Nettle & Bone(13)
Long after midnight, the Sister washed her hands in a bucket of bloody water and said, “You did well,” to Marra.
The praise warmed her down to her bones because it was true and it was not for the princess.
It was a few days later when there was a knock on her door near midnight. Marra opened the door, puzzled—no one ever knocked so late, and Our Lady of Grackles only held midnight services on the solstices and equinoxes—and saw the Sister Apothecary there, holding a cracked leather satchel. “It’s a birth,” she said shortly. “You’ve seen one, haven’t you?”
“One…?” said Marra. “Only one.”
“Then you’re ahead of the Brother Infirmarian. He hasn’t touched that end of a woman since he slid out of one. My assistant’s down with the flux and I need someone to hold a lamp.”
Marra gulped. She waited to see what she would do next, half-convinced that she would curl up in a ball and whimper, but instead she straightened up and said, “All right. Let me get on my shoes.”
* * *
The labor went very much the same way that Kania’s had, which seemed strange to Marra. Then again, peasants and princesses all shit the same and have their courses the same, so I suppose it’s no surprise that babies all come out the same way, too. Having thus accidentally anticipated a few centuries’ worth of revolutionary political thought, Marra got down to the business of boiling water and making tea.
It went more quickly than Kania’s, at least, but it was still a long, tense, tedious stretch. Marra nodded off more than once and sometimes came to with the lamp in her hand and the Sister Apothecary crouching between the mother’s legs, wondering if she was really awake or if she was having a strange sort of dream.
Dawn had passed and it was most of the way to morning when the baby emerged into the world, looked around, and burst into tears.
“You get used to it,” the Sister told the infant, and handed the child to Marra, who stared at it with intense horror. It was bloody and wrinkly and reddish gray and looked like the sort of thing you would drive back to hell with holy water. “Um,” said Marra.
“Is it … Is…” The mother was panting and could hardly breathe. “It cried. It’s alive, right?”
“Oh yes,” said Marra hurriedly. “Very alive.” She stared at it, trying to find something else to say. “Has arms and legs. And, uh … a head…”
“That’s good,” said the mother, and began giggling with high, hysterical laughter. “Oh, that’s good. You want them to have heads.”
“Lady of Grackles have mercy,” muttered the Sister Apothecary, but as she was saying this directly into the birth canal, no one but Marra heard.
Fortunately the afterbirth arrived immediately and the Sister swapped burdens with her. “Go and give that to her husband,” she said. “He’ll know what to do.”
Marra bowed her head and fled.
The husband was a farmer with a young face and gnarled, ancient hands. He took the afterbirth as reverently as if it had been a child itself. “Will you help me then, sister?”
Marra swallowed. “I’m … I’m not a sister. Not all the way.”
He smiled a little. “Don’t have to be. Not for this.”
She walked with him and picked up the spade he pointed to. They buried the strange, muscleless piece of birth meat under a hickory tree, down among the roots. “Oak’s usual,” said the farmer, sitting back, as Marra patted the earth into place. “Oak’s strong. But hickory’s lucky. We’ve got two strong children already, and the third could use a little luck to make their way.”
Marra stifled a sigh, thinking of her own godmother, who had given them gifts of health and princes. A little luck might have smoothed the way for all of them.
She went with the Sister the next time she was called out as midwife, and she was called out often at night because the town midwife was old and slept soundly. Once or twice a month, there would come a tap on Marra’s door and it would be the Sister going out to tend to a woman laboring.
She was never asked to do more than hold hands and bring water, but she learned nevertheless. Among other lessons, she learned to pretend not to hear the terrible threats uttered by women in labor. Strange as it was, this set her mind at ease. Kania could not have meant what she had whispered in Marra’s ear.
It was the labor—that was all it was. When the miller was brought to her bed, she threatened to put her husband’s balls on the millstone and grind them fine if he ever so much as looked at her again.
She saw babies born and mothers die. She saw mothers have an easy birth and then the bleeding simply never stopped, until they died white and bloodless against the pillow. She saw a birthing hook and how it was used to extract babies who had not survived long enough to emerge.
It was the fifth or sixth or tenth labor, as they walked back to the convent, that Marra could no longer keep silent. “It’s so stupid!” she said.
The Sister glanced at her mildly. “They both lived,” she said. “That’s a good outcome, in my book.”
“Not that,” said Marra. Both mother and child had lived, although it had been a harder labor than anyone was happy with. “Just … Lady of Grackles! We lie on our backs or sit in a chair and push out a thing that’s too big to fit so that everything’s torn bloody! What a stupid, stupid way to bear!”