by Jan Vermeer
The questions Elske did answer were those Beriel asked. “How do I know when birth has begun?” and Elske explained about the waters, breaking and flowing. “And that is all? Why do women moan so about it?” Beriel asked, and Elske spoke of the slowly closing gap from one cramping pain to the next, through much of which a woman might continue at her daily life—until the end, when a woman could think only of pain, and the desire to push the child out into the world. “How do you know these things?” Beriel demanded.
“My grandmother—the women came to her for their births. Our house was the Birth House.”
“Was your grandmother, like you, not so strengthless as she looked?”
“Do I look strengthless?” Elske asked.
“You look of such cheerful heart, people think you guileless, which they take for weak. You smile as if this was a world without cruelty, hunger, injustice, ill luck, a world with neither fear nor shame. You smile like someone who is not life’s prisoner.”
“When I can so easily die, how can I be thought a prisoner?”
“As the world sees things,” Beriel began, and then stopped.
They had lingered at table after their meal. Beriel had eaten little and drunk two goblets of red wine. Outside, a thick snow fell steadily. There would be no Assembly that day.
“As the world sees things,” Beriel began again, and again didn’t finish her sentence. She rose from the table and walked over to the door, opened it and for a long time stood with her back to Elske, looking out into the falling snow.
Elske sat still. She waited to hear her mistress speak the thought that had moved her to open the door.
When Beriel at last turned around, her blue eyes shone as if there were not a gathering darkness outside, and a confining snow. “It’s starting. I think it is— Now it’s gone again, but—You said, the pains would come wide apart at first, and these—but I am not at peace,” Beriel said. “The King my father is an old man, ill, and if he should die while I’m sent away here into the exile of courtship—”
Beriel fell silent again. Elske could not know if it was a birth pain that silenced her, or her own thoughts.
“A dead woman is no danger to a living King,” Beriel said. “I must be careful to live.”
Elske gathered their plates onto the serving tray.
They returned to the bedchamber, but Beriel still did not sit. She paced slowly from door to window, and back again, and back again, as steady as the sea against its shores.
“The Wolfer women make no sound?” she asked once.
Elske nodded. If the labor had begun, then she needed to prepare for many hours of sleeplessness. The first child might curl up smallest against his mother, but he was also the most reluctant to leave her. The first labor was the hardest, longest; but not necessarily the most dangerous. Unless, of course, the baby lay wrong in its mother, lay feet down and head up, for example, or crossways; those births were the most difficult. Whether first or not, such births were often the last.
“This Guerric, this brother, is only a year younger than I am. A year and a little less, my mother having been in a great hurry to produce a son. And heir, as if she did not wish me to inherit the throne. They make no sound at all?”
“Mewlings, sometimes, like a kitten,” Elske said. “Later, all panted—” She tried to remember everything, and was about to mention groanings when Beriel announced, “What any other woman can do, that can I do. And man, too—but that’s not the question here, is it?”
“No, my Lady,” Elske smiled. Then she thought to tell Beriel, “Among the Volkaric, to become King one must win the throne away from all others, in battle, after the Volkking dies—”
“And the Death Maiden with him.”
“Yes, then. For the Strydd, the captains strip naked, except for their swords.”
“Naked?”
“Clothed in their strength and courage, why should they need more?”
“The captains fight until one has conquered all the rest?”
“Yes. Then all serve the new Volkking, and all belongs to him.”
Beriel paced, and every now and then stopped to lean against something, concentrating on her labor.
“They do then make some small sounds?” she asked.
“My Lady, if you will be soundless that will keep you safest. And the babe will—”
“I’ve told you, I will know nothing of this babe.”
“Yes, my Lady,” Elske said. She explained to Beriel, “I can tell them you are ill, but to keep you safe we must give no suspicion of what illness it is that keeps you in your chamber.”
