The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) (24 page)

‘There,’ Reyora said getting to her feet. ‘’Tis the custom to cut all knots on the clothes, as a symbol of cutting the umbilicus. It is sympathetic magic.’ Then she cut the skirt from top to bottom and opened it exposing Analee’s belly and thighs completely. Before she could protest at the destruction of her lovely skirt, bought in the happy days with money earned from dancing, Analee felt the pain again, stronger this time. It went round in a tight circle from her navel to her back. She arched her back compulsively and bit her knuckles to stop herself screaming.

Reyora leaned down and felt her belly which was now a seething rippling mass. She knelt beside her and massaged it gently, with her long supple fingers. The pain went and Analee gazed gratefully at her.

‘Do not leave me alone.’

Reyora said nothing but continued with the soothing massage, right over the belly, between the legs, across the back, easing and helping. Every time there was a pain it did not last so long. But suddenly Reyora got up, leaned over and gave Analee a piece of cloth. ‘Bite on this if the pain is too bad. I must go.’ Then she left the tent, drawing back the curtain so that it was quite dark inside.

Analee sweated now in fear and pain, her breath grew shorter and her whole body seemed alive with one long agony. The pain went, but never for long and never completely. It was dark in the tent but outside she knew it was day; soon it would be dark outside as well, pitch dark. Then inside the tent it would be black. Analee wished Reyora had left her knife so that she could plunge it in her breast and kill herself.

But somehow she survived; even when the night fell and it was so black she could not see the rest of her body. Then suddenly when she had almost despaired there was a soft voice, a hand pressed hers.

‘Analee, I have come back to you. I can’t leave you by yourself. I care not what the
cohani
says. I know what it’s like when I had my own baby, and my mother and sisters were there. I waited for nightfall so that no one could see.’

Analee pressed her hand and, drawing the thin face down to hers, kissed it.

‘You will be my friend forever, Nelly.’

‘I have brought water and some bread. How
can
they leave you like this?’

‘It is the custom,’ Analee smiled bitterly in the dark. ‘Also they don’t like me. Randal captured me and they have never accepted me. Even Reyora, who is not as bad as the rest, wants to let me suffer, tame me and teach me a lesson.’

‘She is kind. She was very good with my mother – gave her a potion that immediately brought the colour to her cheeks.’

‘She is limited by what she is and who she is and where she is. She –’

The pain stabbed again, this time ten times worse across the small of Analee’s back. She twisted and would have screamed but for the rag Reyora had left her, now wet with her saliva. The pain in the back was so bad that it seemed to consume her entire body, and her stomach felt hot as though there was a fire inside it.

This continued through the night, and the misery of the long hours was only relieved by the presence of Nelly who comforted her with soothing words, and assuaged the pain by rubbing her belly and back with a cloth soaked in water and then moistening her lips.

At dawn the curtain parted and Reyora entered again. She stood for a long time gazing down at the tormented face and twisted body of Analee. Then she knelt and prodded her abdomen with her hands, and felt gently inside. Her face looked worried. She ignored Nelly.

‘The pain, it is all in my back,’ Analee gasped.

‘The baby has turned,’ Reyora said shortly, ‘the head is the wrong way. It will be a long labour. The waters should have broken. I will fetch the
phuri-dai
.’
She got up and went quickly to the entrance. ‘What does she mean?’ Nelly whispered.

‘I am going to die.’

‘No you are not!’

‘I cannot bear the pain any more. The baby has turned: it is trapped.’

Analee arched again and this time the spasm was unbearable. She screamed aloud, forgetting about the rag. She knew the scream would be heard by the whole camp and the women would be glad that she suffered so, and maybe Randal would be glad because it would teach her a lesson and tame her.

‘I cannot bear it ...’ she gasped and the curtains parted again and Reyora came in, followed by old Rebecca.

They both stood for a long time looking at Analee watching her twist about, trying to stifle her screams.

‘I am dying,’ she called to them, pleading to them to help.

Rebecca shook her head and held aloft a round object between her forefinger and thumb, which, in the dim light, Analee could see was an egg.

