The Devil's Diadem (18 page)

‘Praise sweet Jesu for you, Evelyn,’ Lady Adelie said, patting Evelyn’s hand. ‘I need all my loyal ladies about me for this birth. I am in so much fear of it. So much fear.’

Her voice trembled on those last words and everyone in the room looked aghast. I had never seen my lady express such anxiety regarding the birth before.

Sweet Mary, she must be dreading this birth, indeed.

Now Lady Adelie appeared discomfited at her display of emotion. She let Evelyn’s hand go, brushing away imaginary crumbs from her bed linen, as if bored, or distracted. ‘Thank you, Evelyn.’

Evelyn and I did not get a chance for private conversation until later that night, when we went to our bed in the solar. I was very glad to have her back, and despite the warmth of the early summer night we lay close as we whispered. For a while she told me of her daughter and the joy she’d had in visiting her, but soon the topic turned to Lady Adelie.

‘By the heavenly saints, Maeb, when did Lady Adelie sicken so badly?’

I had truly not realised how ill Lady Adelie was until I had seen Evelyn’s shocked reaction on entering our lady’s privy chamber.

‘She has been sickening for weeks now, Evelyn. She was weak before we even started to Pengraic, but she has become worse since we arrived here, after an initial rally. She coughs at night, often, although Mistress Yvette tells me it is only a summer chill. I had not truly realised
how
ill she was until I saw your face when you first set eyes on her.’

‘Her complexion is dreadful, and her face so gaunt. Has she a fever, Maeb?’

‘I thought that perhaps it was the child …’

‘No. I have seen her carry and birth five children in my time in this household. Lady Adelie is one of those women who seem to find breeding easy. She has never had any difficulty carrying a child, nor birthing it. Not even the twins.’

‘But she is so old now.’

Evelyn chuckled. ‘And you are so young!’

I smiled too, and for a moment we lay there in companionable amusement.

‘Does she complain of any illness, Maeb?’

‘Not to me, although what she says to Mistress Yvette I do not know. I talked to Yvette about Lady Adelie recently, but she evaded my questions. Yvette now cares for my lady almost completely — I no longer even help with her dressing in the mornings.’

‘Mistress Yvette and our lady were ever close,’ Evelyn said. ‘Maeb …’

‘Yes?’

‘What other news about this plague? Surely you have heard more.’

‘Only what you have already heard,’ I said to her. ‘That it has reached Glowecestre and Monemude … and that only this morning, when Lord Stephen brought us the tidings.’

‘And what
of
Lord Stephen?’ Evelyn asked.

I smiled. ‘I have given myself to him entirely, and he promises to wed me in the autumn.’

‘Maeb!’

I laughed. ‘I jest only, Evelyn. I have been good, as you asked. I do not wish to lose my place in this household.’

I felt her body relax beside mine. ‘Do not tease me on this, Maeb. I was worried for you.’

‘There is no need.’

‘Is there word on the earl?’

‘Only that he is with the king in Elesberie.’

‘I wish that he would —’

Evelyn got no further, for suddenly the midwife Gilda loomed over our bed. ‘Mistresses, arise. Your lady needs you.’

Lady Adelie’s time had come. Evelyn and I hastily donned kirtles over our chemises, Evelyn no doubt wishing with myself that we could have enjoyed a few more cool hours lying naked beneath our sheets. We made sure our hair was neat, then entered our lady’s privy chamber.

The air was heavy and uncomfortably warm. The windows were shuttered closed, and heavy drapes pulled across them. Oils and herbs burned in a brazier set to one side and someone had lit the fire as well.

Sweat beaded on my face and I could feel it prickling all over my body under my clothes.

Despite the heat of the chamber, Lady Adelie sat on her wooden chair by the window clad not only in a linen gown laced tightly about her throat, which covered her arms to the wrists and pooled in heavy folds about her feet, but a heavily embroidered woollen, sleeved over-garment as well. I could just see the gleam of one of her precious, blessed girdles underneath it. She was pale, her face unsurprisingly running with sweat, her blue eyes wide with the strain of her labour.

