And then the sound of something very heavy and very wet shifting across the floor.
Utter silence.
Raby and Thomas could not move. They stared at the door, as if transfixed.
The heavy, wet noise came again, and then the sound of something huge thrashing about.
The door creaked slightly, as if it were about to crack.
No one could move.
“Margaret?” Raby whispered.
Nothing … then a sob … then the thin wail of a child.
“Margaret!” Raby yelled, then he was battering away at the door with his shoulder, Thomas beside him.
Slowly, protestingly, it gave way, and the men pushed more gently, knowing they were pushing against Margaret’s body.
“Sweet Jesu!” Raby said as he managed to step through the gap they’d opened.
Thomas was a heartbeat behind him.
Margaret lay on the floor, naked now, her torn shift lying tossed to one side, her hair tangled about her, her limbs lying akimbo.
The very first thought that entered both men’s minds was how beautiful she looked, even like this.
The next was that she was dead.
Everything appeared to be covered in blood: Margaret, the floor, the stuff was even spattered against the door and walls.
Maude pushed past both men, wailed at the sight that met her eyes, but bent down to Margaret instantly. She put a hand to a pouch at her belt, took out some twine and a small knife, and busied herself with something between Margaret’s legs.
Then she stood up.
“Take this,” she said to Thomas, and bundled something warm and damp into his arms, “and go baptize it in the name of our Lord. It will not stay long in this world.”
“My lord?” Maude said to Raby. “Will you assist me lift the lady to the bed?”
As Raby moved to aid Maude, Thomas looked down at what he held in his arms.
It was a baby girl, so tiny she could almost have fitted in the palm of one of his hands. Her naked body—it was so scrawny!—was clotted with Margaret’s blood; a length of their shared umbilical cord, roughly tied off with twine, still dangled from her belly.
“Go take that thing away!” Maude said to him. “It is of no use to its mother now, and we might still save her life.”
“Come,” Joan murmured in Thomas’ ear. She put her hands on his shoulders, and
gently steered him out of the room.
Once he was outside, Joan closed the door on herself, Maude, Raby and Margaret, and Thomas found himself standing in the corridor with his tiny, dying daughter in his arms, and Thorseby, for once so shocked he was unable to speak, staring between them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Prime on the Thursday before the
third Sunday in Lent
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(daybreak 10th March 1379)
— II —
THE GIRL DREW IN A BREATH, and it was so labored that her entire body shook with the effort.
It broke Thomas’ shocked reverie, and broke through the facade of cold heartlessness he had so assiduously cultivated since Alice’s death.
Sweet Jesus, he had to warm her!
Thomas pushed past Thorseby and almost tan in his rush to get back to the hall.
Lancaster was still there, standing with the prior who had returned.
Both stared as Thomas strode into the hall, the tiny bloody scrap of flesh in his hands.
Thomas looked at Lancaster, then at the prior. “Help me!” he said.
It was the prior who acted first. He grabbed a linen cloth from a table close by and held it out to Thomas.
“Wrap her in this,” he said. “Now!”
Thomas fumbled with the linen and the girl, but finally managed to get it about her, praying with every fiber of his being that he did not break one of her fragile limbs as he did so.
“Brother Harold runs the infirmary here,” the prior said. “He will know better than anyone what to do. Thomas, come with me, please.”
BROTHER HAROLD was a lean, wispy man with the sweetest smile Thomas had ever seen.
“Give the child to me,” he said, as soon as he entered the infirmary where Thomas and the prior waited.
There was already a fire blazing in a hearth, and Harold sat on a stool with the baby in his lap. He carefully unfolded the linen from about her, then pursed his lips in concern.
“This is not a full-term infant.”
“No,” Thomas said. “I think Margaret was some seven months gone.”
Harold shook his head. “The child will not live. See, even now she struggles to breathe. Her lungs will be wet and ill-formed. Look.”
One blunt-ended finger rested gently against the girl’s chest wall. “See how she labors with each breath? She cannot get enough air in. I’m sorry, my son, but she is slowly suffocating. She will not live past noon.”
“But—” Thomas lifted a hand, helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” Harold repeated, then he looked to the prior. “Has she been baptized?”
The prior shook his head, then lifted a small vial of holy water that hung from his belt. He unstoppered it, dipped in a finger, then made the sign of the cross over the girl’s head and touched his damp fingertip to her forehead.
“I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he said. It was a perfunctory baptism only, for she should have had salt placed in her mouth and godparents named who could speak for her… but under the circumstances it was the best that could be done. And, all things considered, it was enough.
He looked to Thomas. “What is her name?”
“What is her name? Ah…” Thomas thought frantically, trying to remember the name that Margaret had given him. “Rosalind,” he said. “Her name is Rosalind.”
The prior smiled gently, feeling sorry for the man. He might be a corrupt friar, but he was a father also, and, as a father, he currently was living a nightmare.
“It is a good name,” he said, and placed his fingers gently on the girl’s face. “I baptize thee Rosalind.”
Thomas looked back to Harold. “Help her, please!”
“There is nothing I can do, my son! Ah … well… at the least I can wash her and find her some soft woolens to be wrapped in. Here, you can aid me.”
Harold fetched some warm water and, as Thomas held her in his hands, gently sponged away the birth blood. Once the girl was dry, Harold wrapped in her a square of creamy woolen cloth and handed her back to Thomas.
She was now hardly breathing at all.
Thomas looked up to Harold. “What can we do?” he whispered. Again he stood, helpless, holding the baby girl in bis arms, as he had held her in his dream in France. Sweet Jesu, he had to save the child … his child …
THOMAS CRADLED the tiny girl close to his chest and walked back to Margaret’s chamber. He had thought about the chapel, but had abandoned the idea.
Perhaps the baby would respond to Margaret’s voice and warmth more than she would to the cold impersonality of a stone church.
Maude and Lady Joan were still with Margaret, and looked mildly surprised when Thomas entered with the child, as if they had truly forgotten its existence.
“The babe still lives?” Maude said, then shrugged her shoulders without waiting for an answer. She didn’t care one way or the other.
Joan stood and smiled at Thomas, then lifted the wrap away from the baby’s face with one gentle finger.
“She’s so tiny,” she whispered.
Thomas looked at Margaret.
She was unconscious, lying flat on her back on the bed with the coverlets pulled up to her shoulders. Her hair was unbound, and lay neatly brushed over one shoulder.
Her face was gaunt and gray, her cheeks and closed eyes looking as if they were on the point of collapse.
Thomas looked back at Joan, the question in his eyes.
“We do not think she will live,” Joan said in a low voice. “She has lost most of her blood. Perhaps one of the Brothers from the infirmary might help.”
“Harold? That cursed Brother could do little for a mouse with a thorn in its tail,”
said Thomas. “I will sit with Margaret awhile. Alone, if you please.”
Joan regarded him a moment, then nodded. “Maude,” she said. “Come.”
THERE WAS a stool by the bed, and Thomas hooked it close with one foot and sat down as near to Margaret as he could.
He very gently lifted one of her arms free of the covers—it was so thin!—and then rested it down, setting the baby girl to nestle in the crook of her arm.
Margaret made no sound, nor stirred, and for long minutes the only sound in the chamber was that of the baby’s rucking, tortured breaths.
Oh, sweet Jesu, he wanted her to live! An urge to protect the child, so violent it was almost an anger, swept through Thomas. She could not die! She could not!