Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Here, what’s this?’ said Mistress Bowen, straightening up. ‘There’s no room for you in here, my lass, you’ve none of your own — ’

‘She’s got a word for Meg,’ said Mistress Baillie, ‘that willny wait, Mally.’ The two exchanged a significant glance, and Mistress Bowen stepped away from the bed to join a younger woman by the shaded window. Both were wrapped in linen aprons, stained with blood and — and other fluids, thought Alys. She was astonished by how alarming she found it to be here. Is it because I have no role, no responsibility? she wondered. Or is it another reason?

‘Alys?’ said Meg weakly, reaching out a hand to her. She drew close, and knelt down in obedience to the hand. ‘Is that right, what my mammy says? Did you see —?’

‘My husband saw,’ said Alys, trying to sound reassuring. ‘He saw your man drink from his own flask, while we all watched the mummers. So it was never your man’s flask that Nanty Bothwell had in his scrip. It was nothing to do with him what happened.’ And if the logic of that is not rigorous, she thought, this girl would never see it at the best of times and right now she’s incapable of thinking it out.

‘O-oh!’ Meg let her head fall back on the pillow, tears starting to her eyes. ‘Oh, thanks be to Our Lady!’ Her mother wiped at her brow with a damp cloth, making soothing noises. ‘I should never ha doubted — ’

She caught her breath, and clapped both hands to her belly.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Mistress Bowen, bustling forward from the window with her colleague. Alys stepped hastily back from the bed, and found herself elbowed against the wall. ‘That’s more like it, then.’

‘It’s no the same as it was,’ said Meg weakly. ‘It was — it was — ’

‘Aye, it’s no the same.’ Mistress Bowen turned back the folds of the linen garment which Alys now realized was not a shift but a man’s shirt, and groped expertly between the massive, blue-veined thighs. ‘That’s a clever lass. No long now.’ She paused as another of the spasms seized her patient, and as it eased she said over her shoulder, ‘I think we’ll have her in the chair now, Eppie.’

Alys, caught between the bed and the window, watched in alarm as the three women raised Meg and transferred her to the birthing-chair, where she lay limply, thighs spread, her head thrown back on her mother’s breast, while the two midwives inspected her privities. This was not how one had ever imagined — it was not how the birth of the Virgin or of St Nicholas was shown — they could never depict a saint in such an extremity, she realized. The priests would never believe it. And Kate has done this, been through this, she thought, horrified, and yet she loves her baby.

Although Mistress Bowen had said it would not be long, it seemed to Alys that she stood trapped by the window for a hundred years while Meg laboured through the last stages of bringing her child to birth. She was aware of a stirring at the door to the outer chamber, of voices and exclamations as well as of Meg’s increasing cries of pain, the encouraging words of the two midwives, the reassuring murmurs from Mistress Baillie, but her attention was entirely on Meg, on this dreadful process of bringing a child into the world. She seemed to be reduced to a single point of attention, without hands or feet or body, only a pair of eyes and a mind which tried but was unable to reject what it was seeing.

Finally — finally — Meg screamed in what seemed like a death-agony, the two women on their knees exclaimed together, there was a flurry of movement, a sudden thin high wail. The entire world and everything in it seemed to pause for a moment, and then all the women in the other chamber sighed at once. Meg exclaimed joyfully, her weakness forgotten:

‘Oh, let me see! Let me see! Is it a boy or a lassie?’

‘It’s a bonnie wee lassie, and the image o her daddy,’ said Eppie exultantly, and raised the baby up to its mother’s reaching arms, the cord trailing. ‘Gie her your titty, Mammy, till she kens you.’ Over Meg’s shoulder her eye fell on Alys, and her expression changed. ‘Here, my lass, have you been here the whole time?’

Alys nodded dumbly. Mother and grandmother were already crooning over the scarlet, sticky, crumpled creature in Meg’s arms, counting its toes and calling it Wee Marion and Bonnie wee lass while it nuzzled for Meg’s dark nipple. Mistress Bowen, with a glance at her colleague, got stiffly to her feet and came round the end of the truckle-bed.

‘I’ll say this for Frankie Renfrew, he makes bonnie bairns. Come away, pet, it’s a hard thing to witness your first time,’ she said. ‘You should never ha been here.’ She put out a bloodstained, reeking hand to offer support, then withdrew it as Alys recoiled, shuddering. ‘Aye, away out and get some of the groaning-ale, lassie, that should settle your wame.’

‘Bide there,’ said Grace Gordon, ‘till I find you something to restore the spirits.’

‘I never thought of it being so — so — ’ Alys subsided on to the bench Grace had indicated. ‘Should you not — there is the father to be told — ’

‘I’ll let Eppie do that,’ said Grace, ‘seeing it’s the howdie’s right. And the gossip-ale was going like a fair without my aid, and will go better still now the bairn’s at the breast.’

She had found Alys adrift in the house on legs which did not seem to belong to her, and taking one look in her face had steered her to her own bedchamber. The room was full of kists, most of them ranged in the space under the bed, and, despite the array of expensive clothing of good wool and fine brocade which hung on pegs round the walls and behind the door, smelled not of moth-herbs but, unaccountably, of apples. Now Grace opened a further door and vanished into a small light closet, where Alys could hear her moving things. Glass clinked, pottery tapped. After a moment she emerged with a cloth, which she used to dab at Alys’s hands and wrists. The familiar, comforting scent of lavender water rose from it.

‘D’you want to talk about it?’ Grace asked. ‘I take it you witnessed the birth?’ Alys nodded wearily. ‘Aye, there’s good reason they shut us out. Did Mally turn the bairn, then?’

‘I suppose. She said she did. Do you not wish to join the rest of — ’

‘No, I’m well enough here.’ The cloth moved on to Alys’s temples and brow. ‘Just sit quiet. You’re no howding yoursel?’

She shut her eyes, but managed to shake her head under the gentle attentions.

‘How long since you were wedded?’

‘Nearly a year.’

‘Time enough.’

‘And you?’ Think about something else. Make conversation as one was always taught. Good manners are earthly salvation, as Mère Isabelle once said, though Catherine would not agree.

‘The same. Nicol and I were wedded last Yule in Middelburgh, and came home here in May.’ Her lips tightened briefly.

‘And a — a sad homecoming for you, I think,’ said Alys, pulling her thoughts together. ‘You haven’t — you aren’t —?’

‘No.’

Change the subject, thought Alys.

‘How did Nicol think, to find his father wed again?’

Grace shook her head, smiling wryly. ‘No best pleased, I think, the more so that the letter must ha gone astray and we’d never heard of the marriage, though he’d heard of ours. Nicol and Frankie don’t get on, you’ll ha jaloused, and that was just another coal on the fire. Mind you he’s no quarrel wi Meg herself, poor creature.’

She put the cloth in Alys’s hand and rose to fetch a pottery cup from the closet, stirring it as she crossed the chamber. ‘Drink this, my dear. It should help a bittie. And never fear, you’ve had a fright the now but they aye say it’s a different matter when it’s your own.’