Philippa Gregory - The Complete Wideacre Trilogy - Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

I had expected the birth at the end of May, but the last day of the month came and went. I was so glad to wake to the first of June. It sounded, somehow, so much better. I recounted the weeks on my fingers as I sat at my desk with the warm sun on my shoulders and wondered if I should be so lucky as to have a late baby who hung on to make my reputation yet more secure. But even as I reached for the calendar a pain gripped me in the belly, so intense that the room went hazy and I heard my voice moan.

It held me paralysed for long minutes until it passed and then I felt the warm wetness of the waters breaking as the baby started his short perilous journey.

I left my desk and tugged one of the heavy chairs over to the tall bookcase where I keep the record books that date back to the Laceys’ first seizure of the land seven hundred years ago. I had rather feared that it would hurt me to climb on to the seat and to stretch up to the top shelf. And I was right. I gasped with the pain of stretching and tugging at the heavy volumes. But the scene had to be set, and it had to be persuasive. So I pulled down three or four massive old books and dropped them picturesquely around the chair on the floor. Then I turned the chair over with a resounding crash and lay down on the floor beside it.

My maid, tidying my bedroom above, heard the noise of the falling chair and tapped on the door and came in. I lay as still as the dead and heard her gasp of fright as she took in the scene: the overturned chair, the scatter of books and the widening stain on my light silk skirt. Then she bounded from the room and shrieked for help. The household exploded into panic and I was carried carefully and tenderly to my bedroom where I regained consciousness with a soft moan.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Mama, taking my cold hand. ‘There is nothing to fear, darling. You had a fall from a chair in your study and it has made the baby come early. But we have sent for the midwife and Harry will send post to John.’ She leaned over the bed and stroked my forehead with a handkerchief that smelled of violets. ‘It is too soon, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘You must prepare yourself for a disappointment this time. But there will be other times.’

I managed a wan smile.

‘I am in God’s hands, Mama,’ I said, blaspheming easily. ‘Does it hurt very much?’

‘Ah, no,’ she said tenderly. ‘It will not hurt you, my brave girl. You have always been so full of courage and so dauntless when you faced pain or fear. And besides, it will only be a small baby for it is early.’

I closed my eyes as the familiar grip of the pain closed on me.

‘Mama, could I have some lemonade like you used to make when we were ill?’ I asked, as soon as it had passed.

‘Of course, my darling,’ she said, and bent to kiss me. ‘I’ll go at once and make some. But if you need me you can ring, and Celia will stay with you. Mrs Merry, the midwife, is on the way, and a groom is riding for Mr Smythe, the Petworth accoucheur , so you will be well attended, my darling. Rest now, as much as you can. It all takes a long, long time.’

I lay back and smiled. It would not take a long, long time, and Mr Smythe had better stir himself or he would miss his fee. Second babies always come more quickly, I knew, and I could feel the pains growing ever more intense and with less time to rest between them. Celia sat beside my bed and held my hand as she had done once before.

‘It is like waiting for Julia,’ she said, and I noticed her eyes were filled with tears. She was deeply moved at the prospect of birth, this pretty, barren woman. ‘You did so well then, dearest, I know you will manage wonderfully now.’

I gave her an absent-minded smile, but it seemed already as if she were far, far away. I could think of nothing but the struggle going on inside me between the child battling to be free, and my tense body refusing to yield easily. A sudden rush of pain made me groan, and I heard a clatter as a housemaid dropped her end of the family cradle outside the door. Every single servant in the house was dashing around to get a nursery ready for the new unexpected baby: the first of this generation to be born at Wideacre into the Wideacre cradle.

The pains came faster, except they had ceased to be pain and were more like a great strain of heaving a chest of drawers upstairs or pulling on a rope. Mrs Merry was in the room but I scarce heeded her as she bustled around tidying, and tying a twisted sheet from one bedpost to another. My only response was to snap at her when she urged me to pull on it. I wanted none of that lunging, shrieking women’s toil when inside me was a secret, private progress, which was my son edging his way through my reluctant tunnels. She took no offence, Mrs Merry. Her wise old wrinkled face smiled at me and her shrewd eyes took in my curved back and the cooing, moaning sounds I was unconsciously making, and the rocking of my body.

‘You’ll do,’ she said, as I would speak to a brood mare. And as calmly as I could wish she unpacked some darning and sat at the foot of the bed until I needed her aid.

It did not take long.

‘Mrs Merry!’ I said urgently. Celia flew to hold my hand, but my eyes sought the knowing smile of the wise woman.

‘Ready now?’ she asked, rolling her dirty sleeves up.

‘It is … it is …’ I gasped like a floundering salmon as the power of birth once again grabbed my rigid heaving belly like an osprey and shook me in its talons.

‘Push!’ yelled Mrs Merry. ‘I can see the head.’

A spasm overwhelmed me, and then I paused. Another great thrust and I could feel Mrs Merry’s skilled, grimy fingers poking around, gripping the baby, and helping it to force its way out. Then another shove of muscle and flesh came, and the thing was done, and the child was free. A thin burbly wail filled the room and from behind the closed door I heard a ripple of exclamations as every servant who could possibly be in the west wing heard the cry.

‘A boy,’ said Mrs Merry, swinging him by his ankles like a newly plucked chicken and dumping him without ceremony on the quivering mound of my belly. ‘A boy for Wideacre; that’s good.’

Celia’s guileless, suspicionless eyes were on the new baby.

‘How lovely,’ she said, and her voice was full of love and longing, and unshed tears.

I gathered him up into my arms and smelled the sweet strong unforgettable smell of birth on him. In a rush, suddenly, scalding tears were pouring down my cheeks and I was sobbing and sobbing. Weeping for a grief I could name to no one. For his eyes were so very dark blue and his hair so very black. And in my tired and foolish state I thought he was Ralph’s baby. That I had given birth to Ralph’s son. Mrs Merry scooped him out of my arms and bundled him, wrapped in flannel, towards Celia.

‘Out of the room altogether,’ she advised briefly. ‘I’ve a hot posset brewing for her that will have her right as a trivet. It’s good for her to have a weep now – it gets it out early rather than later.’

‘Beatrice crying!’ said Mama with amazement in her voice as she bustled into the room and stopped still at the sight of me face down amid the rumpled sheets.

‘It’s all been too much for her,’ said Celia gently. ‘But look at Baby. What a miracle. Let’s settle him down and come back to Beatrice when she is rested.’

The door closed behind them and I was alone with my sudden inexplicable sorrow, and with sharp-eyed old Mrs Merry.

‘Drink this,’ she said, and I choked on a herbal posset that smelled sweetly of mint, lavender and, probably most fortifying of all, gin. I drained the mug and the tears stopped rolling down.

‘A seven-month-old child, eh?’ she asked, eyeing me, bright with her secret knowledge.