“Wyn,” Sigefrith said sorrowfully. “What are you doing in here in the dark?”
Wynflaed looked up and put on a smile for him. “I have the lamps.”
“Two little lamps of nothing at all. Why don’t you come out into the sitting room where there’s a window?”
“So many people go through.”
“Poor girl!” he sighed and hugged her. “You’re just like my sister. She likes to be quiet and alone, too.”
“She married the wrong man if that’s what she likes.”
“You, too, I think.”
“No! I shall act like a lady after the baby comes, Sigefrith. But it’s too much now.”
“I know it is,” he soothed. “How do you feel?”
“My back still hurts.”
“No better?”
“No.”
In truth, it was worse. Her back had begun to ache the night before. She had thought it was because she had lain in an uncomfortable position for too long, and so she had expected that it would go away once she had risen and sat up for a while. Instead it was only getting worse as the morning wore on: not a constant, dull ache, but occasional spasms of sharp pain in the small of her back.
“I had meant to have dinner with Sigefrith later, but I can stay here if you like,” he offered. “Rub your back?”
“Oh, Sigefrith, no,” she tried to laugh. “You need to act like a lord even if I can’t bring myself to act like a lady.”
“Poor Wyn,” he cooed. “Why don’t you go lie down in Haakon’s room instead? He has windows.”
“It doesn’t help to lie down.”
“Is the noise bothering you?” he asked as the sound of a stone falling upon stone rang out from behind the wall. “And what about you two?” he asked and laid his hands on her belly.
Sigefrith had begun work on an addition to his manor only a few days after he had asked her to marry him, and the men worked feverishly – and noisily – as they tried to have the lord’s new bedchamber finished before the lady would be confined in it, only a month from now.
Wynflaed did, in fact, find the activity bothersome, as she did all the bustle and business of a manor house. However, the Queen had told her that her brother had had the idea when he had realized that he might be having a second son to inherit the manor – Sigefrith himself, of course, and Haakon after him, would inherit Raegiming castle.
Eadgith said that men were always that way when they were expecting to be fathers: they felt the same way about their new wings and their walls and their barns and their mills as the ladies did about the little dresses and the little quilts they made. The men wanted to make ready for the small visitors, too, and the idea of Sigefrith thinking about and planning for her baby so melted Wynflaed’s heart that she would have gladly listened to the clamor of the builders all through the night if he had desired it.
“Not at all,” she said. “I’m used to it.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“You can go work, Sigefrith!” she laughed. “Go work, and go have dinner with Sigefrith and your sister, and then go work some more, and don’t worry about me. The harvest doesn’t stop because I have a backache.”
“I think it should.”
“What a looby!” she sighed, and they grinned at one another until a loud knock came at the door.
“Who’s there?” Sigefrith called, clearly annoyed. “You should tell them you aren’t to be bothered,” he whispered sternly to her.
The door opened, and Wynflaed saw the visitor before Sigefrith did, though she feared he might have guessed by the look of sudden anxiety on her face. It was Sigefrith’s squire, but more importantly, it was Lady Ragnhild’s brother Eirik.
“I said I wouldn’t be long,” Sigefrith snapped.
Eirik said something to him in Norse. Ordinarily Sigefrith did not tolerate any language other than English in Wynflaed’s presence, but whatever Eirik said was apparently so shocking that Sigefrith forgot his own rule and replied in kind.
Wynflaed understood not a word of it, but the change in her husband’s voice chilled her. She stood quietly by as they spoke, and though they seemed to have forgotten her already, she did not even dare to move enough to lay her hands on her back as another spasm began stealing over her.
“I must go out, Wyn,” Sigefrith said hurriedly and came to kiss her. “Someone took Hilda’s baby in the night. The nurse is here.”
“Oh no!” she gasped.
“He’ll be hungry too…” he murmured and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if to stop tears before they started.
“Poor baby.”
“We shall have to go out to look for him, though God knows a baby is easy to hide if one sees one’s lord coming.”
“You could ask Father Brandt,” she suggested. “He can go into the peasant huts.”
“That’s so. That’s a good idea, Wyn. He knows all the babies, too.”
He smiled at her until Eirik spoke a few words, and then he hugged her tightly.
“I must go. Take care of the three of you,” he said, as he liked to tease. “Send for your sister if you get lonely or need help.”
She nodded, and he kissed her and left, speaking to Eirik in Norse with that strange voice again. He had already forgotten her, as men knew how to do when it was time to do men’s work.
Wynflaed sat wearily and tried to press the cushion into the small of her back. Sitting was scarcely more comfortable than standing, or lying, or anything else, but at least it got the tremendous weight of her belly off of her feet.
She would not send for her sister: it was the harvest season, and there was far too much work to be done at the farm. Nor would she go to Haakon’s room where, if the windows provided light and air, they also allowed her to clearly hear the shouts of the workmen and the clangor of the work.
She would only sit in the half-dark of the windowless bedchamber and wait for the pain to pass. She supposed she should have been grateful that she had not felt the pain in her side since after dinner the day before, but she was beginning to think that this new pain was only harder to bear.
Chapters
Sounds like back labor to me.