Hamnet(62)

Agnes touches her stomach, as if to communicate with the child inside. Very well, she wants to say to it, what must be shall be. You shall be heard. I will get ready for you.

She has to hurry. She has to get out of this house as quickly as she can. She will not birth this baby here, under this roof. Mary has her eye on her, she knows. She will need to be quick, quiet, wily. She will need to leave now.

Beside her, Susanna is crouching on the floor, holding her doll by its leg, exclaiming to herself.

‘Come,’ Agnes says to her, aiming for a tone of brisk cheer. She holds out her hand. ‘Let’s go and find Eliza, shall we?’

Susanna, lost in her game with the upside-down doll, is astonished to see the hand of an adult drop down from above. One moment, there was a doll and the doll was a person who could fly, except her wings could not be seen, and she, Susanna, could also fly and she and the doll were taking to the skies, among the birds, up above the trees. And now there is this: a hand.

She tips back her face and sees her mother looming over her, all stomach, with a faraway face, saying something about Eliza, about going.

Susanna’s face pulls in and she frowns. ‘No,’ she says, curling both hands around the leg of her doll.

‘Please,’ says her mother, and her voice doesn’t sound as it usually does. It is pinched and tight, like an outgrown smock.

‘No,’ Susanna says again, angry now, because her sense of the game is evaporating, drifting away, with all this talking from above. ‘No-no-no!’

‘Yes,’ Agnes is saying, and Susanna is astonished to feel herself lifted off her feet, the hearthrug falling away from her, the fire whisking past her, as she is carried, without ceremony, out of the room, away from her doll, which has fallen to the floor, through the door and down the path to the washhouse, where the maid is standing, scrubbing at something in a bowl.

‘Here,’ Agnes says, thrusting the roaring child into her arms. ‘Can you take her to Eliza?’ She leans in and kisses Susanna on the cheek, then the forehead, then the cheek again. ‘Sorry, my darling. I’ll be back. Very soon.’

Agnes goes quickly, very quickly, up the path, reaching her hearth just as the next pain comes. There is no question, now, of what is happening. She remembers it all from last time, except somehow this feels different. It is fast, it is early, it is insistent. She is not yet where she needs to be, in the forest, alone, with the trees over her head. She is not alone. She is still here, in the town, in the apartment. There is not a moment to lose. Ah-ah-ah, she hears herself pant. She grips the back of a chair until it passes. Then she makes her way across the room to the table, where she has left her bag.

She hooks her fingers around the strap and is at her front door in seconds, manoeuvring herself through, stepping out. Just before she shuts it, she listens for a moment, then nods, satisfied: Susanna’s wails have stopped, which means she must be in the presence of her aunt.

She is setting out across the street, pausing to let a horse pass by, when someone falls into step beside her. She turns to see Gilbert, her brother-in-law, next to her, grinning.

‘Going somewhere?’ he says, raising his eyebrows.

‘No,’ Agnes says, panic beating, like a pulse, against her brow. She has to get to the forest, she must. If she is made to stay here, she doesn’t know what will happen. It won’t bode well. Something will go wrong. She is so certain of this fact, while unable to explain why. ‘I mean, yes. To . . .’ She tries to focus on Gilbert but his face, his beard, looks blurry and indistinct. She is struck, once again, by how unlike his brother he is. ‘To . . .’ she casts around for a plausible place ‘. . . the bakery.’

He clamps his hand around her elbow. ‘Come,’ he says.

‘Where?’

‘Back to the house.’

‘No,’ she says, pulling her elbow away. ‘I won’t. I’m going to the bakery and you – you must let me go. You mustn’t stop me.’

‘Yes, I must.’

‘No, you must not.’

At this point, Mary comes hurrying up, out of breath. ‘Agnes,’ she says, taking her other arm, ‘you are to come back to the house. We have everything ready. You needn’t worry.’ And then, out of the corner of her mouth, to Gilbert: ‘Go for the midwife.’

‘No,’ Agnes is shouting now, ‘let me go.’ How can she explain to these people that she cannot remain here, she cannot birth the child in this way? How can she make them understand the dread that has been filling her, ever since she heard the words of that letter?

Agnes is taken, half carried, half dragged, not to her own narrow slip of a house, but to theirs, through their wide door, down the passage and up the narrow stairs. A door is pushed open, and through she sails, her ankles held together, like a criminal, like a lunatic.

She can hear a voice saying, No, no, no; she can sense a pain coming for her, the way it’s possible to feel a raincloud approaching before seeing it. She wants to stand, to crouch, so that she is ready for it, prepared, able to face it down, but someone is pressing her shoulders back to a bed. Another person is gripping her forehead. The midwife is there, lifting her skirts, saying she must look, that the men must leave, that only the women may stay.

All Agnes wants is the green of a forest. She craves the dappled, animate pattern of light on ground, the merciful shade of a leaf-canopy, the not-quite-quiet, the repeating seclusion of trunks, disappearing into the distance. She will not make it to the forest. There is not enough time now. The doors of this house are too many, she knows this.