Time and Chance (54 page)

Bertrade had taken a short break, was just emerging from the corner privy chamber. Her face was blank, for she was too experienced to reveal her own anxieties or dread. Her fatigue she could not hide, however, and she seemed to have aged years in these post-Christmas hours. Untidy black hair defied its pins, revealing a smattering of grey that Maud had never noticed before, and there was such a prominent slump to her shoulders that her body was conveying her distress more eloquently than words could have done. Eleanor was caught up in another contraction, and Maud took advantage of the moment to draw Bertrade aside.

“Why is the mouth of her womb not open by now?” she asked quietly, the low, even pitch of her voice belied by the fingers digging into Bertrade’s arm. “She has always delivered her babies more easily than this.”

“When a woman gives birth again and again, her womb can become weak and feeble. I’ve also seen this happen when the waters break too soon, but I do not know why.”

Maud had learned that midwives, like doctors, were usually loath to admit their lack of knowledge, and she would have given Bertrade credit for her candor if it were not Eleanor in travail. “In all the birthings I’ve witnessed, the waters were either clear or light reddish in color. Eleanor’s were dark, a murky greenish brown. What does that mean?”

Bertrade glanced across the chamber at the woman writhing on the birthing stool, then dropped her voice so her words barely reached Maud’s ear. “I am not sure, my lady. I’ve seen it but rarely. It can mean that the babe will be stillborn.”

Maud was expecting as much. “If she cannot deliver the child, what will you do?”

Bertrade could not repress a superstitious shiver. Why tempt fate? But she was not about to rebuke the Countess of Chester, the king’s cousin, and she said reluctantly, “There are herbs I can give her, dittany and hyssop and others. Or I can make a pessary with bull’s gall, iris juice, and oil, and that will usually expel a dead child. God Willing, it will not come to that.”

“God Willing,” Maud echoed dutifully, keeping to herself her blasphemous thought that the Almighty too often seemed deaf to prayers coming from the birthing chamber. Just then Eleanor cried out, an involuntary, choked sob that sounded as if it were torn from her throat. Maud had attended three of Eleanor’s birthings and never had she heard her scream like that. The Latin words came unbidden to her lips, so soft and slurred that only Bertrade heard.

The midwife looked at her intently. “What does that mean, Lady Maud?”

Maud swallowed with difficulty. “It is a prayer for a child whose birthing goes wrong. ‘O infant, whether living or dead, come forth because Christ calls you to the light.’ ”

Bertrade nodded slowly. “Amen,” she said succinctly, and moved in a swirl of skirts back to Eleanor’s side.

 

 

 

ELEANOR HAD BEEN CLUTCHING an eagle-stone amulet, most valued of all the talismans said to succor women in childbed. When her grip loosened, it slipped through her fingers onto the floor. With a dismayed gasp, Petronilla dropped to her knees and scrabbled about in the matted, sodden rushes until she’d recovered it. Pressing it back into her sister’s palm, she clasped Eleanor’s hand around the stone and hissed in her ear, “You must not die. You must hold on, you hear me? You cannot let that little whore of Harry’s win!”

Eleanor’s eyes were like sunken caverns, so tightly was the skin stretched across her cheekbones. To Petronilla’s horror, that familiar face had begun to resemble an alabaster death mask, and she warned hoarsely, “If you die, I swear I’ll kill you!”

The other women looked at her as if they feared her wits were wandering. But that was a childhood joke between them, and Eleanor’s cracked, bleeding lips twitched in acknowledgment of it. “I am not going to die, Petra . . . not today.”

Petronilla’s eyes blurred. “You promise?”

Eleanor nodded wordlessly, saving her strength for all that mattered now—survival. Bertrade was patting her face with a wet cloth, murmuring encouragements and reassurances that it would not be much longer and she must not lose heart. Eleanor knew that most childbed deaths occurred when the woman gave up, for there came a time when dying was easier than any of the alternatives. But she would not be one of them. She would rid her body of this alien intruder, this intimate enemy begotten by betrayal. She would not die so Harry’s child might live. And that the child was also hers seemed of small matter when measured against the desolation that had claimed every corner of her soul.

He was born as midnight drew nigh, bruised and blue, a small, feeble shadow of the brothers who’d come before him. They had squalled lustily, kicking and squirming as they were cleansed of their mother’s blood and mucus. He gave only a muted, querulous cry, as if to complain at his unceremonious, discordant entry into their world. The birth of a son was usually a cause for celebration. But this one was an afterthought, the fourth son, needed neither as heir nor spare.

After they’d assured themselves that he was whole and breathing, the women turned their attention to Eleanor, for she still had to expel the afterbirth, and that was often the most dangerous time of all. Bertrade had prepared a yarrow poultice and mixed a flagon of wine with boiled artemisia should Eleanor begin to hemorrhage; she also put aside a lancet and basin, in case the queen’s flooding must be stopped by bleeding her. She felt blessed, indeed, when none of these remedies were needed. After swallowing salted water, Eleanor groaned and twisted upon the birthing stool and the placenta splattered into Bertrade’s waiting hands. Hastily putting it aside for burial later lest it attract demons, the midwife rubbed her temples, leaving streaks of blood midst the sweat. “Well done, Madame,” she said proudly. “Well done!”

The baby balked at being bathed and then swaddled, but he was in practiced hands and was soon turned over to Rohese, the waiting wet-nurse. She, too, was experienced and had no difficulty in getting him to suckle. “How black his hair is,” she marveled. “Blacker than sin itself.” She had nursed several of Eleanor’s infants and could not help commenting upon the dramatic contrast between the other babies, sun-kissed and robust and golden, and this undersized, fretful, dark imp. None of the women responded to her chatter and she lapsed into a subdued silence, sensing tensions in the chamber that had naught to do with a difficult birth.

