Chapter 9: The Calving

My mother didn't come back to the Hall that week.

She didn't call the King.

She didn't call me either, until Thursday night at a quarter to two.

"A farmer just trailered a heifer into the clinic. Calf's backwards, and my tech's got the flu. Can you hold a light?"

"I'll be there in forty minutes."

Rupert was in the kitchen eating cereal out of a mixing bowl when I came through with my keys.

"Where are you going?"

"A cow is having a baby the wrong way round."

He put the bowl down.

"Can I come?"

"It's two in the morning, and it's going to be disgusting."

"I've never been anywhere disgusting. I'm a prince."

He came.

The calving pen at the back of the clinic was cold and lit by one bulb.

The heifer was down in the straw, groaning.

My mother was already in a sleeveless plastic glove up to her shoulder, with her arm inside the cow.

She looked at Rupert in his designer jacket.

"Is that the younger one?"

"Rupert, ma'am. Hi. Sorry about my brother."

"Take your jacket off, Rupert. You're on the chains."

He didn't even hesitate.

For the next hour he pulled when she said pull and stopped when she said stop.

I held the light and the heifer's head and talked to her like I talk to everybody.

"You're doing great. Nobody's judging. I've seen worse."

"She can't understand you," Rupert panted.

"Neither can half my patients. It still works."

The calf came out all at once, in a slither of legs, and landed in the straw.

It didn't move.

"Come on," my mother said. "Come on, baby."

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