The Lady of the Butterflies

by Fiona Mountain

  He hesitated. “But the manuals are very strict.”

  “I do not want this baby to be born into darkness,” I said firmly. “Please, do as I ask.”

  Reluctantly, he went to the window while I screwed a ball of blanket in my hand as another wave of pain reached its peak.

  Edmund came back to my side and watched my face twist with pain. “I would be so much happier if you were attended by a surgeon.”

  “If the parish midwife is good enough for the yeomen’s wives, she is good enough for me,” I said when the spasm abated. “Mother Wall may not even be able to write her own name, but her knowledge is the best there can be. It comes from the experience of her own eyes and ears and hands, and from the scores of babies she has safely delivered before.”

  He nodded. “I will fetch her for you.” He left the room, hurtled back to give me a kiss, rushed off again. As Bess went to fetch the linen and I listened to a horse galloping off from the stables, I looked over at the canopied oak rocking cradle that had been moved over from the corner of the room to the side of my bed. “Please, God,” I whispered, “let me rock my baby in his crib. Have compassion for me through the torture that’s coming. Preserve my life and the life of my little child.”

  I felt much safer when Mother Wall arrived, with her stool and her knife, followed by more than a dozen gossips: Ann Smythe from Ashton Court; Bess and her mother; Mistress Keene, the cook; Jane Jennings, the former kitchenmaid, with her baby daughter in her arms; Mistress Bennett, wife of a wildfowler; Mistress Walker from the mill; and lastly Mistress Hort.

  Between eating pasties and caraway comfits from the kitchen, they drew up stools around the bed and kept up a constant flow of chatter about their own labors and childbeds, their numerous children and their households. I was not expected to join in and it was comforting to listen to them, enjoying being all together, and to have their support, companionship and recollected experience as the crushing pains grew stronger and closer together, until I gripped Bess’s fingers hard enough to break them and screamed that I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Something must be wrong!” I yelled through gritted teeth. My shift clung to my body, soaked in perspiration, and my hair hung below my waist in sweaty rats’ tails. “This cannot . . . cannot be normal.”

  “It is normal, child,” Mistress Bennett soothed. “More’s the pity. Now you stop worrying about it and let nature do its work.”

  “Why is it never like this for cows in calf?”

  “We have grandmother Eve to thank for that,” Mistress Keene said.

  “Thank her!” I grunted. “I’d like to strangle her.”

  Bess chuckled.

  The pain subsided once more and I took consolation from watching Mother Wall issuing confident instructions for the fire to be got ready, the candles kept lit. She could have been forty or she could have been a hundred. Her hair was silvery, her back stooped, but her fingers, with their neatly trimmed nails, were soft and remarkably supple for a marsh dweller. She anointed my womb and her own hands with oil of lilies, rubbed soothing salves and liniments into my skin, and gave me cups of caudles and herbal infusions. I did not ask her what was in them; for once I was content just to obey without question.

  She probed me gently to see how the birth progressed and how the baby lay, and all the while she talked to me in her soothing country burr, telling me to move about and not lie still on the bed, to stand and lean against the bedposts, as the great waves of pain rose ever higher, so that I was sure they would rip me apart.

  She patted my hand as I bore down and pushed with all my might. “You are doing very well, Ma’am,” she said. “You screech all you want. We are nearly there now.”

  “You’ll meet your little one soon enough,” Mistress Knight soothed, and the thought of that made it more bearable, reminded me what lay at the end of my labor.

  “How much longer?” I gasped.

  “The babe will come in its own good time,” Mother Wall said.

  That turned out to be just before midnight. I squatted over a pile of rushes, with Bess supporting me under my arm on one side and her mother on the other, while Mother Wall knelt below me and peered up between my legs. “Its head is crowned,” she said, as if he were a little prince.

  And then, in one fiery eruption of ripping, gushing, hot, wet agony, my baby boy came slithering out like a fish between my knees, into the waiting arms of Mother Wall, who caught him like a boy catches a football. She flipped him over and slapped him on the back and he howled in protest, his little balled fists punching the air, his face red and contorted with anger.

