‘I wish that he would —’
Evelyn got no further, for suddenly the midwife Gilda loomed over our bed. ‘Mistresses, arise. Your lady needs you.’
Lady Adelie’s time had come. Evelyn and I hastily donned kirtles over our chemises, Evelyn no doubt wishing with myself that we could have enjoyed a few more cool hours lying naked beneath our sheets. We made sure our hair was neat, then entered our lady’s privy chamber.
The air was heavy and uncomfortably warm. The windows were shuttered closed, and heavy drapes pulled across them. Oils and herbs burned in a brazier set to one side and someone had lit the fire as well.
Sweat beaded on my face and I could feel it prickling all over my body under my clothes.
Despite the heat of the chamber, Lady Adelie sat on her wooden chair by the window clad not only in a linen gown laced tightly about her throat, which covered her arms to the wrists and pooled in heavy folds about her feet, but a heavily embroidered woollen, sleeved over-garment as well. I could just see the gleam of one of her precious, blessed girdles underneath it. She was pale, her face unsurprisingly running with sweat, her blue eyes wide with the strain of her labour.
Both hands clutched the arms of the chair. I was not sure what to do. The chamber, although spacious, felt crowded with the two midwives, as well as Mistress Yvette, Evelyn and myself. Gilda and Jocea bustled about: shifting the birthing stool, muttering over a pan of some simmering brew they had set to one side of the coals, moving a pile of linens first to the bed (its sheets and covers stripped back to its foot), now back to the top of a chest.
Mistress Yvette sat on a stool near Lady Adelie, and Evelyn moved to her, asking what we could do to help.
‘Evelyn,’ Yvette said, ‘you may pull up a stool and sit with me, keep our lady company and cheery with our chatter. Maeb, can you descend to the kitchen and fetch for our lady some small beer, as also some crusts of bread in a bowl that the babe can suck on once he is born.’
‘The wet nurse is yet to arrive,’ Yvette said, almost as an aside. ‘She is bedded down in the outer bailey with her husband and children, and no doubt no one yet has been sent to fetch her.’
‘I can send someone,’ I said. ‘There must be a boy awake in the kitchen.’
‘Very well,’ said Yvette. ‘She can be found in the sleep house next to the blacksmithy. Her name is Sewenna.’
‘Should I fetch Alice and Emmette as well?’ I said.
Yvette thought a moment, then shook her head. ‘No. Let them sleep. My lady has enough women to attend her now.’
I nodded, glad of something to do, and of the chance to leave this sweaty chamber for a short while. I was no stranger to births, for from the age of nine I had regularly attended and aided at births in my village of Witenie. But I was unsure how to help my lady for the world of a noble birth was strange to me — what rank attended which duty?
Everything about Lady Adelie’s privy chamber, from the draped windows to the fire to the lurking heaviness of the two taciturn midwives to the precious objects I knew would be wielded during this birth made me uneasy and unsure. The world of my experience in birth had been the laughter and raucousness of the village cottage.
The kitchen lay one flight down the spiral stone stairs. At this time of night it was largely deserted, although within an hour or two the serving boys and sleep-soured cooks would be stumbling to set beasts to roast and bread to rise. Yet even though the hour was late (or early, depending on your perspective) there were several servants about, moving slowly through the poorly lit chamber, its huge beamed ceiling lost in the darkness. They were setting out spoons and bowls, flour and salt, ready for the cooks and they affected to ignore me, even though I stood breathless across the table from them, clutching the skirts of my robe and looking, I hoped, importantly impatient.
I cleared my throat.
The three men ignored me.
‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘She needs small beer to sustain her and some bread crusts for her infant to suck.’
One of the men deigned to speak to me, although not once did he raise his eyes in my direction. ‘Beer’s there,’ he moved his head toward a barrel, ‘jug’s over there,’ again the head tilted, ‘bread in that basket.’
I didn’t thank him, instead hastening to fill a jug with the small beer. It was pleasantly spiced, and I paused long enough to have a draught of it myself. I collected the bread crusts in a bowl, then hesitated.
