Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "Mmm," I moaned into her shoulder, kissing it, licking my way up to her soft little earlobe. "Mmm, girl. You're going to finish me, I can feel it. You're going to –"

  I broke off and thrust into her harder, faster, as the sweetness became acute, and sank my fingers into her hips, pulling her back against me at the moment of letting go so every drop would end up exactly where I wanted it – inside her.

  "You'll not go back to your homeland as long as I can give you that," I joked, when I could speak again.

  But she looked at me completely seriously as she stood and straightened her tunic, which we hadn't even had time to take off. "You're right. I won't. None of the boys back home could do half of what you can do to me with just a facial expression, or – I don't know, touching my elbow or something."

  I never felt more a man than when I'd driven Heather to distraction, or during those moments afterwards when she was pliant and giggly and perfectly open about what I did to her. I sat back on the stone step in our courtyard that afternoon with a wide grin on my face and she bent down to kiss my cheek.

  "You're just like one of the roosters," she told me, grinning.

  "If I look as pleased with myself as one of the roosters," I replied, pulling her down for another kiss. "It's only because of you, my little hen."

  The evening darkness began to close in earlier, and the frost fell onto the garden at night after that last sunny afternoon. Heather and I busied ourselves with the autumnal tasks – butchering the spring piglet that had been selected for slaughter, processing and storing the grain, stacking the firewood in the little shack I built to keep it sheltered from the elements and pounding the fruit she gathered with the other women into the tough mixture that would be dried next to the fire and eaten in the depths of the winter, when even the greens in the garden went dormant.

  It was close to Yule, which was for the Angles more a purely joyous celebration of life and light than it was a contemplative time – like it had been for my people – when Heather began to complain of sickness. She was three tens and six by then, and we both assumed that she had had some bad water to drink, or some milk that had perhaps sat out a hair too long before being consumed. But when it lasted for almost a half-moon, and she became at the same time enamored with some foods – the hard cheese we had made that summer – and completely repulsed by others – the smoked pork she had loved for as long as I'd known her – we worriedly called the healer.

  The healer left us with some dried herbs, and instructions to brew a tea that would settle my wife's stomach. She seemed, as did we, to assume that something had been eaten and that it was just taking a little longer than usual to lose its hold on Heather's belly.

  It was late in the depth of that winter, and I was beginning to wake in the mornings with a pit of dread in my stomach because my wife was still not able to take much food. A sickness that lasts for more than two moons is almost always a bad sign. We lay in our bed on a cold morning, after I refreshed the fire with more logs, and when my hand found its way to her belly, it stopped suddenly, before continuing its journey down to her warmth.

  "What is it?" She asked, turning over a little to look at me when she felt my hand still. "Did you forget to close the pigs into the –"

  "No," I replied, as my mind tried to come up with explanations for what my hand was feeling that were not dreadful.

  "Then what? Why have you gone white?"

  "I –" I started. "Heather – your belly."

  I drew the blanket off her as she rolled over onto her back, peering down at her body. I joined her in peering.

  Did she have a fullness there I had not noticed before? No, surely not – she hadn't been eating!

  "Turn towards me," I instructed, convinced it was the angle, or the light – and desperate to believe it was something that innocuous. But there had been that firmness under my hand...

  I reached down and passed my palm over her midsection again, and felt it again. It was different. Something was different.

  "What are you doing?" She laughed, looking up at me, confused because she'd thought my caresses that morning were going somewhere else.

  "Your belly," I repeated. "It's – Heather, feel for yourself."

  So then she reached down and ran her hand over her own flesh, pausing halfway through to frown and then doing it again – and again.

  "It – what's that?" She asked, sitting up.

  And when she sat up, it was even more clear that she was bigger there, fuller than she had been.

  In my haste to convince myself that it was not the firm, growing mass under the skin that had taken my mother's sister, I failed to pay too much attention to Heather's expression. I saw that she seemed to be thinking, but that was it. And then, when she suddenly burst into tears, I didn't know what to think.

  "No," she whispered, looking down at her belly and running her hands over it again. "No, Magnus. The Gods would not see fit to torture me like this, would they? They wouldn't do this if – they wouldn't do it if – if –"

  "If what?!" I replied loudly, wondering if she sensed it was something terrible. "Woman tell me why you weep over this – do you know already that something is wrong?"

  And then my wife looked up at me, baffled through her tears. "That something is – wrong? What do – what do you think is wrong? What do you think this is?"

  "I have no idea what it is!" I responded. "But you have a look on your face like you do, and you weep, and you speak of being tortured by the Gods. I don't understand what –"

  "Am I pregnant again? Is this another baby doomed never to be born?"

  The questions were not asked for the sake of asking. Heather gazed at me, her eyes as an animal expecting a blow – and she wanted an answer. Unfortunately I was not able to give her one, not right away, not after the word 'pregnant' had been uttered. Pregnant?

