The Harem Midwife

by Roberta Rich

  In a voice so low Hannah had to bend her ear to Leah’s mouth, the girl said, “If I die, take care of my baby.”

  “You will be fine,” said Hannah. She had often heard such words from young mothers. The pain of giving birth frightens a girl, making her soft and beseeching. “Of course I shall raise your child if it comes to that. You are a daughter to me, a much-loved daughter. Now, I must prepare the herbs.”

  Hannah took the kettle off the brazier, poured boiling water in a bowl, and added the herbs. With a wooden spoon, she stirred the mixture, submerging the herbs. After the herbs had steeped sufficiently, Hannah carried the bowl of steaming liquid and set it down on the floor next to Leah. She thought of Isaac. Perhaps he had left before Hannah was awake to deliver a few skeins of silk to the Armenians next door? Hannah refused to contemplate other possibilities. She must concentrate on Leah and her baby.

  Hannah reached out a hand and stroked Leah’s belly. The girl’s hips were barely the span of a man’s hand. With such a childlike form, she could struggle for days and not manage to push out the child.

  “Where is the birthing stool?” asked Leah.

  “It is right here behind that curtain.” She hauled it out into the centre of the room where Leah could see it.

  The chair was shaped like a chicken’s wishbone with handles at either end for the labouring mother to grip. The handle of the carved wishbone turned up into a backrest. Isaac had fashioned it for Hannah, hoping that one day she might make use of it herself. On the back, Isaac had painted a pair of turtle doves mating in mid-air, although Hannah knew the thoughts of a labouring mother were far from love and marital congress as she struggled and sweated to expel her baby.

  Hannah took the herbal potion and blew on it to cool it, then coaxed Leah to sip as much as she could manage. Leah soon grew hot to the touch. Her eyes lost focus, darting around the ceiling of the attic like a sparrow searching for a place to light. A puddle of water appeared between her legs. The herbs were not taking effect. Hannah debated whether to give Leah a dose of cramp bark in a cup of warm sweet wine, but decided it was too late. The travail was proceeding. Hannah felt as powerless to stop it as she would be to halt a runaway horse.

  Leah’s legs were filling with fluid. Her lovely, sharp-featured face was turning as puffy and white as pastry dough. Hannah pressed a thumb into the top of the girl’s foot, held it there for a moment, then took it away. The indentation remained. Hannah had seen this condition before. A feeling of helplessness and frustration came over her.

  “Let us get you on the birthing stool,” said Hannah. “You will be more comfortable.”

  Hannah raised Leah from the floor by grasping her under her arms. She helped her toward the chair. To Hannah’s surprise, Leah remained calm and, moreover, did as she was told. Hannah managed to get Leah to lower herself to the chair and grip the handles. Even with her huge belly, the girl felt light, hardly more substantial than Matteo.

  Leah said, “My mother did not have the luxury of a birthing chair and a midwife as kind as you. She appeared home one late afternoon from high up in the summer pastures with my baby brother strapped to her back.”

  Were there no women in Leah’s village helping their sisters and neighbours through their travails? Was life in the mountains nothing more than a comfortless test of endurance from birth to death?

  “After, the mother cooks and eats the placenta to give her strength.”

  The custom of eating the placenta was common among the nomads, but Hannah had never heard of the practice among Jews.

  “If the baby is not wanted,” Leah went on, “they leave it in a crevice for the wolves and return home with empty—” The girl’s tongue was swollen and protruded from her mouth, making it difficult to understand her speech. She let out a groan and clutched at her belly.

  If Leah were still in the harem, this would be a festive occasion like Safiye’s confinement. Jugglers and acrobats would amuse and distract the crowd, if not the mother. An astrologer would draw up the baby’s chart. The lead ladler would predict the baby’s fortune.

  “Leah, relax, breathe. If you are tense, you will only make it more difficult.”

  “Make it stop, now!” Leah pleaded, the pain overwhelming her.

  The girl’s body was stretched as tightly as the strings of a klezmer. Hannah knew there was little she could do, but she went around the room opening the window and all the dresser drawers. This would help ease the baby’s passage into the world. All cooking vessels should be turned upside-down to prevent the Angel of Death from finding a hiding spot.

