Bracing himself he reaches under the table and heaves out a basket of bleached cloths. ‘Wait,’ he says. From another box he brings a wooden spoon and from a cupboard he produces a dark glass bottle. ‘Brandy,’ he says. ‘You can give her that. Take some yourself, bonny maid, might as well drown merry.’
I take the basket in my arms and start up the steps. A heave of the ship throws me forwards and I am out in the storm, my arms full, and dashing to the cabin door before another wave breaks over the deck.
Inside the cabin my mother is bending over Isabel, who is moaning steadily. I fall inwards and bang the door shut behind me as my mother straightens up. ‘Is the galley fire out?’ she asks.
Mutely I nod. The ship heaves and rocks, and we stagger as it shudders. ‘Sit down,’ she says. ‘This is going to take a long time. It is going to be a long hard night.’
All through the night my only thought is that if we can plough through these seas, if we can survive this, then at the end of the voyage there is the outstretched arm of the Calais harbour wall and the shelter behind it. There is the familiar quayside where people will be looking for us, anxiously waiting with hot drinks and dry clothes, and when we come ashore they will gather us up, and rush us up to the castle, and Isabel will be put in our bedroom and the midwives will come, and she will be able to tie her holy girdle around her straining belly, and pin the pilgrim badges to her gown.
Then she will have a proper confinement, locked in her rooms and I locked in with her. Then she will give birth with half a dozen midwives at her beck and call, and physicians at the ready, and everything prepared for the baby: the swaddling board, the cot, the wet nurse, a priest to bless the baby the moment that he is born and cense the room.
I sleep in the chair as Isabel dozes and my mother lies beside her. Now and then Isabel cries out and my mother gets up and feels her belly which stands up square, like a box, and Isabel cries that she cannot bear the pain, and my mother holds her clenched fists and tells her that it will pass. Then it goes again and she lies down, whimpering. The storm subsides but rumbles around us, lightning on the horizon, thunder in the seas, the clouds so low that we cannot see land even though we can hear the waves crashing on the French rocks.
Dawn comes but the sky hardly lightens, the waves come rounded and regular, tossing the ship this way and that. The crew go hand over hand to the prow of the ship where a sail has been torn down and they cut it away, bundling it overboard as waste. The cook gets the galley fire working and everyone has a tot of hot grog and he sends mulled ale to Isabel and all of us. My mother’s three ladies with my half-sister Margaret come to the cabin and bring a clean shift for Isabel to wear, and take away the stained bedding. Isabel sleeps until the pain rouses her; she is getting so tired that now only the worst racking contractions can wake her. She is becoming dreamy with fatigue and pain. When I put my hand on her forehead she is burning up, her face still white but a hot red spot on each cheek.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ I ask Margaret.
She says nothing, just shakes her head.
‘Is she ill?’ I whisper to my mother.
‘The baby is stuck inside her,’ my mother says. ‘As soon as we land she will have to have a midwife turn it.’
I gape at her. I don’t even know what she is talking about. ‘Is that bad?’ I ask. ‘Turning a baby? Is that bad? It sounds bad.’
‘Yes,’ she says baldly. ‘It’s bad. I have seen it done and it is a pain beyond pain. Go and ask your father how long before we get to Calais.’
I duck out of the cabin again. It is raining now, steady heavy rain that pours down out of a dark sky, and the sea is running strongly under the ship and pushing us on our way though the wind is buffeting against us. Father is on deck beside the steersman, the captain beside him.
‘My Lady Mother asks when we will get to Calais?’ I say.
He looks down at me and I can see he is shocked at my appearance. My headdress is off and my hair tumbled down, my gown torn and bloodstained, and I am soaked through and barefoot. Also, there is a wild sort of desperation about me: I have watched through the night, I have been warned that my sister might die. I have been able to do nothing for her but wade through water to the galley to get her a wooden spoon to bite on in her agony.
‘In an hour or two,’ he says. ‘Not long now. How is Isabel?’
‘She needs a midwife.’
‘In an hour or two she will have one,’ he says with a warm smile. ‘You tell her, from me. She has my word. She will have her dinner at home in our castle. She will make her confinement with the best physicians in France.’
The very words cheer me, and I smile back at him.
‘Set yourself to rights,’ he says shortly. ‘You’re the sister of the Queen of England. Put your shoes on, change out of that gown.’
I bow, and duck back to the cabin.
