“Nancy.” She did not awake at my whispered hiss, and so I reached out and shook her gently, feeling slightly guilty for waking her, but knowing I had no choice. “Nancy,” I said, louder this time.
She jolted awake, blinking in the light of the candle I carried. “Wha…” Her eyes focused blearily on my face. “Miss Katrina,” she said, sleep making her voice leaden. “What do you—” She broke off as she saw that my nightgown was soaked from the waist down. “Lord have mercy,” she cried, leaping up out of the bed. “The baby is coming!”
“I … I thought so, yes,” I said, my voice ragged with fear. “I woke up all wet, and…”
“Your water’s broken,” Nancy said. “Perfectly normal. Didn’t Miss Charlotte tell you?”
“She said it might, but…”
“No matter now,” Nancy said briskly. “Let’s get you back upstairs.”
Nancy walked behind me as I slowly made my way up the servants’ staircase. My hair clung damply to me in the June heat, and I was already sweating further out of nervousness.
“Into the guest chamber with you,” Nancy said, directing me. “Good thing we’ve prepared this room. Now. Lie on the bed and lift your shift. I must see how far along you are.”
I did as she said, feeling no shame as Nancy parted my legs and probed between them. She had helped me to bathe and dress since I was a child, so I had no sense of modesty where she was concerned. “Shouldn’t you … shouldn’t you send for Charlotte and Mevrouw Jansen?” I asked.
“When I was a slave on that plantation down in Virginia, I helped my mother birth dozens of babies before you were even thought of,” she said. “And that was before I had my own. Don’t you worry. I’ll get the Jansen women soon enough. They know better than me what potions and medicines you should have.” She peered between my legs and completed her examination. “It’ll be some hours before that baby is ready to leave its nest, you mark my words.”
But something Nancy said had caught my attention. “You … you have a child?” I stared at her, forgetting my fear and worry. How could it be that I had lived in the same house with this woman my whole life and never known about her child?
“That’s a sad story, and not one you need to hear while you’re bringing your first into the world.”
“But … Nancy…”
“Later,” she insisted. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Very well,” I conceded. “But you will tell me?”
“I surely will. But now I need you to get up and walk.”
I stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Walk?”
“Yes, walk. Pace about the room, like you’re deep in thought about something. It’ll help the babe shift into the proper position.”
I rose from the bed and obediently began to do as she said.
“While you’re doing that, I’ll run down and make you some broth,” she said. “You’ll need to keep your strength up. Just keep walking, and if you start to feel different, holler for me.”
I obeyed and kept pacing the small room as Nancy disappeared downstairs to the kitchen. I heard her let Nox, who had been whining outside the guest chamber door, into the garden.
I had yet to feel any of the pain I knew came with childbirth—the pain that was Eve’s curse—but knew it was coming. That fear made me increase my steps, as though I could outrun it before it arrived.
Soon enough, Nancy reappeared with a mug of broth with shredded bits of chicken in it, as well as a thick slice of bread. She allowed me to sit as I ate. “How you doing, Miss Katrina?” she asked. “All right so far?”
I nodded.
“Good. You drink up, and I’ll pop down the street to get Miss Charlotte and Mistress Jansen over here. I’ll not be a minute.”
“All right.”
She disappeared again, and I tried not to let my nerves mount. What if I started to give birth now, when no one was here? What would I do? What if something happened, and it all went wrong?
But before I had even finished my broth, Charlotte burst into the room, Nancy behind her. “Katrina!” she cried. She took my hands. “Are you feeling well?”
“Perfectly, so far,” I said, smiling at her. “Just nervous. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m so glad to be here,” she said. “Though with Nancy I don’t know as I’m needed at all! My mother is off tending to an ailing neighbor,” she said, “or she would be here, too.”
I smiled at both of them. “I have everyone I need right here.”
The night was a blur after that. Charlotte instructed me to keep walking, and as I did so the pains began to come, few and far between for the first few hours. All the walking soon began to tire me, so Charlotte and Nancy let me rest for a bit, then made me get up and start walking again.
As the pains began to come more frequently, they had me lie on the bed again so they could check my progress. “Your body has still not opened enough to expel the child,” Charlotte told me, in her calm healer’s voice. “It will be some time yet.”
I groaned. “Do I need to walk some more?”
“Yes, for a bit.”
I grumbled but obeyed. Charlotte left to fix me some tea of raspberry leaves, to aid in the birthing process and left me to do my paces under Nancy’s supervision.
Once she returned I was able to sit and drink, then it was back to pacing.
