England 1156

The room was shrouded in the heavy dark of a cold and relentless night. Only a single candle burned, a single weak light against the pain and dark cold of the chamber. By that candle, hot and golden against the pressing dark, Elsbeth performed her duty.

"It is not proceeding well, Elsbeth. Something is amiss."

She looked down at the woman she was to help, at the face swollen with strain and effort and pain. Ardeth, the whites of her eyes suffused red with broken blood vessels, struggled for each shallow breath.

"You are only tired," she said. "Hold fast. Your time is near. The babe is upon you."

Ardeth only shook her head and turned her gaze to the midwife, Jean. Jean pressed her lips together and said nothing.

"You know something is amiss," Ardeth said.

Ardeth said no more. Her pain was upon her again and she breathed into the face of it, straining for purchase and finding none. Her cry was ripped from her lips to end in a grunting sigh.

Elsbeth laid a hand upon her mounded belly and felt of the babe. He was moving downward, his hips easily felt of her hand. He was coming strong and coming right. There was nothing amiss in this birthing. Nay, it was all as it should be. God had spoken true when He had declared that He would increase a woman's pain upon the child bed. She had not doubted it. Yet she did not relish the facing of it.

"He comes," she said, laying a cool, wet cloth on Ardeth's brow.

"That I knew, Elsbeth," Ardeth said with a half smile. "He will not come unheralded, it seems, though I would have preferred it. His herald is pain and I must attend. A most unthoughtful child, though I love him even now."

The pain pressed at her again and she went silent in the face of it. Elsbeth clasped her hand and buried her wince at the pain of Ardeth's grip. Ardeth's belly roiled in movement as the babe was pressed downward again. He pushed against her bowels with his progress and the smell of human excrement filled the air. Jean cleared it away with a swipe of a linen cloth, laying a clean cloth in its place to catch whatever else would be purged from Ardeth's body.

"'Twill not be much longer," Ardeth said. "There are things I want to say to you, Elsbeth. So many things to say."

"The time is nigh that he will come," Elsbeth answered. "The worst is past. Rest in that."

"Rest," Ardeth said. "I would rest."

Elsbeth could only agree, though she did not say the words aloud. God had ordained that, as a result of their fall from grace, a man must work the land and a woman work to bring forth a child. She did not know a man who did not find joy in his word, be it knight, baron, or serf. Yet she did not see the joy in this. This was pain. There could be no joy in that.

"It is harder now," Ardeth said on a grunt. "The pain is sharper and heavier."

Elsbeth looked down between Ardeth's legs as the gush of water soaked the bedding.

"Soon now, lady," said Jean. "Soon. Push when the pain comes again."

"I will push, but I know this has gone wrong somehow. I feel it in my heart," Ardeth said.

Her next pain took her hard and Ardeth cried out against it. Her scream bounced against the stone walls of the chamber until the echo of it flew out the single wind hole.

A cap of hair, dark as night, showed itself against the wet curls of Ardeth's womanhood. In the next instant, Elsbeth watched the skin beneath Ardeth's womb tear in a jagged line, a thin trail of blood seeping forth. Born in blood, that was the way into this world. There was no other path.

With the next pain, his head broke free and she could see the line of his closed eyes. This was the hardest part, this passage of the head. Hard and large, larger than any woman should have to bear, it came forth push by push, pain by pain, surrounded in blood and water.

"He comes," Jean said. "Two pushes, mayhap three, and he is free."

Ardeth's pain surrounded her and she cried, a screaming cry, her head thrown back and her mouth opened wide. A cry to mock the wolves and the beasts of the dark. An animal cry to mark the passage of her babe into the world of men.

His head was free and Jean clasped him by the neck, holding fast to the slippery feel of him. He looked small in her hand, but Elsbeth knew that was a lie. He was too big to have come from the body of a woman.

Another push and his body came free. Face down, he was, but she could mark his sex. He was a manchild.

And he was dead. The cord was wrapped around his throat; with every push the noose of blood and skin had tightened and with his exit from the warm dark of his mother, the cord had pulled tight, killing him. He lay in Jean's hands, a lifeless form of bone and skin and glistening hair.

"Push again, push free of the afterbirth," Elsbeth commanded, turning her eyes from the child and onto the mother.

"I hear no cry," Ardeth said in a breathy whisper.

"Push!" Elsbeth said again.

