The Other Elizabeth

Chapter IX: Whitsuntide 1450

Chapter IX: Whitsuntide 1450 

Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England 

Another pain surges through my stomach, and I lean forward, gritting my teeth as I scream. My forehead is drenched in sweat, and I am extracting all the life from Bessie's hand, and she herself winces when I clench onto it and whimper, which rather irritates me, for she is not the one in her seventeenth hour of labour and has to feel like her entrails are being pulled from out of her! Indeed, another quarrel has blighted our friendliness- it was again, on the topic of children.

"Bessie, what would you name your child?" I had asked one day. She had whipped around.

"I am never going to have children." Her face was all flushed, her lips pressed into a thin line. Even seven months with child, I was still my persistent self, despite sitting in the solar in My Lady's largest bliaut. I do insist it was so old it was surely her grandmothers', and having a belly seemingly swelled infinitely with gluttony, for I still could not quite believe I was carrying, and had created a little person inside of me.

Alas, at first, I did not know I was with child, and I do confess I stopped eating my daily bread and Cook's beef stew and tartlets, for fear I was becoming plump, and fed it to My Lady's pack of dogs under the table. My Lady was able to identify I was with child, for my courses had ceased suddenly, and I could eat again, although I have felt rather too nauseous over the past months to eat any of the venison and other foodstuffs of that sort on any saints' days feasts; it is too glistening and shiny and slivery. Bread simply sticks to my throat, and I choke on bones in freshwater fish. Indeed, I only truly have an appetite for sweetmeats and hippocras.

There is plenty of wine and ale for me tonight- and not watered down for once- I should think not! I am deemed old enough to give birth, so I am old enough to drink proper wine, and I need it to numb the pain coursing through my body.

I had cocked my head at Bessie at her statement. "You do not know for sure you will not bare children."

"I do," she snapped.

"John Thomas the stable hand run off with the milkmaid?" I said snidely.

"No, in fact, he offered his hand in marriage to me, and I said no." To which I was left blinking after her retreating figure, for whatever kind of fool declines a proposal of marriage?

The second quarrel which I had on the topic with this cursed child's name was with my very dear and beloved Lady Mother. Mayhap she cursed this child, for I have prayed to Saint Margaret more times tonight than I have ever truly listened at Mass in my whole life, worn a holy girdle, had rose oil rubbed on my person, and taken so many herbal poultices to supposedly ease the coming of the child, and my labour is still not over.

My Lady Isabel suggested I pay a visit to my mother to inform her of the coming of her grandchild when she was away from court, which would evidently please her. I only went to please My Lady, for I knew my Mother would receive me as frostily as an unwanted foreign dignitary at court, and would make me feel contrite about being able to fall with child, when she miscarried so much. In truth, I was scared of seeing her. Would she be happy I possibly had the Scales' heir in my belly, or laugh at me, if, God forbid, I miscarried too? Every day I woke and worried constantly, for fear of losing the baby.

I had clambered from the litter, windswept, fighting through a whirlpool of leaves and rain to where Agnes and Kateren waited in the doorway. I shrugged off offers of warm mulled ale, and went straight to see my Mother, bracing myself. I walked into the familiar solar at Middleton, and there she was, her back to me, skinny as a foal, hunched over her embroidery. She was a small grey speck swallowed in a sea of rainbow tapestries and rugs, the rain hammering against the window, a sliver of orange for a fire. She appeared to mine eyes almost... lonely.