Hamnet(98)

The woman next to Agnes shrugs and grins at her with blackened, crooked teeth. She has a small boy on her shoulders. With one hand, the child grips his mother’s hair, and with the other, he holds what to Agnes looks like a lamb’s shank bone, gnawing at it with sated, glazed indifference. He regards her with impassive eyes, the bone between his small, sharp teeth.

A sudden, blaring noise makes Agnes jump. Trumpets are sounding from somewhere. The babble of the crowd surges and gathers into a ragged cheer. People raise their arms; there is a scattering of applause, several cheers, some piercing whistles. From behind Agnes, comes a rude noise, a curse, a yelled exhortation to hurry up, for Lord’s sake.

The trumpets repeat their tune, a circling refrain, the final note stretched and held. A hush falls over the crowd and two men walk on to the stage.

Agnes blinks. The fact that she has come to see a play has somehow drifted away from her. But here she is, in her husband’s playhouse, and here is the play.

A pair of actors stand upon a wooden stage and speak to each other, as if no one is watching, as if they are completely alone.

She takes them in, listening, attentive. They are nervous, jittery, glancing about themselves, gripping their swords. Who’s there? one of them shouts to the other. Unfold yourself, the other shouts back. More actors arrive on the stage, all nervous, all watchful.

The crowd around her, she cannot help but notice, is entirely still. No one speaks. No one moves. Everyone is entirely focused on these actors and what they are saying. Gone is the jostling, whistling, brawling, pie-chewing mass and in its place a silent, awed congregation. It is as if a magician or sorcerer has waved his staff over the place and turned them all to stone.

Now that she is here and the play has begun, the strangeness and detachment she felt during the journey, and while she stood in his lodgings, rinses off her, like grime. She feels ready, she feels furious. Come on then, she thinks. Show me what you’ve done.

The players on the stage mouth speeches to each other. They gesture and point and mince back and forth, gripping their weapons. One says a line, then another, then it is the first’s turn. She watches, baffled. She had expected something familiar, something about her son. What else would the play be about? But this is people in a castle, on a battlement, debating with each other over nothing.

She alone, it seems, is exempt from the sorcerer’s spell. The magic has not touched her. She feels like heckling or scoffing. Her husband wrote these words, these exchanges, but what has any of this to do with their boy? She wants to shout to the people on the stage. You, she would say, and you: you are all nothing, this is nothing, compared to what he was. Don’t you dare pronounce his name.

A great weariness seizes her. She is conscious of an ache in her legs and hips, from the many hours on horseback, of her lack of sleep, of the light, which seems to sting her eyes. She hasn’t the strength or the inclination to put up with this press of bodies around her, with these long speeches, these floods of words. She won’t stand here any longer. She will leave and her husband will never be any the wiser.

Suddenly, the actor on stage says something about a dreaded sight, and a realisation creeps over her. What these men are seeking, discussing, expecting is a ghost, an apparition. They want it, and yet they fear it, too, all at the same time.

She holds herself very still, watching their movements, listening to their words. She crosses her arms so that no one around her may touch or brush against her, distracting her. She needs to concentrate. She doesn’t want to miss a sound.

When the ghost appears, a collective gasp passes over the audience. Agnes doesn’t flinch. She stares at the ghost. It is in full armour, the visor of the helmet drawn down, its form half-hidden by a shroud. She doesn’t listen to the bluster and bleating of frightened men on the battlements of the castle. She watches it through narrowed lids.

She has her eye on that ghost: the height, that movement of the arm, hand upturned, a particular curl of the fingers, that roll of the shoulder. When he raises the visor, she feels not surprise, not recognition, but a kind of hollow confirmation. His face is painted a ghastly white, his beard made grey; he is dressed as if for battle, in armour and helmet, but she isn’t fooled for a moment. She knows exactly who is underneath that costume, that disguise.

She thinks: Well, now. There you are. What are you up to?

As if her thoughts have been beamed to him, from her mind to his, through the crowds – calling out now, shouting warnings to the men on the battlements – the ghost’s head snaps around. The helmet is open and the eyes peer out over the heads of the audience.

Yes, Agnes tells him, here I am. Now what?

The ghost leaves. It seems not to have found whatever it was seeking. There is a disappointed murmur from the audience. The men onstage keep talking, on and on. Agnes shifts her feet, raising herself on tiptoe, wondering when the ghost will return. She wants to keep him in her sights, wants him to come back; she wants him to explain himself.

She is craning past the head and shoulders of a man in front when she accidentally treads on the toes of the woman next to her. The woman lets out a small yelp and lurches sideways, the child on her shoulders dropping his lamb bone. Agnes is apologising, catching the elbow of the woman to steady her, and bending to retrieve the bone, when she hears a word from the stage that makes her straighten up, makes the bone slide from her fingers.

Hamlet, one of the actors said.

She heard it, as clear and resonant as the strike of a distant bell.