1- The Ritual of Birth
-Night of September 10th, 1572
Uterine contractions alternate between startling knocks. Bessie sucks an icy breath listening through tinnitus. She wonders if truly there was any knocking. She hadn’t heard approaching footfalls. Quiet firelight flickers in the emptiness of the hovel. A dark wind blows upon the leather door violently, returning stark silence so clear that owls can be heard in the glen and, in the far distance, dogs barking.
Throughout the evening she had shaped the ritual birthing postures which she had previously taught to countless women. She feels the child preparing to birth, when again, seven frantic knocks rap upon the threshold, rippling the leather door covering.
She struggles to stand and the inevitable pressure lowers deeper into her pelvis. Anxiety taunts. She pains with each step. Her eyes bead strings of tears knowing her baby will soon be nursing.
She pushes the worn leather aside and strains to see the unrecognized face of a stout, elderly woman, ornately dressed and holding a water bladder. The saggy face is deeply wrinkled with the pattern of countless smiles; an itch of nostalgia too long forgotten to recall.
“Do I know you?” Bessie gasps.
“Doubtfully,” the old woman replies, eyes numb-grey, “I am Euphemia Chalmers.” A wealthy, perhaps noble, burgess, Euphemia is dressed immaculately in a red and purple arisaidh with a dark travelling cloak and adorned in immodest jewelry accentuating her silvered hair. Thick silence fills the void between them as Bessie waits for the old woman to continue speaking. “I was travelling with a group from Renfrew to Kilwinning and became lost. I’ve been following the burn downstream until I heard your cries...” Awkward silence envelopes them as Euphemia assesses Bessie’s laborious condition. Ignoring formalities the stranger hastily requests, “Could you please spare me some drinking water?” She thrusts forward the empty bladder, seemingly surprised to see it in her own hand.
Bessie motions her inside and the burgess enters straight forth, boldly, as if she were the land’s Lord. Unsettled, Bessie remains graceful as she manages labor pains while tending to the drinking bladder, refreshing it from her water pail. “Feel free to stay and rest,” she says motioning towards the peat moss bed on the far end of the circular hovel, “however, my child will soon be born unto this world.”
“What a blessing for I have a lifetime of experience as a midwife.” Exasperated, Bessie glares at the uninvited guest but Euphemia insists. “Please, allow me to assist you. This is a sacred rite.”
“Aye… so it becomes,” Bessie says with caution and relief as her emotions collide: fear tainting joy.
Euphemia sees the kenno cheese sliced on a cutting board near the fire. She eats a slice and hands another to Bessie who smiles and accepts. They eat in silence even though neither has an appetite. “Have you said your prayers? Have you sought your forgiveness…?” Euphemia’s voice fades as she holds her tongue afraid of inviting death into the hovel.
“Yes, I am prepared to bring this child unto the world. I am…” she places a hand on her extended abdomen, specifying: “We are prepared. We are in God’s hands now.”
Euphemia nods briskly and motions her toward the bed. The time is now. Bessie crawls onto the bed and the elderly midwife adjusts her two skirts and shift above her waist.
“Breathe deeply and close your eyes. Is the child timely?”
“No, several weeks early,” through gasps of air, “I am also a midwife… I know God has brought…” Bessie’s voice contorts while contractions seize her until she regains control, remembering to ritually breathe, hum, laugh and cry through her birthing pains. For each pain a different breath. “I know God has brought you here to help me birth this child.” Pain quivers with every intrepid word. “Very few midwives continue to practice now that the surgeons have equated midwifery with Catholicism. Most have abandoned their rites for modern assurances. I am the last midwife in this entire valley and I can only assist others.”
Nodding with understanding, the crone begins softly singing an unfamiliar melody and language. The words sound of the highland tongue, yet none familiar. She sings softly, directly into Bessie’s womanhood, and all time sheds with each strange syllable sung. The hovel walls melt while rainbows of coven shades drip into a sea-green light. Distant and dissociated; calmness floats. Her pain is a forgotten memory as time moves through dream pulses. Warping down her entire body, warmth cocoons her, focusing around a building pressure: the infant emergent.
