The Scarlet Ribbon

by Derry O'Dowd

  James dropped the knife; it clattered to the ground noisily as he held on to the table for dear life, panting and shaking.

  Gregoire ran to him and threw his arms around him, holding him tightly as James trembled and shuddered uncontrollably.

  He cried out in distress, but still Gregoire held strong as the dread overtook James. The men sank slowly to the floor as one, and tutor cradled student, rocking him gently. James desperately wanted a drink, to feel the warming liquid slide down the back of his throat and numb his feelings.

  When the storm had passed, James disentangled himself from his teacher and, looking him in the eyes all the time, told him of Marguerite’s tale and the death of his heart. He told him of his terrible nights and daytime fears, and Gregoire the Younger listened intently throughout.

  His father, unseen at the door of the room, roused by the commotion, also listened in. When James quietened, he beckoned his son over to him.

  They talked quietly as their student still sat on the floor, motionless and quietly staring at nothing at all. The Elder left the room briefly and returned carrying a small book.

  ‘James,’ said Gregoire the Elder softly, crouching down to place his hand on his student’s shoulder for the second time that day, ‘we are all touched by adversity and those who are gifted by God with tender deep emotions feel the hurt so much more. But with time the pain that aches in our hearts will lessen. And so I read to you to remind you of Francois Mauriceau’s tragedy. He wrote: “About three years since, one of my sisters, not yet one and twenty years of age, being about eight and a half months gone with her fifth child, was suddenly surprised with strong frequent pains and floodings.”

  ‘The midwife sent for a surgeon to advise on the case. He chose to retire from the birth chamber without assisting but advised “to give her all the sacraments as nothing can be done for her”. The midwives summoned Mauriceau who rushed to his sister’s side. “I saw as soon as I came in so pitiful a spectacle that all the passions of my soul were at that instant agitated with many and different commotions”.’

  Gregoire the Elder shifted into a more comfortable position and continued, ‘His sister had lost more than three quarts of blood and grew ever weaker. With very great difficulty Mauriceau was able to deliver the child and placenta. His dear sister retained perfect senses but she and the newborn were dead within the hour.

  ‘Yet Mauriceau, who was overcome by sadness, became the best loved of all man-midwives in France. And he wrote his story so that those with tender hearts would take courage.

  ‘Now, James, come, for the spirits of Marie Thérèse and Francois Mauriceau, the souls of all the women and infants that you are yet to save, and we Gregoires, we will all aid you.’

  The men helped James to his feet. Gregoire the Younger looked at him, and handed him the knife that had fallen to the floor.

  ‘James,’ he said softly, ‘you should talk more about this – your burden is too terrible for one man alone to carry. Share and be supported.’ He squeezed James’s shoulder with his free hand.

  And as James accepted the knife, his tutors smiled at each other and Gregoire the Elder said, ‘Good. Good. All is as it should be, James.’

  8

  To take away freckles

  Take four large spoonfuls of elderflower water and put it in a bowl with one large spoonful of oil of tartar that is in liquid form. Mix well together. Wash the face with this as often as liked and leave it on to dry.

  Quinn Household Recipes and Remedies Book

  * * *

  ‘Madam saw me from her carriage. I was sitting on the ground as the rain poured down. She said she saw my potential through the downpour and the dirt and grime that covered me. She told me to hold my skirts away from the seat in the carriage; they were covered with horse dung.’ Avril answered James’s question as to how she came to be at Madam’s establishment, though it hurt in the telling.

  He looked at her intently as she lay on the bed, her creamy nakedness covered by a sheet, the flickering light turning the silken grey material into a rippling pool.

  ‘I came from the Low Countries to France. I am from a very small village that you never would have heard of. I doubt that you would find it on a map. Its name is not important anyway, and I will never go there again.

