Gunnilda goes to tell

The Duchess’s frightened babbling and her maid’s attempts to calm her rippled like an agitated undercurrent beneath the anxious whispers of the women across the room.

Gunnilda did not understand a word of German, but the maid seemed to be insisting on “waschen, waschen.” Gunnilda wondered how long the poor mother believed it took to wash a newborn. She did not think this explanation would suffice for much longer.

But time was passing strangely. The seconds, which all through the birth had passed in strict and simple file, were beginning to drift free and aimless like bubbles in simmering water slowly stirred. There seemed to be gaps between them, gaping wider, permitting a greater number of fruitless gestures in their space, but also magnifying the time that the baby was spending without the air he needed to survive.

Maire and Mother Duna were both issuing sternly whispered commands to the baby, each in her own variety of Gaelic, but Gunnilda was grimly silent. She could not risk the poor mother overhearing her urging the baby, “Breathe!”

“His heart’s still beating!” Maire whispered.

“Turn him over again,” Mother Duna said.

Gunnilda grasped the baby’s feet between her strong fingers and hung him upside down, despairing, for they had tried this already. They had checked his mouth and nose for obstructions over and over; they had spanked him upside down and right side up; they had tickled his flanks and flicked the soles of his feet with their fingernails. The little boy did not respond to anything.

He did not respond now. Gunnilda shook her head.

“He must be baptized,” Mother Duna whispered.

“While we can,” Maire said.

“Before he dies.”

Gunnilda had been called, despite her own imminent confinement, because no one had forgotten that she had delivered Lady Margaret and saved her life in similar circumstances. Everyone knew that His Grace would never forgive them if they did not send for Gunnilda and the child died.

But Lady Margaret had come rump-​​first, which was easier than these babies that started with their feet, and this baby had further complicated matters by raising his arms up above his head. He never would have come at all if Gunnilda had not been able to pull his arms down one by one, but even so it had taken too long.

Gunnilda thought that it would have been too late even if he had cried as soon as his head came clear. Now several minutes had passed since his birth, and they still had not seen a hint of breath. It was a miracle that his little heart still beat at all. She knew it could stop at any time – perhaps even before his mother realized that it could not possibly take so long to waschen, waschen a baby.

Gunnilda sat him down in the basin of water again so that her other hand would be free.

“His name?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse; her throat hurt as if she had been shouting, but she had scarcely said a word.

“His name?” Mother Duna repeated stupidly.

“Hetty!” Maire called. “What will you name him?”

“Name him?” the Duchess wailed. And then she began to sob. She had understood, but she had not provided a name.

“Hurry!” Gunnilda hissed. “What? What? What saint’s day is it today?”

“Ah!” Mother Duna cried. “Dewi Sant! David of Wales!”

“David?” Maire whispered, wrinkling her nose.

“David,” the old Welshwoman insisted.

Gunnilda only knew that David was a name in the Bible, which made it saintly enough for her. They did not have time to argue the matter: the baby hung limp from her left hand, his head lolling against her forearm. She did not even know whether his heart still beat.

“David,” she said, dipping her right hand into the water, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Her hand trembled so that she splashed the water over his head rather than pouring it, but it was done.

At once she lifted him out of the water and felt his chest. His heart was beating still, faintly.

Then she pressed him to her own chest and sobbed. Now that she knew he would go to heaven, she was able to realize that he would be going there in only a moment or two. Heaven suddenly seemed like such a lonely place. Would Matilda receive him? Alred’s mother, or the Duchess’s? He needed to stay on earth, where he would be loved.

Gunnilda had been called because they had all thought that if Gunnilda came, the child would not die. She had come, but the child had died anyway. His poor father would never forgive her – his poor father who had suffered so much, who had only recently begun to seem happy again!

“Gunnilda!” Maire was trying to take the baby away from her.

Then she heard something that chilled her more than the weight of the child’s cold, slippery body in her arms; more than the sound of the wailing mother across the room, who would not be comforted. She heard a horse come clattering across the bridge at a canter, the clanging of its iron shoes on the flagstones of the inner court, and the shouts of the guards.

There was only one man who would dare ride up to the very door of the castle.

They had sent a messenger to Dunellen at the same time that they had sent another to Gunnilda. However, Dunellen was over eight miles away; Gunnilda had been reassuring herself with the thought that the Duke could not possibly arrive in less than an hour. The messenger must have met him on the way home.

“I must meet him!” Gunnilda gasped.

“Gunnilda?” Maire whispered.

“We can’t let him see Her Grace like this,” Gunnilda murmured.

Suddenly everything was clear to her. Again she could act deliberately and do what was necessary, as she had when the child was being born. The seconds had snapped back into file and came evenly, one after the other.

“And I must tell him,” she said. “I must prepare him. He must be strong for Her Grace.”

“I can…” Maire whispered. “If you…”

Gunnilda remembered the night she had crept into the chapel to tell him Margaret had been born. He had kissed her, and ever afterwards she felt they had been wed – not as man and wife, but as two people whose lives had come to be knit together from so often crossing at moments of joy and sorrow and strife.

“I will tell him,” she said firmly. Her right hand, no longer trembling, came up and caressed his dead son’s white and lovely face. “About you, David.”