The Girl Who Tempted Fortune

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  A soldier lifted me onto the bedding wagon where I sat holding baby Charles. Beneath us the royal blankets and feather mattresses made our ride as soft as floating on a cloud, despite the rattling pace of the wagon. The night was still dark as we made for the sea and safety.

  Catania was several hours’ ride away, and then the port beyond it. I had never travelled so far from home. Charles slept in my arms as we passed the huts of my village and left them behind. The Sicilian nurse sat up front with the driver, a soldier who spoke only French, all three of us silent, alone with our thoughts. As the night wore on I thought of my mother and sisters, my son Antonio. I felt myself surrounded by strangers. What was I doing, fleeing into the unknown, alone and unprotected? More than once I imagined myself setting Charles down and jumping off the wagon to run home. If I had been wearing the drab blue dress Guilio had given me I might have done so, but I was in the beautiful yellow kirtle with its promise of an enchanted life, and now and then, in the night wind, I thought I heard my great-grandmother calling me toward the future she had predicted.

  I tried not to think what would happen to me if we were caught. My new kirtle clearly proclaimed me a traitor to King Frederick. I would be lucky to receive a quick death if his men caught me. Charles’ nurse was dressed in the plain, dark Sicilian robe of a village wife. Now that it was too late I understood why she had dressed that way, ready to pass herself off as a loyal Sicilian. The bundle of her new clothes lay in the wagon near me, beside a small packet of herbs my mother had insisted on giving me for the journey. If we were stopped, I would be caught with both. I shivered though the night was warm, but I stayed where I was, rocking Charles and humming softly to distract myself.

  When we finally arrived at the harbor I reached for the packet of herbs, hesitated a moment, then grabbed the nurse’s bundle and slung them both over my shoulder. Tightening my hold on Charles, I slid down off the wagon. Dawn was breaking. Servants and soldiers rushed about shouting instructions. Horses, protesting loudly, were being coaxed over a gangplank onto a ship tied to the small wharf. Three other ships bobbed on the water a short distance away. I saw two rowboats, heavily laden, making their way toward those ships, and two others in the shallows being loaded with goods from the wagons. I looked around for Violante but could not see her in the dark crowd of bodies.

  “The princess asks for her son,” a soldier said, appearing beside me. He looked me up and down appraisingly.

  “I’m Prince Charles’ nurse. Take us to the princess,” I said.

  “And who is she?” He nodded toward the front of the wagon where the day nurse in her worn dark clothes was being helped down from her seat.

  “A Sicilian woman. A camp follower.” I began walking away from the wagon. “Do you mean to keep Princess Violante waiting?”

  I heard him chuckle as he caught up with me and took the lead, forcing a path through the crowd. It quickly closed in again behind us, swallowing us in the press of weary bodies and the dim light of early dawn.

  Despite the commanders shouting at the men for greater speed, the sun was full up by the time we set sail. The wind whipped my hair about my head and flung salt spray onto my cheeks, and the ship bobbed on the water like a twig heading out into the endless sea. I stood on the deck holding another woman’s baby, watching my country, my home, and everything familiar slipping away. I was a stranger among these people with my sun-browned skin and black eyes and my foreign accent. I knew little of their ways and less of their city. When my usefulness was over I would be nothing to them; less than nothing, an embarrassment in their polished, sophisticated court. I trembled on the deck, unbalanced as much by the thought of what I was doing as by the movement of the sea beneath me. I stared hungrily at the receding shore of Sicily, imagining myself leaping into the briny water and swimming home like a fish. Only I could not swim. I was a girl who waded in a shallow river to wash laundry, not a shining silver fish at home in the open sea. I was tethered to this boat and the choice I had made.

  She will travel far from home, my great-grandmother foretold at my birth. But it was not my great-grandmother’s prophecy that had brought me here. It was my mother’s implacable will. And mine, I added in fairness. I straightened my back and raised my chin. And mine.

