Hamnet(21)

‘I’ve heard,’ she continues, with great control, ‘that you take walks together. After the lessons. Is that true?’

He doesn’t look at her when he says, ‘And what of it?’

‘Into the woods?’

He shrugs, neither yes nor no.

‘Does her mother know?’

‘Yes,’ he replies, quickly, too quickly, then amends this to ‘I don’t know.’

‘But what if . . .?’ Eliza finds the question she would like to put to him almost too unwieldy to ask; she has only the vaguest grasp of its content, the deeds involved, the matters at stake. She tries again: ‘What if you are caught? While taking one of these walks?’

He lifts a shoulder, then lets it drop. ‘Then we are caught.’

‘Does the thought not give you pause?’

‘Why would it?’

‘The brother . . .’ she begins ‘. . . the sheep farmer. Have you not seen him? He is a giant of a man. What if he were to—’

Eliza’s brother waves his hand. ‘You worry too much. He is always off with his sheep. I have never encountered him at Hewlands, in all the times I have been there.’

She folds her hands together, squints again at the curls of paper, but can make no sense of what is written there. ‘I don’t know if you know,’ she says, timidly, ‘what people say of her but—’

‘I know what is said of her,’ he snaps.

‘There are many who claim she is—’

He straightens, his colour suddenly high. ‘None of it is true. None of it. I’m surprised that you would attend to such idle gabble.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Eliza cries, crestfallen. ‘I’m merely –’

‘It is all falsehoods,’ he continues, as if she hasn’t spoken, ‘spread by her stepmother. She is so jealous of her it twists her like a snake and—’

‘– frightened for you!’

He regards her, taken aback. ‘For me? Why?’

‘Because . . .’ Eliza tries to order her thoughts, to sift through all she has heard ‘. . . because our father will never agree to this. You must know that. We are in debt to that family. Father will never even speak their name. And because of what is said of her. I don’t believe it,’ she adds hastily, ‘of course I don’t. But, still, it is troubling. People are saying that no good can come of this attachment of yours.’

He slumps back to the wool bales, as if defeated, shutting his eyes. His whole body is quivering, with anger or something else. Eliza doesn’t know. There is a long silence. Eliza folds the fabric of her smock into tiny tight pleats. Then she remembers something else she wanted to ask him, and leans forward.

‘Does she really have a hawk?’ she whispers, in a new voice.

He opens his eyes, lifts his head. Brother and sister regard each other for a moment.

‘She does,’ he says.

‘Really? I had heard that but did not know if it was—’

‘It’s a kestrel, not a hawk,’ he says, in a rush. ‘She trained it herself. A priest taught her. She has a gauntlet and the bird takes off, like an arrow, up through the trees. You have never seen anything like it. It is so different when it flies – it is almost, you might think, two creatures. One on the ground and another in the air. When she calls, it returns to her, circling in these great wheels in the sky, and it lands with such force upon the glove, such determination.’

‘She has let you do this? Wear her glove and catch the hawk?’

‘Kestrel,’ he corrects, then nods, and the pride of it makes him almost glow. ‘She has.’

‘I should love,’ Eliza breathes, ‘to see that.’

He looks at her, rubs his chin with his stained fingertips. ‘Maybe,’ he says, almost to himself, ‘I’ll take you with me one day.’

Eliza lets go of her dress, the pleats falling from the fabric. She is thrilled and terrified, all at once. ‘You will?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you think she will let me fly the hawk? The kestrel?’

‘I see no reason why not.’ He considers his sister for a moment. ‘You will like her, I think. You and she are not dissimilar, in some ways.’

Eliza is shocked by this revelation. She is not dissimilar to the woman of whom people say such terrible things? Only the other day, at church, she had an opportunity to observe the complexion of the mistress of Hewlands – those boils and blotches and wens – and the idea that a person might be able to do that to another is deeply disturbing to her. She doesn’t say this to her brother, though, and, in truth, there is a part of her that longs to see the girl up close, to look into her eyes. So Eliza says nothing. Her brother does not appreciate being pressed or rushed. He is someone who must be approached sideways, with caution, as with a restive horse. She must gently probe him and, in that way, she will likely find out more.

‘What manner of person is she, then?’ Eliza asks.

Her brother thinks before he answers. ‘She is like no one you have ever met. She cares not what people may think of her. She follows entirely her own course.’ He sits forward, placing his elbows on his knees, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘She can look at a person and see right into their very soul. There is not a drop of harshness in her. She will take a person for who they are, not what they are not or ought to be.’ He glances at Eliza. ‘Those are rare qualities, are they not?’