  I sat where I was on the floor, and tears of joy and relief spilled down my hot cheeks. I had a child. A healthy, living child, and I had survived to see him born. He was so perfect. I held out my arms. “Let me hold him,” I said. “I want to hold my baby.”

  I did not need anyone to tell me to use my hand to support his fragile little skull. Holding him was for me as natural and instinctive as his first breath. I held him in my left arm, close to my heart, and with my right hand I carefully wiped the blood and stickiness off his tiny head with the edge of my shift. I noted that he had the blackest hair. Where Edmund was redheaded and I was fair, our son had hair as black as peat, and for a while, at least, he also had soft blue eyes. I kissed him and rocked him, stroked him and crooned over him, could not take my eyes off him. I was filled with love, a protective and pure love that was so powerful it was overwhelming.

  “Thanks be to God,” Bess’s mother said. “You are delivered of your firstborn son.”

  Everyone crowded round with blessings for us both, examined him and pronounced him very well made. I was struck by an enormous sense of affection and kinship with these women who had been with me through my travail. They were my sisters now and it was a joy to be a woman, to be in the exclusive company of women. I felt exalted. With God’s help, and with some help from my husband, admittedly, I had created life inside me. I had brought life forth. And I had survived to see a miracle. If death had seemed an everyday tragedy, so birth was an everyday wonder.

  The midwife took my son back into her expert hands and I watched as she took her knife to cut the navel string. She dressed it with frankincense; then, as I was put to bed, she took the baby to the basin of warm water and sweet butter to bathe him.

  “So, I have a son.”

  I tore my eyes away from the perfect little bundle and saw that Edmund had come into the birthing room. Poor Edmund. He looked so exhausted and so happy and so alarmed amidst the carnage, that all at once my heart went out to him.

  I held out my hand and he came and took it and bent down to kiss my damp forehead. “Eleanor darling, I heard your screams and I was sure you were dying.”

  “You were not the only one.” I smiled across at our baby as he was being swaddled by the midwife. “But it was worth the pain. I’ve almost forgotten it already.”

  He kissed me again. “I’m so proud of you. You were so brave.”

  The midwife handed our son to Edmund, who took him tenderly but awkwardly. “Father, see, there is your child. God give you much joy with him.”

  Much joy indeed. I felt a sweet elation that I had never felt before. I didn’t even feel tired. Edmund placed the baby back in my arms and I kissed the top of his downy head, his sticky ebony hair.

  “I feel as if it is I who have been born,” I said. “Born again this day as a mother.”

  WE CALLED HIM FOREST. It was my choice and I was adamant that he must have his own name. He was to be Forest Edmund but would be known as Forest. He was a child born to inherit this land and I wanted him to have a name taken from nature.

  Edmund acquiesced, no doubt thinking the name rather whimsical, but despite agreeing to that, for all he said he never wanted us to have fallings-out, we did have an almighty disagreement about Forest’s baptism.

  Edmund was determined it should be just like our wedding, quietly and privately done, removed from public view, with only a select gathering
present. He wanted it to take place in the evening, in the chamber where Forest was born. He wanted to present his son himself, with witnesses rather than sponsors, without the font or the sign of the cross.

  “The Roundhead kind of christening, you mean,” I said disapprovingly, leaning back wearily against the angled pillows. “The kind of christening my father gave me and my sister.”

  “Surely you would prefer it to be done in your presence?” Edmund reasoned. “Rather than have him taken away from you? Surely you’d prefer to be there to see our little one become a Christian soul?” He looked down at our baby as he slept peacefully in the crib at the side of the bed. “You have not been parted from him since he was born. I can’t believe you’d consider letting him go to the church without you. I’d have thought that nothing would induce you to send him away.”

  I shifted to a more comfortable position, wriggled my feet under the blankets to get some feeling in them. I was sure I’d have forgotten how to use them once I was allowed out of this room again. “Of course I would rather be with him. But since I am not permitted to leave my chamber so soon after I have given birth, it is not possible.”

