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Chapter LXIX: Repayment in Kind

The kitchen was a busy and welcoming space, even half-lit and tidied for the evening. Shelves and corners were crowded with pots, pans, wooden and earthenware dishes of every description, and baskets, bins and buckets filled with eatables. Braids of onions and garlic hung from the rafters, and there was a sideboard laden with boxes of herbs and spices behind a generous workspace. The room was headed by a great cooking hearth where a young fire danced in the centre of a broad bed of embers.

Eira went straight to the broad worktable and set down her burdens deftly. Then she took a pot-hook from the rack of fire-tools and used it to swing a large iron kettle out from the back of the hearth where it had been steaming. She hefted it with ease by its wooden handle-guard, and poured a measure into a shallow wooden tub already half-full of tepid water. She tested the temperature with her fingertips, added another splash of hot water, and then returned the heavy vessel to its place.

Aragorn set down his tray and the jug, and he reached for the wrung-out rag that lay at hand. His hostess came back just in time to brush his fingers away.

‘There’s no need: I’ll see to that,’ she said. She took the first stack of plates and settled them into the water. ‘If you’re set on helping, you could wipe them.’

She nodded to a towel, spread to dry after the supper washing. Aragorn caught it up and accepted the first clean dish from her, drying it with care.

‘I thought that Grimbeorn made it plain before you left us that there could be no question of indebtedness,’ said Eira softly, keeping her eyes decorously upon her work. It was a kind consideration, meant to spare him embarrassment. Had he indeed been trying to discharge his obligation in this way, it would have been greatly appreciated. ‘You are not beholden to us for anything.’

‘And if you did hold me thus, I could not erase my debt if I were twenty years your scullion,’ Aragorn said with a smile. Eira glanced up in surprise, saw it, and laughed softly. Nonetheless she did not speak: she was waiting for him to continue. ‘Yet I desired a quiet word with you, lady, and this seemed the readiest way to withdraw from the throng.’

‘I see.’ Eira rinsed another plate and gave it to him. ‘Yes, our throng can be intimidating at times, particularly when one has a sensitive matter to discuss. Is it something to do with your feet? I wondered how you would fare, striding off into the snow so soon after thawing – and with such dilapidated boots.’

‘Nay, though you wondered with good cause,’ he said, a little wryly. Then gravely he pressed on. ‘I must ask you, mistress: what ails the wife of Baldbeorn? The child thrives, but plainly her mother does not. Was there some complication in the birth?’

Eira’s brows lifted in surprise, falling swiftly into furrows of care. ‘The birth was perfect,’ she said. ‘How much do you understand of these matters?’

‘I am not without experience,’ said Aragorn. ‘I was taught the principles by the most accomplished of masters – the greatest healer known in this Age of the world. I have overseen several births, not all of them easy. Though I do not say it to boast, I have saved children ere this, and on at least one occasion the mother also. That the babe is healthy is a blessing, but if there is anything I can do to help Freya I beg you to let me try. From your look I take it that this is not the custom of your people: I suspected that such might be the case, and that is why I did not raise the question in the hall.’

Eira’s eyes were fixed on the dishwater, watching intently as her hand slipped into one of the prettily etched cups. She swallowed painfully, and her fear for her daughter by marriage was plain. ‘You take it aright,’ she said. ‘It is not our custom to admit men to the birthing room, and even among our healers this is women’s business. Yet I have overseen many births myself and spared my own share of babies from death, and I have never before seen such a case. All my efforts have proved for naught, and each day she weakens.’

‘Tell me what went wrong in the birth,’ Aragorn urged softly. ‘You and I may speak frankly here, may we not? Before I go up to see her, it would be best for me to know as much as I can.’

‘The birth was perfect!’ Eira’s voice cracked and she looked up at him, hazel eyes glassy with bewilderment and uncomprehending guilt. How she might have erred she knew not, and yet plainly she felt that she had. 'Her pains were bearable and her labour swift. The child was well positioned and prompt to breathe, and the afterbirth followed within the hour. On the second day Freya was abroad from her bed, and by the third we all thought her recovered. But in the afternoon of the fourth day she began to bleed. It is not a heavy stream, as such things are accounted, but it is far heavier than a woman could expect from her monthly course, and it is constant—’

She stopped, colouring a little at her frank words, but Aragorn nodded gravely. ‘She has been bleeding then for three days,’ he said.

‘I have tried all that I know to do,’ said Eira. ‘I put pressure on her womb from without, and I have seen to it that she nurses Inga diligently. That is thought to be a sure way to stop the birth-blood, but what it can do for this ailment I do not know. For days there was no sign that anything was amiss, and now this!’

