Dark Aemilia (30 page)

‘Oh, go and play bare-arses with the rest of them! Every one a cozener and a cheat.’ I push past him and walk on.

‘Aemilia!’

I keep walking.

‘Aemilia!’

I quicken my pace.

‘Aemilia!’
Oh, Lord, there is that scene again: pale flesh, bright sun; his rapt face; the white light in my head.

‘My love…’ His voice breaks upon the word, and stops.

I look back. ‘Your…
what
?’

‘I must see you! I need to see you!’

‘Well, here I am. Solid as a dead sow.’

‘What I mean is… I must talk to you! We must… God! Where are all the words, the
words
, when I need them most?’

‘They cheat you, sir, as you have cheated me. Perhaps there is some justice in Creation after all. Your words came easy enough when you wanted to strumpet me, and whore me and harlot me, and falsely accuse me of fornicating with all and sundry. “The bay where all men ride”! God’s blood, what a phrase! From your so-called love to those foul insults. How great was the distance? You made the change quicker than a viper slips its skin.’

‘Jesu!’ He stares at me hopelessly. ‘What have I done?’

‘What?’

‘I thought that I could exorcise you, if my lines were cruel enough. But…’

‘But… what?’

We stare at each other across the muddy street.

‘I wanted to believe the worst of you. If you wouldn’t have me, then, in my madness, it was easiest to call you whore.’

‘Ah,’ I say. ‘Now we have it. Now I believe you.’

‘But, even in the midst of writing those lines, I never could destroy the passion that tormented me. That is the essence of them. They are love sonnets, from my heart.’

‘Oh, Will,’ I say. ‘You are such a fool.’

He smiles, a strange, sweet smile, and says, ‘And now… now I fear it is too late.’

The sun is low in the sky. ‘I fear so. Henry will wonder where I am.’

‘What are you doing tomorrow morning?’ he asks, abruptly. ‘There is something… I must tell you something.’

‘I’m praying at the tomb of my lord Hunsdon,’ I say, flushing.

‘You still pine for that old place-man?’

‘He was kind to me. None kinder.’

‘I’ll meet you there.’

I laugh. ‘What a fitting arrangement! Perhaps his lordship will rise up from his grave and beat you round the head for leading me such a dance.’

‘I cannot bear this…’

He looks so woebegone that I almost pity him. ‘I’m going to the Church of St Peter early,’ I say. ‘Six of the clock, when it’s still quiet.’

‘I’ll be there.’

I’m startled by his burning eyes. ‘I must go,’ I say, like some awkward, untried maid. ‘My son…’

‘Say that you will meet with me tomorrow.’

I stare.

‘Say it, Aemilia, I beg you.’

‘I…’

‘Please, sweet lady.’

‘If you want.’

‘I do want. I want to see you more than anything.’

‘Then I will meet you.’

For the rest of the day I run hither and thither like the silliest virgin, to stop myself from thinking. I swear, the house was never half so clean, before or after. Marie and I fetch water, scrub floors, air counterpanes, scour knives and clean plates with shave-grasse – what would normally take me three days takes three hours. She complains at first, but she soon gets to it, and while I do the hardest tasks – such as sweeping out the green rushes from the floors and casting down new ones – she toils away with a good grace. Too good a grace, as it turns out.

At last, she comes into the hall, where I am folding linen and placing it neatly in the great oak chest. I look up, and notice Marie’s drawn face. ‘For Heaven’s sake, sit down, girl. You have done enough.’

She sits down on a hall stool, and rests her head against the wall, eyes closed. ‘Truly, I am dog-tired,’ she says. ‘And the babe is jumping.’

‘A good sign,’ say I. ‘It is when they’re still that there is cause for worry.’

But when I look up to see why she hasn’t replied. Her face is contorted with pain. ‘Marie – what is it?’

‘A feeling like the curse but stronger,’ she says. ‘Oh, mistress, it is like a knife! I couldn’t stand it worse than this! I am not ready! I am not strong!’

