Red Adam's Lady Read online

  Folie’s kick, though it had caught Thyra only a glancing blow on the flank, had accelerated labor. A third bearing should go easily, but this was going very hard. The girl threshed and writhed, exhausting her strength to no purpose, and beside herself with fear of her body’s travail and fear of hanging.

  Julitta was summoned away to speak with the priest, a peasant huddling his spiritual authority about him like a cloak. He agreed to Alain’s lying that night before the altar with watchers and candles, to Masses for his soul’s repose, to the arrangements she proposed for his burial. “And when all’s dealt with, come back, Father Simon. There’ll be a child to baptize, maybe in haste, and the mother’s in a grievous state.”

  It had worsened even during her brief absence; Thyra was moaning, her knees drawn up to her belly, and at sight of Julitta she screamed and passed into a convulsion. Constance had been trying to give her wine, but it had dribbled over her chin and cheeks in red streaks. Adela rose from her knees and joined Julitta on the gallery.

  “The waters have broken, and she’s passing blood,” she murmured. “She’s beyond our skill. I reckon the babe’s cross-lodged, and we can’t budge it.”

  “There’s a wise woman in the village. I’ll summon her,” Julitta answered, looking at the girl with appalled pity. A cross-birth was perhaps the most dreaded mischance of childbed, and usually meant death for mother and child. She dispatched one of the girls, and stood outside the door. Unconsciously she laid a hand on her own unburdened belly, and thought of the time when this travail would be hers. She crossed herself and prayed.

  Thyra clung wailing to Constance, who somehow persuaded her to drink wine and lie still. The blood came in a steady seeping they could not check, and Julitta, conning over her little knowledge, suspected that Folie’s kick had done worse hurt than she had guessed.

  Wooden shoes clattered on the gallery, and Hallgerd stood at Julitta’s elbow, breathing ale fumes. “‘Save you, m’ lady.” She regarded the prostrate girl with more exasperation than sympathy. “Now you’d reckon a wench as allus makes a hard do o’ birthing ’d show a mite o’ caution in her coupling, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re drunk!” Constance snapped. “Find some respect for your betters. She’s brought to bed untimely—”

  “Respect where it’s earned, and not so drunk as I can’t tell seven months from nine.” Hallgerd joined battle. She dropped to her knees more spryly than a young nun to her orisons. “I’ve been a midwife forty-odd years, so don’t tell me it’s Lord Adam’s brat.”

  “You’re insolent!”

  “Aye. I’m insolent, and you’re a liar. What now?”

  “Take yourself out of this hold!”

  “Thought as this birthing was too much for you? ’Twasn’t you summoned me, and ’tisn’t for you to dismiss me. You’re not t’ mistress now.”

  Julitta herself had hesitated to say as much so bluntly, and Constance choked. Thyra moaned and reached to her. Hallgerd, having established beyond doubt who commanded, turned to the girl. Ale had not impaired her competence. Her knotty fingers explored the gravid belly, her concentration so absolute that all expression was wiped from her face. She sat back on her heels, and nodded. “Aye, t’ brat’s cross-lodged.” Her hands kneaded and manipulated, and Thyra cried out. “Too far along to turn it.” She reached for the oil flask, tipped a generous palmful and anointed her hands and wrists. Presently she straightened and wiped blood from her fingers. “T’ passage not far enough open,” she reported, frowning at the strained rag. She shrugged, took up the winejug and poured. She raised the cup to salute Julitta. “Mary Mother save you, m’ lady. Not often wine comes my way.”

  “I don’t grudge it so long as you remain competent.”

  “Never nowt else,” she asserted, and Julitta believed her.

  The afternoon wore on. Adela slipped away, murmuring that she must look to her little Charles. Julitta had not known his name until then. No one called by name a child who could neither hear nor answer. She herself remained to preserve the decencies between Constance and Hallgerd, for enmity rose between them as the wine sank in the jug and the midwife’s tongue grew saltier. After an hour or so she oiled her hands and probed again.

  “Times you can reach t’ child’s legs and bring it forth,” she explained over her shoulder, but a foreboding in her face told Julitta the chance was desperate. There was no doubting her dedication. Thyra was quieter, staring at their faces.

