Hen is smiling at the exchange, until she sees Anne’s face in the pause before she turns back into the room. She puts on a smile then, but Hen saw the fear, saw the uncertainty in the half-second she thought herself unobserved.
Hattie, ever alive to a room’s undercurrents, says to Hen: ‘Any word of your brothers?’
‘Of Ned, yes. He is still busy at Bristol. Of Sam, no. What of your brother, Anne?’
‘He still will not reply to my letters. Sends them back unopened from that sty he guards in the back of the west somewhere. Your husband, Hattie?’
‘Not a word. But then he’s a butcher, not a scholar. The end is coming though, soon enough, and then we’ll see if he turns up,’ says Hattie.
They nod and look at each other. Why aren’t we happier that the war is ending? wonders Hen. Why this bottomless trepidation?
‘Hen!’
The shout wakes her, and she sits up, disorientated.
‘Hen! I think it is coming.’ Anne’s voice beside her in the darkness is calm, steady. Hen feels the panic begin to grip her. She jumps to her feet, gasping as her toes meet the icy floor. The world beyond the blankets is freezing; Anne’s fat, pregnant body radiates heat and life.
‘I’ll get Hattie,’ she says.
‘No, wait. The pains are regular, but not too close or too strong to bear. Let her sleep. Sorry to wake you.’ Her voice falters a little.
Hen climbs back in. ‘Don’t worry, Annie. I’m here.’
Anne reaches for her hand. Suddenly her grip tightens, and her breath becomes jagged.
‘Is that one?’ asks Hen.
‘No. Just wind,’ says Anne, and giggles. ‘I’m teasing, cuz. Yes, that was one.’
‘I thought it was not until after Christmas?’
‘Aye, well, the baby must not have heard. She’s coming.’
‘I bought you a present. New linen, for the lying-in. We’ll use this old stuff for the groaning. I’ll build up the fire.’
‘Not yet. To think – when we were littleys, we were surrounded by linen. How could you afford it?’
‘Never mind that,’ says Hen, her mind turning to the ever-dwindling stock of her mother’s jewels. Just a pair of earrings and a necklace left.
In a small voice shrouded in darkness, Anne says: ‘I am frightened, Hen.’
‘No need, my honey. God is with you, and I am with you. All will be well.’
All will be well. How many times does she utter that phrase in the endless hours that follow?
‘All will be well,’ she whispers through Anne’s groaning, as the pains move closer together. ‘All will be well,’ she tells herself as the day advances, and Anne crouches by the fire, lost in a pain that advances and retreats in merciless charges. She does not wail so much as groan, a deep and guttural keening.
The windows are barred and curtains drawn, and the room is kept warm and dim. Womb-dark. Just the light of the fire to witness Anne’s labour. They are shrouded in its orange light, Anne, Hen and Hattie – and Claire, who comes and goes as the day moves forward. Mary Overton comes too, a sharp-faced woman with fingernails bitten to the bleeding roots and a harassed air. She seems fierce, but her hands when she wipes Anne’s forehead are gentle, and she whispers at her softly. ‘Come now, darling. Shh, now.’
There is no sense of time in the room, no notion of their place in the world. It is a place apart, a timeless zone.
The room is sadly empty. If Anne were married and birthing at home in a time of peace, it would be brimming with gossips. The chatter and excitement would fill the room as loudly as the groaning. The room would hum with the steady, matronly presence of women who have sat on the groaning stool and lived.
Instead, there are just the three of them, sometimes five, and the child trying to batter its way out. Why so brutal, oh Lord? Was Eve’s sin so great that we are rendered bestial by childbirth? Is this pain our desserts? A new thought creeps into Hen’s mind. Are Anne’s labours worse because her sin was worse? Do bastards hurt more on their way out?
The day, she believes, has given away to night. None of them have slept. At last, the pains seem to swell together, almost seamlessly. Anne’s groans become cries of effort. Hattie exhorts her to push. Anne crouches, legs apart, bracing herself against Hen, who holds her upright with arms wrapped under her shoulders. Clasped together like this, Anne’s sweat slicks on Hen’s neck, her wails of pushing echo directly into Hen’s ear.