‘It is not unknown,’ said Aragorn, searching his stores of knowledge for what his foster-father had taught him. He did not have a midwife’s range of experience, for it was usually by some chance or mischance that he proved to be on hand when a birth occurred. He had had his part in sixteen deliveries in his lifetime (an average of less than two for each decade of his life) and only those of Halbarad’s children by design. He had successfully overseen three breech births and one case where the placenta had not passed as it ought. He had salvaged another confinement that would otherwise have ended in tragedy and, on one especially memorable occasion, had prevented a premature birth from taking place at all. But he had never had first-hand experience with a case such as this.

‘It is usual for the application of skilled hands to the lower abdomen to halt the bleeding, even when it does not immediately follow the birth,’ he said at last, lighting upon the information he sought. ‘There was no tearing in the labour? And what of the afterbirth: was it whole?’

‘There was no tearing,’ said Eira. She had her eyes closed and her features schooled into calm lines. She was acting now as midwife, not grandmother. ‘Inga is small, as you saw, and she is Freya’s sixth. The afterbirth passed completely. It was not whole: the babe had a caul. But Una matched it to the gap in the afterbirth and I too examined it. The edges were perfectly fitted: none was retained.’ Then she looked at him again, and her eyes were desperate and brimming with pain. ‘Lord Aragorn, if you know aught of these matters that I do not, I would be glad of your counsel. All my skills have availed me nothing, and it is impossible that Freya can continue much longer as she is.’

Aragorn wiped his hands with the dishtowel and passed it to Eira. ‘Take me to her,’ he said softly. ‘Now.’

‘Surely when you have slept—’ Eira began, but the words died on her lips as she looked into his eyes and read there nothing but grave urgency. Hastily she dried her hands and flung the towel aside. ‘Come,’ she said, dishes forgotten.

lar

She led him swiftly across the corner of the hall, where Baldbeorn stood in close conference with his father, one palm resting on the chest and belly of the baby in her basket. They both looked towards the striding woman and her follower, but neither questioned. It seemed that Gandalf had been shown to Sigbeorn’s room already, for he was not present to argue. Aragorn would have had no difficulty in convincing him that so trivial a matter as sleep could wait for such an errand as this, but he was glad to be spared the time. Three days of unremitting bleeding would sap even a strong body of its vigour, and Freya’s weakness upon her feet was not encouraging.

Up a narrow stair with one sharp landing Eira led him, and down a corridor lit by a single sconce. They passed doors both closed and ajar, from beyond which came the chatter of children happily preparing for bed. They were in the west wing of the house, over the kitchen.

Eira came at last to a closed door and stopped, rapping lightly upon it. ‘Una?’ she called. ‘Is your mother abed?’

The door popped open and the eldest of Grimbeorn’s grandchildren peered out. ‘Not yet: she’s just finished washing. Why would you stop to – oh.’ Her eyes found Aragorn, and her question answered itself. ‘You too are a healer,’ she murmured, hope swelling in her bright eyes. Glancing back over her shoulder she dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you know of these things? Can you help her?’

‘I can try,’ Aragorn pledged, wishing that he could offer some firmer promise. ‘Have her put on her smock and get into bed, but fold back the blankets and draw up the sheet. She need not lie down if she is uncomfortable doing so.’

Una glanced at her grandmother, and then nodded obediently. She moved to shut the door, but Eira stepped into the narrow gap. ‘I’ll help her, and try to explain,’ she said. ‘Find your aunt and tell her to bring hot water and the good rags. And a fresh pot of soap.’ She turned to look up at Aragorn again. ‘I dared not pack her too deeply, for fear of bringing on a childbed fever, but if you think it best—’

He shook his head. ‘That is never best, and assuredly the way to bring on a fever. Please, reassure her that I will be as discrete as I may.’

Eira nodded determinedly, though again she swallowed as if in pain. She changed places with Una almost without seeming to move, and the door closed tightly behind her. Left in the corridor with the young maiden, Aragorn turned his attention upon her.

‘Do as she bade you,’ he said. ‘But go to your father afterwards and explain. I grew to manhood in a place where such matters were not the purview of women alone, but of all who ply the healing arts. I have not the Lady Eira’s breadth of experience, but this is not the first birthing bed I have attended. If it will put his mind at ease to speak to me himself, he may come.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Una said breathlessly. She dipped a reflexive curtsey and was gone at a run, whipping around a door near the head of the stairs and into the room beyond.

