“Yes,” I barked, heading up the stairs after her, desperately trying to remember everything I’d learned in my six weeks of obstetrics twelve years before. My mind raced. I’m a neurosurgeon. I can’t do this. But there isn’t anyone else.
The room was lit by wavering tapers. Bianca crouched on a birthing stool, baring her teeth like a wild animal. The floor was dark and wet, and there was a strange smell in the room—blood mixed with amniotic fluid. So the membranes had ruptured. Was she close? Ysabella pointed me to a basin of water where I rinsed my hands, and she tied a heavy apron around me. I approached the bed cautiously.
“Bianca, I think I can help.”
She stared at me, panting and wild-eyed. “Please! God help me, someone help me!” I crouched next to her, put one hand on her belly and the other between her legs. It took me a few seconds to get oriented, but when I realized what I was feeling, my heart sank. Breech—this baby was not coming out headfirst. Bianca was dilated, very far along. I felt a bit more. No cord prolapse, at least not that I could tell. I put my ear to Bianca’s belly and listened. Was that a heartbeat? I hoped so.
At the next contraction Bianca began to wail again. I maneuvered her to the bed so she was on her hands and knees to prevent the cord from coming down before the baby. Bianca grabbed my arm hard, her nails digging into my skin. When the pain passed I reviewed what I knew. Don’t rush a breech—the head can get trapped. I waited, trying to be patient. Bianca screamed and bore down again, and then I saw the buttocks appear. Better than a foot, at least. At the next contraction, the legs appeared at the hip—one then the other—I pushed behind the knees, separating the baby’s legs and flexing them into its trunk. The third contraction let me grasp one ankle, and then one foot, then the other. The umbilical cord is free, that’s the lifeline. Come on, baby, let’s go.
One shoulder, the other shoulder, then the arm. Almost there. I knew that once the baby’s belly met air, I had at most ten minutes to get the head out. Don’t pull. Don’t panic. There were just three of us in the world now: me, Bianca, and this slippery butt-first baby. Pressure right over the pubic bone with one hand, gentle traction with the other, slowly, slowly. Bianca was screaming and panting now. Then finally, finally, I felt the baby’s mouth and nose emerge into my hand, and then in the next second, the whole head. The sound of a newborn’s cry filled the air, lusty and furious.
There were running footsteps on the stairs, and two figures burst into the room. One was a commanding-looking woman who must have been the midwife. The other was Gabriele.
“Monna Trovato,” Gabriele gasped, staring at me with wide eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“She is delivering your new cousin,” the midwife said and stepped in to take over. I rinsed my hands in a daze and stepped away from the bed, pulling the stained apron over my head. I’d just delivered Bianca’s baby in what would someday become my modern bedroom.
“Thank you, Monna Trovato,” Gabriele said, his eyes moving from me to the new baby and then back to me again. “Any gratitude I could possibly express falls woefully short.”
“You’re welcome.” I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. My thoughts were interrupted by the bells ringing for Prime, reminding me of the hour. “God, I have to leave now.” Lugani’s party would be assembling outside the Ospedale. “Ser Lugani is taking me with him—with his company, I mean—to Messina.”
Gabriele’s eyes widened. I guessed he hadn’t heard. “I will escort you back to the Ospedale.”
“No,” Bianca said, surprising everyone. “Gabriele must pray for my daughter. He has walked these paths before, and the Virgin herself will hear his prayers.” It was light by now, and I could manage the short distance myself. Everyone was still too stunned to ask me what I was doing there.
Gabriele nodded reluctantly. “May God watch over every step of your journey, Monna Trovato. Messina is a long way from Siena.” It certainly was.
The midwife tied off and cut the umbilical cord, then washed the baby in a basin and wrapped her tightly in a linen swaddle. I backed out of the room to the sight of Ysabella rinsing the newborn babe’s tongue with water and placing a glistening drop of honey in her mouth.
* * *
By the time I got back to the women’s quarters Clara was pacing anxiously.
“Where have you been? I feared some mishap had befallen you, and that our trip might be canceled.” I ignored her question but glanced down at my dress to be sure I hadn’t been spattered with anything that would give me away.
Egidio appeared and stood in the doorway. He looked like a child, wide-eyed and uncertain. Because of his competence, I tended to forget how young he was when we worked side by side. I crossed the room to envelop him in a good-bye hug, forgetting medieval norms. When I pulled back, his face was bright red.
“I’ll miss you.” I smiled into his startled face.
“M-most honored, Monna Trovato. I have come to help with your weight. Your trunk, I mean, the weight of your trunk. There are two of us.” He gestured behind him where another boy who worked in the kitchens stood waiting for instruction. The boys struggled with the trunk down the stairs of the women’s hospice while I tried to restrain myself from offering to help. In the courtyard my possessions were loaded onto a horse-drawn cart by the burly guards I’d seen earlier that week. I kept my shoulder bag and its contents to myself.
*
When the Medici boy—he was hardly big enough to call Ser—had described the woman with the dark hair in braids whom he’d met outside the Ospedale, Baldi knew it was the Trovato bitch who’d taken his job.
“Why don’t I just dispose of her for you?” Baldi said, throwing back another cup of the excellent wine Semenzato’s provided. The Medici hesitated—squeamish, Baldi supposed he was, about adding a second crime to the first not even done, but he’d finally concurred.
From an Ospedale servant, Baldi had found out that the new scribe would be leaving Siena with a band of merchants that week. Once she was out of the city gates, he told his new Florentine master, it would be a simple task; traveling parties were sadly vulnerable to the threat of outlaws. So dangerous it was, outside Siena’s safely encircling walls. None would ever suspect the band might have been . . . alerted to this particular party, and the particular scribe traveling with it. Perhaps Baldi could even get his old job back once the scribe had fallen by the road. And he only had to pay the head of the band of outlaws half what the Medici boy had paid him. There’d be plenty of gold left for a whore, and a glass of wine to follow.
* * *