‘I can feel it!’ shouts Hattie. ‘I can feel the head! Go on, Anne, my darling, you’re nearly there.’
Anne screams with a last, violent effort. Hen looks down over her shoulder and sees a tangle of purple, bloodied limbs.
‘I can see it! Anne! Anne! I can see it!’
‘Her!’ shouts Hattie. ‘Her!’
And suddenly there’s a thin screaming mingling with Anne’s exhausted sobs and Hen’s rapid breathing. A twist and a grunt from Hattie, and the cord is cut. It lies, grey and mottled, between Anne’s legs.
A new sound. Hattie is swearing. She has wrapped the baby in a blanket and now pushes it towards Hen, who looks with astonishment at its furious old-man face.
‘Sit down, my poppet,’ says Hattie, easing Anne back to lie half upright. Hen sees the blood then. So much blood.
‘Hen, run get the midwife.’
‘But—’
‘Now.’
Anne’s head is lolling onto her chest, grey-white and sweaty. She looks towards the baby with unfocused eyes.
Hen runs out of the room, before remembering she is still clutching the baby. Coming up the stairs is Mary Overton. In relief, Hen pushes the squirming bundle at her as they pass. Outside, the light is dim and the air is freezing. Hen has no notion of whether it is dusk or dawn, and cares less as she runs through the frosted street, her bare feet scrabbling for purchase on the iced cobbles.
She comes to Goodwife Simmonds’ door and pounds on it, before spilling out her plea to the woman who answers. Goody Simmonds pauses to wrap on a shawl and shout instructions to an unseen figure within, and Hen hates her for her slowness, as the seconds stretch to minutes. She hops from foot to numb foot. At last, they set off, Hen running ahead, pausing for unbearable moments as the midwife bustles to catch up.
They reach the door and climb the stairs, Hen taking them two at a time. She opens the door at the top, and light spills into the darkened room. Hattie’s face turns to the light and all the news is there in her grey, horrified face. Blood pools on the floor, dripping into cracks in the boards, soaking through the second-best linen. Mary paces the room with a crying bundle, and she turns to Hen with pity softening her face.
Anne, her back propped up on cushions, looks strangely peaceful, even as her life leaks out from between her parted thighs. Behind her, on the bed, the new linen gleams ivory-white and spotless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Winter 1645
THE LETTER TO ANNE’S PARENTS COMES BACK. SCRAWLED on it, in fierce black ink: ‘We have no daughter. We have no granddaughter.’
The next day, the first of the new year, Hen pushes open the door of the pawnbroker’s. He recognizes her now, greeting her by name. His shop is stuffed with geegaws and trinkets – the cast-offs of the war’s casualties. When anyone has any money to start buying again, he will make a pretty profit.
He offers her a ridiculously low sum for her mother’s necklace, but she expected as much. Still, it will be enough.
That afternoon, Hen and Hattie gather up the baby from the wet nurse in Wapping, who is too drunk to notice or care particularly. She wanders around, bare-breasted and leaking, latching on whichever baby is screaming the loudest. Hen feels sharp guilt that she left it this long. She picks up the baby. Beneath its swaddling she can smell that it is dirty. She peels off its filthy layers and throws them into the fire, while Hattie curses the nurse for her neglect.
‘What do you expect for a penny?’ she shouts back. ‘Fucking gold milk? I’ve me own to clean, and the others. Now take it,
and fuck off.’
They wrap the baby in Hen’s shawl and escape from the room. It feels wrong to leave behind the others, but they have enough work ahead to keep this one.
The baby nuzzles against Hen’s chest, as if looking for milk. So helpless. Eyes closed, she sniffs and worries at Hen, who feels too awkward to whisper aloud the endearments crowding her head.
They take a coach up to Highgate. The air is cleaner up here just a few miles from town. From the top of the hill they can see across the woods down to the Thames, the City in the distance and the black tendrils of smoke reaching up to the sky.
They find the house Goody Barker described to them, and the door is opened by a woman Hen’s age – Alice Harper. She looks tired, and children hang off each leg, but she smiles and ushers them in, winning them over with her politeness and quiet charm.
As they speak, the baby begins to squall.
‘Someone’s hungry,’ says Alice, and reaches across. ‘May I?’