  During the next hour, Hannah sang songs to distract Leah. Between pangs, Hannah told her the tale of a maiden who loved a silly young knight who cared only for his horse. The knight fed oysters to his mare night and day.

  Leah seemed unable to remain upright in the birthing chair and so Hannah helped her to lie down on the floor. When the pains came closer together, Hannah examined the mouth of the womb. It had opened nicely, but the sharing bones still would not permit the passage of the baby’s head. Not even her birthing spoons could help in this situation. As each strong pang came and went, Hannah feared that the pressure of the contractions would cause the infant’s head to bend back, snapping its neck. It was no good telling Leah not to push. When the urge to push came, there was no resisting.

  Hannah could hardly bear to think of what she would be required to do to save Leah’s life if something did not happen soon—take out her crochet, an evil pointed instrument, and pierce the baby’s skull, dismember it, and pull out the severed limbs until the womb was empty and the floor strewn with tiny body parts.

  Hannah brought a paper twist of ground pepper out of her bag to make the girl sneeze, which sometimes helped to hurry the birth. She held it under Leah’s nose. Nothing.

  More time passed.

  There was one thing that could be done to save the baby, but she could not resort to it yet. Hannah had seen death in many forms—plague, murder, and childbirth. She would never grow accustomed to it.

  Gradually Leah’s green eyes grew dull. When Hannah moved her hand in front of them, the girl did not blink. The girl’s pulse was much too rapid. Her body grew rigid. She was icy to the touch.

  It would be a kindness to give her an opiate, but Hannah doubted the girl could swallow a large gold-foiled pill. All she could do was stroke Leah’s hair and hold her as her breathing slowed and grew more shallow and eventually stopped. Was it God’s will that Leah die? No. Surely, God was not so unjust.

  She fumbled through her linen bag for a hand mirror and held it to Leah’s lips. Nothing. No breath at all. Hannah closed Leah’s eyes.

  The poor baby, ill-fated from conception, would soon be dead too. Was it right that this be so? Without a mother’s love, what chance was there for this child? A crippling grief overcame Hannah. Despair hung in the room as pungent as the smell of blood. She dropped to her knees and rocked back and forth, head in her hands.

  I murdered my son’s uncle, Hannah thought. I caused my sister Jessica’s death. I have failed to keep the love of my husband. I have failed to give him a child. Now I have one more failure to add to the reckoning.

  Hannah rose to her feet and started to draw a sheet over Leah’s body and face. Just then there was a ripple along the surface of the girl’s belly, like the twitch of a horse’s hide when a fly alights. Hannah considered. Was failing to act not just as wicked as placing a pillow over the face of a living infant? For the rest of her life, Hannah would struggle to forget what she did next.

  She pushed aside the sheet. She oiled Leah’s belly from breast to umbilicus. She took up her iron knife. Guide my hand, God. Hannah made a horizontal cut above the umbilicus from hip bone to hip bone. A tracery of red blossomed on the white belly, a gaping mouth opened. Such a small girl, so much blood. Hannah placed the sheet on Leah’s chest, then reached inside the belly with both hands and lifted out the womb. Hannah manoeuvred it onto the sheet. It was the colour of a ripe plum, rou
nd and bursting, mapped with a network of veins. With the tip of the knife, Hannah made a small incision. Watery blood flowed like wine from a ruptured goatskin.

  Hannah wiggled her fingers into the small cut and ripped open the womb. The sound of tearing flesh made the bile rise in her throat. This was not Leah, a girl she had come to love and admire, she reminded herself, but a vessel of flesh and muscles cradling a child, a child waiting to be liberated, a child with a will to live.

  Through the tissue and blood and sinew, tiny curled legs and a bottom emerged. Hannah groped, trying to gain a good purchase. When she found the shoulders and had hooked two fingers under the armpits, she pulled. The baby slipped from the womb. Hannah was panting as violently as Leah had done a few minutes ago. The child was blue.

