The Midwife's Apprentice Read online

  First they cooked parsnips with sugar and spices and yeast and poured this into casks, where the fermeriting mixture sang loud and sweet as it turned into wine. And the same they did with turnips.

  Then Alyce, with baskets tied to each end of a pole, walked with the cat to the abbey gardens to gather fallen fruit. There, lying on the ground as if scattered by God just for Alyce, were apples, red and yellow, large and small, sweet and tart, firm and juicy. She tried a few, but unable to say whether she liked best the crisp, white-fleshed Cackagees, the small, sour Foxwhelps, or the mellow, sweet Rusticoats and Rubystripes, she tried a few more. The cat, not finding that apples were good to eat, batted the small ones across the yard, imagining they had ears and tails and other parts that made things worth chasing.

  Returning to the village late in the day, with her baskets and belly full of apples, Alyce cut through the manor field, near where the villagers had dug a pit for the quarrying of gravel. From inside the pit came the cries of some fearsome thing—a beast or a witch or a demon—so she crossed herself and hurried her steps.

  The demon was calling, “Come here to me, here to me.” Alyce ran faster. Then stopped. The demon sounded mighty like Will, the boy with red hair who used to torment her and now did not so much.

  “Are you demon or redheaded lout?” she called.

  “Alyce, be that you?” came the response from the pit.

  Cautiously she crept to the edge and looked over. It was redheaded lout, and with him his cow.

  “Alyce, you must help me. Tansy has fallen into the pit and I cannot get her to climb out, for she is about to have her calf and will not move. Come and help me.”

  “I am no midwife for cows, Will Russet,” she called.

  “She needs your help, Alyce, and so do I.”

  “Indeed I am no midwife at all, Will Russet, and I do not know what to do.”

  “Come over and I will tell you. This is Tansy’s first calf but not mine.”

  At that Tansy called out, low and mournful and full of pain and fright. Alyce could not bear to leave her like that, so she put down her baskets of apples and slid into the pit.

  Will grinned at her. “Good for you, Alyce. Here, hold her head. Keep her quiet. Sing something soft.”

  “I do not know any singing, Will Russet.”

  “Croon a song without words, then. Just make sweet noises.”

  So Alyce did, although none would have called them sweet but she and the boy and the cow. And perhaps the cat, who lay above, where Alyce had left him, carefully licking the soft pink pads of his feet.

  “Hold her, Alyce. Rub her head and belly. If we can but calm her, God will tell her and the calf what to do.”

  Alyce sang and rubbed, calling the cow Sweetheart and Good Old Girl as she heard Will do, and the boy pushed and pulled and worked as hard as the cow. Several times they near gave up, but Alyce always found one more song or one more rub inside her, and Will loved Tansy like she was his babe and not his cow, and so the tired pair kept on.

  Finally, as day darkened into evening, there came the feet of a calf. Then more feet. And more. “Twins, Alyce!” cried Will. “You have brought me great luck, for Tansy be having twins!”

  So she was, and soon two slippery, shiny, brand-new calves were lying in the dirt of the pit, and Tansy was licking and nuzzling them gently.

  Once Alyce and Will took the calves upon their shoulders and scrambled from the pit, so too did Tansy, not willing to stay alone in that hard, dark, and calfless place. Like a holy procession they returned to the village, the boy and the girl and the newborn twins and the cow and the cat.

  Will, so happy with twice the bounty he expected from Tansy, made sure to tell everyone of his luck and of the great help Alyce had been to him, and Alyce felt her skin prickling with delight, although she got in a muck of trouble for being so long about apple gathering and then losing the baskets as well as the fruit, for in the excitement of the twin calves they were forgotten and left behind and never seen again.

  As September turned to October and October to November, through all those days, Alyce grew in knowledge and skills. The midwife, busy with her own importance, did not notice. Alyce, grown accustomed to herself, did not notice. But the villagers noticed, and as October turned to November and the ghosts walked on All Hallows’ Eve, they began to ask her how and why and what can I. Sometimes for her help or advice someone would pay her a ribbon or an egg or a loaf of cheese or bread, which she always gave to the midwife, as if Alyce herself were just the midwife’s hand or arm, doing the work and receiving the pay but taking no credit for the task.

