by Alan Gordon
“What do you have against his father?” she asked.
He looked at her for the first time since he joined her, studying her face in every detail.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “I like his father.”
“So do I,” she said. “So do I.”
* * *
She went into labor three weeks later, the contractions jolting her into consciousness in the middle of the night. She turned instinctively to her husband, but Gorm had taken to sleeping on a thin blanket in the lower room.
She thought that she would have more time, but the pains were of a greater intensity than anything she had experienced with Alfhild. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, and the sweat was already running in rivulets. She felt dizzy, and suddenly terrified that the baby would come without anyone there, or that she would die before that, trapping him inside her.
There was a moment of calm between the assaults. She remembered that she had been given a cowbell for just such an emergency. Her hands scrabbled along the base of the wall until they met up with it, and she shook it hard, finally getting enough air into her lungs to cry out.
For the first time since she had come to Slesvig, she was grateful for living in an armed camp. The patrols were out and alert, and from their vantages high above her had watched the progress of her pregnancy through the months with interest. She had become a favorite of the men posted at the island, and they had quietly promised each other to keep an eye out on their leaders quarters in case anything like this happened. They quickly sounded the alarum.
Ørvendil and Gorm dashed out of their respective quarters, swords in hand, searching for information. The soldiers on the walls were shouting and pointing at Gorm’s home. The drost ran back inside, past a startled Alfhild who had been in the middle of a bad dream, and dashed up the stairs. He was back out in a trice.
“It’s her time,” he told Ørvendil. “I must fetch the midwife.”
“Go,” said Ørvendil. “I’ll send Gerutha up to stay with her until she arrives. Godspeed.”
With a speed that belied his girth, the drost made for the drawbridge, calling for it to be lowered. He stood impatiendy for nearly ten minutes as the guards struggled with the windlass. Finally, he ran up the incline of the partially lowered planks and vaulted the remaining gap over the river.
Amleth was awake with the first sounding of the alarum, and as his father ran upstairs to get his mother, he sneaked into Gorm’s quarters. Alfhild was hiding under her sheets, sobbing with terror. He went over to her and whispered, “It’s all right. Everything is all right. Go back to sleep. When you wake up, you will be a sister.”
He rubbed her back, and the sobbing subsided. Exhausted, she fell back asleep. He heard Signe shriek from upstairs, and ran to be with her.
“Who is it?” gasped Signe as he came in.
“It’s Amleth,” he said. “Gorm went to get the midwife. Mother is coming.”
“Thank you,” she said, tears streaking her face. He took her hand, then winced as she crushed his with the coming of the next contraction.
“I’m here, Signe,” called Gerutha as she came up the steps, a lit torch in one hand and a small basket in the other. She stopped for a moment in surprise.
“Amleth,” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“He’s comforting me,” said Signe, managing to smile at the boy.
“You’re a good child,” said Gerutha briskly as she came over. “But you shouldn’t be in here now. This is woman’s work.”
“But can’t I watch?” pleaded Amleth.
“Go,” commanded his mother, jamming the torch into a sconce.
Amleth went down the stairs, and his mother turned her attention to Signe.
“So,” she said, smiling and patting her cousin’s belly. “How does your garden grow?”
The midwife was in a drunken sleep and not easily roused. It took the repeated pounding on her door by the drost, followed by his threats to kick it in when her head finally appeared at the window, to put her into some semblance of haste. She stumbled along slowly while Gorm gritted his teeth and tried not to shove her ahead of him.
“I can’t help it if they come in the middle of the night,” she complained. “Can’t she wait until morning?”
“No!” shouted Gorm.
“Well, you might at least have sent a cart for me,” she grumbled.
“There wasn’t time,” he said. “Please, for the love of God, can’t you move any faster?”
“This is how fast I walk,” she said. “No point in yelling at me about it. I’m old.”
They finally arrived, and the midwife went slowly up the steps while the drost remained below, pacing. When she reached Signe’s bedside, Gerutha was kneeling by her, wiping her brow with a wet cloth.
“Ah, yes, I remember this one,” said the midwife, rolling up the sleeves of her blouse. “A world of trouble with her first baby.”
She felt Signe’s brow, then reached for her wrist and checked her pulse. She looked over at Gerutha in alarm.
“What is it?” asked Gerutha.
“You’d better send for a priest,” said the midwife.
Gerutha turned pale, then ran down the steps. The midwife turned back to Signe.
“All right, dear,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s get this baby out.”
* * *
Ørvendil himself went to the cathedral, not wanting Gorm to leave the island again while his wife was in extremis. Gerutha stayed with the drost, heating up some wine with spices to keep him from storming everything in sight. Unlike with Alfhild’s birth, there was no regular series of shrieks from the upper room.
“I should never have done this to her,” said Gorm dejectedly. “She warned me that another birth could kill her.”
“Who, the midwife? Don’t be ridiculous,” protested Gerutha. “She’s gotten by on luck and volubility for years. There’s no woman in town who takes her seriously. I’m sure Signe will be fine.”