  At least I had not been caught escaping with the invaders. I would not be executed as a traitor in my yellow dress. It occurred to me then that I was leaving forever. As long as King Frederick III ruled Sicily, I could never return. I stared out at my island, trying to commit to memory this last sight of my home.

  A blur on the land caught my attention. Shielding my eyes I thought I saw a dust cloud far inland. King Frederick! This close he had been behind us! This close I had come to an agonizing death! The chance I had taken frightened me more than the choice I had made. A choice that had, in part, been made for me. I would have cursed my mother if the knowledge that I would never see her again did not tighten my throat until I nearly choked on unshed tears.

  A cry rose up around me as others noticed the dust cloud and began pointing to it. After the discouragement of failure and a humiliating retreat, this small victory, escaping intact from King Frederick’s late-arriving army, lifted the soldiers’ spirits. They stood cheering from the decks of all four ships. I imagined King Frederick and his soldiers gnashing their teeth and shooting their arrows harmlessly into the sea as we sailed out of reach jeering at them, and I added my voice to the general merriment. The day nurse, who had been waving frantically from the beach in her Sicilian clothing, looked behind her and ran from the harbor to hide among the townsfolk. I laughed loudly. How she had mocked me when she thought she was chosen to accompany the princess and I was not!

  The noise woke little Charles. He made a face and soiled his clout.

  “That for King Frederick III,” I said. Those near enough to see the baby’s red, distracted face laughed at my joke and passed it on. I had never had so many young men smiling their approval at me, and not only because of my wit. I smiled back saucily, thinking myself one with them now.

  I expected the joke to be soon forgot, but more and more men looked my way. Assuming they were interested in their prince’s son, who most of them had not yet seen, I held him so his pretty little face was clearly visible. But many of the admiring looks—and the comments that accompanied them—were clearly meant for me. I attributed it to the yellow kirtle, which conferred a portion of its beauty onto me, but I flushed with pleasure nonetheless.

  Charles took that moment to announce his hunger. Emboldened by the success of my first quip, I made a second: “The son of the crown prince of Naples has an appetite for Sicily and he will have her soon enough.”

  It was a bawdy joke, not the kind Violante or her lady’s maid would have made, but the soldiers roared their approval, repeating it to others as I made my way below decks to find a quiet place to change and nurse Charles.

  The laughter followed me downstairs to the little cabin Charles and I had been given. I was smiling as I stepped inside, pleased with myself. These Neapolitans liked me! I sighed deeply, feeling the long night’s tension leave me. I had taken a step that could not be taken back; I had no home but with them from the moment I stepped on board this ship. But it would be all right. I could make them like me. I changed Charles’ clout and put him to my breast.

  My eyes drooped wearily. It had been a long, hard ride through the night. Charles was still sucking intermittently, half asleep against my breast. I did not want to waken him; he had slept so little the night before and been too unsettled to nurse this morning. I jiggled him a little to get him to take some more. I was so tired. I slid down off the little stool onto the floor where I could lean back against the wall, and closed my eyes...

  “I will not have my son raised by a trollop! Where is his nurse?”

  I looked up, startled, from the floor where I had been dozing against the wall. The front of my kirtle was unlaced and my shift pulled down, exposing my breasts. Charles lay across one of them,
having fallen asleep suckling. Princess Violante stood over me in the little cabin, glowering. Behind her, her lady’s maid smirked down at me.

  “Where is Charles’ day nurse?” the princess repeated.

  “She... she saw the Sicilian army coming and ran into the town to hide,” I answered, somewhat honestly.

  Violante’s face changed, surprise, then anger.

  “I’m not a woman of loose morals, Your Majesty,” I protested, sitting straighter and pulling my shift up and the front of my kirtle together over my breasts, an awkward maneuver while holding a sleeping baby. “I’ve known no man but my husband.” I let my voice tremble and my eyes water, since she believed he was dead. Behind the princess her maid pursed her mouth, making a small sound of disbelief.

  “I have heard the lewd comment you made to entertain my husband’s soldiers!”

