The Midwife's Apprentice

by Karen Cushman

  Alyce stood up in the shallow water and looked at herself. Much cleaner, although a bit pink and wrinkled from her long soak. And pretty? Mayhap even that, for she had all her teeth and all her limbs, a face unmarked by pox or witchcraft, and perhaps, now, more of happiness and hope than of sadness in those big eyes that even the midwife had remarked on.

  She washed her clothes, pulled them on still wet and drippy, and ran for the kitchen to dry a bit before the fire.

  Too soon it was time to bid Edward good-bye. “Be assured I will not be far from here, and I promise to come back for Christmas and Easter and your saint’s day. And to see when that front tooth grows in again.” Edward grinned. He had enjoyed the day, done a man’s job, and been carried home on the shoulders of a giant of a shepherd called Hal. He was satisfied with his place at the manor, the devotion of the cook, and the friendship of Alyce. He suddenly felt not so small.

  Alyce gave him a hug and a smack and felt that tickling in her throat and stinging in her eyes that meant she might cry again, now she knew how to do it. She went down the path from the manor, stopping every few steps to turn and wave until finally the path curved and Edward was lost from sight and all she could see was the way ahead.

  16

  The Baby

  ONE WARM EVENING CAME A STILLNESS as if the whole world were holding its breath. Thunderstorm, thought Alyce, as she hurried to fasten the wooden shutters over the windows before the skies opened.

  Just then a party of riders rode into the inn yard-—a prosperous-looking man wearing too much jewelry, a stout lady in some obvious discomfort, and their attendants, a man and woman sullen and none too bright looking. The man lifted the stout lady down and they hurried into the inn, leaving the boy Tam to put the horses away and see them dry and fed for the night.

  Because they appeared important, Jennet herself bustled over to see to their needs.

  “Supper, sir? Cold beef and the best bread in the county? A jug of ale or some Rhenish wine?”

  “We want no food,” said the prosperous-looking man.

  “How then can I serve you?”

  “In no way, madam, unless you be a priest, a magician, or a man of medicine. My wife is being devoured by a stomach worm.”

  The woman moaned a little and then let out a great cry that nearly drowned out the thunder crashing about them. Jennet crossed herself as the man swept platters and mugs off the big table and helped his wife lie down.

  Snatching a mug of ale from John Dark, Jennet brought it to the wailing woman. She watched a moment and then laid her rosy hand on the woman’s swollen belly. “In truth, sir, I think she is about to give you a child.”

  The man looked at Jennet with displeasure and dislike. “Get away with you, fool! My wife has been barren since the day of our marriage and breeds nothing but discontent. She has in truth grown stout of late, but that be herring pie and almond puddings. Having a child? Impossible!”

  Jennet watched a few moments more. “Not only possible, sir, but soon.”

  The entire company looked then at the woman on the table, who was struggling to sit up and was pushing so hard her red face looked near to bursting.

  “Impossible,” said the man again, a little less confidently this time. “What should be done?”

  The woman let out a bellow like a bull and John Dark hurried outside, preferring the rain to this.

  “There is a midwife in the village some walk down that road. I will point your man the way,” said Jennet.

  So for a time the inn resounded with the rumble of the thunder, the cries of the laboring mother, and the useless clucking of the woman’s husband.

  Finally the manservant reappeared, as wet as water could make him. “I found the midwife’s cottage where you told me,” he said. “The midwife was not there and no fire is lit and it looks like some other child is making his way into the world tonight with the midwife to assist him. This one must make his own way.”

  All was noise and confusion as the woman pulled herself up again and commenced bellowing. Her husband gave her his ruby ring to hold. Jennet gave her ale. The manservant gave her a black look and went outside to join John Dark in the rain.

