Chapter Seven - A Christmas Story
The journey down the Camino Real provided no further events until they reached the Santa Barbara mission. Two more huge rains had delayed them at various stops, putting them behind schedule. They arrived in Santa Barbara early in the evening of Christmas Eve. There, to Diego’s dismay, the padres apologetically explained that their rooms were completely filled with scheduled and stranded travelers. They suggested an inn in the town. Diego, Bernardo and Elizabeth remounted their horses and proceeded to the inn, where they were again turned away. Desperate, Diego begged the innkeeper for a suggestion.
"I don’t know, senor, you could try the Seaspray Inn. It is another six miles south of town. But everyone has a full house at this time of year, and it is made worse with all the rain. Now, I have a good stable behind the inn, for your horses. If you want, I can give you and your senora a place in the loft there. You’ll have to share the barn with another young couple who arrived earlier. But that is all I can offer you, your gold will do you no good when I already have so many people here."
Diego admired the man’s honesty, and absent other alternatives agreed to look at the stable. He knew Elizabeth would be frustrated, but staying warm and dry were the first priorities. He went back to his companions, noting that the sky was darkening, another storm headed in.
"We don’t have very good choices," he said to Elizabeth, who was looking quite tired. "We can go further down the Camino, there’s an inn there but no guarantee there will be room for us."
"Or?" she asked.
"We can stay here, in the stable. He says it’s not bad. There would be another couple there."
She gave him a mournful look. He shrugged, returning her look with his own "what can I do?"
"Let’s go look at it," she said rather glumly, getting off her horse. He took her waist as she came down, and could feel her tiredness in how tense she was. Bernardo took the horses.
They walked to the stable, and as the innkeeper had said, it was orderly and dry, with plenty of straw and several empty stalls.
"Let’s check the loft," he said, going to the ladder. He climbed up and looked around, then pulled himself up and stood. "It’s actually rather pleasant," he called down to her. "No draught, good ventilation. The roof seems solid." He stuck his head down at her through the opening. "I think it will be fine. Even if it rains."
"Are the other people up there?" she asked.
He looked around again. "I don’t see anyone," he answered. "Perhaps they’ve gone to buy food."
He climbed back down the ladder and jumped the last few rungs to the floor. "We’ll be fine up there, with lots of blankets," he said. Then, looking around, he laughed and hugged her. "What do you think?" he asked. "We’ll spend Christmas Eve in a stable! All we need is a manger nearby!"
"I’m glad I can’t have the baby yet," Elizabeth said, her voice muffled in his jacket.
He chuckled again and let go of her. "We’ll go to the Tavern and have some lamb stew and a good glass of red wine, and then come up here and make a cozy bed in the straw."
"I wanted to be home for Christmas," she sighed.
"We’re together," he said. "We’ll have to let that be home enough."
She nodded, and let him lead her back outside into the darkness, and the beginnings of a new rain storm.
While Diego and Elizabeth ate, Bernardo busied himself with getting the four horses settled in the stable and laying out blankets in the loft for his master and the Senora. Always meticulous, he laid out a wide, heavy horse blanket, then another softer blanket over that, then a soft linen sheet, and over that another sheet and two more blankets. He was not sure what to do for pillows, so spent some time trying to shape piles of straw into pillows using old grain sacks. Finally satisfied with his work, he set a lantern on a wooden box next to the makeshift bed, and climbed back down the stairs. When he reached the ground, he turned around to be greeted by the sight of a bedraggled-looking young couple standing in the doorway. They were probably still teenagers, the boy might have been nineteen, the girl was younger. They wore the clothes of peons, but they weren’t dirty.
Bernardo smiled and nodded at them. The boy said, "Please senor, my wife..." The girl looked miserable.
Bernardo shook his head, pointing to his mouth and ears.
The boy ascertained that Bernardo was indicating deaf and dumb. He pointed at the girl, and then led her to the last empty stall and helped her sit down on a bale of hay. Bernardo stepped in to help, and as her wet wrap fell open his eyes widened, for she was very large with pregnancy. She suddenly leaned over and moaned.
The boy looked at Bernardo. "We need help," he said, a desperate look on his face.
