‘They’re both hanging on,’ John said. ‘Hester says that they are both hanging on.’

There was nothing for the two men to do. A couple of times there was a knock at the door and John went to admit a visitor to the rarities room and one to walk around the garden; but the rest of the time he and Alexander sat in silence in the parlour, either side of the cold fireplace, straining to hear footsteps upstairs, waiting for news. Johnnie took up a position on the top of the stairs outside Frances’s room carving at a twig with his pocket knife. All the day, he sat like a little choirboy at a vigil, listening to the gentle murmur of talk and the irregular sigh of Frances’s breath.

There was little Hester could do, though she never left Frances’s bedside. She sponged her forehead with vinegar and lavender water, she changed the sheets when they grew wet with sweat, she held her hand and spoke to her quietly and reassuringly when Frances tossed in fever-coloured nightmares, and she held her shoulders so that the young woman could sip a drink of cool well water.

But when Frances dropped back on her pillows and lay still, and the flush died away from her cheeks and her skin grew waxy and pale, there was nothing Hester could do but sit at the head of the bed and pray that her stepdaughter would live.

Hester watched all the night at the bedside and at three in the morning her head drooped and she slept. She was wakened only a few minutes later by a movement in the bed and she heard Frances say, ‘Oh Hester!’ in a tone of such sorrow that she was awake and on her feet as her eyes opened.

‘What is it? Have you found a swelling?’ she demanded, naming the greatest fear.

‘I’m bleeding,’ Frances said.

Hester saw at once that the fever had broken but the young woman was white and drained, and her nightdress was stained a deep cherry red.

‘My baby,’ Frances whispered.

Hester twisted a strip of sheet and held it against the flow. ‘Lie quietly,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ll send John for the midwife, you may be all right.’

Frances lay back obediently, but shook her head. ‘I can feel it gone,’ she said.

Hester, a childless woman, felt herself adrift in a tragedy that she had never experienced. ‘Can you?’

‘Yes,’ Frances said, in a little voice which Hester recognised from the lonely little girl she had first met. ‘Yes. My baby’s gone.’

At seven in the morning Hester went wearily downstairs with a pile of cloths for burning and some sheets to wash, and found Alexander Norman and John alert and silent at the foot of the stairs.

‘Forgive me,’ she said slowly. ‘I forgot the time, I forgot that you would be waiting and worried.’