To be one person is bad enough, but to be two simultaneously? I know some people dream of such an opportunity, or treat it as a matter of essential philosophy, like Kant with his categorical imperative, that prickly notion of fully inhabiting the dilemmas of another—of walking a mile, as Elvis Presley would have put it, in another’s shoes. But to be inserted entirely into another human soul, as I now was, and forced to participate in their life, their past life, a life that could not now be altered? It was claustrophobic, disorienting, intolerable. From the moment Bonesy stuffed her eyeball down my throat, I was nothing more than a rising, pent-up scream, a scream denied release.
Hateful, that’s the word. My experience in the past was hateful.
My name was Elizabeth, and I was married to a physician by the name of Wolcott, William Wolcott. I knew these facts as clearly as I knew the sun would rise, but make no mistake, this was no mere intellectual diversion. My insertion into Elizabeth Wolcott’s life was total and immersive, tactile. When my cold feet rose from the hay-stuffed mattress, I felt the roughness of the rushes that covered the stone slab floor, and I heard their rustle as they shifted under my tread. I smelled the tallow of the guttering candle lit by my husband as he, too, rose in the pre-dawn light. My skin—my entire body—felt the cold, and felt it keenly, for it was winter. Early winter, in the year 1518.
I had breasts, hips, and long tresses the color of acorns. The shift I’d worn to bed was clean, quite new; we had money, William and I, to a point, but what could money buy to heat a home to the standards to which I, Renner, was accustomed? It was not money that was needed in our cottage, but a lack of idle hands. I padded to the kitchen, humming snatches of “The Coventry Carol”, threw fresh kindling into the grate, then took down the bellows and brought last night’s fire back to life. By the time I had a flame going, which did not take long, for I was quick at my work, skilled and experienced, I was shivering violently, and when William came up behind me and wrapped me in a bear hug, I was in no hurry to escape.
Did that, too, cause me discomfort? To be held so closely, so affectionately, by a man? I was Elizabeth Wolcott, yes, but I did not cease to be myself, and when my new husband reached out to cup my breast, to cradle my nipple between thumb and forefinger, I felt that as keenly as if a needle had pricked my finger. It was a remarkable sensation, familiar and foreign all at once, and the tamped-down scream within me rose one notch closer to release.
“The lad with the fever,” said William. “I’d best check on him first. And then Widow Blackwell.”
I said, as I did most mornings, “I’ll have your breakfast ready.”
Not long after, William, carrying his black satchel, went out, and as the heavy door closed, the house dissolved around me and I stood, instead, at the bank of a river, looking across an arched stone bridge at a sunlit huddle of houses beyond. Swayfield-On-Witham, that was the name Elizabeth gave it—and effortlessly, too, since for her it was common knowledge. Wood smoke, thin and gray and smelling of charred oak, rose from the ill-made chimneys; it faltered as it met the wind and trailed off eastward as a layer of blue-white haze. There was no guildhall; the place was too mean for that. Hedge-enclosed fields crisscrossed the landscape in all directions, broken only by the village and the shimmering vine of the River Witham. My nose caught a thousand smells, dominated by the ripe, heady stink of manure. In the distance, past a field of chewing, bleating sheep, the village church rose against the low sun and the bright horizon, its spire a dark, vivid tooth.
I turned to face the opposite way, toward the only significant hill—though it hardly deserved the name—in this otherwise flat expanse. On top of the rise stood a modest manor home, stone-walled and stout. It had not been erected with defense in mind, yet one corner sprouted a crenelated tower, and above that flew a square flag featuring four distinct fields, two red and two blue, the blue showing trios of fleur-de-lis, the red golden lions. Not at all the Union Jack with which I was familiar, no, but Elizabeth knew it without thinking as a Tudor flag, first unveiled by the Winter King, Henry VII, and flown now by his successor, Henry VIII. The house, in turn, belonged to Lord Thomas Lorimer, whose wife was pregnant with their first child.
In the distance, William Wolcott emerged from the house, his satchel in hand. The vaulted door shut firmly behind him. Elizabeth (and I) waved. William waved back, and he hurried closer, his black robe gusting around his legs. His face was visible, for he had never gone in for the “plague masks” preferred by so many, nor had he adopted the fancier threads now appearing at court, by way of Italy. He was in so many ways unconventional, especially in his work, where he’d refused a place in the Fellowship of Surgeons and obtained instead a classical education at Oxford, focusing on anatomy––and then, having graduated, did he go to London or attach himself to a wealthy house? Not my William. He’d willingly, intentionally set off toward what he said was the future of medicine and set himself up as a “rural physician”. He conceded this was madness, and not a path to wealth, but he was satisfied in his work, and how many souls, as he often asked, could claim that? The wealthier farmers and tradesmen, having seen his value in the parish, kept him paid––barely––and he had family money, a little, enough, so he was happy, and that happiness was sufficient to encompass me.
