Birth: A Novella (9 page)

Dominic was supposed to help me. He had gone
through it before, with his natural-born son, and the mother had
survived, with a healthy child to show for it. But what if our
estrangement altered things? It was all based on communion, and
ours wasn’t really functional. I must be the one to reach out to
him, I decided, make the overture. It was essential.

There is no tradition of gift-giving at
Midwinter as there is on Terra for the vague equivalent of Xmas. I
knew, from his thoughts, that Dominic had found a gift for me
anyway, months ago, before things were so bad between us, that it
was small enough to carry on our journey, and that he had
remembered to bring it, despite everything. So perhaps there was
hope. More than that I determined not to find out, allowing him the
pleasure of a surprise if he still wished to give it to me.

I, however, had not got him a gift, or even
thought about it, disliking the whole empty procedure intensely. On
Terra it had all seemed so pointless, purchasing in secret one more
object for people who had too many possessions as it was, who
didn’t use or need half of what they owned. Here, there was more
scope for imagination, for gifts of service or ritual instead of
merchandise. I decided to spend the festival time in
observation.

In the days before Midwinter Night, I saw
that Dominic, deprived of all sexual outlets of marriage, had been
using one of the young stable hands, a small, dark-haired boy,
close to Stefan’s age and build. Dominic would visit the stables,
pretend to inquire about one of the horses, make an assignation,
and the two of them would couple—in the barn, or in an empty horse
stall at night. There was no need for such subterfuge and squalor;
the boy’s two roommates had gone to their homes and there were many
empty beds. Dominic seemed to dislike doing it in the house at all,
as he wouldn’t bring the boy to his room, either.

On the festival night there was almost no
real celebration. With a minimal kitchen staff and cleanup crew, it
would have been a very small pleasure for the huge nightmare that
would greet us the next morning. Those members of the household who
remained at Aranyi simply drank steadily after supper until their
wretched singing sounded good to them, then danced a little, just
to get the feel of each other, and paired off rather glumly. I sat
and watched, having nothing better to do, expecting Dominic to go
with his stable boy.

What he did instead scared me. He spotted a
young girl, perhaps thirteen at the most. She was the daughter of
one of the cooks, but she had rudimentary inner eyelids, one of
those many half-breed children in any ‘Graven household, fathered
at a festival perhaps, or with gifted strains in her genome from
generations back. She had a pretty face, dark red hair and a lovely
little figure, about my size and shape, before I grew as big around
as the enormous cheese wheels in the dairy house—

She looked like me
. That’s what made
Dominic notice her. He danced with her almost the entire festival,
what little there was of it, shutting his mind to the horrible
raucous singing, and he caught her up and carried her to a bedroom
as soon as the dancing ended, and he made love to her. He didn’t
fuck her, or nail her, or screw her, or all the other words that
people sometimes use for the abandon of the midseason festivals. He
was gentle with her, and kind, and he made her laugh, putting her
at ease when she was scared about being with the master. Her mother
had let her attend the festival only because she was sure, with
almost nobody here, and Margrave Aranyi
vir
, not interested
in girls, that no harm could come to her.

It was her first time, and when she cried
with the pain, Dominic said he was sorry, and he cried too. He held
the child in his arms, and soon their tears dried, and she asked
him could they try it again, and he did. In the morning, after he
showed her some of the other things men and women can do together,
he gave her one of my old dresses—the blue work dress that Madame
Leslie had made for me when I was at La Sapienza—and said she
mustn’t wear it here, but only at her own home.

Berend, who had moped through the festival,
dancing mostly with his wife as if at a conventional function,
perked up at Dominic’s surprising choice. Dominic’s stable boy was
sitting in a corner, looking as bereft as only the very young can,
and when Berend smiled and offered his hand his answering smile lit
up his whole face, making him almost handsome.

The next morning I sent the note to Lord
Roger Zichmni, inviting him and Tariq to stay at Aranyi. I used my
own stationery, that Dominic had said I must have, with my name
embossed at the top below the Aranyi cipher, a stylized A
surrounded by a Greek meander design. “We have little to offer,” I
wrote, “except the pleasure of an informal, intimate gathering
after the festival madness, and with no pressure of affairs of
state. Forgive the short notice, but take it as an act of
friendship.”

