Blood, Honey, Salt (Part 3)

Note: This story is part of a series.

Part One

Part Two

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Later: The Milk-Nurse

What instinct prompted you to lie? You had done it proficiently. You told them how you had stood at the window (grieving the King’s passing, of course) and preparing to bear the news.... When you looked down and saw the lad down there on the rocks. Now they must go and look for him, find him and bring him home, before the tide carries him away.

They are out there now, busily scouring the shoreline. Calling his name into the snatching breeze. Or else, making preparations for his return. Sending for a physik, building a fire - in case he has some injury or breathed in water.

Now, while all eyes are looking the other way is the perfect time to visit the sealed bath house. You are not sure what you will find, but it was not... this.

Macabre images cover the walls. Lurid depictions of bizarre hybrids, part-animal, part-woman. The largest is a grotesque mural - a caricature of a woman with unrealistic proportions. Her hair is too long, her lips too big, her waist too narrow. Her large breasts sit a little too far apart and high on her chest. The nipples are enormous and pink, contrasting with her indigo skin. They drip creamy yellow milk. Her feet are absurdly long, the toes webbed. Her legs are oddest of all, fused together from groin to ankle. Despite this, her private parts are completely visible. The artist has painted an open fleshy cave, huge and exaggerated, at the front of her body, when it should have been demurely tucked away underneath and between.

Old blood spatters the makeshift cot alongside the furthest wall. It does not look comfortable, but the remnants of rope still tied to it suggest that comfort was not a priority. Viscera-encrusted knives on the table next to it sharply underscore that notion. A brazier stands, cold and black, its last blaze choked to ashes by a thick, leather-bound book.

Very little of the charred remnants bear anything legible. Some scraps of parchment are covered with an intense amount of cramped script. It would have been difficult to read before the flames touched it. Other pieces show tantalising flashes of diagrams. None can be seen in their entirety. Enough to make out that this man (of course it is a man) has an unhealthy obsession with the female body. Especially it's mysterious inner workings.

Where can I find the author of this journal?

A woman died here. Someone tried to bury and burn the secret. But a baby was born, and babies tend not to live long without the warmth and milk of a woman. You cannot help suspecting that this baby did live. For a while at least. Quite a bit after his poor, unfortunate mother was open up to the curious and perverse eyes of science.

I think I know who that baby was. I've got to find him. There might be a better way than wandering up and down shouting his name like a lost dog.

The scribe could wait.

You make sure you are not seen locking the bath house, and make your way to the servants’ quarters.

You find the milk-nurse in the servants’ kitchen with a tin mug of rum keeping her company. Her one eye peers at you past a cataract, hazarding a guess who you are. Gauging the minimum level of respect she can afford you. In return, despite her insolent stare and ragged appearance, you offer her the greatest deference. As the milk-nurse to the King’s ward, she holds a unique station.

“You are not looking for Fynn, Mother.”

She scoffs and takes a swig.

“Pfft. Idiots. The boy is fine.”

“You are very sure.”

She scoffs again.

“Since the day I set him down on his own two feet, that boy has never done anything that he didn’t do on purpose. He has his limits, like all o’us, but he’s wise to them. Wiser than he’s any right to be. Wiser than us, mebbe. I tell you: he’s fine.”

She is so certain, it’s catching. All of a sudden, it seems obvious that it is ludicrous to think he might be anything other than fine. She is right. Of course she is. You have never known him to do something silly or take a risk. Until today.

Grief and trauma do bizarre things to us all.

She doesn't know it, but she has given you comfort, if only for a moment.

She doesn’t know he jumped from the window.

Best not to dwell on that, lest she see it in your eyes. Better to speak plain.

“Mother, what do you know about the day he was born?”

For answer, she squints at you and asks,

“Is His Majesty really dead?”

“Yes.”

A darting glance around the room to ensure you are alone, and she speaks slow and careful,

“Aye, then I s'pose I might tell you about that birthing then. There’s only me as can tell it now, and it’s too weird a tale to keep secret forever. Mind, you’ll think I'm crazy, and I won’t blame you for it one bit.”

She pours another generous measure of rum into her mug, and returns the little flask back into a fold in her dress. She stretches her swollen feet to the dying fire. Shifts her ample buttocks into a more tolerable position. She seems to be settling in to tell the tale properly.

“Sit, girl, you make the place feel wretched standing there like that… There. That’s better. Now…” Her eye unfocuses a little, as if she is considering her words and arranging them the way she wants them.

