#1330s

Remembering

Katarina Matintytär

1319–1339

1331, part 2

Later in 1331, Margery discovers she's pregnant again!

She's feeling extra tired this pregnancy and is resting a lot.

When Edward isn't playing with the animals or helping out on the farm, he's at his brothers grave. He loves talking to him and sometimes will sit there for hours.

He's started to develop an interest in death and begs Margery to take him to the village cemetery. She reluctantly agrees and Edward can't wait.

1339 – Day 1 – Wozny Farm

When she falls pregnant with her third child more than a year after losing first Imelda and then her second daughter, Theodora is filled with a sense of foreboding. She tries to tell herself that it is nothing, just her previous experiences haunting her and poisoning her against holding out too much hope, but she can’t shake that feeling of dread. They have always been isolated up here, but now, in deep winter, she feels positively cut off from anything but the direct vicinity of their hut. Even visiting their closest neighbours is a challenge they don’t often attempt.

That, at least, is a tangible concern, unlike her vague sense of some looming catastrophe. They also don’t have a lot of food stored for winter and are already rationing. Will she even have enough to eat to bear and nurse a healthy child?

She blames her unease and the lack of food when her pregnancy turns out to be far worse than her previous two. Those were difficult experiences, but now, in addition to swollen feet and nausea, she is faced with frequent dizziness – sometimes so bad she can hardly see straight – headaches, and even swellings in her hands. She tries to take herbal remedies, but now, in winter, even those are scarce. Balwin tries to help her, too, by taking over part of her work and massaging her hands and feet, but that is merely a temporary relief.

When her daughter is finally born in March, she is far too small, but blessedly alive. “I almost didn’t believe it possible”, she says to her husband with a tired smile, to which he responds with a kiss to her temple.

“I had full faith in you.”

He tries to hide his worry over how light little Marlana feels when he scoops her up in his arms to settle her in her crib, already resolving to give up part of his own food to his wife so she can more quickly regain her health and better nurse their daughter. Maybe, if he does that, everything will be well.

And for a moment, it looks like it will be – until he is awoken that night by his wife convulsing beside him as if possessed, gasping for air. It all happens so quickly that he doesn’t know what to do, other than to try to restrain her and to tell her that she must fight whatever is happening to her, that she needs to come back to herself, that she must breathe.

It is no use. Whatever demon possesses her, it steals the air from her lungs, until she is lying still on their bed, an agonized look on her face. Only a tinny wail, perhaps brought about by his shouts, shakes him out of his shock. And even as he stumbles over to the crib to check on his daughter, it still hasn’t quite sunk in that his wife, who when they went to sleep seemed fine, is now dead, in the middle of winter, when he won’t even be able to bury her.

With no mother to nurse her and no neighbours close by that would be able to help, Balwin tries his best to feed his daughter something. But he is unable to save her, just like he was unable to save his wife. Despite his best efforts, all he can do it to watch her, already too small, waste away before his eyes, until she, too, passes away, leaving him alone in the cottage that he and Theodora were supposed to build a family in.