The men, still moving in their somnolent way about the kitchen, continued to ignore me, yet I needed to send someone for the wet nurse, Sewenna.
I took a deep breath. ‘I need a boy to run to the outer bailey for me … to fetch the wet nurse, Sewenna. Do you know where … I could find …’
‘There’s a boy sleeps by the inner gate,’ said one of them. ‘In a little alcove. Can’t miss him. Wake him and send him off.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and hastened out of the kitchen and away from their strange disregard.
I found the boy at the inner gate and had just sent him grumbling on his way when Owain loomed out of the night.
‘What is happening?’ he asked me.
‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’
He shivered, hugging his robe tightly about him. ‘The night has been restless.’
I grunted at his evasiveness. ‘I have to get back to the chamber.’
‘I will come with you,’ he said, ‘and wait in the solar.’
In case I should be needed.
‘Maeb, has anyone sent for Lord Stephen?’
I had been turning to head back to the stairwell, but now I stopped. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘We should send for him.’
‘But shouldn’t we wait until … if anything goes awry …’
‘I think he needs to know now, Maeb. You go ahead. I will find someone to fetch Stephen, or do it myself.’
I returned to the solar, and thence to the privy chamber beyond. Everything was a-bustle, and Yvette snapped at me for taking so long.
I did not mention meeting with Owain, or that he was fetching Stephen.
I set the small beer and crusts to one side, pouring some of the beer into a small cup should it be needed, then stood aside, waiting for a moment when I could be useful.
Lady Adelie’s labour seemed to have progressed apace since I had been gone, and she was now seated on the birthing stool a little distance from the fire. I was surprised to see that she was still clothed in both high-necked and laced linen shift, as well as the outer embroidered woollen robe. She was covered from neck to wrist and toe with several layers of clothing — and surely it could not have been due to any coolness on her part, for her face was bright red and streaming with sweat. Lady Adelie was among women who attended her on a daily basis; we had all seen her naked many times, so this could not be due to unwarranted modesty on her part.
I caught Evelyn’s eye and indicated the clothing, and Evelyn gave me a slight shrug of her shoulders as if to indicate it did not matter, but she also looked perplexed … if this was my first time attending Lady Adelie during childbirth, it surely was not Evelyn’s, so this attachment to heavy clothing was something new for our lady.
Still, if this is what my Lady Adelie wanted, then why should I worry?
Yvette noticed me standing about with nothing to do and set me to changing the bed linens with cleaned, herbed sheets, so that our lady would have a fresh bed to return to once the child was born. I proceeded to do so with alacrity, glad to be given another task. The two midwives hovered close about Lady Adelie, Yvette at their backs bending in whichever way she could to see and enquire.
By the time I had finished the bed, our lady was close to delivering her child. From my own experiences, I knew that women who had birthed before had a quicker and easier time of it than first-time mothers. Nonetheless, I murmured a prayer to our sweet mother Saint Mary as Gilda and Jocea bent to their work (I assumed they worked by touch alone beneath
Lady Adelie’s voluminous and heavy robes), hoping that our lady would deliver with ease. I was glad the child was about to be born, for it had sapped our lady’s strength, and I would be glad to see her recover once the child no longer ate of her flesh.
Gilda snapped at Yvette to be ready with linens in her arms, and, from my vantage point on the other side of the bed, I took a half-step closer in anticipation. I looked at Lady Adelie’s face — it was bright red and running freely with sweat, her mouth and eyes wide and agonised — and I felt a momentary pang of fear for my own inevitable days in childbed. Could men ever truly understand what they required of us?
Then Lady Adelie gave a yelp of sheer pain, and Gilda and Jocea tugged, and suddenly there was a rush of liquid and I caught a glimpse of a bundle of new, wet skin in the midwives’ hands. Jocea tied the cord, biting it free with her teeth, and Gilda scooped up the newborn infant and delivered it into Yvette’s waiting linen-draped arms.
