Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Catherine’s hand went to her throat as if she were choking, and then dropped to her belly, now ever so slightly rounded. “No! It cannot be!” She fell to her knees, keening a prayer, then stopped abruptly in the middle of a plea to the Virgin and got to her feet.

  “Take the sheets away and dispose of them. Say nothing to a soul. This is a small matter. I’m told breeding women often bleed a bit.” But her lips were pressed tight and she was scarcely breathing.

  “Then it’s true? You’re pregnant?” Beth asked.

  Catherine nodded, ignoring the gripping sensation low in her abdomen. Misfortune is like the devil, she thought. To acknowledge it gives it strength. A bit of blood is nothing. I know I carry Charles’s child.

  “But I’ve not yet told Charles,” she confided to her maids of honor. “I wanted to wait until I was certain. And then . . .” She gave a little forced laugh. “If he knew, he’d bundle me home and coddle me for eight more months, and I’m having such a good time here.” She swept the sheet off the bed and scrubbed with a handkerchief at the russet stain on the down-stuffed mattress underneath. A sob escaped her again.

  “Don’t worry, Your majesty,” Zabby said. “I’ve midwived many times at home on Barbados, and what you say is true: there is often blood early on. Most of the time it means nothing.” And the rest of the time it means a miscarriage, she thought.

  “How is it that you’ve midwived?” the queen asked, astonished.

  “We have hundreds of slaves on the estate,” Zabby said, “and perhaps three doctors on the whole island. Many of the slaves and bondswomen are competent midwives themselves, but if there’s no one else, or if it is a difficult case, I assist. I’ve birthed babes, foals, pigs.”

  “But a foal isn’t the next king of England. Oh, what should I do?” Despite her best efforts, her desperation was evident. “Should I send for the physician? If the gossips think I’ve miscarried, they’ll never let me live it down. What good’s a barren queen?”

  “You’re not barren, Your Majesty,” Zabby said firmly, all the while thinking, If the queen gives birth, there’s no chance for me. Then, What if she dies in childbirth? a demon voice whispered in Zabby’s brain, barely audible. She pinched herself hard on the thigh and buried the thought under a thousand blessings. “Perhaps you should send for the physician after all, just in case.”

  But Catherine, though frightened by those crimson spots, didn’t want to let a lack of faith doom her. If God had granted her a child, He would be offended if she doubted Him. She tended to think of God as the ancient Greeks regarded their pantheon, having capacity for a few petty human emotions. If she let a little blood shake her, then her child might be stripped from her, just to teach her a lesson. Blessed Mary might forgive her fears, but God would punish her.

  She forced herself to be cheerful. “No, let us disport ourselves. Archery, did you say? Fetch my quiver and let us go to the green.”

  But though her courses didn’t come, Catherine continued to bleed irregularly, a bit on her petticoat, a bit more on her bedclothes. She kept it secret from the other ladies, but at last she got her favorite maids of honor, her confidantes, together, and sobbed wretchedly.

  “Tell me what to do!” she begged of them. “I must give him a child—I must! It is my only duty in this life, and if I should fail . . .”

  She thought Zabby would have midwife lore for her, or Eliza some jest to cheer her. But it was Beth who said, timidly, “There is a shrine nearby. I . . . Someone told me it is the shrine of one who protects mothers in difficult times. Women go there to ask for an easy birth. We can go there, just the four of us. No one else need know.”

  “A shrine? To one of the saints?”

  Beth knew it was not, but she didn’t think the queen would be willing to pray at an old Celtic altar. “I think so. I don’t know which one. The local women swear by her.”

  “I’ll go!” Catherine said, starting up and scrubbing away her tears. “Where is it? I’ll have my coach made ready.”

  “Can your coachman be trusted, Your Majesty?” Beth asked. “Does he gossip? Everyone near Bath knows why women go to that shrine, and if you don’t want anyone to know you’re quick . . .”

  “You’re right. We can hire a coach.”