  ‘My family, the Hansens, had a small farm. We worked very hard but we were happy. And then a great sickness came and stole my parents, brothers and sister and left me alone in the world. Well, I had an uncle who took me in. But he wanted to use me in a way that I didn’t want so I ran away and found myself in Paris, and here I am. My mother was French,’ a lone tear slid down her cheek and James wiped it away gently.

  ‘But that was then and this is now,’ she recovered swiftly, brushing away James’s concern and sympathy. ‘Madam has been kind, some of the girls less so as they know I will be sold for a high price because I am not experienced in love-making. They are afraid I will steal their custom away, but they should not be,’ she blushed.

  ‘You must talk to me,’ she said briskly, taking charge, re-enacting what had gone on the last time he visited. She felt so emboldened that she placed his hand on her navel, and pushed down the sheet.

  His hand crept down the pale skin of her torso, slowly, softly.

  From behind the spy hole came furious whispering, ‘What’s he saying now?’ followed by a yelp as a foot was trodden on and, ‘shh, come closer.’

  ‘The mons pubis, the mound of Venus,’ said James, ‘the great doubling of the skin, the volvo or wrapper of the ancients, the vulva, the cleft of Venus.’

  ‘What perversion is this? Why must he talk so much?’ demanded the whore who at present had her eye so close to the spy hole it may as well have been stuck into place with glue.

  ‘There the nymphae, the veiled brides, those female spirits of spring and grove with acorn or myrtle berry in full bloom,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Fetch Madam, quickly,’ hissed the whore.

  ‘And so,’ he continued, ‘Bacchus, the god of revelry, and Aphrodite, the Greek Venus, gave birth to the god of marriage. Through the ages happy couples sing their hymns of love to Hymenaeus, the guardian of the Cyprian strait, the sanctum muliebre, Cupid’s cloister, Heaven’s gate.’

  ‘Hush now and be about your businesses,’ whispered Madam furiously as she moved past her girls roughly to get to the spy hole. She settled in to watch.

  James went on. ‘And so, the part the Latins called the sword scabbard, resting place for the yard and the aura seminis, here the hysteros, the matricis and its neck the os tincae, it feels like a puppy’s snout; in childbirth, the midwives’ garland.’

  He stopped. Avril looked up at him from behind the curtain of her hair, and swept it aside so that her tresses lay over her shoulder. She regarded him intently under the soft glow of the candlelight and the unseen stare of her Madam.

  James Quinn sat in the lecture hall awaiting the arrival of Gregoire the Elder. All around him his fellow students chattered. He didn’t feel like joining in this morning, and though a few sentences had been thrown his way he showed his disinterest at joining in by holding up his textbook and smiling ruefully.

  Suddenly James wasn’t sitting in the lecture room any more. He found himself retracing his steps, up the stairs to the bedchamber where he found the women weeping and his one true love lying on the bed undelivered, bloody, made mute by death.

  He heard her weak calls in his head, pleading for help, even though he had not been there to listen to them at the time. They reverberated in his skull and he put his hands over his ears to try to shut the pitiful cries out.

  When he took his hands away again he looked at them in disbelief, turning them one way and then the other. They were covered in her blood, painted red, then rust, and now crimson.

  He blinked to clear his vision, and sure enough he was still sitting in the lecture room, textbook fallen to the floor and forgotten. He bent to pick it up, all the while thinking on sin and how it was impossib
le for one person sitting on high in Heaven to decide that his Marguerite deserved to suffer for her supposed wrongdoings.

  But then, He allowed His own to suffer torments on the wooden, splintered cross that day under the relentless Golgotha sun. Outside the gates of the city of Jerusalem, so His dead son’s poor broken body could not contaminate the living. A law made by men, enacted by God. James shook his head in wonder.

  He allowed the painful memories of Marguerite’s last day to take his breath away once again and cover his shoulders with their desperate mantle. His sorrowful reverie was disturbed as his tutor entered and clapped his hands together once to bring his class to attention.