Both hands clutched the arms of the chair. I was not sure what to do. The chamber, although spacious, felt crowded with the two midwives, as well as Mistress Yvette, Evelyn and myself. Gilda and Jocea bustled about: shifting the birthing stool, muttering over a pan of some simmering brew they had set to one side of the coals, moving a pile of linens first to the bed (its sheets and covers stripped back to its foot), now back to the top of a chest.

Mistress Yvette sat on a stool near Lady Adelie, and Evelyn moved to her, asking what we could do to help.

‘Evelyn,’ Yvette said, ‘you may pull up a stool and sit with me, keep our lady company and cheery with our chatter. Maeb, can you descend to the kitchen and fetch for our lady some small beer, as also some crusts of bread in a bowl that the babe can suck on once he is born.’

‘The wet nurse is yet to arrive,’ Yvette said, almost as an aside. ‘She is bedded down in the outer bailey with her husband and children, and no doubt no one yet has been sent to fetch her.’

‘I can send someone,’ I said. ‘There must be a boy awake in the kitchen.’

‘Very well,’ said Yvette. ‘She can be found in the sleep house next to the blacksmithy. Her name is Sewenna.’

‘Should I fetch Alice and Emmette as well?’ I said.

Yvette thought a moment, then shook her head. ‘No. Let them sleep. My lady has enough women to attend her now.’

I nodded, glad of something to do, and of the chance to leave this sweaty chamber for a short while. I was no stranger to births, for from the age of nine I had regularly attended and aided at births in my village of Witenie. But I was unsure how to help my lady for the world of a noble birth was strange to me — what rank attended which duty?

Everything about Lady Adelie’s privy chamber, from the draped windows to the fire to the lurking heaviness of the two taciturn midwives to the precious objects I knew would be wielded during this birth made me uneasy and unsure. The world of my experience in birth had been the laughter and raucousness of the village cottage.

The kitchen lay one flight down the spiral stone stairs. At this time of night it was largely deserted, although within an hour or two the serving boys and sleep-soured cooks would be stumbling to set beasts to roast and bread to rise. Yet even though the hour was late (or early, depending on your perspective) there were several servants about, moving slowly through the poorly lit chamber, its huge beamed ceiling lost in the darkness. They were setting out spoons and bowls, flour and salt, ready for the cooks and they affected to ignore me, even though I stood breathless across the table from them, clutching the skirts of my robe and looking, I hoped, importantly impatient.

I cleared my throat.

The three men ignored me.

‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘She needs small beer to sustain her and some bread crusts for her infant to suck.’

One of the men deigned to speak to me, although not once did he raise his eyes in my direction. ‘Beer’s there,’ he moved his head toward a barrel, ‘jug’s over there,’ again the head tilted, ‘bread in that basket.’

I didn’t thank him, instead hastening to fill a jug with the small beer. It was pleasantly spiced, and I paused long enough to have a draught of it myself. I collected the bread crusts in a bowl, then hesitated.

The men, still moving in their somnolent way about the kitchen, continued to ignore me, yet I needed to send someone for the wet nurse, Sewenna.

I took a deep breath. ‘I need a boy to run to the outer bailey for me … to fetch the wet nurse, Sewenna. Do you know where … I could find …’

‘There’s a boy sleeps by the inner gate,’ said one of them. ‘In a little alcove. Can’t miss him. Wake him and send him off.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and hastened out of the kitchen and away from their strange disregard.

I found the boy at the inner gate and had just sent him grumbling on his way when Owain loomed out of the night.

‘What is happening?’ he asked me.

‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

He shivered, hugging his robe tightly about him. ‘The night has been restless.’

I grunted at his evasiveness. ‘I have to get back to the chamber.’

‘I will come with you,’ he said, ‘and wait in the solar.’

In case I should be needed
.

‘Maeb, has anyone sent for Lord Stephen?’

I had been turning to head back to the stairwell, but now I stopped. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We should send for him.’

‘But shouldn’t we wait until … if anything goes awry …’

‘I think he needs to know now, Maeb. You go ahead. I will find someone to fetch Stephen, or do it myself.’

I returned to the solar, and thence to the privy chamber beyond. Everything was a-bustle, and Yvette snapped at me for taking so long.

I did not mention meeting with Owain, or that he was fetching Stephen.

I set the small beer and crusts to one side, pouring some of the beer into a small cup should it be needed, then stood aside, waiting for a moment when I could be useful.