There was only a slight chance they’d be
free to accept, and less chance that they would, but it was worth a
shot. Berend showed me how to write it, worrying about the
propriety even as he spelled out words and guided my pen. “It
should come from Margrave Aranyi, under his seal, and with less
familiarity in the phrasing.”

“Then they’ll turn it down,” I said. I was
certain of that much, that Roger would throw a proper, obsequious
note from Dominic on the fire, disdaining to reply. “This way, they
at least owe it to a poor pregnant wife to make up an excuse.”

***

When Dominic and I wake again, it is another day
after the birth. We’re still lying on the soiled, blood-soaked
sheets, and the smell is truly stomach-turning. It seems nobody in
the house has the strength or the courage to lift and move master
and mistress from the bed and change the linen. It’s like sleeping
inside a rotting corpse, the way some insects live.
I’ve become
a maggot
, I think.

The child is screaming, really shrieking in
my ear. That’s what woke me up. Of the three of us, she’s the only
one wearing a diaper, but we’ve all soiled ourselves. It certainly
adds to the ambience. I’ve never been so filthy in my life.

Dominic sniffs and turns his head.
Which
of the hells of Erebos is this?
he asks in communion.
The
one for wife-beaters or the one for unfaithful spouses?

I’m in it, too
, I say.
It must be
the one for new parents
.

No
, Dominic says,
I’ve been there.
That one’s much worse.

I open my eyes. There’s a crowd of people in
here: Magali, Roger, Tariq, maids, Dominic’s stable boy and a few
others. I nudge Dominic with my elbow.
We have an audience
,
I say.

Dominic opens his eyes wide and scans the
crowd, lifting his head. “Isis and Astarte be praised,” he says,
his tired voice straining into a hoarse baritone. “With the help of
my overlord and my son, my lady wife has been safely delivered of
our daughter.” He nods at Roger and Tariq, encouraging the crowd to
offer their thanks.

People have covered nose and mouth against
the stench, but at Dominic’s formal speech they lower their hands
and echo, “Isis and Astarte be praised.” It’s my introduction to
the pagan religion whose deities will become familiar in time and
whose rites will punctuate my life. I think of the tapestries on my
bedroom wall, the fleshy, majestic goddesses who watch over
childbirth and motherhood. It was not they who saved me, but
Dominic. And it was Roger and Tariq who brought Dominic back from
the death he incurred for my sake. Piety does not come easily to my
atheistic mind, but I’m willing to follow the outward forms if it
pleases Dominic.

That’s all it requires
, he says.
You and I may know the truth, but it gives people hope,
personifying the anonymous forces of nature. And it costs us
little.

Naomi the witch comes forward from the back
of the crowd to stand on Dominic’s side of the bed. “Margrave,” she
says, ignoring me, “you did well. Forgive my absence.” She seems
almost humble, genuinely disconcerted, perhaps at not having
foreseen that I would return to Aranyi for the birth. She grins at
the screaming child. “There’s no doubt she’s yours, my lord.”

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “Was there ever
any doubt?”

Naomi shakes her head. “No.” She’s holding
something back in my presence, but I can sense it—regret, that the
child is mine, not hers, that Dominic’s wife has survived. The
witch knows I’m on to her, is unapologetic with me.
I would have
helped you
, she says privately.
I would not harm anyone dear
to Lord Dominic. Truly, Lady Amalie, I did not know you had
returned
.

It’s clear to me where we stand. She could
not, or would not, act directly against me. But neglect, omission,
oversight—these are within her range. She had gone to her home well
before there was any chance of knowing whether I had come back to
Aranyi, something even Magali had suspected might happen. In a way
the child is my protection. A mother is more sacred here than a
wife.

Amalie
, Dominic says, breaking in on
my thoughts,
remember who you are. ‘Gravina Aranyi does not
cower before anyone’s opinions.