Beriel agreed without argument. She paced, and said, “In a battle for the crown, I would stand the victor. Against my brother. Guerric plies his sword as if he were a strengthless girl, with a girl’s cowardly heart. He keeps his horse to a trot, lest he fall off. He loves sweet cakes better than his land. He isn’t fit to be King, and yet he is the King’s preferred heir.”
“A man who brings others to rape his sister, that man isn’t fit to be King,” Elske said. “Even were he a brave and strong swordsman, he would not be fit.”
“Neither, I think, is that man fit who drags a girl child behind him into death,” Beriel remarked.
“It is the way of the Volkaric that the Volkking take a maiden to serve him in his death, and offer him her body for his comfort in Death’s halls. Is it the way in your Kingdom that a Prince should lack heart in fighting? And seek to shame his blood sister?”
There was no answer. Beriel waited out a pain, then said, “I have another brother, and sisters, and they are not poisoned as Guerric is, with envy and fear of me. I have a good brother, Aidenil.” Beriel smiled, thinking of this brother. “My sisters, too, are gentle and obedient. Only in Guerric does ambition rage.”
“And in you, also, my Lady.”
“Do you say I’m no better than he?” Beriel demanded, displeased.
Elske said, “I say nothing of better.”
“And why should I not be Queen? And is not revenge the action of a Queen?”
“Whatever you do will be the action of a Queen,” Elske said, and Beriel subsided. Later, in the deep night, as the pains came more swiftly, “My mother, who should have saved me, has always betrayed me,” Beriel said. She still refused to sit, or to lie on her bed. Elske knew that soon it would be good for her mistress to take off her gown, and good for Elske to take the white linens from off the bed—lest either be soiled in a manner that could not be explained away. Elske had already called for a bowl of water, as if for washing, and set it on the stove to heat. She had called also for a jug of wine.
“I had no grandmother to save me, as you did,” Beriel said. Then she stopped speaking, to place her hands flat against the window and stare out, as she breathed deeply.
There came the time when Beriel consented to take off her gown, and lie down upon the stripped bed, and then the time when she could think of nothing but the labor working upon her body. She opened her mouth, but made no cry. Elske wiped the sweat from her mistress’s face and neck. That was all Elske could do, as the long night wore on. She could sit beside her mistress and dry her sweat and later her tears. Elske’s hands were bruised in Beriel’s clasp, that long night.
In the morning, she waited by her own antechamber door until the house servants brought food, and drink. “My Lady is unwell,” she told them, whispering as if Beriel slept at last behind her closed door, after a night’s illness. “She must have quiet.”
“Shall we send for the housekeeper?” they asked, well-trained servants in a well-run household.
“Not yet,” Elske answered. “She is not so feverish for that. Leave her to me, and to quiet.”
Elske knew that if darkness did not come before the babe, her own dangers would be multiplied. Climbing out of the window in daylight would increase her chances of being seen, as would crossing the snowy lawn and gardens into the woods by day; but waiting for darkness would increase the chance of the babe’s presence b
eing detected at the villa.
And if the babe were born in daylight and couldn’t be quieted, then Elske would have no choice. She would take it into another room and silence it; and at dark she would walk out over the ice until she came to one of the fisherman’s huts, and the fishing hole within, through which a newborn babe with its soft bones could be forced. No one would ever know.
Beriel was beyond caring if it was daylight or dark and Elske—sitting at her mistress’s side, meeting Beriel’s blue gaze with calmness—watched pain wash over her mistress’s body until the girl wept, tears as silent as the cries that came mutely from her howling mouth. Elske couldn’t take time to look away, to know what time of day it was, if dark or light. They were near the end, she thought.
Beriel drew her knees up and Elske—speaking almost in Tamara’s soft remembered voice—urged her to push.
The blue eyes were near wild, like some wolf brought down, struggling to stand and run, except its legs would not obey its will. Beriel closed her eyes and wept with the pain, and the labor, and the silence.
