Hattie sees something unexpected

“Shall I stop reading?” Hatheburga asked her mistress.

“No, no, Hattie,” the Duchess murmured. “I like to hear German, and if you are only reading to me, I needn’t answer.” She turned to her maid with a faint smile.

“You seem a little…”

“I feel fine. Please continue.”

Her maid continued with her reading, but in truth Hetty did not feel fine at all.

On two nights in the past week, the women had been called to attend what she had been certain was to have been the birth of her second child. Both times, after a few hours, her pains had stopped on their own.

The women had gone away smiling, and her husband had joked and teased her, but Hetty had been mortified. She could not believe that she had twice been fooled – she who had not even the excuse of having her first baby – and she was determined not to be fooled a third time.

Her baby could not be coming yet, anyway. The women had calculated that, given her wedding date, the baby could not possibly come before the end of the month of March, and today was only the first day.

Her husband had gone away to visit Dunstan that evening, for she had insisted he not change his plans on account of the merest twinge in her belly. Alred had joked that in any case she was forbidden from having any babies until the end of the month, lest she make him appear to be a dishonorable man.

So there was that consideration as well! Of course she knew and he knew that this baby had been conceived “on the right side of the sheets,” as Egelric liked to tease, but people would talk if it came weeks early. Starting with Egelric!

By now the pains had become intense, but no more so than on those other nights, so she knew that meant nothing. She was determined not to reveal even to her maid that she was feeling anything more than twinges, for fear that the ladies would be called a third time.

But her heavy nightgown was already sodden with sweat from the effort of lying still; and she did wish she had asked Hattie to cut her fingernails that day, for they were ravaging her palms.

Still, provided Hattie did not interrupt her reading to speak to her, Hetty thought that she would make it through the hours until the pain stopped again. She scarcely heard a word of the book, but the German flowed easily over her, without inciting any effort to understand as English or Latin would have done, and Hattie had such a gentle, soothing voice.

Indeed, Hetty was distracting herself more with thoughts of her maid than with the words her maid was reading to her. By concentrating on Hattie’s voice, she had managed to slip into a between-​​place: it seemed the pain of her body was roiling below her and lowering above her, but she was floating in a layer of calm, in the imaginary world of happiness that she was building for her friend.

Dreaming up romances for Hattie was one of Hetty’s secret pastimes, for Hetty of the Hidden Poem believed in romance now, though she and Hattie had once agreed that there was no such thing in the world.

It might have seemed a pastime unbecoming a duchess, but her friend Hatheburga was no ordinary maid. Hetty and Lili had known her in the convent in which they had spent their young maidenhood, and one of the few kindnesses that Friedrich had ever paid his wife was in allowing her to take Hattie with her when they left.

Hattie’s blood would have been as good as her own, but it was twice tainted. Hattie herself had been born “on the wrong side of the sheets”, and then she had been so abused by her stepfather that at thirteen she had been sent to the convent in order to bear a child likewise afflicted, though the latter had – fortunately, to Hattie’s mind – not lived to carry that burden long.

After Friedrich’s death, Hetty and Hattie had both sworn that they would remain together without the need for men of their own. For all practical purposes Lili had provided one for them by marrying Sir Egelric.

Later, her maid had been only too happy for Hetty when she had revealed her romance to her, but Hetty could not help but feel a certain guilt at having broken her word. The only way to ease it, in her mind, was to see Hattie in a romance of her own.

Hetty was rather proud of having detected Mouse’s and Ethelwyn’s affection even before the interested parties had known of it, and now she had her eyes out for Hattie. However, she was constantly running into the same problem. On the one hand, she knew that Hattie came from a grand family and ought not to marry a man beneath her, but on the other, Hetty did not know how she could ask one of her high-​​born friends – Stein for instance – to consider a lady who bore Hattie’s shame.

Thus it was that many of Hetty’s schemes were somewhat fanciful. It was possible that a little of Lady Gwynn was beginning to rub off on her as well, for the easiest solution seemed to be a knight riding in from distant lands, though Hetty, at least, would not have demanded that he have violet eyes.

But the thought of the color of a man’s eyes brought her mind back to her child, whose eyes she was so longing to see. And the thought of her child brought her mind back to her body that was laboring around it, and she realized that she was feeling decidedly not so very fine at all.

She could feel the droplets of sweat on her upper lip; she could feel how her hair was plastered to her face and throat everywhere it touched bare skin; and her nightgown and blankets felt soaked and steamy beneath her. But she had the growing impression that the blankets beneath her hips were wetter than they should have been, and what she was feeling now was not only pain but pressure. She was not having her first baby. She knew what that meant.

“Hattie, I – ”

She tried to sit up, but she was knocked down again by a stabbing pain in her back, and she howled. It felt as if something inside her had slipped. She knew she could not sit up. She knew something was wrong.

Hattie flung her book aside and was with her at once, stroking back her hair, pulling up her gown, murmuring, “Hetty, dear Hetty, what have you been doing all this time? What have you been doing?”

Hattie’s voice was so sweet and gentle, the familiar German was so soothing, but Hetty could not lose herself in it this time. Her pain was all around her.

“Hetty! Oh, Hetty!” Hattie cried in alarm.

“What?” Hetty gasped.

“I feel – I feel – I see toes!”