  “The women say no man is allowed to approach the shrine,” Beth said. Harry, in his latest message, had been very specific that she should get the queen alone. If there’s a coachman or footman there, he may be your mother’s agent, he told her. She has spies everywhere, you know. He might try to stop us from eloping.

  She didn’t call it lying. Subterfuge was a better word. She never would have believed she’d have such a knack for it, but love gave her courage, loquacity, a swift and crafty mind.

  Zabby gave a gasp and pretended she’d just stubbed her toe. That midnight conversation came back to her. Of course—this was it! Their dear Beth was going to join her lover tonight. He’d get the queen’s blessing and carry her off to a life of love and delight. Oh, lucky Beth.

  She thought of Charles, of the love she would never have, and forced herself not to notice how haggard and unwell the queen had been looking lately.

  “We’ll go straightaway!” Catherine said, gaining hope.

  “Not this morning,” Beth said. “Tomorrow, late, when the others are dining. They say . . .” She wracked her brains for something convincing. “They say if you visit the shrine near nightfall, you will receive a dream from the saint that will tell you what you need to know.”

  “Very well, then. Tomorrow.”

  That would be quite enough time for Beth to get a message to Harry.

  Chapter 20

  The Shrine of Sulis

  IT WAS BRISK the next evening, but the day had been sunny enough that the sharp scent of late-blooming verbenas and pinks still rose from the roadside to fill the air. Catherine and the maids bundled into a pony cart Eliza had wheedled from one of the local families, who loaned it gladly when they learned their queen was to ride in it. Why, once word got around, they could sell horse and cart for twice their price, as souvenirs of the royal visit . . . though perhaps it would be better to keep it themselves, and tell guests they sat where the royal rump once rested.

  This outing had none of the festival atmosphere of their last evening adventure. They dressed somberly, the queen in deep indigo with a high neck, and no jewels. Even Beth, after much debate, decided a serviceable gown of sturdy make was better than silks and finery. Harry had told her they would have to ride hard for a while before they’d rendezvous with a coach, and proceed from there to a secret chapel where he had a minister prepared to marry them by special license. She packed an inconspicuous bag with her most minute treasures—her yellow gloves, a length of the emerald ribbon that looked so becoming tied in a bow at her throat, a swirled turquoise brooch Eliza had forced on her, swearing it wasn’t her color.

  Under her dress she wore layer upon layer of her finest petticoats and sheer shifts, some gifts from the queen, some of which she’d painstakingly embroidered herself. She didn’t think her Harry would mind if she had a plain dress, but she rather thought he’d like her to have pretty underthings.

  The ponies fretted and shivered their withers as Zabby drove them out of Bath. They were used to a clean, warm barn and sugar from the daughters of the house, and shied at shadows along the roughening path. There was a queer yellow half light in the air as the sun descended and warm day met cool night.

  “It looks like a poisonous vapor,” Catherine said, and told them of a sickening mist that rose from a marshland not far from her convent and periodically devastated the town perched at its banks.

  Zabby was too distracted to tell her that the disease likely came not from air but from water befouled by their waste. Beth thought only that the mist might make her curls come undone. What if she looked so bedraggled that Harry decided he’d made a bad bargain and rode away without asking the queen for her hand?

  They rode for almost an hour—and cou
ld have walked nearly as fast, if that had accorded with their dignity and footwear. The ponies usually pulled children, with a plump nurse or elderly groom strolling at their head, and only managed a trot under protest. Even then, their short legs made a great show of lifting primly and elegantly high, but accomplished little in the way of distance with each stride.

  “Here, I think,” Beth said, touching Zabby’s arm.

  “You think?” Eliza asked.

  “He said turn at the little ruined inn. Yes, there.” They could just see the skeleton of what had once been a building, long since burned out and overgrown with dying bracken.

  “He?” Catherine asked. “I thought this was a shrine for women. What does a man know of it?” She nervously smoothed the midnight silk that lay flat over her stomach, flat where it should have bulged. Her belly still fluttered with what she was certain were the kicks and caperings of new life, but there was an ache, too, which in recent days slowly tightened around her like a snare.

