Tidelands Read online

  “She’s not a heifer waiting to calve!” Mrs. Grace objected.

  “If I have to help the baby out, it’s better,” Alinor said quietly.

  “She’ll catch her death!” the woman warned.

  The young woman was growing uneasy, her moans of pain coming more quickly. “Is it now?” she asked Alinor.

  “It’s soon,” Alinor confirmed. “Do you want to kneel up on the bed?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know . . .”

  “You see where you feel best,” Alinor advised her, and watched the girl move around, now leaning over the bed, now lying down. Finally, she settled on the wooden floor, her back against the bed, and the older women gave her a peeled wand of wood to bite and offered her a rope to heave on during the birth. Alinor stood back until they started to speak of the ordeal that was coming and that it might last for hours, even days, and how they had suffered. Then she stepped forward.

  “The baby is coming,” she told the young woman. “Just let it come. There’s no need for pulling on a rope. All the work is in your belly.”

  Wide-eyed, the girl saw Alinor’s face shining with calm conviction. “This is the best day’s work we will ever do,” Alinor said. “Let the baby come.”

  The girl squatted, holding to the post of the bed, her belly standing up, every muscle rigid, and she groaned. Alinor knelt before her, watching her frightened face, calming her with a hand on her shoulder. She could see her belly standing up in a spasm, and urged her to push and then rest.

  “I can feel! I can feel it . . .”

  The women wailed in a wordless chorus with her. “That’s right,” Alinor said, intently watching the young woman. Then finally she said: “Wait, wait, I can see the head!”

  There was a gasp of pleasure and excitement in the room, and everyone crowded closer. “Here you are,” said Alinor, her voice filled with joy as she gently took hold of the baby’s head and slippery shoulders and, moving with the mother’s rhythm, swaying with her, brought the baby into the world. Skillfully she held it by its feet, like a writhing mackerel, and slapped it gently on the back to clear the breath, and then bent her head and sucked the baby’s nose and mouth and spat the liquor and blood on the floor. There was a brief silence, a waiting silence, and they all heard the muffled cough and then the wail as the newborn baby breathed air for the first time.

  “A girl,” Alinor said. “A girl.” The cord still pulsed, and the baby opened her mouth and cried. Alinor looked at the perfect hands, the wrinkled skin smeared with white wax and blood, the dark hair plastered on the tiny head, and the small flushed protesting face. She felt the tears rush to her eyes and bit her lip to prevent herself from weeping for pity and joy. “A girl,” she said again. “A precious girl, a gift from God Himself.”

  “Mrs. Reekie, are you all right yourself?” someone asked, and Alinor, recalled to her work, turned to the mother and with her hand still on the pulsing birth cord, delivered the afterbirth. Mrs. Grace held out the shawl that she had kept for her grandchild, and Alinor wrapped the tiny baby closely and handed her to the grandmother, as the young mother climbed onto the bed and Alinor sponged her parts and bound them with moss, her hands moving with their skill while her head was dizzy with the realization that this baby was a precious gift of life, that every baby was precious beyond imagining, that no baby should be lost if they could be saved, if they could have a life where they were loved and cherished.

  All the women crowded around, passing the baby from one to another, admiring her and cooing over her. When the baby came back to Alinor, she tied off the cord, snipped it neatly, and handed the baby to the mother. “Here,” she said. “Your little girl.”

  It was as if the baby had come to Alinor’s hands to bring her a message, like the robin might sing in her hedge or the seagulls cry over her cottage. “God bless her, and make her well and strong,” Alinor said, watching the tiny little head and the way that the dark blue eyes blinked open to see the world for the very first time.

  Young Lisa Auster was flushed and proud, leaning back on the heaped bedding, her neighbors crowding round to see the baby and kiss her.

  “Let’s put her to the breast,” Alinor suggested, and waited while the young mother and the baby fumbled towards each other, putting one gentle hand on Mrs. Grace’s arm to stop her from interfering.

  “Is that right?” the young mother asked. “I don’t know if that’s right.” Then she grimaced as the baby latched on.

  “That’s right!” Alinor said, beaming with a sense of inexplicable joy. “And it will hurt more, before it hurts less, but you will feel the foremilk come down and you can see the baby is sucking.”

  She watched the two of them for a moment and then she realized that she was standing, smiling in silence, as if she had realized something of great importance at this poor fishwife’s bedside that she had never known before.

  “It is a gift,” she whispered. “Life. Precious.”

  “I hoped it would have a caul,” Mrs. Grace said. “All of us fishwives would like our babies born with a caul, to protect against drowning.”

  Alinor nodded. “I know.”

  “If you have a caul or even a part of one, I would buy it from you?”

  “No, I don’t trade in such things.”

  “I thought you were a wisewoman with herbs and secret things?”

  “Just herbs,” Alinor said levelly. “No secret things.”

  “Not faerie gold? I heard you had faerie gold.”

  “I pick up little tokens and pretty shells when I see them. Nothing more than that. Just keepsakes, nothing with any meaning.”

  “I thought a woman might come to you for all sorts of needs?”

  “I’ve got a need. You could give my old man a potion!” someone interrupted, to bawdy laughter.

  Alinor smiled as if she thought it was funny, though she was tired of the question. “I’m sorry, but I only have herbs for illnesses. I sell herbs and attend births, and sometimes I do nursing. I have to take care, Mrs. Grace. You will understand. I have to take care of my good name.”

  The woman nodded, disbelieving. “But they say you can do all sorts of things. They say you speak to the other world. And they help you.”

  Alinor shook her head. “I can do nothing better than this,” she insisted, looking once again at the girl lying back exhausted in the bed, her face alight with joy, and the baby suckling at her breast. “I think there is nothing finer than this in the whole world. This world—I know nothing about any other.”

  “Is she well?” Lisa asked. “She’s feeding well, isn’t she?”

  Alinor smiled at her. “She’s very well, and when your husband comes home, he will love you both. And now . . .” Alinor started to collect up the bottles of oil and the box of dried moss, and pack them in her sack. “Now I’ll go home to my cottage. And if you wish, I’ll come back tomorrow to see how you do.”

  “Jem can go with you with a lantern,” Mrs. Grace offered, producing a sixpence. “And I will pay you another shilling when you come tomorrow. I am grateful, Mrs. Reekie. We both are. I hope we have your goodwill? I hope the baby has your good wishes?”

  “It is my joy. Praise God,” Alinor said, hardly hearing the odd question. She said good night to the other women, hefted her sack, pulled her cape around her and put her hood over her head, and followed Jem’s wavering light up the narrow lanes of East Beach.

  It was too dark to go across the harbor with the tide coming in, so they went the long way, up the Chichester road, north till they saw the light from the window of Ferry-house. Jem went all the way ahead of her, lantern held high at his side to light her path, as if he was afraid to walk abreast with a wisewoman. He only paused when they got to the brink of the rife and the reflection of the moon, silver on the water, made his lantern seem yellow and weak.

  “I’m safe from here,” Alinor said. “I know the way, even in the dark. You can go home.”

  He ducked his head and though she held out half a penny