By morning she is all animal. Slick with sweat and beyond all words. A tide of pain has driven her deep inside, to where the strength of her will has its wellspring.

‘Push!’

She hears the midwife’s cry from a world away and she drags herself, clawing at the arms of she knows not who, scrabbling with her heels to raise herself, so she can push harder, deeper, meeting pain with frenzied effort.

‘Open, open!’ The women cry as they tear around the room.

She hears cupboards thrown open, drawers pulled out. She feels fingers fumble to take down her hair.

‘All about you is open now …’ She feels her sister’s breath in her ear. ‘It’s time, Cecily, push!’

She hears her own roar like a demon set loose, before her body turns to liquid and a new cry comes, high and plangent, a blade of longing twisted in her heart. She clambers up towards the sound and sees, between her blood-streaked legs, the midwife bent over something red and writhing that glistens in her hands. Then a flash of steel.

‘Mine,’ she cries. ‘Give me mine!’

And her hands grasp as the midwife surrenders and she has the child at last in her arms. And her eyes cannot see enough, her hands cannot feel, her body trembles and falls back among the pillows, but that lovely weight comes with her, pummelling against her breast, and that hungry cry is against her ear and she feels exultant joy rising. She lays back her head and laughs.

7

Within an hour the room is quiet, though Cecily’s heart is unsteady. They keep taking the child from her, to wash it, to swaddle it, to rub its limbs with salt and its gums with honey. She wishes them all gone, for the child to be hers alone again. Instead, she lies anchored to the bed, her eyes fixed on the curve of her baby’s head, cradled like an egg in the broad hand of the wet nurse. She listens to the murmuring suck of its feeding, while her own breasts ache.

The nurse, her face round and milk-white, looks up at her and smiles. ‘Your daughter feeds strongly, my lady. She’s hungry for life.’

Cecily holds out her hand and the nurse takes it, lays it along the baby’s back. She closes her eyes and rests.

A while later, Anne wakes her. ‘Richard is coming.’

They help her to sit, stack pillows at her back, gather her hair and braid it, wipe her face with rosewater. They lay the child in her arms, parcelled and sleeping. There’s a little sunlight now. The window hangings have been drawn aside for the first time in a month to take away the smell of blood and the afterbirth’s burning. Then a tap at the door. Anne squeezes her hand, crosses the room, opens it wide.

And there he is.