Well, well, I know. She has heard what all women hear in this time, that babies do not come easily nor safely. Women die giving birth. Many of them die. Life comes through the doorway of death in this time, and Elly is in terror of death. So she sends for me, and I sit beside her and hold her hand. After a time, she grows calm, and her eyes grow soft and her mouth loosens. She begins to think of the prince, and then she sends me away.
I want to go looking for Giles. I cannot. Not so long as she needs me.
Daytimes, I go on about my self-imposed duties at Wellingford. Harry and Bert have gone off to London. Some weeks ago I suggested to Griselda that she might look into the convent where Aunts Tansy and Comfrey—“Acquaintances of mine, now dead”—had found so many pleasant years. She did so and liked it. There she will not have to worry about men or clothes or being ugly, though she will have to bathe. Lydia arranged a dowry for her, very quickly, too, considering that young Edward is still a minor, and Griselda left us. Lydia and the two young children are alone with me. I do what I can with the children. The boy seems past help, but the little girl, Catherine, is beginning to respond to consistency and affection, like a flower growing toward the sun.
ST. BENEDICT’S DAY, MARCH 1368
Little Catherine is dead. My so-called “namesake.” Sweet Catherine. Winter came, and with it the diseases that always come, and she died and was buried next to her half sister.
From time to time I go to Edward’s grave and talk to him, telling him I am sorry. I should not have left him and Elly. It was my duty to stay. Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. Nothing I could have done would have changed things. What looks out of Elly’s eyes at the world would have been there even if I had been with her every moment of her life, born in her. Her nature will have its way. Love and good intentions simply don’t solve everything.
ST. JULIA’S DAY, MAY 1368
Last night I woke at the Dower House, feeling I had heard someone call my name. Elly’s voice. I put on the boots and went. She was in a room overwarmed by a roaring fire, with the midwives all around her, wringing their hands. She was screaming as I had done when she was born, as all women do in this time, her eyes bulging. “Mother,” she cried. She had never had a mother, but she cried for one. I gave her my hands and would have given her life itself, but it was already too late when I got there. She had waited too long to call my name. She grasped at me, panting.
“White as snow,” she panted, her eyes fixed on mine. “Red as blood. Black as death.” She pointed to the child the midwives were holding, then died as I held her, sobbing as she had used to do when she was a baby and we put her down for a nap she did not want. The blood ran out of her in a wave. The baby girl had been born early, her white skin bloodied red all over. She did not want to live at all, but the midwives persevered and at last she cried. They washed her and laid her in my arms. Pale as a white rose, with Elly’s dark, wild hair.
When I came into the outer room, Elly’s young husband wept, but his eyes were full of some other emotion than grief. Was it relief? Was it gladness? He had the look of a man tried past endurance.
I knew what he was feeling. In college, I had read the Victorian poets. I was much enamored of Swinburne. He had spoken of this same feeling, “the delight that consumes the desire; the desire that outruns the delight.” Elly’s desire had outrun their delight. The prince did not ask how I came there, but his mother gave me a speculative look.
“There is no question of returning the dowry,” she said plainly.
“I did not come for that,” I told her.
“What then?” she asked.
What had I come for? “I came because she called for me. I would like Elly to be buried beside her father,” I said. “He loved her very much. Perhaps if he had lived, she … things would have been different.”
Red patches came out on her cheeks. She whispered, “I am glad she is dead. She was destroying my son. She was like an evil spirit, sucking his life.” It was as though she had to confess it to me, had to receive absolution from me. It came out in a hiss.
I gave her the absolution she wanted. “I know,” I said. “It is a hunger she was born with.”
“Her daughter …”
“It is not in her daughter,” I told her. “Her daughter is your son’s daughter. You may trust in what I say.” I knew it was true. I could sense nothing evil in the child at all. There was nothing there but sweet babyhood, innocent as dawn.
They let me take Elly’s body away. I have found a priest to bury her in the Wellingford chapelyard, beside her father.
STS. DONATIAN AND ROGATIAN, MARTYRS
Only the prince came to Elly’s internment, to stand dry-eyed while they filled in the grave. When it was over, he laughed, then he cried.
“We are going home,” he said. “The people rose up and killed the pretender to the throne. He was my half uncle, Richard, and I am glad he is dead. They have sent word we are to return.” His words had a childlike simplicity, and for the first time I really looked at him. He met my gaze innocently, without intention or guile. There was no large intellect there. He had none