“But listen to her suffer,” said Gorm. “It’s all because of me.”
“That is her wifely duty,” said Gerutha. “The suffering that we all bear as Eve’s daughters. Please, stop blaming yourself. Whatever happens is God’s will.”
Ørvendil returned, priest in tow.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
Before anyone could respond, the midwife’s voice sounded from upstairs.
“Is that priest here yet?” she called.
Gorm thundered up the steps, followed more slowly by the priest.
The midwife held a baby in her arms. It was a boy, crying weakly, still bloody. Signe lay nearly still on the bed, only a slight heaving of her breast indicating that she was alive.
“The baby?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“A boy,” said the midwife loudly. “He’s fine.”
Signe smiled, her eyes closed.
“Better hurry,” muttered the midwife.
The priest knelt beside her.
“Milady, do you wish to make confession?” he asked.
“What?” she said, opening her eyes again.
“Confession, milady.”
She focused on her husband for the first time.
“Gorm,” she said, sounding almost puzzled.
He threw himself down by her, clumsily clutching her hand.
“Stay with me, Signe,” he said, sobbing. “You mustn’t go. I need you. I love you.”
She looked at him as though seeing him from the bottom of a deep pool of water.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then she was gone.
The priest patted Gorm gently on the shoulder.
“I think that, under the circumstances, the Church would regard that as an acceptable confession,” he said gently. “Her soul is in Heaven. I’ll administer extreme unction and stay with her. My condolences, milord.”
Gorm didn’t move. Then the baby started crying louder, and he stood to look at it more closely.
> “Looks more like her than you, that’s for certain,” commented the midwife. “You’ll be needing a wet nurse, and soon. Try Margaret, the potter’s wife. She’s still nursing. Here, take him.”
Gorm received the boy awkwardly, and turned to look at his wife. The midwife stayed there, an expectant look on her face, but the drost continued staring at the body. Finally, she cleared her throat.
“I get paid either way,” she said. “Extra for the middle of the night.” Numbly, he reached into his pouch with his free hand. He had no idea how much he handed her, but she was more than satisfied.
“Well, I’ll stop by Margaret’s for you,” she said. “Sorry about your wife. I thought she might pull through. There was much less blood than with the first one. I guess some women just aren’t strong enough to bear children.”
She left quickly. Gorm slowly descended the stairs, the baby mewling in his arms. Gerutha and Ørvendil were waiting for him.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” said Ørvendil. “But at least you have a son, now. What are you naming him?”
“I thought Lother,” said the drost.
“A good king in his time by all reports,” said Ørvendil. “You should get him christened quickly.”
“Let me take him,” said Gerutha kindly. “ou’ve done enough.”
“I have,” said Gorm. He handed the boy over to her, and lay down on his blanket, staring at the ceiling. “She’s in Heaven now.”
“Of course,” said Gerutha firmly. “But you still live, and you have two children to raise. Yau must honor her memory in being their father.”
“I shall never have another wife,” said Gorm softly.
“We won’t talk about that,” said Ørvendil. “Get some rest. We’ll get Lother to that wet nurse as soon as possible.”
He left to await her arrival. Gerutha sat on a chair and rocked the baby, watching Gorm and Alfhild sleeping. Suddenly her eyes darted over to the steps where Amleth was creeping down.
“Were you hiding up there?” she whispered. He nodded. “The entire time?” He nodded again, miserably. She beckoned to him, and he came over to her.
“I should punish you for your disobedience,” she said, pulling his head to rest on her bosom. “But there is enough sorrow here tonight. Go to bed, and this will be our secret.”
He left, staggering from the lack of sleep, and went to find the comfort of his pallet. But sleep would not come to him. The image of Signe’s body floated above him, her face over his, her mouth still open, as if she still wanted to take one more breath.
He wasn’t frightened by the image. He had seen dead people before. He just couldn’t understand why Signe chose to be one of them.
* * *
The cock crowed, and he sat up, having lain awake the entire time. His mother was still with the baby, and his father was busy making arrangements for the funeral. He walked about the island, but a pall had fallen across it, Even the animals were subdued, sensing the sadness of their keepers. He walked silently by the chickens, not bothering to chase them for once.
He wanted to talk to Yorick, to have the fool explain everything to him. He did not understand everything that he saw. He didn’t know why having a baby killed the mother. He didn’t think that that happened all of the time. His mother was still alive. Most of his friends had living mothers. Why should this baby be so deadly?
He slipped through the gate over the drawbridge and walked into town. He knew where horick had his room, and found the back way into the tavern without difficulty. He heard a sound from within that was unlike anything he had ever heard coming out of the fool’s mouth before. He peeped cautiously around the doorway. hbrick was huddled in a corner of the room, an empty wineskin at his feet. He was moaning, a low, guttural sound, and clutching his head to his knees.
“Yorick?” said Amleth softly.
The fool looked bleakly up at the boy.
