The Midwife's Tale(9)

Chapter 3


I took the valise from Hannah and the two of us set out for Patience’s home in St. Crux parish. Patience and her husband lived in two rooms above a small blacksmith’s shop not far from the parish church. When we arrived, we found Patience sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms over the shoulders of two of her gossips. I was pleased to see that Esther Cooper had taken the lead in caring for Patience. Esther had assisted me in many deliveries and acquitted herself well on every occasion. She knelt between Patience’s legs, examining the child to learn how he lay in the womb. I waited until she had finished with her work before I approached. Esther smiled when she saw me.

“How is she?” I asked as we embraced.

“She is well enough, and the child is coming soon. My only fear is that her waters have not yet broken and she is already tired.”

I examined Patience and saw that Esther was right. Her shift was soaked with sweat, and her face had the haggard look of a woman twice her age. For her sake and the child’s, we needed to hasten her labor. “Hannah,” I said, “fetch some featherfew from my bag and boil it in white wine. Esther, I need you to help me with the birth.”

I talked briefly with Patience as I anointed my hands, but she was already too fatigued to tell me much. Hannah returned with the wine and held it to Patience’s lips as she drank. I was loath to break her water before nature saw fit, but I knew that we hadn’t time to wait. I told Patience what I needed to do and then reached inside her to rend the afterbirth with my thumbnail. I said a prayer that Patience’s waters would ease the child’s way into the world. For the next hour, Esther and I worked together to help Patience in her travail, and around noon we delivered her of a baby girl, thanks be to God.

After we swaddled the child and settled Patience in her bed, Esther and I sat together and talked of our friends and neighbors. I had met Esther soon after I had arrived in York, and we became fast friends. I attended her wedding to Stephen Cooper and offered her advice and medicines when she had trouble becoming pregnant. With my help and God’s, she finally could conceive, but she’d not yet had a child who lived. In three years she had four miscarriages, each one more painful to bear than the last. Despite these repeated blows, Esther never stopped attending her gossips in their travail; she rejoiced with them when their children lived and mourned with them when they died. If a more generous soul lived in York, I had not met her.

I knew less about Stephen’s reaction to Esther’s miscarriages, except that he saw divine providence in it and sought remedy more in prayer than in my decoctions and poultices. In the few conversations we did have, it became clear that he disliked me and did not approve of my friendship with Esther. In my more charitable moments, I told myself that he worried that I would gossip about his failure to beget a child or that I blamed him for the miscarriages. But I also knew that he held a low opinion of all women and did not approve of young widows who refused to remarry; women, he thought, needed a man’s guiding hand. Whatever Stephen’s judgment on women, I knew that Esther loved him and I made my peace with her choice. I continued to help them as best I could—the previous month I recommended Esther eat satryion or ragwort flowers soon after the end of her terms.

“Has my prescription had good effect?” I asked.

“It is too soon to tell, but at least there is pleasure in the trying.” She laughed. “If God sees fit, He will answer our prayers.” I thought about Michael and Birdy and wondered at some of the things that God saw as fit. I pushed away such blasphemous thoughts as best I could.

“If you do become pregnant, remember my advice,” I said.

“I know, I know, ‘pomegranate seeds boiled in oil of lilies,’” she said with a laugh. She mimicked my Herefordshire accent with alarming accuracy. “Sometimes I think you want me to have a child as much as I do, if only so you have one to indulge.” She must have seen the sadness that welled up inside me. “My lady, I did not mean that as it sounded.”

“Do not worry,” I said, patting her knee. “You may well be right.” I changed the subject as quickly as I could. “You did well with Patience today. Are you quite sure you won’t let me take you on as my deputy? You have a gift for working with women in travail.”

“Thank you, my lady, but I cannot. Someday I will, but Stephen does not think it meet for me to do so before I have children.”

“I think he fears that you’ll spend even more time with your gossips, and leave him unattended,” I said. “Or that you’ll have money of your own.”