  “Oh, well . . .” Beth had run out of lies, but suddenly they were there.

  The land dipped down sharply into a close copse, and Zabby pulled the ponies to a halt. Where the vegetation thickened stood the tumbled remains of a dry stone wall.

  “It must have been badly built,” Eliza said. “All the ones I’ve seen have stood for centuries.”

  They left the rig loose—it was obvious the ponies would never exert themselves without provocation—and picked their way along the narrow path that led into the little wood. It was just the sort of place a vixen would have liked to make her den, secret and dry, but the path was marked by many shoeprints and the flotsam of human passage: pipe ashes, torn laces, scraps of paper. No fox would have dared dig her earth here. Still, it felt wild, and though they knew the main road was nearby, it seemed to the girls that they’d stepped into something primeval.

  Zabby ran her hand over the crumbling, lichen-covered stones. “Perhaps this wall did stand for centuries,” she said. “Look at that. Surely it is Roman.”

  She pointed to a worn squat stone with the barest impression of having three sides.

  “A grave?” Catherine asked, crossing herself.

  “A terminus, I think. A Roman boundary stone.” Zabby crouched down and could just make out the letters DSM.

  A few more steps brought them to the shrine.

  “Is that it?” the queen asked. “It looks more like a well. Which saint’s can it be?”

  A low oval wall of flaking stones surrounded a navel that descended into the earth deeper than any of them could see in the failing light.

  “I think I know whose shrine this is,” Zabby said. “Lady Bartlett was telling local legends over dinner a few nights ago. Don’t you remember? Dea Sulis Minerva. This must be a shrine of Sulis. She was here before the Romans, Lady Bartlett said, but was so important to the native Britons that the Romans adopted her as an aspect of their own Minerva rather than offend the locals by banishing her.”

  Catherine recoiled. “What have I done? A false pagan god? We must leave at once!”

  “Oh, Your Majesty!” Beth cried. She reached out to restrain her queen and stopped herself just in time. “Wait . . .”

  She looked desperate, and Zabby realized that if the queen left, Beth would lose her chance to elope with Henry. She squeezed Beth’s hand and whispered, “I know about your young lord, my dear. Don’t worry, I’ll keep her here.”

  To the queen she said smoothly, “Your Majesty, don’t leave just yet. Now that we’ve come all this way, you must consider—will you pass up a chance to bear a child?”

  Catherine stared at Zabby, alarmed.

  “Oh, I don’t know that there’s anything to it, and it is, as you say, naught but a pagan shrine, but think on this: For centuries, millennia, women have been coming here to ask for the help of Sulis. Would they still come, generation upon generation, mother and daughter, if there was not some small sign of its efficacy?”

  “But it is a false god. Why, to even be here is almost a sin.”

  “Forget Sulis, Your Majesty,” Zabby said. “What if there is some other explanation? We know that the waters at Bath can cure certain ailments. The ancients thought that was the goddess—now we say it is some essence in the water, no more. Perhaps the same holds true here. Look at that hole—it seems to extend to the bowels of the earth. What if it emits some rare and precious vapor, a healing gas? They call it Sulis, but it may be only science. If women who come here say they have easy births, then why not try it? Forget the reason, and look at the facts.”

  Catherine hesitated, returning to her old nervous habit of counting the rosary on her fingertips. If there was any chance, and she failed to grasp it . . .

  “Will you go first?” she asked her maids of honor.

  Eliza laughed. “Allow me,” she said, blustering forward. “If a sinner such as I ain’t stricken down immediately, you three should be safe.”

  Zabby thought of her own secret sin, and wondered.

  “What do I do?” Eliza asked.

  Beth stepped up, casting Zabby a quick grateful glance. “I’m told you kneel at the shrine and . . .”

  “I will not pray to a pagan god!” Catherine said.

  “I don’t think you have to pray, Your Majesty, and who’s to hear it anyway? But they say you lean over the opening and ask for something, then make an offering. Something small, a coin or ribbon. Like a wishing well.”

