The Midwife's Tale (5 page)

“Martha, what happened? Where is that man? Did he run off?”

“No, he’s there,” she said, indicating the alley. “We must go.”

“But we need to summon the trained bands and have him arrested,” I said.

“He’s beyond arresting,” she said with a hint of irritation. “You can either spend the rest of the night explaining why your maidservant killed one of the King’s soldiers, or you can come with me and deliver Mrs. Asquith.” I hesitated. “Trust me,” she added. “For both our sakes, we should go.” I nodded and gripped the handle of my valise. She picked up the birthing stool and held my arm as we hurried away from the alley and the bloody work its shadows concealed.

For a time I paid no attention to which streets we took as we walked—all I saw were Martha’s blood-soaked clothes, and all I heard were the echoes of our attacker’s final breath. Martha’s path twisted and turned as she put as much distance as she could between us and the soldier’s body. I did not object until I realized that Martha had led us onto a street that would eventually return us to the very alley we were trying to flee.

“Martha, stop.”

“My lady, we cannot. We must get as far as we can.”

“Martha, this is the wrong way.”

She looked around, trying to get her bearings. She cursed softly and shook her head. “These shitting streets and alleys. It’s as if the city were built by a lunatic.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “We need to think before we find ourselves in even more trouble.” The shock of the attack had worn off, and I took a deep breath and examined our circumstances just as I would a perilous birth. From a practical perspective, the problem was not that my maidservant had just slashed a soldier’s throat—from ear to ear, by the look of her dress—but that she was walking through the center of York covered in blood. In that light, the solution was obvious. We had to get her off the street and into a new set of clothes.

“Martha, we’ve got to go home.” I stopped. “Do you have the knife?” I asked.

“I’m no fool. I left it by the body.”

“Good. Let’s see what we can do about your clothes until we get home.” I pulled her into a doorway, untied her apron, and rolled it into a ball. It wouldn’t do to simply drop it—naturally, the authorities would suspect a man had done the killing and I saw no reason to dispel that illusion. I then turned her cloak inside out, hiding the worst of the blood. “This way,” I said. I led her down a small side street. The overhanging buildings made the street darker and thus more dangerous, but it also meant that anyone we met would be less likely to notice the blood on Martha’s clothing. For the time being, the trained bands were as much a threat as another brigand.

We wound our way back toward St. Helen’s, avoiding the larger streets when we could, and arrived without incident at the stables behind my house where I kept my horses. Before the siege, Hannah and I rode them to births in the suburbs or to visit friends in the country, but with the city closed they were trapped and restless. The smell of blood unnerved them all the more—they began to nicker and neigh loudly enough that I feared they might rouse my neighbors. I quickly gave them a measure of grain each, which quieted them. I helped Martha strip down to her shift, and then we looked up at my house. All the windows were dark, and while the back door would be padlocked, Hannah had left the kitchen window open a few inches. The hard part would be reaching the window, for it was six feet above ground level.

I can only imagine how the scene that followed would have appeared to my neighbors, had they cared to open their shutters and peer into my yard. Martha and I tried to keep to the shadows as we slunk across the yard to my window. She wore nothing but her shift, while I carried her blood-soaked skirts wrapped in her equally bloody cloak. Martha crouched below the window and helped me up so that I could clamber through. I stood quietly in the kitchen, hoping that Hannah would not burst in and start screaming for the local watch. When she didn’t, I retrieved the key to the padlock and opened the door for Martha. She stepped into the kitchen and slipped into the shadows. Without a word I opened the oven door and stoked the fire that Hannah had banked a few hours earlier. I added a few coals and followed them with Martha’s bloody clothes. I gestured for Martha to wait there and slipped into the buttery, where I knew we had stored some older clothes. Since Martha could not parade through York dressed like a gentlewoman, I had to choose carefully, but with a little digging I found clothes appropriate to her station. It was possible that Hannah would recognize the pieces, but it was not her place to ask questions. I went out the back door, and Martha locked it behind me. With surprising grace, she perched on the windowsill, closed the window behind her, and dropped to the ground. Once back in the stable she dressed quickly, and we departed once again for Elizabeth Asquith’s house, giving the scene of our earlier adventure as wide a birth as possible.

