Tina Daniell: Dark Heart

It was difficult to understand what Gregor had seen in her mother in the first place. Maybe she had been pretty once, Kit admitted grudgingly. She was a good enough cook. Yet whatever Rosamun once was, more and more in recent months she had become the kind of sickly, indoors drudge that Kit planned never to be.

Rosamun didn't have very many friends or people sympathetic to her sick spells. That's where Minna came in. Kitiara had to admit that Minna tended to her mother as best she could. And she never pressured Gilon to pay her mounting bill.

Even so, Kitiara detested the bossy busybody.

"Gilon," Kit emphasized the name, since he was not her father, "is cutting wood in the forest. I don't know where, probably miles away. Otherwise I'd run and get him. My mother has been feeling well enough lately, and I didn't want to ask him to stay home even though we knew it was close to her time. Can't you hurry?"

Kit looked out the window and wished she were anywhere but in this house, anywhere except perhaps her own cottage. She couldn't forget the anguished sounds that Rosamun had made, and the look of fear on her face.

"Well, who's in a hurry now, young lady? Do your best to keep up."

With that, Minna swept past Kitiara and out the door. Kit would have liked to kick her in the behind. But the thought of Rosamun at home, in the throes of childbirth, made her repress the impulse.

Indeed, Kit practically had to run to keep up with Minna, who moved along the walkways with quick strides.

When they reached the cottage, Kit saw that her mother had climbed back onto the bed, where the blanket and sheets were already soiled and bloodstained. As they rushed to her, Rosamun uttered a low groan and her breathing quickened with the beginning of another contraction. This time, she seemed nearly too exhausted to scream. Her long, pale blond hair was plastered against her skull with perspiration. Her delicately boned face was drawn. When Rosamun's lips parted, only a strangled moan escaped as her body curled forward. After the contraction crested, she collapsed back against the sheets.

Minna hurried up to feel her forehead. The contractions were speeding up. Rosamun's bed was almost soaked.

"Good, your water has broken," Minna declared. But the midwife frowned slightly when she noticed the greenish stain on the bedclothes.

Minna unceremoniously pulled up Rosamun's smock and checked on the labor's progress. "Put some water on to boil and get the clean cloths ready. The baby will be coming any time now. That green water means there might be trouble," she said meaningfully.

Never a deft hand with household chores, Kit awkwardly helped Minna slip clean sheets onto Rosamun's bed. She gathered what clean cloths she could find, then lugged in a bucket of water from outside and put it in a pot to boil on the fire.

By now Rosamun was so consumed by her struggle to give birth that she barely acknowledged the presence of either Kitiara or Minna. Her gray eyes were glassy, her body buffeted by the painful contractions that came relentlessly.

Minna pulled a small pouch out of her birthing bag and ordered Kit to bring a clean bowl filled with hot water to the bedside table. She poured the contents of the pouch into the bowl and wrung out a cloth in the brownish liquid. Minna used the cloth to wipe Rosamun's brow and, occasionally, pulling up the smock Rosamun wore, to bathe her swollen stomach.

"What is it?" Kit ventured to ask.

"Secret ingredients," responded Minna smugly. "Don't know myself, actually." She tittered. "Buy it off that kender I was telling you about, Asa. He calls it his 'Never Fail Balm.'"

Kit had to admit her mother breathed a bit more easily after these ablutions.

Minna kept Kit busy. She ordered her to bring a chair to the bedside, to find more blankets, to brew a pot of tea, to get some more wood for the fire. Kit knew Minna did not like her and had counseled Rosamun that her young daughter was too headstrong and should be reined in a bit. Now Kit chafed under the midwife's orders, realizing how much Minna gloried in her authority over Kit in this emergency.

Rosamun's groans and screams kept the two of them preoccupied, however. Her agony was terrible for the child to witness. At times Rosamun's eyes rolled up into her head and her body went rigid as she endured the repeated contractions.

As the labor dragged on, Kit secretly longed for Gilon's calming presence and wondered when her stepfather would return. But she realized forlornly that it was only about midday, and that, typically, Gilon did not return until dusk.

About an hour after Minna's arrival, Rosamun's breathing slowed dramatically. The midwife thrust her hand under Rosamun's smock and gave Kit a nod. "Push the baby out, Rosamun," she commanded.

Kit looked at Minna in surprise. Rosamun, pale, delirious, and drenched in sweat, seemed barely able to turn her head on the pillow, much less push anything. Nonetheless, at Minna's urging, Kit climbed onto the bed and helped Rosamun to sit up. She then placed her small back against her mother's sweat-stained one and braced her feet against the wooden headboard, thus propping up Rosamun while Minna again exhorted her mother to push.

"Push!" cried Minna, "if you want it over and done with, push!"

An hour after that, nothing had changed except that Kit's legs felt like logs and Rosamun's head had lolled back against her daughter's as if she had lost consciousness. Minna had sat down, strands of hair falling over her sweat-beaded brow. Though exhausted, the midwife methodically urged Rosamun to keep pushing.

Then, finally, with one drawn-out moan, Rosamun gave birth.

To Kit, the baby looked like a reddish-purple monkey covered with blood and a white, cheeselike goo. A lusty cry that seemed to shake the windows in their frames immediately established the child's virility.

"A boy!" Minna crowed. "You have yourself a fine, healthy boy, Rosamun!" she said as she expertly wiped down the infant, diapered him, and swaddled him in a clean blanket. "Why he must weigh ten pounds! He's a giant!"

The information was lost on the baby's mother. Rosamun's eyes fluttered open, then closed as Kit slipped out from behind her, letting Rosamun sink back, exhausted, against the pillows.

Almost instantly, a sharp intake of breath wrenched Rosamun fully awake, her eyes huge and startled.

"Just the afterbirth," Minna muttered to herself, glancing at Rosamun. But the midwife quickly thrust the swaddled infant at Kit and turned back to the mother. Gazing at her intently, Minna reached for her birthing bag at the foot of the bed. She dug through its contents and pulled out another small pouch, this one with a double clasp. As the midwife carefully opened it, Kit, who stood near Minna, could have sworn that a light glowed from within!

Minna drew out a pinch of something. Turning her back on the bed, Minna tossed a sprinkling of particles into the air while chanting a few words Kit didn't understand. The light in the room seemed to shimmer. An instant later, Kit felt a sense of well-being descend on her. The infant in her arms even stopped bawling. More amazing still, Rosamun smiled, heaved a deep sigh, and sank back against the pillows. In that split second, Kit's mother seemed to fall serenely asleep! The girl could not believe the evidence of her eyes.

Then almost as quickly as it had come, the peaceful aura evaporated.

Rosamun's breathing quickened. Her eyelids flew up, but the eyes had rolled up into their sockets again. Minna leaned over Rosamun worriedly, patting her cheeks.

Only the baby seemed to have received some lasting benefit from Minna's hocus pocus. Kit held the infant stiffly away from herself as she edged over to the cradle Gilon had lovingly crafted. Luckily for everyone present, Kit's new brother forgot his initial irritation at being pushed out of the warm comfort of the womb. Immediately after Kit laid him in his new bed and set the cradle rocking, he fell asleep, cooing.