The Devil’s Diadem by Sara Douglass

Sweat beaded on my face and I could feel it prickling all over my body under my clothes.

Despite the heat of the chamber, Lady Adelie sat on her wooden chair by the window clad not only in a linen gown laced tightly about her throat, which covered her arms to the wrists and pooled in heavy folds about her feet, but a heavily embroidered woollen, sleeved over-garment as well. I could just see the gleam of one of her precious, blessed girdles underneath it. She was pale, her face unsurprisingly running with sweat, her blue eyes wide with the strain of her labour.

Both hands clutched the arms of the chair. I was not sure what to do. The chamber, although spacious, felt crowded with the two midwives, as well as Mistress Yvette, Evelyn and myself. Gilda and Jocea bustled about: shifting the birthing stool, muttering over a pan of some simmering brew they had set to one side of the coals, moving a pile of linens first to the bed (its sheets and covers stripped back to its foot), now back to the top of a chest.

Mistress Yvette sat on a stool near Lady Adelie, and Evelyn moved to her, asking what we could do to help.

‘Evelyn,’ Yvette said, ‘you may pull up a stool and sit with me, keep our lady company and cheery with our chatter. Maeb, can you descend to the kitchen and fetch for our lady some small beer, as also some crusts of bread in a bowl that the babe can suck on once he is born.’

‘The wet nurse is yet to arrive,’ Yvette said, almost as an aside. ‘She is bedded down in the outer bailey with her husband and children, and no doubt no one yet has been sent to fetch her.’

‘I can send someone,’ I said. ‘There must be a boy awake in the kitchen.’

‘Very well,’ said Yvette. ‘She can be found in the sleep house next to the blacksmithy. Her name is Sewenna.’

‘Should I fetch Alice and Emmette as well?’ I said.

Yvette thought a moment, then shook her head. ‘No. Let them sleep. My lady has enough women to attend her now.’

I nodded, glad of something to do, and of the chance to leave this sweaty chamber for a short while. I was no stranger to births, for from the age of nine I had regularly attended and aided at births in my village of Witenie. But I was unsure how to help my lady for the world of a noble birth was strange to me — what rank attended which duty?

Everything about Lady Adelie’s privy chamber, from the draped windows to the fire to the lurking heaviness of the two taciturn midwives to the precious objects I knew would be wielded during this birth made me uneasy and unsure. The world of my experience in birth had been the laughter and raucousness of the village cottage.

The kitchen lay one flight down the spiral stone stairs. At this time of night it was largely deserted, although within an hour or two the serving boys and sleep-soured cooks would be stumbling to set beasts to roast and bread to rise. Yet even though the hour was late (or early, depending on your perspective) there were several servants about, moving slowly through the poorly lit chamber, its huge beamed ceiling lost in the darkness. They were setting out spoons and bowls, flour and salt, ready for the cooks and they affected to ignore me, even though I stood breathless across the table from them, clutching the skirts of my robe and looking, I hoped, importantly impatient.

I cleared my throat.

The three men ignored me.

‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘She needs small beer to sustain her and some bread crusts for her infant to suck.’

One of the men deigned to speak to me, although not once did he raise his eyes in my direction. ‘Beer’s there,’ he moved his head toward a barrel, ‘jug’s over there,’ again the head tilted, ‘bread in that basket.’

I didn’t thank him, instead hastening to fill a jug with the small beer. It was pleasantly spiced, and I paused long enough to have a draught of it myself. I collected the bread crusts in a bowl, then hesitated.

The men, still moving in their somnolent way about the kitchen, continued to ignore me, yet I needed to send someone for the wet nurse, Sewenna.

I took a deep breath. ‘I need a boy to run to the outer bailey for me … to fetch the wet nurse, Sewenna. Do you know where … I could find …’

‘There’s a boy sleeps by the inner gate,’ said one of them. ‘In a little alcove. Can’t miss him. Wake him and send him off.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and hastened out of the kitchen and away from their strange disregard.

I found the boy at the inner gate and had just sent him grumbling on his way when Owain loomed out of the night.

‘What is happening?’ he asked me.

‘My lady’s time has come,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

He shivered, hugging his robe tightly about him. ‘The night has been restless.’

I grunted at his evasiveness. ‘I have to get back to the chamber.’

‘I will come with you,’ he said, ‘and wait in the solar.’

In case I should be needed.

‘Maeb, has anyone sent for Lord Stephen?’

I had been turning to head back to the stairwell, but now I stopped. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We should send for him.’

‘But shouldn’t we wait until … if anything goes awry …’

‘I think he needs to know now, Maeb. You go ahead. I will find someone to fetch Stephen, or do it myself.’

I returned to the solar, and thence to the privy chamber beyond. Everything was a-bustle, and Yvette snapped at me for taking so long.

I did not mention meeting with Owain, or that he was fetching Stephen.

I set the small beer and crusts to one side, pouring some of the beer into a small cup should it be needed, then stood aside, waiting for a moment when I could be useful.

Lady Adelie’s labour seemed to have progressed apace since I had been gone, and she was now seated on the birthing stool a little distance from the fire. I was surprised to see that she was still clothed in both high-necked and laced linen shift, as well as the outer embroidered woollen robe. She was covered from neck to wrist and toe with several layers of clothing — and surely it could not have been due to any coolness on her part, for her face was bright red and streaming with sweat. Lady Adelie was among women who attended her on a daily basis; we had all seen her naked many times, so this could not be due to unwarranted modesty on her part.

I caught Evelyn’s eye and indicated the clothing, and Evelyn gave me a slight shrug of her shoulders as if to indicate it did not matter, but she also looked perplexed … if this was my first time attending Lady Adelie during childbirth, it surely was not Evelyn’s, so this attachment to heavy clothing was something new for our lady.

Still, if this is what my Lady Adelie wanted, then why should I worry?

Yvette noticed me standing about with nothing to do and set me to changing the bed linens with cleaned, herbed sheets, so that our lady would have a fresh bed to return to once the child was born. I proceeded to do so with alacrity, glad to be given another task. The two midwives hovered close about Lady Adelie, Yvette at their backs bending in whichever way she could to see and enquire.

By the time I had finished the bed, our lady was close to delivering her child. From my own experiences, I knew that women who had birthed before had a quicker and easier time of it than first-time mothers. Nonetheless, I murmured a prayer to our sweet mother Saint Mary as Gilda and Jocea bent to their work (I assumed they worked by touch alone beneath Lady Adelie’s voluminous and heavy robes), hoping that our lady would deliver with ease. I was glad the child was about to be born, for it had sapped our lady’s strength, and I would be glad to see her recover once the child no longer ate of her flesh.

Gilda snapped at Yvette to be ready with linens in her arms, and, from my vantage point on the other side of the bed, I took a half-step closer in anticipation. I looked at Lady Adelie’s face — it was bright red and running freely with sweat, her mouth and eyes wide and agonised — and I felt a momentary pang of fear for my own inevitable days in childbed. Could men ever truly understand what they required of us?