I was torn between attending Lady Adelie or rushing to where Yvette and Evelyn now huddled over the infant, dabbing at it with a washcloth and some dry linen. My mind was made up for me by Gilda, who snapped at me to help them move Lady Adelie to the bed.
Lady Adelie was quite faint from pain and effort, and Gilda, Jocea and myself had to carry her to the bed. In the doing, the two midwives also stripped off the outer woollen robe, now soiled with sweat and birth fluids, and bundled it to one side.
‘She will need a wash down,’ Jocea said, and I nodded, fetching a basin of tepid water that had been put aside a while since. I carried it to the bed, along with linens and towels. Gilda was clearing away the birthing stool and the mess around it, and Jocea said she would help me wash Lady Adelie down.
‘The afterbirth has yet to come,’ Jocea said. ‘When it does, mind you do not break it, for it shall need to be buried whole.’ I nodded again, already familiar with the knowledge that it was truly bad luck for the infant if its afterbirth was broken.
Jocea and I leaned the still fainting and limp Lady Adelie forward so we might strip off her soiled linen shift.
God’s bones, I thought, she will be glad enough to be rid of this foul garment!
Just then I heard Yvette call my name and I looked up. Yvette was staring frantically at me, although Evelyn was looking down at the baby, frowning, a washcloth frozen in her hand in its journey from washbowl to the baby.
‘No!’ cried Yvette to me, and I wondered, in this last moment of sanity for the coming weeks, what she wanted.
No … what?
Jocea was pulling hard at our lady’s shift and I automatically tugged with her, the shift finally pulling over our lady’s head as I stared in puzzlement at Yvette.
‘No,’ Yvette whispered, but my attention on her was broken by Jocea’s low hiss of horror.
I looked down at our lady, naked now in the flickering light, and for one long moment could not comprehend what I saw.
First I wondered why she had yet another garment on beneath her linen shift.
Then my mind turned to wondering if a wild beast had crawled into the bed.
Then my eyes blinked and I realised what they saw.
Lady Adelie’s shoulders, upper arms, breasts and back were covered by a thick furry layer of yellow fungus, lined and ridged with her sweat.
There were patches of fungus lower down, too, on her still distended belly and her upper thighs.
I blinked again, my eyes seeing, but my brain refusing to comprehend what I saw.
Lady Adelie regained some of her senses and she raised her face to mine.
She moaned, softly, then coughed — that dry hacking cough I had heard so often during the night when I lay in the solar.
A whiff of smoke came from her mouth.
Looking back now, from so many years, I still don’t know what I thought at that moment. I think I was in such shock, my brain was refusing to comprehend, because comprehension would have been too much.
Lady Adelie coughed again.
Yvette was at my side tugging the sheets about my lady’s strange body, and something in my mind registered that somehow she had known about this … and I thought of all those mornings in the past few weeks when I had gone into my lady’s chamber to find her already up and clothed …
Lady Adelie pushed away Yvette’s hands, and fell into a spasm of coughing.
And then, sweet Jesu save me from all the horrors of this tainted earth, I saw a faint wisp of smoke curling up from the fungus on my lady’s back.
I looked, blinked, looked again, and in that instant a flame spurted. Before I or anyone else could cry out, or act, our beautiful Lady Adelie was engulfed in flames.
I find it difficult to speak now of the dreadfulness that ensued over the next few minutes, but I must, because from it followed all the horrors of the subsequent weeks.
Jocea, Yvette and I were closest to our lady, but all three of us were frozen with terror. Then, suddenly, I found myself able to act, and I seized a heavy coverlet from the foot of the bed and tried to smother our lady’s flames with it. I heard screaming and realised that the sound issued from my own mouth, among others, but I kept trying to smother the flames, even though they beat at my own skin.
Poor, piteous Lady Adelie. Through it all her eyes never left my face and I could see her lips moving through the fire. I don’t know what she tried to say, but I hoped then, as I do now, that it was a prayer for her soul.
