The Queen's Gamble (11 page)

A sharp cry came from Frances. The girl looked startled, but Isabel nudged her and the girl went on up the stairs. Isabel carried on down. The house was dark, most of the servants asleep. As she hurried through the great hall she sent two dogs scrabbling to their feet from their slumber, one barking. She found the kitchen, a cavernous space of brick and stone, and dark but for the red glow of embers in the hearth that sent shadows flitting over the crockery piled on the table. But it was warm. Two children, scullery boys, lay asleep on straw mats under the table. The midwife was sprawled in a chair at the hearthside, fast asleep.

Isabel shook her shoulder. “Mistress Dauncy. You are needed.”

The woman jerked awake with a snort. Spittle seeped from a corner of her mouth. “Wha—?”

“Lady Frances is in labor.”

“Ah.” She rubbed her eyes with gnarled fists. “All right, my lady, lead the way.”

Isabel first woke up the scullery boys and told them to rouse the other kitchen servants and have them build up the fire to start boiling water for the midwife. The old woman took her time struggling up the stairs to the birthing chamber. Isabel, impatient, went on ahead and found Nan standing outside the doorway, hugging herself, frowning in alarm.

“What is it, Nan? Is she all right?”

“Don’t know, mistress.”

“Why have you left her? Go in, girl.”

Nan shook her head, nervous but adamant. “I be a spinster, mistress. It ain’t right.”

Isabel gritted her teeth. Tradition again. Only married women were allowed into the room at a childbirth. And, of course, no men. Nan took a step to slink away, but Isabel took her by the arm. “Go and fetch clean linen cloths. And find someone to bring a brazier of hot coals to warm the room. Go!”

Frances was moaning, staring in stark-eyed fear. Isabel’s heart went out to her, sure that such searing fear made the pain worse. She was glad to see the midwife set about her business, asking a servant who had arrived, disheveled from sleep, to bring in her satchel from the birthing chamber. Meanwhile, Isabel did her best to calm Frances, sitting on the edge of the bed and offering comforting words as she smoothed her hair back from her damp forehead. Frances groped for her hand and almost crushed Isabel’s fingers in her grip.

The midwife clucked in disapproval. “Leave her be, my lady. She must do this labor on her own.” She shooed Isabel away from the bed. Frances groped the air, frantic for a human touch. But the midwife insisted, so Isabel reluctantly moved away and sat down on the window seat. A maid came with the brazier of coals and set it in its wall fitting, glancing in dismay at Frances’s suffering. She finished her task and fled. The coals barely warmed the frigid air. Isabel’s teeth almost chattered as she watched the midwife unpack her wares and set them on the bedside table in full view of Frances. A long, coiled, black tube. Pincers the size of a man’s hands, rusted at the ends. A knife. A burlap bag of dried herbs that gave off a rank smell. A long grubby cloth with a fringe of knots. The black tube gave Isabel a shiver. To administer an enema? It seemed revolting, a further assault on poor Frances in her agony of fear. She thought how different her own labor had been, thanks to Pedro’s mother and her gentle Indian ways.

Frances moaned, looking almost delirious. Her lips were parched and looked pale blue in the chill air. She writhed in the grip of a wave of pain, and cried out. The old woman paid her no mind, but settled herself down on a stool at the foot of the bed and went about untying the knots on the grubby cloth, one by one like some ritual, and muttering a mournful incantation. Isabel could not understand how she could ignore Frances’s fearful state. She noticed the leftover cup of claret on the sideboard and jumped up and brought it to the bed. Holding it to Frances’s dry lips, she encouraged her to sip some.

“Nay!” the midwife said. “To a laboring woman, drink is poison !”

Frances heard. In terror, she knocked the cup away. Wine spewed over the sheets, staining them red.

Isabel felt a jolt of fury at the old woman, who shooed her away again. Isabel paced, watching Frances labor on in lonely agony as the old woman untied the knots, crooning her dirge. Time crawled by, an hour at least. The whole household was up now. Young servant girls scurried outside the chamber, leaving water and cloths, but never coming in. The male servants stayed downstairs. Frances groaned as she labored. She writhed, and sweated, and screamed.

“All of her’s shut up too tight,” the midwife muttered. She hobbled around the room, opening drawers and cupboards. Isabel watched in dismay. She had heard of this senseless superstition, actions to coax the womb to open. What folly! It was sheer terror that was paralyzing Frances.

