Joyce Bingham
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On this bright September morning, outside the Palace of Greenwich, it is work as usual on the river, boats and people are ferried to and fro. Inside the Queen’s birthing chamber, it is hot, smoky and still.
I help to loosen Anne’s hair; the darkness of her sweat-dampened locks is so different from my own fair tresses. With a slip of my finger, I tuck another muslin packet inside Anne’s bedding. It contains dried mayflower, and other ingredients I don’t care to know or understand.
“May God help and protect me as I birth my King’s son,” Anne whispers.
The women around her add their own amen. The word dries on my tongue. What I do here is not God’s work. Anne screams as the next contraction tightens her belly.
“You are doing well, sister,” Mary says.
She should know, she’s whelped enough of the King’s bastards.
Anne howls like the she-wolf she is and the baby delivers into my arms, the linen fouled by blood and the layer of the baby’s phlegm. After all the mayflower packets I’ve secreted around this room over the last nine months, I am praying for a girl.
“Your Majesty, the baby is healthy, a good weight,” Margery says as she wraps it in fresh linen, wiping stains from its delicate skin.
“A son?” Anne asks, her face white.
“A daughter, Your Majesty,” says Bess.
Anne whimpers, and her sister takes her in her arms and rocks her gently as the afterbirth is delivered. Anne is sucking in deep sobbing breaths.
“It will be a son next time,” Mary says.
With a serene smile, I take the afterbirth, wrap it in the foul linen and place it in my basket. No one notices, they are all too intent on her, the whore in the bed. And the bastard daughter in the crib.
His Majesty is shouting to see his son. Margery opens the door and displays his daughter. Anne cries harder as he swears and curses his luck. Then the door is closed on us women and the baby. My delight must not show on my face. I clench my fists and remain tranquil Jane, sorrowful for the Queen, and gleeful in private.
I excuse myself and leave with the basket. My steps are light and joy fills my heart. In the farthest part of the palace grounds, I meet the crone.
“As you requested, the Queen’s blood and afterbirth,” I say as I pass the basket to her.
“Are you sure you want to go ahead with this curse?” she spits out of her foul toothless mouth.
“Yes,” I hiss, and I press coins into her bony fingers. She raises the basket, sniffs it, licks her lips.
“The price you will pay later is high. But you, my lady, will give the King a son,” the crone says.
I throw my head back and laugh with abandon.
Joyce’s prompts were: During a Birth, a Thief, Flowers
Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer, living in the North-West of England, whose work has appeared in publications such as Sci-Fi shorts, Flash Frog, WestWord, Molotov Cocktail, Bending Genres, and Ghost Parachute.
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