The dimly lit room in which Mosca found herself was very small, and was made all the smaller for being full of hanging washing, tallow smoke and confusion. From all sides came a bewildering cacophony of metallic clangs, clatters and chimes, and yells, which had grown all the more confused and high-pitched with Mosca and Clent’s unceremonious arrival.
The ewer-bearing figure they had pushed in behind turned out to be a sickly-looking youth of about fourteen with white-lashed eyes and hollow cheeks. Next to the hearth, a dark-haired woman of middle years and height stopped beating two empty pans together, her jaw falling open with surprise. Another woman beside her half rose from her worn mattress and stared at Mosca and Clent with hostility and fear through the damp strings of her hair. A youngish man with a nose like squashed dough dropped the rusty handbell he had been ringing and snatched up a cudgel. All four of the strangers had a pallid, unhealthy look, bruise-coloured shadows under their eyes.
‘Stay back!’ bellowed Clent, snatching up a poker and brandishing it alarmingly. ‘We are not to be crossed!’ And red-faced and wide-eyed as he was, he did indeed look wild enough for anything. Then again, so did the inhabitants of the room, with their inexplicable cacophony.
‘You get you gone… You get you gone or I’ll…’ the young man was snarling in a way that showed his teeth.
Mosca grabbed the solitary rushlight and stood with it raised close to the drab hangings that strove to hide the damp of the walls.
‘Hush your cackling, all of you, or I’ll burn the chirfugging house down!’ she yelled.
There was a moment of silence, broken when the woman on the mattress fell back with a whimper that rose into a full-throated wail. Mosca was filling her lungs to scream her threat again, when her eye was caught by something strange about the woman’s outline. Not even puffed skirts could leave someone so pear-shaped. No, there was only one explanation for a great, domed belly like that…
Clent appeared to have noticed as well, for he turned faintly grey and lost his grip on the collar of the pale-haired youth with the ewer, who scampered to the fireside.
‘That’s it!’ The dark-haired woman by the fireside had scrambled to her feet, her eyes somewhat manic, rebellious hairs escaping the confines of her braided bun. ‘That’s what we need! Again! Quickly!’
Mosca faltered under her zealous, glittering gaze.
‘What…?’
‘Scream! Quickly! You’ve a fine pair of lungs, let’s hear you use them again! Our “scaring” won’t work unless we get some more sound!’
The woman on the floor clenched her eyes shut and gave a small pained whimper.
‘He’s coming, Mistress Leap. I don’t think he’ll wait much longer…’
‘Hold your siege there, Blethemy, he’s not here yet,’ the dark woman muttered. ‘We’ll scare him off for that half an hour we need, or burst our lungs trying. You, sir!’ Clent shook himself out of his paralysed horror just in time to catch a bouquet of bundled spoons flung at his chest. ‘Rattle them for all you’re worth. And you, lass – come to the fireside and take these!’ The rushlight was firmly and fearlessly snatched from Mosca’s hands, and suddenly she was gripping the handles of two heavy, battered-looking pans. ‘Bang them together and scream! Tell the world you’re setting fire to the house, so the little one’s skithered to come out!’
‘But…’
‘What…?’
‘Wind and whistles! If you’re going to argue,’ Mistress Leap snapped, settling herself down by her patient once more, ‘then at least do it at the tops of your voices!’
The young man launched into a bellow that startled all of them, and Clent responded with a shocked-sounding yell, and the youth pitched in with a yodelling wail to show solidarity, and Mosca released the scream she had wanted to give vent to ever since she had seen Goshawk riding past. Everyone rattled cutlery, stamped feet, banged pans, rang Clamouring Hour bells or beat pewter plates like gongs.
Meanwhile Mistress Leap unfolded a great bundle and pulled out a slope-backed chair, a tiny metal bath, folded linen and some small bottles. Evidently she was some form of midwife.
‘I’M GOING TO BURN YOU ALL!’ screamed Mosca.
‘THAT’S BETTER! HOW LONG HAS SHE HAD THE PANGS, BLIGHT?’ Mistress Leap asked in a confidential screech.
‘SIX HOURS!’ shouted the young man, veins standing out on his face with the effort of continual bellowing. ‘COULDN’T SEND FOR NOBODY – WE DIDN’T EXIST…’
‘THAT’S ALL RIGHT, BLIGHT,’ answered the midwife in a kindly banshee wail, patting at his hand. ‘NOW, BLETHEMY, I NEED YOU TO TRY TO RELAX.’
The prone woman nodded feebly. Mosca could see now that it was perspiration that made her hair straggle.
Now that Mosca was seated closer to the hearth, the dark midwife’s features were clearer. She was probably nearer forty than thirty, but had a fine-wired bone structure that gave shape and character to her face. A fan of lines creviced the corner of her eyes, the tidemark of a thousand smiles. Despite the drabness of her dress and the pallor of her skin, the brown hair under her linen cap was tied up into braided whorls bristling with pins, from which only a few spidery wisps escaped. All this could have been confidence-inspiring if she had not been battering the coal scuttle with the ladle in her free hand.
‘NEVER LIKE HAVING MEN IN MY BIRTHING CHAMBER,’ she shrieked conversationally. ‘CANNOT BE HELPED THOUGH. FACE THE WALL, WILL YOU, BOYS?’
Clent, the pale youth and the young man with the squashed nose all obediently turned to face the wall.
The midwife shouted a question at Mosca several times before it was finally audible.
‘I SAID. WHAT. IS. YOUR. NAME?’
‘MOSCA MYE!’ The name was out before Mosca had time to think.
‘CONGRATULATIONS, MOSCA MYE. YOU ARE ABOUT TO HELP DELIVER A BABY.’
While the menfolk obediently yelled at the unoffending wall, Mosca helped the dark-haired Mistress Leap to guide the pregnant woman into the slope-backed birthing chair and then returned to pan-banging. Mosca had just about gleaned enough to guess that the ruckus of the ‘scaring’ was designed to persuade the baby that the world outside its mother was far too noisy, so that it would hold off from being born until everything was quieter.
Mosca banged the pans with her eyes closed, because there was something disturbing about looking at the stretched stomach of the pregnant woman and watching her skin glisten as she gasped for breath. And yet she could not help sneaking glances now and then, fascinated by the idea of an angry little scrap of life striving to force its way into the world. The fire was stoked to heat a kettle of water and a little crock of oil that filled the air with the smell of almonds.
The half-hour passed with painful slowness, the midwife consulting her battered pocket watch again and again. At last she called for silence.
‘He’s coming.’ Her voice was hoarse from continual strain. ‘Everybody stop; it’ll do no more good. He won’t hold off any longer.’
Even after the ‘scaring’ had ended, the birthing took a long time. For what seemed an age, the midwife talked in a quiet calming tone like one soothing a stallion with colic. The pregnant woman’s face was creased and flushed, and she gave a series of long, pained sounds of effort, like somebody trying to heave a cart off their chest.
‘Take her hand,’ said the midwife. Mosca obeyed, and found her fingers all but crushed in the pregnant woman’s grasp. Everything smelt of sweat, tallow and almonds, and Mosca watched the face of the mother-to-be like one hypnotized. Making a new life. A new person, right here and now.