"How dare you?" Thibault's deafening, slurring voice echoed painfully in her ears. Already, her eyes had swollen tightly shut, and only through the smallest slight in her right eye could Cécelie see her drunk husband wind his cane up for another strike.
Pain seared through her back, the metal head of his stick surely cracking bone somewhere inside, though her body had already gone numb from the torture. Limp on the ground, huddled into herself for weak protection, Cécelie kept her voice barely above a whisper, faint and quiet over the man's labored breathing. "Please, Monsieur le Compte—" she used his title with the smallest hope to calm him down— "think of our child."
He cackled loudly down at her, bending down at one knee near her black-and-blue face. "I think of the little bastard every single day I wake next to your ponderous lump in your stomach." He took a handful of her blonde hair in his fist, pulling her head up from the ground, peering his face close to the slit of her swollen eye. "Thank Christ for that belly of yours, actually. How else would I have noticed you sneaking behind me, tracking my whereabouts into the late, sinful hours of the night?" He let her head fall back down to the floor with a thud. "And the sad thing is, you still have no idea where I go and who I see, do you, Cécelie?" he spat her name down at her, her swelling hand made a feeble attempt to wipe the spittle from her bulging cheek.
Her frame shook before him, a grating sound issuing from her bleeding lips. Laughter. "Oh, Thibault," her parched laughter scratched, "I have known for months now just where you go, who you see, and who you fuck... both the women and the men." She struggled to push herself up to sit, leaning forward over her pregnant belly. "I almost wish this baby within me were a bastard, so that the child would not grow up having such a father as you."
Cécelie snarled, lunging forward on her husband. With the sharpness of her nails, she scratched all across his face, screaming her retaliation with each bleeding gash she made.
The last thing she remembered was a blinding whack at the side of her head and a kick to her stomach. The pain shocked and paralyzed her. She rolled over on her side, wretched until her stomach felt as empty as her heart. Then, just before her world went black, she felt a gush of hot liquid from between her legs. Her belly contracted, spilling her broken water over the floor, but she could no longer feel the pain.
A fog hung over her mind, only penetrated by the agonizing stabbings all through her stomach. Her head fell on her shoulder, first one way, then the other, her vision clearing from the sleepy, stunned blur clouding her sight.
Shapes stretched and spun before her eyes. Blinking, Cécelie focused one eye at a flickering candle beside her head. She tried to reach for its light and its warmth. But a tight bind around her wrist restrained her. She tried her other hand, only to find the same.
With racking, panicked breaths and trembling, fighting arms, she tried to sit up, scream after scream begged for God to hear her.
"Shh," comforted a warm, gentle voice. A cool, damp cloth gingerly pressed against her forehead, and the voice continued to soothe her hysteria. "Calm yourself, Comptesse. You are safe and mending in your own bed. God has heard your prayers. You are alive." Cool water ran down her feverish cheek, pooling at the corner of her mouth. A friendly, smiling face leaned into her sight, his eyes bluer than the brilliant summer sky. He smiled as he dabbed the cold cloth over her face, down her neck. "God made you a fighter, Madame la Comptesse."
Cécelie struggled against her bound hands. In her writhing, her legs felt heavy, as if something weighted them down.
The gentle stranger shushed her again. "Madame, Madame, if you struggle, you'll reopen your wounds. Please, calm. It is alright." His mild hands unlaced the leather straps from her wrists quickly, hushing her softly all the while. "There," he whispered, "you are free. Only don't struggle so, now. You have been through dark trials, Madame. I'm only glad to see I pulled you through."
Her other eye opened, blinking rapidly as she tried to focus. Trembling in their motions, her hands reached for her face, tracing over its corners, barely touching over painful bruises on her cheek, behind her ear, and everywhere. Only then, her mind flashed with memories of swollen eyelids and cut lips. Cécelie inhaled her realization quickly, too deeply. Her stammer sounded distant, strange even to her ears, "Thi—Thibault?"
The peaceful smiled dimmed from the stranger's face. "I will not allow Monsieur le Compte to see you until you are fully healed, Madame. Not after what you have been through."
"Who are you, Monsieur?" her thought words passing unbidden through her mouth.
"A doctor, Madame." His reply vaguely registered through her daze. But its hollow answer caused her to shake her head.
The clouds around her mind dispelled every inhibition, allowing her thoughts to run spoken into the world. "That is what you are, not who you are, Monsieur," she slurred her words in a weak whisper.
