And he could tell that she might die soon if he didn’t do something. Caesar was said to have been cut from the body of his dying mother, but Meriwether was not quite willing to do that. Not yet. That would surely kill Sacagawea, and even if the baby survived, how could the men of Fort Mandan feed it? No, Sacagawea had to survive this delivery. The rattlesnake magic might be their only hope.
Though the faint gray glow of day seeped through the imperfectly fitting shutters in the walls of the main building, they didn’t dare open them for better light, due to the raging blizzard outside. When York had retrieved the specimen bottle that held the severed rattle from the snake specimen, Meriwether looked down at his patient.
She was so thin that her bent knees stood out like knobs in her muscular legs, and her fingers seemed delicate, the bones near-visible through her bronze skin. She’d been starving herself, he was sure of it, in her rush to get away from the dragon. Leaving her husband behind.
“Yes,” Sacagawea said. “We know of it. The women of my tribe—the tribe I came from, used rattler venom and the tail of the snake. The magic dulls the pain, and I will be able to push hard, hard. I did not think we would find a snake in the winter cold.”
Meriwether held up the specimen bottle and removed the severed tail, a sinister-looking lumpy object. “Fortunately, we are a scientific expedition, among other things. And I will give this a try, if you are willing. We will get you and your little one through this perilous situation.”
“It’s a boy,” she said, panting. “I know it’s a boy. He’s—” Her hand went protectively over her stomach, as though trying to comfort her unborn child. Her face was wracked with pain.
He placed the preserved rattle on a small plate, then used his sharpened knife to chop it into tiny bits, not at all concerned about destroying one of their specimens. He had no doubt that as their journey continued next year in warmer weather, they would find other snakes.
When he was done, the plate held an unappetizing pink mess, the tissues of the snake’s rattler. It looked finely granular, as though composed of salt beneath a membrane. Meriwether had chopped it so finely that each morsel was no longer than the tip of his fingernail.
He placed one of the thin slivers between Sacagawea’s lips, and she licked, then swallowed. “More,” she said.
He was hesitant, but she seemed certain. He pushed another tiny sliver between her lips, and she lay back, waiting for the venom to affect her.
When the next contraction hit Sacagawea, she seemed to have the endurance to push harder. Her expression showed concentration rather than agony. She gasped. “One…more.”
Though his own pulse was racing, Meriwether did as she asked, feeding her another morsel.
She groaned, squeezed, and drew a deep breath for a great push. Her entire sweat-slick body trembled. Something tore and gave way inside her, and with a rush of blood and fluids, she expelled an infant onto the blankets. It was a boy, but it was too still, too quiet. His skin was pale and bluish.
Meriwether lifted the baby up by his tiny feet. As Sacagawea saw her son, she made a sound like a long sigh that caught on a sob, perhaps realizing he was too still. Maybe the dragon had got him after all—
“No!” Meriwether said out loud, defying the voice he had heard in his head and in his dreams. The idea of the this child being made into one of the evil force’s revenants cut him through the heart. But wait—he saw the baby’s chest moving as he struggled to draw breath.
Instinctively, Meriwether pinched the baby hard on his backside. He’d seen doctors slap the bottoms of hapless infants, but his mother had taught him that any sudden pain could work. The baby’s eyes flung open wide, and a half-choked cry erupted from his tiny mouth. With a probing finger, Meriwether reached into the baby’s mouth and scooped free the clogging mucus. Then the crying started in earnest and echoed through the fort.
He heard men cheering, whooping, and Sacagawea collapsed in relief on her blankets. Meriwether placed the baby on her chest, then moved to protect the young mother’s privacy from the casually staring men crowded around the door.
Remembering what to do, he tied the baby’s cord. The little boy was crying and pumping his arms and legs, apparently a healthy specimen, somehow plump and strong despite his mother’s emaciated condition. “He is fine and healthy,” he told her.
Meriwether reached blindly for a new blanket and wrapped the baby tightly before handing him to the new mother. “Do you have any idea what you’ll call this fine young man?”
She was laughing and crying as she opened her shirt to nurse her son. “Jean Baptiste. His name is Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. His father told me he wanted him named after his father’s father.”
His father. Meriwether did not ask for further explanation. Clearly she considered herself loyal and devoted to her husband. And why should she not be? Who should she be loyal to?
She lay back, exhausted and dozing, no doubt aided by the rattlesnake. Lewis, also exhausted, went to the main room, in search of a corner to sleep.
They built up the fire to keep the main room warm. He had the men bring him more clean blankets for the mother and child, removing the blankets soiled by the birth. They would be stored outside in a sealed shed, so as not to attract animals; with the frozen river and cold weather, the blankets could not be thoroughly washed until spring.
He also knew there were superstitions about a baby’s placenta, and his mother had told him many of them from the old, lost world. His own ancestors in the British Isles would carefully dispose of the afterbirth, burying or burning it. Some even held careful traditions of what must be done afterward, from saying special prayers to planting trees over the remains. Others held no such beliefs, and many times the placenta was just discarded, with no great harm that he could tell.
Except here, in the middle of a strange, magical landscape after the comet had unleashed magic on the world and separated the American continent to another place entirely, who knew what might happen? He did not know the traditions here in the arcane territories, and so he was afraid to discard or burn the afterbirth without consulting Sacagawea, once she grew strong again.
Thinking like a scientist, he wrapped the thing in a square of white linen intended for ligatures and bandages, and ordered it be stored like the soiled blankets, in a secure place where it would freeze.
For hours the men had held a hushed, tense quiet, but now they talked animatedly, relieved. Pryor, the man on outside guard, described Sacagawea’s arrival, like a ghost through the gusts of snow. “When she arrived, Captain Lewis, sir, she said she needed to see the smaller dragon. I think now…I think she meant you, sir. Why did she call you the smaller dragon?”
Meriwether hesitated, not wanting to reveal his dream battle, nor to inflame their superstitions. “She was delirious, Pryor. This isn’t her language. She must have confused the words for dragon and doctor.” He didn’t try to explain how a young native woman would have any basis to know what a dragon from European legend was at all.
He was dead tired, and curled up in blankets on the floor. As he drifted to sleep, he thought how odd it was that Sacagawea had said she had actually seen him fighting the dragon in the sky, during the blizzard. Could she see his dreams?
Deep in sleep, he dreamed he was fighting the dragon again, but even though his adversary seemed weaker, this time his teeth didn’t find their mark on the evil creature’s throat, and they both spiraled into darkness.
My Dearest Julia,