  I gaped at her. It was only a joke, I wanted to say, to make them laugh. But looking up at her stern face I realized how vulgar it sounded. “I swear to you, my Lady, I only meant that your son will see the Kingdom of Sicily as his own one day. It is my firm belief.” I let the tears fall now, real tears, for if she turned her back on me what would become of me? Better I had stayed the poor wife of a cruel man then to arrive unprotected and alone in a foreign city.

  The princess looked down at me silently. “I have heard your mother was a seer,” she said. I flushed but said nothing to deny it. She nodded, slightly mollified; less by my assurances of chastity, I suspected, than by the knowledge that there was no one else on the ship to feed and care for her son. “See that you speak more circumspectly in the future,” she said. “And lay the prince in his cradle! He is not a pauper to sleep on the floor.”

  In fact he was sleeping on me, but I scrambled up to obey her. His clout was heavy and warm so I reached for a clean one and a cloth. By the time I had untied it she was gone, and the sly maid with her. I had no doubt who had passed on the news of my jest to her.

  I cleaned the baby’s bottom and bound him to his swaddling board. His eyes were drooping as I lay him in his cradle. I had been told we would be two days at sea—I had until then to convince the princess she could not do without me. I sat beside the cradle and rocked it while I thought.

  I was ashamed of my foolish joke now. It was the comment of a coarse fisherman’s daughter. If that was how people saw me I knew where I would end up when we reached Naples. I could not change my parentage but I had two days at sea to recreate myself. The dress was a start. I had learned to sit and walk with my back straight, to hold my head high, from watching Violante and her maid. I had begun to listen to the way the princess spoke, as well. She did not shorten her words or let them spill out of her mouth quickly but said each one distinctly, knowing her audience would remain attentive until she was finished. As though every sentence was a formal announcement. I would have said that was the mark of a royal used to being listened to, but I noticed her lady’s maid spoke the same way.

  I had never had much occasion to speak. People seldom addressed me except to issue an order. But after my first sight of the prince, I tried whenever I had the opportunity to speak more slowly, to avoid shortening my words into the dialect I was used to. Patois, I heard Violante’s maid call it, sneering. She mocked me once when I tried to speak as she did, but Violante told her it was a good thing when people improved themselves and everyone could do with some improving. Then the news came that Robert had been defeated, and in the rush to pack and my expectation that I would return to Guilio, I stopped concerning myself with all of that. Now I promised myself that when this boat docked outside of Naples I would leave it with a straight back, my head held high, and speaking Italian the way the princess spoke it.

  Sitting on the little stool rocking Charles’ cradle with my foot, I straightened my back and lifted my chin. I raised my hand to feel my hair. I’d twisted it up quickly but it had come undone in the ride and been blown into tangles by the wind off the sea. I removed the three pins my mother had borrowed from the nurse, and found several more in her bundle which I had taken. She had not wanted it with her in the wagon in case we were caught, but had not hesitated to lay it down beside me, so I felt I had earned it. I combed my fingers through my hair, easing out the tangles as best I could, and braided and pinned it up as I did the princess’s. There! I would make myself into a lady. I smiled down at sleeping Charles. Not just a lady; I would make myself into the kind of person who could be the mother of a prince.

  But first I had to convince Princess Violante to keep me in her service. It would not be enough to care for Charles, or to help the princess dress and do up her hair; any nurse or lady’s maid could do those things. No, I had to convince her I was special. That she needed me and only me.

  I sighed. My mother was the one she would have treasured: a healer, a seer, a trained midwife. I was only her daughter, her mostly unwilling apprentice. True, I had saved Charles’ life with what she had taught me but much had happened since then, and he had been so healthy no one remembered his uncertain birth. If they did I would certainly not be put aside, but I would not be thanked for pointing out their robust little prince had been a sickly newborn. If only I could do something as noteworthy as save a royal life again.

