Blanche had something of the captain’s gift. As the hours wore on, Nell began to suspect that Blanche knew little more about babies than she did herself, but she had solid notions of cleanliness and a determined, confident air.

When the bells of the parish church rang twelve, the baby went to sleep like the extinguishing of a candle.

Throughout the barn, men muttered, sighed, and fell instantly asleep themselves.

Just after the bell rang for one o’clock, Blanche finished tidying up the birthing room and smiled gratefully at Nell, who had stayed with her when all the others had gone to sleep. The nun—everyone said she was a nun, despite her clothes—sat by the Queen, but she did not speak or move—she was eerily like a statue of the Virgin, and Blanche knew, in some instinctive way, that she was guarding the Queen, or the baby, or both.

She was, however, useless for the normal work, and there was an unholy amount of blood, mucus, and a thick black sludge emitted by the baby that was more disgusting than anything she’d faced in five solid years as a palace laundress.

Blanche piled all the foul linen in one horrible pack, and wrapped it in burlap, and was saddened to note the state of her own kirtle—a grey, shapeless beggar’s garment to start with, it was now quite foul. Blanche, who always prided herself on her clean, neat prettiness, was a little surprised at her own state.

Nell, who seemed a sensible, smart lass even if she did dress like a man, was now falling asleep every time she stopped moving.

“Go sleep,” Blanche said in her laundry command voice. “You’ve been a hero.”

Nell grinned. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “I did some fighting today.”

Blanche hadn’t noticed that the other girl was wounded, but she had a nasty gash on her left forearm and another, already closed but black as pitch, on her ankle.

“The other bastard’s hilt,” Nell said.

Blanche sighed and tore the cleanest strip from her shift—one of her own shifts worn under the beggar’s kirtle. She regretted it, but Nell was the closest thing she had to a friend in the lunatic asylum into which she felt she’d fallen. And Nell—another competent, hard-working girl—had the big cauldron boiling, having fed it a succession of small branches brought by guilty-looking young men. Including one tall fellow who kept smiling at Nell even through the chaos of the evening.

Blanche scooped some boiling water and made a quick, hot poultice as her mother had taught her and started to clean the wound. “Saints, sweetie, that’s open. It’ll go red and sick.” Blanche took a deep breath to steady herself. “I should stitch it closed,” she said.

Nell looked at her. “You know how?” she asked.