Royal Mistress (71 page)

“I am glad you have found the life that suits you, William, as I have found mine.” Then she raised her eyes to his. “All I required from you was a child. I suppose now we both have what we wanted.”

“We made each other unhappy, did we not, Jane? I have had many years to regret what happened, but aye, I am contented with my lot.” He paused, and then without warning his civility vanished. “I always knew you were immoral. I cannot pretend I was not grateful to be out of the country during your debauched liaison with the king. You are a harlot and always have been. At least my reputation stayed intact and my business flourished.”

Jane scrambled out of the chair as fast as her condition allowed. Her eyes blazing, she prodded his bony chest and cried, “Aye, your business flourished thanks to the helpful hand from my royal lover. And your lack of manhood pushed me into his arms. Why, you even encouraged me to preen before him, don’t you remember?” She turned away in disgust. “I do not think we have any more to say to each other, so either I should take my leave or you should decline dinner.”

“Very well. I will make my excuses,” William snapped, two spots reddening on his cheeks, and taking two long, purposeful strides, he left the room.

Jane sank back into her chair, feeling the perspiration running
down her face and neck, dismayed at the feelings of shame and guilt that his words had reawakened. What quirk of fate brought him here today, she could not imagine, but she had hoped that part of her life was closed now as surely as the door she heard shut behind William below.

She felt the baby kicking as if in protest, and she cradled her belly, whispering: “Hush, sweeting, the odious, spiteful man has gone, and, God willing, gone for good.”

A
fter a glorious September, October ushered in a nip in the air, and one morning Jane and Thomas awoke to the sparkling magic of Jack Frost’s early visit. Jane’s confinement had begun, and a night spent tossing in search of a comfortable position had left her voluminous nightshirt damp with perspiration. For two weeks now, she had experienced false spasms and a nagging backache. She heaved herself out of bed and waddled to the window.

“Come and see, Thomas,” she exclaimed. “How beautiful!” The edges of the glass windowpanes were rimed in delicate icy patterns that framed the garden etched with white. Thomas joined her, wrapping his arms around her taut, distended belly, and thrilled to the responding bulge that moved slowly under his fingers, as if the babe were greeting its father. He could not wait to hold his child and prayed it would be a little girl who would have her mother’s green-gray eyes—or were they yellow and gray or hazel and green? He could never quite tell. He knew Jane wanted to give him a son, but with so many Lynehams populating the north of England, he really did not care. The baby was to be called Julyan, as the name could be used as much for a girl as for a boy. Thomas told Jane those who carried the name valued truth and justice. “I think we both esteem those characteristics highly. What do you think?” And Jane had been delighted with his choice.

“It seems to me I am having to reach lower to put my arms
around you, my dear,” he said softly. “It seems to me the babe has moved down.”

“Since when have you learned the language of birthing, husband?” Jane laughed. “Next, you will be demanding to be by my side during the delivery. You know ’tis forbidden. I would not object, in truth, but my mother would. As for Goody Long, from all I have heard of her, she might throw boiling water over you.”

“Nay,” Thomas said, shuddering at the thought of Jane in pain, “I shall wish to be as far away in the house as I can be with a large jug of wine to numb my nerves. But I shall be downstairs, I promise.”

A sudden dull stab caused Jane’s belly to tighten, and she gave a little cry. It had a different characteristic this time, she noticed. “It may be that you should send for Mother and the midwife this morning, Thomas,” she told him.

Thomas let her go, his face a picture of anxiety. “Now? Today? Are you sure?”

Jane smiled at him. “Aye, now, my dear. And make certain the doors and windows are cracked open. We want to evict all evil spirits, do we not?”

Privately Thomas thought this superstition a waste of time, but he was not about to irritate his wife today, so he assured her all would be as she asked, and making her comfortable back in bed, hurried off to send his servant to Hosier Lane.

Thomas had no sooner left the room, when Jane felt the water gushing between her legs. Sophie had warned her this might be the first sign of the oncoming labor, and she called out for Ankarette and Nurse Isabel to bring clean rags and ready the birthing chair. As the two servants bustled about the chamber, stoking the fire, fetching a pot of water to boil, and piling laundered strips of bedsheets upon a stool to use as rags, Jane tried to remain calm by picking up the printed book Thomas had recently purchased. She
had been intrigued to see that Master Chaucer had included a story about a lawyer in his
Canterbury Tales,
and she became deeply involved with the dramatic story of the Christian daughter of a Roman emperor sent to marry a sultan. She smiled at the lines:

Constance, mild and true,

And humble, heavy with her child, lay still

Within her chamber, waiting on Christ’s will . . .

Suddenly, another spasm made her drop the book and clutch her stomach.

“Is the midwife here yet?” Jane asked. She hoped she did not sound as afraid as she was feeling, but she would have been comforted to know help was near.

Ankarette dipped a rag in the tepid water and wiped her mistress’s flushed face. “There, there, ’tis too early to be concerned, sweetheart,” she cooed, and Jane had to smile. Ankarette was only five years her senior, and yet in times of crisis, the good servant became a mother hen. “This may go on all day, so put your nose back in the book and rest easy. Both Isabel and I have attended births before, so you have naught to fear.”

All the same, Jane was much relieved to hear her mother’s voice on the stairs an hour later, and when the two newcomers came into the heated room, Jane gave them a wan smile of welcome, although she was dismayed by the number and depth of the midwife’s wrinkles. Would this old woman be up to the task? she wondered. For her part, Goody Long was equally dismayed when she looked Jane up and down. “Such a big weight for such a small lass. ’Twill be a long, hard day,” she confided to Ankarette.

No one had expected the labor to last so long into the night, and Thomas fell asleep in his chair in the hall after midnight and only awoke when one of the women came hurrying down on an
errand. He would then send a new loving message to the weary Jane, giving her courage to persevere.

