The Midwife and the Assassin (31 page)

Katherine took my hand. “We will bring her to you.”

“I know,” I replied, and started home.

I told Mrs. Evelyn of the redheaded girl who might soon be knocking on her door and climbed the stairs to my tenement. For the next hour—or perhaps it was two—I stared into the street hoping for a glimpse of Elizabeth's face or a flash of her red hair. I was so intent on the world out my window that I did not hear the footsteps approaching my door.

“Midwife Hawkins!” a woman called out. “Are you here?”

I opened the door to reveal a maidservant breathing heavily from her hurried journey. “Midwife Hawkins is not here,” I said. “What is it?” I looked over my shoulder, anxious to return to my post.

“She is my mistress's midwife,” the girl said. “Do you know when will she return?”

“Not until evening,” I said. “And perhaps not until morning.”

“Morning?” The girl seemed ready to weep. “But the child is ailing now.”

I caught my breath at this. “I am a midwife,” I said. “Tell me what is happening.”

The girl began to cry. “She was well enough when she was born, but now she is taken with a fever. We've done all we can, but … we need help.”

The decision before me was so easy that I made it without thinking. I was doing Elizabeth no good waiting at the window, and this child needed my help. “Let me get my medicines. I will come with you.”

The girl's mistress, Mrs. Claypole, lived above a haberdasher's shop on Ironmonger Lane, just north of Cheapside Street. We hurried upstairs and found her in bed holding the child. Her husband sat by her side.

“I am Mrs. Hodgson,” I said. “Martha could not come, but I will do my best in her stead.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Claypole said. She opened her mouth to continue, but no sound came.

“Please help,” her husband said.

“I will.” I took the child in my arms and could feel the fever even before I pressed my wrist against her forehead. My heart ached at what I found, for few infants could survive such a fever if it lasted too long.

“What is her name?” I asked.

“Deborah,” Mrs. Claypole replied.

The child's eyes were open but glazed from the fever. “I will do my best for you, Deborah.” I gave the child back to her mother. “You must unwrap her.”

I turned to the maidservant. “Make Mrs. Claypole a barley soup. Use broth, but no meat. We must cool her humors.”

In my valise I found oil of roses and a poplar ointment. The child wailed at the indignity of being unswaddled, and I set to anointing her limbs and chest. She soon ceased her crying and simply lay on the bed, feverish and shaking. I said a prayer that God would not take her. I wrapped the child and gave her to her mother. “When did she last take the breast?”

“Just before you came,” Mrs. Claypole said. “But she did not eat much.”

I nodded. A waning appetite was not a good sign, but at least she had eaten something. “When the soup is ready, eat as much as you can and then see if Deborah will suck. If she does, the barley may cool her humors and break the fever.”

“We should pray as well,” Mr. Claypole said.

Mrs. Claypole lay the child in her lap, and the three of us joined hands, praying in turn. I begged God for His mercy in these perilous hours, begged Him not to rob any mother of her child. By the time we finished, Deborah had fallen asleep, and soon after the maid came with the soup. Mrs. Claypole drank it down and closed her eyes. In a few moments, she, too, was asleep.

Mr. Claypole touched my shoulder and nodded to the chamber door. I joined him outside.

“You must tell me the truth,” he said.

“There is nothing to tell you that you don't know,” I replied. “The fever is serious. If it does not break soon, I will not be able to save her.”

Mr. Claypole took shallow breaths, trying to control the panic within. “When will we know?” he asked. “When will it be too late?”

“We will know one way or the other by morning.”

Mr. Claypole nodded, and we returned to his wife's bedside. The maidservant brought bread and cheese for our supper, and after that Mr. Claypole and I sat in silence. When Deborah whimpered, I picked her up and soothed her back to sleep. I held her for hours after that, praying for her survival and for Elizabeth's safe return. I told myself that both would be safe, that the girl's fever would break, and Elizabeth would find her way home. Perhaps Elizabeth had thought better of her adventure and returned to Pontrilas. Perhaps after leaving Pontrilas, she had fallen in with a trustworthy crowd and had come to London with them. Perhaps Martha had found her, and the two of them were now waiting in our parlor, wondering where
I
could be.