Reyora looked at Rebecca and nodded. Muttering an incantation in
romani
Rebecca dropped the egg so that it fell on the ground between Analee’s legs.

‘
Anro, anro hin olkes

 Te e pera hin obles

 Ara cavo sastovestes

 Devia, devla, tut akharel’
(The egg, the egg is round ... all is round ... little child come in health ... God, God, is calling you.)

Reyora scooped up the broken yolk of the egg and rubbed it against Analee’s thighs, up over the heaving belly.

‘It is a spell, an incantation,’ she said, ‘to help with the birth when it is slow. See, you will soon be better.’

She leaned over Analee, staring into her dark pain-filled eyes, the eyelids heavy and drooping with weariness. ‘It will be soon,’ she whispered.

Suddenly Analee felt a rush of liquid between her legs and cried out again, thinking it was blood. She was dying. Reyora saw it too and smiled, nodding her head with satisfaction.

‘The gypsy spell has worked; the waters have broken. Soon, soon now, the baby will come.’

Analee looked into those dark mysterious eyes and suddenly the pain went and she felt at peace. Reyora gripped her hand and with the other massaged gently the belly round and round. Then Analee felt a sharp tugging, a feeling that she must push and she grasped Nelly with one hand and Reyora with the other and pushed.

Suddenly her whole body arched convulsively and the final push left her feeling empty and free, and then there was a long wail and then another and another.

Analee jerked up her head as Reyora knelt upright, her hands clasping a pair of crumpled bloody tiny legs. She smiled broadly and laid the baby on Analee’s abdomen. Then she skilfully cut the cord with the knife and tied it.

Analee gazed at the baby lying on her belly crying lustily. Nelly had reached over and was wiping it gently with a cloth, removing the blood and the yellow sticky protective covering. Analee looked at the baby and suddenly the crying ceased and her new born infant opened a pair of eyes that seemed to look straight into the eyes of its mother – a beautiful, large, perfectly formed blue-eyed baby girl with a thatch of bright golden hair.

Reyora took the baby from Analee and gave her to Nelly. Then she called for hot water, and one of the boys brought a bucket and left it outside the tent, running quickly away again unless he should be tainted by the birth.

Nelly gently washed the baby all over, noting its beautiful white skin and blue eyes, its fair hair and rather imperious face even at this early stage. It was the loveliest baby Nelly had ever seen, and so sturdy and well formed with chubby dimpled limbs. No wonder Analee had had trouble in bearing her.

While Nelly washed the baby and wrapped it in swaddles Reyora delivered the afterbirth, which she put in a bowl to keep because the afterbirth was very useful for unguents and lotions. Dried out in the sun and ground to powder it helped infertile women to conceive and made impotent men virile.

She bathed Analee all over and rubbed her with a sweet-smelling balsam made from pine and essence of roses. She covered her with a blanket and left her to sleep. Then she sat for a long time by her side gazing alternately at Analee then at her baby, her face very thoughtful.

Nelly was perplexed by Reyora. She knew enough about
cohani
to know that they were usually very brusque and always in a hurry. Why did Reyora linger, now that the birth had been accomplished? She crooned over the baby in her arms. Like her mother the baby slept.

After a long time Reyora sighed and held out her arms for the baby. She looked at her, tenderly tracing her finger over her perfectly chiselled features, noting the deep cleft of the mouth and the long straight nose and the determined chin.

‘It is not the child of a gypsy,’ she said at last.

‘No?’ Nelly was puzzled. Never having seen Analee’s husband she did not know what the
cohani
meant.

‘It is the child of a
gadjo
!’

‘A gadjo!’
Nelly was appalled.

‘A blond, handsome, aristocratic
gadjo.
A
lord.’

‘
A lord!’

‘It is not Randal’s child.  Randal is Analee’s husband. I thought if the child were dark it would pass for his child, but it won’t. Like Analee, Randal is very dark and swarthy; so is all his family. All the Bucklands are dark; there is not a fair one among them.’

‘Maybe in Analee’s family ... ?’ Nelly said helpfully, beginning to understand.

