I hoped Helle would have the sense to stop before the final verse. There were plenty of women in Troy who’d died like that—I knew one of the girls had seen her pregnant sister-in-law dragged out of hiding and speared. But I never did find out what Helle would have done, because she’d only got as far as verse three when Maire vomited. Everybody turned and stared.
I knelt beside her, touched her forehead: she was sweating a little, but didn’t feel too hot. I probed under her jaw: no swelling. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you inside.”
The beds were already made up. I got her to lie down and covered her with a blanket. I noticed Helle hovering in the doorway. “She’ll be all right,” I said. I wasn’t concerned at all; I just thought she had a stomach upset, which were extremely frequent in the camp. “Maire? Try to get some sleep.”
I didn’t particularly want to return to the group round the fire. I was tired after serving in the hall, my ankles were starting to swell, I needed my bed. The singing had started up again—a rather more appropriate song, I was glad to hear—so I thought I could slip away.
I’d actually got as far as the veranda when Helle burst out of the door behind me. “You can’t just GO! I don’t know what to do.”
“She’ll be all right. Just put a bowl by the bed in case she’s sick again.”
She stared at me. “You don’t know, do you? How can you not know?”
And abruptly, like having a bucket of cold water thrown over me, I did know. Only of course, you’ve all got there before me, haven’t you? Can I just say, in my own defence, that pregnancy in a fat woman, a first pregnancy, particularly when the woman’s trying to hide it, is not as easy to spot as you might think. But all the same…I was pregnant myself. How could I not have seen?
“Of course, I’ll stay. You go back to the others. Keep them out as long as you can.”
I went back into the hut and squatted down beside Maire. She was really sweating now; her face was a shining full moon in the flickering rush lights between the beds. “Do you still feel sick?”
She shook her head. Her lips moved; I had to lean in to catch the words. “I know how it ends.”
Pregnancy? Well, no prizes for that…But then I realized: she meant the song.
“That’s not going to happen to you!” Though even as I spoke, I thought: Why not? What’s changed? “You’re going to be all right,” I said, patting her leg.
I needed Ritsa. More than ever in my life, I needed Ritsa, but I could hear groups of drunken fighters walking past—and there’d be plenty of others, in every other compound, all over the camp. I couldn’t go to get her, and I certainly wasn’t going to send one of the girls. Somehow, we’d just have to manage. Thousands of women give birth every day, some with no more help than a whelping bitch. How difficult could it be?
I knelt beside Maire and asked if she was having regular pains. She nodded. When did they start? I asked. “This afternoon.” So, she’d been in labour for several hours already and hadn’t told anybody. The more I tried to understand her behaviour the more insane it seemed. Though I don’t suppose she was thinking straight at all, poor woman.
Four or five of the girls came in to fetch their blankets, glancing sideways at Maire in a shy, curious, slightly embarrassed way. I could hear them chattering as they went back to the fire. They were so excited, staying up late, drinking wine under the stars…Children, really.
Maire was restless. I sat beside her watching as each pain seized her, reached a peak and ebbed. She arched her back when the pain was bad, and grunted, but made no other sound. She’d need something to bite on later. We couldn’t risk the compound being woken by the unmistakable cries of a woman in labour. In the intervals between pains, she talked—more than she’d ever done before, at least to me. She’d been a slave in the kitchen of a great house; born into slavery. I’d assumed the baby’s father would be her owner—slaves, even those as unattractive as Maire, are routinely used for sexual relief—but I was wrong. The father was a fellow slave, a man who worked on the farm and regularly brought supplies of vegetables and fruit to the kitchen door. “And one day,” Maire said, “he brought me flowers.” You could see the wonder of that moment on her face. After that, she’d slipped away to see him as often as she could. In the orchard, in the hay barn, even in the fields…
Do you know, I actually envied her? I’d been married twice, I’d been great Achilles’s prize of honour, but no man had ever brought me flowers.
As she talked, I started to see why she and Helle got on. No two women could have been less alike, but they shared the experience of slavery. For neither of them did the fall of Troy mean a descent from freedom into bondage. They’d swapped one servitude for another, that was all.
After a while, the girls began drifting back in, bringing with them the smell of woodsmoke. Whispering quietly together, they undressed and settled down for the night. One by one, the rush lights were extinguished until the only light remaining was the lamp beside Maire’s bed. In spite of all the excitement, most of the girls dropped off to sleep quickly. Hot food, wine and fresh air had knocked them out. Not all of them though. Looking around the room, I caught more than one glint of eye white in the darkness.
The night dragged on. If anything, Maire’s pains got weaker and further apart; she even managed to doze off between them. I think I must have drifted off myself, because I jumped when Maire reached out and grabbed my hand. “I need a pee.”
The bucket was at the far end of the room. How on earth…? Well, it would have to be done. Helle and I hoisted Maire into a sitting position and then onto her feet. I took the opportunity of stripping the black robe off her. Underneath, she was wearing only a thin white shift. My god, the size of her! Somehow, we managed to shuffle between two rows of beds, Helle pulling, me pushing from behind—and, in the process, waking everybody up. We supported Maire as she squatted over the bucket; Helle’s face was screwed up with the effort—and Helle was a lot stronger than me.
What came out of Maire was no discreet ladylike trickle, but a gush like a pissing mare. For a moment, I was stunned, but then realized her waters had broken. It’s the one thing everybody knows about labour, isn’t it? The waters break. Helle and I looked at each other, then at the long road back to Maire’s bed—only a few yards, yes, but that was a long, long way—and then Helle spoke to the nearest girl. “Sorry, love, we need your bed.”
The girl looked shocked—she’d only just woken up, poor thing—but she stood up at once, and we lowered Maire onto her bed. Helle went to get the lantern and set it on the floor nearby. By now, all the girls were sitting up: I don’t think anybody slept again that night.
After that, the pains got a lot stronger. Maire started to cry out; I tied a knot in my veil and gave it to her to bite on, but her mouth was dry and she kept spitting it out.
“You’ve got to be quiet,” I whispered.
I didn’t need to say any more; Maire knew only too well why, but with every pain it became harder. The girls lit their rush lights and we all settled down to wait. As each pain started, Maire bit into the knot. You could see her fighting her way to the crest of every wave, then floundering down the other side. A few moments’ peace, and the tightening started again. Helle kept giving her sips of water, but she couldn’t keep it down, so we just moistened her cracked lips—all this in front of an audience of shocked girls who weren’t able to help or do anything. Except be there.