Aragorn waited. From behind the door came murmured voices and a sound unsettlingly like a muffled sob. At last he heard the telltale creak of bed-ropes, and Eira’s steady footsteps coming to the door. A sliver of light grew to a pool in the gloom of the passageway as she opened it.

‘Come in, my lord: she is ready,’ she said gently.

Aragorn stepped across the threshold and bowed respectfully to the lady in the bed. Freya was propped against the headboard with several cushions behind her. Her knees were bent and the sheet draped over them, but it had been untucked from the foot of the bed and folded back to show her bare toes where they sank into the mattress.

‘Lady, I hope to help you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me: I know this is not the custom of your folk.’

‘I have four daughters, Lord Aragorn,’ Freya said hoarsely. Her voice quavered, but it was firm with resolve. ‘I wish to witness the day when each of them is wedded and brought healthfully to bed with babes of their own. If there is any hope, I will seize it.’

He smiled comfortingly and drew nearer the bed. Eira was peering out into the hallway, awaiting Randbeorn’s wife and the articles she had requested. Aragorn extended his hand, and was glad when Freya reached to grasp it.

‘There is always hope,’ he assured her. ‘Have you pain?’

‘Only a dull aching,’ she said. ‘And the ordinary tenderness in my… down where… that is…’

He nodded. ‘I understand. But in your lower belly, only a dull aching? May I touch you?’

She stiffened and glanced at her mother-in-law. Eira felt her eyes and tried to smile encouragement. Realizing he had been misunderstood, Aragorn corrected himself. ‘Your belly,’ he said. ‘Straighten your legs, and I will be able to feel what I must through the sheet.’

‘Oh!’ she breathed, and a faint blush of colour rose in her wan cheeks. Had she been less robbed of blood, she would have been crimson with embarrassment. She lowered her knees and smoothed the linen sheet over her lap. Carefully, wishing neither to jar nor startle her, Aragorn sat upon the edge of the bed. Fresh straw crackled beneath him, and for a moment the scent of rue and lavender brought him back to his first night at Grimbeorn’s hearth. He would help her, he resolved. It was not enough merely to try.

Gently he touched his fingertips to her abdomen, feeling for her navel and finding it deftly. Travelling down, he felt the flesh, still soft and distended from its sudden deflation. As he worked, he watched Freya’s face to see when it grew drawn with pain. Only twice did she grimace: when he pressed into the hollow of each hipbone. Beneath the skin and tissue and muscle, he could feel the mass of her womb: more engorged than it ought to be, but not hard with infection. He touched her hand again, and then her brow. There was no fever: Eira had wisely guarded against that by refraining from trying to staunch the bleeding from within as a lesser midwife might well have done.

The door opened wider, and Clothilde came in. She cast a worried look at her sister by marriage, and set down a pitcher of steaming water on the washstand. She had the pot of soap in the crook of her arm, its waxed linen cover still snugly sealed. Behind her came Una, carrying a basket of clean rags.

‘Should I go?’ she asked quietly, looking from her grandmother to the visitor to her mother as if she did not know who ought to decide the matter.

‘No, child,’ said Eira. ‘Not if you wish to learn.’

‘Stay, love,’ Freya murmured, trying to keep her voice from breaking. ‘Tis a comfort to have you with me.’

Clothilde stepped back into the inner corner nearest the foot of the bed, where a squat ceramic stove sat on three stout legs. She opened its latticed iron door and stirred the coals within, sending a ripple of warmth into the air. It seemed that she, too, was reluctant to leave. Aragorn was glad: he would soon have need of someone to go gathering other materials, and he did not wish to press that duty upon Freya’s daughter.

‘All is much as it should be, a week after the birth,’ he said reassuringly, giving his patient another small smile as he rose. He went to the washstand and folded back the thickly broidered cuffs of his cote. He rolled them twice, almost to the elbows, and then shoved up the far thinner cloth of his shirt. He scrubbed his hands, wrists and forearms. There was nothing unusual upon palpation, save that the womb was of a size better suited to the second or third day than the seventh. He might have to make a more invasive examination after all, though he wished to spare Freya both the pain and the mortification of that if he could.

‘I know that Lady Eira has already tried to halt the bleeding with pressure,’ he said. ‘With your leave I will try again. Sometimes luck will smile on a fresh pair of hands.’

The woman nodded, and Eira moved to the other side of the bed. She sat down where her son was wont to lie, and took the hand of his wife. Freya cast grateful eyes upon her.