  “Not time yet. Give her more wine.” She watched Constance raise the girl’s head, watched Thyra lie back exhausted, her sweat-darkened hair strewn across the straw pillow, caught Julitta’s eye and stood up. They withdrew on to the gallery.

  “T’ afterbirth’s come away first. That kick. I can’t reach t’ bairn; passage blocked. It’s God’s will she won’t hang.” She crossed herself.

  “The child?” Julitta asked, mechanically repeating the gesture.

  “Can’t be born. More blood; she’ll go on a rush of it. Send for t’ priest, m’ lady.”

  He was talking to Brien in the hall, and started for the stair at her signal. Julitta went back into the chamber that reaked of sweat, blood and wine. Thyra stared from her to Hallgerd and said starkly, “I’m going to die.”

  “God have mercy on you,” Julitta said. “Here is Father Simon to shrive you.”

  “My baby? What o’ my baby?”

  “I shall see to its rearing. I promise you.”

  Her face twisted. “Godric—you’ll hang me brother! Spite—”

  Julitta, a dull ache in her breast for the wretched creature’s torment, said gently, “I’ll procure your brother what mercy I can from Lord Adam. That also I promise.”

  “Spite—me own lady said you was jealous—nowt but spite—”

  “What cause had I? The child’s not my lord’s. Your brother’s a thief. There’s plain truth.”

  “Alain’s baby—leastways I think so. Oh!”

  The cry was for the entrance of the priest, bearing the pyx. The three women sank to their knees in reverence. Then they rose and filed out that he might hear Thyra’s confession. Leaving the other two at the stairhead, Julitta ran down to tell Brien to have Godric out of the cell and sobered so that he might bid his sister farewell. Returning more slowly, pondering her promise to rear the baby that could not be born, she was checked at the stair’s foot by Constance’s venomous voice.

  “Drunken hag, and you know nothing of your trade!”

  “Enough to know as when’t’ husband’s gone afore Lady Day a wife’s wise to bear t’ brat by Christmas,” Hallgerd retorted.

  “You slanderous liar, I’ll have you in the stocks!”

  “I’ve eyes to’ see.” She chuckled maliciously. “When it’s too late for t’ pennyroyal, time for t’ seven grains o’ black-spurred rye.* Aye, and in a dry season they’re mortal hard to come by. So what’s to be done by a wench as doesn’t know her simples but to bear t’ brat?”

  Julitta, who did know her simples, stood locked in comprehension. A cry of fury mingled with the smack of a blow. A yelp, a thump, and a succession of slithering noises heralded Hallgerd’s descent, bouncing round the newel and rebounding from the wall with her feet tangled in her skirts. Julitta lunged and caught her as she toppled the last half-dozen steps, or she would have crashed on the back of her head and broken that or her skinny neck against the stone. She staggered, her arms full of bones and musty woolens, but the old woman weighed no more than a child. She set her on her feet, shaken and bruised but invincibly truculent, a hand’s print red against cheek and jaw.

  “Nay, no harm to matter, m’ lady. Tripped on t’ stair; mighty heedless.” She stumped up them, and grinned at the consternation in Constance’s face, peering round the newel. “Just missed breaking me neck, but there, I’m not used to t’ risks o’ castles.”

  Julitta, recognizing what was required of her, was silent. Hallgerd conducted her own feuds, and would have satisfaction in her own time. But she regarded Co
nstance thoughtfully; she was discovering more of her capacities today than she had reckoned on.

  Brien and two archers brought up Godric. He was miserably sober now, and his face had the greasy shine of a tallow candle as he stood sweating on the gallery, scowling at his own feet between furtive glances at Julitta and Constance. The murmured Latin came to an end. The priest emerged and signed to him to enter, and they let him shamble in alone.

  “Is there any chance for the child to be born alive?” Father Simon asked Hallgerd.

  “A poor one,” she answered, and flipped the hilt of the knife in her belt. “Soon’s I hears t’ death rattle I’ll have it out.”

  Julitta crossed herself, whispering a prayer. The priest nodded heavily. “I will wait,” he said, and withdrew to the window splay round the corner of the gallery, where he knelt.

