Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Halfway across the bridge, Agnes thinks she cannot go on. She isn’t sure what she expected – a simple arch, perhaps, of wood, over some water – but it wasn’t this. London Bridge is like a town in itself, and a noxious, oppressive one at that. There are houses and shops on either side, some jutting out over the river; these buildings overhang the passage so that, at times, it is completely dark, as if they have been plunged into night. The river appears to them in flashes, between the buildings, and it is wider, deeper, more dangerous than she had ever imagined. It flows beneath their feet, beneath the horses’ hoofs, even now, as they make their way through this crowd.

  From every doorway and shop, vendors call and yell at them, running up with fabric or bread or beads or roasted pigs’ trotters. Bartholomew pulls his bridle away from them, with a curt gesture. His face, when Agnes looks at it, is as expressionless as ever, but she can tell he is as disquieted by all this as she is.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she mutters to him, as they pass what appears to be a heap of excrement, ‘we should have taken a boat.’

  Bartholomew grunts. ‘Maybe, but then we might have—’ He breaks off, the words disappearing before he can speak them. ‘Don’t look,’ he says, glancing upwards, then back at her.

  Agnes widens her eyes, keeping them on his face. ‘What is it?’ she whispers. ‘Is it him? Have you seen him? Is he with someone?’

  ‘No,’ Bartholomew says, stealing another glance at whatever it is. ‘It’s . . . Never mind. Just don’t look.’

  Agnes cannot help herself. She turns in her saddle and sees: drooping grey clouds pierced by long poles, shuddering in the breeze, topped by things that look, for a moment, like stones or turnips. She squints at them. They are blackened, ragged, oddly lumpish. They give off, to her, a thin, soundless wail, like trapped animals. Whatever can they be? Then she sees that the one nearest her seems to have a row of teeth set into it. They have mouths, she realises, and nostrils, and pitted sockets where eyes once were.

  She lets out a cry, turns back to her brother, her hand over her mouth.

  Bartholomew shrugs. ‘I told you not to look.’

  When they reach the other side of the river, Agnes leans into her saddlebag and pulls out the playbill Joan gave her.

  There, again, is the name of her son and the black letters, arranged in their sequence, shocking as it was the first time she saw it.

  She turns it away from her, gripping it tightly in her hand, and waves it at the next person who comes near the flank of her horse. The person – a man with a pointed brushed beard and cape thrown back from his shoulders – indicates a side-street. Go that way, he says, then left, then left again, and you shall see it.

  She recognises the playhouse from her husband’s description: a round wooden place next to the river. She slides from her horse’s back, and Bartholomew takes the reins, and her legs feel as if they have lost their bones somewhere along the way. The scene around her – the street, the riverbank, the horses, the playhouse – seems to waver and swing, coming in and out of focus. Bartholomew is speaking. He will, he says to her, wait for her here; he will not move from this spot until she comes back. Does she understand? His face is pushed up very close to hers. He appears to be waiting for some response, so Agnes nods. She steps away from him, in through the large doors, paying her penny.

  As she comes through the high doorway, she is greeted by the sight of row upon row of faces, hundreds of them, all talking and shouting. She is in a tall-sided enclosure, which is filling with people. There is a stage jutting out into the gathering crowd, and above them all, a ceiling of sky, a circle containing fast-moving clouds, the shapes of birds, darting from one edge to the next.

  Agnes slides between shoulders and bodies, men and women, someone holding a chicken beneath their arm, a woman with a baby at her breast, half-hidden by a shawl, a man selling pies from a tray. She turns herself sideways, steps between people, until she gets herself as close as she can to the stage.

  On all sides, bodies and elbows and arms press in. More and more people are pouring through the doors. Some on the ground are gesturing and shouting to others in the higher balconies. The crowd thickens and heaves, first one way, then the next; Agnes is pushed backwards and forward but she keeps her footing; the trick seems to be to move with the current, rather than resist it. It is, she thinks, like standing in a river: you have to bend yourself to its flow, not fight it. A group in the highest tier of seats is making much of the lowering of a length of rope. There is shouting and hooting and laughter. The pie-man ties to its end a laden basket and the people above begin to haul it up towards them. Several members of the crowd leap to snatch it, in a playful or perhaps hungry fashion; the pie-man deals each of them a swift, cracking blow. A coin is thrown down by the people above and the pie-man lunges to catch it. One of the men he has just hit gets to it first and the pie-man grabs him around the throat; the man lands a punch on the pie-man’s chin. They go down, hard, swallowed by the crowd, amid much cheering and noise.

  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 floo
ds 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.

  There it is again: Hamlet.

  Agnes bites her lip until she tastes the tang of her own blood. She grips her hands together.

  They are saying it, these men up there on the stage, passing it between them, like a counter in a game. Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet. It seems to refer to the ghost, the dead man, the departed form.

  To hear that name, out of the mouths of people she has never known and will never know, and used for an old dead king: Agnes cannot understand this. Why would her husband have done it? Why pretend that it means nothing to him, just a collection of letters? How could he thieve this name, then strip and flense it of all it embodies, discarding the very life it once contained? How could he take up his pen and write it on a page, breaking its connection with their son? It makes no sense. It pierces her heart, it eviscerates her, it threatens to sever her from herself, from him, from everything they had, everything they were. She thinks of those poor heads, their bared teeth, their vulnerable necks, their frozen expressions of fear, on the bridge, and it is as if she is one of them. She can feel the shiver of the river, their bodiless sway and dip, their voiceless and useless regret.