“A soldier came to the village asking for a milk-nurse. Six, mebbe sev’n year ago, now. Warl, my youngest was still on the teat, and I had plenty of milk, yet. Always blessed that way, I was. Gods’ truth, I could use the wage to care for my brood, what with the father dead. I was gettin’ on some, and no looker no more. So I try a curtsey, don't I?" (She affects a high-pitched quavering tone that she imagines wealthy ladies use), “Oh sir! I say, I might be suitable, sir!” She spreads her ragged skirt and tilts her head with an oily smirk.

“He looks at my littluns. I’ve nine o’ the little terrors all told, but the older ones are all off working. The youngest line up in front o’ him so he can see they’re growing healthy and tall. I make ‘em strong.” A prideful relish laces her voice, and it obviously tastes satisfying on her tongue.

“Warl, the soldier says I’ll do, and I can bring ‘em along of me, as long as the new babe takes sup before my own. We get here, and there’s no babby to feed. Not borned yet, he tells me. Soon, he says. I’mta get my bed and board and keep quiet, work in the kitchen some.”

There is a long pause for some more rum.

Days go by. Days and days. The time comes. My babbies wake, crying fretful like. They don’t like their mam whisked away by a soldier in the middle of the night. I tell Alayna - she’m the biggest that came with me - to keep the little buggers quiet and cause no trouble ‘til I get back. And then I’m off to meet the king aren’t I? Me, meet the King! I never thought it.”

The fire crackles low, and the night is wearing thin. People will start arriving soon, to build the fires and make bread. Two pairs of ears cocked for footsteps. She is speaking softly now.

“He war a grumpy old sod, truth be tole. He orders his soldier to tie my wrists afront o’ me, and pull a hood down over my face. I won’t lie, I was afrighted. I struggled, and he slapped me good and tole me how it war going to be. Babby still not borned, and we’m to be locked in with her. The doctor and I. Once the babby is borned, I’mta keep him alive and we’m wait for the King’s return. It was all very odd, but I think of the bed and board for me and my five youngest and I hold my tongue.”

She is well into the stride of the story now.

“We’re marched off down corridors, and down, lower and lower, and we stop. We’m at the bath house, and it’s quiet. The King, he says to save the child, he dun’t much care fer the mother. Vicious she be, he says. Hates menfolk. But weak. Especially out of the water. She takes her strength from the salt, he says. Easy to pin ‘er. She be like to die anyhow…”

A fortifying slurp, and her voice drops even lower.

“When it’s done, the King will look him over his own sel’. If’n the babby is healthy, he’m for me. I’mta nurse him and mind him like my eye depends on it. If not…” she leans forward with a horrified whisper, “that oily bastard doctor can do as he likes wi’ it.”

She sits up again with a grim nod and a shudder, watching your eyes for your reaction.

“He still has his eyes and hands, o’course, so he ken help the girl with the birthin’. He takes my arm like a gennelman and helps me to a seat, puts my tied up hands on the table where there’s food and a flask. If it’s borned alive, we kent let the pup die. He’s very def’nite ‘bout that. So I’mta rest and eat, he says….”

Her face has gone grim, the lines around her mouth drawn tight.

“Rest!” she spits, “There war no rest. I’ve had nine babbies mysel’ and I’d have another nine before’n I witness that again. Only with my ears, mind, but that war bad enough. She howled, she did. Like an animal. And the babby warn’t coming, and the babby warn’t coming…”

She looks aghast at the memory of it.

“Warl, I knew where we war, din’t I. Gretchen’s Bath. Gretchen’s Blood Bath, I calls it. Gods know why they let the girl ‘plash about in the water, or why they filled it wi’ salt and seaweed. The doctor, he pleaded wi’ her to get out, but she warn’t no weakling after all, and she near drownded him in her panic. He hit her. Dunno what he hit her with, summat heavy on her head I reckon. The ‘plashin’ stopped, sudden-like, and then I could hear him heaving her out of the water….”

A look of puzzlement settles on her face.

“Dunno what came over me. The noise! Shrieking and ‘plashin’... The smell... shit and seaweed and sweat. I shouldn’t have touched the hood. I only got a little peak. Mebbe it war a trick o’ the light. Not that there war much light… But there she war: her upper body sprawled on the bath steps And her skin… It looked the colour of a summer sea, and pale, fading near to white, where the babby stretched it. The doctor took his knife and… I couldn’t bear to look, but I know what he did…”

She gazes bleakly into the empty tin mug.