William’s blowsy hair had thinned over time (he was twelve older than I), making it an easy target as he approached for the wind’s every caprice. By the time he reached me, his hair looked like a crow’s nest after a storm.
“The news is good,” he said, and he leaned in to kiss me. I accepted his kiss, of course, along with the tip of his tongue. He tasted of bread and ale and stew, all of which he’d surely been offered by the Lorimers. More to the point for Elizabeth, he tasted like William, like himself, like a man.
“You’re cold,” he said, and his wide blue eyes showed devotion, concern, and everything Elizabeth had ever wanted. Had she been any more in love with him, she would have fainted dead away, and I with her.
As for the words themselves, he said them often, I knew, and they were nearly always true. Elizabeth spent eight months a year at least chilled to the bone. At present, she wore a thick woolen shawl, but it was hardly enough to keep out the wind, eddies of which took gleeful pleasure in pushing in under my ankle-length skirts, and freezing me from beneath.
“Never mind that,” I said, as we set off across the bridge for home. “What of the child?”
“I suspect a boy, but so early in the journey, I’m loath to speculate—and certainly not to the family. But mother and child are both well. Lady Catherine shows a good appetite. There’s no blood in her urine, and her humors are well mixed.”
“You saw his lordship?”
My husband’s face clouded, though none but me would have spotted this. “I’ll say two things for him. He is imposing, no question, and he has the neatest, trimmest beard in Christendom.”
“Did he and his beard deign to speak?”
The brevity of William’s hesitation was intended to mask his annoyance, and in the company of others, it might have served. “Lord Lorimer said, ‘This child will live, or I’ll know the reason why.’”
We’d reached the apex of the span across the Witham, and our boots rang sharply on the cold supportive stones. Below us, the sluggish current twisted southward, toward Boston and the Wash. Long tendrils of plants whose names even Elizabeth did not know pointed the way, swaying like supple dancers, but caught, too—unable ever to stop or alter their stance.
I said to my husband, “I’m afraid.”
He laughed, then let loose a tremendous barking sneeze. “Be at peace, Elizabeth,” he said. “Let’s get home and think about bringing along a family of our own, shall we?”
The smile that creased Elizabeth’s face ought to have been answer enough, but her response surprised me. “Lessons first,” she said. “I will learn to read your Galen if it kills me.”
He sneezed again and wiped at his nose with one black sleeve. “I would not have you die for the sake of language,” he said, “so by all means, let us polish your dative and your spelling, though both are already excellent, and then, with the blessings of the ancients and Asclepios in particular, I’ll take you to bed for as long as you can possibly stand it. Will the lady find that acceptable?”
She did—which meant I did, as well, though I was hardly paying attention. The first building blocks of sense and purpose were falling into place: Elizabeth was learning to read, and it was William, a physician by trade, who had taught her, apparently by using Galen, the Greek father of medicine, as a text.
Her learning was kept in confidence, of course. Few enough women of even the highest class were taught their letters, and in Swayfield-On-Witham, such an endeavor was all but unthinkable—possibly even heretical. They kept at it nonetheless, she with eagerness, and he with an abiding pleasure at the ongoing revelation of his wife’s quick wit and nimble mind. As they progressed, he began to press her for medical opinions, and she answered with ever greater confidence. At times, she visited the sick at his side, and more than once served as nurse (then a term so new that we often had to explain it) or surgical accomplice. “My wife,” William became fond of saying, “is apt to put me out of business.”
Spring. The fields, luxuriant to begin with except where newly turned, now flared with greens so bright it was as if they’d been painted. Hawthorns bloomed, looking, from a distance as if they’d been hit with squalls of snow. The little robin red-breasts sang like tiny choristers from every hedge, and the shepherds were exhausted from keeping up with lambing.
I was in the garden, harvesting the first early lettuce. It wasn’t much, but it would do, and I relished the snap of the stalk as I cut it with a sickle-shaped knife. William came in at the gate as I worked, and he smiled, pleased. “I look forward to that,” he said.
“Fresh, I suppose,” said Elizabeth, and for a moment, I did not understand the joke, for such it evidently was, but in a trice, Elizabeth’s thoughts made all come clear. In Swayfield-On-Witham, to eat a vegetable without cooking it was thought to be unsanitary, an invitation to sickness or even plague. William had been trying, by dint of advice and demonstration, to change that ancient prejudice, but without much luck. Even I was only a recent adherent, and still cooked what I could—which was to say everything, so long as William was not at home when I went about it. But I was becoming a convert, more and more; I liked the crunch of fresh leaves and roots in my teeth. Besides, I trusted my spouse, my handsome, educated husband. He’d just been accepted into the newly forming Royal College of Physicians, as chartered by the king himself . How could such a man steer me wrong?
Hovering at the edge of the vegetable patch, William ran a quick hand through his hair. The day was hardly warm, but he was red-faced, perspiring. His long nose dripped freely and his cheeks were crisscrossed with the pricks of burst blood vessels, though whether it was I or Elizabeth who described them this way, I could not have said.
My husband said, “I note you do not ask about the child.”
I stood straight, the slaughtered lettuce in one hand, and the knife, keen-bladed, in the other. “I assume all is well with Lady Catherine, which is why I do not ask. I want all to be well with you.”
He nodded, then gave a sort of moan and twisted his torso. It was a combination I had endured much of late, this pained sound concurrent with the awkward shifting of his body. He set down his satchel and grasped his side with one hand, his elbow cocked.
“The swelling?” I asked, stepping forward.
“Worse,” he said. “My apologies, I must lie down. But be assured, mother and child are well. As am I, I promise.”
Having followed him in, I said, hesitant (and angry with myself for being so), “Might not a greater quantity of boiled vegetables be best? Until you’re well, at least?”
We had but the two rooms, both whitewashed, and I stood in the portal between, watching as my husband stretched himself fully dressed and clearly aching from head to foot on the bed. I knew better than to rush his answer. In the main, William Wolcott was a man given to hurry, but when he liked not the topic, his pace could drive a snail to drink.
“The animals,” he said at last, “thrive on that which is fresh. Witness the cows and sheep with grass, or birds with their seeds and berries.”
Of course he’d said as much a thousand times, and often to our priest, who took great issue with nearly every word my husband uttered, and warned him at every possible opportunity to not conflate the habits of beasts with the diets of men. “Which of us,” Father John would demand, “is made in God’s image? The cow, or the Vicar of Rome? Do you not believe, Wolcott, that our diet should imitate that of our most Holy Redeemer?”
Seeds and berries. I could feed my husband, scantily, on these things, but not on grass. Instead, I went to the slopes to the west of the manor and followed the hedges, beating the tangled branches on occasion with a stout stick until at last I turned up a family of five day-drowsy hedge-pigs, four of which I tossed in a sack and carried home for baking. Fresh vegetables my William might want, but his favorite dish in the world was hedge-pig, endored, and I meant him to have it as often as possible, for however so long as God chose to let him remain in the world.
William was correct to cite cows, though, for cows—one cow in particular—was what had brought us together. I was a farmer’s daughter, though not a peasant, for my father owned his land outright, for a favor done generations prior, well before the Wars of the Roses. William, then very new to our district, had been summoned to our barn not in his capacity as a physician but sidelong, under the assumption that he might also prove useful as a veterinarian. One of my father’s milk cows had expelled her uterus, and I’d been the one to find her damp, smelly innards spilled down to her hocks and nearly dragging on the hay-strewn, earthen floor of the barn. Robin, the cow, was chewing her cud, unconcerned.
My father was away to Lincoln, so my younger brother hared off straightaway to fetch help. I, however, had seen such things before, and knew more or less what had to be done. I fetched water and a basin, and then set to work cleaning the tissue of what debris Robin had kicked onto herself. This done, and with Robin now tethered to a tight picket line, I rolled up my sleeves, got the best grip I could, and began stuffing Robin’s uterus back inside her.
It was in this position that William first laid eyes on me, shoulder deep in Robin the cow’s backside and shoving, with my one free hand, the last of the poor girl’s uterus into place. I was not, I fear, a pretty sight, but William, with his precious satchel clutched in two hands before him, rocked back on his heels, grinned, and said, “I do believe the patient is already in most capable hands.”
We were married not two months later.
Daylight, later in the spring.
In the woodlot beyond the manor, the bluebells ran riot. A red kite had been spotted by the village boys, and they were off in a pack, armed with slingshots, to track it and bring it down before it could make off with any chickens. The kite, seemingly aware of the danger, had taken to a higher thermal and wheeled away to the west, back to the hill country it preferred.
I, too, was walking west, with William beside me. He carried his satchel, for we were off to visit a far-flung family in a neighboring village where they lacked even an experienced midwife. A broken leg, that was what the messenger had indicated, “A bad break and all,” as he’d said, “with the bone showing clear through and jagged besides.” Our destination lay past the turnoff to Sleaford and Grantham, a crossroads popular with the sheriffs and others who enjoyed making public displays of their newfound Tudor loyalty. The gibbet such men had hung there was rarely empty, and indeed was not so this day. A man lay inside, insensible, his hugely engorged tongue lolling sideways out of his mouth.