‘It is likely just a false alarm,’ I tell her. ‘Go and rest, and it will ease.’ But I have to help her up the stairs and into bed, for she is heavy with fatigue.

As I turn to go, she grabs my hand. ‘Did you see him?’ she asks.

‘See who?’

‘Tom. When you went to the Anchor.’

I hesitate.

‘Did you, mistress?’

‘Yes, I saw him.’ I think of telling her about the whore, but find I can’t. ‘He was snoring and in his cups. You are better off without him, child. Don’t put your trust in players.’

‘He loves me. He says he loves me.’

‘I am sure he does, my poor Marie.’

I wake at the dead of night. Did I hear a scream? I open my eyes and stare up into the thick dark, listening hard. Silence loads my ears; blackness presses upon my eyes. A dream, a night fear. My mind at its old tricks again, and now there’s no Joan to guard me. I am lucky to find myself safe and warm under my eiderdown, instead of out in the cold streets in nothing but my smock.

Then I hear it again, a scream that rips into the night, tearing the silence, louder, louder, then collapsing into agonised sobs. I push back the bed-clothes, light a candle and wrap myself in a woollen shawl. Then I climb up to the garret. Shivering, I open the door.

‘Marie?’

She is naked, kneeling on her bed, with her head hanging down. All I can see is her loose hair, which hides her face. It is swinging to and fro as she rocks in pain. Then I notice, in the shifting orange of the candle-flame, that the sheets are smeared with blood.

I set down the candle. ‘Dear Lord! How long have you been like this?’ But she only grunts. ‘Marie?’

‘Umbstone. Umbstone.’

I throw off the shawl and kneel beside her. ‘What? What is it?’

‘Umbstone.’ She lifts her head and points to the amulet which hangs around her neck. It is an eagle stone, a talisman to ward off miscarriage. The baby will not come till she takes this off. I unfasten it and set it down on the straw mattress where she can see it.

‘I must fetch the midwife,’ say I. ‘I won’t be long.’

But then she grips my hand. There is a look of terror in her eyes. ‘Don’t leave me, mistress. Stay!’

‘Marie… I have no skill in this!’

‘
You
will birth my child.
You
will save me.’ Her grip tightens. ‘Please.’

‘What foolishness – you need someone who knows how to aid you in your travail…’ But then I see myself, as Marie is now, as clear as if a mirror had been held up in which I could view the past. The night Henry was born and Joan saved us both. I see myself, crying out and clutching the birthing stool, and I see Joan, gentle, patient, always calm. While she was with me, I helped her with the births of several children in the parish. In truth, I can remember what she did: how she rubbed the women’s flanks with oil of roses, fed them with vinegar and sugar, and eased the pain with powdered ivory or eagle’s dung.

‘If you want me, I’ll stay, but don’t forget I am not a midwife, nor do I have anything to recommend me.’ The night watch calls outside – one of the clock. ‘Do not lie down when the throes come; walk gently about the chamber. Keep warm, but don’t take to your bed.’

I bank up the fire, so it gives out a good heat.

‘I don’t have child-bed linen or anything else for my poor baby!’ she wails through her fallen hair. ‘I thought it would be weeks from now!’

‘Hush, calm yourself, I will see what I can fetch. I have a store of linen downstairs. Don’t fret yourself. There is not a man or woman in this world who hasn’t come into the world this way. Think on that, and breathe easy.’

I run down the stairs and rush into my room. Sure enough, I have a neat pile of forehead cloths, caps and belly-bands. And some open-fronted shifts which Marie could use for breast-feeding when it is time. Then I fetch the birthing-stool from the kitchen. I also get a pound of butter, a bowl of lavender water, some juice of dittany and my sharpest knife. Returning to the garret, I help the whimpering Marie on to the low seat, so that she is leaning against the back, legs wide. Then I stop up the cracks in the chamber walls with rags and blow out the candles, so that the roaring fire is our only light.

‘Too much brightness can drive a mother mad,’ I tell her.

