The Midwife's Tale (23 page)

“Benjamin, after his father. Mrs. Wood called him Ben.” Martha nodded, fighting back tears.

The maidservant curtsied, and I saw her to the front door. I returned to the parlor and found Martha gazing out the window. I could see the tears on her cheeks. I went over and put my arm around her shoulders. She took a deep breath and clumsily wiped at the tears with her apron.

“Will you go and see the child?” she asked.

“Elizabeth needs me. And because you had a hand in the child’s birth, you should come as well. We brought the child into the world, so we will dress him for his burial and see him out. Ask Hannah to find some linen. Then have her help you tear some strips to wrap the child.” Within the hour Hannah and Martha finished with the linen, and we departed for Elizabeth’s house.

All midwives lost infants in childbirth or soon after—it was God’s will and a midwife’s lot—and a good midwife felt every death in her bones. But the pain I felt on this day was especially sharp. In part it was because it reminded me of Michael, of course, but also because I could see that Martha suffered as much as I did.

“What will you do when you get there?” she asked.

“It depends on Elizabeth’s state. Some women fall into melancholy and require constant attention. Others accept it as the will of God and require little help. It is hardest for women who lose their first child.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I put my arm around her shoulders to comfort her. “I hadn’t forgotten about your son.”

Just as we reached Elizabeth’s door, one of the women who had been present for Elizabeth’s delivery opened it and came out into the street. If she remembered Martha or the rough treatment she had received at her hands, she gave no sign of it.

“How is she?” I asked.

“It is not the first child she has lost, but she still feels it deeply.” Her red-rimmed eyes and pale complexion told me that she felt it, too. However badly she had acted at the birth, she remained a good gossip. Martha and I stepped through the open door and the Woods’ maidservant greeted us.

“Is Mr. Wood here?” I asked. While we would spend most of our time with Elizabeth, sometimes the fathers needed comfort and reassurance as much as the mothers.

“Yes, my lady. He is in the parlor. This way.”

Benjamin Wood sat in the parlor, his face taut with grief. One of the older children sat on his lap. “Thank you for coming to see her,” he said. “Elizabeth is upstairs. She is melancholy and has asked for you.”

“You should be with her,” I urged him.

He smiled weakly. “I’m helping to mind the children. They want her, but she does not need the burden.”

“Let them go to her,” I suggested. “They might take her away from her grief for a time.” He nodded. Birdy had done this for me when I lost Michael, but when she died I had nobody.

“I’ll take you upstairs,” he said. “The baby is there, too.”

Martha and I followed him up to Elizabeth’s bedchamber. The same room where she had given birth was now her lying-in room, and it was here that Martha and I would prepare the child’s body for burial. We entered the room and found Elizabeth sitting on the edge of the bed, talking softly with one of her neighbors. When she saw us, she smiled slightly and stood to greet us. The lines on her face had deepened in the two days since the birth, and her eyes were watery and bloodshot. She embraced me and Martha and began to cry again. I fought back tears, and I saw Martha doing the same. Elizabeth reached out and took Martha’s hands, and it struck me that the two women were comforting each other.

“Ben was never long for this world,” Elizabeth said. Martha nodded, clenching her jaw to keep from bursting into tears. I looked around for the child and saw that he had been loosely wrapped and laid in the crib that should have been his bed. Two women sat with him and would do so until his burial.

I crossed the room to the crib and picked up the child’s body. I found myself unable to breathe as I was hurled back to the day Michael died, and I recalled how my own midwife had prepared his body for burial. That too had been a sunny day, only much colder. I remembered the murmuring of my gossips as they comforted me and how I had tried to find a way to tell Birdy what had happened to her brother. Losing her father had taught her much about death, but she had so loved Michael, I wondered if his death might pitch her into a deeper melancholy than it did me. At first she hadn’t understood or at least refused to admit what had happened. She screamed the most horrible curses at me and at God for taking him away. Then, when she saw his body and held it in her arms, she wailed long and loud, as if to raise the dead. It was a wonder that her heart, and mine, too, did not break from the crying.