  As night deepened, the woman’s cries grew louder and louder. Jennet hustled and bustled, but she knew about brewing and baking and not babies, and all her bustle could not help. Magister Reese went out and returned, went out and returned, unable to help but reluctant to leave. Alyce stood watching from a place under the stairs, unwilling to be part of the scene, for the sounds and smells were all too familiar and spoke of her failure with Emma Blunt. She was kept from leaving altogether by her sympathy and compassion, and by a certain curiosity that compelled her to know what was happening and to what end and what might be done to finish or hasten or ease.

  As the wails of the companions grew near as loud as those of the mother, Jennet threw them all outside—the woman attendant who shrieked more dian she attended, the wailing husband, and Magister Reese, who then stood at the shuttered window, frantically paging through his Great Work looking for something to help and every now and then calling, “Jennet, you must find the bulb of a white lily” or “Virgins’ hair and ant eggs!” or “An eaglestone! Who has an eaglestone?”

  Finally Jennet covered the moaning woman with her cloak, and, whispering “I can do no more. This baby will not come,” slipped from the room.

  Lightning lit up the room, empty but for Alyce under the stairs and the woman, in tears, in pain, in labor, and none to help. Alyce trembled. I should, she said to herself, but I cannot. I tried before and failed. You must, said herself back to her. None so stupid, said Magister Reese. You are nitwit, said Grommet Smith. Guts and common sense, said Will Russet. You gave up, said the midwife. “Help me,” cried the woman on the table. “Keep still, all of you, and let me try,” said Alyce, coming out from behind the ladder.

  She got the woman to her feet and walked her around the room, stopping every now and then to pour some ale into her. She rubbed and oiled and pushed. She bade the woman sit and stand, kneel and lie down. She called on all those saints known to watch over mothers—Saint Margaret and Saint Giles and Saint Felicitas, and even Saint Loy, who protects horses, and Saint Anthony, who does the same for pigs, for she believed it would do no harm. She did every single thing she had seen the midwife do and even invented some of her own. As the thunderstorm passed and night prepared to yield to dawn, on a scarred wooden table that had seen more of pork pies and beer than babies, Alyce delivered a baby boy, with the black hair of his father and the red face of his mother.

  Alyce had no basket of clean linen and ointments and herbs, so she tore a coarse thread from the hem of the woman’s dress, tied the baby’s cord, and cut it with a carving knife borrowed from the kitchen. Having no cumin or cecily for sealing the cord, she spat on her hand and rubbed the cut end.

  Alyce then opened the door. “Here, sir,” Alyce said, handing the baby to his father, “no stomach worm, but a loud and lusty boy.”

  His mother shouted from inside, “Stomach worm, bah! In truth I thought a dragon was eating my innards. Give the lout to me, I will teach him to give such trouble and pain to his mother.” The stupefied father took the baby to his mother, who commenced scolding and berating the little fellow, all the while smoothing his black hair and caressing his little hands, until her scolding turned to cooing and his loud cries to gurgles, and mother and child fell asleep there on the inn table.

  Alyce saw the man and his servants staring at her in awe. “It be a miracle,” they whispered. “We have seen barren woman give birth, stomach worm transformed to innocent babe, dragon defeated by a girl who appeared from nowhere!”

  The man spoke to Alyce. “Good miss, be you an angel or a saint?”

  Alyce stared at him. “An angel? I be no angel.”

  “Then it is saint you are!” he cried, and all about fell to their knees in wonder.

  “No,” Alyce repeated. “No saint, no angel. Corpus bones, I but deliver
ed a child. Your wife never had a stomach worm.”

  But the man and the servants, still on their knees before her, prayed and thanked her for the cure of their mistress and the miracle of the baby, and while she was at it, the female servant asked for a warm cloak for winter and that the wart should fall off her chin.

  Alyce pushed past them and stepped out into the warm night. The moon was as round and as white as a new cheese. On a bench beneath the old oak sat John Dark and Magister Reese, sharing a mug of ale. Magister Reese winked at her and smiled. Alyce smiled back. And then she laughed, a true laugh that came from deep in her gut, rushed out her mouth, and rang through the clear night air. And that was the true miracle that night, the first of June—the month, as Magister Reese could have told her, named for Juno, the Roman goddess of the moon, of women, and of childbirth.