‘It will go easier on you if you lie back,’ said Aragorn, nodding to Una. Understanding wordlessly, she went to move the pillows as Freya shuffled down in the bed. Eira kept the sheet over her legs, but her bare toes wriggled uneasily as she settled. Aragorn came back to her side, stopping to take the thick edge of piled bedclothes in his hand. He drew the blankets up over Freya’s knees, so that they covered her up onto the thigh. He could remove them again if he had need.

‘This may pain you,’ he said as he sat again and placed the heels of his hands with care. He did not yet apply any force. ‘For that I am sorry, but it is the only way.’

She nodded tersely. She knew how it would hurt: she had endured it before. Freya’s lips were white, so tightly pressed together were they, but her eyes were hard with determination and courage. Such courage, thought Aragorn. It was one of the great wonders of Ëa that women faced the dangers of childbed with such fortitude, in many cases hazarding them night after night throughout their fertile years, all for the sake of bringing children into the world. What love they had, for their offspring and for their husbands, to meet such peril and chance such sacrifice.

‘I will do it now, lady,’ he said softly. Firmly and with careful rhythm, he began to massage Freya’s abdomen. He put pressure most strongly where he felt the inflammation of the tissues, but he worked around those areas as well. Now and then he stopped, letting the heels of his hands rest deep in her flesh. He worked by feel, watching not his hands but his patient’s face. At first she cast her eyes away, making a pretext of staring at her hand where it gripped Eira’s. Then she flicked her gaze to his for a brief moment before closing her eyes. At last she met his and he held them, filling his mind and his heart with calm and encouragement and hope. He put forth thoughts of healing, of fine tears clotting with dark blood that hardened to seal them, of lax muscles tightening and vessels awakened by nature's need quieting again into sleep. He willed the bleeding to cease, even as he willed the woman before him to believe that it could.

‘That’s it,’ he murmured. ‘Try to relax. It is not the sinews of your legs and back we wish to tense, but the muscles deep within. Think of your new daughter: how beautiful she is, how perfect. Such tiny feet: the nails no bigger than a trout’s shining scales. Think of Una: once she was every bit as small as Inga is today.’

Freya’s gaze broke from his for a moment, but only so that she could smile up at her nearly-grown daughter, standing now at the head of the bed with a consoling hand on her mother’s right shoulder. ‘Every bit as small,’ she breathed. ‘And how you have grown, my brave one!’

There was a creak of floorboards at the threshold. Aragorn did not need to turn to know that Baldbeorn stood there, his ruddy face now grey with worry. Freya’s eyes moved to him instead, and their love and the apology within them were plain. She feared that she had failed him in falling ill, just as Eira believed she herself had failed them both by being unable to put this right. Neither assessment was just, but it would do no good to argue that now. The best thing that Aragorn could do for them was to restore Freya to health.

Yet there was only so long that either patient or healer could endure such a treatment. At length Freya’s breath was coming shallowly, her eyes watering with pain, and the joints of Aragorn’s hands ached in a deep, pernicious way that they never would have done before their long leagues of freezing exposure. He eased back his palms, lest too sudden a release of pressure should undo any good he might have done.

‘You have changed your cloths for fresh tonight?’ he asked. ‘Just before I came in, once you had washed?’

Baldbeorn muffled a cough of discomfiture with his hand, and Freya closed her eyes in embarrassment. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘How often have you had to change them today?’ Aragorn asked. It was the only way to measure if the bleeding slowed.

‘Every two hours,’ Una answered neatly, sparing her mother the ordeal. She spoke with the calm voice of a practitioner of the arts physic. She would make a good healer when her education was complete. ‘By then they are sodden.’

‘I shall leave it to you to track the time,’ Aragorn said. ‘When two hours have passed, you may judge for us all whether there has been any change in that.’

He straightened his back but did not rise. He was considering his next move. It was a shame that spring had come, he thought. When last he had been here, the yard had been glutted with snow that might have been gathered to make a cold compress. His idle regret was cut short when he remembered that he was in a prosperous household with many strong men constantly in residence, and in a land like his own where winter was long and deep.

‘Have you an ice house?’ he asked, turning at last to Baldbeorn. ‘Is it stocked?’

‘Yes: we have and it is,’ he said in his deep, sombre voice. ‘But why?’

‘I will need a basin of ice, broken into large chips,’ Aragorn instructed. ‘A thick towel, also, and a piece of oilcloth to keep the bed dry. There is some among our baggage, wherever it was put. I regret, dear lady, that I must put you through further unpleasantness,’ he added, facing his patient once more. Already Baldbeorn was striding off: in another breath he could be heard thundering down the stairs. ‘Cold will slow the flow of blood, and reduce the inflammation of the organ and its surrounding tissues. If we can quiet the swelling, it may stem the bleeding.'