  I remembered the packet my mother had given me. Where had I put it? The nurse’s bundle which I had rummaged through for hair pins lay scattered on the bed. I tossed aside the clothes and other items that had spilled out of it, pulled down the blanket and lifted the straw mattress. Where had I dropped my mother’s packet? She had insisted I take it with me, else I would have left it behind with my Sicilian robe. I searched the little cabin from end to end and finally found it lying against the wall behind Charles’ cradle.

  I opened it out on the small table beside the bed. Anise for headache and digestion, also for nausea; we made that into a tea for women suffering the sickness of carrying a child. Motherwort which we sometimes used to begin the birthing process, and dried yarrow and valerian which eased pain and helped induce sleep after a difficult labor. Did my mother mean me to earn my way as a midwife? There was ginger root and comfrey root for stomach ailments, willow bark ground into a powder for fever, and sage leaves to make a healing compress for wounds.

  Why had she chosen these of all the herbal remedies she and I had made together? The sage perhaps because she feared we might meet resistance in our escape, but as for the others—no one on this ship was with child and surely there were more experienced midwives than me in Naples. One had to be careful with yarrow and ginger root. Taken together they could sometimes induce the heat and sweat common to a fever...

  I looked down at Charles just beginning to wake in his cradle. The symptoms did not last long and there was no after effect. In fact, the patient often felt much better, having flushed out the bad humors within him. But Charles was just a baby.

  I could not believe I was even considering this. But Princess Violante intended to send me away for a single foolish remark, even after I had saved her child’s life and left my home to serve her.

  Charles whimpered from his cradle, his mouth pursing as it did when he was hungry. I loved him; I would never hurt him. He turned his head from side to side, searching for me. It was me he wanted, not his mother. He would miss me if I was sent away, he would cry for me and I would not be there to comfort him. He began to cry now, a petulant little wail. I wanted to pick him up, my arms trembled with the need to comfort him and I felt my breasts grow damp in answer to his crying. I had to do it now before I lost my nerve. I ran to the door.

  “Boil some water and bring it to me,” I told the guard standing just outside. “And bring me two mugs and a large wash bowl at once.”

  I closed the door and paced the room while I waited. Charles’ howls got louder. I loosened his swaddling cloths and lifted him up. Immediately he began rooting, searching for my breast. When I put him down again he cried harder. Would his mother hear him and come to see why I was neglecting my charge? I could not feed him yet, I n
eeded him to be hungry.

  The mugs and the bowl arrived. I used my dinner knife to grate a small piece of ginger root and a little yarrow in the bowl, releasing the juice and pungent odors, which I tipped into one of the mugs. In the other mug I put some of the willow bark powder. When the hot water arrived I poured a little into each mug to make a tea, and the rest into the wash bowl. I packed up the herbs and hid them while I waited for the tea to cool enough for Charles to drink. Meanwhile Charles howled and flailed his little arms, demanding his milk. My arms shook as I removed his gown and his clout, and every noise outside the cabin terrified me. Someone would come, I was sure of it, and demand to know what I was doing. What would I say?

  I dipped a clean washing cloth into the ginger-yarrow root tea and let Charles suck on it. He scrunched up his face over the taste, which made me laugh, but he was hungry and sucked vigorously. I kept dipping the cloth into the mug and letting him suck until most of the tea was gone. The water in the bowl had cooled a little now; still quite warm but not so much as to burn his tender skin. I sat him in it and splashed the warm water onto his chest and his shoulders while he sucked the last of the tea from the cloth. He was still hungry and complaining of it so I leaned over and let him have my breast as he sat in the water.

  His little body was hot against me, his cheeks flushed. I took him off my breast before he was finished feeding. It hurt to let him cry when I could easily satisfy him, but I needed a crying baby, flushed and hot, not a contented one. I took him out of the water before it cooled and dried and dressed him and wrapped him tightly in a blanket to hold in the warmth.

  Now I wanted Violante to come and prayed that every step I heard outside the cabin would be hers. At last she did.

  “Why is he crying?” she asked, hurrying across the room to pick him up. “Why are you not rocking him? He should not be left to cry! And why is he wrapped in this heavy blanket?”