Excerpts from
In the Courts of Power
By Helle Stangerup
They laid the child in Christina´s arms. A small creature with reddish skin, with arms, legs, hands, feet, ten tiny fingers. His hand closed around her finger. He cried, and she lifted him to her cheek and felt him against her skin. It was an incomprehensible miracle.
Voices were speaking around her. ´Her Grace is a strong woman ... an easy birth . . .´ There was the howling of the gale, and torches, and flames from the fire; and his little body against hers, his little head on her naked shoulder, his warmth against hers. She held him with both hands, his screams changed to little whimpers and as he slept she thought how painful it must be to be born. She swore a holy oath that nothing human should ever take him from her.
There were sounds again; she opened her eyes; Franz stood there. He was hearing the witnesses´ assurances that the child had been born of her body. She had been married to him for nineteen months, during which time her coldness had slowly abated. It changed, though into something less than love. What was it? Tenderness? Yes, and pleasure in seeing him coming towards her, in hearing his step, in talking with him of architecture and art. Christina had come to know him, this wistful, inquiring man.
When Franz took the child in his arms she saw tears of joy run down his cheeks; and at that moment she loved him. It came in a brief flash and she found herself hoping that she would finally be able to force her feelings away from what was lost, that this moment could be lasting.
She heard a booming sound. The cannon were saluting from the battlements out into the snowstorm, while the midwife massaged her breasts with crushed snowdrop bulbs to ease the tension and release the milk. She had given the dukedom an heir. But it was the child, her little boy, who slept in her arms.
Not only were all her pains forgotten. They had given her love; different, more selfless and perhaps even stronger than the love that had once given her pain.
From Helle Stangerup: In the Courts of Power, Macmillan London, 1987
Translated by Anne Born
|
|