‘No. She is olive skinned. Besides, Randal knows about the
gadjo.
He saw them lying together. It is why he married her. Oh, don’t look like that, child!’ Reyora said impatiently, noting Nelly’s uncomprehending expression. ‘I don’t know why he did it. The way men behave is past my understanding. He thinks the child is his now, but when he sees her he will remember the
gadjo
and he will know. He will be very angry.’

‘What will he do?’

Reyora shrugged. ‘Maybe kill it, or them both. He will be forgiven by the
kriss
because of his rage and grief.’

‘Oh no,’ Nelly looked at the beautiful baby in Reyora’s arms thinking of her own puny little dead one buried now under some stone on the wayside – unwanted, unlamented.

Reyora clasped the baby closer and sighed. A plan was forming in her mind whose seed had been there ever since she knew that Analee had conceived by the
gadjo.
It could be done and only she, the
cohani
could do it. The only chance the plan had to succeed lay in the gypsy laws of
marime:
that a mother and child were unclean because of the birth, until baptism had driven away the evil spirits.

The father would not come near the tent for days, maybe a week. He would not know the child was blue-eyed and blonde. Only Rebecca would see the child apart from herself and Nelly, and Rebecca was very close to Reyora; she knew her longing for a daughter. How she had tried and how she had failed. Reyora knew that only she could save this child; only she could give it respectability, make it acceptable to the tribe. Otherwise it was as good as dead or, at the very best, an outcast.

Reyora closed her eyes because she too was tired, and she hugged the beautiful baby girl very closely to her bosom, wanting it, cherishing it.

Rebecca came in that night as Analee, rested and recovered, was preparing to feed her baby for the first time. Attended by the devoted Nelly and the experienced Reyora she was trying to ease the large engorged nipple into the baby’s mouth; but she was clumsy and the baby kept turning its head away and crying.

Reyora showed Analee how to nurse the baby pressed to her stomach, so that the bellies of mother and child touched, and to cradle the head in one hand while offering her the breast with the other.

Analee experienced a surge of joy at the feel of the baby’s mouth at her breast, the fact that milk was flowing from herself to her child, and she pressed her closer and put her face against the soft little head.

Yes, she was Brent Delamain’s child. There was no possible doubt about that. It made her remember the night she and Brent had lain in the forest; she could see in imagination the moonlight and feel the breeze on their bare flesh. It had been good and beautiful and the baby was lovely ... a love child. She smiled at Reyora over the baby’s head and she saw that Reyora knew what she was thinking.

Then Rebecca came in and she knew, too. She stared for a long time at the baby, contrasting its very white skin with the olive skin of the mother, the full brown breasts and the big splayed nipples the colour of russet crab apples.

Reyora had said nothing to her but now Rebecca knew. She said nothing to Analee, but beckoned to Reyora and, talking quietly together, they left the birth tent and walked slowly over to Reyora’s where they spent a long time together.

Reyora waited for almost a week before she told Analee about her plan. Randal was becoming anxious to see his child and the preparations were being made for the gypsy baptism. The baby and Analee would be immersed deep in the waters of the river that flowed nearby, and then all the objects used for the confinement would be burnt, all her clothes and dishes and bowls, and Analee and her child would be judged fit to be admitted to gypsy society.

Even Reyora who was not a hard woman but not a soft one either, didn’t know how she was going to say what she had to to Analee. She saw the delight Analee had in her baby; how she fondled her and dallied with her. With what care she washed and nursed her and the intense pleasure she had in feeding her, watching the milk froth up at the mouth, forming little bubbles when the baby had had enough.

Analee thought she had never known such happiness as she had that week, seeing her sturdy well-formed baby girl, noting how easily it fed, how contentedly it slept, what a happy loving child it was. She held her to her last thing at night and, when she opened her eyes in the morning, she was the first thing Analee saw.

It was a gypsy custom that the mother gave the baby a secret name, that was not known to anyone, even the father. In her heart Analee called the baby Morella, because that had been the secret name of her own mother. Whatever name the baby was eventually given, only Analee would know the real name, the name given to deceive the spirits, Morella.