The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding Page A

all.'
    'No physician, but people about here say that she has more knowledge than any Latin-speaking doctor of medicine in all of
Copenhagen.'
    In the pause before the next pain came they prayed together. And when she rose from her knees he wrapped her shawl about her,
placed pillows on the bed, made her comfortable as he could. He made to go downstairs to prepare a tisane but she would not
let him at first, would not let him leave her alone in the room. He had to tear her hands from him and hold them by her sides
before he could free himself from her, and then he went down and called to Hans, and went to the neighbouring women's houses
to get them to come and help, and once they were with her and there seemed to be some relief or at least a pattern to the
pains, he went out and walked a long way through iced and empty streets.
    He had no sense of how long he was gone. There was little enough light in the sky, less to penetrate the narrow gap between
the old houses that leaned towards one another overhead. The darkening of the end of day was scarcely perceptible save in
the intensifying glow of candles and firelight from the windows he passed. He walked slowly, watching the ground, for the
dark ice was deceptive and it was easy to slip. Once or twice he hovered before the rumble of noise from an inn or beer cellar.
The idea of warmth enticed him, the thought of a shot of liquor spreading its warmth inside him, but each time he drew back
thinking that he could not take the press of people. Such a crush of men you found in a bar, such brightness of face and voice.
He was not a man for crowds, he had spent too much of his life apart from them and his soul needed space about it. So he walked
to the water. That was what one did in that crowded city, one walked to the water for calm. He walked north until he had reached
the ramparts and put all the houses behind him, and stood at the edge and gazed into space, a long view out beyond ice-bound
ships into the blankness that had been sea, stood and thought until the wind cut through to his bones, and only then turned
back, guilty for the stolen time.
    When he came to the midwife's house he knocked at the door, and waited a long time until he heard a clatter on the stairs
inside and a younger woman came and answered who he saw must be Kirsten Pedersdatter's daughter, so like her she was, only
younger and her face a little plumper, more flesh about the teeth.
    'My name is Thomas Cave. My wife is in urgent need of your mother, at least I guess that Mistress Pedersdatter is your mother.'
The likeness in the young woman's face was so complete that he wondered that any father, any man, could have had a part in
the making of her.
    'My mother is out. She was called away.'
    'Will you tell her then soon as she comes back?'
    'I cannot say when that will be.'
    'Tell her anyway. Tell her we need her to come.' Almost he had asked the daughter to come instead, as if she must have inherited
her mother's cunning along with her features.
    'Wait one moment.' She left him standing at the door and disappeared down the dark passage that ran beside the stairs, came
back a few minutes later with something in her hand. 'I think she would give you this for your wife.'
    'What is it?
    'For the pain. If it becomes very bad.'
    The faces of the women at the house barely registered his return. He felt that they did not care that he had been gone or
for how long, as if he was quite irrelevant to the event. Only Johanne wished to see him. She was walking about the room,
her face taut, a glitter in her eyes.
    She put out a hand to him. 'You went out. I told you not to go.'
    'I went to look for Mistress Pedersdatter.'
    'You were gone such a long time.'
    'It is the state you are in, my dear, that makes a few minutes seem like an hour.'
    At that moment a wave of pain broke in her and she gasped and bent forward across the bed and held her weight up on clenched
fists that dug into the covers. She did