He turns his head away. ‘I want to go in the water,’ he repeats.

Richard looks desperately at me. ‘What does he mean?’

‘It is a vision from the fever,’ I say. ‘It means nothing.’ I am afraid of what it means.

Lewis smiles, and his eyelids flicker open, and he sees his father. He smiles at him. ‘I shall swim, Father,’ he says firmly. ‘I shall swim,’ and he turns his head and takes a little breath like someone preparing to dive in deep cool waters, and I feel his body quiver as if with joy, and then go still and quiet, and I realise that my son has gone from me.

‘Open the window,’ I say to Richard.

Without a word he turns and opens the window as if to let the little soul out and up to heaven. Then he comes back and puts the sign of the cross on Lewis’s forehead. He is still warm, he is slowly cooling, I think the sweet waters of his dream are washing him down.

Anne taps on the door, opens it, and sees me lay Lewis gently down on the bed.

‘He’s gone,’ I say to her. ‘Lewis has gone from us.’

Hardly knowing what I am doing I step towards Richard and he puts his arm around me and holds me close to him. ‘God bless him,’ he says quietly.

‘Amen,’ I say. ‘Oh Richard, I could do nothing. I could do nothing!’

‘I know,’ he says.

‘I’ll go and see the other children,’ Anne says into the silence. ‘And then I’ll get Mrs Westbury to come and wash the body.’

‘I’ll wash him,’ I say at once. ‘And I’ll dress him. I don’t want anyone else to touch him. I’ll put him . . .’ I find that I can’t say the word ‘coffin’.

‘I’ll help you,’ Richard says quietly. ‘And we’ll bury him in the churchyard and know that he has just gone ahead of us, Jacquetta, and that one day we will swim in the water too, and find him on the other side.’

* * *

We bury my son in the churchyard near to his grandfather and Richard orders a grand stone monument with room for our names too. The rest of the children do not take the fever; even the new baby, Martha, is well and strong. I watch them, filled with a terror, for a week after we bury Lewis, but none of them so much as sneezes.

I think that I will dream of Lewis but I sleep deeplyevery night and dream of nothing at all. Until one night, a month after his death, I dream of a river, a deep cool river studded with yellow water lilies, flowing over a bed of gold and bronze stones, and golden kingcups growing on the green reedy banks; and I see my boy Lewis on the far side of the river, pulling on his linen shirt and his breeches, and he is smiling at me and waving to show that he is going to run on ahead, just a little way ahead. And in my dream, though I want to hold him back, I wave at him and call to him that I will see him later, that I will see him soon, that I will see him in the morning.