Hamnet(64)

Agnes and the boy are on the bed, the child feeding, his tiny fist curled possessively at his mother’s breast. She would feed him before anything, before washing herself, she said. She has insisted that the cord and caul be wrapped and bound in cloth; she raised her head to watch, as Mary and the midwife carried out this task. She will, she tells them, bury it under a tree when the child has passed his first month. The midwife is collecting her tools, packing her sack, folding a sheet, emptying a bowl from the window. Mary is sitting on the bed, saying to Agnes that she must let her swaddle the baby, it is the right thing to do, that all her babies were swaddled and look how they turned out, great strong lads, all of them, and Eliza too, and Agnes is shaking her head. No swaddle, thank you, she is saying, and the midwife is smiling to herself in the corner, because she attended Mary in her last three births and found her a great deal more pleased with herself than she ought to be.

The midwife, swirling a cloth around a bowl, has to bow her head because this daughter-in-law, a strange girl by all accounts, is a match for Mary. She can see that. She would be prepared to bet all her pennies (hidden in an earthen jar behind the daub of her cottage, which no living person knows) that this baby will wear no swaddling clothes.

Something makes her turn, wet cloth in hand. When she is telling the story, to a dozen or so townspeople later, she will say that she doesn’t know why she turned: she just did. Midwife’s intuition, she will say later, tapping her finger to her nose.

Agnes is upright in bed, one hand pressed to her middle; with the other, she still holds the baby to her breast.

‘What is it?’ Mary says, rising from the bed.

Agnes shakes her head, then doubles up again, with a low moan.

‘Give me the boy,’ Mary says, holding out her arms. Her face is alarmed, but tender. She wants that child, the midwife sees, despite everything, despite her own eight children, despite her age. She wants that baby, wants to feel it up against her, to hold its parcelled, dense warmth.

‘No,’ Agnes says, through clenched teeth, her body curled into itself. Her expression is bewildered, stretched, frightened. ‘What is happening?’ she whispers, in the hoarse, fearful voice of a child.

The midwife steps forward. She puts a hand to the girl’s belly and presses down. She feels the skin tightening, pulling into itself. She lifts the skirts and peers upwards. There it is: the wet curve of a second head. It is unmistakable.

‘It’s starting again,’ she says.

‘What do you mean?’ Mary asks, with her slightly imperious air.

‘She’s starting again,’ the midwife repeats. ‘There’s another one coming.’ She pats Agnes’s leg. ‘You’re having twins, my girl.’

Agnes takes this news in silence. She lies back in the bed, clutching her son, exhausted, grey-faced, her limbs slack, her head bowed. The only sign of the pains is a whitening of her face, a pursing of her lips. She allows them to take the baby and to tuck it into the cradle by the fire.

Mary and the midwife stand on either side of the bed. Agnes stares up at them, her eyes wide and glassy, her face ghastly white. She raises a finger and points, first at Mary, then at the midwife.

‘Two of you,’ she rasps out.

‘What did she say?’ the midwife says to Mary.

Mary shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure.’ Then she addresses the girl: ‘Agnes, come to the stool. It is ready. It is here. We shall help you. The time has come.’

Agnes is gripped by a pain, her body twisting first one way, then the next. Her fingers snatch at the sheet, pulling it from the mattress, and she presses it to her mouth. The cry that escapes her is ragged and muffled.

‘Two of you,’ she mutters again. ‘Always thought it would be my children, standing at the bed, but it turns out that it was you.’

‘What was that?’ the midwife says, disappearing once again under the hem of Agnes’s shift.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Mary says, more brightly than she feels.

‘She’s raving,’ the midwife says, with a shrug. ‘Doesn’t know where she is. It takes some like that. Well,’ she says, hauling herself upright again, ‘this baby is coming, so we need to get her up off that bed.’

Between them, gripping her under each arm, they get Agnes up. She permits them to lead her out of bed to the stool and she slumps down on it without a murmur. Mary stands behind Agnes, propping up her limp form.

After a while, Agnes begins to speak, if the sounds and disjointed words could be called that. ‘I should never . . .’ she mutters, and her voice is no more than a whisper, gulping for air ‘. . . I should never . . . I got it wrong . . . He’s not here . . . I cannot—’

‘You can,’ the midwife says, from her position on the floor. ‘And you will.’

‘I cannot . . .’ Agnes grips Mary’s arm, her face wet, her eyes wide, glittering, unseeing, willing her to understand ‘. . . you see, my mother died . . . and . . . and I sent him away . . . I cannot—’

‘You—’ the midwife begins, but Mary interrupts her.

‘Hold your tongue,’ she snaps. ‘Attend to your work.’ She cups her hand around Agnes’s bloodless face. ‘What is it?’ she whispers.

Agnes looks at her and her flecked eyes are pleading, scared. Mary has never seen this look on her face before.