She says nothing.

‘Here, eat a knob of butter,’ say I, cutting her a slice.

She groans and dribbles, but most of it goes down.

‘I cannot bear it, mistress! I cannot cope! I swear there is an Oliphant inside me.’

I give her a drink of dittany juice, and then feel carefully inside for her cervix, and discover that she is beginning to open. Pressing against the widening space I can feel a round shape, covered in a waxy layer of vernix. Pray God it is the top of her baby’s head and not some other part of its anatomy, for I cannot recall what to do if it is a breech birth, or there is some other mischief.

‘I can’t do it, mistress!’ shouts Marie. ‘I can’t do it! I don’t dare to, and I’m not strong enough! It will tear me in two. I can feel it. Oh, God, help me!’

‘You’ll do very well, a fine girl like you,’ I say. I soak a cloth in the lavender water and wipe her brow. ‘Keep cheerful! Don’t waste your strength by calling on your Lord, when He has better things to do than mind a child-bed. Do you hear a mare in the field lamenting and crying as she pushes a gangling foal into the world? Save yourself for what must be done.’

‘Lord help me! Our Lady, save me!’ screams Marie, and her hands clench around the arms of the birthing-chair as another spasm takes hold of her. She is not an apt pupil. Poor creature, I
am beyond my own knowledge and experience, but not so much as she. I cannot see how such a flimsy thing as she can bring to birth the great protuberance that she’s been carrying inside. I rub the tight barrel of her belly with butter, speaking soothing nonsense to her all the while.

‘I will help you all I can,’ I say. ‘But you must also strive to help yourself.’

But now another seizure is upon her, and she screams and writhes in the chair, and it is all I can do to stop her thrashing in the rushes in a fit like Legion. When she has done, there is a great pool of blood all around her, so the chair is an island in a scarlet lake, but there is no sign of the baby. The limits of my scant knowledge being already reached, I mop up the blood with the bed-clothes and say my own prayers to God.

‘Mistress,’ whispers the child. Her eyes are tight shut, and her breath comes shallowly. ‘Will my baby come?’

‘In its own time.’

‘So it could not stick inside for ever?’

‘Of course not.’

The watch calls out again. Two of the clock. Time enough, time enough.

But then time contorts to nightmare, and it is as if some demon comes down and takes possession of Marie. The throes come faster and stronger – as they will – but her fear is greater with each contraction, and soon it isn’t God and Mary that she calls for, but the Devil and his minions instead. I find myself shouting back at her, afraid that this can do no good, yet shout she will. To my horror, she leaps up from the chair and runs against the walls, tearing at the bloody shreds of her nightgown, roaring and yelling all the while.

And I swear she sounds more like a damned soul than a serving girl. ‘By Satan! By the Devil in all his names! By Apollyon, Beelzebub, Diabolus, Lucifer, the King of Hell! Did I ask for this?’

I grab her by the shoulders. ‘Marie! Marie! Stop it!’

‘The walking spirits of the Earth do not feel pain as I do!’

‘Come back to yourself…’

But it is as if she is in another world. She puts her head back and howls, then spouts the vilest gibberish, which sounds like the language of lost souls.

‘Marie!’ I cry. ‘Stop this terrible noise! Do not speak of Satan at such a time! Say your prayers!’ Still she rages on, scratching her own flesh with her nails.

I pray for her, hoping to limit the power of her wicked thoughts. She seizes my arm and, using me for purchase, pushes and screams, legs half-bent, eyes rolled back into her head. Then she falls down on the ground, and a torrent of blood comes belching from between her legs and there is the most fearful stench, and I am afraid that she has died. But when I feel the pulse in her neck the blood is still beating fast, so I take some more old sheets and press them between her legs, and mop up all I can of the blood and matter. Then I see that a baby’s face is sticking out.

‘Marie!’ I say. ‘Your prayers are answered! The child is coming.’

Marie only groans, and speaks more of her strange language.

