The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “She will not hate you if she bears a healthy child. Go, Anna of Prague,” and she gave Anna a little push toward the back door. “The midwife is already there. You will have to do nothing but watch and learn.”

  Another scream and Anna, half pushed by Jetta, hoisted herself up the wooden steps and into the wagon.

  Lela lay on a mat on the floor—no birthing chair like the ones Anna had seen in some of the practical texts she copied for the women of Prague, texts with rudimentary illustrations she’d executed in the margins. When she was passing into womanhood, Ddeek had first given her such a text to work on, saying the illustrations were simple enough that she could do them. Just draw what the text describes, he’d said. And even as a green girl, she’d known why he gave them to her to illustrate. He had guessed how avidly she would pore over them, filling in all the information that no mother or sister would pass on to her, information that he could not bring himself to discuss with the grandchild who was on the threshold of becoming a woman. As Gilbert the Englishman’s The Sickness of Women had passed through her hands, Anna had copied out large portions of it in English to keep for herself. She had consulted it often over a span of years. How she wished she had it now.

  Observing Lela’s obvious discomfort and the crescendo of her labor pains, her spread-eagled legs bent at the knee like two towers guarding the entrance to her great mountain of a belly and the midwife crouched between, Anna remembered her crude drawing and realized she’d got it right in the main part. The midwife, an ancient crone Anna recognized from the last wagon, rose up from between Lela’s legs and jerked her head sideways, with a jingle of the bangles in her ears, motioning for Anna to kneel beside Lela’s great belly.

  “Like this,” the midwife said, throwing her head forward, as though what she was asking Anna to do were so ordinary.

  “Like this?” Anna asked, feeling her unbound hair cascade over her head, making a bright auburn curtain in front of her eyes.

  “No. Closer. On the belly.” As she said this, she pushed Anna’s head down until her cheek rested on Lela’s belly, covering it with her hair.

  Lela’s skin was smooth and warm, pulsing with life. Anna could feel the pulsing, and then she realized that what she was feeling against her cheek was the pulsing of not one life but two. The mound beneath her cheek quivered. Lela started to groan and whimper, grabbing double handfuls of Anna’s hair. She screamed. She pulled on Anna’s hair. Hard. But Anna, suddenly realizing that she was so close to this miracle that was about to happen, hardly felt the pain, indeed welcomed it. It was as though she too, in some strange way that made no sense, were a part of the birthing miracle.

  “The babe is crowning,” the old midwife said. “One more push. One more big push.”

  Lela hurled a curse at the midwife in Romani that even Anna could understand, some universal female language that had originated with the birth of Cain. Anna stiffened herself for the hard pull on her hair she knew was coming. Lela grasped a fistful of Anna’s hair in one hand. In the other she grabbed the necklace that had fallen out from the inside of Anna’s shirt. As Lela pushed in response to the next great wave of pain, Anna felt the silver chain of the necklace break and fall from her neck. Then Lela gave one last shrill cry, rising high and lusty before falling away into a descending wail. Seconds later it was answered by a thin, small cry.

  “He’s here. Jetta. He’s here,” the old midwife called, loud enough for the woman waiting outside to hear. “Call Bera. Tell him he has a son. A healthy son.” Lela let go of Anna’s hair. Anna lifted her head and smoothed her hair back.

  Lela’s face was covered with sweat and there was blood everywhere. Anna had not known there would be so much blood, but the midwife seemed not to think it unusual. Jetta had crowded in with hot water and rags and was busy cleaning first the babe and then Lela. The babe was crying in earnest now. The old midwife laughed at him, delighting in the healthy sound, and placed him on his mother with the cord still attached.

  Anna watched in wonder as Lela’s whole demeanor was transformed. She seemed to have forgotten the pain completely. She stroked the babe’s wet head, struggling to lift her own. “Cover him. He might get cold,” she said. “Is he all right? You’re sure he’s all right?”

  Here was another miracle. Fiery Lela with her stormy ways, her strong spirit totally conquered by this infant that had just moments ago caused her so much pain.