When night fell, Mrs. Claypole woke with a start. She looked wildly about for Deborah, her eyes wide with fear.

“She is here,” I said.

“How is she?” Mrs. Claypole asked.

“The fever has not broken, but she has slept,” I said. “And that is no small thing. You should see if she will eat.”

Mrs. Claypole took the child and offered her breast. I said a prayer of thanks when Deborah began to suck. That she ate was hardly a guarantee that she would live, but it would have boded ill if she had refused. When she had finished, I anointed her once again with oil and gave her back to her mother. “Now we wait,” I said.

The nighttime hours passed with agonizing slowness. Mr. Claypole slept in his chair, while I lay with Mrs. Claypole, the child between us.

I woke with a start to a woman's weeping, and found Mrs. Claypole holding her daughter to her chest. “She—she—is cold.”

I fought back tears of my own as I took the child in my arms. I put my wrist to her forehead and began to laugh despite myself. “She is not cold,” I said. “Her fever is broken, and she is sleeping.” Deborah opened her eyes and began to cry. “See? She is hungry.”

Mrs. Claypole began to laugh as well and shook her husband's knee to wake him. “She is well,” she cried. “She is well.”

Deborah ate and went back to sleep. With the fever broken there was little left for me to do, so I packed my valise. I wondered what news—if any—awaited me at home.

“Will you not stay for breakfast?” Mrs. Claypole asked. “It is the least we can offer.”

“I am afraid I cannot,” I said. “I have business I must attend to. I will send Martha back this afternoon to check on both of you.”

As I neared my home, Watling Street seemed no different than on any other morning, but I knew in mere moments I might learn that my daughter had died. I begged God for strength and started up the stairs.

 

Chapter 24

I'd not yet reached the door when it flew open and a figure trailing bright red hair flew across the threshold and into my arms.

It took perhaps half an hour for Martha and Tom to pry Elizabeth and me apart, and half as long again for me to stop crying. When Will returned it all started again: laughter, tears, the demands that Elizabeth tell her story, and my halfhearted reprimands for what she'd done and the worry she'd caused us. With far too little food in our apartment, the five of us retreated to a victualing house for breakfast, and there Elizabeth told her story.

“Getting here was as easy as could be,” Elizabeth insisted. “I rode in a farmer's cart from Pontrilas to Hereford—people make the journey every day. I spent a cold night in a hayloft, but I'd brought a blanket, so it wasn't too bad.”

Tom—not knowing Elizabeth as the rest of us did—stared in open-mouthed wonder. “You just wrapped yourself in a blanket and went to sleep?” he asked.

“Well, I didn't sleep much,” Elizabeth admitted. “But what else was I to do?” I had introduced Tom as Will's master—in what work, I did not say—thinking she could wait to hear the news that he soon would be her stepfather.

“Well, you might have stayed in Pontrilas,” I said. Nobody heard me.

“And how did you come to London?” Martha asked. She had made the same journey in her youth, but she had not been quite so young, nor had she been alone.

“That was no trouble, either,” Elizabeth said. “I waited until just before Hereford's market day to leave Pontrilas, for I knew the town would be crowded with people going to London. I went to the market and looked for someone traveling east.”

“You approached strangers and asked if they would take you to London?” Tom asked. “Just like that?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Not just anyone. I only talked to widows and men who had their wives with them. I thought they would be less likely to cause me trouble. And if someone did…” Elizabeth reached into her apron and produced a knife.

“Elizabeth!” Tom and I gasped together, while Martha and Will laughed.

“Would you have had me travel alone and unarmed?” she asked.

“I would have had you stay in Pontrilas,” I said, but once again nobody heard me.

“And when you found someone, what did you tell them?” Will asked.

“The truth.” Elizabeth laughed. “That my mother was in London and she had sent for me.”

I started to interrupt, but Elizabeth held up her hand. “It
was
true, Ma. You had sent the letter to Hannah a few days before I left.”

“You did not know I had sent it,” I pointed out.