“There war only one way that babby war comin' out, and it war through her belly.”

The words come tumbling out flatly, like she is in a hurry to get them over with.

“He brung it to me, still gooey and bloody. Feed it, he says, please! He gets the rope off my wrists, after I promise I won’t lift the hood. Better for you if you don’t, he says, and I believe him. I smell the blood and shit and salt, and I don’t want to look no more, and that’s the truth.”

She pats her pockets for a pipe and starts filling it, but she’s not done. There’s more.

“The babby is wee. Small. But still too big for the slip what birthed him. He won’t suck. Reckon he knew I warn’t his mam. I ask the doctor for her shirt, something with her smell on it, but she had not a stitch to her name. Odd, that, no?”

She’s watching you again, shrewdly, puffing away.

“Yes, Mother. Very odd.”

The gentle, homely noises from the dying fire accentuate the awful silence.

“Bless my eye if’n he didn’t smear her blood across my breast! Be patient, he says, He finds the nipple three times: hand, nose, mouth. It war odd, a fool man being wise to such things... I've suckled nine babbies, and the doctor knew more than a man's any right ter. Between us both, we helped the babby sup.... Good strong suck, that babby had.”

She muses, speaking to the ceiling now, around the foul pipe. There is a dreamy quality to her tone, as if she can't believe what she is saying is real. Or as if she has long since pushed the memory far, far away from herself, and she has to go a good long way to retrieve it.

“Then he goes back to her mother. I hear more 'plashin', and a scrapin' and a thump. He'm dragging her like a sack o' taters. So, I sit there, I suckle that babby, and I listen to that doctor butcher his mam. The noise of the knives, the squishing, the scritching of his quill. She never wakes. She just bleeds, and I can smell it, and she stinks like the ocean at high tide.”

“Hours we’m to wait. Hours and hours. Mebbe a day or more. Shut in that hole with the girl, bleeding and dying and dead, and that mad doctor and his knives. The King and his soldier come back at last, and take that babby from my arms. I’ll not lie: I’ve not felt terror like that in my life. Not even when my own were borned. If’n he had a fault, they war to give him to the doctor and his knives. The thought turned my insides to piss. Warl, the babby is wee, but strong, and nowt much wrong wi’ ‘im, but they’m don’t hand him back. I’m tole: Wait in the kitchens and say nowt. The soldier rides off with the babby into the night. Idiots! What do men know about anything!”

Her anger is up and she raves some more. About the stupidity of “idiot men tacking a brand new babby out in the cold away from a warm tit”. Still, this is a better thing to focus on than the rest of it. She draws deeply on the beastly pipe to calm herself.

“Warl, you know the next. King goes out riding, “finds” the babby, brings him home. I’m called up from the kitchen to be his nurse and that’s that. I do a good job of lookin’ at that little babby like it’s the first time I laid eyes on ‘im… cos o’course, it is. But every time I see his face, I can stench the blood and kelp in my nose, and I’m like to retchin’... “

You remember the ropes and knives, and still your own churning gut.

And the King, the coward, wouldn’t look at him. He wouldn’t face what he’d done - first to please his violent whim, and then to secure his line... Even then, it was for his own ego. He doesn't care how the succession could affect the commonfolk. Only that it should be his...

Her voice is soft and speculative now.

“I never seed that soldier again. Nice enough lad. Curly hair. Dimples. Girls liked him. Seed too much, I reckon. Knife in his guts and dropped in the sea, fer sure. The doctor is still about, but don’t go looking fer him to tell you no stories. The King cut out his tongue.”

She is watching you again, her eye narrowed behind her pipe, judging as much of your reaction as she can by searching the only part of you she can see: your eyes. She weighs her next words carefully, and it seems like they almost stick in her throat. When they come, they sound trite and softened with shame.

“I’m no perfect mother, even to my own, and this babby war hard to love. Mind, I make no excuses! But gods’ truth, I was shook from what happened to his mam. I warn’t myself’. It was hard to have the little monster chomping at my breast. I fought the urge to fling him from me out the window. And one day, I had him in the tub, and summat came over me, and I held him down.”

She looks bemused, as if she still can’t believe it, and rubs behind her ear absent-mindedly.

“He laughed! I held him under the water and the pup laughed. I’m telling you: he lives. Gods help us.”

Missive: The council are no closer to agreeing on an heir. The boy is all we have. Find him. Guard his secret.

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Thank you for reading! Please have a look at Part 4: