The Knowledge Stone (8 page)

Maretta set to work. Firstly, dirt and grease was washed out of the girl’s matted hair, her face was washed several times, then all other parts of her emaciated body were scrubbed until they were clean. All this time, the girl made no sound. Maretta stood back to admire her handiwork.

‘She does look a bit better when she’s clean,’ she thought.

‘Sit over there,’ her very first words to the child were sharp and unfriendly, ‘while this disgusting thing – she held up the small ragged dress – is washed.’ The garment was plunged into the tub where it was scrubbed energetically and hung up to dry near the fire.

‘Haven’t you got any other clothes?’ was Maretta’s next question to the small huddled figure of the girl. The child shook her head. ‘Well you’ll just have to stay like that until the dress is dry.’ Maretta sat down heavily on her chair and picked up the pot of beer, drinking deeply from it and totally ignoring the child.

Once again, there was complete silence in the room. After ten minutes or so, the woman looked up and spoke: ‘Have you got a name?’ When the little girl did not respond immediately, the question was repeated, more sharply: ‘Wake up! What are you called?’

‘Giana,’ the girl whispered.

‘Giana, is it?’ Maretta repeated, almost to herself. ‘Funny name, no-one is called anything like that around here.’ The child was silent. ‘What work can you do?’ the woman asked, sharply again.

‘Anything you want me to do, Mistress.’ The girl’s voice was barely a whisper.

‘Anything?’ Maretta’s voice was derisive and raucous in comparison. ‘Let’s hope so!’ she quipped grimly, momentarily enjoying her unkind joke.

This was the manner of Giana’s eventual arrival at Old Malik’s farm.

The child was alive, crying thinly but at the same time demonstrating that unique determination of the new-born. Despite her most powerful desires, the mother had no capacity to respond. Time passed. The crimson flow did not slacken. The mother’s cries for help weakened. The baby clung to life, protesting its innocence with increasing hopelessness. The cries emanating from the cave mouth diminished.

‘What a day!’ The travelling merchant muttered these words to himself as he and his family trudged along the narrow muddy track that would eventually take them to the village. When the weather was like this there was no question of anyone riding in the large covered wagon – not even the children.

Years before, when this heavy wagon was being built for him, the merchant had wisely specified stout wide wheels; they were usually effective on muddy roads. However, this track was proving to be a serious trial. It was in poor condition and heavily pocked with deep potholes, now filled with slimy mud. The merchant sighed as one of the large rear wheels sank deeply into a pool of mud, bringing the heavy vehicle to a shuddering halt, despite the best efforts of the two strong mules harnessed to the front shaft.

Like his father before him, the man was a travelling merchant in cloth; he and his family spent most of the year on the road, travelling widely around the country villages, selling from the extensive stock of cloth carried in the wagon. Each of the large bundles of cloth was very heavy and it was of course necessary to carry a comprehensive selection of material for sale.

As he travelled across the country, the merchant also bought cloth from village weavers and sold this on at a suitable profit to individuals and other merchants further along his route. This had been a steady and successful business in the family for many years.

‘People always need good cloth for hangings, covers and clothing,’ the merchant often said, ‘and everyone knows I sell nothing but the best of cloth.’

With one wheel stuck firmly in the deep mud, the merchant wearily fetched his shovel and began to dig out a ramp in front of the trapped wheel; if the excavated ground was firm enough, this would allow the wheel to roll up to ground level when the mules exerted all their strength to pull the wagon forward. His wife helped to throw the excavated mud over to the roadside with a smaller shovel.

Meanwhile, their two children, a boy and a girl, did as children always do – they ran whooping up the hill, laughing, shouting and jostling each other with that mysterious joy of living that children have. On the track below, the cloth merchant now judged that the wagon was ready to be pulled from the mud so he returned to the heads of his beasts to tug at their head ropes, clucking his tongue to encourage them to pull forward. The powerful beasts strained forward and the wheel came free with a reluctant squelch and rolled up the excavated ramp to return to ground level.

Ready to resume their journey, the merchant replaced the shovels in the wagon and called for his children. After some moments, the boy and girl came running back. His wife took one look at their little faces and, as mothers always do, knew something was very wrong. She caught the boy by the arm and enquired urgently: ‘What’s wrong? What has happened? Have either of you hurt themselves?’

Eyes wide, gasping and white of face, the boy mumbled a reply: ‘It’s up there, in the cave. We thought it was a bird but I think it’s a baby. It’s all bloody.’

The boy burst into tears and his little sister immediately howled in sympathy. The adults looked at each other blankly, shock mirrored in their eyes. Extended seconds ticked by.

‘It’s not our business, nothing to do with us,’ the man said uncertainly, ‘we’ve got enough problems of our own.’ He looked as if he wished he was somewhere else – somewhere very far away!

However the woman was more practical and decisive: ‘No, we can’t say that. We can’t just walk away. The boy has told us what he saw. We need to investigate, to see what has happened.’ Still the man did not move. ‘Go and see what has happened. Go quickly.’ The woman was adamant.

Reluctantly, sighing and muttering to himself, the merchant climbed up the hill to the cave. After a few long minutes he reappeared and returned to the wagon. The adults held a whispered conversation, observed fearfully by their quietly sobbing children. Then both adults climbed up to the cave, the man carrying his shovel.

The baby was still alive, though now so weak that it was reduced to almost inaudible whimpering, its breathing rapid and uneven. The woman lifted the pathetic scrap of life from the ground, still wrapped in the blood-soaked blanket and carried it down to the wagon. There, she tended to it, washing away the blood and dirt and wrapping the tiny body in clean, warm cloth. Meanwhile, the man carried out his grim task on the hillside near the cave, digging a shallow grave and burying the small pathetic body of the mother therein.

When the man returned, his wife asked about the identity of the mother – who she was, where she came from, where she might have been going.

‘I looked everywhere,’ he replied, ‘but there was absolutely nothing to identify her. We don’t know anything about her.’ Then he looked worriedly into the bunk bed where the baby lay. ‘What about the baby? Do you think it will live?’

‘Well, I’m going to try my best,’ his wife answered briskly, now busying herself with the preparation of some warm milk. ‘We’ll see if she can be persuaded to have a little of this milk. If I can get her to take some of this, she will have a chance of survival. We don’t want to have to deal with two deaths in the same day.’ The reality of this thought passed a shadow across each of their faces.

The following hours brought blessed progress. The baby responded well to the care of the merchant’s wife and started to feed with strengthening enthusiasm, moving its tiny limbs with increasing energy. By the end of the day, the family were congratulating each other on their success at saving the baby’s life – an undeniable truth.

From the start, the children had been fascinated by the baby; they had never seen a child so small and they were amazed by the power and enthusiasm that was displayed when the bottle of warm milk was offered. They pleaded with their mother to be allowed to feed the tiny infant and were delighted when the milk disappeared quickly from the bottle. Now that the child was thriving, the children were informed by their mother that the baby was a girl: ‘Just like you!’ She pointed at her daughter.

‘What’s her name?’ The children had cried excitedly.

‘She hasn’t got a name but I’m going to give her one,’ their mother replied. ‘I’m going to call her Giana, after my own great-grandmother who lived a long time ago in the Old Country.’

The slow journey of the heavy wagon continued and it was several days later before the merchant and his family reached the village that was their next destination.

‘The first thing we need to do is find the midwife,’ the merchant said to his wife. ‘Obviously the baby will need to be left here, because we cannot travel around the country with such a young child. The midwife will be able to find someone to look after her. Maybe someone who wants a baby but can’t have one … perhaps a family whose baby has died recently.’ His wife was sad about this, for in these few short days she had established a loving bond with the child. Little Giana was now thriving well, despite her traumatic and near-fatal entry into the world.

Enquiries were made of passers-by and the shack of the midwife pointed out. The merchant pulled up the wagon nearby, climbed down and knocked at the door.

‘Who is it?’ An unpleasantly raucous voice was heard from within.

