The Damnation Affair Read online

  If word got out the baby was born, though…

  Gabe, this is a hell of a tangle.

  Li Ang couldn’t explain much of where she’d come from, but he’d done some quiet digging. At least, as quiet as he could, being a tall-ass roundeye wandering around in the Chinois part of Damnation. He supposed he should be grateful the marm hadn’t taken it into her head to explore that shadow-half of town. They had their own chartermage, too, a disgusting piece of dried leather with a white beard and clawlike nails.

  Who just happened to be Li Ang’s husband. Or, to be precise, Li Ang was one of his wives. The only one to bear him a child to term, if what he’d heard was right.

  Gabe was thinking the Chinois didn’t hold with divorce.

  Ripp kept talking, soothing and low. Li Ang cried out again, but softly, like a bird. Maybe it helped to have other womenfolk with her.

  Whereas he was useless. He should be out riding the circuit, too. But Russ could handle it on his lonesome this once.

  Jack stared at the black kettle and kept his hand away from his gun. It looked to be a long night.

  * * *

  “Push!” Ma Ripp barked.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the marm snapped. “She’s Chinoise; she can’t understand you!”

  Jack tried to make himself as small as possible against the hall wall. Inside the bedroom, Li Ang’s cries had taken on a despairing note. It was almost touching, to hear Miss Barrowe taking up Ma Ripp on Li Ang’s behalf.

  “Instead of shouting at her—ow!”

  “That’s it!” Ripp crooned. “Squeeze her hands! Almost there, duckums. I can see the head.”

  “Oh dear…” Suddenly the marm seemed not quite so crisp. “Is that supposed to happen?”

  Li Ang’s voice spiraled up into a scream, and she cursed both of them roundly. At least, so it sounded. The harsh, foreign syllables broke, agony and triumph mingling, and Gabe flinched.

  “Oh…” Miss Barrowe. “Oh, my God.”

  “That’s it! That’s a good girl! Now! Now!”

  Li Ang screamed again. A wet tearing sound, a gushing. Slapping, and Ma Ripp’s muttered mancy. Popping, cracking, fizzing—and Miss Barrowe, softly now.

  “Hush, dearie…oh, hush, all’s well, yes, hold my hand…Oh, my. My goodness. My heavens.”

  She doesn’t know what to say. I reckon I wouldn’t, either.

  Then, a thin protesting wail, gathering in force. “A boy,” Ma Ripp announced dryly. “Breathin’ now, thank the Almighty. And just as fine as can be. Missy, turn loose of her and wash this little ’un.”

  “I’ve never—”

  “That don’t matter. Hold his head, so. Just sponge him—that’s right. Wrap him up good, I laid the swaddling right there. You had a doll once, dintcha? Just like a doll.”

  Li Ang cursed again, raggedly. Or at least, it sounded like a foul imprecation, with an edge of beseeching.

  “Oh, yes, I’m bringing him. Just a moment.” Miss Barrowe, half to weeping. “He’s so small. Oh my goodness. Oh—he’s leaking, I do believe he’s…oh, good Lord.” There was a spray and a pattering, and the baby howled with indignation.

  “Healthy little cuss,” Ma Ripp observed. “Use the fresh swaddlin’, there. Sometimes they pee. Now comes another bit of a mess. Bleeding, too. Ho, Sheriff! Needing another pair of hands!”

  What, me? But he was already palming the door open.

  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, an
d 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 young skin.

  It was there, sitting at her desk and staring across the bent heads as they scratched at their slates, that she realized just how far she was from Boston. Perhaps it was lack of sleep bringing a clarity all its own.

  Cat drew in a deep breath, her stays digging in briefly, and wondered if she could march into a pawnshop under broad daylight.

  No, night is best. But more dangerous—if you are seen, somehow…

  But this was not Boston. She shook her head and attended to the third form, laboriously reciting from the eighth page of Miss Bowdler’s First Primer. “Very good,” she encouraged, though she would have said so if they had been reciting backward charter-cantations, or even the Magna Disputa. “You may lay that aside, and apply yourself to tracing your alphabet.”

  “Yes mum,” they chorused, and she surprised herself by smiling.

  * * *

  They waited until the children were gone, then trooped silently in, faces scrubbed and mouths pulled tight. Miss Tiergale took her seat first as Cat brought out the slates.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” she essayed. They were so long-faced she half-expected bad news. God and charter both knew it would be just the time for it.

  It was Belle who spoke first, in a rush. “We don’t mean to be no trouble, Miss Barrowe.”

  Trouble? Oh, none at all, unless you count the bruise on my arm and the loss of Reputation. It does not seem that I will miss it overmuch here. Her chin rose. “Indeed you are none. In fact, on our short acquaintance I have found you all to be serious and studious.”

