The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 20 of 40

Chapter 20: Carrying

I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.

"I don't know," I said.

"Think."

I thought.

I'd stopped counting two years ago. There had been no point. Every month came, regular as the reeve.

Before the wedding at Highcrown. The week the summons came.

"Early October," I said.

Agnes didn't say anything.

She pulled a stool over and pushed me down onto it.

She wet a cloth in the water barrel and put it on the back of my neck.

"It's something I ate," I said. "The mutton. Greyford's well."

"Corvin ate the same mutton and drank the same well, and he's out in the yard splitting logs like a fool."

"It's the riding. Six days of carts."

"Mm."

"Agnes. I can't. Three physicians. Three years of teas."

"Three years of a husband who couldn't," Agnes said. "You heard the old man yourself."

I opened my mouth.

I shut it again.

She went to the door and shouted across the yard for the physician.

He came down in his nightshirt and a borrowed coat, grumbling.

He looked at me on the stool with the cloth on my neck.

He stopped grumbling.

He asked me questions.

Dates, and sickness, and whether my breasts were sore, which they were.

I had thought it was the cold.

He put his old cold hand on my belly, the way he had once a month for two years at Highcrown.

He kept it there for a long time.

His hand was shaking again.

"I can't be sure this early," he said at last. "Not with my hands. But I've delivered half the court. I'd bet my life."

"On what?"

He took his hand away.

"On you being with child, my lady. Five weeks. Perhaps six."

The kitchen was very quiet.

Agnes put a hand over her mouth and turned around to stir a pot that wasn't on the fire.

I sat on the stool.

Three years of patting at chapel.

Next year, dear.

A barren miller's girl with no crown.

I started to laugh.

I didn't mean to. It came up out of me like the sickness had, and I couldn't stop it.

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