Honey Lane, London
The Year of Our Lord 1389
In the thirteenth year of the reign of Richard II
My plans to set the girls to work the following day were rudely curtailed. Just before lauds, I was awoken by a gentle touch on my shoulder. It was Yolande.
“You must come, mistress,” she said. “Leda needs you.”
Milda stirred on the pallet beside my bed. We threw shawls over our shifts and, first setting Lowdy to boil water, flew upstairs.
Leda was pacing the small, slope-ceilinged room before a chalk-faced audience. Her face was slick with sweat, a frown of pain furrowed her brow. One hand rested on her stomach, as if to prevent it from bursting, the other was screwed into a fist and pressed against her mouth. Upon seeing us, she groaned and stumbled.
Milda ran to her side, Yolande on her heels, but she sent them away with a growl. From the look on Megge’s chastened face, it wasn’t the first time offers of help had been so crudely rejected.
I’d been in a few birthing chambers over the years, and I’d learned that the temperament of the woman was no indication of how she’d behave when about to bring a child into the world. The most placid could turn into a snarling lion, or fling curses like a toothless beldame. Those you’d expect to moan and make a passion play of the hours would sometimes whimper softly and apologize for causing inconvenience. Inconvenience? Aye, that’s one way to describe an ornery mound of flesh forcing its way out of your queynte. Bloody inconvenient in every regard.
Without so much as a by-your-leave, I took charge. Far from being the woman of the world she pretended to be, Leda was a mere chit of fifteen. A donkey’s cousin could see the girl was terrified and snapping at all and sundry because she felt unsafe. I led her to the pallet, which thanks to Megge had a clean sheet atop to soak up the fluids, and pushed her onto it.
“Yolande. Go fetch the midwife, Mistress Ibbot. Drew knows where she lives. Take him with you. For Godsakes,” I snapped over my shoulder, “the rest of you, stoke the fire, open the shutters, and get some fresh air in here. Smells worse than a barn. Bring the lass some ale, fast, you hear, some for me and Milda too.” Megge shot through the door, leaving it open as was proper during childbirth, anything to aid the womb in releasing its burden. Rose and Donnet, woken by the commotion, came upstairs and did what they could. Donnet even threw some rose petals in the water when Lowdy hauled it in. Whether or not it would help, it made the room smell sweeter.
I dipped a cloth in the hot liquid, gave it a quick wring, and dabbed Leda’s brow. “Squeeze my hand as tight as you like,” I urged. “The midwife is on her way. In the meantime, shout if you must, cry and curse or praise God, the angels, Holy Mother Mary, whatever your choice, we’ll not judge.”
She shot me a look of utter disbelief as if about to level some of those curses at me when pain gripped her. She doubled over, pink fluid gushing between her thighs. At the same time, the ale arrived. Before offering Leda any, I took a great swig myself.
The hand I’d offered was now numb and Leda scarce loosened her hold when she was finally able to gulp at the mazer.
“How long have you been like this?” I asked.
“Too long,” she said.
“She started getting ratty after matins,” said Rose helpfully.
“She’s always ratty,” added Megge.
Leda would have retorted, but another spasm took hold and she gritted her teeth, rising to her knees as the urge to move overtook her.
I held her upright, then helped her up off the pallet as she sought the floor. It seemed an age before the midwife, Mistress Ibbot, followed by half the gossips in the bloody lane, arrived. Mistress Ibbot brought salt and honey to dry up the baby’s humors and bind Leda’s womb when all was over. The other women, including the two crones next door and Mistress Bordwrygt, put down the stools they’d carried, along with the jugs of ale and mazers. Crammed around the sides of the room, they began praying to St. Margaret, conversing, and one even started spinning (I took note, a young wench I hadn’t seen before). The midwife pressed a jasper stone into Leda’s palm and bade her squeeze it. Grateful for her foresight, I took back my hand and massaged life into it.
The next few hours were a blur of cries, blood, bodily fluids, and Leda’s oaths and screams, which rang about the house. Chatter rose and fell, advice was kindly given and bluntly spurned. Day dawned, wet and cool, the rain steady upon the roof, some coming in through the window. When Yolande leaped up to close the shutters, Mistress Ibbot shouted at her to leave them open.
“You want this baby to come, don’t you?”
The entire time Mistress Ibbot remained with Leda, ignoring her threats, the foul language spilling from her mouth. She rubbed a fragrant oil into Leda’s back, her legs, pressed her ear to her stomach, and ordered me about as if I were her servant. She kept up a stream of words.