  “She means with Tils.” Mercy’s cheeks, one with its fading bruise, flushed uncomfortably. “He’s…well, he ain’t a nice man, miss. And he’s been drinkin.”

  “That does not surprise me.” She began handing out the slates, her boots tapping the raw lumber with little authoritative ticking noises. “He does not seem the temperate sort.” In any sense of the word.

  “Well, you ain’t got to be afraid, not with Gabe looking after you.” Trixie gazed at the ceiling. Today they were all dressed fairly respectably, instead of in their frail flash and feathers. “It’s us what gots to watch our step.”

  There are so many grammaticals I could take issue with in those statements. “Mr. Gabriel is charged with the safety of everyone in this town.” She handed Mercy her slate with an encouraging smile.

  Anamarie giggled, elbowing the tall one, Carlota. “Not Salt’s, I reckon. He hates that chartershadow.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Trixie was still studying the ceiling, her cheeks flushed from the heat. “Shadows ain’t no good.”

  Let’s cease this chatter. “We shall begin with—”

  “She’s blushing,” Anamarie whispered. “I think she’s sweet on him, too.”

  That got Trixie’s attention. “Who, the shadow?”

  “Ladies.” Cat folded her arms. Her cheeks stung, perhaps because of the bruise on Mercy’s poor face. “We have much to accomplish this afternoon. I intend to earn every cent of the fee you have graciously promised me. Take up your slates.”

  That served to bring them to task. Her cheeks still burned, though, and it took a while for the heat to fade. It was entirely different than the dry baking outside, and Cat’s head was full of a strange noise. She held grimly to her task, and by the end of the session all the women had firmly grasped not only the basic functions of the alphabet, but also the idea, if not the application, of multiplication.

  “It’s all groups!” Anamarie finally burst out. “Say you’ve a fellow buying drinks for you and him. That’s two drinks. And he buys three rounds. Three groups of two, six!”

  “Unless Coy waters yours so you can keep a clear head to roll the bastard,” Carlota said, and their shared laughter made Cat smile before the probable meaning of “roll” occurred to her.

  “Language, Carlota.” Mildly enough. Cat pulled her skirts aside as she reached to wash the slate board clean in preparation for their practice at writing their names. “Very good, Anamarie. It’s all groups. Multiplication and division—”

  “Now hold on,” Mercy finally spoke up. “Let’s just stick with the multiplyin’ until I get that clear inside my skull.”

  “I wanta read my Bible.” Belle, suddenly, as she scratched lightly at the wooden frame of her slate with one broken fingernail. “That’s what I want.”

  “I’m a-gonna move to San Frances and open up a bawdy house of my own. Be a madam, not the girl.” Trixie waved one airy, plump hand. “Count the money and eat me sweet things all day.”

  “Where you gonna get the stake for that?” Anamarie tossed her dark head, her earrings—plain paste, like Mercy’s—swinging against her curls.

  “That’s why
I said we gotta learn numbers, so Tils can’t short us none no more.”

  “Names, ladies.” Cat began tracing them on the board. “Can you tell whose I am writing now?”

  A ragged chorus: “A…N…A…M…A…”

  “Why, that’s me! Ah-na-mah-ree.”

  “Very good. Wait until I’ve written them all to copy your own name.”

  “It’s like mancy. Like the charters.”

  “Except these don’t glow—”

  “Ladies, I know you’re eager to be gone. We must finish this first, however. Please contain yourselves.”

  “Why you call us ladies all the time?” Carlota wanted to know. “We ain’t.”

  Cat’s patience stretched, but the clarity that had possessed her all day held. “This is the Wild Westron. Anyone can become anything here.” I can even become a schoolteacher, possessed of patience I hardly knew was possible. And helper to a midwife, and a woman who can teach fancy frails to read.

  For a long few moments, nobody spoke as Cat traced a C, an A, an R. “Which letters are these? Anyone?”

  The chorus began again. “C…A…R…”

  Cat Barrowe found herself smiling broadly, facing the board. Yes, indeed. Anyone can become anything here.

  Chapter 15

  Dusk was gathering, purple veils and a breath of coolness stepping down from the hills on the heels of a steadily gathering wind. Approaching autumn tiptoed around the town, but the bank of heavy gray stayed firmly in the north and didn’t sweep down any farther. When it did roll over Damnation, the mud would be knee-high. He would have to teach Miss Barrowe to drive the wagon, so she could avoid getting her skirts draggled. That would mean caring for a horse close to her cottage, too, and he was involved in a long train of thought having to do with the possibility of a stall in the Armstrongs’ stable when he turned the corner and saw her walking slowly, head down, from the other direction.

  School was out, then, and the saloon girls were probably back at the Star. He’d had a word with Paul Turnbull about Tils. That went about as well as could be expected—Paul didn’t like trouble, and Gabe gave him to understand that Tilson was fixing to have trouble with Gabe himself if he didn’t leave the marm alone.