  After being reassured by Jetta and the midwife that the boy was as pretty a babe as they’d ever seen, not once but twice, the new mother closed her eyes and sighed. She would probably sleep now, Anna thought. She should leave. But she was reluctant to leave the little circle of women where, for the briefest moment, she had belonged. She stirred slightly in preparation for getting up from her place on the floor, where she still sat so close she could see the rise and fall of Lela’s chest. The baby lay as still as a doll except for the little sucking motions of his tiny mouth against his balled fist. Anna would have liked to touch him. But she did not dare. She was gadje.

  She was on her knees, trying to get up as quietly as possible, when Lela reached out and took her arm. “Anna of Prague, I am grateful.”

  Anna was taken aback. Here was a miracle indeed.

  “I did nothing,” Anna said, tossing back her mass of tangled hair.

  Lela laughed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t have any left,” she said. “But you have plenty. I am sorry I broke your necklace. Here, give it to Bera. He will fix it for you. He can fix anything.”

  Anna reached out and took the necklace, slipped it silently into her pocket. She would not risk it with Bera.

  “Today, you have brought good fortune to the vardo of Bera, King of Gypsies,” Lela said, as though she were a queen conferring some great honor on Anna.

  Anna didn’t know what to say, just murmured that she was glad enough to do it. It did not seem to be the moment to lecture Lela about silly superstition. She turned to go.

  “You want to hold him?” Lela asked.

  Had she heard right? No. Lela would not let a gadje, especially this gadje, touch her new prize, not Lela who wouldn’t even wear a favorite dress that had once been worn by a gorgio.

  “Go on. Take him. He won’t bite. He has no teeth.”

  Anna wanted to hold him, more than anything she wanted to hold him, but she had never held an infant before, was not sure she would know how.

  Lela was propped up on colorful pillows, her dark, wet hair spread out on the bright fabric. The midwife had cut the cord, but still attended to Lela in her woman’s parts. Lela ignored her but nodded to Jetta, who placed the little boy in Anna’s arms.

  Anna held her arms out as though she were accepting a stack of wood. The babe started to whimper.

  “Like this.” Jetta made a slanted cradle with her arms, rocking her upper body back and forth.

  Anna tried to follow her example, bringing the child’s face close to her breast. He rooted around against her blouse, then found his fist and resumed sucking.

  “He’s a greedy one,” the midwife said as she placed a bracelet of red beads on the child’s arm.

  Some sort of good-luck charm, Anna supposed. She had noticed that all the Romani children—at least all the babes in arms—wore similar amulets. Anna rocked the baby gently back and forth, dreading the time she would have to give him back. She watched his working mouth. How did he come into the world knowing how to suck? Who taught him that? Who taught him how to snuggle so in the crook of a woman’s arm, making her heart ache with longing? Here was something no book had ever explained to her, she thought, and then she remembered a bit of verse from the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb.” She could still see the brilliant aquamarine color of the capital of her grandfather’s illumination on the letter B.

  Lela reached out and taking a strand of Anna’s hair, which fell almost to her waist, gently brushed it across the baby’s body, even his
face. As it touched his cheek, he stopped sucking on his fist and smiled as though he were dreaming—or remembering—some vision of paradise.

  Anna thought her heart would break with the beauty of it.

  “Leave us now,” Lela said as imperiously as any queen. “Take the infant and show him to his father.”

  Anna reluctantly handed him over, then stood up in the slightly bent posture to which she’d become accustomed.

  “No, Anna of Prague, you stay. I wish to talk to you.”

  Surprised, Anna sat back down beside Lela. A clean cushion had been placed on the wooden floor. All the bloody linen had been taken away. And the afterbirth. Anna wondered if they had some ritual way of disposing of it, but she did not ask.

  Lela lay back and closed her eyes; gray smudged circles had appeared beneath them. Was she sleeping? No wonder, Anna thought, after the ordeal she’d been through. But if the books—and that was the only rule of comparison Anna had—if the books could be believed, Lela had had an easy enough time for a first birth. “Twenty pangs or less,” Gilbert of England had said. And Lela, judging from the screams, had suffered much less. Still, she had earned her rest.

