Chapter Three: Zealot (Half-Chapter)

Chapter Three: Zealot

The wind tossed my silk dress up to my knees as I clambered out of the carriage with less grace than ever before. Eliza Watling was waiting in her doorway with a maid who took my coat and ushered me into the formal sitting room.

Usually Eliza would have had several women over for tea but she had kept them all away for me. We kept up light chit chat about fashion "I adored her burgundy gown- until the maid served our tea and cakes, then she dropped all pretense. “Dear what happened? Bess was so upset when she came over. You and David fought?

“Yes we did. I kissed him, Eliza.” My tea was too sweet and I tried concentrating on that rather than the I-am-going-to-cry feeling stirring up in me. I had learned last night that I was now able to cry, I should have been done with it by now.

“Why on God’s green Earth would you do that?”

“I misinterpreted the situation.”

“Charlotte if that were all there was to it then you wouldn’t be so upset right now. It is much more, isn’t it?”

“No actually, that is the heart of the problem. David gave me these new emotions, but there is no way for me to learn how to use them. Before I had a sense of emotion, but I didn’t feel them full force. Now I feel them too much, I use them wrong, and it’s humiliating!” My voice had risen almost to a yell by the end of my diatribe but it didn’t faze Eliza. That woman was a study in patience.

“So that’s it then. It’s barely about the kiss at all. You’re embarrassed that you were overwhelmed by the new strength of your emotions, and that when it came to bare you were rejected. I assume David did reject you?”

I tried to keep my tone as calm and level as hers, but I knew my words sounded sulky. “Yes he pushed me away. You know we’re getting married Eliza, eventually, but he never says anything about it to anyone. He doesn’t want to.”

“I don’t think David created you to marry you Charlotte. He probably never planned to keep you with him at all. However you want to stay with him so that presents a problem.”

“What problem? I don’t understand.”

“Well the problem of what to do with you of course. You want to stay, and there are only a few circumstances in which you could stay with him forever. One is if you were an invalid, the other is if you were his wife. Any relative, ward, or even maid would eventually get married. As you aren’t human, David can never allow you to marry anyone for fear of discovery.”

Eliza nibbled daintily on a tea cake but I had forgotten all about the food. Was I really such a problem? My insistence to stay with David would forever keep him from marrying a human woman, or having children. I told Eliza as much.

“I never knew David to be interested in children or marriage at all. He has always been too devoted to his work to even look for a wife. In a way the two of you getting married would be perfect. He would literally be marrying his work, the physical manifestation of everything he has accomplished. He would never have to deal with the nagging, bitter, neglected wife because you understand what he does.”

“If he doesn’t want to marry me then I won’t make him. I don’t want my maker to be miserable on my account.”

“Did you just call him your maker?”

“I always have, but when we got to England he told me I had to start calling him by his name. He created me, but I have never thought of him as my father. He is more of a god to me.” I smiled at Eliza’s stunned silence, and almost laughed when she reached for the cross around her neck. “He is a god, think about it. He created life; he created perfection on his own. No mere mortal could ever accomplish such a thing. So logically he must be more.”

“Charlotte what David did in creating you is remarkable, but he is just a man. A brilliant man, but still a man. There is only one God and he is vengeful and jealous of those who pretend.”

“My god is not jealous because he is perfect, though he can be vengeful when someone tries to harm what he has created. He killed three men for me.” I had no idea that I had taken on the zeal of any religious fanatic, though it wouldn’t have surprised me to know. Let Eliza have the church and god that rejected my very existence! I had the god who had made me, a true god, one who could be seen and heard and felt. I did not need her god…. But I needed to apologize to mine.

“I must go Eliza, thank you so much for your hospitality. My maker is at home waiting for me to come to my senses. I shall see you another time.” I stood and walked out of the house, Bess trailing behind trying to put my coat on me, and the driver running ahead to bring the carriage. I needed to see David.

I fidgeted the entire ride home and when we arrived I didn’t even wait for the footman to open either of the doors. I ran to my maker’s workshop and threw open the door, but he wasn’t inside. I went to his office and began to get alarmed when he wasn’t there either.

The rotund manservant who went with my maker when he made house calls as a simple doctor came up to me with a smile. “Mistress Covington the doctor is with a patient. A young woman is having a hard labor, but it should be over soon.” He held up a small black box. “Dr. Covington sent me to get this. Would you like to come back with me?”