  17

  The Midwife’s Apprentice

  JUNE BURST INTO BLOOM—daisies, larkspur, meadowsweet and thyme, foxglove and thimbleberry, purple thistle flowers, and yellow whorls of blooming fennel. Alyce sat in the meadow and thought. The rich merchant and his wife wished to take her back with them to Salisbury to care for their son and mayhap perform more miracles; he spoke temptingly of new shoes and a shrine. Magister Reese was leaving the inn to return to the lodgings in Oxford he shared with his widowed sister and wished to employ Alyce: “My sister grows older and needs more care than I can give her, and I think mayhap Oxford would please you.” Alyce liked being invited, but Jennet scowled and moped, unwilling to lose a willing worker but even sadder to see the last of the girl herself, and finally offered Alyce a penny every now and then if she would agree to stay.

  As she chewed on a grass, Alyce smiled. From someone who had no place in the world, she had suddenly become someone with a surfeit of places. She closed her eyes and continued to chew. What to do? What do I want? she asked herself in the manner she had learned from Magister Reese, who thought it fitting for even an inn girl to want.

  In her mind she saw Magister Reese’s spotted face and kind eyes, heard Jennet’s merry voice, and smelled the rich perfumed robes of the merchant from Salisbury. She felt again the vigorous, squirming, wonderful aliveness of the merchant’s son as he wriggled into her hands. She heard the joyful chatter of birds building their nests in the thatch of the church, saw the triumph on the face of the midwife as she coaxed a reluctant baby into life, remembered the silky feel of Tansy’s newborn calves and the sticky softness of the baby called Alyce Little.

  “Of course,” she whispered, eyes opening wide. “Of course.” She was not an inn girl or a nursery maid or a companion to old women. She was a midwife’s apprentice with a newborn hope of being someday a midwife herself. She had much still to learn, and she knew a place where she could learn it, cold and difficult and unwelcoming as that place might be. That was her place in this world for right now, and though her belly would likely never be full, her heart was content.

  That night she dreamt she gave birth to a baby who gave birth to a baby and so on and so on until morning.

  Early in the day she saw the merchant and his family off to Salisbury, bid farewell to Magister Reese and sent her respects to his sister, hugged Jennet, and set off for the village, comb and soap and page from a great and holy book tucked in her bodice and orange cat at her heels.

  Not too long after this the inn, which had been known simply as John Dark’s place, came to be called The Cat and Cheese, marked by a great hanging sign of an orange cat with a morsel of cheese in his paw. Within a few years no one remembered why, but so it is called to this day.

  As she swung along the village road, Alyce, with good feelings tumbling about inside her, hummed and then tra-la-ed and then sang, as loud and clear as a swan. Some of the words were without meaning, others just sounded right, but some words came from deep inside her and told how she felt about life and hope and the road ahead.

  “Come summer, come flowers, come sun,” sang Alyce.

  “Purr,” sang the cat.

  Alyce knocked at the midwife’s door, surprised at how the French roses had grown since last she was there.

  “Jane, I am back,” she said to the frowning midwife. “I be a fine midwife’s apprentice now. I know about babies and birthing, singing songs and cooking chickens, crying and laughing and reading.”

  “Is that all?” asked Jane.

  “Are these not excellent things for a midwife’s apprentice to know?”

  “They are indeed, but is that all?”

  “That is all and I am here.”

  But Jane would not have her. Alyce stood before the cottage, eyes stinging and heart sore. She had not thought about this, had thought no further than knocking on Jane’s door and being welcomed. But there it was. Jane would not have her. And before morning turned to afternoon and the morning glories turned their faces from the sun, Alyce, in despair and confusion, turned from the village, fearful that each step would take her once again over that invisible line that separated the village from the rest of the world.

  But the cat would not.

  “I know you do not wish to leave, cat. Nor do I. But there is no place for me here. I tried to come back but failed. She will not have me.”