And so the babe was born, the head first and hardest, followed by the narrow-shouldered body, which slipped out. Beriel lay back, panting, emptied, out of pain’s reach—then her body arched stiffly one more time, to expel the afterbirth.
Using Beriel’s dagger, Elske cut the cord and tied it off. Bloody and wet with its own birthing, the babe started to cry. She wrapped it around with soft cloths, and that soothed it again. It was a girl child.
Beriel lay, chest heaving, her eyes screwed shut. Her hands were fists where they lay on her breasts. Her hair lay wet and straggled around her head.
Elske laid the baby on a cloak which she had set out like a small pallet near the warmth of the stove. She took water, and washed her mistress clean, giving her clean cloths to place between her legs and catch the flow of blood there. She covered her mistress with a clean bedsheet and thrust the afterbirth into the stove. She returned to Beriel, lifting her head to give her wine.
The baby stirred, fussed.
Beriel lay abed, her face closed away from everything.
“I’m going now,” Elske said, pulling on the trousers she had sewn for herself, tucking her shirt half into them. Putting her stockinged feet into her warm wolfskin boots, she took up the baby and the cloak. She set the baby down on the windowsill and settled the cloak around her shoulders, then climbed up onto the sill and jumped down into the deep snow. She reached inside to gather the baby to herself, tucking it up against her breast under the cloak. If the child would stay quiet and warm there, as if she thought herself yet unborn, then Elske could carry her safely through the darkness.
For it was deep, dark night, and her luck held—this might be a lucky child—as Elske crept out of the villa grounds and hurried along dark roadways, across the bridge that arched over the dark ice of the frozen river, then down the familiar streets of Harboring until she came to Var Kenric’s house, silent and shuttered. She knocked on the door, and waited, hoping that the snow muffled the sound that was so loud in her own ears, hoping that none but the people of the house might hear. A shuttered window above her head opened, and Var Kenric looked down at her. Then Ula opened the door to her and she saw Idelle’s freckled face as eager as it had been before she had been married and childless. Elske gave the child into Idelle’s arms.
“A girl,” she said to Taddus. He had bent over the baby’s face, and only looked up to nod.
“We thank—” Var Kenric started to say and Ula was wiping at her eyes with her apron, but Elske said, “I must return,” and she would not stay for food and drink, for thanks, for anything. She had done all she could here, and she would be needed by Beriel.
Darkness hid her in shadows as Elske raced back to Var Vladislav’s snow-covered grounds, and climbed over the low fence, easier now without a newborn held close against her chest. She moved through trees, past stables, around the kitchen gardens—slipping like the shadow of a bird along the walls—until she was at the open window to Beriel’s bedchamber.
Elske climbed back inside.
“I didn’t close the window, but I’m cold,” Beriel said from the bed.
Elske pulled the window in, and went to the stove to remove her boots and warm her hands, after the bitter night.
“I’m bleeding, as if it were my time,” Beriel said.
“That’s the way of it. Did you sleep?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I did well.”
“You did well, my Lady.”
“I want food,” Beriel said then.
“Wiser to wait for the servants to bring food in the morning,” Elske advised.
“I’m very hungry.”
“It’s the hard work of birthing.”
“What have you done with the child, then?” Beriel asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” Elske answered. She held her hands out over the warm stove, but she could hear Beriel stirring behind her, sitting up.
“I command you.”
“I gave my word,” Elske reminded her. At Beriel’s silence, she turned around—and fury crashed against her like a wave thrown by a storm against the rocky coast.
“You gave your word to me and I return it to you. I ask again, what have you done with my babe?”
Elske didn’t speak. This was no more than Beriel herself had warned Elske of.
“My own child, which I endured the shame of getting and the pain of birthing. Where is it now?”
Elske kept silence.
“Will you at least tell me if it was a girl child or a boy?” Beriel asked, more quietly.
“My Lady, I cannot.”
Fury rose again in Beriel’s eyes. “Will not, more like. It’s fortunate for you that I am in your debt,” she said.