  One morning as they sat under the old oak tree eating their breakfast bread, Alyce told the cat again about the birth of Tansy’s twins. “All shiny they were, and sticky to touch. I did not even know them, but I loved them so much.” This sounded to her like a song, so she made singing sounds as she had that day in the gravel pit, and then sang her words to the tune:

  All shiny they were,

  And sticky to touch.

  I did not even know them,

  But I loved them so much.

  And so it was that Alyce learned about singing and making songs. Her song brightened the cold gray day so that a cowbird thought it was spring and began to sing in the old oak tree.

  9

  The Bailiff’s Wife’s Baby

  “A GOOD NUT YEAR means a good baby year,” the midwife said as she sent Alyce and her nutting basket to the woods to see what kind of a year it would be. All day Alyce shook the young trees, climbed into the old ones, and gathered the hard-shelled bounty that fell. Hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds mounded in her basket and stirred her hunger with thoughts of hot roasted nuts on cold winter nights. That was the limit of her imaginings, for never had she heard of almond cream, pickled walnuts, or eels in chestnut sauce, such as they ate at the manor or the homes of rich merchants in London and York.

  Coming back from the woods, she saw the boys teasing the cat. She took a handful of nuts, the biggest and hard't and heaviest in her basket, and heaved them at the boys.

  “Touch that cat again,” she shouted, “and I will unstop this bottle of rat’s blood and viper’s flesh and summon the Devil, who will change you into women, and henceforth each of you will giggle like a woman and wear dresses like a woman and give birth like a woman!”

  She was too startled by her outburst to be afraid. The boys were too startled by her outburst to move. And so Purr the cat escaped and Alyce reached the midwife’s cottage unharmed, and until they were quite old the boys in the dark of night sometimes were afraid that the midwife’s bottle actually had the power to make them into women. It was fortunate that the boys never tested Alyce’s magic, for the bottle she shook so fiercely at them was naught but blackberry cordial she was to deliver to Old Anna on her way home from nutting in the woods, and although it would have made the boys purple and sticky, no harm would have befallen them and never would they have been able to give birth like a woman.

  That night Joan the bailiff’s wife sent for the midwife. Alyce lighted Jane’s way through the gloomy night with a rushlight that hissed and sputtered in the mist. The midwife chased Joan’s husband, her young son, two pigs, and a pigeon out of the cottage, bade Alyce wait for her in the yard, and slammed the cottage door.

  Alyce dozed there in the wet through the long hours of the night. Shortly after dawn, when the sky turned not rosy and welcoming as it does in summer but merely a lighter shade of gray, the midwife kicked her awake. “Up, Beetle, and to the cottage for cowslip, mugwort, and pepper. By the Fourteen Holy Helpers, Joan will have to sneeze this baby out!”

  When Alyce returned, the midwife was waiting in the yard, her bottles and herbs and linen neatly packed in the basket beside her.

  “Has Joan then sneezed her baby out already?” Alyce asked.

  “Ha!” responded the midwife. “This child looks never to come out. You go in and wipe Joan’s face and I will be back as soon as I can. Lady Agnes
at the manor has started her labor and wishes me to attend her. They will pay me in silver, and the bailiff in chickens and beans. God and the babies willing, I will have it all.”

  Alyce began to cry. “I do not know what to do, Mistress Jane. Do not leave me. Do not leave her. I do not know what to do.”

  Alyce was silenced with a sharp slap. “Do nothing, you lackwit fool,” the midwife spat. “She will never deliver that baby. It will die unborn, and I will take it dead from her when I return. Let her labor while I see to the Lady Agnes. I will come back, do what must be done, and collect both fees.”

  Alyce snuffled into her sleeve, leaving her nose dirty and red and no drier than it was.

  “Do nothing,” repeated the midwife. “In her state, Joan will not even remember that I left. Do nothing and say nothing!” And off the midwife ran, up to the manor where warm fires blazed and the laboring mother was soothed with wine and syrups and kind words. Alyce turned back to the dark, cold, nearly empty cottage, took a deep breath, and went in.

