The Last Heiress

by Bertrice Small

  “Then your labor is beginning,” Rosamund responded calmly. “Come, stand up, and let us walk together for a bit. It will help you.”

  For several hours Elizabeth’s pains came slowly. Then towards late afternoon they began to come with greater frequency, and they were harder, lingering longer, it seemed. It was the longest day of the year, and the servants were anxious to get outside to join the revelry of the summer’s night. The Midsummer fires were already springing up.

  “Where is my husband?” Elizabeth demanded petulantly.

  “Here, wife,” Baen answered her. He had come into the hall earlier, but had been wise enough to keep out of the way. “How may I help you, love?” He knelt by her side, and took her small hand in his.

  “Stay with me,” Elizabeth said, to his surprise. Her mood had barely softened over the past weeks, even after her mother had come.

  “I am here, and I shall go nowhere,” he replied.

  “Put her on the birthing table,” Rosamund said to Baen. “It is time.”

  “Is the bairn to be born now?” Elizabeth asked her mother.

  “He will come in his own time,” Rosamund answered, “but I believe you have done all the walking and sitting by the fire that you should. Now you must encourage your child forth, Bessie.”

  “Do not call me Bessie!” Elizabeth wailed. “Ohhhhh! That hurts, Mama.”

  “Of course it hurts,” Rosamund said calmly. “You are about to push a bairn forth from your body. There must be pain if there is to be joy, daughter.”

  The long summer’s twilight lingered until it was almost midnight, and then it grew briefly dark. The pains were coming faster and remaining longer, one barely fading away before the next. Elizabeth could feel a fierce pressure in her nether regions as her child struggled to be born. Droplets of sweat beaded her smooth forehead. Tendrils of blond hair, no longer fully constrained by her plait, hung limply about her face. A sharp pain, like a knife slicing into her vitals, tore through her. She screamed piteously with the hurt, her eyes like those of a trapped animal.

  “Mama!” she cried.

  “You are doing very well, Elizabeth,” her mother’s calm voice reassured her. But Rosamund was not as assured as she appeared. Her eyes met those of her son-in-law. She stood up. “I need to walk about a moment, dearest,” she said. “I will come right back,” she told her daughter. She patted Elizabeth’s cheek and moved away.

  Baen was quickly by Rosamund’s side. “What is it?” he asked her.

  “The child is very big,” Rosamund said, “and it is her first birth.”

  “How can I help?” he wanted to know.

  “Have you ever helped an animal to be birthed?” she queried him.

  “Aye. One of my father’s prize heifers had difficulty with her first birthing. I put my hand up her to help the calf along.”

  “Then you must, I think, do the same with Elizabeth’s bairn. If we could just get the head and shoulders free I believe she could do the rest,” Rosamund told him.

  “The child is ready?” he wanted to be reassured.

  “Aye, and growing tired with his efforts, I have no doubt,” she responded. “That is dangerous for them both, Baen.”

  He nodded. “Then let us bring my laddie forth from his mother’s body,” he said.

  They returned to Elizabeth, who was but half-conscious now. She opened her eyes. “What is the matter? Am I going to die, Mama? Is my bairn all right?”

  “The lad is big,” Rosamund began.

  “I knew that,” Elizabeth replied. “Did I not tell you he was big?”

  “You need help in birthing him. You are growing weary with your efforts, and so is the bairn. Therefore his father must help him into the world, Elizabeth, and then you will complete the birth yourself,” Rosamund explained.

  “No!” Elizabeth cried. “I can do this myself!”

  “In God’s name, woman!” Baen roared at her. “I can take no more of this! I love you, Elizabeth. Do you understand what I am saying? I love you! I apologize to you for leaving you last October. I should have had the wit and the courage to ask my father if he would let me go. As it turned out he was more than willing, and my own foolishness cost me your love. I am sorry. But I will not allow your stubborn nature to cost you your life and that of our child! Now let me help you.”

  Elizabeth was, for the first time in her life, rendered speechless. She collapsed back upon the hard bolster behind her back, watching as her husband washed his hands in the basin, and then covered one hand and part of his arm with olive oil.

