The Crow God's Girl Read Online Free PDF

up behind her, and her smile was pure pleasure now, the smile of one who loved to see her work admired.
    “It’s lovely,” Kate said.
    ““It’s the afterbirths. I take them. It’s my fee, you might say. They have bits of the spirits in them, and I bury them in the garden and how they do make my garden grow.”
    The afterbirths... Kate’s sense of pleasure faded as she belatedly understood. I will never understand this place, never in a lifetime . Unperturbed, Callia gestured her to sit, and she sat at the thick wooden bench at the uneven table. She cast one more glance out the garden, and then looked around.
    The kitchen was simple and comfortable. Kate thought of her mother’s high-tech kitchen with its gleaming appliances and hanging racks, the expensive butcher block table with the granite countertop. Callia had a fireplace with an iron hob, two hollowed out places for baking bread, a heavy crock with a crooked lid. A squat teakettle hissed on the fire. A small cupboard held her dishes.
    Callia pulled out two big mugs and tossed i n vesh leaves, and poured water , the fragrance of the herbs suddenly sharpening Kate’s hunger. Her mouth watered. In her experience, vesh never tasted as good as it smelled, but she was eager for it at that moment. Callia pushed over the mug and she sipped, wincing as she burned her lips. She blew across the liquid, forcing herself to wait before she tried again. Callia gave an indulgent smile and rummaged for a small brown jug, unstoppered it and poured a dollop into her vesh. Kate could smell the spirits. The midwife drank and smacked her lips.
    “Just the thing,” she said. “So the Terrick heir has found a wife. Kett Mosslin.”
    “Just Kate,” Kate said.
    Callia cast a professional eye over her and frowned. “Slight you are, but strong and in good health. I think the grass god’s daughter and I will have no trouble pulling babies from your womb.”
    Kate gave a slight intake of breath. That’s right. No pill, no birth control–sex here meant babies right away.
    And the only person who would attend her birth was a drunken midwife. Joy.
    “Do you deliver all the babies in Terrick?” she asked hopefully. Maybe there was someone else.
    Callia cackled and closed one eye. “There hasn’t been a baby in Terrick that I haven’t delivered in more than five and twenty years. My dam was the midwife before me. If I had a daughter she’d be the midwife after me, but I had none.”
    “Oh.” Oh well. Better start teaching people about handwashing. She sipped. Her vesh had cooled down some.
    “I delivered all the children of Lady Beatra that is, even the three wee ones who never drew breath, aye and the one that almost took the lady with him. I delivered even Alfanye, the eldest girl, though she too died when she was but five summers, and nursed her through the fever that took her in the end. I will deliver your children too, Kett Moslin of Terrick, I give you my word.”
    Three wee ones. Lady Beatra had lost three babies in childbirth and almost died herself. Colar had not told her that. Didn’t they matter? Or was it the custom not to speak of babies that didn’t live? Dammit Colar, she thought crossly. I need to talk to you. With some bitterness she thought of how she had been there for him when he needed to understand something. Now he expected her to just pick things up by – by osmosis.
    Callia looked at her with slyness.
    “I’ve heard things about you, Kett Mosslin.”
    “You can just call me Kett.”
    “The householders, they come to the village on market days and on lord days, and they talk.”
    “What do they say?”
    Callia giggled, and leaned forward. “Oh, you know how householders are. Gossips. Some say you are fast, because you wear trousers and ride astride. Some whisper villainy about you, that you are not fit for the lord’s son. Others, now, these are the ones I believe, say you are a good girl, and you only want guidance.”
    Kate tried to push