I soon gave up trying to put the girl at ease, and peeked carefully into the room where Flaminia was settling the baby and mother. Moments later, Flaminia tiptoed out, bidding me good night with a tired smile as she and Matilda gathered their things and slipped out the door to their temporary lodgings down the corridor, and then Julian too finally left the chamber, closing the door softly behind him with a click. He settled himself down across from me, and though his eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue, he nevertheless began rummaging in the small map case he had ordered brought in from his staff office, and I saw without surprise that he was beginning the next phase of his workday.
I asked him if he would mind some company, as my nerves were too worked up to even contemplate sleeping at that time, and he smiled happily.
'Of course not, old friend,' he said. 'It would be a welcome change from the shifts of dreary scribes who usually accompany me at night. I'm afraid I'm not up to conversation, but if you can endure my silence, please stay.'
I wanted nothing more, and having neglected to bring any reading materials of my own, I contented myself with merely gazing into the coals of the fire.
It must have been about two hours after midnight when I was awakened from a light sleep I did not even realize I had fallen into. I jerked my head up with a start and glanced over at Julian. I assumed it had been the cry of the baby that had awakened me, and marveled at how long the infant had slept between feedings. Julian looked at me expectantly, however, and I then realized that the sound in question was a soft rapping at the door, and that the Caesar, surrounded as he was by maps and parchments and with his quill dripping ink, was hoping that I would be better disposed to get up and answer it. Shaking my head groggily I stood and stretched, then walked the three steps across the small room to open the door.
Two sentries stood before me, a spitting, struggling woman standing between them with her hands bound in front of her and a heavy woolen cloak over her head and shoulders. In the flickering torchlight behind them I was unable to make out her identity.
'Beg pardon, sir,' said the sentry on the left. 'We seek the Caesar.'
I heard Julian quickly rise behind me from his stool and stride to the open door, where he stood looking quizzically at the strange trio. 'Yes?' he inquired amiably.
The men shuffled awkwardly. 'We disturb you only because we know you keep late hours, sir,' the first one said tensely. 'We just came off our shift at the outpost, sir, five miles beyond the city walls on the south road, when we came across this woman, ridin' hell-for-leather on a horse from your stables, sir, and with no baggage to speak of but her little kit, and a pouch of new coins. We found it passing strange, to say the least, at this hour of the night, and thought it best to bring her back and confirm she has leave to borrow the horse. Another woman was with her, sir, but slipped past us in the dark.'
Julian stood perplexed for a moment, blinking in the dim light, and then stepped away from the door.
'By all means,' he responded. 'Bring her in, but quietly, if you please.'
The two sentries, looking uncomfortable, stepped into the room, pushing the woman in front of them, who stumbled slightly as she stepped over the threshold and cursed under her breath. Julian led her over to the light of the candles he kept burning brightly around his desk, and ordered her to remove her cloak so he could see her face.
The woman threw back her head defiantly, letting the hood of the cloak slip off, and as she did we froze. It was Flaminia the midwife, her kindly, patient expression now replaced by one of ill temper and exasperation.
'Caesar, these men have unjustly accused me and disturbed your rest,' she began loudly, knowing as well as anyone present the reason to keep our voices down. 'I received word that I was urgently needed for a birth in an outlying village, and had simply borrowed the fast horse to make greater speed.'
At ill-mannered Flaminia's loud words, I sighed and stepped over to Helena's door, intending to enter quietly and put her mind at rest, for assuredly all the commotion in the anteroom had awakened her and the baby. Ignoring the midwife's hoarsely whispered protests that I would be disturbing the mother's sleep, I stepped inside. As the light from the anteroom flooded across the bed, Helena's eyes fluttered open sleepily and she lifted her head in befuddlement and with a slight grimace of pain.
I saw with relief that the baby was lying quietly at her breast in the crook of her arm, precisely where the midwife had placed him earlier that evening, and I stepped forward to apologize to Helena for disturbing her at such an hour. She smiled contentedly, and I reached down absentmindedly to stroke the baby's tiny head, and to gently feel the pulse through the soft spot at the top where the skull was not yet fused.
The pulse was not there. The baby's head was stone cold.
I hesitate to describe the horrible scene that ensued, Brother, for whatever you can imagine, it was ten times worse. Thinking I had made some mistake, had somehow lost my touch, I placed both hands on the infant's head and palpated frantically, then pried him from Helena's arms and lifted him to the light to examine him more closely. The skin was deathly white, the eyes rolled back into the head, the joints stiff and hard; such symptoms are terrifying enough when seen in a man who has fallen in battle, perhaps unconscious and facedown in a pool of his own blood. But in an infant, in a tiny vessel of Almighty God Himself, the effects of it are perverse, the very image of evil. I let out a cry, and Helena struggled to a sitting position, reaching for her baby at the same time as Julian rushed in and saw me clutching the infant in horror. He snatched the tiny creature from me and brought him into the light of the anteroom, where he collapsed to his knees, holding the baby to his chest.
'H-how can this be?' he stammered questioningly at Flaminia, his eyes filled with confusion. Helena struggled out of bed and stood leaning against the door frame as I supported her on the other side. 'Help my son,' he pleaded to the midwife, 'he's not breathing.'
Flaminia looked sorrowfully down at him. 'Your wife must have rolled over and suffocated him in his sleep, Caesar,' she said. 'It happens often enough to first-time mothers. I should never have placed him in her arms this night and then left. My God, I intended to return later and check on them, but I received this urgent message. Lord knows what has become of the other baby I was called upon to deliver this evening.'
Julian stared at her uncomprehendingly, and then turned to look at Helena, who had straightened up in wild-eyed astonishment, clutching her belly in pain and rocking back and forth on the balls of her bare feet. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she contemplated the implications of what the midwife had just said.