Bernardo could not let on that he heard, but it was plain to anyone that the girl was nearing her time. Bernardo gestured for them to wait there, and with that he hurried to the Tavern.
Diego and Elizabeth were finishing their meal in the noisy, smoky main room. The stew was good, the bread was fresh, and to Diego’s delight the wine was French, from Burgundy. He had succeeded in getting Elizabeth to relax, and he could tell that she was feeling better after eating. Though she was sleepy, he had persuaded her to stay long enough for him to savor a cigar. They sat in a dark corner for an extra half hour, Diego puffing his cigar and enjoying a good guitarist while Elizabeth laid her head on his shoulder and dozed.
The cigar was almost done when Bernardo entered. Diego saw him coming towards them and knew something was amiss from the look on his face. Bernardo gestured for him. Reluctantly, he awoke Elizabeth and told her he would be right back.
"I have heard that before," she said.
Bernardo backed into a narrow hallway where Diego joined him. "What is it?" Diego asked.
Bernardo pointed at the stable.
"Outside? The stable?"
Bernardo nodded. Then he held his hand about 5'8" off the ground, and gestured a drooping moustache over his mouth. Then he indicated 5' and a woman’s figure, adding a curve outward beyond his stomach. Then he pointed to the stable again.
Diego’s eyes widened. "A couple in the stable?" he said. "And she’s pregnant?"
Bernardo nodded, and then, after gesturing the pregnant female again, he grabbed his stomach in pain.
"She’s in labor?" Diego exclaimed.
Bernardo winced, nodding.
"Are you sure?"
Bernardo indicated that he thought so, pretty sure.
Diego looked over at Elizabeth where she sat, trying to keep her eyes open. "Well this is going to be a night to remember," he said. "Go back to the stable. Take them some blankets. I’ll see if there’s a doctor we can get to help."
Bernardo nodded and left. Diego went to the innkeeper, who was also the tavern keeper and bartender. The man was very busy and doing a booming business, so it took a little while to get his attention. "Senor, excuse me," Diego finally planted himself firmly in front of the man as he headed to a table to deliver drinks. "Is there a doctor here in Santa Barbara?"
The man looked at Diego quizzically. "Is something wrong?" he asked, glancing over at Elizabeth.
"I believe there is a woman in the stable who is going to have a baby. Soon."
"Oh, that peon girl," the man said dismissively, trying to pass Diego to make his delivery. "I warned you there would be others out there, senor!" He managed to slip past Diego.
"You didn’t say one of them was about to give birth!" Diego said, following him closely.
The man shrugged, and began setting drinks before a table of noisy customers.
Diego grabbed his arm. "A doctor!" he said.
"Look, I don’t know where you are from, but there isn’t a doctor within a hundred miles!" the innkeeper replied. "You want a doctor? Go to Los Angeles or Monterey. Or San Diego! Ha ha!" He looked at the table of men before him. "The man wants a doctor!" he told them. "In Santa Barbara!"
They all burst out laughing.
Diego shook his head, and went back to Elizabeth. She could see he was in the middle of something.
"What’s going on?" she asked.
He took her hand. "Darling, can you wait for me here? I need to check on something."
"Yes...but what is it?"
"Just give me a few minutes," he said, and kissing her head he grabbed his jacket and went out the door.
Elizabeth yawned, following him out with her eyes. She wondered if she would ever get used to his unpredictable shifts in focus and the way he would suddenly get up and leave. She looked down at the table, and wondered if it would be completely ill-mannered to put her head down on it and go to sleep. She sighed, knowing that it would.
When Diego got to the stable, he found Bernardo laying blankets in the stall. The peon boy was holding onto the girl on the hay bale. She looked stricken.
"Help us, senor," the boy said. "My wife. She is going to have a baby tonight."
"I can see that," Diego said. "Is her mother around?"
The boy shook his head. "We are from Tecate, senor. We don’t know anyone."
Mexicans, Diego thought. He sighed, looking at Bernardo. "Surely there’s a midwife here," he said. He looked at the girl. She was bent over and moaning.
"What is your name?" he asked the boy.
