The Knot

Chapter I.

Of THOROW-WAX. It floureth in July and August.

THE ANCESTORS ARE WAITING in the hall with him, all about like silver smoke or fog. A dissolved airborne, sense-borne host of tiny flecks or particles of the continuity of living. They have his face, his hands, his eyes, they all speak at once as if from a great, hollow distance away and they have his voice, and his father’s voice, and his father’s before him. There must be hundreds of them waiting here, a faint, infinite crowd lightly shifting and jostling in the atmosphere as a shoal does.

He paces the length of the hall, waiting for the noise of hooves outside the porch. He has had no choice but to send for Goodwife Dutton and let her into the house, despite everything that had happened with Anys.

She greets him sternly, untying the panniers and bringing them in.

‘Mistress Dutton, I—’ he begins, waving at the boy to take her stocky little mare off into the stables.

‘We’ll bury our differences shall we, Master?’ She begins to unpack right there in the passage. ‘There is not much time for messing about with life, I find. Your wife is within due season? And how long has she already been travailling? Two hours, four? And the fluid humours have left the matrix? Then I must not tarry.’ She bustles past him, laden with rolls of cloth and a brazen pot from which she produces a bewildering variety of dried and fresh herbs. Without appearing to do so, Henry edges closer and tries to identify what she is about to give his wife. He thinks he can see a packet labelled Elleborus, which would make sense, and maidenhair, aristolochia, motherwort, fenugreek, but what is—

‘Hands off for gentlemen,’ she remarks, slapping his hands away with astounding rudeness and gathers them up to go into the birth chamber. She believes that nothing good ever came from books.

‘If you can bring the birthing stool,’ she orders.

She points into the kitchen.

‘Water boiling?’

‘Yes, Lisbet is—’

‘And her mother is here?’ she says over her shoulder as they go up the stone stairs.

‘Yes, Mistress Marwood is with her, and other kinswomen come up from Devon.’ They reach the closed door of the great chamber and can hear them murmuring inside. ‘What virtue does the oil of white lilies have?’ He can’t help asking.

Goodwife Dutton looks extremely disapproving. She lowers her voice.

‘Lily does make the privy parts wont to slipperiness, Master. Better than duck’s grease or the white of an egg together with the yolk, which I use on ladies of the poorer sort to loose the straits. Now, if you don’t mind? Gentlemen engender babies and then they are to leave the rest to those who know what they’re at. That’s the rules, the way of the world. You need something to do? See the maidservant has the kettles always at the ready, bolsters, hot white wine and more clean cloths. Send up caudle for the ladies. Your wife may need refreshment of good meat, but never anything with oatmeal for it will clot viscosities.’ She twitches a smile at him. ‘Then I should retire for the night, Master, if I was you, after your prayers. We can wake you if need should arise, which it will not. I’ll pass on your wishes to her for a speedful deliverance, Master.’ And with that she shuts the door in his face.

Henry Lyte closes his mouth and can do nothing but wait. He remembers now why she makes him grit his teeth, cocking her power deliberately beneath his nose because she can at times like these. Everybody knows what happened when she did not come to Anys. If she had come … well, there is no use dwelling in that, is there.

Through the muffling of the door he can hear her speaking firmly to Frances. ‘Up and kneel on the bed Madam! Kneel! In the country way! You can pray later. Your matrons will pray for you. There, you see. Good girl, good girl.’

Frances has prepared for death.

Henry fully intends to sit up all night on his chair in the corridor listening to Goodwife Dutton barking demands. For what seem like hours he strains to hear Frances’s responses but cannot hear his wife at all, no cries, nothing. All he thinks he can hear is the brush and hiss and breath of the ancestors, amassed in the draughty air just beyond the reach of the guttering pool of light cast by the candle at his feet. The dark tonight is all uncertainty, but he feels time rushing in to fill that newly opening potential. The first confinement is so often long and arduous and filled with peril, and though Henry Lyte has had other children born to him, this is the first by his new wife Frances and her strengths and weaknesses in that respect are an unknown quantity. But somehow he jerks awake and it is the grey of morning and Goodwife Dutton is before him in the empty corridor, a bundle of bloodied cloths in her arms. The ancestors have gone, their interest sated, for of course now they already know what he does not.

His heart contracts. Her face is unreadable as she tells him the news that he can hardly hear for the beating in his ears.

‘Today your wife is delivered of a strong child, Master, born at full time. Of sound limb and lungs.’

‘And is she—’

‘She laboured sore for twelve hours and is tired from her travail.’ She walks on. ‘But sitting up and doubtless will be glad to see you when she’s cleaned up well enough and has had a bite to eat.’

‘Thank God, Mistress, thank God.’ He tries to keep his voice from shaking. Henry can hear a thin, vibrating cry now from behind the door. His child! He cannot bear to wish. He must not, for it will be God’s judgement upon him if it is otherwise to what he hopes for. He goes to the chamber next door and opens a window, looks out without seeing and breathes the late summer air in deeply, his hands still trembling and sticky with sweat. What is the date? The nineteenth of September; cradled just between Ember days following the Day of the Holy Cross. A sacred day indeed!