Hen hands her across, watching as Alice eases out a breast and proffers it to the baby.
‘There we go, precious,’ she says gently, and Hattie nods imperceptibly at Hen. ‘Your cousin’s child, Miss Challoner?’ asks Alice.
‘Yes. Poor Anne died birthing her, and the baby’s father was killed in the wars.’
Hen tries to say the white lie of omission with conviction, but Alice has no reason to question them. She merely smiles, and they talk of the war – of the king’s lost cause and refusal to surrender, and Fairfax’s march around the country, mopping up the last of the Cavaliers. All the while, the baby suckles contentedly.
‘She don’t care about all the nonsense, do you, my darling?’ coos Alice. ‘Let it all be over, and friends again, I say.’
They murmur their agreement.
‘What name does the baby have?’
‘She is named for her mother,’ says Hen, deciding at that moment the only name possible. ‘Her name is Anne.’
As winter turns to spring, they visit baby Anne once a week. After church they make the journey up the hill to Highgate, sometimes walking back down when the evenings grow longer. They watch baby Anne grow stronger and fiercer. She is impatient and demanding. Chubby hands grab at Alice’s breasts; she wails if her nurse is not fast enough.
‘Sucking the marrow out of me, this one,’ says Alice, and indeed she looks tired, with three of her own to raise as well as Anne to nurse.
One day in May they burst into Alice’s house, impatient with excitement.
‘Have you heard the news?’ Hattie says, reaching immediately for baby Anne, who sits propped on the floor by cushions, gurgling at the youngest Harper child, one-year-old Peter.
Alice, flour-smeared and haggard, looks up from the dough she’s pounding. ‘News?’ she asks vaguely.
‘The king has surrendered to the Scots.’
Alice’s jaw drops open, and she runs a floured hand across her face. She looks like an astonished ghost, and Hen and Hattie find themselves laughing at her appearance. Without a word she runs out of the room, and comes back a moment later with her husband, a huge and taciturn blacksmith that Hattie and Hen nod to in passing but have never spoken to.
‘What’s this?’ he demands.
‘It’s true,’ says Hen. ‘At least, enough people are saying it. Rumour is quick of foot and swift on the wing – a horrible monster.’
She looks at their blank faces. ‘Virgil,’ she whispers, and Hattie impatiently cuts in.
‘Never mind all that. The king has surrendered to the Scots at Newark. Our army is besieging Oxford, which must fall, and then they are done. He crept out of Oxford at midnight, they say, three days past. The MPs are to send the king a proposition for peace.’
‘Peace!’ says Alice.
‘Aye, but on what terms?’ growls the blacksmith. ‘We fought for our God and our Parliament, and is he to skip back to London as if all the blood be in vain, as if it counted for naught?’
Hen says: ‘They want him to confirm all the laws passed in his absence and to turn Presbyterian; to abolish the bishops and purge the Church.’
‘And if he will not?’ Alice asks.
‘Well,’ says Hattie, ‘who can tell? He lost, but he is still the king. And he loves the bishops.’
Hen says: ‘And what of the Scots? Are they our allies in this, as they were in the wars? They hold the king – what do they mean to do with him?’
The blacksmith grunts. ‘Nothing is clear. Just a forest of new confusions. I must return to my forge, or it will lose its heat.’
They can hear him outside, hammering in a slow, insistent rhythm. It seems to Hen as if he’s beating out time.
She looks at baby Anne, who is practising her newly learned smile on Hattie. Kings fall, nations tear themselves apart, and courts fall into anarchy – but still life beats on.
One Sunday, in early summer, they return home to find Lucy sitting on the doorstep. It is so unlike her to sit on the ground that, on seeing her, Hen breaks into a run.
‘Lucy! What is it? Is it Ned?’
‘Don’t be absurd. Our rooms have been overrun by a madman.’
Hen hears shouting from above and looks up to see a head peering out of the window.
‘Aha!’ shouts the head. ‘The return of the sluts! Been cavorting, have we, Henrietta? Been flirting?’
Hen turns to Hattie, who stands beside her looking up at him, her mouth hanging open. ‘My cousin Mathew. Anne’s brother.’
‘He’s sozzled,’ says Hattie.
