Hamnet(32)

‘Nonsense,’ Agnes says crisply. ‘Gilbert’s talking nonsense. Don’t you listen to him. Your sister is happy for you to have her name, for you to carry it on. Remember that. If I hear Gilbert saying that to you, again, ever, I’ll put nettles in his breeches.’

Eliza bursts out laughing. ‘You will not.’

‘I most certainly will. And that will teach him not to go about frightening people.’ Agnes releases Eliza’s hand and pushes herself upright. ‘Now then. Time to start the day.’

Eliza looks down at her hand. There is a dent in her skin, from the press of Agnes’s thumbnail, a rose-red bloom all around it. She rubs at it with her opposite hand, surprised at its heat, as if it has been held near a candle.

The crown Eliza makes is of fern, larch and Michaelmas daisies. She sits at the dining table to do it. She has been given the task of minding her youngest brother, Edmond, as she works, so she gives him some larch leaves and daisy petals. He sits on the floor, legs outstretched, and drops the leaves, one by one, solemnly, into a wooden bowl, where he stirs them with a spoon. She listens to the string of sounds that comes from his mouth breathily, as he stirs: ‘eef’ is in there, for ‘leaf’, and ‘ize’, for ‘Eliza’, and ‘oop’, for ‘soup’. The words exist, if you know how to listen.

Her fingers – strong, slender, more used to the stitching of leather – weave the stems together in a circlet. Edmond gets to his feet. He toddles to the window, then back, then to the fireplace, admonishing himself as he gets closer: ‘Na-na-na-na-na.’ Eliza smiles and says, ‘Nay, Edmond, not the fire.’ He turns a delighted face towards her, thrilled at being understood. The fire, the heat, no, don’t touch. He knows he is not allowed near it but it fills him with a great and irresistible longing, the bright, leaping colour, the blast of warmth to his face, the array of fascinating implements to stoke and poke and grip.

She can hear, at the back of the house, her mother banging pots and pans in the cookhouse. She is in a filthy temper and has already caused the maid to cry. Mary is pouring all her ire and fury into the food. The joint won’t cook. The pastry for the pie will crumble. The dough hasn’t risen fast enough. The sweetmeats taste grainy. It seems to Eliza that the cookhouse is at the centre of a whirlwind and she must stay here, away from it, with Edmond, where they are safe.

Tuck, tuck, go her fingertips, severed stem ends into the weave; the palm of the opposite hand turns the circle of the crown as she works.

Above her, she can hear the thud and clatter of her brothers’ feet. They are wrestling at the top of the stair, by the sound of it. A grunt, a gust of laughter, Richard’s plaintive plea to be let go, Gilbert’s false reassurances, a thud, a creak of floorboard, then the smothered ‘Ow!’

‘Boys!’ comes the roar from the glove shop. ‘Stop that this instant! Or I’ll come up there and give you something to wail about, wedding or no wedding.’

The three brothers appear in the doorway, jostling each other out of the way. Eliza’s eldest brother, the bridegroom, skids across the room, seizes her, kisses the top of her head, then whirls around to lift Edmond high in the air. Edmond is still gripping his wooden spoon in one hand and a fistful of leaves in the other. His eldest brother spins him around, once, twice. Edmond quirks his eyebrows and smiles, the air lifting the hair from his forehead. He tries to cram the spoon sideways into his mouth. Then he is set down and all three bigger brothers promptly disappear out of the door into the street. Edmond lets his spoon drop, looking after them, forlorn, unable to understand this sudden desertion.

Eliza laughs. ‘They’ll be back, Ed,’ she says. ‘By and by. When he is wed. You’ll see.’

Agnes appears in the doorway. Her hair is all unravelled and brushed. It spreads down her back and over her shoulders like black water. She is wearing a gown Eliza hasn’t seen before, in a pale primrose, the front of which is ever so slightly pushed out.

‘Oh,’ says Eliza, clasping her hands together. ‘The yellow will pick out the hearts of the daisies.’ She leaps to her feet, holding out the crown. Agnes ducks down so that Eliza can place it on her head.

Frost has descended overnight. Each leaf, each blade, each twig on the road to the church has encased itself, replicated itself, in frost. The ground is crisp and hard underfoot. The groom and his men are up ahead: the noise from their group is of hooting, yelling, breaks of song, the trill of a pipe, played by a friend who skips half on, half off the verge. Bartholomew brings up the rear, his height obscuring those ahead of him, his head lowered.

The bride walks in a straight line, not looking left or right. With her are Eliza, Edmond riding on her hip, Mary, several of Agnes’s friends, the baker’s wife. Off to the side are Joan and her three daughters. Joan is pulling her youngest son by the hand. The sisters walk in tight formation, arm-in-arm, three abreast, giggling and whispering to each other. Eliza glances sideways at them, several times, before turning her head away.

Agnes sees this, sees Eliza’s sadness gather about her, like fog. She sees everything. The rosehips on the hedgerow that are turning to brown at their tips; unpicked blackberries, too high to reach; the swoop and dip of a thrush from the branches of an oak by the side of the track; the white stream of breath from the mouth of her stepmother as she carries the youngest boy on her back, the strands of strangely colourless hair escaping from her kerchief, the wide swing of her hips. Agnes sees that Caterina has her mother’s nose, flat and broad across the bridge, Joanie her mother’s low hairline and Margaret the thick neck and elongated earlobes. She sees that Caterina has the gift or ability to make her life happy, and Margaret, to a lesser degree, but that Joanie does not. She sees her father in the youngest boy, walking now, and holding Caterina’s hand: his fair hair, the squarish set of his head, the upturned ends of his mouth. She feels the ribbons tied about her stockings, tightening and releasing as the muscles of her legs work beneath her. She feels the prickle and shift of the herbs and berries and flowers of her crown, feels the minute trickle of water within the veins of their stems and leaves. She feels a corresponding motion within herself, in time with the plants, a flow or current or tide, the passage of blood from her to the child within. She is leaving one life; she is beginning another. Anything may happen.