Here Be Dragons - 1 Sharon Penman (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the wrong position, the midwife has to reach up into the womb and try to correct it. If she cannot, both mother and child are like to die. Or the babe can be too big. Or the pains can go on so long that the woman's strength gives out. There's always the danger that she'll lose heart, the danger of sudden bleeding. And afterward, the danger that she'll not expel the afterbirth."Richard looked utterly blank, and Llewelyn said impatiently, "That is the skin that held the babe when it was in the womb. If it does not me out of its own accord, and the midwives cannot pull it out, the woman will sicken and die. And even if she gives birth safely and then expels the afterbirth, there is still the risk of milk fever. They say as many women die from that as from the birthing itself."Richard had already been told more than he'd ever wanted to know about childbirth. "How in God's name do you know so much about it? The midwives I've met have been as closemouthed as clams.""I asked Catrin to tell me." Llewelyn was staring into the fire, caught up in memories of a woman with hair the color of the flames, in memories of a summer seven years past. After a long silence, he said, "I wanted to know whyTangwystl died."FOR Llewelyn, those hours just before a battle always passed with excruciating slowness. But nothing in his past had prepared him for the way time fragmented and froze as he waited for Joanna to give birth to their child. When it had become clear that Joanna's delivery would be neither quick nor easy, he'd sent for Catherine, hoping that her presence might give Joanna comfort. But although she was only twelve miles away at Trefriw, she had yet to arrive, and he did not know whether to attribute the delay to the rain-swamped roads or to the continued illness of her child. Each time he made that grim trek across the bailey, sought scraps of information from an increasingly evasive Branwen, he was aware of a new and frightening feeling, a sense of utter impotence.

The rain fell intermittently all morning. Just before noon, the cloud cover began to break over the mountains; patches of sky became visible. Llewelyn at last humored his ten-year-old daughter, agreed to Gwladys's pleas that he allow the cooks to prepare a meal for him. He was making desultory conversation with Adda and Richard, relating how Maelgwn razed three of his own castles in Ceredigion rather than have them fall into hostile hands, whenBranwen appeared without warning in the doorway of the hall.Her hair was falling about her face in wind-whipped disarray, her gown mud-stained to the knees, and when Llewelyn reached her, he saw that her eyes were filling with tears."The baby will not come," she whispered. "We do not know what glse to do, my lord. We've massaged her belly and anointed her private parts with hot thyme oil, laid agrimony root across her womb, given her °ark of cassia fistula in wine, even given her pepper to make her sneeze. Jhe pains are coming very quick now, very sharp, but the babe is no nearer to delivery than it was three hours ago. My lord . . . she cannot

290go on like this much longer. Her strength is all but gone and she has begun to bleed."To Llewelyn, that was a death knell. It showed on his face, and she said quickly, "No, my lord, bleeding need not be fatal, God's truth! She's lost mayhap a cupful, no more. But she's losing, too, her will t0 endure, losing all hope. And once she begins to believe she and the babe will die ..."She was weeping openly by now. "My lord, Dame Rhagnell did send me to tell you that we do need a vial of holy water. Will your chaplain""Holy water? No! No, I forbid it!""But my lord, you do not understand! It is for the babe. By pouring holy water onto a baptismal sponge, we can insert it up into Lady Joanna's womb, baptise the babe whilst it still lives!""Are you mad? You've just admitted that Joanna now despairs of delivering this child. You tell her you want to baptise the child whilst in her womb and you'll be passing a death sentence upon her!""I know," she said, and sobbed. "But if we do not, if the babe dies unbaptised, its soul will be lost to God! What choice have we, my lord, what choice?""Llewelyn, she is right." Morgan, Richard, and Adda had come up behind them."She is right, lad," the priest repeated softly. "If a child is not baptised, it is forever denied Paradise, may never look upon the face of God. Your child, Llewelyn. Can you risk that?"When Llewelyn did not answer, Morgan reached out, put his rosary into the younger man's hand. Llewelyn's fingers closed tightly around it; he could feel the beads digging into his palm. He brought them up, touched them to his lips, and then handed them back to the priest. "If I must choose between Joanna and the child," he said huskily, "I choose Joanna."ALISON opened the door just wide enough to allow her to slip through to joinLlewelyn out on the drawbridge. When he grabbed the latch, pushed past her into the bedchamber, she cried out in shock, "My lord, no!" but made no move to stop him. Nor did Branwen, a mute, miserable ghost trailing him across the bailey and up the stairs. Both midwives, however, reacted with outrage."My lord, you cannot enter the birthing chamber! You must go from here at once!"Llewelyn did not even hear them. He stood immobile for a moment, staring atJoanna. Although the chamber was chill, she was clad only in a chemise. It was linen, not a clinging material, but it had molded to her

292body like a second skin, so drenched was she in perspiration. Her head was thrown back