Maia raised her eyes to mine. They were wide with fear. “But ye be the queen,” she whispered. With her fingertips she touched my belly. “This be the king’s child, not a common servant’s. Why’d ye not want it?” In this world, where a woman’s primary function was childbearing, she evidently couldn’t comprehend of a married woman, a queen at that, who wouldn’t want to have a child.
The enormity of my intention was reflected in her gaze. I swallowed. How to explain. How to make her understand? “I’m afraid.” My voice was scarcely above a whisper. “I’m afraid of dying if I have a baby.”
The silence stretched between us. Maia didn’t try refuting my fears. She must have known as well as I did how dangerous a pregnancy and birth could be in the Dark Ages. I didn’t know the percentages, but I could take a good guess at them.
“Mother Nara be the midwife,” she said at last.
Of course. She would be, wouldn’t she? The woman who not only attended to the deliveries but who also had medicines for those who didn’t want their babies. She must know of plants that would terminate a pregnancy before it was too far along.
I swallowed. “I can’t go and see her myself.” My voice was conspiratorially low even though I knew no one could overhear us. “You’ll have to go and see her for me. You’ll have to tell her it’s for you.”
Now Maia looked terrified. “But it’s the king’s child,” she repeated, the words hissing out on a breath of disapproval.
I shook my head in determination. “No, it’smychild. It’s in my belly, not his. And it’s not even a child yet. It’s a clump of cells.” My fingers closed on her arm as she looked at me in confusion. “A clump of cells which is only going to grow if I leave it. And it might end up killing me.” I paused. “Like Birte.” She was the wife of one of Arthur’s warriors, who’d not long ago died a horrible death in childbirth, her baby as well. I stared into Maia’s frightened eyes. “I don’t want to end up like Birte. You have to get me something to end this.”
Maia hesitated, biting her bottom lip and shifting from one foot to the other.
“D’you want me to die?” I asked.
She gave a little furtive shake of her head. “No, Milady.” She’d balled up the front of her tunic with her fists. “I– I’ll go and see ’er when I can.”
I’d won. Yet I felt curiously flat at the victory, filled with guilt at what I was proposing to do, and the involvement I’d forced Maia into.
The day stretched out interminably, a day in which I was convinced everyone who looked at me would know my secret. I felt sure my stomach had bloated out already, and my breasts were straining against my clothing in the most tell-tale manner. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time the evening came around, and Maia returned, one hand tightly clenched around a small leather pouch.
Like a guilty conspirator, she came creeping into my chamber. It would have been laughable if I hadn’t been as terrified as she looked.
“I have it,” she whispered, unfolding her fingers to reveal the tiny drawstring bag. “Ye have to drink some in ’ot water before ye go to bed for three nights. Ye’ll get cramps and then– then it should come away. But Mother Nara told me it don’t always work.”
“But it did for you?”
She nodded, her brow furrowing with worry. I didn’t blame her. After all, she was procuring medication, which might be construed as poison, for the queen. “But…” she shifted from one foot to the other. “I do ’ear say it were what caused Corann’s wife, Ardena, to die. Mother Nara did say so, too.”
“What?” I looked down to the innocuous-seeming bag lying in her outstretched palm and then back up at her. “Now you tell me.” My hand, which had been about to take the bag, dropped to my side.
“Mother Nara said as ’ow I should know the risks,” she whispered. “This did ’appen since I took it myself. She did say as it were rare fer a woman t’die of it.”
Rarer than in childbirth? I had no idea which held the highest risk and no way of finding out. I could hardly go and ask Mother Nara myself.
Voices sounded in the Hall. I recognized Arthur’s, and the other was Merlin’s. Maia did, too, because she stuffed the little pouch into my hands and ran, the side door banging shut behind her.
For a moment I stood irresolute, looking down at what lay in my palm. Then I ran to the bed and, pulling out my old walking boots from under it, slipped the pouch into the toe of one of them. I was straightening up when Arthur and Merlin came into the room.
They were laughing together about something that had happened down at the practice field, but when Arthur saw me, he strode over and took me in his arms for a kiss. My nerves stiffened me, and he must have sensed it because he released me quickly and stood gazing at me in surprise.
“Is anything wrong?”
Behind him, Merlin, too, eyed me askance. The fact that he had the Sight had quite slipped my mind, as he so infrequently used it. Guilt blossomed again, deep in my heart– guilt at the thoughts of what I was about to do, guilt at my wish to kill this baby, guilt at my deception of my husband.
Merlin raised a quizzical eyebrow, and my cheeks flushed hot.
“Nothing,” I said as lightly as possible. “I was just wondering when you’d be ready to eat. I’m hungry, is all.”
Arthur seemed satisfied. While he bent over the basin of tepid water I’d used for my ablutions, I glanced back at Merlin, who was waiting near the door, and was unnerved to discover him watching me.
The smile I managed to raise felt so false I could have screamed.
His eyes narrowed. Did he know what I was thinking? Did he know about the baby? Of all the people here at Din Cadan, he was the one most likely to guess my secret.