  “Then have it done here, in the chamber. It is more comfortable and more convenient, after all, and healthier too, to have the minister come to us rather than risk infection by taking someone so tiny out in the cold and the wet.”

  “The church is hardly very far.” But I knew everything Edmund said was right, and did not blame him for thinking me very contrary. My fingers idly pleated the woven blanket. “Of course I would like to be at my son’s baptism, but it is more important to me that it be a joyous celebration. What matters to me more than anything is that Forest should have the most joyous start to his life.”

  I may have submitted to the prescribed three days in the dark to give me time to recover from the birth, with the help of restorative drinks and dressings and doses of burned wine. But I would not allow them to move my baby’s cradle into a dark and shadowy corner, no matter that the manuals said not to let the beams of the sun or moon dart upon him as he slept. I didn’t care what the manuals said, any more than I cared if mothers were supposed to play no part in the arranging of a baptism. I could not let Edmund do it his way.

  “I want it to be a grand celebration,” I said. “I know if it’s done in church it means I can’t come, but so be it. You can tell me all about it afterward. I shall be content just to imagine the benches adorned with arras and cloth of gold and the font framed by heraldic banners, and our little boy, mantled in silk lawn and wool, carried proudly at the front of the procession in the arms of Mother Wall.”

  Edmund harrumphed. “Your father will turn in his grave.”

  It was undoubtedly true. For him the font was an enchanted holy relic, or an abomination left over from Popery, and the sign of the cross was akin to Devil worship, the mark of the beast. It was no wonder we were arguing about it. After all, friction over fonts had helped spark the civil war. Baptism was an issue that had split families, communities and congregations.

  “My father made his choices and I’m making mine,” I said. “I cannot agree that our baby might just as well be baptized in a pail. When I was born, the font was being used as a trough for the cattle to drink from, but John Burges saw to it that it was gilded again and reinstalled. It is fit for use now and I want us to use it. I want our baby baptized in it.”

  “John Burges can no more call himself a Puritan than can you,” Edmund said, rather pompously.

  “I don’t call myself Puritan.”

  “Except in one respect.” Forest had started wailing again and I had reached over and lifted him gently to my breast to give him suck. “And for that, I can forgive you much,” Edmund said gently, watching us.

  I settled the baby and gazed down as he guzzled contentedly, kneading my breast with his little dimpled hand. “Yes, I suppose I am Puritan in this, at least. How could I not agree with the Puritan ministers who claim nursing is a godly responsibility? Even if it is so exhausting and unrelenting.”

  Forest was uncommonly greedy, seemed to be constantly hungry, impossible to satisfy. He fed at all hours, all through the day and all through the night. But such was my infatuation with him that I couldn’t bear to leave him to cry even for five minutes. I wanted to hold him and touch him and gaze at him all the time. My nipples were sore and cracked, so that when he latched on to them with his surprisingly sharp little gums, the pain sometimes made my toes curl. But I wouldn’t have missed even that. “I could no more give him to a wet nurse than I could cut off my own hand.”

  Edmund handed me a cup of small beer, anticipating the raging thirst that hit me as soon as I started feeding. I drank, and then Forest let go of me and drew up his legs and started to squawk again. I lifted him onto my shoulder and patted his back. “There, there, my little man. Do you have a pain? I’ll soon make it go away.” I bent my head to him and kissed the crown of his head.

  “How many times a day do you kiss him and tell him he is handsome and how much you cherish him?” Edmund asked me softly.

  I kissed Forest again and smiled. “Not nearly often enough.”

  “We will do as you wish,” Edmund said, bending to drop a kiss on my own head.

  I caught hold of his fingers as he moved away. “Thank you, Edmund.”

  He turned to me at the door. “I shall ask Richard to be Forest’s sponsor.”

  “Richard?” His name shattered the peace of the chamber like a clap of thunder on a sultry summer day.