  “Tell me when you feel the next pain coming,” he said to her.

  She nodded, and a moment later cried, “Now!” She was on her back with her legs up and apart. Fascinated, she watched as he bent, and then his hand pushed into her as the full thunder of pain rolled over her.

  Baen had seen the child’s head crowning when he had bent down. Gently he slipped his thumb and a finger about the baby’s head, and slowly drew it forward. He felt Elizabeth’s body yielding to allow the infant to move ahead and through the opening her body was making for it. She shrieked as its head broke forth from her, and then its shoulders. Her husband looked up at her, his heart breaking at the sight of her tears.

  “When the next pain comes try to push the rest of the bairn out, Elizabeth,” he instructed her quietly. “The worst is over, lass, and he’s beautiful!”

  “You haven’t seen all of it,” she moaned. “He could be a she.” Then she winced with the rising pain, and bore down with all her might as the rest of the bairn came into the world. They caught him in a clean cloth, and Rosamund opened his little mouth to clean out any extraneous matter. The baby coughed, and then began to howl. Baen was grinning from ear to ear.

  “We have a son,” he told Elizabeth, leaning down to kiss her. “Everything is exactly where it should be, and of a good size too.”

  Pale and exhausted, Elizabeth looked up at him. “Did you mean what you said? That you were sorry you deserted me? That you still love me?”

  “Aye, I meant every word,” he vowed, the stormy gray eyes filled with his love.

  “Then I forgive you, Baen,” she whispered to him, and then she gasped as another pain, but this one less intense than the others, racked her. Her startled eyes went to Rosamund. “Mama? I still have pain.”

  “ ’Tis the afterbirth, and nothing more,” Rosamund said, taking up a small basin. “When you have passed it Baen must take it out and bury it beneath an ash or an oak.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth demanded to know.

  “So your son may have all the qualities of that tree,” Rosamund responded. “Its beauty, its strength.”

  “What time is it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Almost dawn,” her husband told her. “The sky is already light with the coming day. You have done well, Elizabeth,” he said.

  “I want to see Thomas,” she said to them.

  “Thomas?” Rosamund smiled.

  “Thomas Owein Colin Hay,” Elizabeth answered, looking at Baen. “With your permission, of course, husband.”

  “ ’Tis a fine name for a lad, wife,” he agreed with a smile.

  And Elizabeth smiled back at him. It was the first real smile she had given him since his return. What had happened? And then he realized that in his fear for her and for their son, he had offered her an apology, and said in so many words that she had been right all along. Baen almost laughed aloud at the simplicity of it all. An apology! Why had he not considered it before? Because they were both right, he decided, and they were equally stubborn. But it mattered no longer. She had smiled at him, and solicited his opinion in the matter of naming their firstborn son.

  “Thomas for your uncle, Owein for your father, and Colin for Baen’s father,” Rosamund said. “Aye, ’tis a fine name.”

  The afterbirth was expelled into the basin and handed to Baen. He restrained a shudder, for it was certainly not a pretty thing. “I’ll bury it now, and then we will announce our son’s birt
h,” he said. “With your permission, of course, wife.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and accepted the now-swaddled bundle that Maybel handed her.

  “Oh, he’s a good laddie, he is,” Maybel cooed. “A finer bairn I have never seen born, my dearie. He’s his father’s spit, and that is for certain.”

  Elizabeth looked down at her son. Then she looked up at Maybel, and her mother. “Thank you for being here with me,” she said softly, and then her attention became totally absorbed by her child. His hair was dark and covered his round head. “His eyes are blue,” she noted.

  “They may change eventually,” Rosamund told her.

  “Something has changed, Mama,” Elizabeth said softly.

  “Aye,” Rosamund said with a smile.

  “He apologized! Did you tell him to do it?”

  “Nay, I did not,” Rosamund replied. It would have never occurred to her.

  “He loves me!” Elizabeth said.

  “Aye, he does, very much, but then you surely knew it, Elizabeth,” her mother said quietly. “Have you made your peace with him now?”

  Elizabeth nodded, and then she said, “I am so tired, Mama.”

