It was on this that I dwelt as our boat rolled over the waves and we crossed to the other side. And yet, even with beautiful baby Beatrice, the bringer of joy, in my arms, I could not help but turn my gaze to Blackfriars Bridge. Looking up at the stone arches that supported the structure and lifted it high above the water, I allowed myself to dream for a moment about the release and freedom that could be so easily seized with a single step off the bridge.

A moment of free fall, a blast of frigid water. Just a moment to be done with this curse, and all the others—to seal the secrets inside and protect what had been entrusted to me. Just a moment to suck the loss and rot out of my bones. Just a moment to join my own little one, wherever she was.

I continued to bounce Beatrice up and down in my arms, and I made a silent plea that she would never think thoughts as dark and terrible as my own. And I felt sure if my own baby had lived—she would then be nineteen years old, a young woman—I would not have entertained such things. I certainly would not look so longingly to the black shadow of the bridge a short distance away.

I pulled my gaze down to Beatrice’s face. There was not a flaw on her, not so much as a birth blemish. I tugged the cream-colored blanket away slightly so that I might better see the little folds of skin around her chin and neck. By the softness of the wool against my thumb, I believed the blanket swaddling the child cost more than the clothes on both the mother and father put together. Beatrice, I said silently, hoping to somehow communicate the meaning to her with only my eyes, your mother and father love you very much.

As I said it, I could have cried out; my womb had never felt so hollow, so void. I wished I could have said the same thing to my own lost child—that her mother and father loved her very much—but I could not have said it, because it would only have been half true.

Trembling, I handed Beatrice back to her mother as the boatman began to navigate us to shore.

Early the next morning, after harvesting the beetles from the field and roasting them over the hearth, I could hardly lift myself from my place on the floor. The frigid air of the day prior had left my knees stiff, and the long walk after the boat journey made my ankles swell. My fingers, too, were raw and bloodied, but that was expected; I’d dug more than a hundred blister beetles out of the fields near Walworth, plucking each one from its nest, removing each one from its beloved kin.