The Sinner
In this scene, I had Dante’s physician friend Wheeler explain his suspicions regarding all those sickly women that one reads about in early novels. I personally think Wheeler is correct. However, one should not include a scene in a novel just to explain one’s theory regarding some historical phenomenom, even if it ties into the story very neatly. So, "snip"—it was gone.
Dante glanced around the crowded public room. When he had arrived at Wheeler's house after dinner, the physician had insisted on walking to the local tavern, as was his habit every evening. Their frequent stops to chat with Wheeler's neighbors had made their own conversation distracted and sporadic.
Now they were squeezed into a corner table in a tavern that afforded little privacy.
"This visit is more felicitous than your last, I am happy to see. My congratulations on both your nuptials and your escape from potential exile." Wheeler raised his ale in salute and poked his spectacles back up his nose from where they had slipped to its edge. "I should have known that, having lured a wealthy heiress to your bed by shooting her in the buttock, you would end up married and wealthy yourself. I only hope other men who hear of it do not try the same strategy unless they are expert shots."
"It did turn out well, didn't it? However, now that I am married, I am curious about a few matters on which you can enlighten me."
"I cannot imagine what, since I am not married myself."
"Medical matters."
Wheeler’s eyebrows went up. "If you refer to what I think, surely there is little I can tell you there either. I would think avoiding pregnancy was more a matter for your past, anyway. If you say that you do not know the usual methods, I will be speechless."
"I am curious whether there are any less usual, and known only to physicians."
Wheeler absorbed that while he took another swallow of his ale. He settled his glass down and leaned in confidence over the table. "You cannot know how often I have this conversation. Of course, normally women ask the question."
"What do you say to them?"
"What I must now say to you. It is not an area to which medicine has turned its attention. It is illegal to do so. As you know, there are certain measures one can take, French sleeves, sponges, and whatnot. None are perfect, or even nearly so. The only certainty is abstinence."
It was what Dante knew, but he had thought it worth pumping Wheeler to see if physicians held some secret.
"Which is why we have so many mature women who are sickly," Wheeler added. "Until their husbands go up to town, that is."
"The maladies are deceptions, you think?"
"Sometimes. Other times, I believe the notion of getting pregnant again is enough to truly cause illness." Wheeler glanced around and lowered his voice. "I have three such patients, all with a litany of ailments that makes them invalids. All are women married some years. All with children, but with no recent pregnancies. There is nothing medically wrong with any of them that I can tell. I assume that having survived several births, they concluded that further experiences would only tempt fate. The country is full of women who are sickly in this ambiguous way. So frail that their husbands do not impose."
Dante had always assumed that all those frail, sickly women were actually frail and sickly.
"Can't blame them myself," Wheeler said. "Young girls don't think of it, much as young men do not believe they can die in battles. But as one gets older and wiser, the danger becomes more evident and personal in both cases. That is when women come and ask me what you just did. And all the law permits me to say is that they should trust in the Lord."
"Perhaps if the law does not allow physicians to investigate ways to stop procreation, medicine should find a way to make lying in less dangerous."
Wheeler shrugged. "Birth is something that happens on its own, Duclairc, for good or ill. Although, there have been some theories about ways to avoid the later complications. It will probably be decades before medicine knows if the theories are valid, of course, and another century before midwives agree to change their ways even if scientists accept the evidence."
"You do not offer much reassurance to a newly married man, Wheeler."
"I would never insult you with platitudes or the encouraging lies that we are trained to give worried husbands." Wheeler tipped his head closer yet, so that his chin almost touched the top of his glass. "If I can be of any assistance, please let me know. I could talk to her. I would have no qualms smothering her in platitudes if you think it would help."
"I do not think it would make a difference. She is not a young chit, and has seen enough to know the truth."
"It is why men prefer the really young ones, I think. Even more than the promise of virginity, the girls are ignorant, and optimistic despite all evidence that suggests caution. Just as well, I suppose. Otherwise we would have a world of invalids with false maladies, and the race would die out."
Dante turned the conversation to the gossip in town, which he knew Wheeler relished hearing. As they drank more ale and the evening wore into night, he thought about the pretty flower back at Laclere Park.
She had not retreated into false maladies. She had not married and then kept her husband away with claims of illness. She had frankly faced the reality of what she could not do, even if she believed it made her unnatural. Only, in the choice of deficiencies, she had decided to believe she was cold because avoiding childbirth was to her a more perverse reason for her numbing fear.
He had sought out Wheeler hoping there was a secret solution to give Fleur. Wheeler had not only confirmed that there would be no way to obliterate the fear, but emphasized that it was well founded.
Dante imagined the prospect of losing Fleur. The possibility loomed, real and stark, unfair and cruel. For a few instants it created a swelling panic and vicious fury that blotted out the sounds of the tavern.
Fleur’s fear entered his soul too, and cringed in the corner, a dark shadow that stayed small only if it was ignored. It wanted attention, however. It wanted to terrify him.
He knew now that he could never do anything that would make Fleur face that danger if she lacked the ability to fight that shadow.
He knew because he would have difficulty facing it himself.
Copyright © Madeline Hunter