Then Lady Adelie gave a yelp of sheer pain, and Gilda and Jocea tugged, and suddenly there was a rush of liquid and I caught a glimpse of a bundle of new, wet skin in the midwives’ hands. Jocea tied the cord, biting it free with her teeth, and Gilda scooped up the newborn infant and delivered it into Yvette’s waiting linen-draped arms.
I was torn between attending Lady Adelie or rushing to where Yvette and Evelyn now huddled over the infant, dabbing at it with a washcloth and some dry linen. My mind was made up for me by Gilda, who snapped at me to help them move Lady Adelie to the bed.
Lady Adelie was quite faint from pain and effort, and Gilda, Jocea and myself had to carry her to the bed. In the doing, the two midwives also stripped off the outer woollen robe, now soiled with sweat and birth fluids, and bundled it to one side.
‘She will need a wash down,’ Jocea said, and I nodded, fetching a basin of tepid water that had been put aside a while since. I carried it to the bed, along with linens and towels. Gilda was clearing away the birthing stool and the mess around it, and Jocea said she would help me wash Lady Adelie down.
‘The afterbirth has yet to come,’ Jocea said. ‘When it does, mind you do not break it, for it shall need to be buried whole.’ I nodded again, already familiar with the knowledge that it was truly bad luck for the infant if its afterbirth was broken.
Jocea and I leaned the still fainting and limp Lady Adelie forward so we might strip off her soiled linen shift.
God’s bones, I thought, she will be glad enough to be rid of this foul garment!
Just then I heard Yvette call my name and I looked up. Yvette was staring frantically at me, although Evelyn was looking down at the baby, frowning, a washcloth frozen in her hand in its journey from washbowl to the baby.
‘No!’ cried Yvette to me, and I wondered, in this last moment of sanity for the coming weeks, what she wanted.
No … what?
Jocea was pulling hard at our lady’s shift and I automatically tugged with her, the shift finally pulling over our lady’s head as I stared in puzzlement at Yvette.
‘No,’ Yvette whispered, but my attention on her was broken by Jocea’s low hiss of horror.
I looked down at our lady, naked now in the flickering light, and for one long moment could not comprehend what I saw.
First I wondered why she had yet another garment on beneath her linen shift.
Then my mind turned to wondering if a wild beast had crawled into the bed.
Then my eyes blinked and I realised what they saw.
Lady Adelie’s shoulders, upper arms, breasts and back were covered by a thick furry layer of yellow fungus, lined and ridged with her sweat.
There were patches of fungus lower down, too, on her still distended belly and her upper thighs.
I blinked again, my eyes seeing, but my brain refusing to comprehend what I saw.
Lady Adelie regained some of her senses and she raised her face to mine.
She moaned, softly, then coughed — that dry hacking cough I had heard so often during the night when I lay in the solar.
A whiff of smoke came from her mouth.
Looking back now, from so many years, I still don’t know what I thought at that moment. I think I was in such shock, my brain was refusing to comprehend, because comprehension would have been too much.
Lady Adelie coughed again.
Yvette was at my side tugging the sheets about my lady’s strange body, and something in my mind registered that somehow she had known about this … and I thought of all those mornings in the past few weeks when I had gone into my lady’s chamber to find her already up and clothed …
Lady Adelie pushed away Yvette’s hands, and fell into a spasm of coughing.
And then, sweet Jesu save me from all the horrors of this tainted earth, I saw a faint wisp of smoke curling up from the fungus on my lady’s back.
I looked, blinked, looked again, and in that instant a flame spurted. Before I or anyone else could cry out, or act, our beautiful Lady Adelie was engulfed in flames.
I find it difficult to speak now of the dreadfulness that ensued over the next few minutes, but I must, because from it followed all the horrors of the subsequent weeks.
Jocea, Yvette and I were closest to our lady, but all three of us were frozen with terror. Then, suddenly, I found myself able to act, and I seized a heavy coverlet from the foot of the bed and tried to smother our lady’s flames with it. I heard screaming and realised that the sound issued from my own mouth, among others, but I kept trying to smother the flames, even though they beat at my own skin.
Poor, piteous Lady Adelie. Through it all her eyes never left my face and I could see her lips moving through the fire. I don’t know what she tried to say, but I hoped then, as I do now, that it was a prayer for her soul.
I heard the sudden bang of the outer door being thrust open, and then Stephen was at my side, and Owain, and I felt myself shoved to one side as both men covered our lady in blankets and coverlets, shouting all the while for water.
I stumbled away, seeking one of the many bowls of water which littered the chamber. I found one, finally, and carried it back to the bed in shaking hands, to have it snatched by Owain and its contents dumped over Lady Adelie.
She was blackened all over, her mouth a gaping rictus of agony, her eyes still staring, now from lidless cradles.
Others carried water hence — Evelyn, Yvette, Gilda — until all that was in the chamber had been poured over our lady’s form.
I saw her manage to raise one crisped arm for Owain to grasp the blackened claw that had once been her hand.
I don’t know how he managed to touch it, let alone hold it as firmly as he did, for I know that I could not have done so.
Owain was chanting prayers, his voice harsh with horror.
I backed away, using as my excuse the number of people crowded about our lady’s bed, until I felt the sharp edge of a chest in the back of my legs. I half turned, grateful to have something else to look at and saw Lady Adelie’s child lying in his linens on the top of the chest.
A tiny boy, left half unwashed and unattended as his minders had fled to his mother’s bed.
I took a deep breath and cried out, for even the infant’s thin, half-starved body was covered with the vile yellow fungus.
He tried to cry and a wisp of smoke appeared, and my hand rushed down to his mouth, hoping that I could stop the nightmare before it became any worse.
But I was too late.
The child, too, was engulfed in flames.
Again I grabbed some heavy cloth close to hand and tried to smother the flames — there was no more water in the chamber, and it was an impossibility to run down flights of stairs to fetch more. I was more successful this time with this tinier body, and I thought I had succeeded in smothering the flames. I lifted a corner of the cloth carefully, to look, and a sheet of flame almost roared out at me.
I stumbled back reflexively, then felt hands grab my shoulders and pull me away.
Stephen.
He seized the bundle of cloth and flesh that was his younger brother, even though flames lapped at his hands, and half carried, half threw him onto the stone slab that sat before the fireplace, it’s own fire now burning low.
Then Stephen stepped back.
He saw my face. ‘We cannot save him,’ he said. ‘Let him burn. Owain can tend his soul later.’
At the time I thought them terrible words, but now, looking back, I know Stephen was as shocked and numbed as I. The baby meant little to him, his mother everything.
I turned back to the bed.
Everything smoked. The bedclothes and sheets, the hangings about the bed, even a small rug at the foot of the bed, but there were no more flames.
I forced myself to look to the thing that lay still and blackened on the bed. Sweet Mary, let her be dead!
I think she was, then, for everyone about the bed — the two midwives, Evelyn, Yvette, Owain, and Stephen — were still and staring.
The only sound was the harsh strain of Owain’s voice, and the only movement that of his hand as he blessed and prayed for the soul of our sweet Lady Adelie, Countess of Pengraic.