Chapter 57
ELSPET PUSHES THE WALL TAPESTRY aside and opens the window.
A caal wind rushes into the tower bedchamber as the Queen’s savage groans escape and echo around the courtyard of Stirling Castle.
The air freezes in white stipples on the stone around the window but Queen Anna, lying on a bed in the centre of the room, is sweating.
Elspet’s gaze falls on a man on horseback in the courtyard below, light spilling over him from an open doorway somewhere. She leans out further and sees the animal’s hot breath billowing in impatient clouds through the night air.
Next to her, Beatrix shifts from one foot to the other and her hand shoots out to grasp Elspet’s arm, her wide eyes fearful. ‘It’s the Earl of Mar,’ Beatrix says. ‘Shall I cover the window?’
Elspet looks back at the prostrate Queen and shakes her head.
The bairn is coming and Her Majesty’s exertions are only just beginning.
The air will cool and refresh Queen Anna – and it’s good to let the sound out.
Everyone in the castle, including King James, now kens the Queen is enduring a long and painful labour.
A deception is more likely to succeed when hidden in some truths.
Turning back into the bedchamber, Elspet takes a steadying breath.
Margaret sits bolt upright and still on a chair next to Queen Anna. Her brow is furrowed as she observes the Queen’s suffering but even in this moment, Margaret’s reserve remains intact.
Elspet moves to the Queen’s side and takes up her hand, warm and wet with sweat. Queen Anna turns at her touch, eyes full of tears. Elspet is struck once more by her youth. ‘It hurts . . .’ she stammers. ‘It hurts so dreadfully . . . I can’t do this . . .’
Margaret looks at Elspet with urgency. The same demand she’s been making since the day they met all those months ago. Help my Queen. Keep her and her baby safe.
Elspet gives the Queen’s slippery hand a reassuring squeeze.
This distress and increase in pain is a sign a woman is getting close to delivery.
It is a frightening stage of labouring for a new mother but encouraging to the experienced spae-wife.
‘You can, Your Majesty. This is normal. I’m going to have a look. ’
She pulls up the woollen undergarments covering Queen Anna’s body. Her upper belly has become sunken and hollow, and the lower part grown much fuller – a sign the bairn is dropping.
‘Are they well?’ the Queen asks, her voice catching. ‘Do they breathe?’
There’s a bowl of water on the floor by the bed, still warm, and Elspet submerges both her hands for a few moments, then rubs them over the Queen’s lower belly. The bairn moves under her hands, rolling and shifting.
Elspet smiles, meeting Queen Anna’s gaze with a nod that tells her all she needs to know. ‘They are well,’ the Queen says with a sigh, for a moment her pain forgotten. Then a look of fierce resolution comes over her face.
Elspet pours a cup of cinnamon water from a jug on the bedside table and hands it to Margaret. ‘Here, help her to drink this. It will bring some comfort.’
Margaret’s face is a picture of grim determination.
This is a woman with five children who knows well the pain of the birthing chamber.
She supports the Queen to raise her head and take peedie sips from the cup.
But then the Queen pushes the cup aside, grips the coverlet between her fingers, and moans in primal grunts through her nose. The throes are close together now.
Elspet gently pushes Queen Anna’s legs apart and lowers her head to look.
‘Good, Your Majesty, very good,’ she says.
Her pot of duck’s grease, replenished since Kitty gave birth, sits on the table next to the bed. She takes a generous amount in her fingers and smears it around the opening.
Beatrix hovers at Elspet’s shoulder, staring in horror. ‘My God. I never imagined . . .’
Poor girl – how dreadful this scene must appear. Even to Elspet, seeing a Queen – a woman put on a pedestal for a whole nation to admire – reduced to this state is something new.
Elspet glances towards the thick oak door of the bedchamber; it remains closed.
Against all odds, they are here and the men who should be in this room are not.
Now, all that matters is to help this child safely from its mother’s womb.
She kens only too well all that can go wrong, but she mustn’t be distracted by thoughts of the men who might enter this room at any moment, by the Earl of Mar waiting on his horse in the courtyard below, by whatever will happen to her after all this.
Beatrix grabs Elspet’s arm once more. ‘What can I do?’ she asks. Elspet nods quickly. Assisting will distract the Ruthven girl from the terrible sight of her Queen in this state.
‘Bring me some more pillows,’ she says gently. ‘It’s time to get her into the best position to birth the bairn.’
Beatrix quickly does as she’s asked. Then Beatrix and Margaret work together to gently lift the Queen’s body so Elspet can put a pillow under her back and another two under her buttocks.
