The Crippled Angel. Sara Douglass

       Prologue Friday 1st March 1381

      The chamber was close and warm, its windows closed, its air thick with the scent of herbs.

      There was silence, save for the moans of the woman squatting between two midwives before the roaring fire in the hearth.

      The woman giving birth was naked; her skin gleamed with sweat, while her unbound hair had soaked into glistening strings clinging to her shoulders and back. The midwives bent over her, holding bunches of soothing herbs close to her nostrils and open mouth, rubbing the small of her back encouragingly.

      They did not murmur instructions to her, for Marie was of their own and knew what was happening both to her own body and to the baby it was trying to expel.

      Two other women stood half shadowed on each side of the shuttered windows. To one side stood Catherine of France, daughter of the insane Louis and the adventurous Isabeau de Bavière, her attention as much on her silent companion as on the labouring Marie.

      Slightly distanced from her stood Joan of Arc, Maid of France, staring intently at the woman struggling to give birth. Her face, if possible, was even more tortured than that of Marie.

      She was terrified of what Marie was about to birth.

      Joan

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