CHAPTER 1

LONDON

January 1675

A cold year in a spate of them

Sarah knew Rebecca’s babe was dead as soon as the head slid free, from the look on Mistress June’s face. She was not so long into her midwifery apprenticeship, but she’d learned what that look meant early. And by the time the first arm was out, it was obvious—this was not a baby meant to survive in this world. It had gills on its neck and a neat line of scales down its back like the hooks up the spine of a good woman’s stay. It would have been a problem anyway, had it lived. There was nothing to be done for these ones, no way to hide them.

Outside, the night wind howled and shook the shutters, trying to claw its way into the room they’d finally managed to make warm. Steam rose off the pile of rags on the floor, all of them used to sop up the blood and vomit and slick fluids of the past hours. She knew that some of the blood had surely made it between the floorboards and was likely dripping down into the printshop below, where the husband waited for someone to tell him the child had come into the world. The thumping of the press reverberated up through the ceiling beams and Sarah’s knees as she knelt on the floor. The air was tangy on her tongue. Here on Fleet Street, everything stank of iron ink and sweat. The ink and the blood together made the air taste like she was licking a farthing coin, and despite her training, acid rose in the back of her throat.

“Sarah,” Mrs. June said. “Get me some clean cloths.” She slid two fingers behind the baby’s back. One arm free, but the other shoulder was caught. Rebecca hissed when Mrs. June pressed inside her, but she had no strength anymore for wailing. We had some trouble with her others, Mrs. June had said, before they arrived. Very narrow pelvis; be prepared.

Sarah did as she was bid. By the time she returned from the front room, where the pot of water boiled over the fire and the mother’s mother and aunts waited, Mrs. June had the rest of it birthed.

“He hasn’t cried.” Rebecca had three babes before this one. She panted, but her eyes were glassy with pain and exhaustion. The other three were girls, and it was well known that her husband wished a boy for an apprentice.

Mrs. June took the cloths from Sarah, clipped the baby’s cord with a sharp knife she kept for the purpose, and wrapped it up with a practiced hand so all but its face was hidden. The mother tried to rise from the birthing chair, but she still had one leg propped on Mrs. June’s shoulder and she was too tired after nine hours of laboring to coordinate herself.

“It’s as I feared.” Mrs. June patted Rebecca’s knee. Rebecca turned her face against the high back of the chair. “Would you like to hold him?”

“Show me his face.”

Mrs. June passed the swaddled bundle to Sarah and stayed on the floor, where she could watch the afterbirth. It all had to come in one piece, else the mother was more likely to contract childbed fever. In the six months of her apprenticeship, Sarah had thus far seen two women die of the fever. She didn’t wish to see a third, so she took the babe, though she also didn’t wish to look upon it. She held out the baby and Rebecca pressed a finger against his little lips. Like pansy buds.

“His face ain’t right,” Rebecca said.

It wasn’t. He had very large eyes, like a creature meant for the dark.

Mrs. June looked at Sarah, silent. Sarah swallowed. In the beginning of her training, she’d been trusted only to boil the pot and bring cloths. Now she’d progressed to checking the mother’s progress into labor and, apparently, explaining when something went wrong. Though there was no explaining a thing like this. You put a thing like this in the Lord’s hands and well, He was unlikely to explain Himself, wasn’t he? Sometimes she thought the papists had the right of it, with all their burying saints’ icons and lighting candles. Witchcraft, the bishops called it, but if it helped a child quicken right in the womb, then it seemed helpful enough. Though she knew the papists of London were birthing the same kinds of babies the Protestants were these days. Babies like this creature born to breathe in dark waters.

“This happens sometimes. It ain’t made right inside you, that’s all.”

Rebecca hiccuped, and a tear rolled down her plump cheek to her chin where it mixed with the sweat that still glistened there from her exertion.

“Come now,” Mrs. June said. “There will be more babies after this one. It’s just the way of the world. You and William are young yet, and there will be sons aplenty.” Rebecca’s hand loosened around the bundle and Mrs. June took it back from her, gently. “We’ll take it to the church for you, and you’ll think on it no more. I shall get your mother, and once the afterbirth is passed you can have your rest.” She slipped so easily from he to it. Sarah saw Rebecca start to slip that way, too. Easier not to think about it. Easier to give them the extra money for a stillbirth’s burial in the churchyard and put this matter from her mind, except perhaps for when she went to services, and crossed the ground where he would be buried, and thought about which bit of grass might hide her dead child.

Rebecca descended into silence. The sun fell, too, while Mrs. June and Sarah waited for the last of the afterbirth to deliver itself. It was an easy enough labor, all told, aside from the baby’s body cooling on the bedside table. Finally, it was as over as it could be and Mrs. June let the grandmother into the room to see to Rebecca. Her face was still and soft and she wiped the sweat off Rebecca’s brow with the hem of her apron, like Rebecca was a barefoot child again and not a woman who had just delivered a child of her own. While they were distracted, Mrs. June opened her bag and tucked the baby inside on top of her books and medicines, snug up like it was in danger of catching another death.

Sarah helped Rebecca clean herself. It had been a longer labor than her last, and with the blood and fluid dried, Sarah could see that her flesh had torn. She looked up toward Mrs. June, who examined the bleeding gash and then laid her hand on Rebecca’s stomach once more. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly and Sarah felt the air shudder. She shivered, but Rebecca and her mother noticed nothing at all, of course. When Mrs. June finished, the flesh had healed itself with only the smallest of silver scars, as thin as spider silk, to remember the trauma.


Copyright © 2023 by Lina Rather