Hamnet(19)

Susanna shrugs. She rubs her fingertips against the worn joints of the chair.

Mary casts her eyes about the room. ‘Where are the twins?’ she demands.

Susanna raises one shoulder, lets it drop.

‘Haven’t you seen them?’ Mary says, mopping her brow with a handkerchief.

‘No.’

‘I told them,’ Mary mutters, bending to pick up Susanna’s fallen cap, placing it on the table, ‘to chop the kindling and to light the fire in the cookhouse. And have they done it? No, they have not. They are both in for a hiding when they come in.’

She returns to stand in front of Susanna, hands on hips. ‘And where’s your mother?’

‘Don’t know.’

Mary sighs. Almost says something. But doesn’t. Susanna sees this, senses the unsaid words rippling out like pennants into the air between them.

‘Well, come on, then,’ Mary says instead, flapping her apron at Susanna, ‘stir yourself. The supper won’t cook itself. Come and help us, girl, instead of sitting there like a brood hen.’

Mary takes Susanna’s arm and hauls her to her feet. They go out of the back door, which slams shut behind them.

Upstairs, Hamnet wakes with a start.





here is suddenly nothing so excellent as teaching Latin. On the days he is due at Hewlands, the tutor is up at first call, folding his bedclothes and washing himself vigorously at the pail. He combs his hair and beard with careful strokes. He fills his breakfast plate but leaves the table before he has finished. He helps his brothers find their books and escorts them to the door, as they leave for school, waving them off. He has been known to hum, even to yield a polite nod to his father. His sister eyes him, sideways, as he whistles to himself, fastening his jerkin one way then the other, checking his reflection in the window pane before leaving, tucking and retucking his hair behind his ears, banging the door after him.

On the days when he is not at Hewlands, he lies in his bed until his father threatens to tan his hide unless he stirs himself. Once upright, he will slope about the house, sighing, not answering if spoken to, chewing absently on a crust of bread, picking things up, putting them down again. He is observed in the workshop, leaning on the counter, turning over pair after pair of ladies’ gloves, as if searching for some meaning hidden in their seams, their inert fingers. He then sighs once more and pushes them all haphazardly back into their box. He stands over Ned, watching as he stitches a falconer’s belt, so closely that the boy is quite put off his work, causing John to roar at the boy about how there’s only the door between him and the street.

‘And you,’ John turns on his son, ‘get out of here. Find some useful occupation. If you can.’ John shakes his head, turning his attention back to the cutting of a squirrel skin into useful, narrow strips. ‘All that education,’ he mutters, to himself, to the slippery lengths of pelt, ‘and not an ounce of sense.’

His sister, Eliza, is sent later by her mother to find him. After wandering the ground floor, the yard, she takes the stairs and goes from the boys’ chamber to hers, to her parents’ and back; she calls his name.

The reply takes a while to come and, when it does, it is flat in tone, annoyed, displeased.

‘Where are you?’ she asks wonderingly, turning her head from side to side.

Again, the long, reluctant pause. Then: ‘Up here.’

‘Where?’ she asks, mystified.

‘Here.’

Eliza moves from her parents’ chamber, to stand at the foot of the ladder to the attic. She calls his name again.

A sigh. A mysterious rustle. ‘What do you want?’

For a moment, Eliza thinks he might be doing the thing that boys – young men – do sometimes. She has enough brothers to know that there is something that happens in private, and they are ill-tempered if interrupted. She hesitates at the bottom of the ladder, one hand on a rung.

‘May I . . . come up?’

A silence.

‘Are you sick?’

Another sigh. ‘No.’

‘Mother says, can you go to the tannery and then to the—’

There is a strangled, inarticulate cry from above, the sound of something weighty being thrown against the wall, a boot perhaps or a loaf of bread, a movement, then a thud, not unlike someone standing up and hitting their head on a rafter. ‘Ow,’ he screams, and lets out a volley of curses, some startling, some Eliza has never heard before but will ask him about later, when he is in a better humour.

‘I’m coming up,’ she says, and begins to climb the ladder.

She rises, head first, into a warm and dusty space, the only light coming from two candles propped on a bale. Her brother is sitting collapsed on the floor, his head cradled in his hands.

‘Let me see,’ she says.

He mutters something inaudible, possibly heretical, but the meaning is clear: he wants her to go away and leave him alone.

She puts her hands on his, peels back his fingers. With her other hand, she lifts the candle and examines the place of pain. There is a swelling, reddened and bruised, just under his hairline. She presses its outer edges, making him wince.

‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘You’ve had worse.’

He lifts his eyes to hers and they regard each other for a moment. He gives a half-smile. ‘That is true,’ he says.