Hamnet(36)

Agnes nods again, once. Mary’s face is clenched, her eyes blazing. You might think she was angry, but Agnes knows better. The two women look at one another and Agnes sees that Mary is thinking of her daughter, Anne, who died of the pestilence, aged eight, covered with swellings and hot with fever, her fingers black and odorous and rotting off her hands. She knows this because Eliza told her once but, then, she knew it anyway. Agnes doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t break her gaze with Mary, but she knows that little Anne will be there in the room with them, over by the door, her winding sheet caught over her shoulder, her hair unravelled, her fingers sore and useless, her neck swollen and choking. Agnes makes herself form the thought, Anne, we know you are there, you are not forgotten. How frail, to Agnes, is the veil between their world and hers. For her, the worlds are indistinct from each other, rubbing up against each other, allowing passage between them. She will not let Judith cross over.

Mary mutters a string of words under her breath, a prayer, of sorts, an entreaty, then pulls Agnes to her. Her touch is almost rough, her fingers gripping Agnes’s elbow, her forearm pressing down hard on Agnes’s shoulder. Agnes’s face is pressed to Mary’s coif; she smells the soap in it, soap she herself made – with ashes and tallow and the narrow buds of lavender – she hears the rasp of hair against cloth, underneath. Before she shuts her eyes, submitting herself to the embrace, she sees Susanna and Hamnet step in through the back door.

Then Mary has released her and is turning, the moment between them over, done. She is all business now, brushing down her apron, inspecting the contents of the mortar, going to the fireplace, saying she will build it up, telling Hamnet to bring wood, quickly, boy, we shall build a great blaze for there is nothing so efficacious to the driving out of fever as a hot fire. She is clearing a space before the hearth and Agnes knows that Mary will bring down the rush mattress; she will bring clean blankets, she will make up a bed there, by the fire, and Judith will be brought down before the blaze.

Whatever differences Agnes and Mary have – and there are many, of course, living at such close quarters, with so much to do, so many children, so many mouths, the meals to cook and the clothes to wash and mend, the men to watch and assess, soothe and guide – dissolve in the face of tasks. The two of them can gripe and prickle and rub each other up the wrong way; they can argue and bicker and sigh; they can throw into the pig-pen food the other has cooked because it is too salted or not milled finely enough or too spiced; they can raise an eyebrow at each other’s darning or stitching or embroidery. In a time such as this, however, they can operate like two hands of the same person.

Look. Agnes is pouring water into a pan and sprinkling the powder into it. Mary is working the bellows, taking the wood from Hamnet, instructing Susanna to go to the coffer next door and bring out sheets. She is lighting the candles now, the flames flaring and lengthening, spreading circles of light into the dark corners of the room. Agnes is handing the pan to Mary, who is setting it to warm over the flames. They are both climbing the stairs now, without conferring, and Agnes knows that Mary will greet Judith with a smiling face, will call out some rousing and unconcerned words. Together, they will see to the girl, lift down the pallet, give her the medicine. They will take this matter in hand.





t is past midnight on Agnes’s wedding night; it might even be near dawn. It is cold enough for her breath to be visible with every exhalation, for it to collect in droplets on the blanket she has wrapped about her.

Henley Street, when she looks through the windows, is drenched in the darkest black. No one is abroad. An owl can be heard intermittently, from somewhere behind the house, sending its shivering cry out into the night.

Some, Agnes reflects, as she stands at the window, blanket clutched around her, might take this as a bad omen, the owl’s cry being a sign of death. But Agnes isn’t afraid of the creatures. She likes them, likes their eyes, which resemble the centre of marigolds, their overlapped, flecked feathers, their inscrutable expressions. They seem, to her, to exist in some doubled state, half spirit, half bird.

Agnes has risen from her marriage bed and is walking about the rooms of her new house. Because sleep won’t seem to come for her and fold her in its plumes. Because the thoughts in her head are too many, too crowded, jostling for space. Because there is too much to take in, too much of the day to go over. Because this is the first time she has ever been expected to sleep either in a bed or on an upstairs floor.

And so she is drifting through the apartment, touching things as she goes: the back of a chair, an empty shelf, the fire irons, the door handle, the stair rail. She moves to the front of the house, to the back, and again to the front; she goes down the stairs, she comes up again. She runs a hand down the curtains surrounding the bed, given to them as a wedding gift by his parents. She pulls aside the curtain and contemplates the form of the man within, her husband, ocean-deep in sleep, sprawled in the middle of the bed, arms outstretched, as if drifting on a current. She looks up at the ceiling, beyond which is a small, slope-roofed attic.

This apartment, now her home, has been built on to the side of the family’s house. It has two storeys: downstairs there is the fireplace and the settle, the table and the plate, up here the bed. John had been using it for storage – for what exactly has never been mentioned but Agnes, sniffing the air, the first time they came in here, caught the unmistakable scent of fleece, of baled wool, rolled up and left for several years. Whatever it was it has been removed and taken elsewhere.