I heard the sudden bang of the outer door being thrust open, and then Stephen was at my side, and Owain, and I felt myself shoved to one side as both men covered our lady in blankets and coverlets, shouting all the while for water.
I stumbled away, seeking one of the many bowls of water which littered the chamber. I found one, finally, and carried it back to the bed in shaking hands, to have it snatched by Owain and its contents dumped over Lady Adelie.
She was blackened all over, her mouth a gaping rictus of agony, her eyes still staring, now from lidless cradles.
Others carried water hence — Evelyn, Yvette, Gilda — until all that was in the chamber had been poured over our lady’s form.
I saw her manage to raise one crisped arm for Owain to grasp the blackened claw that had once been her hand.
I don’t know how he managed to touch it, let alone hold it as firmly as he did, for I know that I could not have done so.
Owain was chanting prayers, his voice harsh with horror.
I backed away, using as my excuse the number of people crowded about our lady’s bed, until I felt the sharp edge of a chest in the back of my legs. I half turned, grateful to have something else to look at and saw Lady Adelie’s child lying in his linens on the top of the chest.
A tiny boy, left half unwashed and unattended as his minders had fled to his mother’s bed.
I took a deep breath and cried out, for even the infant’s thin, half-starved body was covered with the vile yellow fungus.
He tried to cry and a wisp of smoke appeared, and my hand rushed down to his mouth, hoping that I could stop the nightmare before it became any worse.
But I was too late.
The child, too, was engulfed in flames.
Again I grabbed some heavy cloth close to hand and tried to smother the flames — there was no more water in the chamber, and it was an impossibility to run down flights of stairs to fetch more. I was more successful this time with this tinier body, and I thought I had succeeded in smothering the flames. I lifted a corner of the cloth carefully, to look, and a sheet of flame almost roared out at me.
I stumbled back reflexively, then felt hands grab my shoulders and pull me away.
Stephen.
He seized the bundle of cloth and flesh that was his younger brother, even though flames lapped at his hands, and half carried, half threw him onto the stone slab that sat before the fireplace, it’s own fire now burning low.
Then Stephen stepped back.
He saw my face. ‘We cannot save him,’ he said. ‘Let him burn. Owain can tend his s
oul later.’
At the time I thought them terrible words, but now, looking back, I know Stephen was as shocked and numbed as I. The baby meant little to him, his mother everything.
I turned back to the bed.
Everything smoked. The bedclothes and sheets, the hangings about the bed, even a small rug at the foot of the bed, but there were no more flames.
I forced myself to look to the thing that lay still and blackened on the bed. Sweet Mary, let her be dead!
I think she was, then, for everyone about the bed — the two midwives, Evelyn, Yvette, Owain, and Stephen — were still and staring.
The only sound was the harsh strain of Owain’s voice, and the only movement that of his hand as he blessed and prayed for the soul of our sweet Lady Adelie, Countess of Pengraic.
Suddenly, horribly, I remembered how the earl had asked me to take care of his lady, over and over again, so fearful was he of her safety and I was swamped by guilt.
And fear.
A shadow flickered in a corner of the chamber and for one terrifying moment I thought it the imp I had seen in Oxeneford, come to steal my soul for my sins.
Chapter Five
Stephen asked me to go to the kitchen to order food and small beer to be carried to the solar, as well as pitchers of water, and bowls we could use to wash in.
I nodded numbly, deeply relieved to be allowed to again leave the chamber that now stank of burned flesh and death.
‘Then return here,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘You feel able to do this?’ he asked, and I blinked away sudden tears at his kindness.
‘I can do it,’ I said.
‘Do not speak to anyone of what has happened here.’
I shook my head. Gossiping about what I had just witnessed was not something I could have done in any case. I left the privy chamber, pausing in the solar for a long minute as I heaved in great breaths of fresh air to quell the queasiness of my stomach, before descending the stairs.
There were far more people in the kitchen this time — cooks, servants, butchers — and many of them paused to look at me curiously.