‘May I . . .’ she begins, speaking into the icy air of the room ‘. . . I wondered if you would like it if I . . . made your flower crown? For tomorrow?’

Eliza looks down at her hand. There is a dent in her skin, from the press of Agnes’s thumbnail, a rose-red bloom all around it. She rubs at it with her opposite hand, surprised at its heat, as if it has been held near a candle.

The words exist, if you know how to listen.

The crown Eliza makes is of fern, larch and Michaelmas daisies.

She feels a corresponding motion within herself, in time with the plants, a flow or current or tide, the passage of blood from her to the child within. She is leaving one life; she is beginning another. Anything may happen.

The priest dips the ring in holy water, murmuring a blessing, and then the groom takes it. In nomine Patris, he says, in a clear voice, audible to all, even those at the back, sliding the ring on to her thumb and then off again, in nomine Filii, the ring is pushed on to her first finger, in nomine Spiritus Sancti, her middle finger. At Amen, the ring encircles her third finger where, the groom told her the other day, as they were hiding in the orchard, runs a vein that travels straight to her heart. It feels cold, for a moment, against her skin, and damp with holy water, but then the blood, flowing straight from her heart, warms it, brings it up to the temperature of her body.

She steps into the church, conscious of the three things she is holding. The ring on her finger, the spray of rowan berries, curled into her palm, the hand of her husband.

She jumps, her hand travelling to her heart. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You frightened me! Whatever are you doing, boy? You look like a ghost, standing there like that.’

The two women look at one another and Agnes sees that Mary is thinking of her daughter, Anne, who died of the pestilence, aged eight, covered with swellings and hot with fever, her fingers black and odorous and rotting off her hands.

Agnes makes herself form the thought, Anne, we know you are there, you are not forgotten. How frail, to Agnes, is the veil between their world and hers. For her, the worlds are indistinct from each other, rubbing up against each other, allowing passage between them. She will not let Judith cross over.

The letter manifesting itself from under the blackened point, hardened to charcoal in the kitchen fire: ‘A’. Her letter, always hers.