  ‘Yesterday we learned about natural labour, to wit, that it be at full time, that it be speedy and without any ill accident, and that the child be alive. We considered the condition of the mother and child and how an expert midwife conducts the labour and delivery. Our Mr Moreau was able, as usual, to quote from texts from memory. Well done Andre, perhaps you will now give others a chance to shine. Today we will learn of difficult labours. Did you study your texts in preparation? Good. Now kindly pay attention to my son.’

  Gregoire the Younger stood in front of the table in the hushed lecture room, instrument raised above his head, arms outstretched.

  The long steel rod with its sharp hook sliced through the air then bit deeply into the wood as it swung in its downward arc.

  James flinched and he noticed his fellow students do the same.

  Hauling on its ebony handle, the Younger pulled hard and the table moved towards him, grating across the floor. He released the hook with difficulty then held it aloft again.

  ‘This, my friends, is the crotchet. Andre, there are some here, please pass them along. As you know, the crotchet is used to thrust into and hook a dead foetus to aid in its extraction from the womb,’ continued Gregoire. ‘We know the baby is dead when the mother has felt no movement for some time, putrid fluid leaks from the womb, and the infant’s head has collapsed and is soft. Midwives only use their hands to conduct delivery, so it falls on surgeons and man-midwives to use this destructor. Pity the days you have to use it.’

  He showed how the crotchet was used to hook into the head, eye socket or other parts of the foetus within reach, and how using all his strength the man-midwife would drag the tiny dead unborn into the world, a bloody mess rather than a pink living infant to be handed into its mother’s arms.

  ‘But enough,’ he continued. ‘We have had enough of death and destruction. For we have our successes too, we bring infants alive to their mothers who cry out with joy in that first embrace.

  ‘We employ these next methods when the delivery is imminent but delayed, and the mother in much distress. Consider here the fillet, or loop as others call it. In ancient times, Hippocrates knew of this method to extract living infants from the womb once the neck of the matrix was open. The Ancients used loops of silk or leather. Now we avail of horsehair, whalebone, or cane mounted in wood or metal handles. And now behold,’ the Younger paused and with a great sense of ceremony unveiled a set of instruments that lay on the table beside him.

  ‘See here the main de fer, the iron hands, the delivery forceps first shown in this city only twenty years ago. These versions are cumbersome and can slip off, but with some improvement, the forceps will be of great use in man-midwifery during difficult births. We wait in great expectation of the day.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gregoire the Elder to his son. ‘Now we will make a demonstration. Ah James, yes, come and join me.’

  James left his seat and walked on to join his teacher.

  ‘So far we have persuaded the mother and her onlookers of the impossibility of being delivered without help. Thus resolved, we must place her across the bed. Here James, up, up onto the table and help me to demonstrate, assistance from among you, please.’

  With help from a few students, Gregoire readied James as if for delivery and spoke, ‘She must lie on her back, her hips raised a little higher than her head. She must fold her legs so as her heels be towards her buttocks, and her thighs spread, and held so by a couple of strong persons.

  ‘Likewise, others hold her arms. The sheet must cover her thighs for decency, here like this,’ and he pulled the sheet that was there for the purpose over James, fixing it so it laid flat and just so.

  ‘The woman so fixed is constrained as on the rack,’ Gregoire continued. ‘Let the man-midwife then anoint the womb with oil or fresh butter. So James, try to escape the clutches of your husband and family.’

  James struggled to no avail and Gregoire looked down at him, a wicked glint in his eye.

  ‘Now we recall the ceremony of the Hebrews, when the child becomes a man,’ Gregoire paused for dramatic effect. ‘In France we call it “the cut” – circumcision, friend James.’

  Gregoire pulled up his sleeves and then threw a knife and scissors between James’s outstretched thighs.

  As the instruments clattered on the wooden table, the student assistants gripped James tightly while he panicked and cried out, lashing with his fists at those nearest to him. Gregoire reached forward and then paused, looking down at the struggling man.

  ‘Thank you, James. Now perhaps you have felt like a mother in desperation, if only for a moment.’