Both William and I averted our eyes, for to see such suffering appalled us both, but there was nothing we could do, and to tamper with a gibbet or its occupant was in itself a whipping offense. In any case, we had need to hurry on, for ours was not a short journey, and we would not be home until well after sundown.
I had taken to accompanying my husband on his surgical visits, for his energy flagged unpredictably now, and he was prone to falling asleep at unexpected moments. At times he appeared confused, and his Latin, so hard won at Oxford and before, deserted him. More than once in the past week, it was I who had made the diagnosis, and I who then described what course of treatment to take. I tried to keep vanity at bay, but not with any great success. At every spare moment, between cooking and gardening and cleaning and especially late at night, while William slept, I read over and over again his copies of Galen, forcing myself both to the yoke of Latin and reading in general, a task so many said was unnatural in a woman. Indeed, I shuttered our windows when attempting my studies by night, so that none would suspicion that it was I and not my husband who was now the preeminent physician in our region. I did not wish to end my days accused of witchcraft.
When we came to the man with the leg break, we set the bone together, William and I, and we prayed together with the man’s family and his parish priest to prevent disease and pestilence from entering the wound. William fell asleep twice during the lengthy prayer, drawing a scowl from the man’s eldest son, but in the end, we escaped with his reputation intact, and I was confident that the man would heal in time.
“Fresh vegetables and plenty of fat,” were William’s parting words of advice. “And use your crutch, sir. To put weight on your leg in these next weeks will prove fatal to our cause.”
Fresh vegetables. In the eyes of the injured man’s family, it was clear that this instruction would be entirely ignored. In response, I quickened our steps toward home. To add verve to our stride, we sang as we walked, blending our voices in “Nottamun Town”, a song only just then arriving in our small corner of the world.
In Nottamun Town, not a soul would look up
Not a soul would look up
Not a soul would look down
To show me the way to fair Nottamun Town.
In early summer, Lady Catherine announced to the world her condition—as if it were not already known from the Fens to Lincoln and beyond—and on the day of her announcement, William died in my arms, in the bed we’d shared. He had no last words; he had not, at the end, known me.
His death left me agonized not only for my loss but for myself, for with him had died my livelihood, and I could hardly take up where he had left off, no matter what I’d gleaned of his learning. Indeed, I fully expected Father John to make off with William’s books under the pretext of “protecting” me from whatever vulgar or devilish knowledge lay within. Father John was consistent if nothing else: he believed in one book and one book only, and he was to serve as its sole intermediary. Any other text let loose in his vicinity challenged that authority, and with William dead, he would not be long in seeking to regain his place as arbiter of all things lettered.
William, in his last lucid days, had also foreseen this outcome, and together we hatched a plan to transcribe in shorthand terms what knowledge we could into his Book of Hours. True, it was yet another book, and so a poor enough hiding place, but it was likely that I could impress upon Father John that I must retain that one title in my keeping, as both a remembrance of my husband and as a proper woman’s duty to God, for was not a Book of Hours a devotional text? There were pictures (though not many) upon which I could focus my godly thoughts and prayers. Surely he could not do aught but promote such virtuous inclinations?
It worked, too, although my prayers were anything but holy. My anger with God for taking my husband expressed itself in hisses and babbling, in fistfuls of rushes plucked from the floor and flung on the hearth. Indeed, I nearly burned the cottage down around my ears more than once when the trailing ends of the rushes fired the rest of my floor, and I had to beat out the flames with what had once been my mother’s old twig broom. It was a lesson in practicality, that, the hard-won notion that haste and pique would not, in and of themselves, do anything but endanger what was left of the wreckage of my life.
The funeral was almost universally attended, with only a handful of shepherds staying away out of need. Even the Lorimers made an appearance, if only because they could not afford to miss an opportunity to display themselves in public. They sat in the front pews just across the aisle from me, both dressed in finery quite unimaginable to most of those present. If, afterward, the first item of gossip was not my copious weeping, then it was surely the Lorimers’ exceptional outfits. In any case, Lady Catherine was very kind to me, and was full of entreaties that I come to stay with them as a temporary governess until I found a new position—or a new man—to occupy myself. I reminded her that she had no need of a governess, not for another two months at the least, not to mention several years beyond, but she would brook no protest. “It’s a title,” she said, “and we owe your husband everything.”
Perhaps they did, and perhaps they did not. His lordship soon demonstrated all too clearly that he did not see eye-to-eye with his wife on matters concerning myself. Once Lady Catherine was safely stowed in his enclosed carriage, he drew me aside and told me that my services would not be required. “We have commenced our search for a replacement, and a proper surgeon this time. One who is qualified by something other than proximity and marriage. I have heard rumors, my good woman,” he added, in a tone that left no doubt that while I might be a woman I would never be good, “and I do not wish to hear them again. Leave off what studies you’ve begun. Find suitable work. As the king himself has lately said, ‘Idle hands are playthings fit only for the Devil.’”