Freya nodded bravely, but Clothilde made a sound of unease. ‘She may take a chill,’ she protested.

‘You may stoke the fire,’ said Aragorn. ‘And we can bundle her shoulders and legs in blankets. It will be uncomfortable, but it is certainly worth the attempt.’

‘What else?’ asked Eira, looking far younger than her years as she watched him with utmost trust and fragile hope.

Aragorn caught himself before he could shake his head. He was not given to falsehoods and he had been taught that equivocation in the sickroom did more harm than good, but he did not know how it might be taken if he told them frankly that he did not know. He had but once had a patient whose bleeding did not respond to all that he and Eira had already tried. He had staunched it in the end, but only with the aid of a herb known in the West as Melesta’s Slipper. It was a gold-blossomed plant with leaves of a distinctive blue-green, and it was known to encourage the shrinking of the womb after delivery – though in too potent a dose it was a poison, and it was deadly even in small amounts to an unborn child. Yet like athelas and galenas and a number of other weeds of varying usefulness, this plant was native not to Middle-earth but to Númenor. It was found only in places where the Dúnedain of old had dwelt: it did not grow east of the Hithaeglir, save perhaps in distant Ithilien.

‘Bring the babe, that she might suckle,’ Aragorn said, needing something to fill the silence. Eira was correct in this, also: somehow the consolation of a feeding infant seemed to ease bleeding in the hours after birth and aid in the contracture of the womb. It was not wholly beyond possibility that the same might hold true now. At the very least it would be a comfort and a distraction for Freya when it came time to pack her hips with ice.

Clothilde nodded and slipped away. Eira and Una were helping Freya to sit up again, wrapping her shoulders and upper body snugly in a thick woollen blanket. Aragorn lifted the bedclothes higher so that the lady could draw them almost to her hips. His mind was wandering in the vast vaults of herb-lore stored up within his mind, trying to reason through the puzzle. Perhaps there was some other herb, something indigenous to these lands that a well equipped home might have in supply, that had similar properties to the one he needed. He could not match the desired trait, for he knew of nothing else employed for this purpose. But its other, grimmer characteristics might lead him to the plant he wanted.

It was of no use to consider other weak poisons, for those would not be found in a kitchen or a country herbarium. The use of such medicines was a highly skilled art, perilous and almost never practiced outside of the great citadels of ancient learning. Yet there were herbs that could be used harmlessly in most that would bring evil upon a pregnant woman, and he sifted through these in his mind. He wanted one that did not cause disordered spasms of the womb, but would bring on an early course or cause true contractions to come too soon if taken in sufficient amounts.

A sudden small smile broke upon his lips. ‘Shepherd’s scrip,’ he said. ‘Have you any shepherd’s scrip?’

Una looked bewilderedly to her grandmother, but Eira was nodding. ‘Of course we have,’ she said. ‘It makes a pleasant flavouring in a pasty, and you can add it to—’

Clothilde was coming back into the room with the babe in her arms. Inga was still asleep, though she began to root encouragingly as she was lowered into her mother’s embrace. Freya opened the throat of her smock and tucked her daughter into the shelter of the garment to give her the breast. This at least did not seem to be a cause for discomfiture, even before a man who was but lately known to her. Of that Aragorn was glad.

Now he turned again to Randbeorn’s good wife, who was waiting with the air of one longing to be helpful but unsure what to do next. ‘Fetch a handful of shepherd’s scrip,’ he instructed, demonstrating with his own cupped fingers. ‘The pods if you have them, though the leaves will do. Make of it a strong tea: no more than half a pint of water. The mead you serve at board is a mild one. Have you any twice-brewed or else distilled?’

‘Twice-brewed, yes,’ said Clothilde. ‘There is brandy if you fancy something stronger.’

‘It is not for me, lady,’ Aragorn said with a spark of amusement. ‘Use the brandy: mix one part of it with two parts of the tea, then bring it hither.’

When she was gone, Eira shook her head. ‘Shepherd’s purse has no value as a medicine, Aragorn. It is a foodstuff, though if a woman eats too much of it when she is early in her bearing…’ Her eyes grew great and her mouth formed a knowing circle as she reached his conclusion.

He nodded. ‘I have never used it for this purpose, and I cannot be certain it will help,’ he said, now able to be honest without seeding despair. ‘Yet it cannot harm the Lady Freya now, and it is worth the attempt.’