‘Sozzled! Witch, shall I have you burned? I ain’t drunk. Sad is what I am. Where’s my sister, Henrietta? Where’s Anne?’
‘Oh Lord,’ Hen mutters under her breath, and makes for the stairs.
Mathew opens the door and drops into a low, facetious bow. Hattie is behind her, and Lucy peers into the room from over her shoulder.
‘Did your parents not tell you, Mathew?’
‘Tell me what, punk?’
‘Be civil, boy,’ Hattie snaps.
‘Forgive me, ma’am, but I save my civility for those that earn it. My slut of a sister sought refuge in this pushing school, and found it with her own kind. So I shall address this hobbyhorse, this cock-bawd, as I think she deserves.’ He takes a long draught from his bottle, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. He is unshaven and filthy, dressed as an infantry soldier, and his boots are held together by string. He carries with him the stench of the losing side, the tang of defeat. More of them arrive in London every day, as each of the remaining royalist positions topples, one by one. The city draws them in, offering anonymity and hope to the disgraced.
He looks as if he has not slept. Beneath his red-tinged stubble, his cheeks are hollow. Hen remembers the gleaming, well-fed shine of the first-born boy he used to wear as his birthright. She pities him. He is shrivelled and musty, like an abandoned apple.
Of course. Oxford is under siege. Where else could he go?
Hen holds on to Hattie’s arm. Her friend is still bristling, pugnacious.
‘Mathew, I’m so sorry. Anne died.’
The words hit him visibly, leaching the blood from his face. He looks at them wordlessly for a moment, before turning away and violently emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbles, catching his breath before puking again.
‘No matter, Mathew,’ says Hen, and she walks forward, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He pushes it away. ‘How?’
‘She was with child. The baby lives, but—’
‘With child? But…’ She watches the realization dawn on his face. His parents’ silence explained. ‘What did you do to her?’ He turns towards her, furious. He lashes out and catches her cheek with his fist. Her head snaps back, and the pain makes her gasp.
Hattie moves forward, while Lucy cowers behind the door.
He draws his sword then. ‘Back, witches. Back. You shan’t corrupt me. My poor Anne. My poor Anne.’
He moves th
e sword towards Hen, and she stays very still as the point comes close to her face. She watches it advance, mesmerized by the cruel, jagged point of it. Stay still, she tells herself. Hold me upright, oh Lord. Hold me upright.
‘Your doing,’ he says. ‘Bitch.’
She feels the point of the sword brush her nipple, first one, then the other. It snags on her dress. She watches him weigh up his next move, watches him enjoy how she trembles. Time seems to slow. There is only this moment; the two of them and the sword suspended in infinity. His dark eyes flicker up and down her.
At last, he raises the point of the sword and steps backwards. ‘Get out,’ he growls, and Hen backs away, shaking violently as all the tension dissipates.
Hattie grabs her waist and they tumble out of the door, which he slams behind them. They collapse in the corridor, holding on to each other.
Kneeling, holding on to Hattie, with a door between them and Mathew, Hen feels a strange, wild joy.
‘Did I introduce my cousin formally?’ says Hen, and Hattie starts laughing. They try to laugh noiselessly, hands clasped over their mouths. But it’s too strong, gripping their stomachs, breaking out in tears and squeaks. Hand in hand they clatter down the stairs, still smiling. At the bottom, they find Lucy.
‘Hen!’ she cries.
‘Yes?’ Hen laughs anew at Lucy’s terrified, uncomprehending face, and Hattie joins in.
‘Yes, very funny,’ says Lucy. ‘But what are we going to do? That madman’s locked in there with two bottles of French brandy.’
‘It’s not often I say this,’ says Hattie. ‘But we need a man.’
‘I know one,’ says Hen.
The Temple garden is unnaturally quiet. Coming in from the bustle of Fleet Street feels like arriving at Eden from Gomorrah. The grass stretches down to the glittering river, sinuous in the sunshine. A squirrel hops across to a tree ahead of her, pausing to look at her, its head cocked like an inquisitive schoolboy. The air is still and heavy.
Hen looks for the right staircase and walks to it. Her stomach rolls and rollicks like a butter churn. She climbs the staircase inside, listening to the sonorous echo of each footfall. She feels large, awkward.
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