Bess nodded.

I never knew how long a birth could take. How much punishment it gave the mother. Bess labored for hours and hours, such pain that she screamed and cried and I were surprised there were still water in her to cry and sweat. The pains started with minutes between them and grew closer until it never broke, just kept coming and coming and coming. She cried and hurt so much that I cried with her. It weren’t my arm—though that were red and sore in her grasp—it were the strangeness of it.

Pain never meant much to me. It weren’t the beginning or the end—it were an ever-moving mark that never served a purpose, never bore a reason, never changed things except to make people more afraid.

But this pain—I cried with her and I cursed God for His cruelty. I thought He meant to take Bess from us—surely this amount of pain weren’t natural, weren’t expected, even though the midwife stayed calm throughout. I thought Bess were dying, and I were meant to hold her hand and watch because Death and I knew each other so well.

But then the baby started to come, and the pain started to mean something. Every push Bess gave became an inch closer to new life as the little one struggled to get out of her body.

The head came first, and it were a quick thing to pull it out once the shoulders appeared, like a strange and humbling magic, from Bess’s body. The midwife caught the baby in clean linen, toweling off blood and mess. She cleaned the face, and the tiny eyes didn’t open and the mouth didn’t move.

“Sarah?” Bess whined. “Sarah?”

“Hush,” the midwife said. Holding the baby in the linen, she swatted the rump.

And the tiny, perfect thing screamed. It screamed so loud and hard its lips trembled and shook.

The midwife laughed. “Bess, you have a beautiful, healthy baby girl.”

Bess burst into tears as the midwife passed the bundle up. There were a fleshy cord tying the two together, and the midwife motioned to me. “Perhaps you and your knives could be of service?” she asked.

Silent and wide-eyed, I moved forward, away from Bess, my body hot and sweaty where she’d been pressed against me. I drew one of my knives, burning it in the fire to make the wound clean. I felt utterly strange at having a weapon so close to a brand new thing, and the midwife showed me where to cut.

In a breath it were done, and the tether that bound the two of them together became something less easy to see, less easy to touch. But it were there nonetheless, as she stared at her daughter and her daughter quieted, looking back up at her through bare-open eyes.

I stood before them, lost, captivated, as the women cleaned and piled things to hide the blood and the muck and all the things that had come out of her that no one wanted the men to know about. She just stared at the little baby, and the midwife showed her how to feed her.

“Scarlet?” Bess asked soft.

Nodding, I stepped closer. “Will you bring her out? I don’t want the menfolk in here just yet.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice rough. Bess held her up a little but she weren’t strong, and I picked up the baby, holding her at arm’s length and staring at her as she stared back at me. The midwife laughed and took her from me, holding her like a loaf of bread I were meant to cradle.

“Like this,” she told me, putting her into my arms.

I followed her instructions, but the baby turned and wiggled until she were in the crook of my arm, against my breast. The midwife smiled. “Just like that. Make sure to hold her head,” she told me, positioning my other arm.

“I’ve held babies before,” I said. “She’s just . . . tiny.”

The midwife beamed at me and nodded me toward the door.

One of the women opened it for me, and all the men were there, looking like they hadn’t moved in hours, big broad shoulders and tall heads overfilling the space. I knew I were meant to look for Much, but I saw Robin first, and he came close, grazing his fingers on her little cheek and looking back up to me.

He kissed me, and I knew how it could be. Us, with a family, with little babies just like this. Our family.

“Is that . . . ?” Much breathed beside me.

I pulled away from Rob, showing Much the baby. “Your daughter,” I told him.

His throat worked as he looked at me. He didn’t deny that it were his. The way he looked at her, even if John were the father, she were Much’s daughter. “Let me hold her,” he told me.

I nodded, and Much slipped his arm along mine, catching her up in one hand and using his other arm to hold her underneath. He nodded at the door, not looking away from his daughter. “Open the door, Scar,” he murmured.

“She doesn’t want—” I started.

He grinned at his daughter, then glanced up to me. “Let me go be with my wonderful, miraculous wife, Scar,” he said.

I opened the door for him.

Rob caught my hand and tugged it. “Come on. You need some rest,” he said, kissing my temple.

Taking his hand, I let him pull me away from the other people, but I stopped him when we were alone. “I don’t want to go back to that room, Rob.”

He stared at me. “Will you tell me why?”

Nodding, a small sigh escaped me. “I just—later. I will tell you later. Is that enough?”

He kissed me again. “Yes.”

There weren’t any other rooms without people in them. Rob took me outside into the late morning, to the stables, nodding to the stable hands.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered to me. “But I come up here to think sometimes. It reminds me of the Oak, in a way.”