  Godric came forth, knuckling his eyes. He halted before Julitta, mumbling, “Your fault—” but the archers hustled him to the stair before he could make offence worse. The three women returned. Blood soaked the straw, and one glance at Thyra’s gray face told Julitta that her time was short. The birth pains had ceased, and her breath panted in her throat. Constance held her hand and repeated the Ave Maria over and over, tears running down her face. Julitta prayed silently for God’s mercy on Thyra’s soul and that the child might live to be baptized.

  The gasping breaths ceased, started again, came at longer and longer intervals. Thyra’s eyes widened in a stare. A moment’s struggle, the last breath fluttering in her throat, and her spirit broke from her body. Hallgerd slashed, groped and grabbed, and swung the baby by the heels. She shook it, slapped its buttocks and squeezed its chest. It squeaked. The priest waited but for her to cut and knot the cord; then he held it over the bowl of warm water standing ready.

  “What name for a boy?”

  “Alain,” Julitta answered instantly.

  He gabbled through the sacramental words and plunged the infant into the water. He mewed thinly as he was handed back to Hallgerd. She took him on her lap, fat and perfect, but pale rather than red, and wiped him with a towel. The hair on his round skull was black, not red, and his face bore no resemblance to the Lorismonds.

  “Guessed wrong; he’s Oswald’s or Roger’s this time,” commented Hallgerd. She squeezed his chest again, and then set her mouth to his and tried to drive her own breath into his lungs. He was quite still, his eyes half-open. She shrugged, wiped the blood and birth-grease from him and shrouded him in a fresh towel before laying him on his mother’s breast.

  Constance walked out without a word. Julitta said a final prayer and crossed herself, looking at the dead with a kind of empty disappointment. Hallgerd, preparing the body for burial, glanced up. “What’s amiss, m’ lady?”

  “I promised her—but the baby’s dead.”

  “Nowt to grieve for. You thank God he’s took him in his innocence, m’ lady, and don’t quarrel wi’ His judgment.”

  “No—no.” she sighed, and then straightened her shoulders. “Your doing, that his soul was saved. I thank you with all my heart.”

  She stood a moment on the gallery, looking down at the servants clearing the hall after supper, stacking tables, trestles and benches against the walls and banking the fires. The priest had gone back to his window to pray; she waited until he rose from his knees and they went down together.

  Sir Bertram came to her, peering in the ruddy sunset-light so that she wondered whether, like the blind man in Holy Writ, he saw men as trees walking. “Both dead, my lady?” he asked heavily. The priest’s movements, and the cessation of all sound from the birth room, had made that an easy deduction. At her affirmation he bowed his head with his customary dignity. “God rest them. My lady, there’s a woman awaiting you. The innkeeper’s wife.”

  The woman came forward. She had been weeping, but she stood hardily before her lady as her husband had done. She understood that confession and restitution, besides conferring spiritual benefit, soften the rancor of the wronged. She admitted the whole conspiracy, attributing its origin to Godric, and thrust a weighty bag into Julitta’s hands.

  “It’s all here, m’ lady—every penny we have! You’ll turn him loose, m’ lady?” She dropped to her knees, tears starting. “What’s to become o’ me bairns an’ me—five I’ve borne, and three living, and another on t’ way—what’s to come if you hangs me man? Ha’ mercy, gracious lady!” She clawed at Julitta’s gown, blotched with Alain’s and Thyra’s blood, and the girl jerked away.

  “I cannot—it’s not for me—” she stammered. Power of life and death she had never dreamed of wielding, and three had died already for this thievery. Then she glimpsed calculation in the frantic eyes, watchful for the appeal’s effect, and hardened against the woman who consigned Godric and the woodcutter to the gibbet without a word of extenuation. “This must wait on Lord Adam’s judgment,” she said firmly.

  “But—but then he’ll hang!” she blurted, lurching to her feet.

  “I will ask his mercy,” Julitta promised. The woman crumpled.

  “He’ll hang—he’ll hang for sure—and what’ll become o’ me and t’ bairns?” she muttered, and stumbled towards the stair, blind with weeping. Sir Bertram signed to a soldier, who steered her out. Julitta clenched her hands so that her nails dug into her palms, and ground her teeth together to keep her tongue from granting her prayer. Justice was not so served, and authority must serve justice though her own harshness hurt her heart.