By the time Eleanor’s chaplain was allowed entry into this female sanctorum, she had been bathed and put to bed, although the women were hovering nearby to make sure she did not sleep yet, for all knew the danger that posed to new mothers. She accepted the priest’s congratulations with exhausted indifference, rousing herself to meet the minimum demands of courtesy and protocol, when all she wanted was to spiral down into a deep, dreamless sleep.

At the priest’s urging, the wet-nurse produced the infant for his inspection. “A fine lad,” he beamed. “If you wish, I will write to the king this very night. How pleased he will be to hear he has another son. Madame . . . the chapel is ready for the baptism. What name have you chosen for the babe?”

Eleanor did not seem to have heard his query and he cleared his throat, asked again. She regarded him in silence, and he fidgeted under the power of those slanting hazel eyes, bloodshot and swollen and utterly opaque.

It was Maud who came to his rescue. Taking the child from Rohese, she said briskly, “Since today is the saint’s day of John the Evangelist, let’s name him John.”

The priest looked relieved to have this settled. “Does that meet with your approval, Madame?”

Eleanor nodded and Maud handed the baby back to the wet-nurse. It occurred to Rohese then that the queen had yet to ask for the infant, and she moved, smiling, toward the bed. “Would you like to hold him, Madame?”

Eleanor turned her head away without answering.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

 

 

 

 

MAUDE TURNED AT THE SOUND of the opening door. The woman who entered was her last link to the young bride she’d once been, consort and wife to Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Germans. Heinrich had been dead for more than four decades, and in just a month’s time, it would be sixteen years since her unlamented second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, had been called to account for his sins. She’d lost a crown and buried two of her three sons, and through it all, Minna had been with her, steadfast and unswerving in her devotion, loyal even by Maude’s stringent standards. Age had gnarled Minna’s limbs and stolen away her strength; she walked with a limp, panted for breath at the least exertion, and had asked Maude to send her heart back to Germany for burial. Maude had promised that it would be done, and quietly made the necessary arrangements, for she knew—if Minna did not—that death would find her first.

Minna was balancing a platter in an unsteady grip, scorning servants for the joy of waiting upon Maude’s son herself. Maude was amused to see it heaped with sugared wafers, as if England’s king was still a boy hungering after sweets. If her love for Henry was like a sword, gleaming and sharp and stark, Minna’s love was as expansive and comforting as the softest of goose-down pillows. Putting her finger to her lips, she signaled for quiet.

Minna carefully set her burden upon the table, smiling fondly at the man reclining in the window seat. Henry looked younger in sleep, piercing hawk’s gaze veiled by golden lashes, mouth curling up at the corners in a dream-smile. He was usually too fair to tan. But he’d passed the entire spring and summer in the saddle, and his face was evenly sun-browned, aside from an incongruous pale strip that had been shadowed by his helmet’s nasal guard.

“How bone-weary he looks,” Minna said softly. “Now that he has made a truce with the French king, you must insist that he stay in Rouen for at least a fortnight and take his ease, Madame.”

“To get him to rest, I’d have to slip a sleeping potion into his wine.”

Minna chuckled. “Even as a little lad, he was a veritable whirlwind of motion, never sitting still unless he was tied to the chair.”

“I remember your threatening to do that more than once,” Henry said, without opening his eyes, and Minna matched his grin with one of her own, protesting that she’d done no such thing. Maude watched in bemusement, for she’d never bantered with her sons, never fully understood Henry’s humor, considering it to be—like his infamous Angevin temper—one of his father’s more dubious bequests. To Maude, life was far too serious to be laughed at.

Minna had begun talking about Henry’s attack in July upon the castle and town of Chaumont, where the French king had stored his arsenal. Maude shared Minna’s pride in Henry’s feat, for it had been a remarkable achievement. He had lured the castle garrison out to meet his frontal assault while he sent a band of Welsh mercenaries to enter the town through a channel of the River Troesne. The resulting victory had been a dramatic triumph for Henry and a great humiliation for the French king. But Maude had contented herself with a “Well done,” whereas Minna was so lavish in her praise that she made Henry sound like the most brilliant battle commander since the days of Julius Caesar. After listening impatiently for several moments, Maude reclaimed control of the conversation by asking Henry if all had gone as planned at Andeley.

“Indeed it did,” Henry said gravely, although his eyes were agleam with silent laughter, for he understood his mother far better than she understood him. Andeley had been evacuated of all its citizens, the town abandoned to the approaching French army. The scheme had been hatched by the Count of Flanders and Maude, who’d persuaded Henry that the French king needed a sop for the debacle at Chaumont. Henry had been skeptical, for he’d never been overly concerned himself with saving face and could not imagine gaining satisfaction from such an empty victory. But the count and Maude had accurately assessed the depths of French mortification, and once Andeley had been sacked by his army, Louis and his advisers offered a truce. Henry had been quite willing to accept, for he had rebellious barons still to be subdued in Brittany and Aquitaine. And so the war had come to a mutually satisfactory if ironic end, with the French king applying the balm of Andeley to soothe his bloodied pride and Henry getting the time he needed to put out fires in other corners of his vast empire. As for the unhappy townspeople of Andeley, they had their lives and the dubious consolation that whenever elephants fought, it was invariably the mice underfoot who were trampled first.

“You read men well, Mother,” Henry said now, giving her the compliment she craved while thinking that this was a skill she’d unfortunately learned late in life. Had she not misjudged the English temperament so abysmally, she’d not have been chased out of London by her own subjects. “My truce with Louis is supposed to endure until Easter next. It will be interesting to see if it lasts that long.”