The doctor immediately stopped whatever preoccupied his hands on the stand, turning with a wry smile on his face back to his patient. "I believe the drugs have made you into quite the philosopher, Comptesse." He picked up a glass—its contents opaquely grey. "Drink this," he ordered, pressing the rim to her dry and cracked mouth, cradling the back of her neck in his hand. .
She gulped the foul drink down, grateful for the small relief to her thirst. Just the compassion of his palm securing her head instilled peace right to her heart. The air passing into her lungs composed her, a numbing sensation running to her lower regions that contorted in agonizing pain.
His kind eyes watched as the grimaces and tweaks of suffering left her face, the angelic calm he had watched for hours as she slept reclaiming her features. Removing the rim from her greedy lips, he took his first notice of her eyes—shockingly deep blue, almost violet in their shining hue. His hand eased her head back down to the pillow, returning the glassy gleam that startled him.
"Please, Monsieur, your name," she inquired weakly once more. For some reason, it mattered that she knew who this savior was, who wanted her to live and continue her fight.
"Jehan de Lacey," he answered, continued his ministering dabs of cooling water over her flushed cheek. At his Christian name, she spasmed and contorted in surprise. But as he uttered his last name, her horrific tremor disappeared as suddenly as it had seized her.
Concerned over her reaction, the doctor stepped to a basin of water, rinsing his hands in its cleansing soap. Such was his immediate worry for her health.
That name sent a shock through her, the ghost of a name from her past. When it once was filled with joy. "Jehan," she mouthed, another tremor coursed down her back.
"You must excuse me, Madame la Comptesse, but I will need to inspect your injuries." He pulled a stool to her bedside, his steady hands lifting the cotton sheet from his patient.
Cécelie nodded. "Of course, Doctor."
She smiled at his profile, his attention fixated on the damp and blood encrusted warps tied over her lower stomach and parts of her thighs. Carefully and meticulously, he began to remove them, examining both skin and cloth minutely for signs of infection.
"M- monsieur le Docteur," the uncontrolled shaking in her voice pulled the doctor from his work. Her face was blanched, suddenly lacking the feverish flush present only moments before. Mouth quivering, hands trembling, she reached towards her belly.
Bloody. Flat. Empty. "Where is my child?" she barely articulated her words loud enough for his ears.
Taking a deep breath, he met her pitiful eyes. Only the faintest beginnings of tears in the corners. Most women would sob and wail and cry cascades at her discovery. But not this one, not with her history, he well knew.
She asked him again, steadier, more commanding this time, "Where is my child?"
"Gone to God, Madame la Comptesse. He is his Father now. I'm sorry." He paused, unsure of whether she could handle the rest of the truth or not. The firm and steady line of her lips compelled him onward. "The night I was called, Madame, I found you unconscious on the ground, bruised and broken, bleeding with natal blood. Your child was sent into this world prematurely, your labor forced by whatever beating you had undergone. And still, you would not... you could not revive yourself for the task. So, I had to retrieve the baby myself. The scar across your belly serves as illustration, Madame. Your life is my sole duty now—" he watched her eyes shut tightly—"as I was unable to save that of your son."
He returned his attention to the bandages in his hands, unable to watch her stoic suffering any longer. He merely felt her unsteady breathing as he worked, shallow from her weakness. "You can weep, Madame. Grieving is what we all must do at sometime, and tears are a part of grief. It is natural." He did not glance at her as he spoke, directing his words into the bloody skin at his hands.
But he did feel her dark and scornful chuckle. "Monsieur, the last time I cried overwhelmed by emotion was my wedding night. The only tears that trickle down my cheeks now are solely from pain."
As he reached for fresh wrappings, he stared over her hardened smirk, her closed eyes, and her quivering lips. She inhaled feebly to continue. "I would not give Thibault the pleasure of knowing I wept over his dead child." A sneer twisted her mouth. "My son has a better Father now in death than he ever would in life."
Pity welling up inside him, he inspected the long line of stitches just under her navel, no longer swollen and straining against the thread. She was mending physically, and that was the only restoration capable of his hands. "Your incision is healing perfectly, Comptesse," he dressed the cut with a nod.
"Thanks to you, Monsieur De Lacey," she said, her voice just a bit stronger.
The doctor scoffed quietly, "I only wish I could heal your wounded spirit as easily..."
Her muscles contracted stiffly as she rolled over in her bed sheets. Sinews stretched, tight and aching. Typical of the morning after, she smirked into the early morning light. The hardened scar on her stomach still sent a jolt to her stomach as she pushed a single finger over its top. A constant reminder that she was made a fighter, but even fighters must heal.
Cécelie sighed and turned over to sleep just a bit longer. No point in dwelling on empty memories.