  “You’re a she-wolf for vindictiveness,” Constance declared in her ear. “You’ll hang three to be revenged on Godric, because he upheld me.”

  “Did you license him to be a thief?”

  She turned into her husband’s arms. “Hear how I am used—after all my years—and my poor Thyra butchered by the drab she brought in!” She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.

  He patted her, and over her kerchief frowned at Julitta. “Indeed, my lady, you are of an age to be her daughter, and you use my wife with gross discourtesy.”

  “Discourtesy? Am I to tolerate her inciting the servants to defiance because she’ll not accept me as mistress?” Julitta blazed. Constance had achieved an unmendable breach between them.

  * Ergot, the poison of rye fungus, has been known from ancient times as a powerful abortifacient.

  13

  Julitta locked the door of the undercroft, where she had spent a dusty morning supervising the grain bins’ cleansing, and looked down the hall at the preparations for dinner. The servants found a new alacrity with trestles and tableboards, a scullion hurriedly kicked up a couple of boys wrestling in the rushes, and a couple whispering in a corner broke apart and scrambled to find separate tasks in a spreading hush of guilt. She stood a moment in bleak appreciation of these manifestations, and then started for her chamber to wash and freshen herself.

  The watchman’s horn blared, startling every head up, and then a clatter of feet on the stair heralded the roof sentinel.

  “Company approaching the gate, m’ lady!”

  “Not Lord Adam?”

  “Nay, m’ lady. I’d not sound the alarm for m’ lord. Looks like your uncle o’ Chivingham in t’ lead.”

  “Hell’s Teeth!” she said. The fellow grinned. “And how many?”

  “Six more. I thought to recognize t’ lords o’ Digglewick and Crossthwaite.”

  Her first impulse was to refuse entry to any, her second to exclude the Ladies’ Delight, but sense and courtesy restrained her; one would be an offence against kinship, the other would rouse the very scandal she wished to avoid. And in her husband’s absence she was Brentborough, its honor hers. “Pass the word for Sir Brien, and tell the cook we entertain noble guests,” she commanded, and fled to her chamber calling for Avice and warm water.

  She met her uncle’s unconvincing smile, Humphrey’s smirk and Sir Everard’s courtesy with equal civility, and set them at table in order of seniority, so that her uncle sat beside her and Sir Everard by Red Adam’s empty chair. Throughout
the first course she maintained decorous conversation, kept a watchful eye on the service, and ignored every smile or meaning glance that Humphrey sent her with a composure that at last pierced the hide of his vanity, so that he attended sulkily to his trencher. Inwardly Julitta marveled at herself. A few weeks ago she had flinched from her uncle’s frown, fluttered in silly infatuation at Humphrey’s slightest smile. Now she had only contempt for both.

  The course was removed. The serving lads went round with ewers, basins and towels. Sir Everard commended her on the changes she had wrought in so short a space. “We’d heard of drastic measures,” he added with his diffident smile.

  “Drastic measures,” she agreed with a smile, “and a deal of whitewash.”

  “It’s the sound training she had in my wife’s household,” Lord William declared. “I hope you bear that in mind, girl.”

  “Every day I remember your charity,” Julitta declared with perfect truth.

  “It’s brought you to high rank and rule over great estates, and it’s right that you should show gratitude,” he continued. “I’d expected to hear before now that you had reconciled your husband to me. After all, I am now his uncle by marriage, and this foolish quarrel—”

  “He has little time left him for deciding,” Lord William declared harshly. “Any day Leicester will land with reinforcements. He may be in Norfolk even now, and soon all England will be the Young King’s.”

  “He has little time left for deciding,” Lord William declared harshly. “Any day Leicester will land with reinforcements. He may be in Norfolk even now, and soon all England will be the Young King’s.”

  “I doubt a rabble of unemployed weavers will achieve so much,” Julitta answered grimly, “or that many will see Flanders again.”

  His head reared up. Everard spoke quickly. “Your husband’s been misinformed. The Earl has a strong force, and only contrary winds have so far prevented his landing to seize England. You must realize it’s urgent Lord Adam should join our rightful King.”