‘Do you want my advice?’ Agnes asks.
Bartholomew shrugs, his mouth set.
‘With Joan, you must pretend,’ Agnes says, as they come in sight of the first stalls of the marketplace, ‘that what you want isn’t what you want at all.’
‘Eh?’
Agnes pauses to examine a row of cheeses, to greet a woman in a yellow shawl, before walking on.
‘Let her believe you’ve changed your mind,’ she says, as she weaves ahead of him, in and out of the market crowds. ‘That you don’t want to rebuild the hall. That you think it’s too much bother, too costly.’ Agnes throws him a look from over her shoulder. ‘I promise you, within a week, she will be saying that she thinks the hall has become too crowded, that more rooms are needed, that the only reason you aren’t building them is because you’re too lazy.’
Bartholomew considers this as they reach the far side of the market. ‘You think that will work?’
Agnes allows him to catch up with her, so that they are once again walking side by side. ‘Joan is never content and she cannot rest if others are. The only thing that pleases her is making others as unhappy as she is. She likes company in her perpetual dissatisfaction. So hide what will make you happy. Make her believe you want its opposite. Then all will be as you wish. You’ll see.’
Agnes is just about to turn towards Henley Street, when Bartholomew catches her elbow and tucks her arm into his, easing her down a different street, towards the Guildhall and the river.
‘Let us walk this way,’ he says.
She hesitates for a moment, giving him a quizzical look, then silently relents.
They pass by the windows of the grammar school. It is possible to hear the pupils chanting a lesson. A mathematical formula, a verb construction, a verse of poetry, Bartholomew cannot tell what it is. The noise is rhythmic, fluting, like the cries of distant marsh birds. When he glances at his sister, he sees her head is bent, her shoulders hunched inwards, as if she is protecting herself from hail. The grip on his arm tells him that she wishes to cross the street, so they do.
‘Your husband,’ Bartholomew says, as they wait for a horse to pass, ‘wrote to me.’
Agnes raises her head. ‘He did? When?’
‘He instructed me to buy a house for him and—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m telling you now.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me before now, before I—’
‘Do you want to see it?’
She presses her lips together. He can tell that she wants to say no, but is simultaneously filled with curiosity.
She opts to shrug, affecting indifference. ‘If you like.’
‘No,’ Bartholomew says, ‘if you like.’
She shrugs again. ‘Perhaps another day, when—’
Bartholomew reaches out with his free hand and points to a building across the road from where they are standing. It is an enormous place, the biggest in the town, with a wide central doorway, three storeys stacked on top of each other, and arranged on a corner, so that the front of it faces them, the side stretching away from them.
Agnes follows the direction of his pointing finger. He watches her look at the house. He watches her glance at either side of it. He watches her frown.
‘Where?’ she says.
‘There.’
‘That place?’
‘Yes.’
Her face is puckered with confusion. ‘But which part of it? Which rooms?’
Bartholomew puts down the basket he is holding and rocks back on his heels before he says, ‘All of them.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘The whole house,’ he says, ‘is yours.’
The new house is a place of sound. It is never quiet. At night Agnes walks the corridors and stairs and chambers and passageways, her feet bare, listening out.
In the new house, the windows shudder in their frames. A breath of wind turns a chimney into a flute, blowing a long, mournful note down into the hall. The click of wooden wainscots settling for the night. Dogs turning and sighing in their baskets. The small, clawed feet of mice skittering unseen in the walls. The thrashing of branches in the long garden at the back.
In the new house, Susanna sleeps at the furthest end of the corridor; she locks her door against her mother’s nocturnal wanderings. Judith has the chamber next to Agnes’s; she skims over the surface of sleep, waking often, never quite reaching the depths. If Agnes opens the door, just the sound of the hinges is enough to make her sit up, say, Who’s there? The cats sleep on her blankets, one on either side of her.