  Purr laid himself down, tucked his front paws under the white spot on his chest, and looked at her with his gooseberry eyes.

  “What then should I do?” Alyce sat down and listened to the humming of the bees and the purring of the cat. Suddenly she leapt to her feet. “Corpus bones, you are right, cat! Jane herself told me what she needed.”

  Alyce turned back again for the cottage, gathering comfrey leaves and raspberries and the tiny wild strawberries in her skirt as she went. She marched up to the midwife’s door and knocked firmly.

  “Jane Sharp! It is I, Alyce, your apprentice. I have come back. And if you do not let me in, I will try again and again. I can do what you tell me and take what you give me, and I know how to try and risk and fail and try again and not give up. I will not go away."

  The door opened. Alyce went in. And the cat went with her.

  Author’s Note

  As long as there has been a woman giving birth and another to help her, there have been midwives. In developed countries today, most births take place in hospitals attended by doctors. This is not so throughout the world and certainly was not true in the past. Until the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of women giving birth did so at home attended by other women.

  The woman who made a profession of helping women in labor was called a midwife, from Middle English words meaning “with woman.” Sometimes the midwife was the oldest woman in the village or the one who had the most children. Sometimes a woman could get no other work, because she was poor or ignorant or dirty, so she hired herself out as midwife for women who could afford no other help. Lucky women were attended by a midwife with a deep commitment, skill, and training through experience or apprenticeship, and with patience, judgment, and clean hands.

  Different times and different places saw midwives differently, as almost-doctors or as almost witches. In medical England, midwifery was a less than honorable profession, mostly because it was practiced by and on women. Midwives worked unsupervised and unregulated into the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII’s efforts to centralize and supervise the medical profession resulted in the registration and regulation of midwives.

  Medieval midwifery was a combination of common sense, herbal knowledge, and superstition, passed from woman to woman through oral tradition and apprenticeship. Things were done the way they had long been done, with little innovation or progress. This “women’s knowledge” was considered reliable and valuable, as illustrated in this book by the inclusion of Jane Sharp’s information in Magister Reese’s great encyclopaedia.

  Midwives in general used their common sense to help the woman in labor relax, to comfort and soothe her physically and emotionally, to call on all the natural and magical agents at their disposal, and to assess when things were going badly. Some, lik
e Jane Sharp, were experienced enough to know when and how to interfere. Others just tormented the struggling woman with their meddling. Medieval common sense knew nothing of germs, little of anatomy, and all too much of magic and superstition.

  Herbs were the only medicines available to the medieval midwife. They were selected, picked, dried, and prepared according to ancient recipes and rituals, which took into consideration where and when the herbs were picked, what their leaves or flowers looked or tasted like, and the influence of the ruling planets. Plants under the influence of Mars, used to treat complaints of organs under the influence of Mars, were usually ineffective, as were those given to stanch blood or increase milk because their flowers looked like drops of blood or milk. But many herbs actually were effective, such as birthwort for inducing contractions, lady’s mantle to stop bleeding, wormwood to relieve pain, and hops for their calming effect. The derivatives of some herbs used by midwives are used in medicine today: belladonna to calm spasms and cramps, smut rye to stimulate uterine contractions, henbane and poppy for relief from pain.

  Superstitions included the use of relics, water from holy wells, charms, and magic words. Snail jelly for childbirth fever and eel liver to ease labor were considered useful, as were precious stones—notably jasper, emerald, and ruby—either held in the mother’s hand or crushed into powder and mixed in wine. If these practices helped, it was not through magical intervention, but because of the calming and strengthening effect of the midwife and mother’s faith in their efficacy.

  No matter how skillful and conscientious she was, a midwife was really only of help in a normal delivery. No amount of magic stones or herbal syrups could correct a serious problem, such as a woman’s small or deformed pelvis or a child in a position making passage through the birth canal impossible. Many mothers and children died in childbirth during the Middle Ages, the result of poor nutrition and care, the number of unskilled midwives, and the inadequate state of medical knowledge.