Chapter 55 #2
‘Let me look at you,’ she says gently, stepping forward and touching Kitty lightly on the shoulder.
Kitty begins to moan, rolling from one side to the other.
Elspet warms her hands in the bowl of water and places them on Kitty’s stomach.The bairn drops downward, a warm shifting under Elspet’s hands through the taut skin of its mother’s belly.
This is a good sign – a sign the child will be born soon.
But as she traces the outline of the small body with gentle, probing fingers, fear rises in her chest. This is not right.
Here is the unmistakable dome of the head, high up close to its mother’s breast, and here the back rounds downward.
No, no, no – it must have turned late. Its sete will be born first.
Even under ideal circumstances, Elspet would fear for the safety of a bairn in this position, not to mention its mother. She’s known women so injured by a sete-first birth that their bleeding can’t be stopped, and they never meet their peedie one. And these circumstances are far from ideal.
Martin Schoner, the Queen’s physician, is at her side, watching and frowning. She looks at him, panicked. ‘The bairn has turned – it will be born sete-first.’
‘What are you talking . . .’ Schoner begins but then he understands. ‘Oh, God help us – you mean the child is breech.’
Elspet submerges her hands once more in the bowl of water, still warm, on the floor by the bed, before placing them on the strained flesh and moving them in gentle repetitive downward strokes; the warmth stimulates the child, encourages the journey from the comfort of the womb out into the caal world.
The sleeves of Elspet’s silk gown are drenched; she sighs in frustration.
‘What is all this stroking?’ Schoner asks, sceptical about her methods even now. ‘Is the child well?’
Elspet nods. ‘I think so, and it is coming. We’ll have to do the best we can despite its position.’
By the time she has generously applied duck’s grease to the skin around the bairn’s emerging head and lifted Kitty’s pelvis with cushions, the child begins to emerge.
Elspet must think of nothing else. She gently guides the child’s sete from its mother, followed by its legs and body.
She carefully unfolds the legs to their full length, and holds her breath.
This is the riskiest part of a sete-birth: the head remains inside its mother, the bairn’s neck stuck in the constricted opening.
Elspet takes another handful of duck’s grease and covers her hand before gently pushing it inside the opening, to reach the bairn’s head. Kitty’s screams are fevered.
‘Not long now,’ Elspet says. ‘The throes will come again in a minute and I want you to push as hard as you can, just one more time.’
‘What are you doing?’ Schoner is looking at her, appalled.
She glares at him. ‘Lift up the bairn’s body.’ The last thing she needs is his judgement – she’s saving this situation for both of them, the least he can be is helpful.
‘Kitty, push down,’ Elspet instructs.
Kitty’s moans begin again but she shakes her head furiously. ‘I can’t. I can’t do this.’
All the anger, all the hate, has disappeared from Kitty’s face now – replaced only with desperate exhaustion.
This happens to some women as they’re giving birth, this point of giving up.
Never has Elspet sympathised or understood it as much as she does in this moment.
She looks her directly in the eye. ‘You can. I’m here.
I’ll help you. Then it will all be over. ’
Kitty’s eyes swim with tears, but she roars as her throes come again. Elspet feels her bear down on her hand and the child’s head. Mormor’s words are in her ear: ‘A sete-first birth needs a kindly hand in the bairn’s mouth, and a firm tug.’
Elspet takes a deep breath, finds the tiny child’s mouth, still inside its mother, and slips two fingers inside. As Kitty pushes, she gives a sharp pull downward. For a moment, nothing happens and then, all of a sudden, in a rush of fluid, the child is free.
She carefully removes her fingers from the bairn’s mouth and looks the child over. He is healthy. Kitty did it; she did it – relief washes over her in a great wave.
‘A boy,’ Schoner remarks. ‘The King will be happy.’
The lad’s body is red and flushed, covered in the grey-white milk of birth. As Elspet cradles him, a perfect thing in all this squalor, he opens his mouth and lets out a loud cry. She smiles and plants a kiss on his wet forehead. ‘Well done, my peedie lad.’
But as she looks into his angry, blinking new eyes, she feels a surge of guilt. Will this child really be the next King of Scotland? What sort of a life are we condemning you to?
Kitty shows no interest, turning away as Elspet holds out the screaming child for her to see.
Perhaps it is for the best. Less than an hour later, when the fylgja has been birthed and the cord cut, Schoner stands in the doorway of the cell, a swaddled bundle tight against his body.
Elspet is attempting to persuade Kitty to drink some water and eat a piece of bread before she passes out.
They’ve given her a generous dose of dwale nightshade to dull the pain, and her eyes have started to swim, the kindest thing given the filth she’s lying in and all her body has endured.
Schoner pauses to look back at the figure on the bed and, for a moment, Kitty looks up at him and her child.
‘A lad?’ she asks drowsily.
‘Yes.’
‘And they’ll give him a good life?’
Elspet takes a deep breath. In that moment, she thinks of the King, the distrust in his eyes, scanning every room to see who mocks him and who flatters him, a man brought up among the villainy of mutinous knave ministers.
The child in Schoner’s arms is still smeared with the blood of his birth.
The heir to the throne of Scotland – many would think this the luckiest child in the country.
But Elspet knows better. Is what she’s doing really much better than the extremes Bothwell was driven to in Sutherland?
She’s come so far down this path though.
This child has no other option now, and neither does she.
She screws up her eyes for just a second, wishing herself out of this cell, and sees the faces of Gillie and Broden appear in the blackness of her closed eyes. This is what matters – this is what she must get back to.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He will have a good life.’
Schoner leaves, rushing to get the child to the nurse who will care for him until the Queen goes into labour.
Elspet crouches down next to the filth of the bed and watches Kitty, stroking her hair as the nightshade leads her into a sleep she hopes is dreamless. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I’m so sorry.’