In Bed With Lord Byron

suddenly I heard a scream in the distance. It sounded human.
    ‘What’s that noise?’ I cried.
    ‘It’s nothing, I’m sure—’ Ovid began, then broke off as the screaming grew louder.
    I hurried through the trees. The screams led me to a small summerhouse. I burst in to find Tiryns lying on the floor, gasping for air, her face a violent, sticky shade of red.
    ‘Ovid – please, please . . .’
    ‘Oh my God, her waters have broken,’ I cried. ‘We have to get a doctor.’
    ‘That won’t be possible,’ said Ovid. His face was white; he stepped backward, away from Tiryns. ‘You deal with this, Lesbia.’
    ‘
What?
’
    And Ovid, literally, ran off.
    ‘Tell him to call the midwife!’ Tiryns screamed. ‘Tell him to send a messenger to Hilara!’
    ‘OVID, BRING HILARA!’ I yelled after him, and I thought I heard a faint cry of acquiescence before he fled towards the house.
    I knelt down beside Tiryns, stroking hair back from her face.
    ‘He’s gone,’ she puffed tearfully. ‘Oh God, it’s his child, and he’s so ashamed . . .’
    ‘What! You’re pregnant with Ovid’s child!’ I cried. In the space of thirty seconds, my opinion of him did a sharp U-turn. And to think I had just nearly . . .
    ‘He tried to make me give my baby up.’ She stared at me, her eyes filling with tears as she hissed for breath. ‘But I couldn’t – I just couldn’t. Oh God, help
me.’
    ‘But why didn’t you use contraception?’
    ‘We used a pig’s bladder, like everyone else.’
    ‘
A pig’s bladder?
’ I was aghast. The next time someone said ‘Just what have the Romans done for us?’ I knew that contraception wouldn’t be high on the
list.
    ‘My baby is coming,’ Tiryns cried, ‘and you can only talk of bladders. Oh help me, Lesbia, please be my midwife!’
    Ah. I had no idea how to deliver a baby. I had a vague idea that I needed towels . . . and hot water . . . and . . . er . . .
    ‘Push,’ I cried, leaping on the word hastily. ‘You’ve got to push – that’s it – push!’
    The next few hours were horrible. As each contraction bit sharper teeth into her body, Tiryns kept groaning and wailing and writhing and lacerating my palms with her nails. I had a vague idea
that I ought to check to see if she was dilated to a certain width, but when I stuck my head between her thighs, I was utterly foxed. Wasn’t it ten inches, something like that? How much was
an inch? The top digit of my thumb? So, how many thumb-lengths fitted against her—
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Tiryns screamed. ‘Is it coming?’
    ‘Push!’ I cried helplessly. ‘Keep going.’
    Tiryns, as though possessed by a beast, arched her back and howled like a banshee.
    Fuck,
I thought, sweat cascading down my face,
I am never, ever going to have children.
    And then we heard the sound of footsteps. Oh, thank God! A middle-aged woman appeared, carrying a strange-looking stool and a bag of equipment. Hilara. I stepped backwards, more than happy to
let her take over.
    ‘Here,’ said Hilara sharply. ‘Get her to take this.’ She passed me a bottle and I knelt down beside Tiryns, gently trickling its contents into her mouth. She gulped it
down in fits of panting breath.
    ‘Drink up, child, it’s water with goose’s semen,’ Hilara said, frowning as I nearly dropped the bottle. ‘Yes, I know powdered sow’s dung would have been
better, but I could not find any in such a hurry.’
    Goose semen?
I wondered.
Fuck, this was even worse than their idea of contraception
. But it got even more bizarre. Next Hilara tied a snake’s slough to Tiryn’s thigh
and gave her a stick from which a frog had been shaken from a snake to clutch. After assessing her cervix, Hilara then forced poor Tiryns to get up and sit on the weird stool.
    ‘Are you sure she shouldn’t be lying down?’ I asked, feeling this was all getting a bit much. But as Hilara turned her fierce blue eyes on me, I shut up and quickly muttered an
apology.
    ‘Stand behind the stool and give her support then!’ Hilara cried, shaking her head impatiently. I darted behind it, allowing Tiryns to lean back into me as she clutched the arm-rests
of the chair. Hilara knelt before her; there was a crescent-shaped hole for the baby to emerge through. I noted that Hilara had wrapped her hands in thin papyrus, though whether this was to help
her grasp the slippery baby with ease, or for luck, I couldn’t say.
    I soon became exhausted from supporting