Hamnet(44)

He steps forward and lifts it out, giving it a gentle shake, so that the drops don’t fall to the curled pages. He notices, then, that something has been added to what he had been writing the night before.

It is a string of letters, written in a slanted fashion; the words seem to slide down the page, as if they weigh more at the end of the sentence than at the beginning. He bends to look. There is no punctuation, no indication of the start or finish. He can make out the words ‘branches’ and ‘rain’ (written as ‘rayne’); there is another word beginning with a capital B and another with an F or possibly an S.

The branches of the something are something something . . . rayne. He cannot follow it. His fingers hold flat the page. With his other hand, he scuffs the end of the quill against his cheek. The branches, the branches.

His wife has never done this before, taken up a quill and written something at his desk. Is it a message for him? Is it important that he understand it? What does it mean?

He lays down the quill. He turns. He calls her name again, with a questioning lilt. He descends the narrow stairs.

She is not in the downstairs room or outside on the street. Could she have gone to the priest to fly her kestrel, as she does sometimes? But surely she wouldn’t undertake to walk that far, so close to her confinement? He goes through the back door, into the yard, where he finds his mother standing over Eliza, who is dipping cloth in and out of red dye.

‘Have you seen Agnes?’

‘Not like that,’ his mother is scolding. ‘The way I showed you yesterday, with light fingers. Light, I said.’ She raises her head to look at him. ‘Agnes?’ she repeats.

The baby is alive: Agnes doesn’t realise, despite her intimations, how much she feared that this might not be until she sees it twist its head, scrunch up its features into a yell of outrage. Her daughter’s face is wet, greyish, with an expression of dismay. She holds her fists up on either side of her head and lets out a cry – surprisingly loud and emphatic for so small a creature. Agnes turns her on to her side, as her father always did with lambs, and watches as the water – from that other place where she has been, these long months – leaks out of her mouth. Her lips become tinged with pink and then the colour spreads to her cheeks, her chin, her eyes, her forehead. She looks, suddenly and completely, human. No longer aquatic, a mer-child, as she did when she emerged, but a small person, very much herself, with her father’s high forehead, his bottom lip, his swirl of hair at the crown of her head, and Agnes’s sharp cheekbones and wide eyes.

She reaches out with her spare hand and brings the blanket and scissors out of the basket. She lays the baby on the blanket and works at the cord with the scissors. Who would ever think it could be so thick, so strong, still pulsing like a long, striped heart? The colours of birth assail Agnes: the red, the blue, the white.

She tugs on her shift, baring her breast, lifting the baby to it, watching in something close to awe as her daughter’s mouth opens wide, as she clamps down and begins to suck. Agnes lets out a laugh. Everything works. The baby knows what to do, better than her.

In the house and, shortly afterwards, in the whole town, there follows an enormous hue and cry, a panic and a lament. Eliza is in tears; Mary is screeching, running up and down the stairs in the narrow apartment, as if Agnes has been hiding in a cupboard. I had it all ready for her, she keeps shouting, the birthing room, everything she needs, right here. John thunders in and out of the workshop, alternately roaring that he can’t possibly work with all this racket, and then, where the devil has she got to?

Ned, the apprentice, is dispatched to Hewlands, to see if they have any news of her. No one can find Bartholomew, who went out early in the morning, but soon all the sisters and Joan, neighbours and villagers are out, searching for Agnes. Have you seen a woman, greatly with child, carrying a basket? The sisters have been up and down the lane, asking anyone they meet. But no one has seen her, save the wife of the baker, who said she went in the direction of the Shottery path. She wrung her hands, threw her apron over her head, saying, Why did I let her go, why, when I knew something wasn’t right? Gilbert and Richard are sent out into the streets, to apprehend passers-by, to see if anyone has any news at all.

And the husband? He is the one to find Bartholomew.

When Bartholomew spies him on the path that runs along the outer edge of his land, he throws down the bale of straw he is holding and strides towards him. The lad – Bartholomew cannot think of him as anything other than a lad, soft-handed towns-boy that he is, hair all smoothed back, a ring through his ear – blanches to see him coming over the field. The dogs reach him first and they bound and bark around him.

‘What?’ Bartholomew demands, as he comes within earshot. ‘Is she brought to bed? Is all well?’

‘Eh,’ the husband says, ‘the situation, such as it is, if indeed one might call it that, is—’

Bartholomew’s fingers seize the front of the husband’s jerkin. ‘Speak plainly,’ he says. ‘Now.’

‘She’s disappeared. We don’t know where she is. Someone saw her, early this morning, heading in this direction. Have you seen her? Have you any clue as to where she—’

‘You don’t know where she is?’ Bartholomew repeats. He stares at him for a long moment, his grip tightening on the jerkin, then speaks in a quiet, menacing voice: ‘I thought I made myself very clear. I told you to look after her. Didn’t I? I said that you were to take good care of her. The best of care.’