She nodded, and a moment later cried, “Now!” She was on her back with her legs up and apart. Fascinated, she watched as he bent, and then his hand pushed into her as the full thunder of pain rolled over her.
Baen had seen the child’s head crowning when he had bent down. Gently he slipped his thumb and a finger about the baby’s head, and slowly drew it forward. He felt Elizabeth’s body yielding to allow the infant to move ahead and through the opening her body was making for it. She shrieked as its head broke forth from her, and then its shoulders. Her husband looked up at her, his heart breaking at the sight of her tears.
“When the next pain comes try to push the rest of the bairn out, Elizabeth,” he instructed her quietly. “The worst is over, lass, and he’s beautiful!”
“You haven’t seen all of it,” she moaned. “He could be a she.” Then she winced with the rising pain, and bore down with all her might as the rest of the bairn came into the world. They caught him in a clean cloth, and Rosamund opened his little mouth to clean out any extraneous matter. The baby coughed, and then began to howl. Baen was grinning from ear to ear.
“We have a son,” he told Elizabeth, leaning down to kiss her. “Everything is exactly where it should be, and of a good size too.”
Pale and exhausted, Elizabeth looked up at him. “Did you mean what you said? That you were sorry you deserted me? That you still love me?”
“Aye, I meant every word,” he vowed, the stormy gray eyes filled with his love.
“Then I forgive you, Baen,” she whispered to him, and then she gasped as another pain, but this one less intense than the others, racked her. Her startled eyes went to Rosamund. “Mama? I still have pain.”
“’Tis the afterbirth, and nothing more,” Rosamund said, taking up a small basin. “When you have passed it Baen must take it out and bury it beneath an ash or an oak.”
“Why?” Elizabeth demanded to know.
“So your son may have all the qualities of that tree,” Rosamund responded. “Its beauty, its strength.”
“What time is it?” Elizabeth asked.
“Almost dawn,” her husband told her. “The sky is already light with the coming day. You have done well, Elizabeth,” he said.
“I want to see Thomas,” she said to them.
“Thomas?” Rosamund smiled.
“Thomas Owein Colin Hay,” Elizabeth answered, looking at Baen. “With your permission, of course, husband.”
“’Tis a fine name for a lad, wife,” he agreed with a smile.
And Elizabeth smiled back at him. It was the first real smile she had given him since his return. What had happened? And then he realized that in his fear for her and for their son, he had offered her an apology, and said in so many words that she had been right all along. Baen almost laughed aloud at the simplicity of it all. An apology! Why had he not considered it before? Because they were both right, he decided, and they were equally stubborn. But it mattered no longer. She had smiled at him, and solicited his opinion in the matter of naming their firstborn son.
“Thomas for your uncle, Owein for your father, and Colin for Baen’s father,” Rosamund said. “Aye, ’tis a fine name.”
The afterbirth was expelled into the basin and handed to Baen. He restrained a shudder, for it was certainly not a pretty thing. “I’ll bury it now, and then we will announce our son’s birth,” he said. “With your permission, of course, wife.”
Elizabeth nodded, and accepted the now-swaddled bundle that Maybel handed her.
“Oh, he’s a good laddie, he is,” Maybel cooed. “A finer bairn I have never seen born, my dearie. He’s his father’s spit, and that is for certain.”
Elizabeth looked down at her son. Then she looked up at Maybel, and her mother. “Thank you for being here with me,” she said softly, and then her attention became totally absorbed by her child. His hair was dark and covered his round head. “His eyes are blue,” she noted.
“They may change eventually,” Rosamund told her.
“Something has changed, Mama,” Elizabeth said softly.
“Aye,” Rosamund said with a smile.
“He apologized! Did you tell him to do it?”
“Nay, I did not,” Rosamund replied. It would have never occurred to her.
“He loves me!” Elizabeth said.
“Aye, he does, very much, but then you surely knew it, Elizabeth,” her mother said quietly. “Have you made your peace with him now?”