  "Pregnant?" I whispered. "Pregnant? But you're, Heather, you're three tens and –"

  "I'm thirty-six! Do you think thirty-six is too old to get pregnant? My mom had me when she was thirty-four, Magnus! And two winters ago that Angle woman had a baby when she was forty! It –"

  I sat back on our bed, thinking. Three tens and six was, for my people, not an age at which most women were still bearing children. But Heather was right, there had been an Angle woman on the estate who bore a daughter at four tens. I remembered seeing her carrying the child on her chest, with her hair, streaked with some grays, falling over the infant's head.

  "Do you speak the truth?" I asked. "Your mother bore you at three tens and four? I remember hearing in the North that if a woman's mother had a child at an older age – or a younger age – then a woman herself was more likely to do so. Do you – Heather – is it possible? Is it possible after all these winters that I have put a baby in your belly?"

  She shook her head, weeping freshly. "I don't know! I don't know."

  But there was a baby in my wife's belly. As the winter began to soften into early spring, and then into the glorious green abundance of spring itself, her midsection grew. And as it grew, the reason why became more and more obvious. Even the healer confirmed it, eventually, after coming to examine Heather many more times.

  Not that our cottage was filled with the kind of unsullied joy that filled the cottages of younger couples, perhaps freshly married and barely ten and ten, when they came to know they would soon be parents. Heather and I had bad memories, we had had lessons in the past, of hopes dashed, of bloodied bed-sheets and, later, a child's funeral. Even the healer and the midwives were circumspect, knowing about the lost baby and the years of coupling with no pregnancies.

  "Do not hope for too much," one of the midwives said as she ran her hands over my wife's belly one day. "You know you have had difficulty carrying a child before. It is best not to become too attached to this one before it comes."

  I stood back, as I often did when the women tended to Heather, as women tend to each other regarding womanly things, but a sudden urge to take the midwife by the
hair and drag her out into the courtyard seized me so strongly that I had to step out of the cottage. A few moments later, the woman who had just given warning to a pregnant woman not to hope for too much joined me.

  "You're angry," she observed, seeing my face. "Would you rather I tell your wife that she is assured a healthy, strong baby in a few moons? How much greater will her grief be then if the child is not healthy and strong? You know her history as I do, Northman. Is it not best that we temper our hopes, and save our celebrations for a time when they are truly warranted?"

  Nothing the woman said was wrong. The Angles, like the people of the North, were practical. They were practical because they had to be. They warned against false hope because they understood that life did not often reward the falsely hopeful. But I was hopeful. And no matter how hard I tried to smother the feeling within my chest, I found that I could not do so. So I shouted at the midwife to take her gloom elsewhere and sent her angrily on her way.

  After that, as the child in Heather's belly grew to the point that we could see it moving under the flesh, we both seemed to allow ourselves some small space within which to feel happy.

  "Look," she said one night as we sat outside in the courtyard after dark, after supper, and held a candle to the place where a small arm – or was it a leg? – seemed to pass underneath her skin. "He's awake. Now he will keep me awake with his somersaulting all night."

  We had both spent much of past few moons speaking of 'the child' or 'the baby,' and wondering whether or not 'it' would come to be born alive and well. But that night Heather used the word 'he.' 'Now he will keep me awake...'

  "Is it a son?" I asked, reaching out to touch her midsection where the little movements continued. "A boy?"

  "I don't know," she replied, smiling with delight as the child seemed to respond to my touch with more vigorous dancing. "It – it feels like maybe it is? I'm probably just imagining it, though. Do you want it to be a boy?"

  "In truth I have not allowed myself to hope for one or the other," I replied. "Although in moments of weakness perhaps I catch myself hoping for a girl. Perhaps it is because I remember Eidyth so well, and dream of once again having a little girl who loves her daddy as much as she –"

  I stopped speaking abruptly, as emotion suddenly welled up in my chest, and then coughed and forced an odd sounding laugh. "I'm sorry, girl. I don't know what comes over me – they say a woman's emotions are stronger when she carries a child. Perhaps it is the same for –"

  "Magnus," Heather whispered, reaching up to caress my cheek in her palm, a gesture that always managed to calm me. "You don't have to be sorry. Of all the people in the world, do you think anyone understands how much you miss Eidyth as clearly as I do?"

  I leaned down to rest my head on her belly, and she stroked my hair as the sounds of the small insects and night creatures filled the air.

  "If the child is healthy and strong," I said a few moments later, "I don't care what sex it is."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Heather

  I seemed to grow slowly, as a plant grows. You stare at it and do not see it move upwards, or see its leaves unfurling in front of your eyes, but nonetheless it is soon transformed. That's how it was with me. I did not see my belly grow, I only knew that it did. And at a certain point, it became so large I could hardly believe it was real. I would look down on it in Brona's garden – where Magnus insisted I spent my days when he was in the fields or training the men, because he did not want me to be alone at such a time – as if it could not possibly be a part of me.

  "I remember that feeling," Brona would say, smiling as her youngest children played around us. "You start to feel like your own body has become separate from you, as if the child has taken over in some way. The last days are hard ones, Heather, but I would advise you to enjoy them while you can. A newborn babe is a trial unlike any other you have experienced."

