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I had been at the Muellers’ cabin for three days, seeing eighteen-year-old Petronella through her first labor. It would be her last, too, according to Petronella. Her seventeen-year-old husband, peeking tentatively into the room in the middle of the second day, had received a burst of German invective from Petronella that sent him stumping back to the men’s refuge in the barn, ears bright red with mortification.

Still, a few hours later, I had seen Freddy—looking much younger than seventeen—kneel tentatively by his wife’s bedside, face whiter than her shift as he reached a hesitant, scrubbed finger to push aside the blanket covering his daughter.

He stared dumbly at the round head, furred with soft black, then looked at his wife, as though in need of prompting.

“Ist sie nicht wunderschön?” Petronella said softly.

He nodded, slowly, then laid his head on her lap and began to cry. The women had all smiled kindly, and gone back to fixing dinner. …

I finished spreading out a thin layer of the wet barley and set it in the corner of the hearth to dry, then went to the writing table, uncapped the inkwell, and opened my casebook. It didn’t take long to record the details of the newest Mueller’s arrival into the world; it had been a long labor but otherwise quite normal. The birth itself had presented no complications; the only unusual feature had been the child’s caul …

I stopped writing and shook my head. Still distracted by thoughts of Jamie, I had let my attention wander. Petronella’s child had not been born with a caul. I had a clear memory of the top of the skull crowning, the pudendum a shiny red ring stretched tight around a small patch of black hair. I had touched it, felt the tiny pulse throbbing there, just under the skin. I remembered vividly the sensation of the wet down against my fingers, like the damp skin of a new-hatched chick.

It was the dream, I thought. I had dreamed in my burrow, mingling the events of the two births together—this one, and Brianna’s. It was Brianna who had been born with a caul.

A “silly hoo,” the Scots called it; a lucky hood. A fortunate portent, a caul offered—they said—protection from drowning in later life. And some children born with a caul were blessed with second sight—though having met one or two of those who saw with the third eye, I took leave to doubt that such a blessing was unmixed.

Whether lucky or not, Brianna had never showed any signs of that strange Celtic “knowing,” and I thought it just as well. I knew enough of my own peculiar form of second sight—the certain knowledge of things to come—not to wish its complications on anyone else.

I looked at the page before me. Only half noticing, I had sketched the rough outline of a girl’s head. A curving thick line of swirling hair, the bare suggestion of a long, straight nose. Beyond that, she was faceless.

I was no artist. I had learned to make clean clinical drawings, accurate pictures of limbs and bodies, but I lacked Brianna’s gift of bringing lines to life. The sketch as it stood was no more than an aide-mémoire; I could look at it and paint her face in memory. To try to do more—to conjure flesh out of the paper—would be to ruin that, and risk losing the image I held of her in my heart.

And would I conjure her in the flesh, if I could do it? No. That I would not; I would a thousand times rather think of her in the safety and comfort of her own time than wish her here amid the harshness and dangers of this one. But it didn’t mean that I didn’t miss her. — Drums Of Autumn

__________

Photos: outlanderonline.com (1&2), Starz (3), @ecampbellsoup (4&5) Gifs: @thegirlwiththecoffintattoo

Dums of Autumn, Chapter 23, Diana Gabaldon, 1996

#Outlander #S4E5 Savages #Drums Of Autumn #Chapter 23 #I had been at the Muellers’ cabin for three days #rather think of her in the safety and comfort of her own time #Claire Fraser #Jamie Fraser #Frank Randall #Brianna MacKenzie #Rosewitha Mueller #Petronella Mueller #Baby Klara Mueller #Too Much Of Frank #S2E13 Dragonfly In Amber #S3E1 The Battle Joined #211 #011920