Hamnet(23)

And now there is this – this fit. It is altogether unlike anything she has felt before. It makes her think of a hand drawing on a glove, of a lamb slithering wet from a ewe, an axe splitting open a log, a key turning in an oiled lock. How, she wonders, as she looks into the face of the tutor, can anything fit so well, so exactly, with such a sense of rightness?

The apples, stretching away from her one way and the other, rotate and jostle in their grooves.

The Latin tutor opens his eyes for a moment, the black of his pupils wide, almost unseeing. He smiles, places his hands on either side of her face, murmurs something, she isn’t sure what, but it doesn’t matter at this particular moment. Their foreheads touch. Strange, she thinks, to have another at such proximity: the overwhelming scale of lash, of folded eyelid, of the hairs of the brow, all facing the same way. She doesn’t take his hand, not even out of habit: she doesn’t need to.

When she had taken his hand that day, the first time she had met him, she had felt – what? Something of which she had never known the like. Something she would never have expected to find in the hand of a clean-booted grammar-school boy from town. It was far-reaching: this much she knew. It had layers and strata, like a landscape. There were spaces and vacancies, dense patches, underground caves, rises and descents. There wasn’t enough time for her to get a sense of it all – it was too big, too complex. It eluded her, mostly. She knew there was more of it than she could grasp, that it was bigger than both of them. A sense, too, that something was tethering him, holding him back; there was a tie somewhere, a bond, that needed to be loosened or broken, before he could fully inhabit this landscape, before he could take command.

She watches an apple turn its red-stained flesh towards her, then away, a pitted tree-mark appearing, then the flash of the navel-like end.

Last time he came to the farm, they had walked together after his lesson, up to the furthest field, as dusk settled on the land, dimming the trees to black, as the furrows of the new-cut hayfields seemed to deepen into valleys, and come upon Joan, stepping between the springy flanks of their flocks. She liked to check on Bartholomew’s work, or liked Bartholomew to know she was checking. One of the two. She had seen them coming, Agnes knew. She had seen Joan’s head turn towards them, take a long look at them, as they walked up the path together. She would have realised why they were coming, would have seen their joined hands. Agnes had sensed the anxiety of the tutor: all at once, his fingers were cold and she could feel them tremble. She pressed his hand once, twice, before releasing it and letting him go ahead of her, through the gate.

Never, was what Joan had said. You? Then she laughed, a harsh trill that startled the sheep around her, making them lift their blunt heads and shift their cloven feet. Never, she said again. What age are you? She didn’t wait for a reply but answered herself: Not old enough. I know your family, Joan had said, screwing up her face into a contemptuous pout, pointing at the tutor. Everyone knows them. Your father and his shady dealings, his disgrace. He was bailiff, she said, spitting out the word ‘was’. How he loved to lord it over us all, swanning about in his red robes. But not any more. Have you any idea how much your father owes around the town? How much he owes us? You could tutor my sons until they are all grown men and it wouldn’t come close to clearing his debt here. So, no, she said, looking round him at her, you cannot marry her. Agnes will marry a farmer, by and by – someone with prospects, someone to provide for her. She’s been brought up for that life. Her father left her a dowry in his will – I’m sure you know that, don’t you? She’ll not marry a feckless, tradeless boy like you.

And she had turned away, as if that had been an end to it. But I don’t want to marry a farmer, Agnes had cried. Joan had laughed again. Is that so? You want to marry him? Yes, she said. I do. Very much. And Joan had laughed again, shaking her head.

But we are handfasted, the tutor said. I asked her and she answered and so we are bound.

No, you are not, said Joan. Not unless I say so.

The tutor had left the field, marched down the path and off through the woods, his face dark and thunderous, and Agnes was left with her stepmother, who told her to stop standing there like a simpleton, go back to the hall and mind the children. The next time he came to the farm, Agnes beckoned to him. I know a way, she said. I have an answer. We can, she said, take matters into our own hands. Come. Come with me.

Each apple, to her, at this moment, seems toweringly different, distinct, unique, each one streaked with variations of crimson, gold and green. All of them turning their single eye upon her, then away, then back. It is too much, all too much, it is overwhelming, how many of them there are, the noise they are all making, the tapping, rhythmic, rocking sound, on and on it goes, faster and faster. It steals her breath, makes her heart trip and race in her chest, she cannot take it much more, she cannot, she cannot. Some apples rock right out of their places, on to the floor, and perhaps the tutor has trodden on them because the air is filled with a sweetish, acrid smell and she grips his shoulders. She knows, she feels, that all will be well, that everything will go their way. He holds her to him and she can feel the breath leave him, enter him, leave him again.

Joan is not an idle woman. She has six children (eight, if you count the half-mad step-girl and the idiot brother she was forced to take on when she married). She is a widow, as of last year. The farmer left the farm to Bartholomew, of course, but the terms of the will allow her, Joan, to remain living here to oversee matters. And oversee she will. She doesn’t trust that Bartholomew to look further than his nose. She has told him she will continue to run the kitchen, the yard and the orchard, with the help of the girls. Bartholomew will see to the flocks and the fields, with the help of the boys, and she will walk the land with him, once a week, to make sure all is as it should be. So Joan has the chickens and pigs to see to, the cows to milk, food for the men, the farmhand and the shepherd to prepare, day in, day out. Two younger boys to educate as best she can – and Lord knows they will need an education as the farm will not be coming down to them, more’s the pity. She has three daughters (four, if you count the other, which Joan usually doesn’t) to keep under her eye. She has bread to bake, cattle to milk, berries to bottle, beer to brew, clothes to mend, stockings to darn, floors to scrub, dishes to wash, beds to air, carpets to beat, windows to polish, tables to scour, hair to brush, passages to sweep, steps to scrub.