Without granting me the dignity of a reply, he swept away, disappeared into his carriage, and was gone.
That very afternoon, Father John and his minions came for my books. I gave them up readily enough, saving my pitiable lamentations for my Book of Hours. I must have played my part well, for the priest never so much as touched my treasured Book, and mentioned it only in passing, suggesting vaguely that I should leaf through it “when the mood might strike me”, in hopes that “something of godliness would cling” by virtue of rifling its pages.
What I had not expected was that Father John might attempt to make off with William’s satchel, but he did, and I had to physically grab it away from him. He shook his finger in my face, called me willful and tumultuous, a “potential plaything for devilry”. My vehement denials weakened him in the end, for he was by nature an impulsive man, and not given to struggles of any great duration, but of course I had to argue that I wanted the satchel only for sentimental reasons, to remind me of William. The possibility that I did not care in the least for the satchel itself never crossed the priest’s mind, though it should have. What I wanted were the tools within.
Not that I had any realistic hope of employing a single one. The practice of medicine was not a province in which I would be welcome, at least not officially, not there in Swayfield-On-Witham, nor anywhere else in England. Perhaps, I thought, in Arabia? For I had heard stories of women achieving marvelous things in such far places, but I had no solid notion of where these lands lay, and no ambition of trying to reach them. No, my life, at least for the present, began and ended with my cottage, and with my Book of Hours. I began, that very night, to employ it as a diary.
I wrote only sparingly, of course, for I knew I would soon run out of pages, and the recipes, tinctures, and cures which William and I had already entered filled more than half the book, back to front, using every possible margin and blank.
One week later. Seven awful interminable days. Grief preyed on me, chewing my bones without cease, day and night. I slept little and ate less. When I sang, it was “Nottamun Town” that captured my tongue.
Sat down on a hard, hot cold frozen stone
Ten thousand stood round me yet I was alone
Two things kept me sane: adding to my Book of Hours, and attending those who came, on the sly, to ask for my services as—well, not as a physician, not precisely, but as a wise-woman. A healer. Or, for those so inclined, a good-witch. Keeping an eye out always for members of the clergy, or even those known for excessive piety, and also for those most friendly with Lord Lorimer, I had sallied forth on several errands of mercy already, and won favorable results in each case. Unbeknownst to me, William had paved the way, dropping hints throughout the region that if his illness should carry him off, I would be a worthy resource, at least until a new physician, surgeon, or barber should be installed, and quite possibly beyond. When I discovered this, I of course burst into tears, much to the consternation of the family whom I was then visiting.
A new healer did arrive, and a surgeon as promised, but as he had nowhere to live, what with me still inhabiting “the physician’s cottage”, he took up a temporary residence in the manor, where Lord Lorimer could order a close watch kept on his now abundantly pregnant wife. This surgeon was Alain Divonne, and Swayfield-On-Witham took an instant dislike to him thanks to his French heritage, his French accent, light though it was, and his habit of employing a walking stick, cunningly inlaid along the handle with a black-and-white checkerboard of lacquered wood.
Some days later, I received a visitor, a pudgy, balding smith from Boston who had been engaged, he said, to design a brass monument plate in my late husband’s honor. A poor speaker, he stammered away with his hat clutched roughly to his chest, and explained that the villagers all ’round the countryside had taken up a collection for this purpose, and that in the face of such an outpouring, Father John had had no recourse but to support the scheme. The results would be installed in the church, along the north aisle.
“I am pleased to hear of this,” I said, wondering that it had all been kept a secret from me. Apparently the villagers had intended their tribute as a surprise, even as a gift. “But,” I went on, “I know not how I may be of assistance.”
“Well, mum, as to the pose, that’s of what I’m asking. The aspect, you know. Prayerful? Meek? Bold as lions? And as to dress, mum, how should I proceed? The priest, now, God bless his holy soul, he’s a man of the times you might say, and he’s seen a brass or two of late where it’s nothin’ but skin and bone. He’s partial to these, he is, and says they’re an apt reminder of the grave, but if the object is to remember the man, well. And besides which, he’s not the one who put the coin in my purse, now, is he? So I thought I’d come to you and see what preference you might have.”
I told him I would prefer William to be wearing scholarly robes, as he’d done at Oxford. I knew better than to ask for an actual likeness. William had never had his portrait painted, and as he had been to Boston but once, the smith had no model from which to work. I said to him, “My William had straight hair, steady eyes, and a long nose. He would not mind having his hands folded in prayer.”
The smith departed soon after, bowing as if I were royalty. I watched, embarrassed on his behalf, but pleased that my neighbors thought so well of William, and that he would now, rendered in brass, outlive us all.