"Jose," came the answer. "But I am called Pepe. My wife, she is Maria."
Diego could not suppress a smile, and glanced at Bernardo, who was also smiling.
"Well, Pepe," he said, "I thnk we may have to get through this without much help. Is Maria in good health?"
The boy nodded.
"Is this your first baby?" he asked the girl.
She looked up at him and nodded, and then grimaced as a contraction started to shoot through her. Pepe held her as she cried out.
Diego turned to Bernardo. "Go back to the Inn, bring hot water, and get some clean towels. Steal them if you have to, I’ll pay for them later. And get my knife, the long sharp one sheathed in my saddlebag. Clean it and bring it here."
Bernardo nodded and left. Diego turned back to the couple. "There are some things I will need to do, in order to help you," he said. "I have seen this before, and once I helped deliver a baby. As long as things go smoothly we will be fine. We must help Maria lie down with her back up against the hay bale, like this?" he sat to demonstrate. "And Pepe, you will have to allow me to touch her."
Pepe looked at his wife. She nodded.
"All right," Diego said, and helped her reposition herself on the blanket. "That’s good, right like that," he said. "Pepe, you sit here beside her, and when she has a pain you help her by holding her arm and back, like this?" he demonstrated. "You can stroke her tummy when the pain comes, it will help distract her."
At that moment another pain overcame her and she again cried out.
"Just wait, just wait," Diego said to her. "Take a deep breath. It will pass."
She continue to cry out. Pepe tried to get her to breathe. The contraction passed.
"Now, bend your knees, senora," Diego said. When she did, he reached up under her skirts, first to feel how much she was dilated and then to fell her belly. The baby was in the head-down position, and her opening was wide.
"This will happen soon, Pepe," he said to the boy. "Stay here with her. She will continue to have the pains, more and more often. I need to find my wife. I’ll be right back."
Pepe nodded, settling beside Maria.
Diego hurried back to the Tavern through the rain, and passed Bernardo with a kettle of water and a stack of towels in his arms.
"Set it out, and put a couple of towels under her," Diego told him. "I’m getting Elizabeth."
He entered the Tavern, and made his way to their table.
"What is going on?" she asked.
"We have a situation," he said. "You can come with me if you want, but you may not want to."
"What is it?"
"There’s a young woman out in the stable who’s about to have a baby and there’s no doctor within a hundred miles," he explained. "I think I am going to have to be the midwife."
"You?" she said.
"Si, darling, I saw four Indian babies born with Windhawk, and I helped him deliver Little Feather."
Elizabeth was stunned. She knew of Diego’s boyhood friend, the Indian brave Windhawk, and of his wife and their young son Little Feather. But this was news. "You saw Soaring Bird give birth?" she asked.
"Si," he said. "A story for another time. Now, do you want to come help me or not?"
Elizabeth stared at him. "There is no end to what I don’t know of you," she said.
"Oh, there’s an end," he said. "You just haven’t gotten to it yet." He took her hand. "It is a wondrous thing, to see a new baby come into the world."
She took a deep breath. "I guess it is a way to find out what I’m in for," she said, standing up.
He tried to shelter her from the rain as they made the muddy walk to the stable. A loud scream carried across the courtyard from ahead of them, and Elizabeth stopped in her tracks. "I don’t know if I can do this," she said.
"The moment is now," Diego said, pushing her along. "Babies don’t wait."
He got her into the stable and, leaving her in the doorway, went on to Pepe and Maria. Reaching under Maria’s skirt again, he realized the baby’s head was already crowning. He pulled up her skirts above her knees. She was groaning in awful pain.
"You have to push now, Maria, when you feel the next pain," he said. "As soon as the pain starts, you push as hard as you can, to help the baby come out, all right?"
She nodded miserably.
"It will be fine," he said, patting her knee. "I can already see the baby’s head."
Pepe peered over Diego’s shoulder and his eyes widened, for indeed there was the top of a tiny human head in Maria’s opening. Elizabeth slowly approached them from behind, and looked over them to see the same sight.
The contraction started and with a terrible wail, Maria pushed.
