The Barley-Child: Chapter Sixteen
Our son was born today here in Venosa, the birthplace of Horace, named for the goddess of love, Venus. It is summer 1232. We will call him Manfred. He looks very much like his father and, already, there is a wondrously strong bonding between the two.
That is gross! Del couldn’t credit she had written such a silly, non-bit. Trash indeed; going nowhere! Rising, she paced wildly around the hotel room, ignoring the inspiring sights without, cringing, eyes narrowing in disbelief at the thought of such banal phrases.
Take a pull on yourself, Fidelma, who is this girl? She’s educated, for God’s sake, maybe besotted in love but would her diary pieces be nervous revelation one entry, birth accomplished the next? Where’s the credibility in that? She riffled through the loose pages on the desk, angry, knowing she was missing some fundamental factor. Suddenly, Del saw the picture. An educated Bianca would look for expertise help with the pregnancy, wouldn’t she? Del scurried back to her research papers; giving a happy hoot at the fortuitous relevance she found lying there.
Frederick’s birthday
Thirty-seven today is the golden boy of Apulia; Stupor Mundi, Sweetheart. And I have just interviewed the mid-wife for the birth of our babe. Her name is Soria and she is, of course, a graduate of the medical school of Salerno. I was impressed when she first entered the chamber; neat, strong, clean — and clutching Trotula de Ruggiero’s famous treatise, On the Diseases of Women, Before, During and After Childbirth. Even from a distance, I could see she had added her own annotations; had recorded her experiences of childbirth. And her hands were small, her wrists strong. She would be able to turn my baby should he lie badly. Together, we have plotted out the birth plan.
That is more like it, Del sighed, as she re-read the new entry. Frederick had had two wives die in childbirth but they were both of royal blood, probably confined in ignorance and traditional folklore rather than science. But Bianca was a woman of the world. As a notary, she had, most likely, worked on the Constitutions of Melfi, just newly gazetted. The document presented a highly organized legal system for law and order throughout the Kingdom. The Emperor was absolute justice…the Emperor must defend the Church and stamp out heresy…must keep the peace with royal armies, no private wars or feuds. The Emperor must show justice for all his people; all men were equal before the Law. The reins of power rested with the Emperor; all criminal justice was a right reserved to the Crown. For widows and orphans, free legal advice. Abolition of trial by ordeal…usury in Jews’ hands only…all weights and measures under State control. No bribes. And abattoirs had to be outside town precincts.
Heady stuff indeed! And there was more, much more.
Law. Del, gazing into space, fiddled with her pen. Maybe she should take a whole new direction in her life; not struggle with this backhand academic trivia. So, she nodded to herself, feeling heat rising to her cheeks, Sal’s criticism had rattled her. How would a new degree make a difference? Silly. How could someone her age, an unknown, break into the tight Sydney legal fraternity? Suddenly, she was acutely aware of Kevin’s desertion; of the loneliness stretching ahead of her, and wiped a threatening tear away. Maybe, though, there were other opportunities. Maybe, with a law or similar degree, she could work for Oxfam, or some such charity, developing gender policies for improvement of women in impoverished countries.
Feeling her temper rising, pent-up frustration seething through her, she grabbed her purse and keys and fairly flung herself out of the room, down the stairs and headed across the piazza in a wild stride. By the time she had reached the castle, where the men shouted greetings as they rode the cranes positioning massive stones, she was calmer. Just stick to the plot for now, Del, she told herself; return and write a birth scene for Bianca. Still she lingered but the smell of the rubbish, dead fish, birds and cats mainly, washing up against the outer bailey and what seemed like the local garbage piled, rotting in the harsh sunshine of the inner bailey, drove her away.
Although it is a warm, August day, (1232) Soria says I must take care not to chill. My women lead me about with slow steps and I have had two baths and a massage so far. Soria is preparing the first of the suffumigations and she commands that I must sneeze, holding my nostrils and mouth tightly closed, forcing energy towards my womb. The aromatic substances will be placed at the vaginal orifice; the uterus, she says, responds to sweet smells and shrinks from fetid. I have identified musk, amber, aloe wood, with a hint of mint and oregano swirling in the chamber. She has shown me the decoction of linseed and fenugreek with which she will wet her hands if she needs to manoeuver the baby. She has a strong potion, based on the white excrement of the sparrowhawk, for pain, if I should need it.
I am confident but I can no longer continue to write.