“Won’t they wonder where we’ve been?” Martha asked as we walked.

“They’ll wonder, and they may talk among themselves, but they’re unlikely to say anything.” I smiled faintly. “It’s one of the benefits of rank.” You can get away with murder, I thought to myself.

Mercifully, we arrived at Elizabeth Asquith’s home without further incident. A servant met us at the door and ushered us into Elizabeth’s chamber. The room glowed with the light of beeswax candles, and a half dozen women from the neighborhood surrounded Elizabeth. Many of them were my clients, and they offered Martha and me a warm welcome. Some women sipped small cups of wine, and Elizabeth’s servants had laid out a plate of bread and cheese on a table near the door. I made my way over to Elizabeth.

“How is your labor?” I asked. This was her sixth child, and she had attended the deliveries of many of her friends, so by this time she would know the signs if the birth was close.

“Tolerably well,” she said. “The child is beginning to push his way down, but there is time yet.”

I nodded and turned to tell Martha to bring me the birthing stool so I could show her how the parts fit together. To my surprise, I found it sitting next to the bed, fully assembled. I looked for Martha and saw her across the room, pointing at the half-empty bottles of wine and giving instructions to one of the servants. She turned around and scanned the chamber, apparently looking for anything else that might be amiss.

Elizabeth looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “She is new to your household, isn’t she? Has she done this before?” she asked.

I shook my head as I led her over to the bed and eased her onto her back. “She is full of surprises. If I told you what else she can do, you wouldn’t believe me.” I oiled my hand and checked the child. His head was down, praise God, but his mother was right in saying he would not enter the world for some time.

“Martha,” I called out. She came over immediately, carrying herself more like the midwife in charge of the proceedings than a servant in an unfamiliar situation. I could not help seeing some of myself in her ability to take control of the delivery room and wondered if God had sent me a deputy as well as a maidservant. “Have the servants bring Mrs. Asquith some chicken and a poached egg. Then fetch her a glass of wine.”

“Yes, my lady,” she said, and slipped out of the room.

“Your new servant is holding up well, then?” Elizabeth asked. “At least you haven’t scared her off like the last girl you hired.”

The image of Martha stripping a soldier of his knife and then killing him with it sprang to mind. “She doesn’t frighten easily. You should have seen the dressing-down she gave a grocer’s apprentice in the market. He was nearly in tears.” We laughed at the thought.

I helped Elizabeth back to her feet, and we resumed the merry business of gossiping. As usual, the chief topic of discussion was the lives of our neighbors. We discussed Anna Thompson’s husband, who had been seen pawing a serving-wench at an alehouse. It wasn’t the first time he’d behaved so badly, and the anger toward him was palpable. A few days later, I heard that one of Anna’s neighbors had “accidentally” emptied a chamber pot on his head as he walked down Coneystreet, and I imagine that another in our company had some hard words for the serving-wench. When husbands could not be trusted, respectable women turned to their gossips.

As morning approached, Elizabeth’s pains came closer together. Elizabeth preferred the birthing stool, so Martha and I helped her there, and I applied oil of lilies and a beaten egg to her privy passage to smooth the child’s journey.

I checked the child and found his head was entering the neck of her womb. “The next time he pushes,” I reminded Elizabeth, “you must hold your breath.” She nodded. On that day God blessed Elizabeth with a strong bairn, who entered the world just a few minutes later. I told Martha to look in my valise for my commonplace book that contained recipes useful to laboring women and new mothers.

“Near the back is my recipe for caudle. If the kitchen has a red wine, use that instead of the ale. If they have cinnamon, make sure to add that as well.”

She nodded, found the book, and dashed off to the kitchen. A few minutes later, she reappeared with the mixture of spiced wine and havermeal. I washed and swaddled the baby, and as Elizabeth sipped the caudle, I helped myself to a cup of sack. I was about to direct Martha to clean and disassemble the birthing stool when Faith Bray burst into the room.

“Stephen Cooper is dead!” she announced. The women began to chatter, but Faith recaptured their attention when she added, “They say he was murdered.”

