Watermark

Elena clutched her
distended belly and tried not to cry out. A cold winter draft blew through crevices in the cottage’s half-timbered walls. Yet rivulets of sweat still ran down the sides of her face. Propped in a corner, straddling a hay bale, she crossed her arms over the life growing inside her.

“Not y-yet,” she hiccupped amid the fierce pain cramping her belly. She tilted her head back to stop her tears from falling and the salty moisture dripped into her throat. Her gaze rested on the wildflowers drying upside down in the corner. An old tune flitted through her head, a folksong her own mother had taught her, the lyrics long forgotten. In a broken voice, she hummed the melody.

Another sharp pang shot through her and she doubled over with a low cry. Warm liquid surged between her legs. She reached to feel the sticky wetness: thick dark blood. She looked
across the room, over the floor of withered rushes and past the hearth to the single plank of wood that served as supper table, kitchen lath, and her husband Martin’s workbench. A near-empty flagon of wine rested beside his paper vat.

Knocking her head back against the wall, she cried out for him. He had left hours earlier with their daughter, Poncia, to find the midwife. Why hadn’t they returned?

Suddenly, the door flung open and an elderly woman stumbled through on thick legs and swollen knees. Not the midwife but someone else. Biatris, the healer. Had Martin brought her? She’d lost track of everything but the pain.

The woman directed her assistant, Onors, to build up the dwindled fire, then hovered over Elena. The healer looked like a leathery vegetable, weathered and withered, with a head of white wiry curls.

Elena whimpered and searched for her husband. She found him standing in the shadows, holding their daughter. Fear shone in his dark eyes. She tried to smile. He shook his head only once. Onors trundled him outside.

Elena keened a low cry after him. Another wave of birthing blood coursed onto the linen blanket tucked between her legs. The bleeding had to stop, but how? She curled her head over her stomach.

“Rest easy,” Biatris said. She reached out to steady Elena, then glanced at her apprentice. “We need a compress of cinque-foil root to slow the bleeding. Look in the kitchen garden.”

The young girl cast Biatris a grateful look and slipped outside. A cold winter gust blew through the rickety cottage and the door slammed shut. Elena gasped again, arms encircling her belly. Her body pushed out globs of half-clotted blood.

The healer shoved a cup of wine at Elena. She choked on the bitter poppy-laced drink.

Its warmth slid down her throat and seeped into her veins,
limbs, belly, and head. Soon a slow drowse tugged at her mind. The upsurge of pain receded into a dull ache and then into nothing. Her fingers relaxed and dropped the cup. She blinked, her vision murky, her eyelids weighted down.

Biatris stumbled among the stools and barrels cluttering the dim one-room home. Elena tossed her head back and forth. Oh, Martin would be angry, the way the woman pushed aside his tools, quills, and ink that lay scattered on the supper board.

Another jolt of pain knifed through her belly. Elena stifled a gasp and breathed in and out to calm herself.

“That’s it, loosen the muscles,” the healer said, picking up Elena’s cup. She waddled to the table and washed her hands in the basin of river water, then dried each finger.

A low moan escaped Elena’s lips. Pangs of homesickness and pain mingled together.
“Mare,”
she sobbed. But her mother wasn’t there. Elena was alone, without mother, aunts, or cousins who could see her through this birth. Surely there would have been work enough for Martin in the family paper mill back home. Why had they ever left? A forlorn sadness gurgled through her lips. Her limbs slackened.

Biatris passed a full cup of the drugged wine back to her, then lowered herself beside the makeshift seat of hay.

Elena blinked back tears and swallowed the draught. She felt cold, too cold, her only remaining warmth focused in the lump of her belly. The metallic stench of blood gagged in her throat. She wheezed. Why was it so hard to breathe?

“My child. My babe,” she said in a fading whisper. She dropped the cup. Dry tongue licked dry lips. Would her babe survive? How, motherless in this world? She focused on the healer, who reached to touch her clammy forehead and smooth her sweat-soaked hair. “Please.”

Biatris gripped her hand and leaned in. “The Church permits
us only to cut babes from dead wombs.” Her gaze darted to the door through which the young assistant had disappeared. “By then it may be too late.” She stared into Elena’s eyes.

What had she said—dead wombs, dead babes? Elena stared back, comprehension dawning. She placed her hands on either side of her belly and felt the receding warmth.

“Cut my babe free,” she said in a whisper. Her breath burbled into a sob. Who would look out for her children, both of them? She struggled to remember what her daughter looked like.

The healer looked at her. “No time to call for a priest, but I bless you in God’s name. He will understand.”

Struggling to her feet, the healer reached for her bag and uncorked a clay bottle. She poured a thick white salve on Elena’s belly and rubbed the numbing balm in circles into her cold skin.

“Prepare yourself,” she said and shoved a wooden stick between Elena’s teeth. Her hand curved around the haft of her large knife. She placed the tip of the blade on Elena’s pregnant bulge and drew in her breath. Exhaling, she pushed the knife in hard.

Elena screamed, a shrill cry that split the bare room. The stick slipped from her mouth and fell onto the straw. The woman was killing her—the babe too? The healer pulled the blade through her thick flesh. Elena screamed again. Her stomach tore apart like a split gourd. She kicked, trying to escape the agony.

The healer broke through her belly and reached into her womb. Elena thrashed, shrieking. Biatris pressed on her abdomen and drew the child out, guiding its head and shoulders into the cold air. The infant’s scream rang out.

Elena sobbed. Her babe lived.

In the background, the healer fussed over the child, clean
ing the mucous from its eyes, nose, and mouth. Elena closed her eyes and drew in ragged breaths.

But then Biatris gasped. “My God.”

Elena turned her pain-swollen gaze to her babe. Another girl? A boy? “Alive?”

“Your babe has will to live,” the healer said, though Elena heard reluctance in her voice.

Biatris brought the infant close but Elena couldn’t see, could only feel its slimy skin stick to hers. She tried to smile, but her lips felt heavy and curved downward.

“My babe,” she said. Her fingers swiped at the air and fell. The room grew dimmer. A tune—her babe needed a tune. Again her mother’s song ran through her head; with cracked sobs, Elena tried to hum along. A few words surfaced in her hazy memory.

Love, my love, how can a mortal be

So pure, and innocent as is she.

Dressed in beauty, will and God's grace

What wonders will she see?

Such wonders you will see, she thought to her child, and closed her eyes.

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