From the expression on the face of the accoucheur and his assistant, Darcy knew that this amount of bleeding was not normal and expected as the preceding flows of blood had been.
“John, the pitcher of water,” the accoucheur said, studying the expelled placenta. “It looks intact…”
The assistant handed the physician a tall pitcher of water that he had had placed outside in the frosty night air.
The doctor lifted it up several feet above Anne’s belly, and then as his assistant held Anne still, he deliberately poured the water onto her stomach.
She shrieked. “It is so cold.”
This changed not the doctor’s steady hand at all.
As soon as the pitcher was drained, he handed the pitcher to one of the housemaids who stood about waiting to be useful. “John, the cloths.”
The assistant nodded and let go of Anne, while grabbing several clean linen rags that had been placed on the side of the room.
The accoucheur took from his case a dark glass bottle and opened it.
A sharp smell of vinegar filled the room.
The assistant handed the accoucheur the linen cloths and he soaked them with the liquid of a bottle that he had brought in his case with him.
He pulled the bed linens away from Anne and laid the cloths on her belly.
Seeing Darcy’s astonished stare as he watched these proceedings, the accoucheur said to him almost offhandedly, “We must stimulate the uterus so that it contracts and closes off the blood vessels.”
There was so much blood. The assistant pulled the first set of cloths away, and replaced them with additional linens, and in an instant, they were also soaked with the bright red fluid.
Darcy saw that Anne was becoming pale, her lips trembling.
“Put the babe on her breast,” the accoucheur ordered, “that often will stimulate the contraction of the uterus.”
Tears leaked from Anne’s eyes. Darcy sat by her again and took her hand.
Anne sighed happily when the child was placed on her. “She is so perfect. Do not name her for my mother. Or after me, though tell her that I loved her dearly, and—”
“You will not die,” Darcy said sharply. “Tell her. Tell her.”
The accoucheur was too busy, or perhaps he simply chose to pretend he had not heard Darcy’s words. His assistant had soaked a sponge with a brandy that had a particularly strong scent from another open bottle, and now he pressed it up Anne’s female passageway, pushing it in with two long fingers.
Blood, blood, thick, fresh flowing, not clotted at all.
Another set of bedlinens, this time exchanged by Mrs. Reynolds herself rather than one of the maids. Soaked sodden red.
Darcy’s stomach was hollow.
Anne’s arms were around the child, but her eyes had lost their brightness.
“I am glad you are here,” she said. “I am not frightened now.”
There seemed to be less blood flowing. That had to be good.
The accoucheur took one of Anne’s arms and held her wrist in that detached manner of the physician checking the pulse. He frowned and shook his head. “Thin and fast. Thin and fast. Bleeding her would do more harm than good in this case I think.”
“Why would you bleed a woman who is losing so much blood?” Darcy said, his voice in half a screech.
“It relieves the pressure on the oversubscribed blood vessels,” the doctor replied absently. As he spoke, he took a long strip of cloth and tied it tightly around one of Anne’s legs. Then he tied another around her other leg.
“What are you doing?”