  She couldn’t see the figure on the bed at first for all the smoke, and then realized that the writhing mound was Joan, the bailiffs proud wife who washed her linen each week and never let herself be seen without shoes even in summer, and there she was, a moaning, mewling mound on a straw bed. Alyce covered her mouth and her eyes and turned to go. She could tell the midwife she had waited with Joan. Who was to know if she sat on the stoop until she heard the crinkle of the midwife’s starched wimple?

  “Let me die. By the bones of Saint Mildred, let me die. Or help me to die.” The moaning, mewling mound spoke, not, as Alyce expected, frantically or madly, but calmly and reasonably, asking for death. To Alyce it sounded all the more frightening and strange, as if a goose had spoken, or an egg, or the dung heap in the yard.

  “Beetle, is that you?” Joan asked. “Where is the midwife?”

  “Out but to relieve herself, mistress. She will be back soon, and then your babe will be born.”

  “Don’t sham me, Beetle. I know this babe is stuck and will never be born and we will both die soon and why not now? Surely the midwife has something in her basket to help us along?”

  “Shh, mistress. ’Tis but pain and fright make you speak so, for else you’d never think of sending yourself to Hell and the baby with you.”

  “Hell indeed, Beetle, and no worse than this suffering.” Suddenly the proud, reasonable Joan became again the moaning, mewling mound. Then, as the hot pains invaded her body, she shouted and thrashed and flailed, shrieking and kicking.

  Alyce betook herself to the cottage door, ready to run from this horror. But the memory of the proud, frightened Joan of a moment ago kept her inside. And she asked herself, What would the midwife do were she here? What had Alyce seen her do from cottage windows all this year when the babe would not come and the mother looked to scream and thrash herself to death? What had Will done in that gravel pit to help Tansy with the calves who would not be born?

  Alyce took another deep breath and returned to Joan’s side. She gave her mugwort in warm ale to drink and spoke soothingly, calling her Sweetheart and Good Old Girl. She warmed oil over the fire and rubbed her head and belly, as she had the cow’s. She did not know the spells or the magic, so gave Joan all she had of care and courtesy and hard work.

  So it was that in the middle of the night, when the monks were rising from their beds for midnight prayers, and in the towns revelers were returning home full of beef and wine, and at the manor the midwife was delivering Lady Agnes of her first son, so it was that a calmer, more rested Joan, with the kind attention of the midwife’s apprentice, brought forth a daughter, feet first but perfectly formed, whom she called Alyce Little.

  Alyce had washed Alyce Little and wrapped her in clean linen and laid her in her father’s arms before Jane the Midwife bustled up the path and into the cottage. Jane made some remarks, which no one believed, about having left for just an instant, and stuck her hand out for her fee.

  The bailiff said, “We have no need of you, Jane. Your helper has taken care of us with her two strong hands and her good common sense.”

  At that, Alyce felt so much pride and satisfaction that she had to let them out somehow, and so she smiled, which felt so good that she thought she might do it again. Facing the midwife’s jealous anger, she went back to their cottage, ate some cold soup and hard bread, lay down on her straw mat by the fire, and had a dream about her mother, which upon waking she could not remember.

  10

  The Boy

  AFTER THIS, when the midwife was summoned to attend a mother, Alyce took to stealing her way inside the woman’s cottage, hiding in the shadows so as not to be noticed, watching closely to see what the midwife did and how and why. She took and stored in her brain and her heart what she heard the midwife say and do about babies and birthing and easing pain.

  She discovered that an eggshell full of the juice of leeks and mallows will make a labor quicker, that rubbing the mother’s belly with the blood of a crane can make it easier, that birth wort roots and flowers can strengthen contractions in a reluctant mother, and that, if all else fails, the midwife can shout into the birth passage, “Infant, come forward! Christ calls you to the light!” She found that mouse ear and willow can help stop bleeding and that a tea of anise and dill and bitter milkwort will help when milk will not come.

  She learned that newborn infants are readily seized by fairies unless salt is put in their mouths and their cradles, that a baby born in the morning will never see ghosts, and that a son born after the death of his father will be able to cure fevers.