"Harder," Diego said, one hand on her huge belly and the other just below her opening where the baby’s head was making only slight progress.
Maria grunted desperately and continued to push.
"All right, let go," Diego said, feeling the contraction relax in her belly. "Just take a deep breath, you’ll have another pain soon, and this time you push again, as hard as you can, all right? Even harder this time?"
She nodded, looking utterly spent. She groaned, her hands on her belly.
"Did you get the knife?" he asked Bernardo.
The servant held up Diego’s gleaming hunting knife. Diego took it and handed it to Pepe. "Once the baby is born, you’ll see a cord going from its belly button up into Maria. You cut the cord as close to the baby’s tummy as you can, all right? Can you do that, Pepe?"
The boy nodded, accepting the knife.
Maria began another moan, which rose into a scream and Diego looked down to see the baby’s head starting to emerge. "Push, Maria, push!" he cried. The girl screamed again, and pushed. "Good!" Diego said, "Keep pushing, the baby’s head is coming out, one more push...I see the shoulders..." she screamed and pushed one more time, and with that Diego reached down with a towel and scooped the bloody little creature up, holding it in front of Pepe. "It’s a girl!" he cried, laughing. "Go ahead, cut the cord," he said, his hands under the baby’s buttocks. Pepe slid the knife through the umbilical cord. Diego held the baby higher in the air and she began to squeal. Laughing, he laid her on Maria’s chest. "You have a daughter," he said gently.
Maria looked down at the baby, then to Diego, and then to Pepe. Her eyes were shining, gazing at the new life. She took the baby in her arms, and then looked at Diego again. "Thank you, senor," she said.
Diego looked down at the bedding, and saw the afterbirth beginning to slide out. "Another towel, Bernardo," he said, reaching. It was Elizabeth’s hand that he touched, as the towel was handed to him. He looked up, and their eyes met. Then he saw her look past him to the bloody mess below Maria’s buttocks. He turned, to swipe the girl up and then fold the towels in a heap, putting a clean one under her. Then he pulled her skirt back over her knees and got up.
"Burn it all," he said to Bernardo, waving at the bloodied towels. "And when you are finished, bring them some food." He bent over again, looking down at the young family. "There are more towels and water," he said, "you will want to wash the baby," he said to them. He smiled. Maria was opening her blouse and putting the baby to her breast.
Pepe looked up at him gratefully. "We cannot know how to thank you, senor," he said.
Diego stepped back, suddenly feeling overcome. That, he thought, was an exceptionally easy birth. He stepped behind Elizabeth, and put his arms around her. They looked at the scene. "That will be us in a few months," he said.
"Si," she said softly. "Look. She isn’t ten minutes old, and she’s already suckling." With her mother’s help, the tiny babe was indeed pressing her face into the offered nipple, trying to suck. Elizabeth leaned into Diego.
"You need to sleep," he said to her.
"I want to watch this," she said, but her tiredness was overcoming her.
"Let’s let them have their privacy, and we can have ours," he whispered, putting his hand on her back and guiding her towards the ladder to the loft. "Go on up," he said. "I’ll be right there."
She began to climb the ladder. Diego turned back to Pepe and Maria. "My servant will bring you food," he said. "The senora and I will sleep up in the loft, but if you need anything, you call us."
Pepe nodded, and then turned his attention back to his new family.
Diego climbed up into the hayloft, to find Elizabeth lying on the bed Bernardo had prepared. She had lit the lantern and it was burning low. He lay down next to her, pulling the covers over them. She had taken off her dress but was wearing her slip.
"I’d rather not sleep in my clothes," he said as an afterthought.
"Take some of them off," she said.
"Pepe and Maria might need something," he said, pulling off his jacket. "I’m so awake now I don’t know if I can sleep, anyway."
Elizabeth chuckled. "I can’t believe they are Jose and Maria," she said. "It’s a good thing they had a girl! Otherwise they would have to name him Jesus."
Diego laughed softly, too, putting his arms around her. "He would not have been the first," he said. " Half the people in the Spanish-speaking world are Jose or Maria.." He kissed her cheek.
She snuggled closer to him.
"Oh, wait!" he said, sitting up.
