Despite two hours of effort, the afterbirth refused to budge. Mrs. B tried her old recipe of hyssop, wild mint, pennyroyal, and balm, good for easing gripes in the belly and cleansing impurities from the womb. Hyssop could even bring away a dead child, but mostly it helped beckon the soft, warm placenta, whole and unto itself, to slide into the midwife’s waiting hands. The less she intervened, the less blood would be lost, she knew, but there was a boundary of time, and they were near it.

When the herbs failed to move things along, Mrs. B gave the cord a gentle tug, then rubbed and pressed on Mary’s belly.

The patient, at the start, was uncomplaining, even cheerful. Never mind her long and arduous labor, Mary now radiated elation at being delivered of her daughter—she was enthralled with her “little bird,” and couldn’t wait for Fanny to meet her new sister. The matter of the placenta seemed an inconvenience she was anxious to have behind her, so she might hold her new babe in her arms, and urge her to suck. This, she’d told Mrs. B, she believed in above all things—that the best sustenance for a newborn child was its mother’s own milk, and the love that flowered between them. But Mary began to tire, and the boundary of time drew closer.

“Will it come on its own?” she asked Mrs. B. “Why isn’t it coming?”

“I think your placenta’s a bit shy.”

“That would be the only thing shy about me.”

“It’s not just yours, it’s hers too. Belonged to both of you.” Mrs. B thought that talking was the best way to ease Mary’s mind. “It’s like a tree, I think,” she said. “How the placenta makes the roots, and the cord is the trunk that grows from the roots, and your little girl is the fruits and flowers of all that.”

“I’d like her to be a tree of her own,” said Mary.

“Why shouldn’t she be, then?”

“You have a poetic soul, Mrs. B.” Mary squeezed out a smile and laid her head on the pillow with a sigh.

Mrs. Blenkinsop told her to have a little rest, said they’d take it up again when she woke. She knew she must alert Mr. Godwin to the risk of infection, however unlikely, given that he’d not stopped pacing the hall, and every twenty minutes asked for news through the door. She still believed, by faith and experience, that Nature would take its course, given time.

“It’s hard to think clearly,” Mr. Godwin said, rubbing his temple.

“We could wait till morning, sir.” She was careful not to mention God again.

“But waiting has its own dangers, yes?”

The swaddled child chirped low in her cradle. She seemed to grow weaker by the hour. Mrs. B could tell that her little cries nearly broke Mr. Godwin.