‘Yes,’ Eira said breathlessly. ‘Yes, it is.’

The wait was a painful one. All three generations of women were nervous, and Aragorn’s own uncertainty was not inconsiderable. Still he kept up a quiet rill of gentle, encouraging talk. He asked of the baby, and Freya spoke for a time as all new mothers do. Then Una stepped in and took hold of the conversation, guiding it deftly through channels clearly favoured by her dam. Eira too was doing her utmost to keep the ailing woman calm and distracted.

At length there came footsteps in the corridor again, but this time they came not from the stairs but from the other side. Knowing who approached, Aragorn rose from the bed and went swiftly to the door, drawing it to a narrow gap that his long body filled almost to the lintel.

Gandalf looked up at him, frowning. ‘I take it you are not going to your bed,’ he said. ‘Not for some hours at least.’

‘I cannot,’ said Aragorn. ‘The wife of Baldbeorn is not well, and I believe I can help her. There have been complications from the birth of their daughter. I will do all I can, and then I shall sleep. When I am through, there will be nothing more to do but wait.’

The wizard studied his face carefully in the diffuse light of the distant candle, but though the furrows in his brow deepened he did not argue. ‘So long as you understand that you need not be the one to sit the vigil, I am content.’

‘Need not and should not,’ Aragorn said. ‘It is strange enough for these good folk to have a man consult in such matters. The more intimate duties I will quite rightly leave to our hostess, whose experience in midwifery is greater than my own. It is only that the situation transgresses the bounds of common knowledge.’

Gandalf gestured in a way that was both dismissive and imploring. ‘Tell me no more,’ he said, rather hastily. ‘A man may consult in such matters at need, but it is no business for wizards; thank my good fortunes! Tend to her. She is blessed to have one of your skill and education at her bedside in such an hour. Then come to bed. Remember your own body as soon as you may.’

Aragorn gave a tired little smile and inclined his head obediently. Gandalf reached to clap him on the elbow, and then retreated back towards the room that belonged to Sigbeorn.

Baldbeorn and Clothilde returned at the same time: one with a huge wooden bowl piled high with chunks of ice, and the other with a steaming teapot and a mug. For a time Aragorn was busy, piling the towel loosely with ice and folding it into a pad. Freya drank of the strange toddy, though she grimaced with distaste at the first bitter mouthful. She sipped it more eagerly once the pack of ice was in place around her hips and across her lower abdomen, for the warmth was welcome. Though she shuddered at the first contact with the slowly seeping meltwater, she did not complain. Eira yielded up her place to Baldbeorn, who sat up against the headboard with his arm about his wife’s blanketed shoulders that he might hold her close. His discomfort with these proceedings and his presence before them was obvious in his eyes, but nowhere in his manner. He was a good man, and determined. He would stand with his wife whatever his personal unease.

The cold would be taking effect, and the liquor and the herbal infusion reaching her blood: three different treatments all designed to quiet her womb. But the fourth was no longer feasible: sated, Inga had released her latch upon her mother and she was now blinking sleepily as Freya burped her. It would have been better, Aragorn realized too late, to wait to feed the child while the rest was happening.

Yet here again circumstances favoured him. He turned to Clothilde. ‘Does Svala still take the breast?’ he asked quietly. He had forsaken his place on the edge of the bed, and was now leaning against the tall footboard to take the pressure off of his mending ankle.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the lady, as if unsure she had heard him aright.

‘She is but seven months by my guess. Is she yet unweaned?’ he rephrased, somewhat more delicately.

‘Yes,’ Clothilde answered with the swiftness of one who is surprised into a reply to an unimagined question. ‘She takes a taste of honey-cake now and then, and she is almost immorally fond of butter, but—’

‘Have you fed her in the last four hours?’ pressed Aragorn. The matter was too important for him to worry over the rudeness of interrupting.

‘No…’ Now she spoke with the hesitancy of a woman who has no idea where the line of questioning might lead, but only that it was treading upon grounds usually reserved for the family. ‘I was about to give her the bedtime feeding when Una fetched me.’

This was what he had hoped to hear, and in his moment of elation it was hard not to laugh aloud. ‘Will you allow Freya to feed her?’ Aragorn asked, almost breathless. Among his own people this was common practice: for sisters or dear friends to share the feeding of their infants when one or the other was otherwise occupied, or for some reason abroad. He did not know what the Beornings thought of it.

‘Why, yes! I’ve fed Inga,’ said Clothilde. Then she flushed prettily, no longer shamed but only rather shy. ‘Do you think it will help her?’