Reading it back, Del felt it sounded quite a civilised scene. Rather like the birthing centres in vogue today. She had had the twins not long after fathers had been admitted to the labour ward, though most, in those days, including Kevin, had not stayed the distance. She smiled wryly: it was said that the greatest change in allowing the men in was that the stirrups, those degrading, torturous, elevating leg-spreaders, disappeared immediately. Certainly, Del had not seen such an implement.
I swooned soon enough but all has ended well. Soria is still laughing, giggling rather, and so very excited about our beautiful son. She has bathed him and assured me she has tied the umbilical cord at the height of three fingers measured from his belly. She indicated the distance, her black eyes shining into mine. ‘Now, little man’s cord, it’s up to you,’ she says she told it, ‘the degree of contraction determines the size of your future virility.’ She drew the thick, soft pad of cloth back from the wound for me to see.
I then watched as she re-wrapped him in the fine white linen reserved for the rich. It is bound with red braid as recommended by medical practitioners. Before she passed him to me, she swirled honey into his mouth, rubbed it into his palate. ‘I washed his tongue with hot water when I bathed him,’ she chatted, ‘so that his speech will be fine and clear.’ Bustling a little, she nestled him against my bared breast, showing me how to tilt his head just so, and, though a sharp pain shot through me at first contact, he suckled wondrously. And I felt myself glow. As he drank, Soria lifted the horn of red coral from around my neck and, when it was time to change breasts, placed it over my son’s head. She had told me of the importance, in Islamic tradition, of a babe wearing the coral pendant; that Trotula, her teacher and mentor, also personally considered it a valid aid to the mother during birth.
Mmm. That’s more like it, Del sighed, as she looked up, placed her pen down and squeezed her fingers together. A group of people, stylishly dressed, were leaving the ancient law courts building, taxis waiting; the day’s session must be over.
Honey, an antiseptic; and amber was reputed to attract dust, she mused. These medieval medical specialists knew a trick or two.
She poured herself a glass of water; she would have preferred coffee but that meant contacting Francesca. A certain interruption. She had told Susan she had only the death scene to write but, in fact, that — or the date she, Del, had chosen — was still fifteen years down the track. There was the birth of the daughter, Constance; of the successful political marriages of both Manfred and Constance; of the anguish associated with Isabella when queen…
Determined, she turned back to the pages.
At length she reached the vexed question of Bianca’s death. For the first time she realised that it was just not feasible to have Bianca continue scribbling a diary while the world was destroyed around her — and she with it. Weary, Del dropped her head on her folded arms. She had not thought this through properly. Indeed, she had not. Her father’s face — her birth father’s face — assaulted her tired mind. There was no way she could ever show him this work; she could not tolerate the humiliation she just knew he would heap on her. Or, perhaps, the cynical sniff he would give as he gingerly passed it back as if it were soiled rag. This has got to stop! She rose, used the bathroom, paced back and forth across the room. Opening the dreary green wooden louvre shutters back, she leaned out of the eastern window, the one facing the full force of the ocean, and breathed in deeply. Extra freshness also flowed into the room before she closed the shutters across. Earlier, Francesca had warned her that birds could enter if she left the window bare.
That whole Parma siege of February 1247 was an enigma. Frederick had decided to make the Parmesians recognise his power the hard way. He would destroy their city and build his own on the outskirts, calling it Vittoria. Apparently, extensive plans were made but, Del shook her head, they could hardly have reached drawing board stage. Most likely, the fledgling Vittoria was little other than a fortified wooden camp. But Frederick, it seemed, had moved the entire court, chancery and treasure, library and menagerie, to the site. Perhaps, Bianca had been working in a temporary, cobbled together, chancery when the starving inhabitants of Parma screamed in, torching the buildings. Earlier, there had been a diversion on the other side of town which tempted her brother, now Marquis of Lancia, to attack there, leaving Vittoria virtually ungarrisoned. And it was raided without mercy.
And Frederick? Well, he had been out in the marshes, falconing!
The diary, Bianca’s diary: could it have survived the onslaught? The magnificent manuscript of Frederick’s falconry guide somehow became the possession of a citizen of Milan who offered it to Charles of Anjou in 1264. And the seized crown, auctioned to the mob for an absurd sum, is thought to be that of Otto the Great, now in Vienna’s Hofburg, alongside some of Frederick’s robes.
So…she could allow Bianca’s diary a provenance, maybe? She tapped her pen; Babbo would not approve she felt sure. Susan may — and it was Susan who counted here. After all, Bianca’s story was hardly the Hitler Diaries. She would run it by Susan, let the decision be hers, but, she knew in her heart, it was a lightweight idea. Misleading, too. Dishonest?
Slowly, she composed the provenance, draft provenance she told herself, for Susan’s consideration and set her pen aside.