Tidelands Read online

  “Spirits’ll come in,” the maid whispered. “Don’t let spirits in!”

  “No, they won’t,” Alinor ruled. “Shall we get you into a clean nightgown?”

  Margaret’s mother came through the door with a bowl of water. “Thank you,” Alinor said, taking it at the threshold and heading her off. “And the mulled ale?”

  “We could all do with a glass,” the woman agreed, and went back to the kitchen as Alinor closed the door.

  “Why don’t you sit down and let me wash your face and hands?” Alinor suggested.

  Margaret protested faintly that washing must be dangerous in her condition, but she watched Alinor add some lavender oil to the warm water. The sharp clean scent filled the room and Alinor gently patted Margaret’s temples and the back of her neck with the warm water and the oil, washed her hands, taking them gently and rubbing them with oil, and then washed her own.

  Margaret sighed and then held her big belly and groaned. “I feel as if my guts are turning over.”

  “So you should,” Alinor said with satisfaction.

  “I don’t want to lie on the birthing bed,” Margaret protested.

  “Not if you don’t want,” Alinor said pleasantly. “You can stand or sit or kneel as you like. But let’s be still and calm.”

  “I have to walk about. I feel so restless!”

  “Walk in a moment,” Alinor suggested. “But sit still now while they bring you some ale to drink.”

  “Is it going to take a long, long time?” Margaret demanded nervously. “Is it going to be torture?”

  “Oh, no,” Alinor said. “Think of a hen laying an egg. It might be quite easy.”

  Margaret—who had been filled with terrors by the older women—looked incredulously at her young midwife and saw her confident smile. “Easy?” she demanded.

  “It might be,” Alinor said smiling. “Perhaps.”

  It was not as easy as a hen laying an egg, but it was not torture, and Margaret did not see the gates of heaven opening up before her, as her mother-in-law had confidently predicted. She gave birth to a boy, as her husband secretly wanted, and Alinor, receiving the miracle of the bloodstained, warm, squirming baby into her steady hands, wrapped him in a clean linen cloth and laid him on his mother’s breast.

  “Is he all right?” Margaret whispered, as the other women in the room—the two mothers and three friends who had arrived to bear them company—drained a glass of birth ale to the mother and baby.

  “He’s perfect,” Alinor said, snipping and tying off the cord. “You did very well.”

  “Shall you baptize him?”

  “No, he’s in no danger, and the new churchmen don’t like it done by a midwife.”

  Quietly and carefully she washed Margaret’s parts and bound them up with moss. “I will come later today and every day for a week with fresh moss,” Alinor promised.

  “And you will stay,” the girl insisted. “And help me with him?”

  “I will.” Alinor smiled. “As long as you want me. But you will see, soon you won’t want anyone in your way. He will like you best.”

  The young wife looked torn between fear and love. “Will he? Won’t he prefer . . .” her eyes slid to her overbearing mother-in-law, “. . . someone who knows what to do? Better than me?”

  “You will find he is all yours,” Alinor confidently predicted. “For him there will be no one better than you. And both of you will learn what you like best together.”

  “Can I see my son? Can I see him?” was the shouted demand from the other side of the bedroom door. Farmer Johnson would not be allowed into the bedroom nor see his wife for another four weeks, but his mother carried his son out to him. They could hear the loud exclamations and blessings, and his words of love for his young wife, and then Mrs. Johnson brought the baby back in again.

  “He won’t have the baby baptized at church,” she said in a shocked undertone to Alinor. “Says it’s papist ritual and a God-fearing father names his own child at home. What d’you think of that, Mrs. Reekie?”

  Alinor shook her head, refusing to be drawn into the new argument. “I don’t know the rights and wrongs of it.”

  “And he says she’s not to be churched.” Margaret’s mother nodded at her dozing daughter. “How can that be right?”

  Alinor maintained her silence: all the new church sects were determined to be rid of all ritual, to cut any traditions that were not named in the Bible. “He’s a godly man,” she said diplomatically. “He must know what’s right.”

  “Says he’s prayed on it,” Margaret’s mother sniffed. “And so my girl gets up and goes about her work without a blessing. What about giving thanks for escaping death and danger?”

  “We can all give thanks that she had a safe birth,” Alinor said. “In church or out of it.”

  “Thanks are due to you too,” the older woman said. “You have all your mother’s gifts. You have a way with a woman at her time that is like magic.”

  It was a dangerous word to use, even in praise. The older women turned and looked at Alinor to see what she might admit.

  “There’s no magic,” Alinor insisted. “It’s not magic. Don’t say such a thing! It’s just trusting to the Lord and having attended so many births.”

  “And yet you don’t have a license from the bishop?”

  “I had my license, of course; but His Grace hasn’t been seen in his palace at Chichester for months, not since the siege. I’ve asked, and asked, but nobody knows how a midwife gets her license now.”

  Both older women shook their heads. “Well, someone has to give you a license,” Mrs. Johnson ruled. “For there isn’t a woman in all of Sealsea Island who would have anyone else attend them.”

  “Though it was a pity about your sister-in-law,” Mrs. Johnson added.

  An old pang of grief shook Alinor. “Yes,” she agreed. “Some things are mysteries. It’s God’s will, not ours. I’m so glad that Margaret came through safe.”

  “And a man midwife is just ungodly. What shameless woman would want a man at a time like this?”

  “I’m glad it went so well,” Alinor said, gathering up her things: the sharp knife for cutting the cord, the clean string for tying it off, the oils in the bottles, the tincture of arnica and the St. John’s Wort for the bruising and the pain. “I’ll come back this afternoon.”

  “Come in the morning?” Margaret’s sleepy voice came from the bed.

  “It’s morning already,” Alinor said, lifting the corner of the tapestry and seeing the pearly light of the summer day. “Your first morning as a mother. Your baby’s first dawn.”

  “You’ll see a lot more dawns,” her mother-in-law predicted grimly. “All the babies in our family wake early.”

  The young wife was drowsy on her pillow in the best bed. “Don’t be late.” She opened her eyes and smiled at Alinor. “I shall look for you this afternoon.”

  “I won’t be late,” Alinor promised. “You can count on me.”

  Farmer Johnson sent her home in the clear dawn light, riding pillion on his horse behind the groom, to her brother’s ferry-house. Alinor was seated high on the plow horse, a tiny crescent moon like a clipped silver coin in the light sky above her, water rising in the rife, when she saw a figure on the other side. He was riding down the road towards the ferry. She recognized him at once: James Summer, the man she loved, come home to her as he promised, within the month.

  Alinor dismounted from the farmer’s horse, said a word of thanks to the stable lad, and stood and watched her brother pull the ferry over the water, hand over hand on the overhead rope. She saw James lead his horse down the bank, and its nervous steps onto the rocking ferry. The two men crossed in silence, and then they went either side of the horse to lead it off the ferry and up the cobbled bank on the island side.

  “He should know it by now, he’s done it a dozen times,” Ned remarked to James, patting the horse. “I’ve seen horses get used to cannon and musket fire within a day. He’s an island horse,