Page 71 of Hold Fast

Mary took a deep, shuddering breath. “Aye,” she said, new determination in her eyes.

The moments crawled, but the hours flew by as Mary stood, circling her hips, pressing her weight into the solid table while her mother and sister bathed her face with wet cloths and Una pressed her knuckles into Mary’s lower back. She had manually turned the baby, which had not been enjoyable for any parties involved, and Mary’s labor was progressing again. Una’s gown was soaked, though it was impossible to tell anymore whether from rain or sweat. In the end, it didn’t matter.

All of a sudden, Mary began to keen loudly.

“Una! I think he’s coming!”

Una undid the knot tying the girl’s shift and let it fall to the floor. Firelight flickered across her pale, naked form, the skin stretched taut over her rounded belly. Sweat rolled down her body as she gripped the table and panted.

“Do you feel like you must push, Mary? Like you cannae bear not to?”

“I must! I cannae not,” she sobbed at the same moment she dropped to her hands and knees in the rushes on the floor.

Una crouched behind her. “Verra well. We will do it here.”

Mary pushed with all her might.

“It hurts!” she screamed.

“It will hurt until ’tis done, Mary,” Una barked back, “and then you will think of it nae more!”

“I cannae do it. I cannae do it any longer,” Mary said, her voice thick with tears.

Between Mary’s legs, Una could see a shock of blond hair covering the baby’s head.

“Mary, my beauty, I see the head. He has hair as fair as your husband’s, Mary! Dinnae give up now!”

Mary panted heavily for a few moments before pushing again, yelling loudly as she strained.

“Good girl, Mary! His head is out! Give me one more push, one more and we’ll have him!”

Seeing her grandchild’s head must have spurred something in Margaret because she took her daughter’s face in her hands, chanting encouragements in her ear and stroking her hair. Mary screamed and, with one more push, delivered a robust, squirming baby boy into Una’s arms. After an eternal moment, a piercing cry rent the sudden silence.

Mary wept, loud sobs wracking her body. All Una could do was laugh as tears streamed down her own face.

“Stay where you are, Mary, just a moment longer,” Una said before asking Elsbeth to place fresh linens on the bed. Margaret bathed Mary’s face with a dry cloth, a proud look in her eye. Una wrapped the babe in a clean cloth and handed him to his grandmother so that she could tend to the afterbirth.

When Una was done with the necessary ministrations, she and Elsbeth helped Mary into a clean shift and then into the bed. Margaret placed the babe in his mother’s arms.

Mary looked at him as if he had fallen from the sky without warning, her eyes wide with shock and amazement. Una’s heart seized, as it always did in this exact moment. Every time. That first look. The first time the babe curled a tiny fist around his mother’s finger. The look of complete bewilderment and utter peace all at once.

Smiling through her tears, Una went to the basin and rinsed the blood and fluids off of her hands and arms. Now that the birthing was done, she felt her exhaustion keenly. She whispered a few instructions to Margaret, who wrapped Una in a tight hug, and made her way to exit, promising she would return in the morning to check in on the pair.

Una opened the door, and Mary’s husband nearly fell in. His face was gray and haggard. She smiled at him.

“Go. Meet your son,” Una said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

The big man stumbled into his cottage and fell to his knees beside the bed, clasping Mary’s hand in one of his and stroking his son’s downy soft head with the other. Margaret and Elsbeth were busy setting the cottage to rights when Una slipped out the door, closing it silently behind her. She shook her head, her vision suddenly going dark around the edges again as she remembered that she’d left without breakfast that morning and it was now nearly dark.

As she turned away from the cottage, she ran into a wall. Strong hands gripped her arms to keep her from stumbling back as arms she knew so well banded around her.

“Una,” Ewan groaned against the top of her head. “I’ve been worried sick.”

“Worried?” she gaped, still trying to steady her vision as the world spun around her.

“You took my horse, and I heard from the watch that you rode off at breakneck speed with Duncan behind you. I—” His voice cracked.

“His sister-in-law was in labor,” Una murmured, her words feeling thick in her mouth. “I dinnae ken her husband’s name.”