"What now?" she sighed.
"I have something," he said, reaching for his jacket. "I was going to give you tonight."
She sat up, too. "What?" she asked.
He pulled a small box from an inner pocket and took something out of it, and took her left hand. "I retrieved this a long time ago, longer than you know," he said, sliding her golden ruby and diamond ring onto her finger above her wedding band. "I’ve been waiting for the right moment to return it to where it belongs and I decided to save it for Christmas morning..."
"Oh, Diego, my ring!" she cried, looking at it sparkling on her finger in the lantern light. "I thought Diablo had sold it off or given it to some cheap..."she threw her arms around his neck. Then she let go of him and looked at it again. "My ring," she said, tearing up.
"When I first put it on your finger you weren’t so happy about it," he reminded her, smiling.
"I was so stupid then," she said through her tears, her arms coming back around his neck.
"Merry Christmas, sweetheart," he said, kissing her cheek again.
"Merry Christmas, my love," she answered, gazing at her hand beyond his shoulder. Then she leaned back and looked at him. "I don’t know how this Christmas could be any more wonderful," she said.
He laughed softly, lying back down and pulling her into his arms. "I do," he said.
"Oh, Diego," she giggled. "They’ll hear us."
"They’re pretty distracted," he said.
"But we’re not quiet," she said.
"Not usually," he agreed. "But perhaps tonight we can make an excep...."
Elizabeth gasped suddenly.
"What?" he said.
"Something moved!" she said, sitting up and staring at him.
"Where?" he asked, jerking up and looking around.
"There it is again!" she said. And taking his hand she put it on her belly. Then they both felt it, a tiny flutter deep inside her, rippling to the surface. "It’s our baby, Diego," she said with wonder. "Do you feel it?"
He nodded. "Yes," he whispered, overcome anew.
"There it is again!" she said. "Oh, it feels like sparrows inside me! Or little mice feet!"
He pulled her back into his arms, lying back down with her. "I think this Christmas just got more wonderful," he said softly in her ear.
It was hours later, in the deep darkness, rain showering on the roof, that Diego awoke suddenly to feel Elizabeth shaking.
"Sweetheart?" he whispered. At first he wondered if she were cold, but she was still snuggled in his arms and felt neither cold nor feverish to him. "Elizabeth?" Another long quiver shot through her, centered in her middle. "Are you sick?"
"I’m scared," she said to him.
"Of what?"
"Having this baby," she said, shaking again.
Diego wasn’t sure what to say, and wondered if he’d done the right thing when she hesitated in the rain the night before. Perhaps it had been a mistake, encouraging her to witness childbirth.
"Are you scared because of what you saw last night?" he asked.
She nodded, another shudder going through her.
"Come here," he said, pulling her more tightly into his arms, her head nestling on his shoulder. "Little baby will be fine, and so will you," he said softly.
She shook again. "I don’t know. The way she screamed...all that stuff that came out of her, it was so bloody..."
"That’s just part of it," he said. "It passes, don’t you remember how they all looked just a few minutes after? They were all radiant, Maria was fine, the baby was nursing...remember?"
She nodded. "It’s just so real now, between that and feeling little baby move inside me," she murmured.
Diego rustled his hand over her belly. "Little baby is growing some more," he said. "I can feel her getting bigger."
Elizabeth shook again. "That’s why I’m scared. She’s sneaking up on me. Little baby is a little sneak."
"Just a little fox," he whispered. "A little fox-kitten."
Elizabeth quieted, and the shaking let up. They lay there for a while in the deep quiet. "I think I can go back to sleep now," she said.
"Good. You’re warm?"
"Oh, yes. As long as you’re here."
"I’m here, darling. I’m not going anywhere."
"You always say that and then you leave," she sighed.
"Ten thousand soldiers couldn’t budge me right now."
"No, but ten might," she laughed, adding in a whisper, "El Zorro could handle ten."
"El Zorro is doing what his heart most loves, tending to his one, just now," Diego said, feeling her settle beside him.
"His two," Elizabeth corrected.
"His two." With that, they slowly went back to sleep, as the soft cries of the newborn downstairs drifted up into the loft.
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