  “Are you comfortable, Lela? Can I get anything for you?”

  “You have already given me enough.”

  Anna opened her mouth to try to explain to her that the business of red hair bringing good fortune was superstitious foolishness, that she should place her faith in God, but she did not.

  “I have one more thing to ask of you, Anna of Prague. But first I must confess something to you.”

  The wagon was stuffy. Jetta and the midwife had closed the door behind them when they left, trapping the air still thick with the herbs the women had burned for the birth, unfamiliar, heady smells.

  “Shall I open the door?” Anna asked.

  “No. What is to be said between us should stay between us. Will you promise me that?”

  It seemed a rash thing to promise an unknown, and yet Anna did not want to see Lela agitated in her weakened state. Besides, to whom would she tell whatever secret Lela was going to confide to her? She had no one with whom to swap gossip. She nodded her head.

  Lela closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “I turned you over to the authorities in Prague. It was I who told them to search your house for the Bible. I see that you are a good woman, and I am sorry.”

  She said it so casually, as though she were asking to be excused for some trifling offense. The memory of the little town house crowded in, with all its loss and longing. The woman’s words, the smells swirling in the room, the bits of smoke and dust floating in the sunlight all converged to choke Anna. She could not breathe.

  Because of this woman, she had been forced to leave the home of her childhood. Because of this silly woman, she had abandoned her grandfather’s bones, left him rotting in a churchyard in another country, a country to which she would likely never return. She tried to get up, but she was trembling.

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “It doesn’t matter why, you filthy little witch. I don’t care why!” Anna screeched, alarmed at the high, angry sound coming out of her.

  Get control, Anna. Calm yourself, she heard her grandfather say in the steady, quiet voice he had used whenever her temper erupted.

  “All right then, suppose you tell me why.”

  “I hated the way my husband looked at you. I wanted to hurt you.”

  “I cannot help the way Bera looks at me!” But she remembered the flashing smiles, the winks, the way he leaned into her face when he talked to her, enough to bother any wife. “He only helped me out of the perilous situation you created. If it were not for you I would not even be here for him to look at in any way whatsoever. I’d still be back in Prague, safe in my own home.”

  Lela sighed wearily. “I know,” she said, “but he wanted you from the beginning. I saw it in his eyes. And now the fact remains that you are here. But I have given him a son, and that will bind him to me. My husband will not be unfaithful. It is not the Romani way. But he will still look at you with wanting in his eyes, and I cannot bear it. So, Anna of Prague—” She scrunched her hand into a half-fist, unscrunched it, scrunched it again.

  “So I am asking you for two things.”

  The quiet, sincere way in which she said this last calmed Anna’s temper somewhat. It was clear the girl felt some remorse. They had shared something with the birth of the child. More than their skins had touched as Lela’s child pushed his way into the world. It was as though their souls had fused long enough for each to see into the other’s. And each had sensed a self in the other.

  “Two things?” Anna said. Calmer, but still wary.

  “First your forgiveness. It was a cowardly, evil thing for me to do. But you must forgive me. You are a Christian. That’s what Christians do.” She said it so assuredly, as though there could be no doubt of it.

  As if forgiveness were a commodity to be gained or given easily.

  “You said two things.”

  “I want you to leave the caravan when we get to the next place on the pilgrim journey. The pilgrims say there is a great cathedral there. There will be many people. Many men who will give a beautiful woman protection.”

  Leave the caravan! She had feared banishment would come when her silver coins ran out. When it had not, she had gained new hope. But it was not the money. It had never been the money. It had been her hair all along: the stupid, silly superstition that her red hair could give Lela a healthy delivery. And now that that fact had been accomplished, she was being cast aside like a ragged Roma garment. Maybe she could appeal to Bera. But now more than ever his wife would have a hold on him. Frantically, she tried to calculate the value of the gold left in her traveling chest.

