Hamnet(71)

His body is different. Increasingly so, as the day wears on. It is as if a strong wind – the one from her dream, she believes – has lifted her son off the ground, battered him against rocks, whirled him around a cliff, then set him back down. He is misused, abused, marked, maltreated: the illness has ravaged him. For a while after he died, the bruises and black marks spread and widened. Then they stopped. His skin has turned to waxy tallow, the bones standing up beneath. The cut above his eye, the one she has no idea how he came by, is still livid and red.

She regards the face of her son, or the face that used to belong to her son, the vessel that held his mind, produced his speech, contained all that his eyes saw. The lips are dry, sealed. She would like to dampen them, to allow them a little water. The cheeks are stretched, hollowed by fever. The eyelids are a delicate purplish-grey, like the petals of early spring flowers. She closed them herself. With her own hands, her own fingers, and how hot and slippery her fingers had felt, how unmanageable the task, how difficult it had been to put her fingers – trembling and wet – over those lids, so dear, so known, she could draw them from memory if someone were to put a stick of charcoal in her hand. How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.

She grips his hand in hers. The heat from her own skin is giving itself to his. She can almost believe that the hand is as it was, that he still lives, if she keeps her eyes away from that face, from that never-rising chest and the inexorable stiffness invading this body. She must grip the hand tighter. She must keep her hand on the hair, which feels as it always did: silken, soft, ragged at the ends where he tugs it as he studies.

Her fingers press into the muscle between Hamnet’s thumb and forefinger. She kneads the muscle there, gently, in a circular motion, and waits, listens, concentrates. She is like her old kestrel, reading the air, listening out, waiting for a signal, a sound.

Nothing comes. Nothing at all. Never has she felt this before. There is always something, even with the most mysterious and private of people; with her own children, she found always a clamour of images, noise, secrets, information. Susanna has begun to hold her hands behind her back when near to her mother, so aware is she that Agnes can find out whatever she wants in this way.

But Hamnet’s hand is silent. Agnes listens; she strains. She tries to hear what might be under the silence, behind it. Could there be a distant murmur, some sound, a message, perhaps, from her son? A sign where he is, a place she might find him? But there is nothing. A high whine of nothing, like the absence of noise when a church bell falls silent.

Someone, she is aware, has arrived next to her, crouching down, touching her arm. She doesn’t need to look to know it’s Bartholomew. The breadth and weight of that hand. The heavy tread and shuffle of his boots. The clean scent of hay and wool.

Her brother touches her dry cheek. He says her name, once, twice. He says he is sorry, he is heart sore. He says no one would have expected this. He says he wishes it could have been otherwise, that he was the best of boys, the very best, that it is a terrible loss. He places his hand over hers.

‘I will see to the arrangements,’ he murmurs. ‘I’ve dispatched Richard to the church. He will make sure that all is prepared.’ He breathes in and she can hear, in that breath, all that has been said around her. ‘The women are here, to help you.’

Agnes shakes her head, mute. She curls a single finger into the dip of Hamnet’s palm. She remembers examining his palm, and Judith’s, when they were babes, lying together in the crib. She had uncurled their miniature fingers and traced the lines she found. How remarkable had seemed the creases of their hands: just like hers, only smaller. Hamnet had a definite deep groove through the middle of his palm, like the stroke of a brush, denoting a long life; Judith’s had been faint, uncertain, petering out, then restarting in another place. It had made her frown, made her raise the curled fingers to her lips, where she kissed them, again and again, with a fierce, almost angry love.

‘They can . . .’ Bartholomew is saying ‘. . . lay him out. Or they can be with you while you do it. Whichever you prefer.’

She holds herself very still.

‘Agnes,’ he says.

She uncurls the fingers of Hamnet’s hand and peers at the palm. The fingers are not noticeably stiffer than before, most definitely not. There it is, the long, strong line of life, coursing from the wrist to the base of the fingers. It is a beautiful line, a perfect line, a stream through a landscape. Look, she wants to say to Bartholomew. Do you see that? Can you explain this?

‘We must prepare him,’ Bartholomew says, tightening his grip on hers.

She presses her lips together. If they were alone, she and Bartholomew, maybe then she could risk letting out some of the words jamming up her throat. But as it is, the room so full of silent people, she cannot.

‘He must be buried. You know this. The town will come to take him if we do not.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not yet.’

‘Then when?’

She bows her head, turning away from him, back to her son.

Bartholomew shifts his weight. ‘Agnes,’ he says, in a low voice so that, maybe, no one else can hear them, although they will be listening, Agnes knows. ‘It is possible that word may not have reached him. He would come, if he knew. I know he would. But he would not find it amiss if we were to go ahead. He would understand the necessity of it. What we must do is send another letter and in the meantime—’