After another couple of hours, the pains began coming faster. After further inspection, Nancy and Charlotte agreed it was time. “Do not be afraid, Katrina,” Charlotte soothed me. “Nancy and I are right here. This is nature’s way. The pain will be worth it, because it is bringing you a child.”
Becoming irritable with exhaustion and pain, I wanted to snap at her, to ask her how she, a virgin with no child, could say such things. But I bit my tongue, knowing she was only trying to help.
They helped me remove my robe so that I lay on the bed in just my shift. I gritted my teeth against another wave of pain. “What … must I do?”
“You’ll need to push soon,” Nancy said. “But not quite yet.”
“Push?”
“Yes,” Charlotte explained. “Push with all the muscles in your lower body to help expel the child. But not yet. Wait until we tell you so.”
They examined me again, and perhaps another hour passed as I lay in bed, riding each wave of pain that crested over me. Then they began to come faster still.
“All right, Katrina,” Charlotte said, peering between my legs again. “When the next pain comes, you must push. Push back against it.”
“How?” I cried, frustrated.
“Your body knows what to do,” Nancy assured me. She stepped close to the bed. “Here, take my hand, and squeeze it when the pain gets to be too much.”
I took her hand, and when the next pain came I bore down with all the strength in my lower body. While it did not lessen the pain, it felt satisfying all the same. No doubt this was what Charlotte meant.
“Yes!” Charlotte encouraged me, from the end of the bed. “Very good. Keep doing just that.”
I could not say how much time passed as I pushed and pushed against the pain, so that soon I was drenched in sweat and tears as I wept in frustration.
“Why is it taking so long? Is the baby safe?” I sobbed.
“This is how long it takes,” Charlotte said. Her calm, which had given me strength before, was now infuriating. “The first child always takes the longest. If you have another, it will likely go faster.”
I laughed humorlessly. “That will never happen. You know that, Charlotte. I will never bear Brom a child.”
Charlotte’s eyes quickly skittered up to Nancy’s face. I had no patience or energy for discretion just then, yet it did not matter. Nancy’s face betrayed not a flicker of surprise nor concern.
“It will not be much longer now, Katrina,” Charlotte said. It was early afternoon by then, or so I thought. I had quite lost all sense of time. “Just keep pushing.”
I did as she said, gripping Nancy’s hand all the while. “Oh, Nancy,” I said, more tears leaking out as another hideous cramp passed. “I am crushing your hand.” I tried to release her, but she held on firmly.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “It’ll take more than a little thing like you to break these hard old bones, Katrina Van Tassel.”
I laughed through the next pain.
“Push!” Charlotte commanded.
I was so, so tired; more exhausted than I could ever remember being. But some primal instinct urged me on, so I gathered my strength and pushed.
“Yes!” Charlotte cried. “Nearly there! I can see the babe’s head!”
The pain was nearly relentless now, and I pushed back against it just as relentlessly.
“Harder!”
With a cry of anguish and frustration I felt a great flood of fluid gush from between my legs, and the child being expelled with it. Moments later, an indignant cry split the air, a baby enraged at being pushed from its warm nest.
I collapsed back against the pillow, my head thrown back in something like ecstasy.
“Oh, Katrina,” Charlotte said, and I looked up to see her cradling the squalling, wrinkled, bloody infant in her hands. “You’ve done it!”
I lifted my head. “Is … the child is well?” I asked.
Nancy chuckled. “You can hear for yourself it’s got a fine set of lungs.”
“Perfectly well,” Charlotte said. “It’s a girl, Katrina. You and—you have a daughter, just as you predicted.”
I lay back again and closed my eyes, tears of relief and happiness spilling down my cheeks. “I knew it,” I sobbed. “I knew it.”
Charlotte cut the cord and crossed the room to a basin of water. “I shall clean her up, and then you may hold her.”
While Charlotte washed the child—my daughter—Nancy took some damp clothes and wiped the sweat and salt from my face. “We’ll get you into a bath soon,” she murmured soothingly. “Get you washed so infection doesn’t set in. But first you can hold your baby girl.”
Charlotte brought her to me, washed and swaddled, and placed her in my arms. I scarcely noticed Nancy and Charlotte removing bloody cloths and checking my female parts, to make sure there was no dangerous tearing or bleeding. Charlotte was speaking to me again, applying an ointment between my legs that she said was to help stop the bleeding and promote healing, but I scarcely heard her. Instead I marveled at my daughter’s face as she settled against me, squirming slightly in her swaddling. When she opened her eyes, they were a brilliant blue, just like mine.
And just like that, everything I had done in the last year, every decision I had made—no matter how ill-advised or how much it had pained me—was worth it.