Luminous

61 - Motherhood

Keeping time for the whole manor meant life in the church was also governed by a strict routine. On midday, young acolyte Jerald would normally be found trailing after Friar Tumney, recording his observations of the pea plants in his experimental plot.

Today, however, Jerald was on his own. Friar Tumney was hosting the visiting alchemist Tyberne inside the church. He was counting pea plants with pink flowers when the sound of retching interrupted the quiet afternoon.

Jerald straightened. The retching echoed from the back of the church. Being a monk armed with knowledge in medicine, Jerald hurried to see to the sick. He skidded to a halt at the sight of a fair-haired woman around his age, bent on all fours before a plot of herbs, coughing and sputtering. The hems of her Crosset Green tunic flowed onto the ground like mint paste, held down by a wicker basket strewn with plucked sprigs of basil and rosemary.

Once she had exhausted the contents of her stomach, the maiden sat up, dabbing at her mouth with her apron. She spun around, and Jerald recognized her as Tyberne's maidservant. At the sight of his priest habit, her brown eyes widened in fright. She snatched her basket and scrambled to her feet.

"Sir Acolyte." She gasped, her voice hoarse, bowing so low the tail of her braid caressed the soil, "Forgive me. I've retched all over your sacred herbs."

Jerald dismissed it with an absentminded wave, covering the remaining distance with brisk, gangly strides. He bent to the maiden's level, surveying her pallid, sweat-peppered countenance.

"Are you..." He hesitated whether to pry into a maiden's private affairs, but succumbed to the urge of his training, "by any chance...pregnant?"

The maid pointedly avoided his eyes, glaring down at her apron, now twisted in her hands. Jerald could guess her circumstances, and he knew better than to prolong her shame. Spatters of sick drooped from the leaves of their precious herbs, falling in dollops to the pool below. He snatched the watering can and washed them away.

"You'd better stay away from herbs. Even healers aren't certain what the aromas could do to you and your babe." He set the can on the barrel and turned to the maid with a disapproving frown, "And you definitely shouldn't be working in the labs, for that matter."

The maid hitched up a cool, mocking grin.

"That's swell, then." Her bright voice dripped with sarcasm, "I was hoping I could retch the thing out while I was at it. Turns out the uterus isn't connected to the gullet."

She spat bitterly then turned away, heaving a deep, sobbing sigh as she covered her face. Jerald dithered in silence as he watched her. Allowing the woman to rid of the life within her was against his teachings, but to force a reluctant woman to carry a babe to birth and raise it would be an affront to his mother.

The maid tugged on his sleeves, jolting him from his thoughts.

"Please don't tell." She begged in a tear-choked whisper, rattling his arms, "If they know, they'll make me keep it. And they'll kill me if I don't."

At the sight of her anguished brown eyes, Jerald's blood froze to ice then boiled with fury. He knew those eyes. He'd known that gleam of living pain since he could remember. To see it again in this woman's eyes. After all these years.

"He forced you, didn't he?"

He breathed through numb lips. The woman's bulging eyes grew even wider.

"How did you know?"

Jerald focused on the grass beneath his feet as dull pangs of pain throbbed in his heart.

"My mother has that look in her eyes whenever she looks at me."