‘I promise,’ she says again, looking her daughter-in-law right in the eye. Agnes lets go of her hand. Together, they look down at the dome of her belly, at the shoulders of the midwife, below.
The second labour is short, fast and difficult. The pains come without interval, on and on, and Mary can see that Agnes, like a swimmer going under, cannot catch her breath in between. Her screams, by the end, are ragged, hoarse, desperate. Mary holds her, her own face wet with tears. She begins to form, in her head, the words she will say to her son. We tried our best. We did everything we could. In the end, we couldn’t save her.
When the baby emerges, it is clear to them all that the death they have been dreading is not Agnes’s after all. The baby is grey in colour, the cord tight around its neck.
No one says anything as the midwife eases the body out with one hand and catches it in the other. A girl child, half the size of the first, and silent. Eyes shut tight, fists curled, lips pursed, as if in apology.
The midwife unloops the cord quickly, deftly, and turns the little doll upside-down. She lands a slap on its bottom, once, twice, but nothing. No noise, no cry, no flicker of life. The midwife raises her hand a third time.
‘Enough,’ says Agnes, holding out her arms. ‘Let me have her.’
The midwife mumbles about how she should not look on it, how it is bad luck. It is best, she says, you don’t see it. She will take it away, she says, and make sure it gets a decent burial.
‘Give her to me,’ Agnes says, and goes to rise from the stool.
Mary steps forward and takes the child from the midwife. Its face is perfect, she thinks, and the image of its brother’s – the same brow, the same line of jaw and cheek. It has eyelashes and fingernails and is still warm.
Mary hands the tiny form to Agnes, who takes it and holds it to her, cradling the head in her palm.
The room is silent.
‘You have a beautiful boy,’ the midwife says, after a moment. ‘Let’s bring him here and you may feed him.’
‘I will fetch him,’ Mary says, starting towards the cradle.
‘No, I will,’ says the midwife, crossing before her, stepping into her path.
Annoyed, Mary pushes at her shoulder. ‘Out of my way. I will fetch my grandson.’
‘Mistress, I need to say that—’ The midwife is squaring up to her, but she never finishes her sentence because from behind them comes a thin, spiralling cry.
They both turn, in unison.
The child in Agnes’s arms, the girl, is wailing, arms rigid with outrage, her minute form rinsing itself pink as she draws in air.
Two babies, then, not one. Agnes tells herself this as she lies in bed, curtains drawn against the sharp draughts.
It is by no means certain, in those first few weeks, whether the girl-child will survive. Agnes knows this. She knows it in her mind, in her bones, in her skin, right down to her heart. She knows in the way her mother-in-law tiptoes into the room and peers at the children, sometimes putting a quick hand to their chests. She sees it in the way Mary urges John to take the babies to be churched: she and John wrap the infants in blanket after blanket, then tuck them into their clothing and hurry to the priest. Mary bursts back into the house a while later, with the air of a woman who has completed a race, outrun an enemy, holding out the smaller of the twins towards her, saying, There, it is done, here she is.
Agnes may not sleep, it seems. She may not rise from the bed. She may not have a hand spare or empty. One or both of the babies will need to be held at any given moment. She will feed one, then the other, then the first again; she will feed them both at once, heads meeting in the centre of her chest, their bodies podded under each of her arms. She feeds and feeds and feeds.
The boy, Hamnet, is strong. This she has known since the moment she first saw him. He latches on with a definite and sure force, sucking with great concentration. The girl, Judith, needs to be encouraged on to the breast. Sometimes, when her mouth is opened for her and the breast placed inside it, she looks confused, as if unsure what she is meant to do. Agnes must stroke her cheek, tap her chin, run a finger along her jaw, to remind her to suck, to sup, to live.
Agnes’s concept of death has, for a long time, taken the form of a single room, lit from within, perhaps in the middle of an expanse of moorland. The living inhabit the room; the dead mill about outside it, pressing their palms and faces and fingertips to the window, desperate to get back, to reach their people. Some inside the room can hear and see those outside; some can speak through the walls; most cannot.
The idea that this tiny child might have to live out there, on the cold and misted moor, without her, is unthinkable. She will not let her pass over. It is always the smaller twin who is taken: everybody knows this. Everyone, she can tell, is waiting, breath held, for this to happen. She knows that for the girl child, the door leading out of the room of the living is ajar; she can feel the chill of the draught, scent that icy air. She knows that she is meant to have only two children but she will not accept this. She tells herself this, in the darkest hours of the night. She will not let it happen; not tonight, not tomorrow, not any day. She will find that door and slam it shut.