“Very much so, yes, thank you.” The entire carriage ride over to the patient’s house I mocked poor simple Eliza. What had her god ever done for anyone? Mine created life, helped the poor, doctored the sick, protected, provided, nurtured…. If one of his patients couldn’t pay, he didn’t have them sent to debtors’ prison. He allowed them as much time as they needed to pay or often just forgave them the bill. He had the loyalty and love of so many who knew him. How could she deny that my David was a god?

Sarah Baker was not much older than I appeared to be, maybe twenty-three. This pregnancy was her first but the baby was facing the wrong way. David was trying to insert his hand into the birth canal and hold it open so that the baby wouldn’t suffocate. That was what the box was for. It contained herbs that would act as a muscle relaxant. That was the intention anyway, so far David’s hand still wouldn’t fit as far as it needed.

Michael Baker was distraught, seeming to think that both his wife and his child would die. David was staring at me without seeing me, he was too lost in his thoughts. But then he seemed to realize I was sitting there and he called me over. “Hope, my hand is simply too big. You are much smaller. You will have to do this.”

Who was I to question him? I knelt beside him on the floor. A mattress had been moved off a bed somewhere in the house so that the doctor would have easier access. It was proving helpful. I had not been designed to be squeamish, but there was blood and some sort of slime I couldn’t identify dripping from Mrs. Baker’s insides. My rose silk dress would be ruined by it.

I rolled up my sleeves and David guided my hand. “You have to be immobile Hope. You cannot let the muscles contract around the baby’s head. They are supposed to be born head first,” there were little feet poking out of the slime. “That doesn’t always happen. We can’t pull or turn the baby because the umbilical cord is around his neck. You need to keep the vaginal walls open while Mrs. Baker pushes. Do you understand?”

“Yes Ma- yes doctor.”  I could feel the baby beneath my fingers as I pushed my hand through the mother. She screamed at the intrusion but there was no other way. I found the head and pushed to keep the flesh away from the face. I wouldn’t let this baby die.

“Push now Sarah. You have to push.” David’s voice was so calm, so soothing. I felt better hearing it, and Sarah apparently did as well because she stopped screaming and started pushing. Of course the action of pushing made her start screaming again and I had to fight against her muscles to keep the baby’s airways uncovered. In a fight between her muscles and my metal, I was going to win. David seemed to realize that that might be a dangerous thing.

“S**t. Hope, you might rip through her,” he ground out under the cover of screams. “We need this baby out now.”

“Should I try to untangle the umbilical cord? I think I can.”

“Yes, we can’t wait any longer.”

“I can do this, no problem.” I had to put my other hand inside of the mother as well, to feel for the umbilical cord. “It is only wrapped once.” I slid my finger under the cord and started to loosen it.

“Good, good, keep going. Carefully pull it around the head. Tell me when it’s off.”

It was harder that I thought it would be. Maybe the cord was bunched somewhere else, maybe it was just short, but there wasn’t enough slack to pull it over the baby’s head. “David, if the cord snaps will it hurt the baby?”

“No, but we can’t get a kni-“

“Done. Push Sarah, the baby is free.” Sarah pushed, I carefully pulled, and soon there was a baby screaming in my arms. The midwife came and took it to clean, and David began to wash the secretions from my arms.

“You did well Hope, I am glad you decided to take the initiative. And if it makes you feel better, you do not appear to have gotten anything on your dress.” He cleaned me off gently and methodically until everything was gone. Sarah was crooning over her baby as it fed, and her husband watched with a pathetic expression on his face. Something indescribable flooded through me as I watched them, but a quashed it down quickly.

“I did what had to be done.” We were quiet, watching the happy family. David wrapped his arm around me and I leaned into him. “We have to talk.”

“Yes. But not right now.”

“When we get home.”

“Yes.” I turned my face into his chest and watched how the delicately woven pattern of his vest rose and fell with his breathing. David was my maker, my god, I had behaved stupidly, but he wasn’t mad. Eliza was misguided.

“I think I may have made Eliza angry.”

“What makes you say that?” I could feel his lips moving against my hair as he spoke.

“Oh a minor disagreement over something major. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Whatever retort David had was cut off when Michael Baker came over to thank us. He insisted on paying us, though my maker waved him off. The money wouldn’t go straight into his pocket like with most doctors. He would use it to continue treating patients who couldn’t pay, or he would donate it to some good charity.

We walked to the carriage still wrapped up in each other. I imagine that we looked like a proper couple about to be wed, happy and in love. I wished that were the case.

Author's Note

This isn't the full chapter, this is just what I have so far. I have to study so I will be evil and leave you hanging!