‘I do,’ said Aragorn earnestly. A healthy babe of seven months would have a much greater capacity than a small newborn: he hoped that Svala might suckle until Freya was dry. ‘Please bring her. Wake her if you must.’

Svala was brought with all speed from wherever she had been biding. Aragorn scarcely had time to explain himself to Freya when the smiling child was in the room. She was not at all sleepy, but indeed feeling quite sociable. She babbled happily at the sight of her grandmother, and put her arms out to Una at once. Instead her mother brought her to the bed, and the maiden collected her newest sister and retreated to a chair near the stove to rock her.

Svala was at first reluctant to nurse: she kept trying to sit up in Freya’s arms. She looked enormous, held as the much smaller babe had been, and when she planted one plump foot in Freya’s belly where the smock was darkened with wetness from the ice-filled towel below, Baldbeorn opened his mouth in obvious worry. When he saw that Eira and Aragorn were both unconcerned, the tension ebbed a little from his shoulders, and he used his broad left hand to help Freya wrangle Svala down into the proper position. Once there, she knew what was offered and she took it hungrily, reaching up to toy with Freya’s trailing plait as she suckled. Her bright eyes rolled around, trying to watch everyone at once, but she was hungry and soon she fell to feeding in earnest.

Aragorn replenished the ice around Freya’s hips once, after an interval of half an hour without. She drank three cups of the unproven concoction, though by the end it was clearly a great effort to do so.  Long since satiated, Svala slept at the foot of the bed, flat on her back with arms and legs akimbo. Neither Grimbeorn nor his other sons drew near the room, but Baldbeorn did not move from his wife’s side. Soon Freya was drowsing with her head on his shoulder. By then there was no more to be done, save to help her out of her sodden shift and put right the bed.

‘It is two hours,’ Una said softly, just as Aragorn was about to speak. Freya stirred at the sound of her voice, and Clothilde bent to take the baby from her niece.

‘We two will withdraw,’ Aragorn said, nodding to Baldbeorn. The other man began gently disentangling himself from his wife. ‘She may change her wet garment also, and the bed should be made with a fresh top sheet. I think the other has escaped a wetting. When you are finished, call for me: I will be waiting without.’

Eira assented, and began giving quiet instructions so as not to wake the two babies. Aragorn held the door that Baldbeorn might pass through it first. In the corridor all was dark. The candle in its sconce had been snuffed, and from the children’s rooms came no light at all; only the soft huffs and sighs of sleep. There was a single band of candlelight up the passage on the other side: in Sigbeorn’s chamber, Gandalf was awake. From the same direction came the sonorous snores of a man who, having worked hard and worried much, was asleep at last. Whether it was Grimbeorn or his second son Aragorn did not know.

A strong grip closed upon his forearm, and there was a lancing pain in the snarl of scars where Gollum’s bites had at last been cleansed of infection only a week before. Baldbeorn’s voice came low and fervent in the darkness.

‘Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chief of the West and lord of ancient lineage,’ he said; ‘for what you have done this night there can be no repayment.’

‘Then all is indeed repaid,’ said Aragorn. ‘For in my own hour of desperate need you gave me warmth and sustenance, and so life. I only wish that I could offer you more surety. We do not yet know if my labours shall bear any fruit.’

‘They will. They have,’ said Baldbeorn, and his voice was now thick with inexpressible feeling. ‘Even if Freya… even if she does not… does not recover, now my mother will not blame herself. If the worst should indeed befall us, at least each one of us will have the comfort that all that could have been done was done, and more. We will all be able to live with the loss, as might not otherwise have been. Yet I do not think it will come to that. Beyond that door you have left nothing but hope.’

For a moment there was silence, Aragorn incapable of speech and Baldbeorn apparently finished. Then the heir of Grimbeorn added in a deadpan voice; ‘Hope, and a wet length of oilcloth.’

Aragorn could not help himself: he laughed. It was only a chuckle, judiciously muted out of deference to the sleeping children nearby, but it warmed his heart. When Baldbeorn too let out a low chortle, the corridor seemed markedly less dark and the stakes of Una’s exam less mortal. Baldbeorn clapped Aragorn’s other shoulder, and Aragorn reached with his left hand to hold Baldbeorn’s elbow. The moment of camaraderie lingered only briefly, for the door opened and Clothilde beckoned Aragorn in. Baldbeorn looked over the dainty woman’s head, caught a glimpse of the scarlet rags in his daughter’s hands and turned hastily away. He cleared his throat.

