I thank the men for their time before moving back to the other table. I don’t think much of their tale after all. It sounds rather pathetic, but just the sort of foolishness that can easily cost a person their life in current times. And it does nothing to reassure me about the profession of midwives.
Despite the coffee, the warm, smoky airlessness of Sam’s begins to prickle at my eyelids. I’ve no qualms about folding my arms on the table and resting my head for a few moments. I won’t be the first man, or the last, to take a little nap in Sam’s. When I wake, Henry is sitting opposite me.
“Any news?” I ask, but he’s already shaking his head.
“None. I called there less than an hour ago. They told me things were progressing.”
“Progressing?”
“Here.” He pushes a fresh dish of coffee across the table to me. Just as I remember how long it is since the last civil words we’ve exchanged, he speaks again. “Drink this and let me occupy your mind. Let’s talk. Southwell and I were hypothesising last night. Imagine that King Charles were to die tomorrow—”
“Henry!” Even in Sam’s, amongst friends, such words could be misinterpreted.
“Oh, come, Nat. Exercise that brain of yours. No-one is listening. What if he were to die tomorrow? What do you think would happen?”
I take a mouthful of hot coffee. Henry looks expectant. Tangled up with worrying about Anne, I’m relieved that he’s with me and recognise the olive branch being offered. “Monmouth.”
“No.”
I infer that the King’s illegitimate son will not inherit the throne, at least not in Henry’s opinion. “Why not? He’s very popular with the people.”
“Ah, but it’s not all about the people, is it?”
“True.” I shrug. “James then.”
“A Catholic?” says Henry with exaggerated horror.
“He is the heir.”
“But shouldn’t the King defend the Anglican Church?”
“He wouldn’t work against it, surely?”
“That remains to be seen. But it may only be a temporary hiatus. James has no sons either. That would be Southwell’s view, anyway.”
The door bangs and I turn. Still no news.
“So, who’s King after James?”
“William of Orange?”
“Dutch. Protestant.” He might be married to James’s daughter Mary, but could England stomach such a compromise?” I waggle a finger at Henry. “Same argument. Back to Monmouth.”
“English. Anglican.” Henry is smiling. “Illegitimate.”
“Probably.”
That makes him snort. “Definitely!”
“Well, maybe the King, or perhaps even James, will have another son. A legitimate one.” At once, my thoughts swing back to home. “Oh God, Henry, what in heaven’s name is happening with Anne? I’ve been here for hours.”
The heavy door creaks open behind me. I keep my eyes on Henry’s face. His eyebrows rise in recognition and his chin dips in acknowledgement.
“It’s time, Nat,” he says. “I will walk you home.”
Wild thoughts race around my brain as we stride back through the streets to the house. I grabbed at the messenger’s lapels, but the look in his eyes was genuine enough. He knew nothing: just that I was called back. Henry, puffing and gasping, tells me to go ahead, and I take the last couple of corners at a run. I burst through the door. Sarah is at the bottom of the stairs.
“Anne?”
“She will be well, Nat.”
But even as relief floods my veins, the hair prickles on the back of my neck. Sarah’s face is too still. The house is too quiet.
“The child lives but…” Sarah’s face cracks and crumbles like broken pie crust.
I run up the stairs and into our bedroom. Anne’s mother is standing by the window, but as I cross to the bed she leaves the room, the swish of her skirts rattling the silence.
“Anne?”
She turns her head on the pillow and looks at me. Her face is bloodless, blanched white even to her lips, although the fragile skin around her eyes looks almost bruised blue. Her beautiful hair is limp, flat against her head like a skull-cap. It strikes me that this is what she will look like when she’s dead. Pain slices my chest. Tears slip from the corners of her eyes and her bottom lip quivers. In two steps I’m beside her. I kiss away the tears and we stare into each other’s eyes. She slowly turns her head and directs me toward the wooden crib beside the bed.
“Listen,” she says.
I hear it. There’s the faintest rumble, the lightest wheeze or bubble and cracking noise, like a cat is asleep in the cupboard or a whisper of wind is rattling a window in another room.
“A girl. Bring her to me.”
I walk round the bed. In the crib, swaddled in white linen, there’s the tiniest, most perfect face. She is small, her skin as smooth as her mother’s but yellowish, not right. Her tiny head is decorated in inky, black commas; her lash-less eyes are a mole-ish blue; her lips look thin and dry. She’s struggling to breathe. With hands like shovels, I pick up the almost weightless form and turn to Anne, my face twisting. I take her into the crook of one arm and trace her perfect, soft skin with one finger, while Anne, sore as an old crone, levers herself up in the bed and holds out her hands for our daughter.
“Can nothing be done?” My voice breaks.
Anne shakes her head. “She won’t suckle. She doesn’t cry. They think there’s something wrong with her lungs. It will not be long.”
I take off my boots and climb onto the bed next to Anne and our baby. About an hour later, the little one stops breathing.
***
When the knock at the door comes, we’re both startled.
“We can’t stay here like this forever, my love,” I say softly. I walk back round the bed and open the door to Sarah.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is almost a whisper.