Another hour. Frances writhed. Sweated. Moaned. “Adam!” she screamed, a sound of such raw pain that tears of pity stung Isabel’s eyes. She had never witnessed a labor so hard.

After another agonizing hour Frances lay back shuddering, racked with exhaustion. Her face was white and damp, like raw pastry, and her nightdress clung to her with sticky sweat. The midwife beckoned Isabel, who rushed to the bedside. “Prepare the lady for death,” the old woman told her. “Fetch a priest, if you can find one.”

Isabel was horrified, for Frances had heard. She snatched Isabel’s arm, her fingers like claws. “Priest! Can’t die . . . without . . . rites.
Please!
”

“Shhh, Frances, you’re going to be fine,” Isabel assured her as calmly as her fury at the old woman would allow. “There’s no need for any priest. The baby’s almost here, and we’re going to help you bring it.”

She turned on the hag, gripped her elbow and hustled her away from the bed, then lowered her voice, putting steel into it. “Get out.”

“What? I was called by her—”

“Leave at once, or I shall report you to the parish vicar.”

“Report what?”

“Fetch a priest, you said. That’s enough to land you in the stocks. Now go! And take these wretched things with you.” She scooped up the black coil and other paraphernalia, threw them into the satchel, and thrust it at her.

The woman hobbled out with her wares, grumbling. Isabel turned to the three servants who were watching, wide-eyed. One was a stout middle-aged woman with a sensible look about her. “What’s your name?”

“Margery, my lady.”

“Is there a washtub, Margery? A big one?”

“Aye,” she said, bewildered. “In the kitchen.”

“Go and tell the kitchen folk to build up the fires and boil water, buckets of water. I want the washtub filled. Go!” Margery hurried out and Isabel turned to the others. “Is there a strong man about?”

They blinked at her. “Bartholomew, the porter,” one said. “He’s a wrestler.”

“Fetch him here. And you,” she said to the third one, “help me get your mistress into a fresh nightdress.”

Frances was so rigid with fear, it was hard to calm her enough to change her shift, but they managed it. The porter arrived, but would not step into the room. Isabel went to the doorway and told him to carry Frances down to the kitchen. He balked, said birthing was women’s work. “Bartholomew,” she said quietly, “we may lose your mistress and the babe unless we can make her relax. Now carry her downstairs, or be prepared to answer to Sir Adam Thornleigh for the death of his wife and heir.” That got him moving.

The kitchen looked like a smithy’s workshop, a dozen servants at work around the roaring fires in the two huge hearths as Isabel ushered Bartholomew in carrying Frances. Footmen slogged in from the scullery pump house with pails of water to fill the kettles at the hearth, and women poured steaming water from the kettles into the wooden washtub. Isabel tested the water in the tub. Too hot. “Warm, like blood,” Pedro’s mother had said. Isabel ordered some cold water poured in, then tested it again. It was fine.

“Lower her into the tub,” she told Bartholomew.

He stared at her, shocked. The kitchen quieted, all eyes on Isabel. Frances blinked at Isabel, bewildered and still stiff with fear. “Frances, the water will ease your pain. It will be good for you, and good for the baby.”

“No! I’ll drown!”

“You shall not, believe me.” She gently took Frances’s face between her hands. “Do you trust me?”

Frances stared at her in an agony of doubt. Then managed, in a small voice, “Yes.”

“Good. Let this man lower you into the water. Do it now, Bartholomew.”

He didn’t move.

“Now.”

He shook his head as if to say that he would not be responsible for drowning the mistress, then set her down in the tub, immersing her bulky body up to her waist, her shift billowing under the water. “Dear God!” she cried, her face screwed up in fear. She threw her arms over the sides and gripped the tub edge as if for dear life.

There was a hush, everyone waiting for catastrophe.

Then Frances’s face unclenched. A sigh rushed out of her mouth. She half sat, half floated in the tub. Isabel relaxed, too. She remembered the feeling well, the water buoying up her heavy body, taking the awful strain off her back. The warmth of the water easing her taut muscles. All of it easing her mind. “This is how my son was born,” she said. She ordered that a curtain be hung to give Frances privacy, and sent a young maid for cider to give Frances strength, and sent Margery for twine. Once the curtain was up, she ordered all the servants to stay behind it. She could not risk their reaction to what she was going to do.

