50. Then Trap #2
“For it begins now. You will take it up tonight, or tomorrow if they drag it out,” she replied. “Clean off the tools for the act of care and put them inside your stays. Make sure they are secure.”
With her gaze on me, I did so.
Raising her voice, still looking at me, she called out, “Robbie, see to the door! They’ve been trying to get in all this time, girl!”
Perturbed, as she had told me to ignore the knocking, I lifted the bar.
Starling, Torm and Bertram Sheridan, and six guards burst into the room, stepping past me with little to no regard.
“What is this?” thundered the priest. He looked around, and there was something too practiced in his manner, like he had rehearsed his outrage. “Why so much blood on these clothes? Where is the babe? There are no cries. There is no happy mother.”
The lady-in-waiting gasped, eyes flying open, and drew her bedding around her neck, though her fresh nightgown reached her chin and showed nothing of her body.
“What is this business, Magda?” Torm asked.
The men circled the chair where the midwife sat at the bedside.
“The hag has killed the babe!” exclaimed Bertram. “It is as you said it would be, Father.”
“I knew it was a trap the moment I saw the woman,” Magda laughed. “And you knew I wouldn’t abandon her. You must have thrilled, Starling, at this lady’s misery and misfortune. You found yourself an opportunity. You have caught me out. What will it be? A death in the keep prison? A hanging?”
“’Twill be no hanging, madam,” answered one of the guards.
I heard the clip of his accent. He was Perpatanian.
“I think you know, foul creature,” Starling answered, and he could not keep the vindication from his manner.
“What is going on?” I sputtered.
The rest of them spared me but a glance as Father Starling began to list a litany of scriptures as to why Magda had committed a crime, but Torm Sheridan turned and looked me up and down.
I and the lord faced each other for a breath. There was a brief fragility in his features that I could not understand, but just as I glimpsed it, it disappeared. And we were both distracted by the tumult going on at the bedside of the now-shivering lady-in-waiting.
“Is it a sin to relieve a woman of suffering and also likely save her life?” the midwife asked, almost casual in her query.
“I know not of what you speak! I know only what the scriptures say, and they say that no one, no mortal soul, should interfere with—”
“A sad old book written by a sad old shit,” Magda spat at the priest, cutting him off. There was a light in her eyes that was new, a spark unseen, having always been covered by her weary cynicism and dry humor.
“Filthy language from a filthy woman,” huffed Bertram.
I had the thought that she had been angry all this time.
That in her seventy or so winters, as she had aged and weathered more than half a life in this place, she had witnessed injustices, unfairness, tyranny, and sorrows.
And she had kept her mouth shut for the benefit of others.
She had swallowed her rage so as not to draw attention to the women to whom she tended.
And then I knew, she was letting her rage out that night for she had nothing left to lose. On a delay, I understood that what we had done, which had been a simple solution to a miscarriage, an everyday act of care that any midwife might have to perform, was a crime in Sheridan.
“You will burn for this,” Father Starling said, and he was quiet now.
He addressed Torm. “My lord, I will defer to you, but this is how our king—bless him and his graces—who supports you tirelessly, would want to see you mete out justice. Should you want to imprison the criminal until her death, that would be acceptable, I am sure. But this is a serpent that needs its neck broken.”
“And burn the apprentice too,” Bertram added, his eyes on me.
I stood next to the open door, mouth agape, my hand over my middle where the tools were stowed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a cluster of more guards and keep staff in the corridor watching.
“Yes,” said the Perpatanian guard. “The apprentice should see the stake too. She has been influenced by the witch. It is negligible not to.”
His use of “witch” caused all gathered to fall silent.
“Can we do this elsewhere?” my mentor asked, again dry and apathetic, her usual self. “This woman needs rest and, for gods’ sake, a little privacy. Someone fetch her husband for her comfort. I mean really.”
Torm Sheridan held up his hand. He nodded to the priest. “I value your counsel, Father. Above all others. Magda Geist will burn for the crime of killing this woman’s babe.”
“No,” I tried to shout, but it came out as a whine.
The midwife turned from the priest to the lord. “Ah, Torm. You have so much power, you cannot see how much you give away.”
“Do not speak to him,” Starling interjected. “You have no right.”
“The apprentice too,” Bertram added. “She should burn as well.”
“It would be wise and careful, my lord,” the guard said, bowing his head.
“I agree,” said the priest. “She has spent winters under the witch’s tutelage. It is a sadness she is so young, but it’s a dangerous thing to—”
Torm Sheridan held up his hand again. “I thank you, my Perpatanian friends. We will burn Madam Geist. I will jail the girl and consider it. Your counsel is appreciated and heard.” And he nodded to the guards. “Separate cells, I think.”
Two of them went to the old woman and lifted her roughly from her seat.
I began shouting, trying to catch her eye, but Magda was smiling now, a sort of happiness to her. And she was looking at the priest, almost daring him to ask why she smiled.
They put us in different cells underground. I called to her in her cell, wondering if she could hear me through the damp stone walls of mine.