Lady Adelie’s labour seemed to have progressed apace since I had been gone, and she was now seated on the birthing stool a little distance from the fire. I was surprised to see that she was still clothed in both high-necked and laced linen shift, as well as the outer embroidered woollen robe. She was covered from neck to wrist and toe with several layers of clothing — and surely it could not have been due to any coolness on her part, for her face was bright red and streaming with sweat. Lady Adelie was among women who attended her on a daily basis; we had all seen her naked many times, so this could not be due to unwarranted modesty on her part.

I caught Evelyn’s eye and indicated the clothing, and Evelyn gave me a slight shrug of her shoulders as if to indicate it did not matter, but she also looked perplexed … if this was my first time attending Lady Adelie during childbirth, it surely was not Evelyn’s, so this attachment to heavy clothing was something new for our lady.

Still, if this is what my Lady Adelie wanted, then why should I worry?

Yvette noticed me standing about with nothing to do and set me to changing the bed linens with cleaned, herbed sheets, so that our lady would have a fresh bed to return to once the child was born. I proceeded to do so with alacrity, glad to be given another task. The two midwives hovered close about Lady Adelie, Yvette at their backs bending in whichever way she could to see and enquire.

By the time I had finished the bed, our lady was close to delivering her child. From my own experiences, I knew that women who had birthed before had a quicker and easier time of it than first-time mothers. Nonetheless, I murmured a prayer to our sweet mother Saint Mary as Gilda and Jocea bent to their work (I assumed they worked by touch alone beneath Lady Adelie’s voluminous and heavy robes), hoping that our lady would deliver with ease. I was glad the child was about to be born, for it had sapped our lady’s strength, and I would be glad to see her recover once the child no longer ate of her flesh.

Gilda snapped at Yvette to be ready with linens in her arms, and, from my vantage point on the other side of the bed, I took a half-step closer in anticipation. I looked at Lady Adelie’s face — it was bright red and running freely with sweat, her mouth and eyes wide and agonised — and I felt a momentary pang of fear for my own inevitable days in childbed. Could men ever truly understand what they required of us?

Then Lady Adelie gave a yelp of sheer pain, and Gilda and Jocea tugged, and suddenly there was a rush of liquid and I caught a glimpse of a bundle of new, wet skin in the midwives’ hands. Jocea tied the cord, biting it free with her teeth, and Gilda scooped up the newborn infant and delivered it into Yvette’s waiting linen-draped arms.

I was torn between attending Lady Adelie or rushing to where Yvette and Evelyn now huddled over the infant, dabbing at it with a washcloth and some dry linen. My mind was made up for me by Gilda, who snapped at me to help them move Lady Adelie to the bed.

Lady Adelie was quite faint from pain and effort, and Gilda, Jocea and myself had to carry her to the bed. In the doing, the two midwives also stripped off the outer woollen robe, now soiled with sweat and birth fluids, and bundled it to one side.

‘She will need a wash down,’ Jocea said, and I nodded, fetching a basin of tepid water that had been put aside a while since. I carried it to the bed, along with linens and towels. Gilda was clearing away the birthing stool and the mess around it, and Jocea said she would help me wash Lady Adelie down.

‘The afterbirth has yet to come,’ Jocea said. ‘When it does, mind you do not break it, for it shall need to be buried whole.’ I nodded again, already familiar with the knowledge that it was truly bad luck for the infant if its afterbirth was broken.

Jocea and I leaned the still fainting and limp Lady Adelie forward so we might strip off her soiled linen shift.

God’s bones
, I thought,
she will be glad enough to be rid of this foul garment!

Just then I heard Yvette call my name and I looked up. Yvette was staring frantically at me, although Evelyn was looking down at the baby, frowning, a washcloth frozen in her hand in its journey from washbowl to the baby.

‘No!’ cried Yvette to me, and I wondered, in this last moment of sanity for the coming weeks, what she wanted.

No … what?

Jocea was pulling hard at our lady’s shift and I automatically tugged with her, the shift finally pulling over our lady’s head as I stared in puzzlement at Yvette.

‘No,’ Yvette whispered, but my attention on her was broken by Jocea’s low hiss of horror.

I looked down at our lady, naked now in the flickering light, and for one long moment could not comprehend what I saw.