“A GOOD NUT YEAR means a good baby year,” the midwife said as she sent Alyce and her nutting basket to the woods to see what kind of a year it would be. All day Alyce shook the young trees, climbed into the old ones, and gathered the hard-shelled bounty that fell. Hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds mounded in her basket and stirred her hunger with
thoughts of hot roasted nuts on cold winter nights. That was the limit of her imaginings, for never had she heard of almond cream, pickled walnuts, or
eels in chestnut sauce, such as they ate at the manor or the homes of rich merchants in London and York.
Coming back from the woods, she saw the boys teasing the cat. She took a handful of nuts, the biggest and hard’t and heaviest in her basket, and heaved them at the boys.
“Touch that cat again,” she shouted, “and I will unstop this bottle of rat’s blood and viper’s flesh and summon the Devil, who will change you into women, and henceforth each of you will giggle like a woman and wear
dresses like a woman and give birth like a woman!”
She was too startled by her outburst to be afraid. The boys were too startled by her outburst to move. And so Purr the cat escaped and Alyce reached the midwife’s cottage unharmed, and until they were quite old the boys in the dark of night sometimes were afraid that the midwife’s bottle actually had the power to make them into women. It was fortunate that the
boys never tested Alyce’s magic, for the bottle she shook so fiercely at them was naught but blackberry cordial she was to deliver to Old Anna on her way home from nutting in the woods, and although it would have made the boys purple and sticky, no harm would have befallen them and never would they have been able to give birth like a woman.
That night Joan the bailiff’s wife sent for the midwife. Alyce lighted Jane’s way through the gloomy night with a rushlight that hissed and sputtered in the mist. The midwife chased Joan’s husband, her young son, two pigs, and a pigeon out of the cottage, bade Alyce wait for her in the yard, and slammed the cottage door.
Alyce dozed there in the wet through the long hours of the night. Shortly after dawn, when the sky turned not rosy and welcoming as it does in summer but merely a lighter shade of gray, the midwife kicked her awake. “Up, Beetle, and to the cottage for cowslip, mugwort, and pepper. By the Fourteen Holy Helpers, Joan will have to sneeze this baby out!”
When Alyce returned, the midwife was waiting in the yard, her bottles and herbs and linen neatly packed in the basket beside her.
“Has Joan then sneezed her baby out already?” Alyce asked.
“Ha!” responded the midwife. “This child looks never to come out. You go in and wipe Joan’s face and I will be back as soon as I can. Lady Agnes at the manor has started her labor and wishes me to attend her. They will pay me in silver, and the bailiff in chickens and beans. God and the babies willing, I will have it all.”
Alyce began to cry. “I do not know what to do, Mistress Jane. Do not leave me. Do not leave her. I do not know what to do.”
Alyce was silenced with a sharp slap. “Do nothing, you lackwit fool,” the midwife spat. “She will never deliver that baby. It will die unborn, and I will take it dead from her when I return. Let her labor while I see to the Lady Agnes. I will come back, do what must be done, and collect both
fees.”
Alyce snuffled into her sleeve, leaving her nose dirty and red and no drier than it was.
“Do nothing,” repeated the midwife. “In her state, Joan will not even remember that I left. Do nothing and say nothing!” And off the midwife ran, up to the manor where warm fires blazed and the laboring mother was soothed with wine and syrups and kind words. Alyce turned back to the dark, cold, nearly empty cottage, took a deep breath, and went in.
She couldn’t see the figure on the bed at first for all the smoke, and then realized that the writhing mound was Joan, the bailiffs proud wife who washed her linen each week and never let herself be seen without shoes even in summer, and there she was, a moaning, mewling mound on a straw bed. Alyce covered her mouth and her eyes and turned to go. She could tell the midwife she had waited with Joan. Who was to know if she sat on the stoop until she heard the crinkle of the midwife’s starched wimple?
“Let me die. By the bones of Saint Mildred, let me die. Or help me to die.” The moaning, mewling mound spoke, not, as Alyce expected,
frantically or madly, but calmly and reasonably, asking for death. To Alyce
it sounded all the more frightening and strange, as if a goose had spoken, or an egg, or the dung heap in the yard.
“Beetle, is that you?” Joan asked. “Where is the midwife?”
“Out but to relieve herself, mistress. She will be back soon, and then your babe will be born.”
“Don’t sham me, Beetle. I know this babe is stuck and will never be born and we will both die soon and why not now? Surely the midwife has something in her basket to help us along?”
“Shh, mistress. ’Tis but pain and fright make you speak so, for else you’d never think of sending yourself to Hell and the baby with you.”
“Hell indeed, Beetle, and no worse than this suffering.” Suddenly the proud, reasonable Joan became again the moaning, mewling mound. Then, as the hot pains invaded her body, she shouted and thrashed and flailed, shrieking and kicking.
Alyce betook herself to the cottage door, ready to run from this horror. But the memory of the proud, frightened Joan of a moment ago kept her inside. And she asked herself, What would the midwife do were she here?
What had Alyce seen her do from cottage windows all this year when the
babe would not come and the mother looked to scream and thrash herself to death? What had Will done in that gravel pit to help Tansy with the calves who would not be born?
Alyce took another deep breath and returned to Joan’s side. She gave her mugwort in warm ale to drink and spoke soothingly, calling her Sweetheart and Good Old Girl. She warmed oil over the fire and rubbed her head and belly, as she had the cow’s. She did not know the spells or the magic, so
gave Joan all she had of care and courtesy and hard work.
So it was that in the middle of the night, when the monks were rising from their beds for midnight prayers, and in the towns revelers were returning home full of beef and wine, and at the manor the midwife was delivering Lady Agnes of her first son, so it was that a calmer, more rested Joan, with the kind attention of the midwife’s apprentice, brought forth a daughter, feet first but perfectly formed, whom she called Alyce Little.
Alyce had washed Alyce Little and wrapped her in clean linen and laid her in her father’s arms before Jane the Midwife bustled up the path and into the cottage. Jane made some remarks, which no one believed, about having left for just an instant, and stuck her hand out for her fee.
The bailiff said, “We have no need of you, Jane. Your helper has taken care of us with her two strong hands and her good common sense.”
At that, Alyce felt so much pride and satisfaction that she had to let them out somehow, and so she smiled, which felt so good that she thought she might do it again. Facing the midwife’s jealous anger, she went back to their cottage, ate some cold soup and hard bread, lay down on her straw mat by
the fire, and had a dream about her mother, which upon waking she could not remember.
