Page 66 of The Bear's Heart
Chapter Twenty-Five
Astomach achewoke me. I lay for a few minutes wondering whether to get up and use the bucket in the corner of the bedchamber, dimly visible in the early morning light. The discomfort subsided though, and feeling better, I turned onto my side and snuggled as close to Arthur’s warm body as my now swollen and nearly full-term belly would allow me, pressing myself against his naked back. There was a nip in the autumn air, and my nose was cold, so I pulled the covers right up and buried my head under them, breathing in Arthur’s masculine smell.
Just as I was beginning to doze off again, a second pain wracked my body, drawing a gasp from my lips. That hadn’t been nice. Maybe it was something I’d eaten. After a few moments, it passed like the first one, and I put my arm over Arthur’s back, nestling closer still. He stirred in his sleep, but didn’t waken, and I closed my eyes to try to get back to sleep as well.
The third time it happened, it brought me properly awake. Realization finally dawned. These were not ordinary stomach pains. This was labor. The thing I’d been half-dreading, half-looking forward to, for the last few months since we’d returned from Caer Baddan, the thing that might kill me if I were unlucky. I sat up and shook Arthur awake, anxious not to be going through this alone. “I think it’s started.”
By the faint light from the half-open shutters he went from sleep to wide awake in a fraction of a second, with the instincts of a warrior and a hunter. “Are you certain? What’s happening? Are you in pain?”
“I think I’m getting contractions.” I put my hand on my belly. “Not all that close together yet, so it’s early stages. The midwife said first babies take a long time.” My university friend Sian’s certainly had. She’d given me every gory and unnecessary detail of her delivery, and it was thanks to her, and all the episodes ofCall the Midwife, that I felt so nervous about what was about to happen to me. Ignorance can be bliss.
Arthur sat up in bed, giving me a full view of his lean torso and causing me a pang of jealousy that he was a man and not expected to do anything more than get a baby started. I wished very much that I could delegate this birth to someone else.
He licked his lips. “What can I do?” A certain nervousness edged his voice, even though he was already a father. “Shall I fetch the midwife?”
He’d had a midwife brought from Caer Pensa– Donella, a woman who’d been trained at Viroconium. There’d be no Mother Nara with her dirty hands tending me. Donella had already delivered four babies within the walls of Din Cadan, all of whom had lived, as had their mothers, so I was feeling a little more confident about the medical care available to me than I had been nine months ago.
I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s only just starting. The sun’s not even up, and she’ll be in her bed.” I rubbed my stomach as the pain began to tighten around my body like an iron girdle. “She’s already given me lots of advice. I’d like it to be just you and me for as long as possible.” I screwed up my face and stopped talking to concentrate on the pain.
“Lie down in the warm then.” He patted my pillow. “See if you can get a bit more sleep.”
Get a bit more sleep? Who was he kidding? He might already be a father, but he had no idea of what being in labor was like. The problem was, neither had I. Not really. I lay down on my side with my back to him, and he curled himself around me, holding me close.
That didn’t work for long. I had no way of telling the time, of course, and had to estimate the passage of minutes. But I was sure these contractions were coming about ten minutes apart. Or maybe a bit less. Everything Sian said about how her labor had started had unhelpfully gone out of my head. My old life of working in the library and going for coffee at her house and admiring her chubby, blonde-haired baby seemed a distant memory.
But I did remember what Donella had told me. “The easiest births be them what ’appen to women what keep workin’. I’ve known women toilin’ in the fields drop their babbies in minutes and get back to work straight after as though nowt ’ad ’appened.”
I got out of bed, burying my bare feet in the thick fur rugs covering the flagstoned floor of our bedchamber. “Donella said to walk up and down, and that would bring the baby quicker and more easily. She said not to lie down for too long.” Indeed, she was probably right, because during the only birth I’d actually witnessed, that of Medraut, Morgawse’s little son, Morgawse had crouched on a stool to give birth rather than lain down.
Arthur got out of bed as well and pulled on his braccae, stifling a yawn. It was early still. I walked over to the door, turned around and walked back, feeling a little stupid. “Can we walk outside, do you think?”
He pulled his tunic over his head and yanked on his boots, then put mine on for me while I sat on the edge of the bed. Reaching my feet had become impossible lately. In fact, even seeing my feet had become difficult. He found me a loose, ankle-length over-tunic and helped me into it, this action punctuated by me having to stop and bend double while another contraction took control of my body.
Having draped a thick cloak around my shoulders, he took me out of the side door, through the little room where the records of the fortress were stored, and into the cool early morning air. In the east, the sky was gently pinkening, and the blue-black above our heads was rapidly growing lighter. Autumn mist draped the thatched houses of Din Cadan, and dew sparkled like jewels on a million autumnal cobwebs.
With Arthur supporting me, we walked between the quiet houses and barns until we reached the steps to the wall-walk which ran around the fortress perimeter. The morning guard shift stood at intervals along the walkway. As we reached the walk, the man nearest to us gave my husband a quick salute. “Milord.”
Arthur nodded to him. “How goes it, Teithi?”
The man’s ready smile told me he was pleased to have been recognized. “Quiet, as usual. No threats.”
I bent over with another contraction and the man’s face clouded with concern. “Is the queen all right?”
Arthur nodded. “It’s her time. She’s walking to ease the pain.”
The man grinned. “’Twas the same with my woman. She were working in the vegetable patch until the moment she dropped our latest boy. ’Tis a good idea to walk. For a queen may not work in a vegetable patch!” He laughed at his own joke, and Arthur joined in. Ignoring them, I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my breathing steady.
We left Teithi and walked slowly along the wall-walk, stopping to speak with each guard we came to. By the time we’d done the entire circuit, a distance of a good three quarters of a mile, my contractions were coming closer together, and every warrior on the wall knew my labor had started. At every contraction, I had to stop and lean on the wall, but in between, the walking made me feel better.
The sky had grown much lighter now. The sun had risen above the eastern hills, and the fortress was stirring. A cockerel crowed on a rooftop, hens descended from their safe perches to scratch in the middens, and women emerged from their homes to start the milking. Mothers chased small boys out of their beds to go and feed the pigs in the pens which snuggled beside the houses, and fresh smoke began to curl upward from the dark thatch of the rooftops. People’s heavy feet crushed the lacework of dew-laden cobwebs covering the ground. Suddenly aware of every little detail, I found the smells of the steaming middens and acrid smoke, the tang of cow pats and the smell of frying bacon, sharp and clear in my nostrils.
“Shall we fetch Donella now?” Arthur sounded cautious, as though, for once, he felt unsure of what he should do. After all, birthing was women’s work, a mystery to men. How much might he have seen of Tangwyn’s deliveries? Llacheu was a son to be proud of, but her other babies had all died. Had that been the fault of Mother Nara, or something else? Would my baby be at risk even after he was born? Probably.
I shook my head, unwilling to involve Donella too early. “Can we walk along the practice grounds?”
He helped me down the steps in the earthen bank that reinforced the walkway. At the bottom, another contraction had me doubled up, clutching his hand in an iron grip I never knew I possessed. His eyes widened in concern. “They’re definitely closer together now. I think we should get Donella. And take you back to the hall.”
“No.” I was so determined to keep control, the word came out as a barked order. “I need to keep walking. It’s helping me.” Irritation sharpened my voice.
