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.
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 fi
ngers 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—’
‘We will wait,’ she gets out. ‘Until tomorrow. You may tell the town that. And I will lay him out. No one else.’
‘Very well,’ he says, and stands up. She sees him look at Hamnet, watches his eyes travel from the bare and blackened feet of his nephew, all the way to his ravaged face. Her brother’s mouth presses itself into a line and he closes his eyes briefly. He makes the sign of the cross. Before he turns away, he reaches out and rests his hand on the boy’s chest, just above where his heart used to beat.
* * *
—
A task to be done, and she will do it alone.
She waits until evening, until everyone has left, until most people are in bed.
She will have the water at her right hand and she will sprinkle a few drops of oil into it. The oil will resist, refuse to mix with the water, and will instead resolve itself into golden circles on the surface. She will dip and rinse the cloth.
She begins at the face, at the top of him. He has a wide forehead and his hair grows up from the brow. He had, of late, begun to wet it in the morning, to try to get it to lie flat, but the hair would not listen. She wets it now but it still does not listen, even in death. You see, she says to him, you cannot change what you are given, cannot bend or alter what is dealt to you.
He gives no answer.
She wets her hands in the water and then draws her fingers through his hair; she finds flecks of lint, a teasel, a leaf from a plum tree. These, she lays aside, on a plate: flotsam from her boy. She combs with her fingers until the hair is clean. May I, she asks him, take a lock from you? Would you mind?
He gives no answer.
She takes a knife, the one she finds so useful for prising kernels from fruit – she bought it from a gypsy she met in the lane one day – and takes a skein of hair at the back of his head. The knife severs the strands easily, as she knew it would. She holds up the hair. Light yellow at the end, bleached by the summer sun, darkening to near-brown at the roots. She lays it carefully next to the plate.
She wipes his forehead, his closed eyes, his cheeks, his lips, the open wound on his brow. She clears the shell-whorls of both ears, the soft stem of neck. She would wash the fever from him, draw it from his skin, if she could. The nightshirt must be cut from him, so she runs the gypsy’s knife down each arm, along the chest.
She is dabbing the cloth, gently, so gently, over the bruised and swollen armpits, when Mary comes in.
She stands in the doorway, looking down at the boy. Her face is wet, her eyes swollen. ‘I saw the light,’ she says, in a cracked voice. ‘I was not sleeping.’
Agnes nods towards a chair. Mary was with her when Hamnet came into the world; she may stay to see him out of it.
The candle is flaring and burning high, illuminating the ceiling and leaving the edges of the room in shadow. Mary sits in the chair; Agnes can see the white of her nightgown hem.
She dips the cloth, she washes, she dips it again. A repetitive motion. She runs her fingers over the scar on Hamnet’s arm where he fell from a fence at Hewlands, over the puckered knot from a dog bite at a harvest fair. The third finger of his right hand is calloused from gripping a quill. There are small pits in the skin of his stomach from when he had a spotted pox as a small child.
She washes his legs, his ankles, his feet. Mary takes the bowl, changes the water. Agnes washes the feet again, and dries them.
The two women look at each other for a moment, then Mary picks up the folded sheet, holding a corner in each hand. The sheet unravels, opens like an enormous flower, its petals wide, and Agnes is faced with its startling blank white expanse. The brightness of it is star-like, unavoidable, in this dark room.
She takes it. She presses her face to it. It smells of juniper, of cedar, of soap. Its nap is soft, enveloping, forgiving.
Mary helps her to lift Hamnet’s legs and then his torso, to slide the sheet under him.
Hard to fold him in. Hard to lift the sheet’s corners and cover him, smother him in its whiteness. Hard to think, to know, that she will never again see these arms, these knuckles, these shins, that thumbnail, that callus, this face, after this.
She cannot cover him the first time. She cannot do it the second. She takes the sheet, she drapes it over him, she removes it. Does it again. Removes it again. The boy lies, unclothed, washed clean, in the centre of the sheet, hands folded on his chest, chin tilted upwards, eyes shut fast.