  “Aye, you would be,” Rosamund agreed. “Your labor was a long one. Not the longest I have known, but long enough. You need to rest now, daughter. When Baen comes back he will carry you to your bed.” She removed the infant from his mother’s charge. “Where is the cradle rocker?” she wanted to know.

  A girl of twelve stepped forward. “Here I am, my lady,” she said.

  “You must rock him most gently,” Rosamund instructed the girl as she set Thomas Hay into his cradle.

  “Yes, my lady,” the girl replied.

  “She’s Alfred’s niece,” Maybel informed Rosamund. “Her name is Sadie.”

  “Take good care of my grandson, Sadie,” Rosamund told the girl, who nodded vigorously.

  The two women, with Nancy’s aid, began the business of cleaning all evidence of the birth from Elizabeth. By the time they had finished Baen returned to the hall, and he carried his wife up to her bed for a well-deserved rest. When he returned to the hall he found Rosamund and Maybel seated together at the high board, breaking their fast. Father Mata had just entered the hall, and congratulated Baen on his son’s arrival.

  “When will he be baptized?” the priest wanted to know.

  “Will your father come down from the north?” Rosamund asked Baen.

  Baen shook his head in the negative. “He’ll not leave his lands. But perhaps I can get my youngest brother to come. I should like him to stand as my son’s godfather, along with Lord Cambridge,” Baen answered her. Then he turned to the priest. “The lad appears to be strong and healthy, Father. I believe we can wait a few weeks, can we not?”

  The priest nodded. “I am here should there be an emergency, Baen,” he said.

  “Then we will set the baptism for Lammastide. That will give a messenger time to ride north and bring Gilbert back with him,” Baen decided.

  “And I shall go home tomorrow,” Rosamund said. “But we should send someone to Otterly today to inform my cousin of his namesake’s safe arrival on this earth. Now, someone find the master chamber’s cradle, for when my daughter awakens it will be time to put her son to her breast. She is too weak to come into the hall each time young Tom needs to be fed. The baby and its rocker must be with her. Has she chosen a nursemaid for the child?”

  “As if I should allow anyone else to look after that precious bairn!” Maybel declared indignantly. “I am not so ancient that I cannot care for him.”

  “But Elizabeth will need your counsel to chose another, for you must be in your own home each evening with Edmund,” Rosamund said. “What if you grew ill, and there was no one to look after the lad?”

  “Well,” Maybel allowed, “there is Grizel. She is Sadie’s mam, and widowed. Sadie is her youngest. She would serve quite well.”

  “Will you speak with her then, dear Maybel?” Rosamund asked.

  Maybel laughed, shaking a finger at Rosamund. “Do not think to cozen me, my lady.” She chuckled. “Remember, I raised you, and I know all your tricks. I am not so foolish that I do not realize I could use the aid of a younger woman.”

  Rosamund leaned over and kissed the old woman on her cheek. “Thank you.” Then she beckoned to Baen and the priest to sit down. “Come and break your fast,” she said. “It has been a long night for us all. Baen, you must get some rest when you have eaten. And Mata, why are you looking so worn?”

  “I spent the night praying for Elizabeth’s safety, and that of the bairn,” the priest said quietly. “Surely you do not believe that you were the only ones helping the lady of Friarsgate along,” he teased them.

  “Then you are both entitled to some rest,” Rosamund declared.

  “There is work to be done,” Baen protested. “The hay is ready to cut.”

  “Edmund can oversee it today,” Rosamund told her son-in-law.

  He did not argue. He was more tired now than he could ever remember being in all of his life. It was as if he had given birth to his son, he thought, a faint grin breaking forth on his handsome face. He ate quickly, and then excused himself. Upstairs he went into the chamber where he had been sleeping, and then, anxious for Elizabeth, he opened the door connecting their two rooms for the first time and stepped inside.

  Elizabeth lay on her back, not yet asleep, but her eyes were closed as she tried to gain that state. She was exhausted, but still excited by the birth of her son. Hearing the door she opened her eyes to see Baen. “Have you eaten?” she asked him, and she smiled.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and, taking her hand, kissed it. “Aye. Your mother says I must get some sleep, and Edmund will see to the haying,” Baen told her.

