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.