“What are you doing here?” he said. “It’s too early for you. And it’s too late for me,”
“I wanted to know something,” said Amleth. “Everyone at the island is too busy to tell me.”
“What, child?” said the fool.
“Why did the baby kill his mother?”
The fool stared at the boy, then beckoned him closer. He wrapped him in an embrace, his wine-drenched breath coursing over the little one’s neck.
“He didn’t kill her,” said the fool, his whiteface streaking anew from his tears. “She died. It is something that happens sometimes with women. That is why we should honor all of them. She was a good woman.”
“I liked her,” said Amleth.
“So did I,” said the fool. “But liking someone never stopped them from dying. How is the boy?”
“They were fetching a wet nurse from town,” said Amleth. “They think he’ll live.”
“Thank Christ for that,” said the fool. “What will they name him?”
“Lother,” said Amleth.
“Lother,” repeated the fool. “I like it.”
He released the boy and pointed to his pallet. There was a bunch of flowers lying there, tied loosely.
“Take those, and put them by her,” he said. “Tell no one. It will be our secret.”
“That’s my second secret today, and the sun is still low,” said Amleth.
“What was the other one?” asked the fool.
Amleth told him how he had sneaked back into Signe’s room to watch her give birth to Lother. The fool listened intently, asking a few questions, then sat back in his corner at the end of the narrative and closed his eyes.
“That’s a good secret to keep,” he said.
“Is it still a secret now that I’ve told you?” asked Amleth.
“You can trust me with anything,” said Terence. “You know that.”
* * *
Amleth returned to the fortress with the bouquet in his hands. As he came to the drost’s quarters, his mother grabbed him by the wrist.
“Where did you vanish to?” she said angrily. “I have been looking everywhere.”
“I went to get these,” said Amleth, holding the bouquet up. “I wanted to give these to her.”
Gerutha snatched the flowers from him and threw them on the refuse heap.
“To your room,” she commanded him. “I’ll deal with you later.”
He looked at her in astonishment.
“Well?” she snapped.
He turned and fled inside.
Alfhild was there, sitting by the window. She turned when she heard him come in.
“Mama is dead,” she said, sniffling. “And they won’t let me hold the baby.”
She started to cry. Amleth wanted to do the same, but he looked at the little girl, then sat next to her, his arm around her.
“Everything will be fine,” he said. “I’m here.”
* * *
The midwife woke around noon, feeling ravenous. She had been overpaid for her services, but felt that the indignities to which she had been subjected merited the additional remuneration. She prepared a meal, then cursed as she realized she was out of wine. She was about to go out when there was a knocking at her door.
She knew of no other imminent births. Puzzled, she opened the door to see that tavern fool standing before her, grinning maniacally.
“What do you want?” she asked abruptly.
“To know everything,” he said. “Is not that the goal of any fool?”
“What do you want to know from me?” she asked.
“About Signe and Lother, a birth and a death in the same hour,” he said.
“Those are personal matters,” she said. “Hardly the subject of common gossip.”
He held up a wineskin and jiggled it so that a pleasant sloshing noise came from within it.
“Well, in that case,” she said, holding the door open.
He smiled and went in.
Twelve
“They fool me to the top of my bent.”
—Hamlet, Act III, Scene II
&n
bsp; Slesvig—Roskilde, 1162 A.D.
The midwife had no friends or family in Slesvig. The general suspicion that she may have been a witch kept most of the townsfolk away. It may have been because of this that her absence from view caused no notice. It was a lovesick farmers daughter who found her, stretched out on her pallet with several knife wounds in her chest. The girl had wanted a love potion to win the affections of a neighboring shepherd, but ended up fleeing the house, screaming at the top of her lungs. Strangely enough, the story she told, enhanced by repetition and her fertile imagination, eventually so enthralled the shepherd that he fell for her charms without any occult enhancement.
“The last person who was seen talking to her was Yorick,” said Ørvendil to his wife as they undressed that night.
“’Yorick?” said Gerutha. “What possible interest would he have in a midwife?”
“I asked him that very question,” said Ørvendil. “He protested up and down that he had nothing to do with her death. He only wanted to hear about poor Signe’s last moments.”
“He did? Why?” wondered Gerutha.
“Curiosity, I suppose,” said Ørvendil. “Too morbid for my tastes, but a jester dines out on stories and gossip, so that would have been meat for his stew.”
“And you believe he had no part in her death?” asked Gerutha.
“The midwife? No,” said Ørvendil. “What reason would he have for killing her?”
“I frankly do not know,” admitted Gerutha. “But to be the last to see her alive …”
“He was the last anyone else saw seeing her alive,” her husband corrected her.
“Still, it makes you think, doesn’t it?” asked Gerutha.
“Not of Yorick,” said Ørvendil. “I trust him.”
“He may have murdered a woman, and you trust him to play with our son,” said Gerutha.
“I’ll have one of my men look into it tomorrow,” he said.
“Not Gorm,” she said.
“Hm? No, I take your meaning,” he said sleepily. “He’s having enough troubles as it is right now.”
