Gytha rushed in and passed a damp linen pouch to the innkeeper.
“Does this warmth give you ease?” Signy asked, pressing the moist packet of herbs against the young woman’s back as she embraced her to give support.
Belia groaned.
Quickly, Anne felt around the belly, seeking better knowledge of how the baby lay. Firmly, she pressed against the sides of where she believed the child to be and twisted.
It moved.
Belia howled.
Again, Anne twisted the unseen shape, gritting her teeth against her own terror and the pain she knew this young woman was suffering
Sobbing, Belia gazed at the ceiling.
Anne looked at Signy and nodded, then twisted once more.
The innkeeper gripped the woman tighter under her swollen breasts and began whispering in her ear.
Her back pressed against the stable wall, Malka murmured a prayer.
Pouring more oil on her hands, Anne reached between the woman’s legs and measured how much the birth canal had expanded. “Belia, this will hurt,” she said. “Scream if you must but save your strength for pushing the babe into the world when I command it. It won’t take much longer.” And may God make my words true, the nun prayed.
She eased her hand inside and felt two feet near the opening. She had not managed to turn the babe completely but did feel movement against her fingers. If only the womb would not shut before the head was free, strangling the child.
The feet emerged. She grasped them with one hand and waited, placing a palm against the belly to feel for contractions.
“Push!”
Belia screamed, her agony ripping through the thick air.
Malka pressed her bent fingers against her mouth.
“Mother!” Belia howled.
“Push!” Anne ordered, resisting all desire to wrench the child into the world. Many did, destroying both mother and child, but she felt as if her father’s spirit was hovering nearby, whispering instructions and urging patience.
“Push, beloved,” Malka urged with feigned confidence.
Blood now rushed through Anne’s hands. This is too much bleeding, too much.
Belia strained to obey. The stall reeked with sour sweat and the metallic tang of blood. Signy hugged the woman tighter and stared at the nun.
Anne looked up at the tortured face of the exhausted Belia. “Push,” she said, her voice soft and trembling. “Your child wills it.”
The young woman raised her eyes and screamed, willing her body to make one final effort. With no strength left, she collapsed in Signy’s arms.
Malka began to weep and reached out to touch her motionless daughter.
All voices fell silent. The rustling of Anne moving in the straw was the only sound.
Then Belia moaned, and Signy eased her backward with a sigh.
Suddenly a cry rent the air, rising in pitch. Whether meant as anguish or outrage, it issued from the tiny mouth of a baby boy.
17
Oseberne struck his son.
Adelard fell backward and just caught himself before his head hit the edge of the table. Shocked at the blow, he put a hand to his cheek, then stared at the blood mixed with tears on his fingers.
“How dare you lose that precious object?”
“The cord must have broken…”
“When did you last see the cross?” Oseberne turned his back to his son, lifted the pitcher, and poured himself a cup of wine. He offered none to Adelard.
“I had it just before Brother Thomas arrived to question me. I know because I kissed it so God might give me strength and a swift tongue.”
“Afterward?”
Adelard began to weep. “I do not know! Maybe I lost it in the street when I went to join those seeking to kill the Jews.”
“A silver cross, lost in the street, to be picked up by some villain.” Oseberne spun around and pointed a shaking finger at his son. “Do you have any idea what that cost me?”
“I shall repay you!” The young man knelt and stretched his hands toward his father. His eyes were wide with impotent misery.
“That cross was my gift, so that you might stand without shame in the choir of monks at Tyndal Priory next to sons of higher birth.” The baker gulped his wine and poured another cup. “Repay me?” he roared. “You owe me a far greater debt than the cross. The priory is your best hope of advancement on earth as well as in heaven. And have I not worked hard for this? Do I not deserve an obedient son in God’s service, one who would spend his life praying for my soul?” Sneering, he continued. “Dare you be so ungrateful as to force my soul to suffer in Purgatory when it could be quickly freed from its agonies by filial devotion?”
“And my mother’s soul,” Adelard whispered.
“A wife who took nun’s vows? She’s in Heaven and has no need of our prayers.” Oseberne wiped a hand across his mouth. “And now you think you can crawl into that priory like some freedman’s son.” He looked heavenward. “Prior Andrew may not even accept you. I would not blame him, careless and ungrateful wretch that you are.”
Adelard covered his face.
“And all you do is whine.” His face red with anger, the baker grabbed a handful of his son’s hair and pulled his head back. “Ever since those cowards failed to punish that family of Jews for the crimes they have done and hope to commit, you have been bleating like a woman with her courses.” Bending down, he spat in his son’s face. “You are unmanned. Why?”
“I have sinned!”
“That you have. Most certainly against me for losing the silver cross, a crime you failed to confess until I discovered it.”
“Another evil yet.”
Letting go of his son’s head, Oseberne stared at the lad. “What else could be so heinous? Surely you have not lain with some pocky girl and seeded a bastard?”
Adelard shook his head, exuding a horror that matched his father’s disgust. “Worse! I have gone against the teachings of the saints and God.”
Oseberne stepped back, both worried and perplexed. “And what will this cost me?”
Staggering to his feet, the young man looked longingly at the wine jug.
His father ignored the hint. “Out with it! What have you done?”
“Brother Thomas told us all, as we gathered about the inn stables where the Jews stay, that when St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached the crusade, he forbade good Christians to harm those Jews living there.” He raised a trembling hand to keep his father from interrupting him. “And the good monk also quoted from a letter written by Pope Gregory, stating that the tales of these people drinking the blood of Christian children were untrue.”
Oseberne waved the words away. “Blasphemy.”
The son murmured a weak protest.
“At my most charitable, I shall say that this monk is sinfully ill-informed. The priest who taught me was firm in the belief that the world shall never be truly Christian until we sweep the earth clean of all unbelievers. What difference is there between those infidels who stole Jerusalem for their wicked purposes and the Jews who killed Our Lord?”
Adelard mumbled in confusion.
“Shall you trust Brother Thomas, a man who lacked a faith strong enough to keep him in his hermitage? Dare you take his word over mine, a man taught by one so holy that he never removed his hair shirt even when his skin rotted and dropped from his body?”
“I have always followed your teaching, but you have also directed me to take holy vows and enter Tyndal Priory so I might pray for your soul’s peace after death. There I shall meet Brother Thomas again, a man who may well become my confessor.”
“Then find a holier one than he for that. Seek a man who reeks with contempt for the world. Brother Thomas spends too much time with the secular sons of Adam, and for this reason, amongst others, I doubt his virtue.”
Adelard opened his mouth to speak, then drew back in fear as his father bent so close that he could count protruding nose hairs.