I said nothing, but let Joan believe she was taking charge. I let her fuss about me and put me to my bed that night. I confess I let her do all of it with no complaint. I felt exhausted. So I was relieved to lie in bed and let Joan bring me bread soaked in milk. She vowed not to tell the Baxters yet, and I knew she wouldn’t, for she felt exactly as I did. We did not want them – or anyone else in Kelso – deciding our fates.

We lived like this, oddly, for a week or so. When I say ‘oddly’, I mean that we lived side by side as we once had, but with something between us. Not merely the babe. But something unsettled, as though we were back to being enemies again. My exhaustion continued. My feet ached and my belly did too. It would start to tighten, with a dull ache that spread down the length of me; then just as I began to wonder what was causing the ache, it would subside.

Chapter Seventeen

Kelso
July 1724, one night, in the dead of the night

Another snake.

This one writhed.

It could not lie still.

It coiled and uncoiled.

It squeezed my guts. I fought it; pushed it away.

I felt wetness. I had only just got to sleep and yet I was being pulled awake. The pain was intense. I must be dying. It squeezed again and the cramp gripped me from belly to thigh. I woke up, on the verge of vomiting, but the purge was more than simply vomit. I retched. I cramped. I opened my mouth to scream.

‘Oh God, the baby is coming!’

It was not me who spoke, for I could not speak. My mouth was full of pain.

Joan came at me like an apparition, candle and white nightie, floating in the yellow light.

‘Maggie, there’s blood.’

I do not remember much of what happened, only that it was quick – quicker than I had imagined it would be – and the snake vanished and everything was real and vivid.

My own belly, the candlestick at the bedside, the damp sheets. I know it was the dead of the night, because the night-candle was fresh and had barely burned. I came in and out of the world and I had a terrible urge to push, but when I did, I felt myself being torn in two, yet my body pushed anyway. All by itself. I know I kept telling Joan to fetch someone: Mrs Baxter, Mr Baxter, Cook, anyone; but she was transfixed in shock and did not leave the room.

Joan, my sister, did not leave the room.

She stood and stared as I delivered the baby. It came out in a pop of pale skin and folded limbs. None of them kicking.

It came out purplish and too small.

‘It is sickly,’ I said. ‘It has come too soon.’