  She will go. She will leave this place. She will find Bartholomew, mount that exhausted horse, ride back to Stratford and write a letter to her husband, saying, Don’t come home, don’t ever come back, stay in London, we are done with you. She has seen all she needs to see. It is just as she feared: he has taken that most sacred and tender of names and tossed it in among a jumble of other words, in the midst of a theatrical pageant.

  She had thought that coming here, watching this, might give her a glimpse into her husband’s heart. It might have offered her a way back to him. She thought the name on the playbill might have been a means for him to communicate something to her. A sign, of sorts, a signal, an outstretched hand, a summons. As she rode to London, she had thought that perhaps now she might understand his distance, his silence, since their son’s death. She has the sense now that there is nothing in her husband’s heart to understand. It is filled only with this: a wooden stage, declaiming players, memorised speeches, adoring crowds, costumed fools. She has been chasing a phantasm, a will-o’-the-wisp, all this time.

  She is gathering her skirts, pulling her shawl about her, getting ready to turn her back on her husband and his company, when her attention is drawn by a boy walking on to the stage. A boy, she thinks, unknotting and reknotting her shawl. Then, no, a man. Then, no, a lad – halfway between man and boy.

  It is as if a whip has been snapped hard upon the skin. He has yellow hair which stands up at the brow, a tripping, buoyant tread, an impatient toss to his head. Agnes lets her hands fall. The shawl slips from her shoulders but she doesn’t stoop to pick it up. She fixes her gaze upon this boy; she stares and stares as if she may never look away from him. She feels the breath empty from her chest, feels the blood curdle in her veins. The disc of sky above her seems at once to press down on her head, on all of them, like the lid of a cauldron. She is freezing; she is stiflingly hot; she must leave; she will stand here for ever, on this spot.

  When the King addresses him as ‘Hamlet, my son,’ the words carry no surprise for her. Of course this is who he is. Of course. Who else would it be? She has looked for her son everywhere, ceaselessly, these past four years, and here he is.

  It is him. It is not him. It is him. It is not him. The thought swings like a hammer through her. Her son, her Hamnet or Hamlet, is dead, buried in the churchyard. He died while he was still a child. He is now only white, stripped bones in a grave. Yet this is him, grown into a near-man, as he would be now, had he lived, on the stage, walking with her son’s gait, talking in her son’s voice, speaking words written for him by her son’s father.

  She presses a hand to either side of her head. It is too much: she isn’t sure how to bear it, how to explain this to herself. It is too much. For a moment, she thinks she may fall, disappear beneath this sea of heads and bodies, to lie on the compacted earth, to be trampled under a hundred feet.

  But then the ghost returns and the boy Hamlet is speaking with it: he is terrified, he is furious, he is distraught, and Agnes is filled by an old, familiar urge, like water gushing into a dry streambed. She wants to lay hands on that boy; she wants to fold him in her arms, comfort and console him – she has to, if it is the last thing she does.

  The young Hamlet on stage is listening as old Hamlet, the ghost, is telling a story about how he died, a poison coursing through his body, ‘like quicksilver’, and how like her Hamnet he listens. The very same lean and tilt of the head, the gesture of pressing a knuckle to the mouth when hearing something he doesn’t immediately comprehend. How can it be? She doesn’t understand it, she doesn’t understand any of it. How can this player, this young man, know how to be her Hamnet when he never saw or met the boy?

  The knowledge settles on her like a fine covering of rain, as she moves towards the players, threading her way through the packed crowds: her husband has pulled off a manner of alchemy. He has found this boy, instructed him, shown him, how to speak, how to stand, how to lift his chin, like this, like that. He has rehearsed and primed and prepared him. He has written words for him to speak and to hear. She tries to imagine these rehearsals, how her husband could have schooled him so exactly, so precisely, and how it might have felt when the boy got it right, when he first got the walk, that heartbreaking turn of the head. Did her husband have to say, Make sure your doublet is undone, wit
h the ties hanging down, and your boots should be scuffed, and now wet your hair so it stands up, just so?

  Hamlet, here, on this stage, is two people, the young man, alive, and the father, dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband has brought him back to life, in the only way he can. As the ghost talks, she sees that her husband, in writing this, in taking the role of the ghost, has changed places with his son. He has taken his son’s death and made it his own; he has put himself in death’s clutches, resurrecting the boy in his place. ‘O horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!’ murmurs her husband’s ghoulish voice, recalling the agony of his death. He has, Agnes sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child’s suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child’s stead so that the boy might live.

  She will say all this to her husband, later, after the play has ended, after the final silence has fallen, after the dead have sprung up to take their places in the line of players at the edge of the stage. After her husband and the boy, their hands joined, bow and bow, facing into the storm of applause. After the stage is left deserted, no longer a battlement, no longer a graveyard, no longer a castle. After he has come to find her, forcing his way through the crowds, his face still streaked with traces of paste. After he has taken her by the hand and held her against the buckles and leather of his armour. After they have stood together in the open circle of the playhouse, until it was as empty as the sky above it.

  For now, she is right at the front of the crowd, at the edge of the stage; she is gripping its wooden lip in both hands. An arm’s length away, perhaps two, is Hamlet, her Hamlet, as he might have been, had he lived, and the ghost, who has her husband’s hands, her husband’s beard, who speaks in her husband’s voice.