The Damnation Affair

A squalling little bundle, wrapped tightly but inexpertly in boiled and charm-dry cloth, screwed up its tiny little face and wailed. Li Ang, wan and sagging, her knees hitched high and everything below the waist exposed, closed her eyes and clutched the bundle to her chest. It looked like a little old man, and was quickly turning purple. It produced an amazing amount of noise.

“Get the tit in that babe’s mouth.” Ma Ripp pointed at Miss Barrowe, who was braced at the side of the bed, a smear of blood on her colorless cheek. The Boston miss looked dazed. “Sheriff, my bag. Got to stanch this with mair’s root and a charm.”

The bed looked sadly the worse for wear, bright blood and a clot of darkness spreading from Li Ang’s undersides. That’s an awful lot of blood for such a little girl.

“I believe, ah, that she wishes you to feed the baby, Miss Ang.” The marm’s fingers, clutched in Li Ang’s free hand, must have been throbbing, but she merely looked pale and interested. “I, ah, think it might be best to…oh, dear.”

“Don’t you go fainting like a useless little prip.” Ma Ripp accepted her capacious black Gladstone. “Or I’ll step on you. Get her to put the tit in that little one’s mouth; best thing for them both.” Rummaging in the bag now, with bloodstained fingers, the woman looked like a graveyard hag. “And you, Sheriff. More cloths. Won’t fix itself, and I know you’ve seen the underbits of a woman before.”

“Will she be…” His head was full of rushing noise. Damn, who would have thought the little bitty Chinoise girl would have so much blood in her? Grown men couldn’t stand after losing that much.

“Right as rain once we fix this. Seen worse, yes I have.” Ma Ripp nodded, pushing back a lank strand of sweat-drenched gray hair knocked free of her braids. “Right fine work done tonight.”

“That’s it, dear. Oh, he knows what to do!” Miss Barrowe actually sounded delighted. Maybe women all loved this birthing business.

“This child yourn?” Ripp’s claws were quick and deft, a charm guttering into life on the pad of fresh cloth she pressed between Li Ang’s legs. “You seem mighty interested.”

“She’s a widow.” Jack managed the familiar lie, and followed it with truth. “And it ain’t mine.”

“Well, her husband, God rest the heathen, has a fine son. At least he’ll never have to do this.” She licked her dry, withered lips. “Don’t suppose there’s no whiskey in this house.”

“Madam!” The marm, genuinely shocked, blinked from Li Ang’s side. The Chinoise girl had let go of Miss Barrowe’s hand, and was occupied with her new bundle, staring at the tiny little purple-faced thing as if she had never seen a baby before. For all Jack knew, she hadn’t. She was awful young, and the Chinois…well. It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Keep your corset on, missy. A drop’s just the thing after this type of work.” The midwife accepted Gabe’s flask and tossed back a healthy slug. “Now, let’s get this mess cleared. Dawn’s coming. You should ride for the chartermage, to fetch him a charing.”

“Quite.” Miss Barrowe no longer sounded so pale, and the baby had quit its hollering. It was occupied with its mother’s breast, in any case, and the sight gave Gabe an odd feeling in the region of his stomach.

She looks just like any of our girls. And, compelled, he glanced at Miss Barrowe. Some color had come back into her face, and she stared at the baby, rapt as Li Ang herself. The smear of blood on Miss Barrowe’s soft cheek was wrong, and his fingers tingled. He could just wipe it away, couldn’t he.

If he could touch her.

Don’t, Jack. You know what could happen. You know what’s bound to happen if you start getting ideas.

“Sheriff.” A poke to his shoulder, Ma Ripp shoving the metal flask back at him. “You go fetch the mage, now. Sooner this ’un gets a proper charing, the better.”

“Yes ma’am,” he mumbled, and backed for the door.

Chapter 14

Tuesday was a blur of half-somnolent anxiety. There were items to be procured for a baby’s care, and the midwife’s fee to pay, and the news to be spread that her girl had birthed and the school was closed for the day. The Chinoise was only a servant, true, and this event should not cause her to leave her duties.

But Cat had been dead on her feet, and Jack Gabriel had, none too gently, told her to take her rest while he made sure the town knew.

She had no idea if it was quite proper or normal for Mr. Gabriel to take charge of affairs, but was grateful nonetheless. Mrs. Ripp, her terrible yellowed teeth showing in a grin, undertook to provide the things the baby would need—for a fee, of course, and Cat had paid without question. Afterward, Mr. Gabriel had words with the crone, and returned a third of Cat’s money.

It was…thought-provoking.

It ain’t mine, he’d said, but it was most odd, that he would take such care over a Chinoise girl’s baby. It was none of Cat’s concern, though, and there was plenty else to worry about on that day.

There was engaging a charmwasher for the laundry, the short coffee-colored chartermage to pay and the certificate for a fresh charing-charm to fill, a delivery of firewood to be attended to, and Cat had not eaten until Jack Gabriel had shoved a plate into her hands and told her to sit down and take a bite. Tolerable biscuits, some half- charred bacon, and there was even boiling water for tea.

She had boiled so much water she doubted she would ever forget the charm itself. It was burned into her fingers, along with its catchword. She wondered if it was the way a Continental sorcerer might feel about a certain charm or mancy, never mind that their sorcery worked differently. Mancy followed geography, as the old saying went.

She’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, staring at the side of her teacup, and only woke when the sheriff shook her shoulder and told her briskly to get herself up to bed. It was Li Ang’s pallet she slept on through the remainder of that long, terribly hot day, and so deeply she had surfaced in a panic, unable to discern who, where, or even what she was.

Fortunately, the feeling had passed, and she found herself in Damnation, with a baby’s cry coming from downstairs and Li Ang singing to her son in an exhausted, crooning voice. The poor girl had been trying to clean the kitchen, and Cat’s heart had wrung itself in a most peculiar fashion.

It had taken all Cat’s skill to gently but firmly bully the Chinoise girl upstairs and tuck her in with the baby.

This cannot be so hard. And indeed the biscuits were lumpy and her gruel left a little to be desired, but it was nourishing. Or so she hoped, but then dawn was painting the hills with orange and pink, and she had to hurry to reach the schoolhouse at a reasonable hour. Without her parasol, no less.

Her mother would be not just annoyed, but angered. A lady did not forget such things, much less a Barrowe-Browne.

She had half-expected the schoolroom to be empty on Wednesday, Mrs. Granger having had more than enough time to spread calumny and gossip-brimstone. But the students came trooping in, some of them downcast, true, but others bright and cheery—or sullenly energetic—as usual. Now she knew their names, and a curious calm settled over her.

The children did not seem so fractious, now. Even the Dalrymple girls were no trouble, bent over their slates and newly eager to please. Amy, the elder, even elbowed Cecily once or twice when the younger girl seemed likely to bridle, and Cat rewarded the elder girl with letting her touch the pianoforte’s keys during lunchtime. “There are such things as lessons,” she had intimated, and the naked hope on the young blonde hoyden’s face gave Cat another strange, piercing pain in the region of her chest.

Instead of savages, the children now looked oddly hopeful. Their bare feet and ragged clothing were less urchin than primitive, as if the Garden of Shoaal had been re-created here in the far West, amid the dust and the heat and the incivility. Even the freckles on young Cecily’s face had their own fey beauty, tiny spots of gold on fair