She calls first for water. Plenty of water. Then scrapes grime and oil from between the fine lines and wrinkled folds of her bent fingers. She has seen them all; screaming and red; brown and white; long, large and tiny, grey-blue and unbreathing. With the fire warmed water, she cleanses her hands of them, making her paper skin raw pink with the scratching stiff brush bristles. The brown spots and yellow nails remain though. Her hands clean, she dries them on crisp white linens and turns to Her Lady Queen, who is already moaning from her labours. 

The room is swollen with the restless spirits of Queens past, who laboured in this place before.  The apparitions dart about the room, dark phantoms that serve to remind them all that Her Majesty may not come out of this enterprise alive. But Her Majesty is a prudent Queen. Before her seclusion, she was sensible and wrote her letters and paid for her masses and made herself ready with God.

The ladies’ maids move quietly about the chamber, draping tapestries and drawing the heavy curtains to banish light from the sealed room. They remove Her Majesty’s rings and pin prayers to her sweat-soaked smock. Then retreat to dark corners to recite the litany of the saints in stifled monastic tones. 

She bends to examine the labouring royal, muttering sweet words and giving The Queen good hope of a speedful deliverance. Throughout the night, she attends the labouring Queen. She applies salves and caudles, administering them with accompanying pater nosters. By midnight, word spreads through court that it is a hard labour and childbirth talismans appear at the doorway. Aetites; eagle stones from Cyprus, holy girdles and invocations of the saints. Diligently observing, she waits. Speaking only to demand meats and sugar cakes be brought to nourish and strengthen the enfeebling Queen. And water of course. More water.

It is the second morning. The candles cast long wine-red shadows across the room. The air is close with the throat-catching acridity of burning lavender and sage. It is taking too long. The Queen’s ladies pass the news around on hot breath, whispering through the thick air. Their eyes linger on Her Ladyship. She is too weakened, they murmur. When the smock is bloodied, they swaddle the Queen’s ovoid belly with prayer scrolls and tie parchment preces to her wrists. The Queen fits and starts, muttering secret injuries of misbirths and babies lost. Build the fire, they are commanded. It will not be long now. 

Then everything becomes screaming, twists of sheets upheaving and the women draw close and press the Queen to calm herself, it will be over soon. But the Queen’s weakness and weariness returns, increased. The Queen begins to faint and is without sensible pulse or colour. 

The ladies’ maids melt from view and all that is left is Her Majesty. Lizzie! –she seizes her Highness by the jaw–remember you are a woman! One who wields the power to bring forth new life into this world, and no nobleman nor King upon this earth holds such might as this. There is a surge, a great heaving and then a precious shriek, torn from the marrow of her. The chamber is full of it and with indrawn breath, all in the room wait. 

Man or maid? The question hangs in the air. Man or maid? The ladies knot their hands and wait for her to speak. Man or maid! She holds him in her hands and laughs despite herself. A future King of England! The happy fruit safely delivered. Slippery with the waters of his mother’s travail, red and wrinkled like a roasted crab-apple, his limbs drawn up tight, unwilling to leave the shape of the womb. 

The umbilical cord pulsates and she waits a moment, allowing the spirit of the child and the mother one last moment together before he is no longer hers. Then she hands the babe over to be washed and swaddled, before holding fast the maternal end of the navel chord, lest it be sucked back into the womb and hid there, strangling the secudine. With one swift swipe of her birthing blade, she severs the connection between mother and child. He belongs to England now. 

Though Her Majesty is depleted, she urges her into the grovelling position to excrete the after-birth. Presently, and with a final shudder, she is delivered. Exhausted, the Queen lies gashed and mangled. She helps Her Majesty back against the silken pillows and does what she can for her tears and pain. Secret wounds. If she lives. Though regardless, history will construct a story of her now, since she has birthed a King.

The ladies-in-waiting devote themselves to the comfort of the Queen, who lies lily-white and trembling. They are kind and gentle. Sympathetic. Once she is bathed and dressed and the bed linens changed, the seal is broken. In they come. The men. Filling the dark room with stout self-righteousness as they busy themselves with the tasks of officialdom, ensuring the birth is properly acknowledged and neatly recorded. 

The Royal Physician appears, and she is called to report. She measures her words, for what purpose is there in recounting the gruesome details of Her Majesty’s travails to this clammy eel of a man. Let him exalt the birth in blissful ignorance of the delivery. He nods his approval, prescribing rest and a tonic of burnt wine, as if a scorched throat will stitch Her Majesty back together. Then he scampers off to inform The King and, he hopes, accept a title. 

She looks down at her open palms which are stained with the Queen’s blood. The wet red has hardened, crusting over in jagged streaks, clinging to the creases and lines. She wipes them on the corpse cloth that has been laid out–just in case. And then calls for water.