  The sun shone down on the two men as they made their way down the broad, leafy streets of St Germain. James and Andre were in search of a coffee house that fine Sunday.

  ‘James, my friend, did you see the new midwife at the Hotel Dieu? My, what a veritable beauty! Her lush little behind could fit just perfectly in my manly paw,’ Andre smiled and gave him a playful shove as their laughter rang out.

  ‘Ah, and now I smell another bewitching aroma. In here we shall go, for I declare the quality of that coffee to be excellent, even though I have not yet tasted it.’ James smiled at his friend, who considered himself quite the expert in food, drink and, of course, women.

  As they sat, Andre looked around and spied three glamorous young ladies. He blessed the gods again; luck was always with him when it came to finding entrancing members of the opposite sex. He tugged on James’s sleeve, ‘See there, James, sent from Heaven just for us. I will take the angel, the little blonde, and you mon ami can have the other two.’

  And smiling he left the table and went to introduce himself. James recognised the women from the brothel. He lifted his coffee cup in salute, smiling, and put a finger to his lips as if to tell the ladies not to say a word.

  Andre called James over to join them. His many charms had not worked on the angel, who appeared to have eyes only for his long-limbed friend, but he didn’t mind unduly as her companions were taken with him, and two were always better than one.

  ‘James, say something romantic to your beautiful lady friend,’ said Andre, playfully digging him in the ribs as the table’s occupants erupted with laughter.

  Avril blushed becomingly and twisted in her seat a little.

  James smiled and touched her hand in understanding. He thought she looked lovely today, with her hair all caught up at the back and ringlets falling over her ears. She wore a fine, emerald-coloured gown, embroidered with lighter green leaves and flowers intertwining. Her modesty panel matched the dress perfectly and had a becoming froth of cream lace at the top.

  ‘Cailín deas ailinn atá tú,’ he said softly to her.

  ‘Well friend, what is this strange tongue you address the French race with?’ enquired Andre, clutching at his heart in mock horror.

  James smiled, ‘Irish, the language of my home.’

  ‘So tell her again, James.’

  ‘Cailín deas ailinn atá tú,’ even softer this time. James looked Avril deep in the eyes. ‘You are a beautiful girl.’

  ‘James, my friend, I can tell you have a great way with women. Give us more of your sayings or tell a tale from Ireland,’ chuckled Andre, looking at their female companions.

  ‘I’m not a storyteller,’ James replied.

  ‘Tell us
something romantic then,’ begged Clara, one of the other girls.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘have you heard of Diarmuid?’

  The blank faces around the table confirmed that they had not.

  ‘He had a love spot.’

  ‘A love spot?’ asked Andre.

  ‘A love spot,’ replied James as giggles circled the table.

  ‘More, more, tell us more!’ demanded Andre, slapping his thigh.

  ‘It was on his forehead.’

  ‘His forehead, you say, surely not there. Perhaps he was a unicorn, or had freckles,’ Andre led a fresh bout of laughter which grew in volume and ribald tone.

  James continued, ‘Diarmuid had a love spot on his forehead. If any woman saw the love spot she would fall madly in love with him. So he had to keep it covered with his hair.’

  Andre held his hair from his forehead, leering, demanding, ‘Kiss it, kiss it, kiss my love spot, my lovely ladies!’

  They shrank back, laughing.

  ‘What happened next, James?’

  ‘One windy day the king’s beautiful wife-to-be watched as the love spot was revealed by a gust that lifted Diarmuid’s hair and she fell madly in love with him. They ran away together but they were followed by the king and his army as their love was forbidden. And so the couple became fugitives. They are still free and it is told that they roam around Ireland to this day.’

  His companions clapped at the story and James bowed to them.

  ‘And on that note of love and sadness I suggest we take a carriage to Montmartre to view our magnificent city from afar,’ said Andre.‘Ladies?’

  ‘You look very beautiful in your finery,’ James said to Avril as they sat on the upholstered leather seat.