She went with the Sister the next time she was called out as midwife, and she was called out often at night because the town midwife was old and slept soundly. Once or twice a month, there would come a tap on Marra’s door and it would be the Sister going out to tend to a woman laboring.
She was never asked to do more than hold hands and bring water, but she learned nevertheless. Among other lessons, she learned to pretend not to hear the terrible threats uttered by women in labor. Strange as it was, this set her mind at ease. Kania could not have meant what she had whispered in Marra’s ear.
It was the labor—that was all it was. When the miller was brought to her bed, she threatened to put her husband’s balls on the millstone and grind them fine if he ever so much as looked at her again.
She saw babies born and mothers die. She saw mothers have an easy birth and then the bleeding simply never stopped, until they died white and bloodless against the pillow. She saw a birthing hook and how it was used to extract babies who had not survived long enough to emerge.
It was the fifth or sixth or tenth labor, as they walked back to the convent, that Marra could no longer keep silent. “It’s so stupid!” she said.
The Sister glanced at her mildly. “They both lived,” she said. “That’s a good outcome, in my book.”
“Not that,” said Marra. Both mother and child had lived, although it had been a harder labor than anyone was happy with. “Just … Lady of Grackles! We lie on our backs or sit in a chair and push out a thing that’s too big to fit so that everything’s torn bloody! What a stupid, stupid way to bear!”
“Oh, that,” said the Sister. “Yes. I’ve often thought so. Cows have a much better time of it. Goats and sheep, too. Granted the legs are a bit harder to untangle, but it’s not half the mess of humans.”
“I won’t do it,” said Marra.
“Nobody’s asking you to,” said the Sister. She paused. Marra was fairly certain that the Sister knew exactly who and what she was, and who her parents were, and was trying to find a way to phrase her next sentence. “Well, not at the moment, anyway. And if someone should … ah … well. There are ways.”
Run away. Ruin yourself. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her drag you into this hell along with us.
Marra licked her lips. Had they used a birthing hook on Kania, for the child who had gone much too long without being born?
“Ways?”
The Sister glanced around, as if someone might really be eavesdropping in a remote hedgerow in the hour before dawn. “Ways,” she said. “Herbs, mostly. Sponges soaked in lemon juice. None of them work perfectly, and anyone who says they do is lying to you. Most of them are dangerous. Sometimes everyone dies anyway, and there’s nothing to be done. But there are things that can make pregnancy less likely.”
Marra’s heart leapt. Could she find out? Could she tell Kania? The entire point of queens and princesses was to act as broodmares for royalty, but if there were ways to prevent it …
“I want to know,” she said. “All of them.”
The Sister Apothecary sighed. “It can be done,” she said. “But not tonight.”
* * *
The Sister was as good as her word. It was all rather abstract at the moment for Marra, but she memorized the methods and even brewed an entire vial of extract, with the Sister standing over her to make certain she did it correctly.
“You care very much about this,” said the Sister.
Marra shrugged. She did not want to care. She did not want to think that her time in the convent might come to an end, that she would be dragged back out onto the game board with all the other pawns and princes.
But if I am, I will not go unarmed. I won’t. I have to learn. And maybe I can tell Kania. She had already seen women wearing themselves out from too much bearing.
There was a letter in her room now, another polite, correct letter from her mother, and at the end, her mother had written that Kania was pregnant again.
This is too much. Surely it is too much. She is wearing herself out to bear an heir, and if she dies …
Marra told herself that it was fear for her sister that drove her on, not fear for herself. She clamped down on the traitorous little whisper that said that she would have to take her sister’s place as broodmare to the prince.
I will not. I will not. But it will not come to that. I will learn …
Chapter 5
In the spring of Marra’s fifteenth year at the convent, a fever went through the kingdom. It laid Marra low for many days, and when she struggled to her feet at last, it was to discover that the abbess was near death. For nearly a week, it was touch and go. Because she had recovered, Marra was allowed to tend to the older woman. In truth, there was not much to be done except to sit in the room and practice her needlework and listen to the rattle of breathing that would not quite be still.