“It’s not your fault, Sarah,” I begin, but she shakes her head.
“No! You don’t understand. Henry and I… We have tried everything, but we can’t stop them!”
“What?” I step back, letting Sarah into the room, and she rushes to take Anne in her arms.
“We can’t stop them, Anne.”
Heavy footsteps sound on the stairs. Soldiers thrust their way into the room. I stand between them and Anne, to give her some shield, some protection. But they are not remotely interested in Anne. The first of them makes the case very clear.
“Nathaniel Thompson. You are under arrest for treason. If you won’t come with us willingly, then I have orders to take you away from here by force!”
Chapter Seventeen
Anne
Our child is dead.
I keep to my bed for three days and nights. Mother, Sarah, Kitty, and the midwife Mistress Gwyd come and go. I drink beer warmed with caraway seeds, coriander, sweet fennel, and sugar to help with the pain. My breasts have been daubed in honey and linseed oil, and tightly bound to dry up the milk I do not need. They tend me like a cripple; washing, dressing, wiping, turning me over and back, but no-one will speak about the baby.
Martha. I dream about a girl with long legs and swinging black hair, skipping with a rope or playing mother with a ragged doll. She has bright blue eyes and dark curling lashes. But when I wake, she is gone, and my smock is drenched in sweat and blood.
***
I am unwell.
Did we bury her yesterday? I open my eyes and I am lying in bed. Perhaps I will always be in this bed. Will Nat come home soon and help me up? The door opens. A woman walks around the bed. She leans in at me. She is my mother, but I won’t speak to her. Mother does not approve of Nat. When I have the baby, Mother will be different. I put my hand to my belly. It is soft, like kneaded dough. Pain stabs in my eyes. Martha is already gone.
“I forgot. She is dead.”
Mother nods very, very slowly. She is behaving strangely. Perhaps she is sad, too.
“Are you?” I ask.
“Drink t
his.” She holds out a cup. It looks like water.
I sip it. It has no taste. Perhaps all the taste went out of the world with Martha. Why did God want her? I wish…
“Are you sure about this?”
Someone else is in the room. My hair has been sewn into the pillow, I think, for it tears my scalp to lift my head.
“Henry,” I say.
He comes to me and takes my hand. His hands are hot. Or perhaps mine are very cold.
“My feet are cold,” I say. “Where is Nathaniel?”
“In prison.”
I nod my head. I knew that.
“And Martha?” There’s a movement. My mother walks to the door.
Henry pats my hand. “Martha is buried. She is with God.”
“I don’t remember.”
“No. You were ill. Your mother’s doctor has sent you medicine to allow you to rest and heal for a few more days.”
“Dr. Sydenham?”
“Yes.” Henry gives a little smile. “You remember some things then, little one,” he says.
“I’m sleepy again, Henry.”
“I’ll go.”
“No. Stay. Stay a moment or two. Your hand feels good.” I close my eyes.
***
I open my eyes and I am sitting by the window downstairs. Sarah is sitting opposite me, sewing.
“You should go home, Sarah.”
“I have been home and come back many times. But I will leave if you wish to be alone.”
“I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to be.”
“You need to get better. You need rest and time. You need to be thankful that you can heal.”
“I can?”
Sarah tilts her head as if weighing me up. “Anne, listen carefully,” she says. I blink and try my best.
“Mother is giving you laudanum. It has made you sleepy and confused. I’m not sure it’s helping. Do you understand?”
“I don’t want to be confused.”
“Then you mustn’t take the drink again. Can you do that?”
I nod. “I want to talk about Martha.”
“Martha is dead.”
“I know that.”
“Then what is there to talk about?” Suddenly, Sarah is gathering up her sewing, securing her needles, fastening her bags. A new emotion winds its way through the fog. My temper rises.
“She is my baby! My daughter!”
But Sarah is standing and walking away from me.
She opens the door. I stand, but there’s a lightness in my head. I have to put my palms on the table, suck up deep breaths. I have to sit down. She is gone.
***
I open my eyes. I am sitting at the window downstairs. William is opposite me, reading a book. He lifts a finger and strokes the side of his nose. Then his eyes come and meet mine, and he smiles.
“How are you?”
I think about this. “I feel nothing.”
“And is that an improvement?” he asks.
I think some more. “Possibly. Why are you here?”
“I came to see how you are.”
“No-one will talk to me. Even Sarah won’t. She has lost children. But she never speaks of it.”
“I will.”
“About Martha?”
“If you like.”
This is good. Now I feel something. “Shall we have some wine?” I say.
“Why not?” William goes to the cabinet and fills two glasses.
I take a sip. It tastes hard on my tongue and burns in my throat. I still find no flavours, but I like that burn. “I called her Martha, after my grandmother.”
“It’s a beautiful name.”
“She was so beautiful, William.” Tears well at my eyes.
“She had beautiful hands,” he says.
“Yes! They were so small, but so perfect. She had tiny nails. Prettier than pearls. And tiny feet.”
“I’m so sorry you lost her.”
William’s face is pale as always. His lips are too red and rich for such a thin, thoughtful-looking face. But his eyes are warm and sincere. He is honestly concerned. It is a hint of comfort in the darkest of times.