That day, a breezy one at first, giving way to spattering rain, brought a second visitor in the form of a tinker and his family, bearing mail. To my surprise, their wagon pulled up short at my cottage, and a girl of perhaps twelve years rapped smartly on my door. When I opened up, she handed me a bound tube of thick sheaves, wrapped in a ribbon and getting wetter by the moment. I thanked her and offered half a penny, which she took in the most businesslike manner, and then she was gone.
I had few family, and no expectation of correspondence, so it was no surprise to find that the roll of papers were marked “For William Wolcott,” and came from a fellow at Oxford who, he said, in the opening page within, “remembered well your fascination with anatomical drawings. Here, then, is the very latest, as done by an Italian gentleman by the name of Leonardo some years since and only just arriving here with us in London.” William’s distant friend, himself a physician, then plunged into a detailed analysis of what Leonardo had sketched, mixing his own original theories quite liberally with those of his Italian source.
The English was difficult to comprehend, for while I spoke the language as well as any, I read properly only in Latin, with a smattering of Greek. Still, after repeated attempts—and I had time, in those days—too much time, really—I felt I had it. As for Leonardo’s original notes, I could make no sense at all. It wasn’t Latin, it wasn’t Greek, and I could not bring myself to believe it was Italian. Luckily, William’s anatomist friend had provided a partial transcription on a separate sheaf, and from it I gleaned all sorts of new information, such as the correct alignment of the infant in the womb, the position and function, prior to birth, of the umbilical cord, and the lack of multiple chambers within the womb itself. That in itself was a great surprise.
For a moment, I confess I thought of repairing at once to Italy and offering myself to this unknown Leonardo as a pupil and assistant. But no. I was running low on funds, even taking into account the donations I received from those I treated, and Italy might as well have been the moon for all my ability to reach it.
The end of summer came quickly, and while William still flitted through my dreams, and though my heart remained heavy, I was busy, in demand. I had taken, by then, to telling myself I was not the first to lose a husband, and was stern with myself whenever I threatened to succumb to self-pity.
By that time, Alain Divonne had made a name for himself in the district, and not a good one. He drank wine, steadily and heavily, and his hands shook so badly when he abstained that the locals were in a quandary as to which state they preferred. It did explain his fondness for his walking stick; he had need of it more often than not.
One thing for certain: on the evening that Lady Lorimer went into labor, Alain Divonne was too drunk to stand, and it was I who was summoned to the manor, on Lady Catherine’s insistence. His lordship would have had it otherwise, but he could not refuse his wife, and one of the chamber maids told me, as we ascended the grand stair, that her ladyship had said, “In this time of need, I wish for no hands but those of Elizabeth Wolcott.”
Before I could gain that stair or hear that confidence, I had to pass by Lord Lorimer himself, whose brittle gaze held me fast as I entered at the manor’s front door. I brought with me William’s satchel, and what tools I’d been able to keep. It was the first time I had left the cottage with it, never daring before to be so bold, but I reasoned that in this instance, I would not be turned away, since it was the Lorimers who had summoned me, and perhaps after the child was safely delivered, the satchel and I might have sufficient standing to go about in the open, together.
As his lordship was all but blocking the entry, I curtseyed and said, “I assume her ladyship is within?”
For a moment, he said nothing, and then he stepped aside—only just—and bent his face low to meet my own. He was a tall man, barbaric in strength and standing, and he said, as his eye approached mine, “Do not mistake me. I said this once to your husband, and I say it now to you. This child will live, or I’ll know the reason why.”
“God’s will be done,” I murmured, and made my escape.
A farmer’s daughter knows more than most nobles ever will of birth and death and the signs that portend either one, and upon entering her ladyship’s chambers, I knew at a glance that she was in distress, and this would be no gentle birthing. She knew it, too, and had begun to panic, which robbed her of any ability to work with and not against the actions of her body. She lay on the largest bed I’d ever seen, cossetted not only by sheets and her shift but by two ladies in waiting, and the sweat ran in streams from her brow. She did not greet me. Indeed, for some time, she seemed hardly aware of my presence. Only when I at last bade her to try crouching, knees splayed, did she grunt out a reply, a blunt refusal. “I am no beast of the forest,” she said, panting, and remained on her back.
Hours passed. A half-moon rose and threw its pale white light through the thick mottled glass of the windows. The ladies in waiting came and went, quick to attend to my every decree—“Build up the fire! Cut away her shift!”—but the child within refused to budge. His lordship had swept in three times, and each time exited when his wife screamed that he must go away, that she refused to seen in such a state.
I assumed a more active role only with the greatest reluctance. “M’lady,” I said, as I pushed both my sleeves above the elbow, “I must use my hands on you. I must know how the babe presents itself.”
