Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

He scanned my face, and then left the room. I sat cold and still and waited for Stride to bring me the little withy basket.

He put it in my hands and I nodded him from the room. It was Ralph’s work, a tiny replica of the other basket I had pulled up to my window seat in the dawn light on my fifteenth birthday. The reeds were fresh and green, so it had been made in the last few days. Wideacre reeds perhaps, so he could be as close to the house as the Fenny. With his basket in one hand, and his horrid little present in the other, I gave a moan of terror. Then I bit the tip of my tongue and pinched my cheeks with hard fingers to fetch some colour to them, and when John came back into the room with my smelling-salts I had a hard laugh ready, and I waved them away. Smelling-salts, questions, grave looks of concern, I dismissed airily. John watched me, his eyes sharp and anxious, but he pressed no questions on me.

‘It is nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing, I just danced too much for your little son.’ And I would say no more.

I dared not give him reason to stay. With my baby due in three or four weeks, I had to have him away. So I hid my fear under a bright brave front, and I packed his bags for him with a light step and an easy smile. Then I stood on the steps and waved his chaise out of sight, and I did not let myself tremble for fear until I had heard the hoofbeats of the horses cantering away down the drive.

Then, and then only, I leaned back on the sun-warmed doorpost and moaned in fright at the thought of Ralph daring enough to ride or, even more hideous, to crawl right up to the walls of the Hall, and hating enough to remember what he had given me for a present four years before.

But there was no time for me to think, and I blessed the work and the planning that I had to do, and my tiredness during the days and my heavy sleep at nights. In my first pregnancy I had revelled in slothful inactivity in the last few weeks, but in this one I had to pretend to three pairs of watchful eyes that I was two months away from my time. So I walked with a light step and worked a full day, and never put my hands to my aching back and sighed until my bedroom door was safely shut and I could confess myself bone-tired.

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 bis 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 ringers 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.