Shield of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman

silence while both the bleeding churl and the dame looked up with gaping jaws, nonplussed.
    Her eyes, small and red as ladybugs, suddenly fastened on me and she jerked me rudely to the ground.
    “Come on,” she ordered. “You’re a boy, not a man, so canon law doesn’t apply. If I don’t get help, Maud will die.”
    Now the screams from the hut took over to make my skin crawl. I cast a beseeching look at Enoch as Dame Aggie dragged me inside the shack. Neither of us could stand upright in the thick dark space and my ears split, my nose quivered and my stomach lurched at the sound and stench of the place. Gradually I saw a figure rolling on the floor at my feet, clutching a great mound on her belly.
    “Oh, God help me!” the figure cried. “Where’s Lucina? Lucina, come help me! Anybody, make the pain stop!”
    “Don’t worry, dear,” Aggie soothed, “I’ve got help at last, a very experienced young leecher.” Her tone was crisp. “You, boy, kneel down and take two corners of the blanket.”
    I knelt.
    “Now lift when I say.”
    I got back to my feet, holding the corners. At her signal I tried to lift and nothing happened.
    “Lift, you fool!”
    Again I tugged along with the dame, but her side went up alone and Maud fell at my feet.
    “Do you need a few lashes to give you strength? Up, I say!”
    Terrified, I lifted with force I didn’t know I had and Maud hung between us on a hammock, screaming ever louder in a series of spasms. We were killing her sure and my knees knocked in panic.
    “Heave!” bawled the dame.
    And I heaved as Maud flew high and fair broke my arms in her fall.
    “Heave!”
    Again we tossed her like a pulpy rock, up and down, up and down, while her stomach began strange gyrations.
    “Now, lower her easy.”
    I did.
    “Now sit on her stomach and get in rhythm.”
    “I’ll hurt her,” I whimpered.
    “Sit on her stomach!”
    I sat.
    “
Up!
Lay on sore.
Up!
Lay on sore.”
    I felt the lump moving under me and closed my eyes.
    “Stop, that’s enough. Come help me here.”
    Too cowed to protest, I crawled to Maud’s lower end and witnessed a huge dark mouth stretch wide, then spit a waxy bag in a torrent of slime and blood while Aggie pulled and pulled. The bag was fastened inside by a long piece of gut which Aggie snapped with her teeth.
    “Lordy Maud, it’s twins born in their own caul. Was ever such a blessing? Look, darling, twins!”
    Aggie ripped at the caul with a knife and lifted two wormy creatures as I leaned forward to see what they might be.
    I gasped aloud.
    “Get out of here!” Dame Aggie snarled viciously.
    “But—” I said, too dazed to move.
    “And not a word!”
    “But—” I repeated in a stupor.
    “Here’s your payment. Don’t let me see your silly face when I come out or you’ll be sorry.”
    Still toty I felt something thrust in my hand and was suddenly in bright light holding the bloody caul, which looked like a boar’s liver.
    “Augh!” I dropped it in disgust.
    “Pick it up and let’s go,” Enoch commanded sharply.
    Reluctantly I obeyed and soon we were riding rapidly away. When we were well beyond earshot, Enoch questioned me closely upon what had transpired for he’d never seen a baby be born. I described the revolting details as best I could and at last reached the terrifying mystery.
    “And when I leaned to look closely, Enoch, one babe looked normal though hideous ugly, but the other had only two holes where his nose should have been.”
    I turned anxiously to see his reaction.
    “That explains it, certes, for otherwise the old dame would never have give up the caul. She was buyin’ yer silence.”
    “About the freak?”
    “Aye, partly. Worse for Maud be the fact that her secret’s out. When one twin shaws a marked difference fram the other, ye can be sure that twa sires bred the mare.”
    “What?”
    “There’s been two bittern booming in the mire. Adultery, my lad, simple adultery.”
    Adultery! One of the deadly sins, I