Lady Catherine was half insensible, so I doubt she heard me, but in any event, I had spoken for the benefit of her servants. Without waiting longer, I plunged one hand into her widening sex and felt for the child hidden beneath.
It did not take but a moment for my fingers to find that the baby had twisted itself around so that its buttocks faced outward to the world. I was not surprised, but I did attempt to hide my disappointment from the women in the room, and from Lady Catherine, all of whom had placed such trust in me—a trust that was now quite likely to prove undeserved.
William’s bag contained a set of tongs, a silvery device whose business end had been looped and rounded, smoothed as much as possible. I had seen him use these to grasp the soft, pliable heads of overlarge infants on their way into the world, to provide a little extra tug, but could they also be used to grasp an infant’s rear end, to maybe turn the lad right way around? (For lad it was; that much was now revealed.) I decided I must try.
The tongs did not work. Whenever I inserted them, not only did her ladyship shriek, but the child slipped away from me, upward and into the womb; it was as if the least pressure on the babe’s skin sent him shimmying away from me, like a fish in shallow water. I tried repeatedly, but with no success. A sort of ladle, inserted for the same purpose, also failed in its intent.
I feared now for Lady Lorimer’s life, at least as much as for the child’s.
Dawn came, and her ladyship did at last consent to try crouching. She gamely balanced on the balls of her feet while those about her supported her shoulders and arms, but it was no use. The baby refused to slide downward.
Midday arrived, and now her ladyship was delusional, talking in bursts to unseen persons, referencing demons and angels and tossing out fragments of French. The ladies in waiting, overtired and aware that I had no miraculous solutions to offer, were frightened, and whispered in corners amongst themselves.
Absent all day, his lordship entered as the sun dipped toward the western horizon. His blood was high, and he could not keep still; his eyes strayed from his wife to me in a trice. “Save her,” he said. “Save them both.” And then he was gone.
There was a way, and I had seen it done with an injured donkey whose legs would no longer support it as it tried to deliver its foal. There was a way, and I had Leonardo to guide me. There was a way, but I was terrified to attempt it.
When the last of the sun’s light had given way to stars, I could delay no longer, for her ladyship’s will to live had flagged, and she lay unmoving on the bed, a limp and helpless shipwreck. I steeled myself to the task and demanded that his lordship be brought before me. He came, distempered of course, and understandably so, and I gave him a curt nod and asked, all business, if he had ever heard of the term, “caesarian”.
“No. Why?”
I explained, as best I could, what I was about to attempt, but he could not seem to grasp it. The more information I gave, the more he closed himself off, like a clam contracting its shell.
“You would cut her?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “With a blade?”
“I would, your lordship, both for her sake and for yours. The child, at least, will live.”
“But Catherine?”
In mechanical tones, I told him first of the ancients, the Romans specifically and the Jews before them, and then I spoke of more modern reports I’d heard through William, most recently from Switzerland, of remarkable recoveries, of women stitched back together like cloth dolls. I did not know if these tales were true, and William had openly scoffed at more than one, but he had been fascinated by the possibility, however outrageous, that maybe, just maybe, a woman could survive being sliced open as if she were nothing more than a melon.
Lord Lorimer’s mouth shifted sideways in a grotesque and failed attempt to speak. At last he rallied himself. “As I said when you arrived, this child must be born or I will know…”
He left off, choking, and fled the room, calling as he went for someone, anyone, to summon Father John.
That was the moment where I, Renner, wrenched myself free of Elizabeth’s memory and stood back, horrified, as she “prepared” herself for the surgery. She did not wash her hands. She did not fetch clean towels to receive the child. She did not soak the chosen knife in alcohol or other disinfectant. She did not ask for boiled water to cleanse herself or the wound. What she did do was order Lady Catherine Lorimer to be tied to the bed, spread-eagled across it, and then she placed the tip of the knife to the would-be mother’s too-tight belly, and pressed sharply down. Blood leaked out around the blade, and then, with a firm hand, as if she all she were doing was drawing a lever over and across, she cut a line across the lower belly from hip to hip, and when the blood welled, this precise, clever incision looked for all the world like a smile, written in dripping cherry red.
Lady Catherine howled and struggled. The ropes held her arms and legs fast, but she could move her hips, and she did, with might and main. Elizabeth tried to reach through the bloody gap to seize the child, but found she had not cut quite deep enough across the whole of the line, and she was obliged to grab the knife back and try a second time. Lady Catherine, who had I’m sure not the least conception of what was intended, thrust her hips high into the air at the exact moment that Elizabeth made fresh contact with the knife. The thinnest, most clinical of cuts, became, instead, a slashing stab.
