AFTER THIS, when the midwife was summoned to attend a mother, Alyce took to stealing her way inside the woman’s cottage, hiding in the shadows so as not to be noticed, watching closely to see what the midwife did and
how and why. She took and stored in her brain and her heart what she heard the midwife say and do about babies and birthing and easing pain.
She discovered that an eggshell full of the juice of leeks and mallows will make a labor quicker, that rubbing the mother’s belly with the blood of a
crane can make it easier, that birth wort roots and flowers can strengthen
contractions in a reluctant mother, and that, if all else fails, the midwife can shout into the birth passage, “Infant, come forward! Christ calls you to the
light!” She found that mouse ear and willow can help stop bleeding and that a tea of anise and dill and bitter milkwort will help when milk will not come.
She learned that newborn infants are readily seized by fairies unless salt is put in their mouths and their cradles, that a baby born in the morning will never see ghosts, and that a son born after the death of his father will be
able to cure fevers.
Alyce thought the midwife had more skills with herbs and syrups and
spells than Will Russet, but Will delivered babies just as well and was much kinder to the mother. Alyce thought if she needed a midwife, she would rather someone like Will than Jane Sharp, for all her spells and syrups.
Early one cold November day, before the pale, watery sun could light up the morning sky, Alyce left the midwife’s cottage and hurried to the cowshed to see Tansy’s twins, now called Baldred and Billfrith after the saintly local hermits, and give them some parsnip tops to munch. There, huddled as close to Tansy as her calves, lay a sleeping boy, blue in his lips, frost in his hair, and tears frozen on his thin dirty cheeks. Her coming startled him awake and he jumped to his feet.
“I be leaving, mistress,” he said. “I took nothing. I hurt nothing. I be going.”
Alyce grabbed his arm. “Wait, boy. I mean you no harm. Who are you?” “I be nobody, mistress. I go.”
“Everybody is somebody and so are you. Want some breakfast?”
From the sleeve of her gown Alyce pulled the parsnip tops meant for the cows and some cheese she had saved for the cat and fed instead the hungry boy.
She watched him as he ate. Six, he was. Maybe a little older, for all he was so small and thin. Fie looked a little like her, now she thought about it. A sudden pleasure inside her warmed her hands as she reached out to smooth the boy’s hair.
“Next time you be much warmer nestled in the dung heap these cold days,” she told him. “I know. ”
He finished the cheese and looked up at her. “Bread?” “Bread. I’ll go fetch some. You stay here.”
Alyce ran for the cottage, found a bit of bread she had hidden away for the cat, ignored the midwife’s questions and demands, and started back for the cowshed.
The boy was running down the road toward her, pursued by several much bigger boys shouting and threatening with their pitchforks and rakes.
“Beggar! Thief! Ragtag!” the boys hollered as one of them barreled straight into Alyce, sending them both tumbling to the ground.
“Get on, Dick,” Alyce said sharply, “or I’ll tell your granny who’s been sneaking her ale. And as for you, Jack Snaggletooth, I still have that bottle of rat’s blood!”
At her words, the boys hesitated, then began to back away. Alyce stood, brushing the mud off her skirt with one hand while keeping a firm grip on the boy with the other.
“I said, have off!” she repeated, stepping toward them with a warning glare.
“Corpus bones, Beetle,” one muttered. “We were just wagging him since you ain’t no fun anymore.”
Grumbling, the boys slinked away, already plotting their next bit of mischief until they’d inevitably be caught, scolded, and put to work.
Alyce turned her attention back to the boy, who introduced himself as Runt. When they reached the midwife’s cottage, Jane was out tending to Kate the weaver’s daughter, who was struggling with her milk. Alyce led the boy into the yard, gently wiping the dirt from his face with her skirt and combing straw from his hair.
“All the while,” she said with a smile, “Runt might do for a piglet, but never for a fine-looking boy like you. Don’t worry, I’ll help you find a proper name.”
place to sleep and something regular to eat but he would have to have a real name, for she was not taking anywhere anyone named Runt.
“What is your name?” the boy asked. “Alyce,” said Alyce.
“Then I be Alyce, too.”
“You cannot be Alyce, for it is a name for a girl.” “What then is the king’s name?”
Alyce did not know, so she hid the boy in the chicken house and went about the village asking folks what was the king’s name.
“Longshanks,” said the baker. “Hammer,” said Thomas At-the-Bridge.
“The Devil Hisself,” said Brian Tailor, who was a Scot and so had reason to feel that way.
“Just ‘the king’ is all,” said several.
“Edward,” said the bailiff. “The king’s name is Edward.” “Edward,” said Alyce to the boy.
“Then Edward is my name,” said Edward, who used to be called Runt.
Alyce nodded.
She could see the midwife coming in the distance, so Alyce spat on her
fingers and rubbed a bit of stubborn dirt off Edward’s cheek. “Go,” she said, “up that road to the manor. They are hiring boys to help with the threshing.
Tell them Jane the Midwife sent you and bid them remember the good job she did delivering Lady Agnes’ stubborn son. Now go.”
Edward shook his head and grabbed a piece of her skirt in his fist, but she put him off. So he straightened his tunic and went, looking back once to
throw a brave, shaky grin at Alyce.
The returning midwife, angry at Alyce for ignoring her earlier, set her to do all the least pleasant chores: roasting frogs’ livers, boiling snails into jelly, stripping the thorns from dogberry roses.
But Alyce minded little, for she thought not of her tasks but of Edward’s face and the abundance of bread and cheese up at the manor looking for a hungry boy’s belly to fill.