  Hannah turned away from Leah’s body, upending the baby. With the heels in one hand, she gave the child a vigorous whack on the bottom. The baby choked, screamed, and turned scarlet with fury. Hannah placed the child on a cloth on the floor and took up her iron knife. She severed the birth cord, then sank to her knees. Gradually, she felt her pulse slow and her breathing grow more regular.

  She shielded the baby, tucking it to her breast. The child’s first view of the world must not be its mother’s mutilated corpse. Still kneeling on the floor, struggling and slipping in the blood, Hannah used one arm to pull the sheet over Leah’s face. God, prayed Hannah, guide me. Tell me what I am to do with this motherless child.

  The baby was whimpering softly. “It is all right, little one. You have made it safely into the world. No need to dunk you in a cold bath to coax you to breathe.”

  A dense fatigue swept over her. With her hand, Hannah cleared the baby’s mouth and face, washing off the sticky white grease that coated all newborns and protected them from the waters of the womb. Like many babies born too soon, Leah’s was covered with a golden down like the hairs on a bee’s legs. The child was small but not impossibly small. As Hannah rocked it, she glanced between its legs. A girl.

  A wet-nurse must be found. A grave dug. The placenta buried. She had not the energy for any of it. Who would see to everything? The only thing of which she was certain was that someone else would need to take care of these matters. The girl Hannah had hoped would become like a daughter to her was dead, and her baby, the last of its mountain tribe, an orphan.

  CHAPTER 21

  Constantinople

  STANDING AT THE window, Hannah once again saw a carriage pull up in front of her house. There could be only one reason for the Imperial carriage with its little mare snorting, harness bells tinkling, plumes dancing in the breeze.

  Several weeks had elapsed since Leah’s baby was born. In that time, Tova also bore a child—a vigorous, healthy boy whom she named Benjamin. Jessica, as Hannah had called her, had grown plump and healthy on Tova’s rich milk. She began to gurgle. When Matteo held her carefully on his lap, she waved at him and tried to pull his hair. Isaac had grown fond of the child, fussing over her when she cried, taking her to Tova’s house when it was time for her to be nursed.

  But in spite of all the joy the children brought, it was still a house in mourning. Leah’s death hung heavy in their hearts, even Zephra and Möishe who had avoided her company, believing she brought bad luck upon them, felt her loss. Isaac, who even in happier times kept his feelings to himself, looked sad and weary, although he called for the Rabbi to bury Leah and covered the mirrors for shiva, the period of mourning. Zephra no longer whistled tunelessly as she scrubbed the pots. Möishe no longer teased Matteo and tossed the ball for him in the garden.

  Grazia, meanwhile, had become more insistent that her money be paid and refused to grant any further extensions. They had until next week or she would insist her marriage to Isaac proceed. Soon, Hannah feared, she would have no husband, no son, no home.

  Suat dismounted and knocked on the door. Hannah, the baby on her hip, opened it. “I have orders to fetch you,” he said. “The Valide wants to speak with you.”

  “About what?” asked Hannah.

  “Her Highness wishes you to bring the baby.”

  So the Valide knew. Hannah felt her entire body grow cold.

  Suat turned and returned to the carriage, climbing into the driver’s seat.

  Hannah had no time to run or hide. Only Grazia was home. She appeared now in the front entrance.

  “What is going on?”

  “I’ve been called to the palace.”

  “I’ll take the baby, then.”

  “No,” Hannah said. “She’s coming with me.”

  Grazia looked about to argue, but seemed to think better of it and withdrew into the house.

  It was horrible to think that the last familiar face Hannah might see was Grazia’s. Hannah wanted to say a last goodbye with Isaac. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and cry, The Valide has found me out. I may never see you or Matteo again. Don’t let me go without hearing you say ‘I love you’ one last time. But there was no Isaac to confide in and kiss goodbye. He was at the market and was not due home for at least another hour. Perhaps it was better this way, because what, after all, could he or anyone do to help her out of this situation, a situation entirely of her own making?

  The neighbours craned their heads out of their windows to get a better look as Hannah and the baby climbed into the carriage and old Suat clucked to the horse and they pulled away. Hannah hugged the baby against her chest as they rode.