Muffling a moaned scream with serpentine limbs writhing, a ring of pain explodes from her faighean burning and stinging as it expands. Time slips through her until she is on her side; a relieved grimace whittled into her sweaty face.
“Bessie!” out of the silence Euphemia’s voice anxiously calls. “Quickly woman, look here!”
Her black eyes crack open and, in the dim firelight, she sees Euphemia holding her newborn son… but he looks like a fish? There is a wet film covering his entire body. It’s the caul; Her Son is born in the Caul! The women are breathless as the child floats angelically in a thin bubble until without warning the caul peels away releasing fluid all over Euphemia’s arisaidh. She squeals out a churlish laugh as Bessie reaches for the baby in a panic.
“It’s ok, I have him, tightly,” she assures, even as fluid seeps into her expensive clothing. Holding the infant she begins singing a haunting melody. Watching the spirit chord decrescendo, it pulses a final throb and she cuts the chord with a knife pulled from her birth soaked arisaidh. Neither child nor mother flinches while dissected from each other. Euphemia’s song continues to a harmonic resolution and silence returns, accompanying the flickering fire.
Carefully, she hands over the newborn. Bessie begins a joyous sob as she gazes at the tiny child breathing calculated breaths. She feels the placenta approaching and Euphemia catches the evil twin with precision. Using the sharp knife again, she slices bites off the placenta. They eat in silence while behind them their shadows dance.
“Oulvundr,” Bessie breaks the silence. “Oulvundr Jak. That shall be his name: Oulvundr, son of Andro Jak.” The crone makes an insincere gesture of gratitude toward the infant, but, the mother quietly promises to raise him without any set ideals. She will not chastise or judge him in this tumultuous era, optimistic that he can safely navigate the dangerous paradigms of these modern times: an age where money and power have become the counter-balances of religion and politics.
Euphemia leans over Oulvundr and begins marking sigils with her boney finger, proclaiming his birth as if he were nobility. “With Brighid as witness on this 10th day of Witumanoth, in the year of our Lord, 1572, I claim this soul as Oulvundr Jak, son of Andro Jak.” Shocked and annoyed, Bessie silently smiles, yet doesn’t lift her bleary gaze. She wishes to be alone. Euphemia stands and positions herself awkwardly close, nervously rolling her eyes with unsaid thoughts until those cold icicles affix again upon the infant. “Oulvundr is strong in spirit, you should be proud.” Becoming exhausted, she doesn’t respond to the unsolicited comments. Then, even much louder, the crone further insists, “Your son can conquer empires!” She blinks away her tears when she hears mockery in the words of the wealthy burgess knowing the son of peasants will never become nobility; would never have wealth and could never rule empires. The world simply doesn’t work that way. She might be the wife of a simple peasant, but she isn’t a dolt.
Euphemia surprises Bessie and plucks the infant away from her stunned hands and, without warning, quickly disappears beyond the leather door and into the night. Her aged, stout body moves surprisingly swift with the infant, still stained in afterbirth.
Shock, confusion and panic consume Bessie’s entire being. She stands up quickly and walks with dizziness growing, past the leather door flap, into the cloudless, starry night. Euphemia is nowhere to be seen! Alarmed, Bessie whirls her head back and forth. She screams and screams again into the insistently silent night. “Euphemina! …Euphemia!”
Did that fat old crone really just disappear with Oulvundr?
Her heart pounds in her chest as she listens, but there is only heavy silence between wind gusts, crickets, the trickle of the Caaf Water, an owl, a very distant dog and leaves trembling anxiously. Her own heavy breathing is too wheezy to penetrate any deeper and the ringing of her ears reminds her… She is not a young mother - just young to motherhood …
Sounds of splashing followed by Oulvundr’s infantile screams send Bessie running, as hastily as her ill-fit hips allow, to the bank of the Caaf Water.
