Tidelands

Alinor herded the two women from the room before Mrs. Johnson could tell more terrifying tales, and suddenly there was a silence broken only by the crackle of new wood burning in the fireplace. “It is very hot,” Alinor remarked. “Don’t put another log on.”

The maid shrank back, as Alinor drew back the tapestry and opened the window.

“Night air?” Margaret said fearfully.

Alinor dropped the tapestry so no one would see that the window was opened but a cool breeze came into the room and Margaret sighed with relief.

“Spirits’ll come in,” the maid whispered. “Don’t let spirits in!”

“No, they won’t,” Alinor ruled. “Shall we get you into a clean nightgown?”

Margaret’s mother came through the door with a bowl of water. “Thank you,” Alinor said, taking it at the threshold and heading her off. “And the mulled ale?”

“We could all do with a glass,” the woman agreed, and went back to the kitchen as Alinor closed the door.

“Why don’t you sit down and let me wash your face and hands?” Alinor suggested.

Margaret protested faintly that washing must be dangerous in her condition, but she watched Alinor add some lavender oil to the warm water. The sharp clean scent filled the room and Alinor gently patted Margaret’s temples and the back of her neck with the warm water and the oil, washed her hands, taking them gently and rubbing them with oil, and then washed her own.

Margaret sighed and then held her big belly and groaned. “I feel as if my guts are turning over.”

“So you should,” Alinor said with satisfaction.

“I don’t want to lie on the birthing bed,” Margaret protested.

“Not if you don’t want,” Alinor said pleasantly. “You can stand or sit or kneel as you like. But let’s be still and calm.”

“I have to walk about. I feel so restless!”

“Walk in a moment,” Alinor suggested. “But sit still now while they bring you some ale to drink.”

“Is it going to take a long, long time?” Margaret demanded nervously. “Is it going to be torture?”

“Oh, no,” Alinor said. “Think of a hen laying an egg. It might be quite easy.”

Margaret—who had been filled with terrors by the older women—looked incredulously at her young midwife and saw her confident smile. “Easy?” she demanded.

“It might be,” Alinor said smiling. “Perhaps.”

It was not as easy as a hen laying an egg, but it was not torture, and Margaret did not see the gates of heaven opening up before her, as her mother-in-law had confidently predicted. She gave birth to a boy, as her husband secretly wanted, and Alinor, receiving the miracle of the bloodstained, warm, squirming baby into her steady hands, wrapped him in a clean linen cloth and laid him on his mother’s breast.

“Is he all right?” Margaret whispered, as the other women in the room—the two mothers and three friends who had arrived to bear them company—drained a glass of birth ale to the mother and baby.

“He’s perfect,” Alinor said, snipping and tying off the cord. “You did very well.”

“Shall you baptize him?”

“No, he’s in no danger, and the new churchmen don’t like it done by a midwife.”

Quietly and carefully she washed Margaret’s parts and bound them up with moss. “I will come later today and every day for a week with fresh moss,” Alinor promised.

“And you will stay,” the girl insisted. “And help me with him?”

“I will.” Alinor smiled. “As long as you want me. But you will see, soon you won’t want anyone in your way. He will like you best.”

The young wife looked torn between fear and love. “Will he? Won’t he prefer . . .” her eyes slid to her overbearing mother-in-law, “. . . someone who knows what to do? Better than me?”

“You will find he is all yours,” Alinor confidently predicted. “For him there will be no one better than you. And both of you will learn what you like best together.”

“Can I see my son? Can I see him?” was the shouted demand from the other side of the bedroom door. Farmer Johnson would not be allowed into the bedroom nor see his wife for another four weeks, but his mother carried his son out to him. They could hear the loud exclamations and blessings, and his words of love for his young wife, and then Mrs. Johnson brought the baby back in again.

“He won’t have the baby baptized at church,” she said in a shocked undertone to Alinor. “Says it’s papist ritual and a God-fearing father names his own child at home. What d’you think of that, Mrs. Reekie?”

Alinor shook her head, refusing to be drawn into the new argument. “I don’t know the rights and wrongs of it.”

“And he says she’s not to be churched.” Margaret’s mother nodded at her dozing daughter. “How can that be right?”

Alinor maintained her silence: all the new church sects were determined to be rid of all ritual, to cut any traditions that were not named in the Bible. “He’s a godly man,” she said diplomatically. “He must know what’s right.”

“Says he’s prayed on it,” Margaret’s mother sniffed. “And so my girl gets up and goes about her work without a blessing. What about giving thanks for escaping death and danger?”