“Why should you be in my debt?” Elske asked.
“Sometimes—you are so—innocent—and ignorant,” Beriel answered, and this added to her anger. “I know you lived among brutes, but—” She took a deep breath and gave the order more quietly. “I am hungry, and you are my servant. I tell you to find me food, and drink. It has been more than a day since I have eaten, and if Var Vladislav’s housekeeper catches you at the larder, and punishes you, remember that a better servant would have had food ready for me.”
“Yes, my Lady,” Elske said. She turned to leave the room.
“After all, they believe I have been feverish. When a fever passes on, the sick person is often hungry, so why should they suspect anything? Unless, you’ve told them—?”
Elske knew that if Beriel wished to believe ill of her, nothing Elske could say would convince her otherwise. But why should her mistress wish to distrust Elske?
And when Elske returned, carrying a tankard of ale, and some cheese, cold roasted fowl, fish pudding and bread, Beriel said to her, “You also have not eaten, have you, Elske?” Then she adjusted herself back on her pillows, as if the bed were a throne, and announced, “We must both eat.” At last Beriel said, “I am afraid for my land, and for my throne,” and thus ended her quarrel with Elske.
Chapter 12
IT WAS HARD TO PERSUADE Beriel to keep to her bed for as long as the household would expect for recovery from a feverish illness. It seemed as if the baby had been a stone in Beriel’s belly, and she had needed her best strength to keep it hidden there. Now, Beriel could use her best strength for her own purposes and those required her to be out of her bed.
Elske reminded her, again and again, that she must appear to the servants to be weak, although recovering as her good appetite attested.
Beriel argued, again and again. “I gave birth as a Wolfer woman, soundless, and I think such a woman would not lie abed. Did they, among the Wolfers?”
“They did not, my Lady,” Elske answered patiently.
“They must have been proud,” Beriel observed from her bed. “To have given birth, so, and perhaps to a son. Did I have a son, Elske? You might at least tell me that.”
Elske had given her word, and kept silent. She di
d, however, point out to Beriel, “The women of the Volkaric were never proud. What could a woman do to be proud of? Not win treasure for the Volkking, not fight in battle. The women couldn’t hunt, either. And even when they hated—for they were good haters—it was only among themselves.”
“You are quarrelsome,” Beriel complained. “Go and find me some book. If I can’t read it myself, then you must read it to me.”
So Elske went to Var Vladislav’s library, where she unexpectedly interrupted him as he sat for a painting of himself. The High Councillor was not displeased at the disturbance. When she explained who she was and that she had permission from his housekeeper to go to this room, and her purpose there, he answered impatiently, “I know, I know you, Elske. Take what you will, but I would ask your mistress, will she spare you to me, to teach me a little Souther, perhaps to tell me of the Volkaric, so I can make a use of these inactive hours?”
Elske carried that request, along with a volume of animal stories she had sometimes read to Var Jerrol’s daughters, back to Beriel, who had an answer quick on her tongue. “If I say yes, will you tell me about my child?”
“No, my Lady.”
Beriel then asked from her bed, “And if I say no?”
“I will obey you.”
When Beriel did not say yes or no, Elske turned to leave the bedchamber. At the door Beriel called her back to say, “Very well, I give you my permission. I will also warn you, Elske, as a kind mistress. Do you know what men use flattery for?”
“For rape,” Elske answered.
Beriel laughed, her ill temper flown like a bird out of the cage. She said, “We must find you some other word, in Norther and in Souther, too, some word that tells the bed pleasures a man and a woman have together. Did your Wolfer women never have pleasure of a man?”
“They had babies. They never spoke of pleasure.”
“And the men?”
“They had their desire and—sometimes—they had sons.”
“Among the Wolfers,” Beriel said then, “if you refused to tell me what I wished to know, I would have you killed. Isn’t that so? No captive among the Wolfers would dare refuse her mistress.”