Hamnet(28)

‘I’m in no doubt,’ his father is saying, ‘we can . . . come to an arrangement.’

The expression on his father’s face is an odd one. He stares at it, struck by its peculiarity. John’s lips are pulled back from his teeth, his eyes strangely alight. It takes him several seconds to realise that John is, in fact, smiling.

‘But, John,’ his mother is exclaiming, ‘there is no possible way that we can agree to such—’

‘Hush, woman,’ John says. ‘The boy said they were handfasted. Did you not hear him? No son of mine will go back on his promises, will shirk his responsibilities. The lad has got this girl with child. He has a responsibility, a—’

‘He’s eighteen years of age! He has no trade! How can you think—’

‘I told you to hush.’ His father speaks with his accustomed rough fury, just for a moment, before reassuming the odd, almost wheedling tone. ‘My son made you a promise, did he?’ he says, looking at Agnes. ‘Before he took you to the woods?’

Agnes strokes her bird. She looks at John, with a level gaze. ‘We made a promise to each other.’

‘And what does your mother – your, ah, stepmother – say to the match?’

‘She . . . was not in favour. Before. And now,’ she gestures towards her belly, ‘I cannot say.’

‘I see.’ His father pauses for a moment, his mind working. And there is, to the son, something familiar in this silence of his father’s, and just as he is staring at him, frowning, wondering, he realises what it is. This is the face his father wears when he is contemplating a business deal, an advantageous one. The expression is the same as when a cheap lot of skins has come his way, or a couple of extra bales of wool, to be hidden in the attic, or an inexperienced merchant has been sent to barter with him. It is the expression he assumes when he is trying not to let on to the other party that he will come out of the deal better off.

It is covetous. It is gleeful. It is suppressed. It chills the son, right down to the marrow of his bones. It makes him clutch the edges of the chair beneath him with both hands.

This marriage, the son suddenly sees, with a choking sensation of disbelief, will be beneficial to his father, to whatever dealings he has with the sheep farmer’s widow. His father is about to turn all this – Agnes’s bleeding face, her arrival here, the kestrel, the baby growing in her belly – to his own good.

He cannot believe it. He cannot. That he and Agnes have, unwittingly, played into his father’s hands. The thought makes him want to run from the room. That what happened between them both at Hewlands, in the forest, the kestrel diving like a needle through the fabric of leaves above them, can be twisted into a rope with which his father will tether him ever more closely to this house, to this place. It is insupportable. It cannot be borne. Will he never get away? Will he never be free of this man, this house, this trade?

John begins to talk again, in the same honeyed voice, saying how he will go out to Hewlands directly, to talk to the yeoman’s widow, to Agnes’s brother. He is sure, he tells them, he can broker an agreement, can draw up terms beneficial to all. The boy wants to marry the girl, he says to his wife, the girl wants to marry the boy: who are they to forbid this union? The baby must be born in wedlock, cannot be delivered into this world on the wrong side of the sheet. It is their grandchild, is it not? Many weddings are brought about thus. It is nature’s way.

At this point, he turns to his wife and gives a laugh, reaches out a hand to grab at her hip, and the son must look at the floor, so queasy does he feel.

John leaps to his feet, his face flushed, all eagerness and fervour. ‘It is settled, then. I will go out to Hewlands, to set out my terms . . . our terms . . . to . . . to seal this most . . . sudden . . . and, it must be said, blessed union between our families. The girl will remain here.’ He beckons to his son. ‘A word with you, in private, if you please.’

Out in the passage, John lets the pretence at geniality drop. He grips his son by the collar, his fingers cold against his skin; he pushes his face right up to his.

‘Tell me,’ he says, with low, grizzled menace, ‘there are no more.’

‘No more what?’

‘Say it. There are no more. Are there?’

The son feels the wall pressing into his back, his shoulder. The fingers grip his collar with such force that they stop the air in his throat.

‘Are there?’ his father hisses into his face. His breath is vaguely fishy, loamy. ‘Will there be other Warwickshire doxies lolloping up to my door to tell me that you swelled their bellies with a child? Must I be dealing with others? Tell me the truth, now. Because, by God, if there are others and her family hear of it, there’ll be trouble. For you and for all of us. Understand?’

He gasps, pushes back against his father but there is an elbow pressed into his shoulder, a forearm across his throat. He tries to say, no, never, there is only her, she is no doxy, how dare you say such a thing, but the words cannot make it to his mouth.

‘Because if you have ploughed and planted another one – just one – I’ll kill you. And if I don’t, her brother will. Do you hear me? I swear I will part you from your life, with God as my witness. Remember that.’

His father gives one final shove to his windpipe, then moves off, out of the door, letting it clang shut behind him.