The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [183]
“Your Highness?” Elyssa came up beside her. “What’s wrong? You look so distressed.”
“I was watching the fog. Did you see it turn from gold to grey?”
“It always does that, Your Highness, this time of year.”
“I know, but I was just thinking that my life’s rather been like that, all gold when I married, and now …”
Elyssa stared, her dark blue eyes narrowed in puzzlement. Although the serving woman was the older by a few years, they had been friends since childhood, but now, Bellyra supposed, Elyssa hardly knew what to make of her. She hardly knew what to make of herself at times.
“It’s just the baby,” Elyssa said at last. “It should come soon.”
“Very soon.” Bellyra laid both hands on her swollen belly. “He feels ready to move down.”
“You’re so sure it’s a lad.” Elyssa smiled at her. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
“I won’t be. No lass would kick her mother’s guts as hard as this little beast has.”
“Let’s hope, anyway.” Elyssa considered her, the smile gone. “Are you frightened?”
“Very, but not of the labor or suchlike. It’s what came after.”
Elyssa reached out and caught the princess’s hand twixt both of hers.
“You’ll do splendidly this time. I swear it. I’ve made ever so many prayers to the Goddess.”
“But did the Goddess give you an answer back? Oh, I’m sorry, Lyss, please, don’t look so distressed. We’ll deal with what comes if it comes.”
In the middle of the night Bellyra woke sopping wet and in pain. Her water had broken. She got out of bed, stood for a moment considering her contractions—not too bad, but strong—then flung open her bedroom door and yelled to her serving women.
“It’s begun. Send for the midwife!”
She sat down on a wooden chest and let herself sprawl, legs akimbo. In a few moments Elyssa and Degwa came hurrying in, carrying candle lanterns. Degwa’s dark hair hung in two tidy braids, while Elyssa’s fair hair tumbled down her back, all tousled.
“Let me just put a dress over this nightgown,” Degwa said, “and then I’ll go down and wake the pages.”
“Send young Donno,” Elyssa said. “He knows the town well. And get a couple of serving lasses up here to light a fire and suchlike.”
Panting from the pain, Bellyra leaned back against the wall and let their concern cover her like a warm quilt. Servant girls came soon, and after them the midwife. By the time the dawn broke, her labor filled her world. She clung to the birthing rope and thought of naught else but the child fighting within her to get out. The pain, oddly enough, helped keep the fear at bay. When the sun was well over the horizon, the baby came with one huge squall of rage at being shoved into the light.
“A lad!” the midwife crowed. “Ah, the Goddess has favored you again, Your Highness.”
“I told you,” Bellyra whispered. “Give me some water.”
The afterbirth came clean and whole. Only then did she truly feel safe. Once again, she’d had an easy birth, or so the midwife told her. Laughing and chattering, her women washed her and brought her dry nightclothes, then tucked her up in her freshly made bed. By the time they’d drawn the hangings around her, she was asleep.
In a little while they woke her. When Degwa brought the new prince to her bed, he mewled like a kitten. Bellyra took him with unsteady hands and settled him at her breast. He grabbed the nipple in his mouth and began to suck the false milk so hard that her breast ached.
“Oh, he’s so beautiful,” Degwa crooned. “What a little love, isn’t he?”
“Just so,” Elyssa said. “What lovely little hands he has!”
In truth, Bellyra thought, Marro was red, wrinkled, and squashed-looking about the face still. His sprinkling of pale hair lay coarsely on his skull. She lay back on the mounded pillows and stared up at the bed hangings, embroidered with a repeating design of three ships bound round with interlacements. The ships were brown, the waves blue, and the interlacements