‘I am going to fetch a tray of mead,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘We could all use a taste, I think.’

‘We could,’ Aragorn agreed decisively, and he went into the room.

Una looked to him at once, wide-eyed. Her mane of dark curls was wild about her head, and she looked both older and younger than her age: childlike with hope and womanly in her reasoned certainty.

‘It is less,’ she said, nodding to the stained cloths. ‘I know that it is less. Look: there is white cloth yet showing. That has not happened once, not in all these days.’

Joy and relief burst bright in Aragorn’s chest, but he was too well-versed in the vagaries of mortal bodies to risk unmasking them wholly and breeding high expectations that might yet prove false. Yet he did smile. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That is the most promising sign yet.’ He looked to the bed, where Freya lay tucked warmly to her chin. Already she was drifting in half-waking dreams. ‘Let her sleep, but when she wakes – or the babe wakes her – check again. There will be some showing of blood for the next day or so, even if we have stopped it entirely. Yet if it is not significant we will know she is well.’

Una nodded, but she could not speak. She was weeping silently, stalwartly. Eira hugged her shoulders and guided her to the stove to fling the bloody cloths on the fire. Even before the flames flared, the aged woman was washing her granddaughter’s hands as tenderly as she must have bathed Inga on the day of her birth.

Aragorn turned to Clothilde. ‘Will you sit the vigil with her?’ he asked. ‘Baldbeorn should not bide here tonight, for there will be work to do that is beyond his scope.’

‘I will,’ said the lady. ‘Send him to bed with his brother, and you should go to your own rest. I know little of the use of arcane herbs and I have no healing touch, but I do know the intricacies of nursing.’

‘She must be kept warm and quiet,’ said Aragorn. ‘Do not allow her to rise, and do not allow her to sit. If needful she may leave bed to use the chamber pot, but someone must walk with her and hold her if she does. When the babe is hungry, let Freya feed her – Svala, too, if she does not sleep through the night. Give her water when she will take it, but no food tonight. In the morning, if all is well, she may eat as heartily as she is able: cheer her with that thought if her stomach troubles her. If anything changes, or the bleeding does not abate, wake me at once.’

From Clothilde he received a not, and Eira and Una were listening as well. When he finished, the wife of Grimbeorn hugged her granddaughter to her and kissed her fair brow. ‘You too must away to bed, my strong girl,’ she said. Una parted her lips to protest, but Eira shook her head. ‘You have done good work, but it is time to rest.’

‘A healer must know when to take stock of her own needs, as well as the needs of those in her care,’ Aragorn affirmed quietly. ‘You can do nothing for your patients if you are yourself prostrate with hunger or exhaustion.’ He went to her and clasped her shoulders, looking down into her eyes with earnest admiration. ‘Sleep well, child of Baldbeorn son of Grimbeorn. You are worthy of your birthright tonight: Beorn himself did not surpass your courage, though his may have been its equal.’

Una smiled, at first tremulously and then with well-earned pride. ‘Thank you, Chief of the West, for tending to my mother,’ she said. ‘If ever you have need of my aid, Una daughter of Freya and of Baldbeorn shall be yours to command.’

It was a grave pledge, and a valiant one. Aragorn bowed his head in deep respect. ‘I am honoured by your faith, lady. I thank you.’ Then he raised his eyes again and smiled as he released one arm and patted the other paternally. ‘Now to bed!’ he said cheerily.

‘And you as well,’ Una scolded, wagging her finger at him as she sidled for the door. ‘You may not be half-frozen or covered in chilblains now, but you’re still gaunt and grim-faced when you don’t take a moment to smile!’

‘Una!’ Eira huffed, but the girl was gone. Aragorn shrugged his shoulders to show that he took no offence. Eira sighed. ‘That child,’ she said. ‘She’s always had a streak of impudence, but she’ll be quite insufferable now!’

‘She has earned it,’ said Aragorn. ‘Tonight was not the first night she stood unwavering and did all she could, watching her mother fading by degrees.’

‘No,’ Eira said, and her pride in her progeny shone forth. ‘No, it was not.’

So Aragorn took his leave, the offer of mead forgotten, and went to join Gandalf in the room made vacant for them. It was a delicious thing to undress to his linens and stretch out in the bed – indeed big enough to accommodate tall, husky Sigbeorn and a lively young wife, if ever he settled upon one. Gandalf had no sharp words for the Ranger, but only one quiet question about Freya’s condition. Side by side on the thick straw mattress with the warm bedding over them, they each slept long and deep.