  It seemed impossible that this infant born in tragedy could be so beautiful. The baby’s eyes, as green as Leah’s, darted from side to side, trying to focus on Hannah’s face. Bracelets of fat encircled her wrists. Hannah jiggled Jessica in her arms in time to the swaying of the carriage, wondering at the baby’s fate, and her own. The movement would soon have the infant sleeping.

  Mustafa was waiting at the entrance to the harem when they pulled up. His eyebrows were drawn in a scowl, his shoulders stiff. The golden quill in his turban trembled in disapproval. He greeted her without his customary smile and offer of tea. He cast a dismissive look at the baby. Her staunchest ally in the palace had become hostile.

  Without preamble, he said, “I will take you to her.” He beckoned Hannah to follow him to the Valide’s apartments.

  When they passed through the marble columns, the floor was strewn with fresh rose petals. The infant was now asleep in Hannah arms, oblivious to her opulent surroundings, the walls lined with Iznik tiles and gold-embroidered tapestries. What did any of this beauty matter, if the Valide was about to order their executions?

  Mustafa knocked on the doors of a formal reception room and when the doors opened, he dropped to his knees and crawled toward the Valide, who wore a kaftan of rich cerulean blue. Tucking the baby under one arm, Hannah got down on her knees and crawled, as best she could, to the royal divan, leaving in her wake a swath of exposed marble floor as her skirts swept away the rose petals. Hannah did not dare meet Nurbanu’s eye.

  The Valide’s white lap dog scampered from her arms, knocking over a small table holding an Iznik ewer and a tray of pastries. The pitcher shattered into dozens of pieces. The dog, unconcerned, commenced to gobble down the pastries.

  The Valide snapped her fingers and ordered a slave to attend to the mess. Then she turned to Hannah, who had approached as far as she felt she was proper. “You and I have much to discuss.”

  There was no escape from this huge room with eunuch guards at all the doors. There was no way to explain how Hannah came to have this baby.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Hannah said, still afraid to raise her head. The baby had done nothing wrong. Surely the Valide would not order the execution of an innocent child?

  “Be seated.” The Valide gestured to a nearby cushion.

  Hannah was surprised by the invitation and immediately stumbled to her feet, arranging herself on the cushion, still holding the baby tightly. Nurbanu’s eyes came to rest on the child. She crooked a finger to beckon Hannah to hold the child so she could see her.

  “And what
have you named this little thing?”

  “I call her Jessica,” Hannah replied. “After my sister.” She had planned to ask Rabbi Yakov to say a brokhe, a blessing, over the child and bestow the name Jessica in blessed memory of Hannah’s dead sister, but Hannah had not been able to bring herself to do it just yet. Was it right to give such an ill-fated name to the baby? Her sister had died by bloodshed and so would never be at peace until she found another body to inhabit. Hannah hoped Jessica’s spirit would find repose in this baby and protect it.

  The Valide sighed. “All that nuisance for a girl.”

  Nuisance? What exactly did the Valide know? Hannah couldn’t help thinking of Leah’s white body, the knife, the hasty funeral, the lusty baby, her own tears.

  The Valide leaned over to examine her. “It has been so long since I held an infant.” She reached out and took the sleeping babe in her arms, bent over and kissed her round cheeks and silky black hair. “Does she resemble the Sultan, do you think, Hannah?”

  The Valide was playing with her. Hannah was certain of it. “She is so young. It is too soon to tell who she looks like,” she ventured, hoping she wasn’t making a fatal mistake.

  “Nonsense. Many newborns are the very image of their fathers.” The Valide tucked a corner of the blanket around the baby’s feet. “How old is she?” She peered more closely. “I would say a few weeks. Would that be right?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “So that means …”

  Hannah watched her mentally calculate, counting off months.

  “She was conceived a good while before my son ever laid eyes on little Leah.” The Valide studied Hannah, daring her to make a reply.

  “She was born very early,” Hannah said. “It is a miracle that she survived.”

  “You do not think I am so stupid as to think this child is the Sultan’s?”