It’s what he’s been trying to tell me, here
and at the Ormondes’, and why he couldn’t accept my explanation for
choosing death. He thinks I’m tougher than I am, or wants me to
become so. If I yell at him so boldly, how can I shrink so timidly
before his wrath? We must be two of a kind, a matched pair, quick
to anger, fierce and loud as mating cats, and neither one dominant.
It is the same in my relations with others. I should not be
deliberately discourteous, but have confidence in my own motives.
Having a tray of supper in my bedroom because I’m tired is my
prerogative. But requesting it only because I’m afraid to sit with
Lady Ormonde and encounter her dislike or jealousy—that is unworthy
of my position. Even a witch, it seems, may only think against me,
not act.

Magali’s son Wilmos is in here, too, a
foolish smile on his face, eyes only for the witch who stands, tall
and proud, looking with envy at the child. He steps closer to her
and it’s impossible to avoid his thoughts. Young man-boy, his first
time with a woman, snowed in with Naomi in her mother’s snug little
cottage. He had not wanted to come back, had hoped to be trapped
for weeks by the storm, living on the stored provisions and the
small game the two women caught, seemingly with their bare hands.
Only his basic decency, knowing the lives that were at stake, had
forced him to return on his errand, bringing Naomi to Aranyi. He
can’t help the direction of his thoughts in this room of birth,
that he could give Naomi a child, if she would allow it—

She turns her hard green eyes on him,
shaking her head. He seems to shrivel where he stands until she
takes pity on him. “Don’t you see?” she asks. “What we had was like
Midwinter night for us. We cannot be together all the year. We both
serve Aranyi first. You will find a wife when you are ready, and
mother for your children.”

He knows not to protest that he doesn’t want
a wife, wants only the wild passion, the ferocity of the sorceress.
He nods, and acquiesces, and decides that he is lucky after all, to
have had the two days and the night.

Magali cuffs her son affectionately. “Send a
boy to do a man’s errand,” she says, “and a man comes back instead
of the boy.” She’s so thankful to have him safe, and at the same
time awed and intimidated by everything that’s happened in the past
two days, that she can’t hug him the way she wants to, can only
treat him like the adult he is so much nearer to being than when he
left.

Despite the stench, I’m increasingly aware
of only one need: I’m ravenous, as I will always be so long as my
gift is strong. And I can’t believe it, that I’m lying here all
this time in filth, with everybody just standing around chatting,
like a cocktail party for larvae.

It’s traditional for the household to
view the master’s child as soon as possible
, Dominic explains,
smiling at my simile.
But you’re right, it’s time we were alone,
and clean.

It is Naomi who sees to it, muttering
against the way things have been left, snapping her fingers and
sending the men out, maids running to and fro, refilling our empty
water pitcher. Even Magali scurries downstairs to get the cooks
working on food for us. One woman stays—Isobel, Sir Karl Ormonde’s
partner of Midsummer night, the nursemaid hired by Magali. She
seems unaffected by the foulness, coming forward at Naomi’s
direction to take the child from my arms. “I’ll just wash her, my
lady,” she says soothingly at my anxious look, my clutching hands
that refuse to relinquish my baby. “I’ll clean her up and put a
fresh diaper on her while you and Margrave Aranyi bathe.”

Naomi alone helps Dominic out of the bed and
onto his feet, removing her own clothes to keep them from being
soiled. I watch, expecting the androgynous being to reveal itself.
But no, she’s completely and only female in form, tall and with
absurdly narrow hips, but with breasts and vagina and nothing
more.

Dominic leans all his weight on her and she
doesn’t stagger as she helps him into his bathroom. Then it’s my
turn. The witch’s arms, hard and muscular as any man’s, lift me as
easily as Isobel lifted the baby. A moment of communion begins, one
naked body carrying another, and I perceive a being whose gift is
an extension of its vitality, inseparable. The force of my own
gift, that always threatens to overwhelm my lesser physical
strength, makes the witch stumble over the threshold of my
bathroom. Her arms tighten around me; she stares at me,
into
me
, but the connection breaks, the budding insight withers, as
Naomi settles me in the bathtub and Katrina takes over.