The Red Tent

Her name was Hatnuf, and she was in a bad way. Her first baby had been born dead—full-sized and perfect in every feature, but lifeless. After years of miscarrying, another child had finally taken root, but she faced this labor in terror, and after a full day of travail, the pains had not advanced the baby’s progress. Meryt was in attendance, and the lady of the house had sent for a physician-priest, who chanted prayers and hung the room with amulets and set a pile of herbs and goat dung to smoking while Hatnuf crouched over it.

But the smell had caused the mother to faint, and in falling, the girl cut her forehead and bled. After that, Ruddedit banished the doctor from the room and had him wait outside the front door, where he recited incantations in the nasal drone of a priest. Day turned to night again, and night began to brighten to another dawn, and still the pains did not abate, nor did the baby move. Hatnuf, the lady’s only daughter, was nearly dead with fear and pain when Meryt suggested I be summoned.

This time, it was not a matter of being asked. Meryt appeared at the doorway of my garden hut with Ruddedit standing in the dawn’s light behind her. Weariness barely dimmed the beauty in a face no longer young. “Den-ner,” she said, in the accents of Egypt, “you must come and do what you can for my child. We have nothing left to try. The smell of Anubis is in the birth chamber already. Bring your kit and follow me.”

Meryt quickly told me the story, and I grabbed a few herbs I’d been drying in the rafters of my shed. The lady was nearly running. I barely had time to realize that I was out of the garden. We walked past the front of Nakht-re’s house, and I remembered the day I first saw the place, a lifetime earlier. Sunlight caught the gold-tipped flagpoles in front of the great temple, where banners hung lifeless in the still of the dawn. Ruddedit’s house was just on the other side of the temple, so it took no time to reach the antechamber where Hatnuf lay whimpering on the floor, surrounded by the servants of the house, who were nearly as exhausted as the laboring mother.

Death was in the room. I caught sight of him in the shadows beneath a statue of Bes, the friendly-grotesque guardian of children, who seemed to grimace at his own powerlessness here.

Ruddedit introduced me to her daughter, who looked up at me with empty eyes, but did as I asked. She moved to her side so I could reach an oiled hand up to the womb, but I felt no sign of the baby’s head. The room was very still as the women waited to see what I would do or ask of them.

The dog-shaped shadow of death stirred, sensing my dismay. But his eagerness only made me angry. I cursed at his bark and his tail and his very mother. I did this in my native tongue, which sounded harsh even to me after so many years of Egyptian words in my ears. Meryt and the others thought I uttered a secret charm, and murmured approval. Even Hatnuf stirred and looked around.

I called for oil and a mortar and mixed the strongest herbs I had at hand: birthwort and an extraction of hemp, both of which sometimes cause the womb to expel its contents early in pregnancy. I did not know if they would work, and worried that the combination might cause damage, but I knew there was nothing else to be tried, for she was dying. The baby was already dead, but there was no reason to give up on the mother.

I applied the mixture, and soon strong pains seized the girl. I had the women help Hatnuf back up to the bricks, where I massaged her belly and tried to push the baby downward. HatnuFs legs could not hold her, and soon Meryt had to take Ruddedit’s place behind her, where she whispered encouragement as I reached in again to feel the baby’s head, which was now near the door.

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bsp; The pains became ceaseless and intolerable to the poor woman on the bricks. Her eyes turned back in her head, and she fell into Meryt’s arms, senseless and unable to push.

It was full daylight now, but the shadow in the room would not let the sun’s rays penetrate the gloom. My cheeks were streaked with tears. I did not know what to do next. Inna had once told a tale of freeing a baby from its dead mother’s womb, but this mother was not dead. I had no other tricks to try, no other herbs.

And then I remembered the song in which Inna had taken such delight, the song which she learned in the hills above Shechem.

“Fear not,” I sang, recalling the melody easily, reaching deep for the words.

Fear not, the time is coming Fear not, your bones are strong Fear not, help is nearly

Fear not, Gula is near

Fear not, the baby is at the door

Fear not, he will live to bring you honor

Fear not, the hands of the midwife are clever

Fear not, the earth is beneath you

Fear not, we have water and salt

Fear not, little mother

Fear not, mother of us al

Meryt joined me in singing the words “Fear not,” sensing the power of the sounds without knowing what she was saying. By the third time, all of the women were singing “Fear not,” and Hatnuf was breathing deeply again.

The baby was delivered soon after, and indeed he was dead. Hatnuf turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, wishing only to join him. But when Meryt began to pack her poor, battered womb with boiled linen, Hatnuf cried out again in the voice of a laboring mother. “There is another child,” said Meryt. “Come, Den-ner,” she said. “Catch the twin.”

With just one more push, Hatnuf delivered a baby utterly unlike his brother. Where the first one was fat and perfect and lifeless, this one was puny and wrinkled and bellowed with the lungs of an ox.

Meryt laughed at the sound, and the room erupted in peals and gales and giggles of relief and joy. The bloody, unwashed, squalling baby was passed from hand to hand, kissed and blessed by every woman there. Ruddedit fell to her knees and laughed and wept with her grandson in her arms. But Hatnuf did not hear us. The little one arrived in a torrent of blood that would not cease. No amount of packing stanched the flow, and within moments of her son’s birth, Hatnuf died, her head on her mother’s lap.

The scene in the room was terrible: the mother dead, one baby dead, a scrawny newborn wailing for the breast that would never feed him. Ruddedit sat, bereaved of her only daughter, a grandmother for the first time. Meryt wept with her mistress, and I crept away, wishing I had never ventured out of my garden.

After the horror of that scene, I thought I would be forbidden to enter another birth chamber. But as Meryt told the story, I alone was responsible for saving the life of the surviving child, who had been born, she said, on a day so hated by Set that it was a miracle he drew a single breath.

Soon messengers from other important houses of Thebes came to the door of Nakht-re’s garden with orders not to return home without Den-ner the midwife. These were the servants of priests and scribes and others who could not be gainsaid. I consented only if Meryt would accompany me, but since she always agreed, we became the midwives of our neighborhood, which comprised many fine houses where the ladies and their servants enjoyed fertile wombs. We were called at least once every seven days, and for every healthy baby, we were rewarded with jewelry, amulets, fine linen, or jars of oil. Meryt and I divided these goods, and though I offered my share to Re-nefer, she insisted that I keep them.