‘I’m a stranger, a passing merchant who has important business with the midwife of this village.’ The door was flung open with a crash. The midwife was a stooped old woman who wore a permanently sour expression.

‘What is your business with me?’ The midwife spoke angrily.

‘I have a baby to discuss with you.’ The merchant smiled his most winning smile, the one he always found effective in difficult commercial transactions. ‘Can my wife and I speak to you?’

With bad grace, the midwife permitted the man, woman and baby to enter her shack.

‘What’s all this about?’ She addressed them sharply, looking aggressively at them both. So the sad story of Giana was told and the midwife’s scowl deepened. ‘What am I supposed to do? How can I find someone?’ The old woman continued to complain bitterly, while stripping and examining the baby with practiced but far from gentle hands. Giana squawked in protest but the examination was soon over. The midwife then thrust the naked baby and its clothes back into the arms of the merchant’s wife.

‘There’s nothing wrong with this baby though she could do with more flesh on her,’ she stated disagreeably. ‘If you want me to find her a home, you’ll need to pay me. I don’t do all this for nothing, you know. People don’t want to look after stray babies and it can take me months to find someone. Anyway, what’s her name?’

‘Giana,’ the merchant’s wife ventured.

‘Giana?’ The midwife repeated the name raucously. ‘What sort of a name is that? No-one is called anything like that around here. Why don’t you call her something normal?’

‘Giana was my great-grandmother’s name; she lived in another country far away,’ the woman replied uncertainly.

‘Well, it’s a stupid name to give a child,’ the midwife grunted, ‘but why should I care?’

There was silence for a few moments. Then the midwife turned to the merchant: ‘I want fifty Ourtz.’

The man shook his head: ‘It’s too much,’ he replied, automatically falling into his merchant negotiating mode.

‘Really,’ the old woman sneered, ‘then take the baby and go.’ She turned away and made to leave the room. The man was nonplussed. He was not used to such unpleasantness in commercial transactions. To him, this was of course a commercial transaction.

‘What about forty?’ This said with decreasing hope.

The midwife swung round and thrust her face close to his: ‘I said fifty and I meant fifty. Take it or leave it.’ Then she turned away abruptly, muttering curses.

Shamefacedly, the man counted out the coins and, without another word or a backward glance, left the room.

His wife was distressed. She did not wish to leave baby Giana with this unpleasant old woman – but she knew she had no choice: ‘Please be kind to her,’ she said quietly, as she turned to leave with tears in her eyes.

‘What?’ The midwife spoke so loudly and sharply that the child started violently and began to wail with fright. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you stupid woman,’ the midwife yelled, ‘get out, the baby’s mine now and I’ll do what I like with her.’

The merchant’s wife left the midwife’s shack with great sadness and rejoined her husband to begin the business of trading cloth in the village. As the wagon trundled slowly along the road, both adults were strangely quiet, part of their introspective selves back with Giana, the little girl that had touched their lives so dramatically.

‘Girl!’ The midwife shouted into the back room of her shack.

‘Yes, Mistress,’ a small voice instantly replied.

‘Get in here. You’ve got another baby to look after until I find it a home. And you had better keep it quiet while I’m sleeping.’

The girl, a thin, rather clumsy teenager with downcast eyes, sidled into the room: ‘Shall I take it to the nursery room now?’

‘Of course,’ snapped the midwife, ‘what do you think I’m calling you for?’

The girl, a simple kindly soul, immediately felt sorry for the baby, obviously abandoned by its parents – of course she did not dare to ask the midwife what had happened, since this would only elicit anger and even a beating with the stick. The girl had been sold to the midwife as a servant several years before and she knew she had to keep quiet and do exactly as she was told. She did not even dare to ask whether the baby was a boy or a girl but she hoped the midwife would tell her the baby’s name.

‘Take it and go,’ the midwife rasped, ‘it’s a girl and the stupid people that brought her in called her Giana. What a stupid name! And I told them that, too. Anyway, it’ll very likely grow up to be a stupid girl, just like you, so she may as well have a stupid name too.’ The midwife cackled unpleasantly at this, greatly enjoying her joke.