  Catherine lightened at once. “Oh, a wishing well. There was one near where I grew up. A mere harmless entertainment.” It never occurred to her that her natal well might have begun life as the holy site of some long-forgotten goddess. “Go on, Eliza, and if you’re smitten, I’ll pray for your soul.” She gave a nervous laugh.

  The girls and their queen retreated out of earshot while Eliza knelt by the shrine.

  Eliza chuckled at herself; she scarcely believed in the religion of her birth, and certainly gave no credence to some old goddess who hadn’t the good sense to drift forgotten into the mists of obscurity like a dowager when the new bride arrives. But it was not long before her keen sense of the dramatic took over, and she imagined herself not in the moment but on a stage, the rocks only plaster, the hole descending below the proscenium, where some actor thin and nimble enough to play the part would presently rise, wraithlike, to murmur strange prophesies in iambic pentameter. She found her voice, and who knows but that she didn’t fool Sulis herself?

  “Spirit of the waters, goddess of this holy hole . . .” No, that would never do, unless this was to be a comedy. She leaned over and stared into the shadowy pit, trying to find exactly the right words for her monologue, something that would make the audience, if there was one, shiver with delicious premonition. Before she could frame the words, she found herself growing dizzy, and swayed above the pit as if she would pitch forward.

  Give me strength, she begged Sulis or herself, God or the world. Give me the courage to leave comfort and safety and family and cast myself on the mercy of the audience as a playwright and a player. I have been my father’s coin, a golden thing he’d spend to buy the ear of the king. Let me be my own coin, a ha’penny, if only it is one I can spend as I wish. Give me the words to astound the world, the voice to thrill them, and please, let me have no regrets when I have thrown away wealth.

  She bent her head to the well and stared into the blackness, looking, listening for answers. But Sulis, like every goddess and every woman, gives her answers in her own good time, and Eliza heard only her own surging thoughts.

  On impulse she unclasped an emerald bracelet from her wrist and let it slither from her fingers like an asp into the depths. She thought she heard it brush the sides, but she never heard it hit bottom.

  “Oh, well,” she said aloud. “If it doesn’t work out, I can always come back here with a grappling hook on a cord. Likely every lady with a hankering is as madly generous to Sulis as I’ve been. If I’m poor, I’ll just fish up their wishes.”

  Beth stood and brus
hed off her skirts, lighthearted again, and thought how to turn that last line into poetry.

  “Here I am, unblasted and uncursed,” Eliza said blithely, returning to her friends. “Go on, Beth. Your turn at the altar.”

  Beth blushed fiercely and caught Zabby’s smile. “No, you go, Zabby. There’s nothing else I wish for.” She peered through the boscage, waiting for Harry.

  “There’s nothing I wish for either. You go, Your Majesty.”

  “Nonsense,” Catherine said, still a little afraid of the shrine, delaying as long as possible. “Why, a girl of sixteen must have as many wishes as there are stars in the sky. Pick a worthy one and go.”

  The command of a monarch could not be refused, and Zabby went slowly down the path. Her desires were not stars but one single burning sun that dimmed all else with its brilliance.

  She did not kneel but stood defiantly above the maw, peering into it, wondering at its secrets. She had no real faith in anything she could not observe or theoretically surmise, but all the same she had time and again seen the efficacy of folk wisdom. The slaves on her father’s estate packed cobwebs into freely bleeding cane-knife wounds and the flow quickly ceased—far faster than if they had stuffed them with cotton. They said the web is accustomed to being knit by the spider, and knits the wounds as well, but Zabby knew there must be some other mechanism. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it worked. There must be some property of this well, or cave, or pit . . .

  She dropped a pebble into it and heard no splash, no sound at all. She bent and put her face to the gap. With a faint susurrus the earth exhaled in a warm, sweet breath, a gust that made her gasp, inhaling deeply of the cloying gas. She felt lightheaded, but cogent enough to think, Yes, a vapor, I was sure of it, before reclining, half conscious, beside the shrine. The hot, honeyed smell was gone, and she knew she should move before it returned, but the worn stones were oddly comfortable, and she began to think, or dream—she was not sure which.