Like Michael, Ben seemed to weigh nothing at all with his breath stopped. I asked Elizabeth’s maidservant for a towel and basin of warm water. When she returned, I spread the towel in the crib, laid the child on it, and motioned for Martha. She looked down at the tiny body as I carefully loosened the swaddling clothes and showed her how to wash an infant’s corpse. Unbidden, Martha produced the strips that she had torn, and with shaking hands we wrapped the child. After we finished, we left the body with the women and returned to Elizabeth.

One of Elizabeth’s other children, a boy of perhaps four years, lay in the crook of her arm, gazing blankly at his dead brother’s body. I sat next to her and took her hand, but I could think of nothing to say. Soon it was time to go to the church. I picked up Ben and brought him to Elizabeth so she could hold him for the last time. A low moan escaped her chest as she took him in her arms, and tears fell from her cheeks onto his. The sound of her sobs wrenched my heart, and I wondered at the God who would do this.

Elizabeth kissed her boy, gave him to me, and bade us farewell. Accompanied by Benjamin and a dozen neighborhood women, we walked slowly to St. Martin’s church as the bell tolled softly. The summer sun blazed down from a brilliant blue sky, making our party’s grief seem small and out of place. I wondered what the Lord meant by this. The priest met us at the entrance to the church and sang out, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” We entered and took our seats. Because it was not the Sabbath, the service would be a short one. I closed my ears to the priest’s words and sought refuge in prayer. I begged God to comfort Elizabeth and Benjamin in their grief and asked Him to heal me, to make me whole.

After he finished his reading, the priest led us to the churchyard. Ben’s grave seemed terribly small. I saw that the digger had laid a bed of straw at the bottom and hoped that the same had been done for Michael. We said the Lord’s Prayer, and with shaking hands Benjamin lowered his son into the ground. Then, as gently as he could, he shoveled in the grave. I thought then of the cold earth that covered Michael first and then Birdy, but my heart was so sore that I could feel nothing more. I heard some snuffling from the mourners but few sobs. I think by then we had all cried enough. As we walked back to his house, I put my arm through Benjamin’s and told him of my prayers. He looked at me with red and haggard eyes and offered his thanks. The maid met us at the door and whispered in Benjamin’s ear.

“Elizabeth is asleep,” he said. “She’s not slept more than a few hours since Ben was born. Now that he’s gone…” His voice trailed off.

“Please tell Elizabeth we came back,” I said. “And that we will be here when she is churched.”

“I will.”

Then Martha and I started for home, and the other women went their own ways. We walked in silence for a while. As we crossed the Ouse, she looked out over the water and asked, “How do you do this year after year? How do you bury the same babies that you deliver?”

“With God’s help, and the knowledge that death comes to us all. If Ben hadn’t died today, it would have been tomorrow, or some other tomorrow in five, fifty, or a hundred years. We cannot stop death, only slow his march.”

“And that is enough?” she asked doubtfully.

“I also remind myself that I am a good midwife. I could not save Ben, but as surely as God created the world, I have saved babies that would have died under another midwife’s care. There are the mothers, too. Sometimes they die in travail, but if I am at a woman’s bedside, she is more likely to live.” Martha nodded and wiped her eyes.

*   *   *

When Martha and I neared my home, the guard at the door raised his hand in greeting. Before I could respond, the door belonging to my next-door neighbor burst open, and George Chapman spilled out into the street, his bulging belly straining at his doublet’s buttons. To my dismay, he planted himself squarely in front of us, with his hands on his ample hips.

“Lady Hodgson,” he said, “I must have a word with you.”

“I imagine you must,” I said archly. I wondered what complaint he might have this time. Because I was a young widow who had not remarried, a lady who worked with her hands, and a woman with power, my very existence challenged his carefully ordered world. He respected my rank enough not to confront me directly, but he took advantage of every opportunity to reprimand members of my household for any failing, real or imagined. “May I guess? Was Martha singing too loudly in my courtyard? Or did she not treat you with the reverence you deserve?”

