Philippa Gregory - The Kingmaker's Daughter

‘Anne!’ my mother calls, shouting into the wind. ‘Come here.’

I stagger back to the cabin, as I hear the anchor chain creak protestingly, and then the rattle as it comes on board and sets us free. The ship is groaning, released again to the mercy of the sea, pounded by the waves, pushed along by the wind. I don’t know what course Father will set. I don’t know where we can go now that we have been banned from our own home. We cannot return to England, we are traitors to England’s king. Calais will not admit us. Where can we go? Is there anywhere that we will be safe?

Inside the cabin, Isabel is up on the bed on her hands and knees, lowing like a dying animal. She looks at me through a tangle of hair and her face is white and her eyes rimmed red. I can hardly recognise her; she is as ugly as a tortured beast. My mother lifts her gown at the back and her linen is bloody. I have a glimpse and I look away.

‘You have to put your hands in, and turn the baby,’ my mother says. ‘My hands are too big. I can’t do it.’

I look at her with utter horror. ‘What?’

‘We have no midwife, we have to turn the baby ourselves,’ my mother says impatiently. ‘She’s so small that my hands are too big. You’ll have to do it.’

I look at my slender hands, my long fingers. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say.

‘I’ll tell you.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You have to.’

‘Mother, I am a maid, a girl – I shouldn’t even be here . . .’

A scream from Isabel as she drops her head to the bed interrupts me. ‘Annie, for the love of God, help me. Get it out! Get it out of me!’

My mother takes my arm and drags me to the foot of the bed. Margaret lifts Isabel’s linen; her hindquarters are horribly bloody. ‘Put your hand in there,’ my mother says. ‘Push in. What can you feel?’

Isabel cries out in pain as I put my hand to her yielding flesh and slide it in. Disgust – disgust is all I feel through the hot flesh, and horror. Then something vile: like a leg.

Isabel’s body contracts on my hand like a vice, crushing my fingers. I cry out: ‘Don’t do that! You’re hurting me!’

She gasps like a dying cow. ‘I can’t help it. Annie, get it out.’

The slithery leg kicks at my touch. ‘I have it. I think it’s a leg, or an arm.’

‘Can you find the other?’

I shake my head.

‘Then pull it anyway,’ my mother says.

I look at her aghast.

‘We have to get it out. Pull gently.’

I start to pull. Isabel screams. I bite my lip, this is disgusting, horrifying work and Isabel disgusts and horrifies me that she should be here like this, like a fat mare, labouring like a whore, forcing me to do this. I find I am grimacing, my head turned aside as if I don’t want to see, standing as far as I can from the bed, from her, from my sister, this monster, touching her without pity, holding tight onto this limb as I am ordered, despite my loathing.

‘Can you get your other hand in?’

I look at my mother as if she is mad. This is not possible.

‘See if you can get your other hand in, and get hold of the baby.’

I had forgotten there was a baby, I am so shocked by the horror of the stench and the sensation of the slippery little limb in my hand. Gently I try to press my other hand in. Something yields horribly, and I can feel, with the tips of my fingers, something that might be an arm, a shoulder.

‘An arm?’ I say. I grit my teeth so I don’t retch.

‘Push it away, feel down, get the other leg.’ My mother is wringing her hands, desperate to get the work done, patting Isabel’s back as if she were a sick dog.

‘I’ve got the other leg,’ I say.

‘When I tell you – you have to pull both legs,’ she commands. She steps sideways and takes Isabel’s head in her hands. She speaks to her: ‘When you feel your pain is coming you have to push,’ she says. ‘Push hard.’

‘I can’t,’ Isabel sobs. ‘I can’t, Mother. I can’t.’

‘You have to. You must. Tell me as the pain comes.’

There is a pause and then Isabel’s groans gather strength and she screams: ‘Now, it is now.’

‘Push!’ my mother says. The ladies get hold of her clenched fists and heave on her arms, as if we are tearing her apart. Margaret slips the wooden spoon in her mouth and Isabel howls and bites down on it. ‘You pull the baby,’ my mother shouts at me. ‘Now. Steady. Pull.’

I pull as I am ordered, and horribly I feel something click and give under my hands. ‘No! It’s broken, broken!’

‘Pull it. Pull it anyway!’

I pull, there is a rush and a gout of blood, a stink of liquid and two little legs are dangling from Isabel and she screams and pants.

‘Once more,’ Mother says. She sounds oddly triumphant, but I am filled with terror. ‘Nearly there now, once again, Isabel. As the pain comes.’

Isabel groans and heaves herself up.

‘Pull, Anne!’ Mother commands and I hold the thin little slippery legs and pull again, and there is a moment when nothing moves at all and then one shoulder comes and then another and then Isabel shrieks as the head comes and I clearly see her flesh tear, as if she were a crimson and blue brocade, red blood and blue veins tear as the head comes out and then the slithery cord, and I drop the baby on the bedding and turn my head away and am sick on the floor.

The ship heaves, we all stagger with the movement, and then Mother comes hand over hand down the bed, and gently takes up the child and wraps him in the linen. I am shuddering, rubbing my bloody hands and arms on some rags, rubbing the vomit from my mouth but waiting for the words that will tell us a miracle has happened. I am waiting for the first miraculous little cry.

There is silence.

Isabel is moaning quietly. I can see that she is bleeding but nobody staunches her wounds. My mother has the baby wrapped warmly. One of the women looks up smiling, her face stained with tears. We all wait for the little cry, we wait for my mother’s smile.

My mother’s exhausted face is grey. ‘It’s a boy,’ she says harshly: the one thing we all want to hear. But oddly, there is no joy in her voice and her mouth is grim.

‘A boy?’ I repeat hopefully.

‘Yes, it’s a boy. But it’s a dead boy. He is dead.’

THE RIVER SEINE, FRANCE, MAY 1470

The sailors take down the sails and cart them to the sailyards for repair, and scrub out the royal cabin where the boards are stained with Izzy’s blood and my vomit. They say that it is a miracle we were not drowned in the storm, they speak of their own horror when the chain went up across the Calais harbour entrance. They say only my father’s weight on the wheel made it possible for the steersman to get the ship round. They say they never want to take a voyage like that again, but if they had to, they would only do it with my father at the wheel. They say that he saved them. But never again will they sail with women on board. They shake their heads. Never again with women who are chased by a witch’s wind. They are exultant in their survival. They all think that the ship was cursed with a woman in labour and a dead baby on board. They all believe that the ship was chased by a witch’s wind whistled up by the queen to blow us to hell. Everywhere I go on board there is an immediate and total silence. They think the witch’s wind was hunting us, will follow us still. They blame us for everything.

They get up the chests from the hold and at last we can wash and change our clothes. Isabel is still bleeding but she gets up and gets dressed, though her gowns hang oddly on her. Her proud belly has gone, she just looks fat and sick. Izzy’s holy girdle and pilgrim badges for her confinement are unpacked with her jewels. She puts them in the box at the foot of our bed without comment. There is a wordless awkwardness between the two of us. Something terrible has happened, so terrible that we don’t even know how to name it or speak of it. She disgusts me, she disgusts herself, and we say nothing about it. Mother takes the dead baby away in a box and someone blesses it and throws it into the sea, I think. Nobody tells us, and we don’t ask. I know that it was my inexperienced tugging that pulled his leg from the socket; but I don’t know if I killed him. I don’t know if Izzy thinks this, or Mother knows it. Nobody says anything to me either way, and I am never going to speak of it again. The disgust and the horror lies in my belly like seasickness.