Chapter 4

With that, Faith became the center of our attention. Despite her fatigue, Elizabeth waved Faith to her bedside so she could join in the questioning. The child was asleep and we all knew Esther—we could hardly ignore the murder of her husband. It soon became clear that these few words had largely exhausted Faith’s knowledge on the subject. She didn’t know when he had died or where his body had been found. How he had died remained a mystery, as did the question of whether anyone had been arrested. The group became exasperated with Faith’s inability to offer more detail, so the women began to fill it in on their own. Esther was distraught, or at least everyone imagined she must be. Did anyone else think that he must have been killed by a business rival? Or had the siege so disrupted his trade that he took his own life? Soon the theories became so fantastical that I could not bear to hear another, so I packed my valise while Martha disassembled my birthing stool. We said our good-byes, wished Elizabeth well, and started for home.

As Martha and I walked home in the dawn light, I realized that the awful events of the previous night had forged a bond between us. Martha asked me questions about Elizabeth’s travail and all the things I had done to ease her labor. I explained a few of midwifery’s mysteries. While a stranger might not have noticed the difference, I think we both knew that from that day forward we would be not just mistress and servant, but friends as well.

“Did you know the man who was murdered?” Martha asked.

“Stephen Cooper? Not as well as I knew his wife. Esther is a dear friend. She often assists me when I attend her neighbors in travail. She was with me yesterday morning. I have tried to convince her to become my deputy so I could teach her more about the art of midwifery, but Stephen insisted she become a mother before a midwife. She was desperate for children; this will be a terrible blow for her.” I shook my head, unable to believe that Esther had become a widow in the few hours since we last saw each other. I paused for a moment. “Martha, we need to talk about what happened before we arrived at Elizabeth’s.”

“My lady, I had no choice!” she cried. “You saw what he intended to do.”

“I know, I know,” I assured her. “He met an end no worse than he deserved, and if necessary I will swear to that before the Justices. I will protect you as I would my own daughter.”

“And you won’t report his death?”

“It’s a bit late for that now,” I said. “Justice could not be served any better than it has, and in these uncertain times it might well miscarry. I will talk to my brother, and see what he knows about the case.” A look of concern crossed Martha’s face. “Don’t worry,” I continued. “Midwives trade in gossip the way he does in wool. My questions won’t seem unusual. I’ll also find out what he knows about Stephen Cooper’s death.”

We arrived home as the sun appeared over the city’s rooftops. Hannah prepared a small meal for us. While I ate by myself in the dining room, I could hear Martha telling Hannah the details of Elizabeth Asquith’s labor and delivery and of Stephen Cooper’s possible murder. After eating, I told Hannah to take over Martha’s duties for the morning so she could sleep, and then I retired to my chamber. It was the Sabbath, but I did not think the Lord would begrudge our absence from that morning’s service. After prayers I fell into a deep sleep, mercifully free of dreams.

I awoke feeling refreshed to the noonday sun streaming in my windows. When Hannah came to help me dress, she brought news of Stephen Cooper’s murder, or at least rumors about it. Even in the midst of a siege, the death of a wealthy merchant could capture the city’s imagination.

“It’s all the neighborhood is talking of,” Hannah said. “Mr. Baker said that Mr. Cooper was murdered by the rebels.”

“What?” I cried. “That’s ridiculous! Why would they do that?”

“Mr. Baker didn’t say, but I heard Mr. Lee swear that it was the King’s men who killed him. He said Stephen Cooper was a precise fool and a Puritan.”

“Well, he was that,” I admitted. “But if the King’s men killed all the Puritans, we’d bury half the city’s Aldermen within the week.”

Hannah laughed. “Mrs. Lee disagreed, said Mr. Lee didn’t know anything about the case.”

“That’s unusually sensible for her,” I said. Mrs. Lee was a notorious gossip and did little to distinguish truth from lies.

“She said that Mr. Cooper was murdered by Mrs. Cooper and her lover. ‘Just like in
Arden of Faversham
!’ she said.”

“Once idle tongues start wagging, there is no end to the trouble,” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “Is Martha awake?”