  My movements became awkward and slow as the final moon of my pregnancy passed, and I found myself waddling like a duck rather than walking, and groaning loudly whenever I had to sit down – or get back up. Brona and the other Angle women were warm, and full of well-meant advice. But all seemed to assume that my physical discomfort indicated mental or emotional discomfort. It did not. Most of them were blessed with many children, and their pregnancies, especially after the first one, had mostly been treated as happy inconveniences, the simple time it takes to grow a child before it is ready to come out into the world.

  But my swollen ankles, my near-constant need to pee and my enormous belly that made me feel like one of the cows did nothing to dampen the pure joy that grew by the day. Every second of the late pregnancy was like magic to me, as precious and rare as emeralds, an experience I had truly not believed I would ever know. So I laughed along with the Angle women, and nodded and smiled. But I truly had no complaints.

  Well. I had no complaints until I woke up in the middle of one of the hottest summer nights I could remember, the heat so oppressive it almost reminded me of California, and felt a dull, clenching pain in the bottom of my belly. I looked down in the darkness, to where the pale moonlight that came through the open door shone on what looked like a different kind of moon. The pain lasted. It was not bad, and it felt almost exactly the same as a menstrual cramp. And then it was gone. I lay back down, but sleep didn't return.

  After a few more pains, after dawn began to creep into the cottage, Magnus woke up. And when he saw me lying next to him, alert and staring down at my belly, he sat up at once.

  "What is it girl? Do you feel the birth pains? Is that why you have the look on your face? What do you feel? Is it –"

  "Magnus."

  He took a breath and laughed, so the light fell along his strong jaw-line. "I'm sorry. I – just tell me, girl, so I can stop pouring out questions! Do you feel the birth pains?"

  "I think I do," I replied quietly, as he reached for my stomach and placed his big hand flat on top of it. "I feel something. I – ow."

  Another cramp came. Was it worse than the one that came before it? I couldn't yet tell. Magnus pressed his hand gently down.

  "Shall I bring the midwife? Why do you think the baby does not move, now? Would he not be awake, with the pains beginning to push him out?"

  "He's probably asleep," I said. "He seems to sleep when I wake, and wake when I sleep. And – I don't know about the midwife. I don't yet know if –"

  "I will bring her now."

  The first thing Ora – the midwife – did when she arrived at the cottage was bid me open my legs and insert two fingers deep inside me with no warning.

  "OW!" I yelled, pushing away her hand, which I knew was not washed because the Angles didn't know anything about germs. "What are you –"

  "I need to check to see if I can feel the baby's head," she replied, looking at Magnus before continuing. "Please explain to your wife that it's a necessary thing, to check how far the baby has come. As it is it is going to be some time yet, perhaps more than a day. You must wait for the pains to come quicker, and harder, and call for me again when they do."

  When she was gone and another cramp had passed – that one noticeably stronger than any that had come before it, I felt a wave of fear wash over me at the realization that I had just taken the first few steps into a journey I could not control. Magnus seemed to recognize that I needed reassurance because he sat down on the bed, beside me, and took my hand.

  "I'm here, girl. I'll not go to the training today – it is with bows and arrows, anyway, and Mercawb is as good as I. Are you thirsty? Shall I bring you ale, or water? There is some bread left from yesterday, perhaps I can –"

  I squeezed his hand, distracting him from going on to list each and every item of food and drink in the house, and smiled. "Some water, please. As it is I am not hungry."

  And that is how we spent the day, and into the night. The pains came on but it seemed a very slow process, and twice they quickened before slowing again. In the middle of the night, though, as my husband dozed in
bed beside me, they seemed to take on a new dimension, so strong that I could no longer smile when they passed.

  When Ora returned, more than twenty-four hours after the pain had first started, they were coming fast, and each one put a real fear into me that my belly was about to rip itself in half.

  "It won't be long now," Ora said, when the sun way high in the sky once more and both me and the bed were soaked with sweat. "You must endure it, Eltha, and the baby will come."

  But the baby didn't come. The sun set and night came around again and I was so tired by then that I began to fall asleep between contractions, waking each time already in the midst of a scream.

  When the third dawn of my labor came, the feeling in the cottage became noticeably grim. Magnus no longer wore a smile on his face, and when Ora bid him to leave, and to send her two apprentices, he did so with his shoulders slumped forward and an air of barely concealed panic about him.

  "It's not the place for a man," Ora said to me when he was gone. "Now it is only a woman's business what will happen. You must not give up, Eltha. If you give up, your baby will die. You will die."

  It was the starkest warning I'd ever been given in my life. And when the two younger midwives arrived and Ora told them each to take one of my arms and hold me down, I felt it in full that it was now life or death. Not just for my child but, as she had said – for me.

  Still, it didn't stop. I forgot, in my delirium of pain and exhaustion, about my worry over unwashed hands and allowed the midwives to reach inside me over and over, pulling and prodding and yanking.

  When the torture neared its end, and I felt what must have been my child's head exit my body in a fire of pain, Ora suddenly sent her two helpers away. I barely noticed it at the time – it was only later that it struck me what a strange decision it was.

  There was no more talking. The only sound in the cottage was the heavy breathing – my own, as I struggled to push out my baby, and Ora's, as she struggled to pull him.