  “Richard,” Edmund repeated, with what passed for harshness in his mild-mannered nature. “Or do you have objections to that too? Since it’s your wish that our baby have a grand baptism, with cloth of gold and holy water and sponsors and whatnot, at least allow me to have my say over who those sponsors should be.”

  Because we had already had such a lengthy disagreement, I had to agree to this, wrong and twisted as it felt.

  “I shall write to Richard now and ask him to come as soon as he can. I am sure he will accept. He is very fond of you, you know.”

  How could he be so trusting, so oblivious?

  THEY’D ALL GONE to the church, and as I waited alone, the chamber desolate without Forest in it, I tried very hard to concentrate on imagining my little son being anointed, John Foskett, the curate, saying the words of the baptism over him. How we were born in sin, entered this wicked world bathed in blood, and were born again, through water. I prayed that the Holy Ghost would descend upon my boy and live within him, would give him grace and goodness, such as it seemed I did not have. For I had heard Richard Glanville’s soft-spoken voice in the garden as the party returned to begin the evening of festive drinking, and my heart had tuned to its cadence as my ears strained only to hear him again.

  I listened to the noisy merriment downstairs and for once I didn’t long to join in. I clung to the seclusion and safety of my chamber like a startled rabbit will hide in the woodpile when a fox is about.

  Now they’d all raised a glass or three of canary wine and enjoyed the christening supper in the hall. They’d had their fill of oysters and anchovies and wafers and caraways and christening cake, and the other guests had all been brought to my bedside to congratulate me and see the gifts of silver spoons and gilt bowls on formal display in the chamber.

  “God bless your little one and grant you as much comfort as every mother had of a child,” said Mary Burges, the other sponsor.

  Edmund had given the midwife her ten shillings, the nurse her five, and every gossip had her sweetmeats to carry away in her handkerchief.

  Still I had not seen Richard. And I would not let his name touch my lips to ask after him, told myself that it would be for the best if he did not come to see me.

  Surely he must come.

  The Smythe girls, Florence and Arabella from Ashton Court, crowded round Forest adoringly, kissed me and him and wished me much joy in my new little Christian. One of the boys from Clevedon Court poked his head between the ber
ibboned heads of the sisters and looked at them cheekily in turn out of the corner of his eyes. “There’s just as much joy to be had in begetting a babe as there is in cooing over one,” he said, setting the girls to blushing and giggling.

  “At this rate, this one christening will beget a hundred,” Mr. Merrick complained to me as he kissed my hand. “You look well. Motherhood suits you.”

  “It certainly does.” The voice had come from the other side of the room.

  I looked up to see Richard framed in the doorway, standing at the entrance to my bedchamber with an anxious look in his beautiful blue eyes, as if he was not certain he would be welcome.

  I smiled at him, and as soon as I did he smiled back, strode confidently toward the high bed as if there was nobody in the room but the two of us, as if he would throw aside the blankets and climb in beside me, would gather me into his arms, with the drapes drawn to shut out the rest of the world.

  “Motherhood does suit her indeed,” he whispered tenderly, as if in response to the earlier comment, but speaking to me alone. “She has never looked more lovely.”

  “I thank you, sir,” I said, as if there had been nothing more to it than a regular compliment. Only the hammering of my heart and a slight trembling of his hands told otherwise.

  “It must be sweet torture for her husband,” he added with feeling. “He must be in torment, knowing the joy of her, but being barred from her bed, not being able to touch her. When she lies there half dressed like a goddess of fertility, with her rosy cheeks and golden hair and her ripe breasts.”

  I was sure that everyone must hear the torment in his voice, must see the need in his eyes. But not even one eyebrow was raised at this lewd exchange. Of course not. It was, after all, entirely in order at baptisms to spice the talk with plenty of bawdiness. Only I guessed it was spoken with a real emotion. And I did not know how to manage it. I heard little Forest stir and I called for them to bring him to me, even though he hadn’t yet worked himself up to a proper cry. I clutched him before me as a knight might hold up a shield.