The Queen lets out a terrible sound, a guttural howl of pain, and Elspet puts a hand on the hot skin of her forehead.
‘You’re ready,’ Elspet says. ‘We’ll start to push the bairn out next time you feel the tightening.’
The Queen’s moans begin again. Just as Elspet bends down once more to help the peedie one from its mother’s body, there is a hammering on the door.
‘Let me in!’ comes a man’s voice from the other side of the thick oak – deep and urgent.
She looks up in alarm. The Queen’s face is locked in a grimace as she pushes down on the bairn, oblivious to the interruption. Beatrix, though, looks at her with terror in her eyes.
Margaret rises from her seat, her body as stiff and upright as a board. ‘I’ll deal with him,’ she says fiercely. ‘You take care of the Queen – and the child.’
The hammering comes again.
Elspet feels the tightening under her hands. The skin of the Queen’s stomach is as solid as a stone. She turns her back to the door as Margaret strides towards it.
‘Let me in. Open this door – now!’ the voice bellows.
The Queen gives a roar of pain as she pushes down on the bairn.
Margaret unlocks the door. Elspet focuses on Queen Anna and the child’s crown beginning to emerge to the sounds of its mother’s screams. No matter what’s happening, what this interruption means, she must stay focused. Or the whole of the last six months has been for naught.
Margaret opens the door. She stands tall and erect, shoulders back.
Elspet glances back to see Schoner push past her, carrying a peedie wooden chest into the room.
She catches a glimpse of Primrose, slumped on a cushioned chair, sleeping off his drunken, nightshade-enhanced stupor in the ante-chamber.
‘What are you doing?’ Margaret hisses at Schoner, ‘causing such a commotion? Do you want to alert the whole castle? You were supposed to come up the private staircase.’
‘There’s a guard on the back stairs – I had to come this way,’ Schoner says, irritated. ‘I thought you were going to leave me standing out there all day.’
‘A guard?’ Margaret says, worried. ‘Why? Did anyone see you? Mar waits in the courtyard below.’
‘Of course they saw me,’ Schoner says, ‘but that hardly matters. I’m supposed to be here. I said I’d been to fetch more supplies.’
‘But the bairn?’ Margaret stammers. ‘Where is he?’
‘Give me some credit,’ Schoner says, rolling his eyes.
He opens his cloak to reveal a peedie bundle, strapped to his chest with a wide piece of fabric.
Schoner unravels the sleeping lad and hands him to Margaret, who looks at the bairn with distaste.
Schoner rushes forward to inspect the crown emerging from the Queen.
Queen Anna gives another deep, guttural growl, and Elspet concentrates on the bairn’s head. ‘You’re ready, Your Majesty. One more big push and the child will be with us.’
She thinks of Kitty Muirhead, giving birth in the filthy Tolbooth cell.
The Queen has every comfort and support here, but it doesn’t change the savagery of the act.
Beads of sweat stand out on Queen Anna’s face, her hair wet and slick against the bed linen, as she lets out another terrible roar of pain.
Elspet guides the child’s head out of its mother; the hardest, widest part of the bairn is free. Then she turns the shoulders to allow the rest of the body to slip out. Blood and birth water surge out with the child’s body, soaking the bed and floor.
Elspet lifts her up slowly, gently and looks her over. A lass – a pink, crumple-faced but healthy lass, slippery with her white and grey coating from the womb. She carefully hands her to the Queen, who takes her child into her arms and stares at her daughter, transfixed.
‘We must wrap her,’ Schoner says, stepping forward. ‘The air in here is cold.’
Elspet looks at the Queen and her daughter, who is curled up against her mother like a mole in its burrow. She places a blanket over them both. ‘They’re well,’ she says, holding up a hand up to stay Schoner, ‘and she’s still attached to her cord. We need to birth this fylgia.’
While most folk feel relief when a healthy bairn is born, a spae-wife kens things can still go wrong. Her task is not complete until the intact fylgja has been delivered.
‘One more big squeeze, Your Majesty,’ Elspet says and, as the Queen obliges, she gently pulls on the child’s cord and eases out the flat circle of afterbirth that has kept the child company inside its mother.
Still attached to the bairn by the beating cord, she checks it’s complete and then allows herself to stand back and relax, watching the Queen and her baby.
Beatrix, stunned, steps forward and puts an arm around the Queen. ‘You were magnificent, Your Majesty. You did it.’
Queen Anna is still staring at the child. ‘I did, didn’t I?’ she breathes, her eyes never leaving her daughter’s face.