"This is all very well," retorted Melani, "but you still have not explained to me how I am supposed to get away from the Deputy Steward's lodgings. I'd not want to run the risk of having to provide real assistance throughout the delivery and then having to return empty-handed."
"Trust me," murmured Cloridia, for we were already approaching the gate. "There's no time to explain it to you now, but I'll make sure you know when the time comes to leave me."
"But…" Atto tried to say.
"Hush, now."
"And what about me?" I asked.
"You, pretend to take your leave of us and, while I distract the boy who's driving the barouche, put on your cape and get onto the back axle."
My sweet wife had not thought any disguise necessary for me; ah yes, I thought with a trace of melancholy, my small size made it easy for me to slip in concealed…
Once they had all got down from the barouche, I leapt up as swiftly and stealthily as possible and hid myself behind it. Fortunately, I thought with a smile, the presence of my two little ones in the barouche, well behaved but not without vivacity, created so much noise that it helped keep my presence hidden from the young driver.
When the carriage entered the palace courtyard, 1 stretched the cape even further over my head. The guards let us pass with a nod.
As Gloridia had advised us, the Deputy Steward and his wife, who had come from Milan not long before the pregnancy to take up service with the Spada family, were temporarily lodging in a small room on the ground floor, which enabled them to keep an eye on the entrance to the palace, now that the servants had all been sent to the wedding at Villa Spada.
I waited hidden in the coach-house. As agreed, Cloridia soon announced that she had left a purse in the carriage and, while the Deputy Steward and Melani took the service entrance to go to the woman in labour, she brought me surreptitiously in. We went up to the first floor. First, I tried out the key ring lent to us by Ugonio. As expected, I did not need to try many times and soon found the right keys. The locks on the doors yielded quietly one after another.
"Wait here and don't make a sound," my wife commanded me, kissing my forehead. "Soon I shall send you Mistress Midwife Melani. Keep a lookout here," said she, opening a window in the wide corridor which gave onto the inner courtyard still sunk in darkness. "Here's what I thought when I came to this place yesterday."
From this window, Cloridia showed me, I could see almost everything that was happening in the room where the woman was giving birth. This would be extremely useful. While we were searching, we could keep a constant check on the Deputy Steward's presence near his wife and thus be sure that the coast was clear. I had a quick look: Atto and the Deputy Steward were down there and I could descry the woman lying on the bed. I smiled seeing Abbot Melani got up like that: he must be on tenterhooks waiting for Cloridia. To keep up appearances, he was removing the equipment from the bag and arranging it by the woman's bedside. Yet he held each item disgustedly with his fingertips, as though he were picking up dead rats.
Cloridia returned downstairs, leaving me in the dark, and entered the Deputy Steward's lodgings. I saw her take three bolsters and arrange them on the floor. Then, to my great surprise, she made the pregnant woman lie down there on her back. She arranged the three cushions carefully under her so that her head hung back towards the floor.
The posture was quite uncomfortable and the poor woman was complaining, but Cloridia made matters even more difficult for her, or so it seemed to my untrained eyes, by bending her knees so that her feet ended up under her back, as in the drawing which I am reproducing below.
"How hot it is in here!" exclaimed Cloridia, opening the window of the room, so that from my lookout I could hear as well as see all that was taking place within.
"But is it really necessary for my wife to give birth in that position?" moaned the Deputy Steward, who could not bear to see his wife bent in such a horrid posture.
"'Tis surely not my fault if your wife is so fat. All the lard in her paunch compresses the womb and makes it even tighter. Only thus can the woman's uterus be dilated sufficiently for her to be able to give birth easily, however fat and corpulent she may be."
"And how is that?" asked the husband dubiously, turning also to Atto, who at once turned his eyes elsewhere with a vague expression on his face.
"Simple: the fat on the body spreads towards the sides," my wife replied, as though this were all perfectly obvious, "so that the infant is not prevented from coming out, as would happen if the birth seat were used, because the belly and the full weight of the fat and the intestines would compress the womb below and restrict the opening for the child no little, thus obstructing the delivery."
With the groaning woman lying thus arranged, Cloridia ordered the Deputy Steward and Abbot Melani (who, however, kept his gaze well averted from the woman's private parts) to hold her firm by both arms while she herself knelt between her legs, with a cushion under her own knees.
She covered the woman's pudenda and got our eldest daughter to hand her a terracotta jar full of oil of white lilies, with which she anointed both her hands and forearms and began to smear her patient's genitals and belly. Then with the greatest care, she thrust her right hand into the woman's privates and abundantly softened the insides with oil. Lastly, she ordered her to be turned on one side and also anointed the point four fingers above the ending of the back, known as the little tail or coccyx, which in childbirth sticks out no little, as I had occasion to observe when Cloridia gave birth to our two little daughters. She then made a movement with her hand which drew a resounding howl from the poor mother-to-be.
"Heavens, the canal really is narrow," complained Cloridia. "My friend," she then commanded, turning to Abbot Melani. "Go and get me the oil of yellow violets which is inside that glass jar."
She continued as before and then thought the time ripe to give our daughters a little lesson in obstetrics.
"If the woman in labour has a tight womb, one anoints freely and unrestrictedly with oil of yellow violets. And since one or ten applications of ointment cannot compensate for natural defects, one may use up to twenty or thirty, until — as Hippocrates and Avicenna proposed — art corrects nature. Avicenna also favours squirting a few drops of oil right inside the womb, the better to relax the internal parts."
The children paid attention, while the Deputy Steward and his wife, with her face all covered in perspiration, looked at one another full of admiration and gratitude for the knowledge of so fine, and renowned, a midwife.
I was beginning to fume: Cloridia had promised to free Abbot Melani, but as yet nothing was happening. And I could see that Atto, too, was in a state of growing agitation, casting eloquent winks in my consort's direction.
"Alas, there is not enough of this oil," said Cloridia. "My dear, please go and fetch the other bottle which I left in the bag."
Atto obeyed. When he returned, Cloridia looked at him with a worried expression.
"M'dear, you seem unwell."
"Well, I really…" whined Atto who did not know what Cloridia was getting at.
My wife began to scrutinise him attentively and asked: "Are you aware of any slight feelings of faintness? Lassitude? Do you feel confused?"
Abbot Melani returned Cloridia's inquiring gaze with an uncertain expression and answered her fusillade of questions vaguely. Then suddenly my consort rose and put her hands around his neck. Atto, taken by surprise, opened his eyes wide and tried instinctively to defend himself, while Clorida energetically opened his blouse and plunged her nose in, pretending to observe the breasts.