“You are truly loved,” Amy told her, well into the night. “The man has not stopped pacing for hours.”

Goody Long might have more wrinkles than a slept-in shift, but she had the stamina of an Araby horse, which Edward had told Jane could run for as many as four hours at a time. The old woman’s beard hair could rival a mare’s mane, Jane thought to herself as the midwife leaned in close to check Jane’s paps. “Plenty there to feed the wee mite,” she said, cackling, her surprisingly strong hands expertly working their way down Jane’s body as she checked this and that. There was something in the practical, temperate manner that instilled confidence in Jane, and as yet another and stronger wave of pain assailed her, she listened carefully to the woman’s instructions as her body prepared to expel the too-large object from the narrow birth canal.

The pains were coming closer together, and each time one tightened its grip on her, Goody Long encouraged her to take quick, short breaths.

“How much longer, Mother?” Jane demanded after night fell, believing she could endure no more. Why had she wanted a child all these years? Why would a woman go through this more than once? And then she remembered: ’Twas all because of Eve’s first sin, and during her next pain, she roundly cursed her female ancestor.

“It will not be long now, Jane,” Amy soothed when the bell for matins rang. In her weariness, she wondered why someone bothered to ring the bell when only those cloistered communities would heed a call to prayer in the middle of the night.

“Dear God, I want to push. Can I push, goodwife?” she asked. The urge was overwhelming and she began to satisfy it.

The midwife frowned as she inspected Jane’s condition, inserting her hand up the widening orifice and feeling for the position
of the babe’s limbs and head. “Nay, you must not yet. You must fight it,” she cried. “Blow hard and keep blowing.”

Jane was exhausted but she blew, and Amy and Ankarette blew with her. For more than half an hour Jane blew until she begged to push again. Amy stroked her daughter’s damp hair and held her hand. Then Goody Long said, “Come, child, ’tis time to get onto the chair,” and relieved, Amy and Ankarette supported the weakened Jane the few steps to the hard, backward-sloping chair. The midwife instructed Amy to sit behind Jane and brace her. As Jane lowered herself onto the broad wooden seat, she screamed as a new and searing pain between her legs now alarmed her, and her tears came unbidden.

“It hurts me too much to sit.” She wept, arching her back off the uncomfortable seat and trying to get up.

“She may be torn inside,” Goody Long surmised. Her many years of experience and the Mercers Guild’s gift to her of Trotula’s treatise on
The Sickness of Women
told her that her skills would be put to the test this night. “Let us put her back on the bed.” Then she told Isabel to place the large jasper stone between Jane’s breasts and start praying to St. Margaret. She put her hand inside Jane, and a scowl informed Amy all was not as it should be. Under her breath the midwife rattled off every curse she could think of: “By Christ and his saints! God blind me! By the nails on the Cross and the Blood on the thorns! Hell’s bells! God’s truth!”

“What is it?” Amy asked the expert softly. “What is wrong?”

“The babe is facing away,” the goodwife mumbled, shaking. “ ’Tis not a good sign. We must make the bed as hard as we can.”

Ankarette tweaked Isabel’s sleeve and said, “I know where there is a trestle top. Come with me.” The two ran from the room.

Jane was panting again now as the midwife had demanded: “It helps to stay the need to push.”

When the soft mattress had been replaced by the hard wooden plank and Jane was lying upon it, her head tipped over the edge,
as had been depicted in Trotula’s illustration, Goody Long asked Amy for the butter she had brought with her and liberally smeared her right hand and wrist with it. Jane flinched as she felt the probing fingers inside her, but she tried instead to concentrate on the flowers embroidered on the canopy above her head. Giving a grunt of satisfaction, the midwife found what she was looking for and, cradling the back of the baby’s head in her palm and with her thumb upon one temple and her fingers on the other, she rotated it with a gentle twist.

“And now you may push, Mistress Jane,” she directed as she slowly withdrew her hand, “and as much as you like.”

With relieved groans, Jane did as she was told, her strength at its lowest point, and she, too, prayed to the patron saint of childbirth to end the ordeal. Suddenly, a broad grin wreathed the midwife’s wrinkled face and the baby was expelled in a gush of blood and birthing fluids.

“You have a daughter, mistress,” Goody Long declared, pleased with herself.

Ankarette took the child as the midwife tied off and cut the cord, and holding the infant upside down, she gave it a couple of smacks on the long, thin back. The resulting cry made Jane’s eyes fly open and a tired smile greeted her child. After rubbing the protesting babe with salt to clean off the birthing fluid, Ankarette wrapped her in a clean cloth and proudly presented her to Jane, as though she herself were the grandmother.

“Your work is well done, mistress,” Goody Long praised Jane, after dealing efficiently with the afterbirth, as the first rays of dawn were filtering through the cracks of the shutters. “There will be more blood, but unless it is bright red and does not stop, ’tis to be expected.” She plunged her hands into the basin of hot water and looked around at the others. “God was kind to us today. A backward-seated babe can kill a mother, but this little lass wants to know her ma,” she said cheerfully as Amy burst into tears. “This
is only the third time I have had success with this kind of birth in all my years. She is a beauty,” she said proudly, watching with the others as Jane held the little girl to her breast.

“Her name is Julyan,” Jane told them, enjoying the sound of it. “Perhaps someone would be kind enough to let Thomas know he has a daughter.”

Amy volunteered and left the room.

“I thank you with all my heart, Goody Long. Your skill is unmatched,” Jane said, praising the beaming midwife. “What is your given name?”

“Mary, Mistress,” she replied.

“Then my child shall be Julyan Mary,” Jane told the woman. “I shall tell her that she came into this world with the same helping hands that brought me here. ’Tis a miracle.”