  Alyce thought the midwife had more skills with herbs and syrups and spells than Will Russet, but Will delivered babies just as well and was much kinder to the mother. Alyce thought if she needed a midwife, she would rather someone like Will than Jane Sharp, for all her spells and syrups.

  Early one cold November day, before the pale, watery sun could light up the morning sky, Alyce left the midwife’s cottage and hurried to the cowshed to see Tansy’s twins, now called Baldred and Billfrith after the saintly local hermits, and give them some parsnip tops to munch. There, huddled as close to Tansy as her calves, lay a sleeping boy, blue in his lips, frost in his hair, and tears frozen on his thin dirty cheeks. Her coming startled him awake and he jumped to his feet.

  “I be leaving, mistress,” he said. “I took nothing. I hurt nothing. I be going.”

  Alyce grabbed his arm. “Wait, boy. I mean you no harm. Who are you?”

  “I be nobody, mistress. I go.”

  “Everybody is somebody and so are you. Want some breakfast?”

  From the sleeve of her gown Alyce pulled the parsnip tops meant for the cows and some cheese she had saved for the cat and fed instead the hungry boy.

  She watched him as he ate. Six, he was. Maybe a little older, for all he was so small and thin. Fie looked a little like her, now she thought about it. A sudden pleasure inside her warmed her hands as she reached out to smooth the boy’s hair.

  “Next time you be much warmer nestled in the dung heap these cold days,” she told him. “I know. ”

  He finished the cheese and looked up at her. “Bread?”

  “Bread. I’ll go fetch some. You stay here.”

  Alyce ran for the cottage, found a bit of bread she had hidden away for the cat, ignored the midwife’s questions and demands, and started back for the cowshed.

  The boy was running down the road toward her, pursued by several much bigger boys shouting and threatening with their pitchforks and rakes.

  “Beggar! Thief! Ragtag!” they shouted as the boy crashed right into Alyce and sent them both sprawling to the ground.

  “Have off, Dick,” said Alyce, “or I be telling your granny who drank that ale she hid for herself. And you, Jack Snaggletooth, I still have that bottle of rat’s blood!”

  As the boys backed away, Alyce stood, brushing the mud from her skirt with one hand and holding on to the boy with the other.

  “Hav
e off, I said,” she repeated, moving toward them.

  “Corpus bones, Beetle. We were but wagging him since you are no sport no more.”

  And the boys moved off to torment someone else until they were found, slapped, and sent to work.

  When Alyce and the boy, who said his name was Runt, got back to the midwife’s cottage, Jane was out seeing to Kate the weaver’s daughter, who was having trouble with her milk. Alyce brought the boy into the yard, cleaned his face with her skirt, and combed the straw from his hair, all the while telling him that Runt might be a good name for a small pig but never for such a likely-looking boy as he, and that she would help him find a place to sleep and something regular to eat but he would have to have a real name, for she was not taking anywhere anyone named Runt.

  “What is your name?” the boy asked.

  “Alyce,” said Alyce.

  “Then I be Alyce, too.”

  “You cannot be Alyce, for it is a name for a girl.”

  “What then is the king’s name?”

  Alyce did not know, so she hid the boy in the chicken house and went about the village asking folks what was the king’s name.

  “Longshanks,” said the baker.

  “Hammer,” said Thomas At-the-Bridge.

  “The Devil Hisself,” said Brian Tailor, who was a Scot and so had reason to feel that way.

  “Just ‘the king’ is all,” said several.

  “Edward,” said the bailiff. “The king’s name is Edward.”

  “Edward,” said Alyce to the boy.

  “Then Edward is my name,” said Edward, who used to be called Runt. Alyce nodded.

  She could see the midwife coming in the distance, so Alyce spat on her fingers and rubbed a bit of stubborn dirt off Edward’s cheek. “Go,” she said, “up that road to the manor. They are hiring boys to help with the threshing. Tell them Jane the Midwife sent you and bid them remember the good job she did delivering Lady Agnes’ stubborn son. Now go.”