‘Be quiet now, and don’t push out for a little while. Let it come gently.’ I cradle the little head in my hands and gradually a tiny shoulder follows. Then comes the other, and then the top part of its body. I feel in its mouth, scrape out the dark mess that is there, and it coughs and splutters and begins to cry. ‘It is good Marie, it’s good, you have a child…’

I bend closer, wanting to release its legs, but they are stuck fast. I try to ease the infant out, but can’t. So I grease my hands with more butter, and feel inside her, to see what ails it. I feel a rounded shape, a blockage. But then, with a terrible wail, Marie begins to push once more. Blood oozes out around the half-born baby.

‘Don’t push too hard now; let the child take its time,’ I say, though I don’t know if she can understand a word I say. There is another contraction and out slips the baby’s legs. Yet there is still something wrong. The baby seems stuck to its mother’s body by some hidden protuberance, and I can’t free it. Its cries grow faster, and I look around me, wondering what I should do next. I see the sharp knife lying on a stool. I had thought to use this to cut the cord, but I know that sometimes Joan would cut the woman’s skin to ease the progress of a birth. (It is part of Eve’s punishment that babies are born with large heads, so that the agony of birthing is more severe.) I grasp the knife, and screw up my courage. Then I cut her taut skin, so that she is ripped wider. Thick gore gushes forth around the baby’s protruding head. It seems Marie is indeed being torn in two. And then… a second pair of legs comes kicking out, a mirror copy of the first. Then slithers forth another child, a perfect twin. But then I scream myself, hardly able to believe what I see before me. The two infants are one flesh. It is a double-child, a hellish freak, joined at the hip. I shrink back from it, trembling, and the creature wriggles and mewls, crying out with its two mouths and flailing its four legs and four arms in the air. Creature? It? I must say ‘they’, for there are two souls here, two mortals bound together for eternity. Separate but whole. I cry out and take a step backwards, turning away, my hands clutched to my head. Turning back, I see the malformed creatures squirming and crying in a sea of blood. A hellish punishment indeed. A blot on nature, hideous and misbegotten. I think of the father who smashed his one-eyed child against the wall, and, looking down, I see that I still have the knife clenched in my hand.

I walk slowly back to the birth-bed. Marie is lying still, eyes shut. Her babies are crying with double force. Praying all the while, I cut the cord and tie it, then wash the infants with milk and water and wrap them tight. Then I put a biggin-bonnet on each of the two heads, with a compress under each to protect their soft spots. Then I swaddle the poor things on a board. And
there they lie, in an unbreakable embrace, arms locked around themselves. The two heads match exactly: black-haired and fairy-faced. Sweeter, prettier monsters you could not imagine. I hope that they will quietly die, and bless them, wishing I had holy water instead of just my scented bowl.

Of their mother I have little hope. Her breaths are shallow and uneven and she is deathly white. I fear she might not last till daybreak. The linen cloths that I have used are turned bright red, and my hands and dress are of the same colour: I feel like a murderer, not a midwife. I strip the bed and change the sheets, then begin to sweep the scarlet rushes from the floor. Outside, someone calls out the time. But I can make no sense of it.

Marie is stronger than she looks. After I have washed her and sewn her wound as best I can, she wakes. Her eyes blink open, and I see that the madness has left her.

‘Where is my baby?’ she asks, looking round the room. ‘Does it live? Is it a boy or a girl?’

I hesitate.

‘Mistress, is my baby well?’

‘You have two babies, Marie,’ I say. I lift the swaddled infants from their cot, and place them in her arms.

‘Two babies?’ She smiles down at the two faces, which are pressed tight together. ‘Twins!’

‘Twin girls.’

‘What a wondrous thing.’ She stares down at them.

‘Every birth is wondrous,’ say I. (This is lying, plain and simple.)

‘But why are they swaddled to each other? Don’t they need their own bands?’

I want to find a way to tell her why they are bound together, but I can’t. She sees it in my face. ‘What’s wrong, mistress?’