Waltrude dipped her head between Marozia’s thighs. The child’s head had made no noticeable progress forward, and her stomach twitched with alarm.
“You must push, Princess,” she said. “Else the babe will die half stuck within you.”
A strangled sob wrenched from her throat. As she pushed, she howled and howled, and Waltrude could see, in her mind’s eye, the sawing and scraping of the princess’s vocal cords, which would steal her voice for days after her labors were done. Agnes’s hand grew a blotchy purple, so mangled it was by Marozia’s unrelenting grip.
Yet still—the babe’s head did not proceed. There was another twitch in Waltrude’s stomach. Before she could speak and urge the princess on, the door opened and Ninian came through. She carried a heavy bucket of water, which slouched her shoulders and slowed her steps to an awkward stumble, and under her arm was a bundle of rags.
She approached and set them down before Waltrude, shaking all over like a sapling in the wind.
“Is she well?” the girl asked, in her pitifully quavering voice. “Will the child be born soon?”
Waltrude did not answer. Rather, she said, “Damp the rags now and wipe the princess’s forehead.”
This was not essential and would not help along the labors, but it would keep the girl busy. Agnes’s hand was still being crushed and mauled. Still the princess screamed. And still the babe would not come.
It was not yet the moment for a new course, but it would be soon. Waltrude waited and watched. When moments passed without progress, she said, to Agnes and to Ninian, “Get the princess to her feet. And then down onto her hands and knees.”
Marozia protested, but it was a wordless, mewling sound, which only dribbled spittle down her chin. Her eyes still twisted shut, she allowed herself to be maneuvered—more hauled—out of the bed and onto the floor. Waltrude thought to cushion her knees, but this concern blew over and past her, for there was no opportunity to worry over small comforts. They walked now within the shady membrane between life and death.
In these circumstances, time bore down on Waltrude like a lathe, grinding and grinding. The princess no longer screamed—she whimpered, and wept in blurry gouts, but all her exertion was for nothing, and so were her tears. The babe would not budge.
Waltrude found her own hands shaking as she moved to wipe sweat from the princess’s brow. Strands of hair were plastered to the skin, like kelp to a sunken statue, and she did not feel feverish but rather cold, and this frightened Waltrude to such a degree that she snatched her hand away.
Would this castle be so cruel as to claim another wife? Was Berengar’s line so bitterly cursed that all who were yoked to it—who merely brushed against it—were doomed, too? These were questions for mystics and prophets. They were beyond the purview of a wet nurse. So was the saving of a life.
Two lives: the princess, and the infant stuck half inside her. Marozia was mangling her cousin’s right hand, such that it grew to resemble her scarred and ravaged left. Yet Agnes did not flinch, did not move, only knelt there on the floor beside her, in a pose that was almost penitent, if anyone on the island of Drepane knew how to pray.
The girl Ninian had slumped over against the wall, her lashes fluttering.Good,Waltrude thought savagely,let her faint and be done with this sniveling.But she did not faint. Her knees were pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them, and she rocked herself back and forth, whispering, “I’m sorry, I am so sorry, I never meant for this, never, never, never…”
On and on she went. Anger smoldered within Waltrude. Her mistress was in the narrowing gyre of death, and the girl thought only of herself. She should never have been plucked from that hovel in the Outer Wall. What a vain and stupid creature.
“Waltrude,” Agnes whispered, interrupting the course of these cruel thoughts, “we must send for Pliny.”
The princess was too mired in her agony to overhear. She had sunk to the floor and tipped onto her side, other hand pressed to the freakish swelling of her stomach, which seemed somehow—impossibly—larger than it had before. Waltrude gave one quick, stiff nod.
“Yes,” she said. “We must.”
Agnes’s throat bobbed. “I will go.”
“If she will let you.” Waltrude indicated their joined hands.
At that, Agnes’s gray eyes began to shine. Tears glistened at their corners, and her lips pressed into a thin grimace as if to keep from expelling a sob. Waltrude was alarmed, as she had never seen the lady weep before. By the time she had come to her after Lord Fredegar’s death, her eyes were flat and dull, the tears as dry as the blood on her gown. The look of these coming tears filled Waltrude with dread.
Agnes bent over, lowering herself to her ground beside the princess, so that their heads were at a height. Their long hair—the same smoky-black shade precisely—twined and tangled. She pressed hercheek to her cousin’s cheek, her lips to the shell of her ear, and whispered something that Waltrude did not have the privilege to hear.
Whatever these brief, secret words, they moved the princess. Her fingers slid limply out of Agnes’s grasp, and her hand now rested like a dead thing on the floor. Agnes pushed herself to her feet and left the room without another word, her nightgown shuddering after her.
Alone now with the princess—except that useless lump rocking herself in the corner—Waltrude sat back on her heels and let out a breath. Before her was Marozia, wife of Liuprand the Just, the once-heiress of the House of Teeth, the great beauty of Drepane. But also before her was Iphigene, that golden child of Seraph, stiff as a doll in the white sheets that had been her death-shroud, and Philomel, the screaming queen, the lioness in chains, her throat crushed under her husband’s brutish hands. All these others, whom Waltrude could not save.
VI
Spare
Agnes had started her journey at a walk and then quickened to a run. Yet still this was not fast enough. The halls seemed to unspool before her, gray and endless, and her bare feet throbbed from beating over and over against the cold stone floor. She hated to be aware of any of it, to even be aware of the tightness in her chest, the burning of air in her throat. She hated to think of anything but Marozia, dying.
She will not. She cannot. I will not let her.She reached the arched entrance to the leeches’ bay.
Agnes did not care to look around, nor did she have to—Pliny rose from his cot at once and came to her. He flipped his brown hood up over his head, covering the pits and the spots of age, and when he met her at the threshold, he merely said, “The princess?”