Euphemia is hunched over the icy stream washing Oulvundr of afterbirth. Dripping with darkness, he shimmers and wails loudly as Bessie snatches him back from the crone’s wet, cold hands. Emotions of anger and betrayal dissipate when she sees Oulvundr’s beautifully body glistening clean. He seemingly self-illuminates in the moonlight penetrating through the glen’s canopy. He is crying from the cold of the night waters, and, yet, to his mother appears to be glowing angelically: beautiful and innocent. He’s perfect. She feels her whole body relaxing as she pulls him into her bosom, comforting and warming his tiny, cold body.
Silence accompanies them as they reenter the hovel. She’s grateful that this stranger helped with her labor, yet still unnerved by the apparent abduction of Oulvundr. She is emotionally conflicted as they sit awkwardly before the dimming embers. She notices Euphemia’s various eccentricities and the wealthy burgess nods, then slides a hand into her cloak and reveals a leather pouch. “I’d like to thank you for sparing drinking water tonight and inviting me into your home. You are a very gracious hostess.” She opens the pouch to reveal golden coins, many golden coins. A colorful palate of firelight reflects upon their brightly minted surface. The profile of Mary, Queen of Scots, is imprinted in their rainbow-gold alloy.
She pushes the entire pouch of coins towards the peasant mother. “Starting a family, there will surely be a time, likely soon, that you will need help… and this will help you.” Bessie looks down at the mountain of money, then up at the wrinkled countenance before her trying to read sincerity or mockery. Bessie and her goodman live simply as peasants on Lord Lynn’s land, the currency of their life is the sack of grain and the chore completed. They are not like the merchants who live in the royal burghs, buying and selling their way through life’s problems with the golden faces of kings and queens. “Please,” Euphemia insists.
She contemplates the value of the coins being offered thinking it may be fortune enough to fund a small army. The actual value is not relevant since it’s definitely worth more in grain than she can eat for the rest of her days; both her and her husband’s lot combined, that she didn’t question. Certainly these coins are worth more than their lives; they will be more burden than blessing. Euphemia doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a village peasant’s place in the world and the wife of a wealthy merchant, but Bessie does, and she would not be able to accept one shiny coin. “I’m sorry, I must refuse, and I know you might try to insist all night long, but I simply can’t accept this fortune... I truly appreciate the offer though, truly I do.” She nods insistently pushing the coins back toward the wealthy eccentric.
With a waved hand Euphemia hacks a laugh. “Bah! Do as you please dear.”
Clearly unsettled as strong emotions and memories swell inside her, Bessie ponders her reaction to the theft of Oulvundr: the loss she imagined she would have endured. Then her heart reflects the many losses of her past. The past is just as imaginary as fear.
Euphemia ignores motherhood’s tears and attends to making the bed. It had become tussled during the ritual of birth. Lifting the large cloth off the clumped peat moss, she pats and resituates it, being sure to turn the drier sides to the softer moister sides before returning the bedding. Euphemia motions for Bessie to lie upon the bed and places the thick blanket over the mother and newborn child.
Bessie’s maternal sobbing never ceases as Euphemia moves about, walking in and out of the hovel as she prepares a fir candle. Cutting pieces of string from her cloak and tying them to the pine fir wreathing, she finishes the fir candle by lighting the beeswax candle in the fire and affixing it in the center of the pine branches. The large crone stands next to the bed and swings the lit candle by the string in a slow steady circle. She sings a lullaby familiar to Bessie’s youth. The swinging candle casts hypnogogic shadowry that rhythmically outpaces the sleep song, then she blows out the candle, steps off the bed and turns to the new mother, quietly uttering, “Fare thee well,” before escaping into the night.
Stillness settles. The mother and child sleep, dream and redefine their physical and spiritual boundaries. For their first time, separate yet together, they dream a wonderful dream only they will ever know. The purple light ceases to flicker when the smoldering fire snuffs leaving the pouch of golden coins lying in darkness.
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