“I don’t remember the funeral.”
“You collapsed. And then you were given physic to help you rest.”
“I have stopped taking it. I couldn’t think. I need to think.”
“You are beginning to heal, perhaps?” He speaks tentatively, there’s hope in his voice, but I won’t have him misled.
“Oh no, William. There is no healing from this. This cannot get better. This just is.”
If he tries to tell me I’m wrong, I will be angry. A fist of anger waits in my chest ready to explode if he tells me how to grieve. In my head, I dare him to placate me. Let him try and tell me how to feel, just let him.
But he knows better. Instead, he says, “Would you like to go and visit her?”
“I can?”
“Of course. Are you strong enough to walk a little?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you may lean on my arm,” he says. “I will call Kitty to get your cloak.”
He steps out of the room and I almost call him back. I’m not sure I’m ready. Just to step out of the door seems dangerous. But to see where Martha rests? It will not make it better, but it might help. I let him take me.
***
The noise on the street rains down on my poor head like catapult sling-shots. Carts rumble, a gang of boys run past shoving and shrieking, a man and woman brawl on a corner pulling a loaf of bread between them until it breaks. The woman tumbles back, cracking her head on the stones. She’s silent for a moment but then releases a wail that tears through my chest. I shrivel against William’s arm. I fix my eyes on my black skirts and wish for a way to shut my ears to the city’s harshness. Thankfully, we do not have to go far to find a hackney carriage.
Martha is with my family. The plot has been paid for far in advance, and the fresh-laid earth, without any headstone yet to mark her place, gives me comfort. I will be near her again, one day. She is not far from her name-sake, my grandmother. Or from her cousins, Sarah’s children, both of whom died before they reached the age of four. I must remember them and not think so harshly of my sister in the future. I had no idea of her pain, until now.
“Is it harder, William, to lose a person you have been with a long time, or someone you will never have the chance to get to know?”
“Who can say? We all lose. There is no measuring stick for loss that I’m aware of. It’s not a case of hard or harder. It is all grief.”
He walks away then and leaves me alone with Martha. I’m immensely grateful to him. I don’t know how long I stand there, but eventually the heat of the afternoon sends a trickle of sweat running down my back. It wakens me to the sounds from the street, the beauty of the blue sky overhead, and the scent floating from all the roses planted at the churchyard wall. I let him take me home.
“I tried to see Nat,” he says when we are only a step from the door.
Nat. Nat, who has not been here when I needed him most.
“Henry and I both applied to visit him, but we were denied. We don’t even know what the charge is. Anne?”
“What?”
“Aren’t you concerned? Don’t you want him home?”
“I…” What to say? We should be bearing this loss together, but I’m alone. I don’t have the words.
William keeps talking. “It must be Oates, mustn’t it? He must be behind this arrest somehow.”
“Oates?” It comes out like a whisper.
I had not thought. I’ve had no time for thought and no ability either, thanks to my mother and her doctor. But I am thinking now.
Chapter Eighteen
Nat
Our child is dead; our baby, who would have been our little girl. I don’t even have a name for her. I don’t know who she might have become. Children die every day. I had a sister who died when she was seven years old and I was four. Death is not extraordinary. But t
he death of our child, of Anne’s and my child, this is terrible. It’s an open wound in my head, a needle in my eye, a sword in my guts. I would not have imagined it.
They drag me to Newgate. I spend the first night wrapped in a damp blanket in a filthy cage with three other men, one of whom mutters and scratches his arms for hours at a stretch. I don’t sleep. When morning comes, the tiny windows send grey shafts of light across the darkness. I make out the forms of tens of other prisoners penned behind similar bars. We huddle in the dark, more shadows than individuals. It is never quiet. Through five nights, not a minute passes when someone is not crying or complaining, singing or shouting. Arguments are frequent, and prisoners fight without mercy. One woman crushes another’s face against the bars and shatters her teeth.
It’s worse during the day. Guards walk up and down between the cells, swearing, smacking the bars with iron clubs whenever they like, swatting away outstretched hands, and dismissing all appeals. At any moment I expect the door to open. I need to get home to my wife, but no-one comes for me. A man could lose his mind in such a place.
After the fifth day, my circumstances improve a little. I’m told that friends have paid to improve my accommodation. I am led, still in chains, to a different part of the prison and given a small stone cell with a mattress on the floor and a high slit of a window. It is drier, lighter, quieter, and immeasurably safer. I sleep.
I spend two days entirely alone and then I’m taken before the Privy Council in Whitehall. For the sake of the Council rather than myself, I suspect, I’m allowed a change of linen and a wash. I am more than ready.
The number of people in the room catches me off guard. There are six members of the Privy Council and various other politicians, including the Earl of Shaftesbury, who stares straight through me as if I’m a piece of glass. To their left sits Robert Southwell. He nods at me, but nothing in his demeanour gives me grounds for optimism. I’m most affected, though, by the men on the right. Titus Oates glares at me, a sneer curling his fat lip. And next to him, hunched and clearly uncomfortable, sits Simpson Tonge.
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