Everyone in the room, Elizabeth included, screamed. Lady Catherine bucked once more, then lay still. A bloom of blood, like water rising thickly from a spring, rose from her belly; it flowed over her torso and then the bedclothes. It did not stop.
Elizabeth recovered first. She threw the knife across the room—it banked off a wainscot and ricocheted into the cheerfully burning hearth—then forced her hands into the welling blood. She grappled briefly with what lay within, then hauled her prize upward: the Lorimer’s firstborn son, wet and wrinkled and strong, with a knife wound gaping in its groin.
I tried to turn away, gagging, but I was trapped still in Elizabeth, and could do nothing, not even close my eyes, as she and I held at arm’s length the ruin of all her ambition and learning.
Who would have thought that a body so small could hold such a quantity of dripping, sopping scarlet?
Those in authority wasted no time in consigning Elizabeth Wolcott to the crossroads gibbet, and they even tossed in her Book of Hours, to mock her, to show the world the depths to which learning in a woman could lead. They gave her clothing, but only because her nakedness offended their own sense of shame and modesty, but what little they allowed her offered no protection from the wind and rain and the rapidly cooling nights. They also gave her condign wounds, two, one for Lady Catherine and one for the boy, each a thin line of a cut, long and painful, across the abdomen, the kind that would fester and ooze. “Wouldn’t want you to die too soon, that’s my orders,” said one of the men emplacing her in the gibbet. “These is reminders, these is. Gentle red reminders of what it is you done.”
Then the man stooped and retrieved a length of metal chain, the links concluding at either end in sturdy iron loops. The man grinned, revealing four missing teeth; he jangled the manacles as if testing their weight. “These, too, love. Just in case,” and he cackled, pleased with the impossibility of it all. “Just in case you think to try running away.”
No water. No food. The gibbet swayed on the winds, suspended ten feet above the rutted roadways. Insects arrived, then crows, both attracted by the trickles of blood clinging to the latticework of crossbars on which Elizabeth crouched. Drop by sticky drop, that blood fell to the weeds below.
There was no room to stand, or even stretch out, which was itself an agony. One young woman tried to bring food, just crusts and cheese, a pitcher of water, but she couldn’t help disturbing the raucous murder of crows and was caught by a guard stationed in the bushes. For her attempts at mercy, the woman lost two fingers and an ear. After that, none dared approach, and Elizabeth did not blame them.
She wrote using her own blood for ink, on the only pages that remained, and the last words she managed were, “Te amo, William.”
But even then, starved and plagued by thirst far worse than any mere description, I could not escape her. Her mind was gone, yes, but I was forced to remain, to persevere despite her complete capitulation to an insanity born of torture and deprivation. Seconds stretched to minutes, minutes to days, and the days to infinite centuries of agony that would have beggared the combined powers of Pol Pot, Lucifer, and Bosch. The crows pecked mercilessly. Midges infested her ears and crawled up her nose. In the fleshy folds of her cut belly, buzzing black flies lay eggs by the hundred.
Bouts of chilling rainfall kept her—me—alive for eleven days, and I spent that time weeping and cursing, moaning and screaming.
I wanted, myself, to die, and I would have managed it, but I had no form, no corporeal self. I was Elizabeth, her lodger and witness; I could no more end my torments than I could endure them.
Perhaps I dreamed it, but near the end I saw, or imagined that I saw, Lord Lorimer approach my swinging, black-barred cage. He wore mourning clothes and he’d shaved his patrician beard. Other men swirled about him, underlings and fawning dogs.
“I thought you would like to know,” he said, “that today, your husband’s monument brass was set in the church. Many came. A great abundance of people.” He stopped, swallowing. It struck me that he, too, had been crying, and might again, at any moment. “I have decided that you should join him. Would you like that? To stand beside your intelligent, gifted husband, forever? So you shall. But your brass shall be rot and worms, fodder for hell and beyond, and I shall pay for it, every penny. And when people see you, they will be horrified and avert their gaze and remember, as I will, that you, who brought no good to this weary world, are forever forsaken.”
I would not have thought it possible, but Elizabeth had four words left to her, and she gripped the bars with weak, bony fingers, and spat all four into Lorimer’s startled face. “I did my best.”
Night. A lonely crossroads, starless black skies, and a rusting gibbet that creaked and sighed under the hand of a bleak, moaning wind.
Night, and death.
When Elizabeth finally expired, I got to experience it, firsthand, as if her death were my own. I, like her, was ripped from the fabric of life, but unlike her, I could not fully depart. Instead, I remained hanging, pasted in place, immobile and fading, her bodily pain not a distant memory but the only tangible thing remaining, and when she was truly gone and I was left behind in the limbo of her absence, I screamed as I had never screamed before, hollering without thought and beyond even the hope of begging for mercy, salvation, release.