Chapman looked at me closely, trying to determine if I spoke in jest—a difficult task for so humorless a man. “No,” he said slowly, apparently convinced of my sincerity. “It is not that.…”

“Well, that is certainly a relief. If you will excuse me, I have urgent business.”

“My lady, what is the meaning of posting an armed man at your door? If you have brought trouble to this neighborhood, you must warn the rest of us.”

I looked at him incredulously. “Mr. Chapman,” I began, “the city is besieged by three armies. The King’s soldiers have proven themselves rogues at best, and murderers at worst.” A look of alarm crossed his face. “You
did
hear that on Sunday night one of the garrison was killed not far from here, didn’t you?” He started to respond, but I held up my hand to silence him. “We have marauding rebels outside the city and equally dangerous men inside, and you accuse
me
of bringing trouble to the neighborhood? Are you suggesting I remain in my home with my maidservants with no man to protect us? What, will you do us that service?” I glanced significantly at his massive stomach, daring him to assert his martial prowess. Before he could reply, I grasped Martha firmly by the arm, steered her around Chapman, and hurried the last few steps to my door. As we passed the guard, I whispered, “If he tries to follow, you may run him through.” The guard laughed loudly, and I glanced over my shoulder. Chapman still stared at me, trying to think of a response. “Good day, Mr. Chapman,” I called as I closed the door behind me.

Once safely inside, I set Martha to work on her household duties, and I retired to my chamber to rest, leaving word that I was not to be disturbed. Just as I was drifting to sleep, Hannah appeared in the doorway.

“My lady,” she said, “Mrs. Emerson is here to see you. She says she has found the mother of the infant murdered in Coneystreet.”

Chapter 17

The prospect of finding the mother of the murdered child pulled me from my listless state. “Tell her I’ll be right down.”

Susan Emerson lived in St. Wilfred’s parish, not far from my house. I hadn’t delivered any of her children—she was too old for that—but she’d assisted me on occasion and even delivered a few on her own when a midwife arrived late. She was one of the most formidable matrons in her neighborhood and kept a sharp eye on local maidens. She reprimanded them if they behaved lewdly and reported them to the minister if they failed to heed her warnings.

“Mrs. Emerson, how are you?” I asked as I entered the parlor. She was a stout woman and powerfully built. A few years earlier, an unruly youth had attempted to steal from her husband’s shop. She chased him half-way to the Minster and thrashed him vigorously when she caught him.

“Very well, Lady Hodgson, it is good to see you.”

“Hannah says you have found the mother of the murdered child.”

“Perhaps. I have made some enquiries. There is a barmaid who was rumored to be with child some months ago, but her neighbors never heard of a birth. She lives near the river, not far from where they found the baby.” My pulse quickened at the prospect of confronting the woman who could tell us who had murdered the infant.

“Do you know where she is?”

“I just saw her at the alehouse where she works.”

“Good. We can go there now.”

I considered bringing Martha but knew that my interrogation of this maiden would not be pleasant, and she’d already had a difficult day. As Susan and I walked toward the river, I wondered what this discovery might mean for Anne Goodwin and her child. From the first I had assumed the child in the privy was hers, and I had to admit I relished the thought of laying a murder at Rebecca Hooke’s doorstep. But I was no longer so sure. If the murdered child belonged to this barmaid, what had become of Anne’s baby? Had he even been born yet? Where was Anne? I said a prayer that Anne and her child might escape from the Hookes and silently cursed Rebecca for abusing Anne so mercilessly. Between my praying and cursing, I became so lost in thought that I walked right into Susan when she stopped outside a small alehouse.

“This is it,” she said. “We can take her to the kitchen.” I nodded in agreement, and we ducked through the low door. As my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I found the woman we’d come for.

“Hello, what can I get for you?” she asked when we entered. Without answering, Susan and I crossed the room, grasped her arms, and dragged the squawking girl through the doorway into the back room that served as both a pantry and a kitchen.

“Shut your gob,” Susan commanded sharply, and the girl’s mouth snapped closed. “We found the child you threw in the privy, and we’ll see you hanged for what you’ve done.”

Disbelief and fear crossed her face when she heard Susan’s accusation. “What? I did no such thing!” the girl cried.