The afterbirth slid out, a mass of blood and fiber, and with it, a trail of blood. A trail that widened and would not stop. A running stream of blood that grew brighter and more lively as they watched.

"He is dead," Ardeth said. "As soon I will be."

She lay back on the single pillow that supported her head, her eyes closed, her breath light.

"Nay! You must not and will not die!" Elsbeth said, pressing a wadding of linen against the flow of relentless blood. "This bleeding will stop."

"There is so much left to say," Ardeth said, looking up into Elsbeth's face. "I love you," she said, a single tear winding down her tired face to mesh with her light brown hair.

"I love you, Maman," Elsbeth answered, her own eyes dim with unshed tears. "You must not die."

"I am dying. I cannot stay God's hand and, of a truth, I do not care to try. Life is long and hard. I am glad to be going out of it, Elsbeth. Be glad for me, if you can," Ardeth said.

"I will be anything you want me to be," Elsbeth said, blinking back her tears.

Elsbeth bent down to her mother and buried her face in her hair, finding pain-filled joy in the beating of her mother's heart and the rise and fall of her breathing.

"Take my son," Ardeth told Jean. "Take him and clean him and prepare him for burial. I want him named Harald, after my father. Go now."

Jean left, the child a small, still bundle in her arms.

The blood between her legs grew and grew, warm and wet, leaving Ardeth cold and empty.

Mother and daughter, they held each other, Ardeth stroking Elsbeth's hair, Elsbeth losing herself in Ardeth's vanishing warmth.

"I loved him very much," Ardeth said softly. "He was so very beautiful. He made me laugh. Did I tell you that? I could not see beyond his smile. I was lost in him and looked no further." Ardeth closed her eyes and sighed. "I am glad he is not here for this."

Her father. Aye, she knew he had been well-loved by his wife, had been beautiful, could be charming. And he was not here in his manor of Herulfmeade when his wife delivered up his eleventh child. Nay, her father was off in London, seeing to his pleasures while his wife saw to the ending of her life. Better there than here, that was surely true.

"I am glad as well," Elsbeth said. "Let us not think of him now."

"You must remember what I taught you, Elsbeth," Ardeth said. "You must not forget the lessons of my life. They will save you, if you heed them. You will not live out your life as I have done."

"Be still, Maman. I have listened. I have believed. Give no thought to that."

Elsbeth gently pulled away the sodden linen from between her mother's legs, hoping to find the bleeding had stopped. Blood burst forth steadily, calmly, defiantly. It would not be stopped. Ardeth bled from high up in her womb and there was no way to stop it.

"They cannot help it," Ardeth said, her voice high and meandering. "I do not think they can help it. God created them so, to be lusty and proud. The only thing to do is to be careful of them. A convent must be such a lovely place, so quiet and safe."

"Aye," Elsbeth said. "It must be so. Do not fear for me, Maman."

"I cannot seem to help it," Ardeth said with a weak smile. "I want so much for you. A different life than I have known. A safer life. Sunnandune is safe. Go to Sunnandune, Elsbeth, and if that gate is closed against you, then find your way into the abbey. Away from men and from all harm."

"I will. I have promised it. I will be safe," Elsbeth said. They had spoken of this before, for as long as she could remember. Throughout all her memories words of safety and of cloister echoed.

"I regret the choice I made for you so long ago. I would that you could have lived in Sunnandune all your life. Yet you will soon be of age and then Sunnandune will be yours."

"Fear not for me, Maman. I am well and will stay so."

Ardeth clutched Elsbeth to her with arms strong with desperation. "You must not give in to the temptation of men. They are masters of temptation. It is a long fall into desire and passion. Do not fall to it, Elsbeth. Be wiser than your mother. Be safe."

"I will be safe," Elsbeth said, making her voice strong, though her heart trembled in anguish. "I will not fall."

"I have not kept you very safe, have I?" Ardeth said.

"I am well, Maman. Rest in that. I am safe. You are a good mother. You have taught me well."

"You will beware the snare of men?" Ardeth said again, her deep blue eyes clouding over as the blood poured free of her.

"You will not forget?"

"I will not forget," Elsbeth said. She would not fail. She would fulfill all her mother's dreams for her. She would not tumble into the same traps, the traps of men.

"I wonder..." Ardeth said, her breath fading away before her thought was finished. Her soul was flown, high and bright and free, leaving the gray, cold world behind like a troubled dream.

Leaving Elsbeth to finish out the dream alone.

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