  Lela put out her hand and stroked Anna’s head as though she were a child rather than the older of the two women. “Don’t look so fearful, Anna of Prague. I will help you find a man. Somebody better than my Bera.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as though she were about to vouchsafe some choice morsel of gossip to one of the other Gypsy women. “You know he is not really a king. There is no Romani king. He just calls himself that because he wants to be boss.” Then she added proudly, “But he is a good boss.”

  Some of Anna’s anger turned inward. Fool, what did you expect? You should not have spent the shillings for the thread for sewing the badges. You knew that sooner or later these pilgrims who are not really pilgrims but vagabonds would abandon you when you were no longer of use to them. You should have trusted that instinct and been prepared.

  “Don’t frown so, Anna of Prague. It will make crones’ wrinkles in your brow. A woman who looks like you will have no trouble finding a husband of her own. And then you will have no need of mine.” Again, the conspiratorial voice, “I know a love philter we can work. Now leave me to rest. We will talk again later. Now that we are friends. You can come back tomorrow and hold the baby again. You’ll need the practice. Now go.”

  She dismissed Anna with the same regal ease with which she pronounced Anna’s forgiveness. Dazed, Anna stumbled down the steps of the wagon toward the glowing bonfire. “Christians must forgive. That is what they do.” Ddeek had once told her the very same thing. In almost the exact same words. Forgive maybe. But trust? That was an altogether different thing. Next time, Anna would trust only her instincts.

  SIXTEEN

  Thirty foreigners from the country of Egypt who

  arrived led by a count bearing letters from the

  emperor … women wore low-cut chemises …

  women and children had rings in their ears.

  —FROM THE 15TH-CENTURY PAPER OF AN

  ALDERMAN IN BURGUNDY

  Anna was relieved when the midwife held up three stubby fingers, so close to Bera’s face he could have bitten them, and said, “Three weeks.” She waved her fingers three times so he could not mistake her meaning. “Three weeks before the mother can ride. Your son tore her. She bled like a stuck pig. She has to have
time to heal.” The accompanying frown seemed to say she regarded all men as beasts. Those three weeks at least bought Anna a little more time.

  Bera left the camp grumbling but came back a few hours later, wreathed in smiles. He’d struck a “brilliant” bargain. All of Bera’s bargains were “brilliant.” It was an English word that he’d learned from Anna. And when he said it, he rolled the double l and raised his shoulders, adding almost an inch to his stature. He’d concluded this deal, he pronounced, with the lord of a nearby manor. They could camp in his fields, would be given a daily ration of hay for the horses, ewe’s milk for the children, and fresh eggs in return for shoeing the manor lord’s horses and mending his metal pots.

  “He also has a smokehouse and a root cellar. Full to bursting. He’ll not miss a bit of bacon or a few wrinkled apples.”

  The real pilgrims, who traveled with them, went on ahead. The ease of Bera’s safe conduct pass was no longer worth the delay, especially now that the rainy season was approaching and no official had demanded traveling papers of them since they’d crossed the Rhine. But one of the pilgrims, a wealthy burgher from Flanders, left behind something of great importance, bartering it to Anna in exchange for a look at the Wycliffe Bible. The small, much-thumbed, crumbling leather-bound book called the Pilgrim’s Guide gave Anna a new idea.

  Its Latin text outlined all the stops along the way from Paris to the ultimate pilgrim’s destination of the shrine of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Anna had been fascinated by the book. She wondered about the “Gascons” who talked “much trivia,” were “verbose” and “mocking,” “short in stature”—they sounded a lot like the Roma. And even though her grandfather and her education in Wycliffe’s theology had bequeathed her a healthy disdain for both relics and shrines, the “brightness of the celestial candles” and “angelic adoration” the guidebook promised intrigued her. But the little map sketched inside the Pilgrim’s Guide showed the route lay far south and then west and Anna knew, even if the Gypsy vardos traveled that way, she would not go with them. Lela would see to it.