Alone with Frances, she stood behind her and laid her hands on her shoulders and gently kneaded. The muscles felt like wire. Another wave of labor pains made Frances tighten again with a gasp, but Isabel kept massaging her shoulders and back, slowly and gently, and murmuring encouragement, just as Pedro’s mother had done for her, and gradually Frances’s stiff body loosened. The labor pains came in waves that got closer together, but now Frances was able to ride with them until they ebbed. Though exhausted, she was much calmer.

After another hour, the pains crested. The baby was coming. Isabel perched on the side of the tub. “Push, Frances. Push, just as your body wants you to.”

“But . . . no, I must come out . . . the child—”

“Your baby will be born into the water.”

Frances gaped at her in horror. “He’ll drown! No! Let me out!”

Isabel held her back, gently but firmly. “He will not drown. A watery bed has been his home all these months. He will not need to breathe until his face touches the air. Frances, look at me. I swear to you, Nicolas was born this very way.” Doubt swam in Frances’s eyes. Isabel willed her to trust, and to believe.

A wave of pain overtook Frances.

“Now, push!” Isabel said.

Frances took a deep breath. She lifted herself so that she was half floating, and she pushed.

“It’s coming . . . your child is coming,” Isabel crooned. “Push!”

The baby floated out into the water, as unperturbed as though it were still dreaming in the womb. Frances gasped. Isabel cried out, “You have a daughter!” On her knees, she reached into the water and scooped up the warm little being. “Margery, the twine!” Margery threw open the curtain and rushed in with the twine.

Slowly, Isabel brought the baby girl to the water’s surface. The child went rigid. Then gasped in a breath. And let out a lusty yell. Isabel laughed with joy.

With the slippery, squirming child in her arms, she instructed Margery, who kneeled, and with trembling fingers wrapped the twine around the umbilical cord and tugged, pinching the cord tight, severing it. Isabel gently laid the warm little body on Frances’s heaving breast. Frances blinked, still catching her breath, sweat gleaming on her face. A shadow of a smile struggled over her pale lips. A smile of awe at her baby. And a tired but glowing look at Isabel.

A boy darted across the street in front of the horses, making Ambassador Quadra’s gelding shy, hooves up. He rocked back in his saddle. Carlos reached across from his mount and hooked his finger in the gelding’s bridle and steadied the horse. The ambassador settled, looking relieved. “Thank you, Valverde.”

“Your servant, my lord.” They were riding west on busy Newgate Street, going at a walk, on their way to a dinner the French ambassador was hosting at his Charterhouse lodgings outside London Wall. It was the first time Carlos had taken out this horse he’d chosen from Thornleigh’s stable, and he was pleased with its quick reflexes. A strong, steady animal. Handsome, too, black as a raven.
Noche,
his son had named it. A good name.
Night
.

“There’ll be good food and wine, I can promise you that,” Quadra said, adding with a dry smile, “The French do
some
things right.”

Carlos smiled back to be polite. Food was food and wine was wine—he had never understood the skirmishing that Frenchmen and Spaniards wasted their time on over who cooked a better sauce. He wasn’t sure why Quadra wanted him along at this dinner, either, but he was glad to keep abreast of the man’s network of contacts.

He noticed a girl shaking a sheet from a second-story window, and his thoughts went to Isabel, shut up with her sister-in-law. Had the baby come yet? he wondered. As soon as she was done there they could leave for Spain and then, finally, sail back home. He was itching to go. So much to see to, what with the troubles at the Potosí mine. He was sorry her parents had refused to go back with them—sorry for her sake, because he knew she was worried about them. But her mother had made the decision, and now he was keen to go, and he hoped that being shut up with Adam’s wife had made Isabel keen, too. Staying indoors for days on end was not her favorite thing. He smiled to himself, remembering her happy look when he had taken her to see the house at Trujillo for the first time. She loved that house, its sunny courtyard, its open verandas, its view of the mountains. It had made him glad to be able to give her that. He hoped he could hang on to the house. But if his debts at the silver mine piled up much higher, he’d have to consider selling the place. He would hate to do that to Isabel.

“Have you met Ambassador de Noailles?” Quadra asked.

“No.”

“Well, get to know him tonight. He’s something of an alarmist—the French so often are—but in this case, in Scotland, he may have cause. France has enjoyed such a long alliance with that country, until the recent dilemma.” Quadra gave Carlos an appraising look. “Are you familiar with the latest developments?”