Agnes leans on the edge of the board, breathing hard, the fabric gripped in her hands.
Mary watches. She reaches over the body of the boy to touch Agnes’s hand.
Agnes looks at her son. The birdcage ribs, the interlaced fingers, the round bones of the knees, the still face, the corn-coloured hair, which has dried now, standing up from his brow, as it always does. His physical presence has always been so strong, so definite, unlike Judith’s. Agnes has always known if he enters a room, or leaves it: that unmistakable clatter of feet, that passage of air, the heavy thud as he sits down on a chair. And now she must give up this body, submit it to the earth, never to be seen again.
‘I cannot do it,’ she says.
Mary takes the sheet from her. She tucks it one way, over his legs, then the other, over his chest. Some part of Agnes registers, in the deft way she performs this task, that she has done it before, many times.
Then, together, they reach up to the rafters. Agnes selects rue, comfrey, yellow-eyed chamomile. She takes purple lavender and thyme, a handful of rosemary. Not heartsease, because Hamnet disliked the smell. Not angelica, because it is too late for that and it did not help, did not perform its task, did not save him, did not break the fever. Not valerian, for the same reason. Not milk thistle, for the leaves are so spiny and sharp, enough to pierce the skin, to bring forth drops of blood.
She tucks the dried plants into the sheet, nestles them next to his body, where they whisper their comfort to him.
Next is the needle. Agnes threads it with thick twine. She begins at the feet.
The point is sharp; it punctures the weave of the cloth and slides out the other side. She keeps her eyes on her work, the drawing together of the sheet, to make a shroud. She is a sailor, stitching a sail, preparing a boat that will carry her son into the next world.
She has reached the shins when something makes her lift her head. There is a figure standing at the bottom of the stairs. Agnes’s heart clenches like a fist, she almost cries out, There you are, have you come back, but then she sees it is, in fact, Judith. The same face, but this one is alive, stricken, trembling.
Mary starts up from her chair, saying, Back to bed, now, come, you must sleep, but Agnes says, No
, let her stay.
She puts down the needle, carefully, because it must not prick him, even now, and holds out her arms. Judith leaves the stairs, she steps into the room, she hurls herself against her mother, pressing her face into her apron, saying something about kittens, and something else about sickness, about changing places, about it being her fault, and then sobs tear through her, gale winds through a tree.
Agnes says to her: It is no fault of yours. None at all. The fever came for him and there was nothing we could do. We must bear it the best we can. Then she says: Do you want to see him?
Mary arranges the sheet so that Hamnet’s face is uncovered. Judith comes to stand beside him, looking down, her hands drawn up, clenched into themselves. Her expression melds from disbelief to timidity to pity to grief and back again.
‘Oh,’ she says, drawing in breath. ‘It is really him?’
Agnes, standing next to her, nods.
‘It doesn’t look like him.’
Agnes nods again. ‘Well, he is gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘To…’ she inhales a deep, almost steady breath ‘…to…Heaven. And his body is left behind. We have to take care of it the best we can.’
Judith puts out a hand and touches the cheek of her twin. Tears course down her face, chasing each other. She has always cried such enormous tears, like heavy pearls, quite at odds with the slightness of her frame. She shakes her head, hard, once or twice. Then she says, ‘Will he never come back?’
And Agnes finds she can bear anything except her child’s pain. She can bear separation, sickness, blows, birth, deprivation, hunger, unfairness, seclusion, but not this: her child, looking down at her dead twin. Her child, sobbing for her lost brother. Her child, racked with grief.
For the first time, the tears come for Agnes. They fill her eyes without warning, blur her vision, pouring forth to run down her face, her neck, soaking her apron, running between her clothes and her skin. They seem to come not just from her eyes but from every pore of her body. Her whole being longs for, grieves for her son, her daughters, her absent husband, for all of them, when she says, ‘No, my love, he will never come again.’
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