Hamnet(70)

They glance towards the end of the room, where the fireplace is, again and again, then turn back to each other.

A door has been lifted from its hinges and placed on two barrels by the fireplace. A woman is sitting beside it. She is motionless, back bent, head lowered. It is not immediately apparent that she even breathes. Her hair is disarrayed and falls in strands around her shoulders. Her body is curved over, her feet tucked under, her arms outstretched, the nape of her neck exposed.

Before her is the body of a child. His bared feet splay outwards, his toes curled. The soles and nails still bear the dirt so recently accrued from life: grit from the road, soil from the garden, mud from the riverbank, where he swam not a week ago with his friends. His arms are by his sides, his head turned slightly towards his mother. His skin is losing the appearance of the living, becoming parchment white, stiff and sunken. He is dressed, still, in his nightshirt. His uncles were the ones to unhinge the door and bring it into the room. They lifted him, gently, gently, with careful hands, with held breath, from the pallet where he died to the hard wooden surface of the door.

The younger uncle, Edmond, had wept, tears blurring his sight, which was, for him, a relief because he found it too painful to look into the still features of his brother’s dead son. This is a child whom he has known and seen every day of his short life, a child whom he taught to catch a wooden ball, to pick fleas from a dog, to whittle a pipe from a reed. The older uncle, Richard, did not cry: instead his sadness passed over into anger – at the grim task they had been bidden to do, at the world, at Fate, at the fact that a child could fall ill and then be lying there dead. The anger made him snap at Edmond whom he thought wasn’t taking enough of the boy’s weight, not holding the legs as firmly as he should have done, by the knees and not the ankles, fumbling the job, messing it up.

Both uncles leave soon afterwards, exchanging a few words with the people in the room, then finding excuses of work, of errands to run, of places they must go.

In the room there are mostly women: the boy’s grandmother, the baker’s wife, who is godmother to the boy, the boy’s aunt. They have done all they can. Burnt the bedding and the mattress and the straw and the linens. Aired the room. Put the twin girl to bed upstairs, for she is still weak, still unwell, although making a good recovery. They have cleaned the room, sprinkling lavender water around it, letting in the air. They have brought a white sheet, strong thread, sharp needles. They have said, in respectful and quiet voices, that they will help with the laying out, that they are here, that they will not leave, that they are ready to begin. The boy must be prepared for burial: there is no time to lose. The town decrees that any who die of the pestilence must be buried quickly, within a day. The women have communicated this to the mother, in case she is not aware of the ruling, or has forgotten it, in her grief. They have placed bowls of warm water and cloths beside the mother and cleared their throats.

But nothing. She does not respond. She does not raise her head. She does not listen or even seem to hear suggestions to start the laying out, the washing of the body, the stitching of the shroud. She will not look at the bowls of water, instead letting them cool beside her. She did not glance at the white bolt of the sheet, folded into a neat square, placed at the foot of the door.

She will only sit, her head bent, one hand touching the boy’s inert, curled fingers, the other his hair.

Inside Agnes’s head, her thoughts are widening out, then narrowing down, widening, narrowing, over and over again. She thinks, This cannot happen, it cannot, how will we live, what will we do, how can Judith bear it, what will I tell people, how can we continue, what should I have done, where is my husband, what will he say, how could I have saved him, why didn’t I save him, why didn’t I realise it was he who was in danger? And then, the focus narrows, and she thinks: He is dead, he is dead, he is dead.

The three words contain no sense for her. She cannot bend her mind to their meaning. It is an impossible idea that her son, her child, her boy, the healthiest and most robust of her children, should, within days, sicken and die.

She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare. From habit, while she sits there near the fireplace, some part of her mind is tabulating them and their whereabouts: Judith, upstairs. Susanna, next door. And Hamnet? Her unconscious mind casts, again and again, puzzled by the lack of bite, by the answer she keeps giving it: he is dead, he is gone. And Hamnet? The mind will ask again. At school, at play, out at the river? And Hamnet? And Hamnet? Where is he?

Here, she tries to tell herself. Cold and lifeless, on this board, right in front of you. Look, here, see.

And Hamnet? Where is he?

With her back to the door, she faces the fireplace, which is filled only with ashes, held in the fragile shape of the log they once were.

She is aware of people arriving and leaving, via the door to the street, and the door out to the yard. Her mother-in-law, Eliza, the baker’s wife, the neighbour, John, some other people she cannot place.

They speak to her, these people. She hears words and voices, murmured mostly, but she doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t raise her head. These people, walking in and out of her house, pushing speech and utterances towards her ears, are nothing to do with her. They offer nothing she wants or needs.

One of her hands rests on her son’s hair; the other still grips his fingers. These are the only parts of him that are familiar, that still look the same. She allows herself to think this.