Elizabeth shrugged as if this detail were of no import, and continued her tale. “In the end I traveled with a cloth merchant's widow. She had two servants with her, so we were safe enough. Once we came to London I walked to St. Paul's. It was easy enough to find. Then I asked directions to the Cheap, and then to Watling Street. Once I'd found that, I could hardly miss the sign you'd hung up. And that was that. The gold paint is lovely, by the way.”

By now we'd finished our meal and wandered onto Cheapside Street. We spent the rest of the day walking through the Cheap showing Elizabeth the Great Conduit, St. Mary-le-Bow, and other landmarks that would help her find her way around. Tom and Will started back to the Horned Bull, while Martha and I returned to Watling Street. As we climbed the stairs to our tenement, Elizabeth fell silent and furrowed her brow, clearly deep in thought. By the time we reached our door, she'd come to some sort of conclusion. She whirled on Martha and me, her eyes ablaze.

“Just what have the two of you been doing here?”

Martha and I looked at her in astonishment. “What do you mean?” I managed.

“First you send your silks and fine linens back to Pontrilas with no explanation. Then I find you living in this … this…” She gestured at our rooms at a loss for words adequate to describe them. She shook her head. “You are not suddenly poor, so you must be over the shoes in some strange business. I demand to know what it is.”

Martha and I began to laugh at the same time, and I embraced Elizabeth. “Very well. We will tell you everything.”

Over the course of the evening Martha and I told Elizabeth of our work for Cromwell, my betrothal to Tom, and our plans to move together into a larger house. She was, of course, entranced by our work as spies, and pleased with London, having taken a liking both to Tom and the Cheap.

“I'm glad you found someone else to love,” she said just before she went to sleep.

*   *   *

With Elizabeth's arrival, the apartment on Watling Street became far too small. We borrowed a bed from Katherine, but the only place to put it was in the parlor. While Martha and I had become used to sharing a room, Elizabeth chafed at the idea that her chamber also would serve as the kitchen, dining room, and parlor. When Will sat on the edge of her bed as if it were just another piece of furniture, she chased him off it with a broom and a few choice words.

Luckily, the tenants in the house I had found agreed to depart early, and within a fortnight we moved from our tenement to the house further down the street. More room meant more work, of course, and I took on a maidservant named Susan Oliver to help with the cooking and cleaning. The sign Martha and I had hung over Mrs. Evelyn's door came with us, of course, and soon we'd settled in quite nicely.

For her part, Elizabeth began to frequent Katherine Chidley's shop, and within weeks the two of them were as closely knit as any gossips in London. Katherine had only the one living son, and Elizabeth's arrival gave her the chance to mother a girl. Elizabeth claimed that she enjoyed the needlework, but it soon became clear that she and Katherine spent as much time talking about politics as they did sewing coats.

“How is it,” Elizabeth asked me one morning over bread and cheese, “that you sought a license from a bishop for your midwifery?” The edge in her voice made clear that she was not asking a question, but preparing to make a speech. She continued without waiting for my response. “Was the Archbishop of York well versed in the art of midwifery? That would make him a rare man indeed, don't you think?”

“
Someone
has been spending rather too much time with Katherine Chidley,” I murmured.

“Or perhaps the Archbishop bore children himself, and learned the art that way,” Elizabeth continued. “But that would be no less rare. They say the world is full of marvels, but what could be more marvelous that a bishop in travail?”

When I did not take the bait, Elizabeth chose a more direct route. “Why would you beg a bishop's permission to do the work of a midwife? What does a bishop know of a woman's travail?”

“It is a complicated thing,” I said.

Elizabeth stared at me, feigning innocence and waiting for me to explain myself.

“It would not be mete for just any woman to serve as a midwife,” I said at last. “She must be respectable, of good reputation, and ready-handed in the work. When Rebecca Hooke showed her malicious nature, the Archbishop took her license and York's mothers were better for it.”

“But it was the Archbishop who gave her a license in the first place,” Elizabeth pointed out. “And Katherine Chidley is a fine midwife, but she has no license. And neither does Martha.”