Hamnet(95)

Bartholomew insists that the road via Oxford is safer and faster; a man who trades in mutton has told him this. They ride through the gentle dips and heights of the Chiltern Hills, through a rainstorm and a smattering of hail. In Kidlington, her horse becomes lame so she changes to a piebald mare with narrow hips and a flighty way of high-stepping if they come across a bird. They pass the night at an inn in Oxford; Agnes barely sleeps for the sound of mice in the walls and the snores of someone in the room next door.

Towards mid-morning on the third day of riding, she sees first the smoke, a grey cloth thrown over a hollow. There it is, she says to Bartholomew, and he nods. As they move closer, they hear the peal of bells, catch the scent of it – wet vegetable, animal, lime, some other things Agnes cannot name – and see its vast sprawl, a broken clutter of a city, the river winding through it, clouds pulling up threads of smoke from it.

They ride through the village of Shepherd’s Bush, the name of which makes Bartholomew smile, and past the gravel pits of Kensington and over the brook at Maryburne. At the Tyburn hanging-tree, Bartholomew leans down from his saddle to ask the way to the parish of St Helen’s, in Bishopsgate. Several people walk by without answering him, a young man laughs, skittering off into a doorway on bare, cut feet.

On towards Holborn, where the streets are narrower and blacker; Agnes cannot believe the noise and the stench. All around are shops and yards and taverns and crowded doorways. Traders approach them, holding out their wares – potatoes, cakes, hard crab-apples, a bowl of chestnuts. People shout and yell at each other across the street; Agnes sees, she is sure, a man coupling with a woman in a narrow gap between buildings. Further on, a man relieves himself into a ditch; Agnes catches sight of his appendage, wrinkled and pale, before she averts her gaze. Young men, apprentices, she supposes, stand outside shops, entreating passers-by to enter. Children still with first teeth are wheeling barrows along the road, calling out their contents, and ancient men and women sit with gnarled carrots, shelled nuts, loaves laid out around them.

The scent of cabbage-heads and burnt hide and bread dough and filth from the street fills her nose as she guides her horse, both hands gripping the reins. Bartholomew reaches over to seize the bridle, so that they won’t become separated.

Thoughts begin to cram into Agnes’s head as she rides close to her brother: what if we can’t find him, what if we get lost, what if we don’t find his lodgings by nightfall, what shall we do, where should we go, shall we secure rooms now, why did we come, this was madness, my madness, it is all my fault.

When they reach what they believe is his parish, Bartholomew asks a cake-seller to direct them to his lodgings. They have it written out, on a piece of paper, but the cake-seller waves it away from her, with a gap-toothed smile, telling them to go that way, then this, then straight on, then sharp sideways past the church.

Agnes grips the reins of her horse, sitting straighter in her saddle. She would do anything to be able to get down, for their journey to be at an end. Her back aches, her feet, her hands, her shoulders. She is thirsty, she is hungry, and yet now she is here, now she is about to see him, she wants to pull on the bridle of her horse, turn it around, and head directly back to Stratford. What had she been thinking? How can she and Bartholomew just arrive on his doorstep? This was a terrible idea, a dreadful plan.

‘Bartholomew,’ she says, but he is ahead of her, already dismounting, tying his horse to a post, and walking up to a door.

She says his name again, but he doesn’t hear her because he is knocking at the door. She feels her heart pound against her bones. What will she say to him? What will he say to them? She can’t remember now what it was she wanted to ask him. She feels again for the playbill in her saddlebag and glances up at the house: three or four storeys, with windows uneven and stained in places. The street is narrow, the houses leaning towards each other. A woman is propped against her doorway, staring at them with naked curiosity. Further down, two children are playing a game with a length of rope.

Strange to think that these people must see him every day, as he comes to and fro, as he leaves the house in the morning. Does he exchange a word with them? Does he ever eat at their homes?

A window opens above them; Agnes and Bartholomew look up. It is a girl of nine or ten, her hair neatly parted on either side of her sallow face, carrying an infant on her hip.

Bartholomew speaks the name of her husband and the girl shrugs, jiggling the now crying infant. ‘Push the door,’ she says, ‘and go up the stairs. He’s up in the attic.’

Bartholomew indicates, with a jerk of his head, that she must go and he will stay in the street. He takes the bridle of her horse as she slides down.

The stairs are narrow and her legs tremble as she climbs, from the long ride or the peculiarity of it all, she doesn’t know, but she has to haul herself up by the rail.

At the top, she waits for a moment, to catch her breath. There is a door before her. Panelled wood with knots flowing through it. She reaches out a hand and taps it. She says his name. She says it again.

Nothing. No answer. She turns to look down the stairs and almost goes down them. Perhaps she doesn’t want to see what lies beyond this door. Might there be signs of his other life, his other women? There may be things here she does not want to know.

She turns back, lifts the latch and steps in. The room has a low ceiling slanting inwards at all angles. There is a low bed, pushed up against the wall, a small rug, a cupboard. She recognises a hat, left on top of a coffer, the jerkin lying on the bed. Under the light of the window there is a square table, with a chair tucked beneath. The desk-box on top of it is open and she can see a pen-case, inkwell and pen-knife. A collection of quills is lined up next to three or four table-books, bound by his hand. She recognises the knots and stitching he favours. There is a single sheet of paper in front of the chair.