“These men who say bawds can’t get pregnant because their queyntes are slippery with too much seed, or clogged with the dirt of sin, need to be silenced. No doubt you thought you were free to swive whoever you pleased. Foolish girl. Look at the price you’re payin’.” She tut-tutted. “It’s always the woman; never the man, ain’t it? Even though Adam took the apple of his own free will. Eve didn’t force-feed it to him, did she? I’ll bet the bastard relished every mouthful, knowing he’d never be held to account.”
I liked this woman.
Finally, when all color had fled from Leda’s face and a sizeable crowd was gathered both in the room and in the lane below, the babe made its entrance.
Squatting over some rushes, Leda pushed and pushed, as if she had the worst dose of squits. The babe’s head crowned, a slow emergence that was greeted with a cheer from the women and a river of words that don’t bear repeating from Leda (but impressed me mightily). Wrapped in a thick caul of white, it hung suspended above the floor before, as Leda’s stomach rippled again, the child escaped in a spurt of blood and fluid. Mistress Ibbot caught it before it hit the rushes. I held onto Leda, whose knees gave way.
The caul was torn from the baby’s face, the midwife pushed her finger into its mouth then put her lips over its tiny ones and sucked. She turned and spat.
All at once, a welcome cry followed. Timid at first, like a young rooster learning to crow, it soon filled the room. There was laughter, tears, and more curses (that might have been me).
With experienced hands, Mistress Ibbot tied the cord, leaving a small nub. She washed away the blood then rubbed the babe’s body with salt and honey. Then she swaddled it tightly, muttering the words every layperson attending births was trained to say lest the babe die before it was baptized.
“Ego te baptizo—” She looked at Leda. “What’s his name?”
“He? I have a son?”
The midwife gave her a curious look. “Dear God, girl, I’d have thought you’d held enough pricks in your life to recognize what was hanging between his legs. Aye, you have a beautiful boy.”
Leda choked back a sob and her eyes filled. She turned to where I sat on the edge of the pallet, sweat dripping as if I’d just given birth myself. Impatient to have a hold, Milda came and whisked the baby from the midwife, all the other women gathering about her, cooing like a dovecote in the gloaming.
“What shall I call him?” asked Leda, one eye on the child.
The question took me unawares. “Can you name him after the father?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll not name him after that bastard.”
“What about your father?”
“Nor him,” she said, her eyes growing harder than flint. “He was not . . . a good man.” She regarded me strangely. “Was your father?”
I hadn’t thought of Papa in so long. “He wasn’t bad, I guess.” He worked hard, was loyal to a fault. By all accounts, he’d loved Mama and I’d loved him.
“What was his name?” Leda asked.
“Wace. His name was Wace,” I said, recalling the last time I saw him, standing with a group of broggers, enjoying an ale, throwing his head back to laugh at something one of them had said. A wave of sorrow swept me.
“Wace,” said Leda, glancing at her baby who was being held by a delighted Lowdy. He began to mewl. “His name is Wace.”
I gasped. My heart swelled. “You can’t—” I began, even while an inner voice was shouting at me to be silent. “Why—?”
“I can call him whatever I want,” snapped Leda. “I like your father’s name. I like you.”
Suddenly, the babe was thrust into my arms, as if I knew how to soothe his plaintive whimpers. I looked down at his little bunched face, his wrinkled, downy skin, the way the gray light from the window sat like an aura about him. His darkling eyes stared at me, or so I liked to believe.
God had denied me the joy of motherhood and, until this moment, I thought myself reconciled to that. If ever I felt the pinch of sadness that all my husbands and swiving had led to naught, I’d remember the babe I saw born on a ceaseless tide of crimson, draining his mother of life, or the one born with no face, one arm, and twisted like a sailor’s knot. Those cut from a womb or born violet and cold, not breathing. And now here was this sweet little creature. A boy who would bear my father’s name. A yearning rose in me, followed by a glow, as if I was a blacksmith’s furnace kindled for the day’s labor. Only, this fire would never be doused.
“Aye. It’s a strong name,” I whispered. I stroked his downy cheek as his screwed-up pinkened face swam before me. I sniffed. “A good name.”
In that moment I knew I would do anything to protect him. I dropped the lightest of kisses upon his rosy brow, inhaled his scent, which came not from this stinking earth but from the abode of angels.
“Wace—” continued Mistress Ibbot as if my world hadn’t just expanded. “In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”
“Amen,” we repeated.
Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to baptize the babe—it should only be done when there was a chance of imminent death. One had only to look at Wace’s sturdy feet, hear his lusty cries, to know he was secure in this world. Still, we women had so few opportunities to assert our authority—especially over the church.
Then we set to welcoming the baby as one should—with ale, song and much cheer.
My joy in little Wace was, however, short-lived. Among those outside waiting to hear the result of the birth was Wace’s father—none other than Ordric Fleshewer.