The War of Queens

Chapter 46

Mary

 Queen Sybil’s water broke on a cool, crisp autumn day.

 The air was still and serene, the noise of the city markets was dying out and the sun had begun to lower into the horizon. Orange and yellow colored the faraway horizon. It had all been very beautiful and very peaceful until it happened.

 Mary observed with intrigued interest as the wet-nurse and midwives were called to the chamber. Sybil was laid down, ordered to eat - for she would be unable to eat much for the next many hours - and drink some strong wine - for the pain, as she would surely be in pain for the next many hours as well. The midwives went through their instruments, put it all in order. Hot water, clean sheets and pieces of white cotton was sent to them. They flittered around the room with clinical precision and the confidence born from many years of experience. Mary sat down heavily on her spot by Sybil’s bed and took the Queen’s hand.

 “Are you frightened?” she asked.

 Sybil had been undressed down to her under-gown and her bleached, red hair had tied into a loose braid. Her face was as pale as if it had been bleached, too.

 “A little,” she said in a high-pitched voice.

 Mary gave her hand a clench. “Don’t be. These are the best midwives in the kingdom, and your family have a talent for childbirth.”

 Sybil nodded, more often than she needed, and Mary thought that perhaps she was trying to convince herself that she agreed.

 Mary did not think it seemed scary at all, though of course she was not the one with a child in her womb, fighting to escape. You should just stay in there, she advised the bump, it is much safer and much better, and you are much more loved.

 The midwives calmed her more than the wet-nurse, even though the wet-nurse was the one who sat by them and told them kind, hopeful words. It was the way they moved, she thought, as though they feared nothing from this birth. “Don’t look so frightened, girl,” one of them had said to Sybil, “a hundred thousand women have done this before you, and a hundred thousand will after you.”

 The childbirth itself was worse, though not terrifying. There was a lot of blood, and at first the crimson coloring of the sheets made her feel sick but after a while, she was able to ignore it. It was Sybil’s bone-breaking clench around her hand that made her feel just a sliver of the pain the Queen was going through; it was the high-pitched screams she emitted whenever she was told to push that scared Mary the most.

 Worst of those two were the screams. The wet-nurse told her not to scream, it was not becoming for a Queen. Even when they were muffled by a wooden stick that Sybil was ordered to bite down on, just like a hundred Queens before her had, they were terrible. Formed in the strong depths of her abdomen and shaped in the animalistic part of her throat, they took the sound of a dying animal. A dying animal fighting to live, though. And once the head was released, they began to sound like an animal winning that fight.

 By the end of it, Sybil was damp with sweat where she was not smeared in blood. The child was quickly washed and wrapped in soft, white blankets. When Sybil first held the child in her arms, a line of blood was still smeared on its forehead, just above the pale blue eyes that were definitely all Sybil.

 “Boy or girl?” she asked the midwife. The sound of her voice was something Mary could not have described in a thousand words - relieved, and yet full of a happiness that was worth going through the same pain for a million times over.

 “Princess,” the midwife replied.

 At first, a flash of disappointment appeared. That was only to be expected. But then Sybil smiled a smile that split her face.