ONE WARM EVENING CAME A STILLNESS as if the whole world were holding its breath. Thunderstorm, thought Alyce, as she hurried to fasten the wooden
shutters over the windows before the skies opened.
Just then a party of riders rode into the inn yard-—a prosperous-looking man wearing too much jewelry, a stout lady in some obvious discomfort, and their attendants, a man and woman sullen and none too bright looking. The man lifted the stout lady down and they hurried into the inn, leaving the boy Tam to put the horses away and see them dry and fed for the night.
Because they appeared important, Jennet herself bustled over to see to their needs.
“Supper, sir? Cold beef and the best bread in the county? A jug of ale or some Rhenish wine?”
“We want no food,” said the prosperous-looking man. “How then can I serve you?”
“In no way, madam, unless you be a priest, a magician, or a man of medicine. My wife is being devoured by a stomach worm.”
The woman moaned a little and then let out a great cry that nearly drowned out the thunder crashing about them. Jennet crossed herself as the man swept platters and mugs off the big table and helped his wife lie down.
Snatching a mug of ale from John Dark, Jennet brought it to the wailing woman. She watched a moment and then laid her rosy hand on the woman’s swollen belly. “In truth, sir, I think she is about to give you a child.”
The man looked at Jennet with displeasure and dislike. “Get away with you, fool! My wife has been barren since the day of our marriage and
breeds nothing but discontent. She has in truth grown stout of late, but that be herring pie and almond puddings. Having a child? Impossible!”
Jennet watched a few moments more. “Not only possible, sir, but soon.”
The entire company looked then at the woman on the table, who was struggling to sit up and was pushing so hard her red face looked near to bursting.
“Impossible,” said the man again, a little less confidently this time. “What should be done?”
The woman let out a bellow like a bull and John Dark hurried outside, preferring the rain to this.
“There is a midwife in the village some walk down that road. I will point your man the way,” said Jennet.
So for a time the inn resounded with the rumble of the thunder, the cries of the laboring mother, and the useless clucking of the woman’s husband.
Finally the manservant reappeared, as wet as water could make him. “I found the midwife’s cottage where you told me,” he said. “The midwife was not there and no fire is lit and it looks like some other child is making
his way into the world tonight with the midwife to assist him. This one must make his own way.”
All was noise and confusion as the woman pulled herself up again and commenced bellowing. Her husband gave her his ruby ring to hold. Jennet gave her ale. The manservant gave her a black look and went outside to join John Dark in the rain.
As night deepened, the woman’s cries grew louder and louder. Jennet hustled and bustled, but she knew about brewing and baking and not babies, and all her bustle could not help. Magister Reese went out and returned, went out and returned, unable to help but reluctant to leave. Alyce stood watching from a place under the stairs, unwilling to be part of the scene, for the sounds and smells were all too familiar and spoke of her failure with
Emma Blunt. She was kept from leaving altogether by her sympathy and compassion, and by a certain curiosity that compelled her to know what was happening and to what end and what might be done to finish or hasten or ease.
As the wails of the companions grew near as loud as those of the mother, Jennet threw them all outside—the woman attendant who shrieked more dian she attended, the wailing husband, and Magister Reese, who then stood at the shuttered window, frantically paging through his Great Work looking for something to help and every now and then calling, “Jennet, you must find the bulb of a white lily” or “Virgins’ hair and ant eggs!” or “An eaglestone! Who has an eaglestone?”
Finally Jennet covered the moaning woman with her cloak, and, whispering “I can do no more. This baby will not come,” slipped from the room.
Lightning lit up the room, empty but for Alyce under the stairs and the woman, in tears, in pain, in labor, and none to help. Alyce trembled. I
should, she said to herself, but I cannot. I tried before and failed. You must, said herself back to her. None so stupid, said Magister Reese. You are nitwit, said Grommet Smith. Guts and common sense, said Will Russet.
You gave up, said the midwife. “Help me,” cried the woman on the table. “Keep still, all of you, and let me try,” said Alyce, coming out from behind the ladder.
She got the woman to her feet and walked her around the room, stopping every now and then to pour some ale into her. She rubbed and oiled and pushed. She bade the woman sit and stand, kneel and lie down. She called on all those saints known to watch over mothers—Saint Margaret and Saint Giles and Saint Felicitas, and even Saint Loy, who protects horses, and Saint Anthony, who does the same for pigs, for she believed it would do no harm. She did every single thing she had seen the midwife do and even invented some of her own. As the thunderstorm passed and night prepared to yield to dawn, on a scarred wooden table that had seen more of pork pies and beer than babies, Alyce delivered a baby boy, with the black hair of his father and the red face of his mother.
Alyce had no basket of clean linen and ointments and herbs, so she tore a coarse thread from the hem of the woman’s dress, tied the baby’s cord, and cut it with a carving knife borrowed from the kitchen. Having no cumin or cecily for sealing the cord, she spat on her hand and rubbed the cut end.
Alyce then opened the door. “Here, sir,” Alyce said, handing the baby to his father, “no stomach worm, but a loud and lusty boy.”
His mother shouted from inside, “Stomach worm, bah! In truth I thought a dragon was eating my innards. Give the lout to me, I will teach him to
give such trouble and pain to his mother.” The stupefied father took the baby to his mother, who commenced scolding and berating the little fellow, all the while smoothing his black hair and caressing his little hands, until her scolding turned to cooing and his loud cries to gurgles, and mother and child fell asleep there on the inn table.
Alyce saw the man and his servants staring at her in awe. “It be a
miracle,” they whispered. “We have seen barren woman give birth, stomach worm transformed to innocent babe, dragon defeated by a girl who appeared from nowhere!”
The man spoke to Alyce. “Good miss, be you an angel or a saint?” Alyce stared at him. “An angel? I be no angel.”
“Then it is saint you are!” he cried, and all about fell to their knees in wonder.
“No,” Alyce repeated. “No saint, no angel. Corpus bones, I but delivered a child. Your wife never had a stomach worm.”
But the man and the servants, still on their knees before her, prayed and thanked her for the cure of their mistress and the miracle of the baby, and while she was at it, the female servant asked for a warm cloak for winter and that the wart should fall off her chin.
Alyce pushed past them and stepped out into the warm night. The moon was as round and as white as a new cheese. On a bench beneath the old oak sat John Dark and Magister Reese, sharing a mug of ale. Magister Reese winked at her and smiled. Alyce smiled back. And then she laughed, a true laugh that came from deep in her gut, rushed out her mouth, and rang through the clear night air. And that was the true miracle that night, the first of June—the month, as Magister Reese could have told her, named for Juno, the Roman goddess of the moon, of women, and of childbirth.