  “You should,” she agreed. “You were with me all the night long. Is he not the most beautiful bairn?” She was glowing with her happiness. Happiness she had never thought to experience.

  “Aye, he’s a fine lad,” Baen said. “And you were so braw, my sweet wife.”

  “You saved us, Baen,” Elizabeth said suddenly serious. “I could not have birthed our son without your help. I had grown so weak, and if you had not helped him forth from my body I know we would have both died. And I did not want to die. Not before I told you that I do love you.”

  “I knew it without you saying it, Elizabeth,” he replied. “After all, you have always had a weakness for Scots, haven’t you?” Baen teased gently.

  She giggled. “Aye,” she admitted, “I always have, husband.”

  He leaned forward, and their lips met briefly. “Go to sleep now, my love.”

  “Stay with me,” she pleaded softly. “I think I will sleep better in your arms, Baen, than I will alone.”

  And that was how Rosamund found them when she peeped into the chamber an hour later. Baen was lying with his back to the headboard, his arms protectively about Elizabeth, whose head was on his chest. His head rested atop her blond head. Both were sleeping soundly. Rosamund closed the door to the chamber as quietly as she had opened it. She could go home tomorrow knowing that a permanent peace had been forged between her youngest daughter and her husband. It was a great relief, and her heart was lighter than it had been in months. She went to the small library and, taking some parchment, wrote to Thomas Bolton, inviting him to his godson’s baptism on the first day of August. She smiled, almost hearing his protest at being disturbed yet once again, but the trip between Otterly and Friarsgate was hardly a great one. He would come. And Banon and her husband would come, but when Rosamund wrote to her middle daughter she insisted that her grandchildren, but for the two eldest, remain at home. And she, Logan, and their sons would come. And she would write to her uncle Richard Bolton, asking that he send John for the baptism of his new niece. John Hepburn might not be her blood, but he was Logan’s eldest son. It would be a wonderful family day.

  Elizabeth was saddened to see her mother depart the next day, but she knew Rosamund’s place was at Clav
en’s Carn. The daughter had noticed that when her mother was at Friarsgate this time the servants deferred to her in a way that Elizabeth felt took from her position. She had been lax in her discipline in the last days of her confinement. It was time for the Friarsgate folk to be reminded again who the lady of the manor was. Within a few short days after young Tom’s birth she had Baen carry her to the hall, where she spent her days. And a week after that she was in her library again. And then she was walking and riding once more as her strength increased. By the time the day for the baptism arrived Elizabeth was her old self again.

  “Dear girl!” Lord Cambridge said when he saw her. “You are in love! How simply marvelous! Is love not marvelous, Will?” he asked his secretary, who had accompanied him.

  Elizabeth laughed. “Uncle,” she said, kissing him, “you are ever the romantic.” Then she kissed Will. “I can see you are taking good care of him. Thank you. He is my favorite relation. Come in! Come in!”

  Banon and her Neville arrived shortly thereafter.

  “Jemima is most put out that you would not include her,” Banon told her sister. “And I have never looked so well after a confinement as you do. My new bairn was a boy too! We have named him Henry, after the king.”

  “I have not the accommodation for your family,” Elizabeth said, not in the least disturbed by her sister’s complaint. “Mama thought it best only the two eldest come. If we had included Jemima, then my namesake and your youngest daughter would have wanted to come. As it is our brothers are sleeping in the stables.”

  “Why do you not simply enlarge the house?” Banon wanted to know.

  “Actually we are considering it,” Elizabeth said.

  “So I finally get to meet this Scot you married,” Banon responded. “Where is he?” She looked about the hall.

  “He is the biggest man in the room,” Elizabeth said proudly.

  “God’s wounds, Bessie!” Banon exclaimed. “He is gorgeous! How on earth did you manage to get him?”

  “I seduced him,” Elizabeth answered her older sister. “And please do not call me Bessie!”

  “You didn’t!” Banon sounded just slightly shocked. “I would have never thought it of you.” She giggled.