Take him next door, to the big house, and he is sullen, sallow of face, irritable, tetchy. He is all tinder and flint, sending out sparks to ignite and kindle. Why? he challenges his mother. Whatever for? he snaps. I don’t want to, he retorts to his father. She had never understood why this was so but the coiled fury she witnessed in John, as he raised himself from his stool, told her everything she needs to know.
In their apartment, he lets her take his hand, lets her lead him from the fire to a chair, lets his eyes lose focus, lets her rub her fingers through his hair, and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.
hree heavy knocks to the door of the apartment: boom, boom, boom.
Hamnet is closest so he goes to answer it. As it swings open, he cringes and yelps: on the doorstep is a terrifying sight, a creature from a nightmare, from Hell, from the devil. It is tall, cloaked in black, and in the place of a face is a hideous, featureless mask, pointed like the beak of a gigantic bird.
‘No,’ Hamnet cries, ‘get away.’ He tries to shut the door but the creature puts out a hand and presses it back, with horrible, preternatural strength. ‘Get away,’ Hamnet screams again, kicking out.
Then his grandmother is there, pushing him aside, apologising to the spectre, as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about it, inviting it to step into the house, to examine the patient.
The spectre is speaking without a mouth, saying he will not come in, he cannot, and they, the inhabitants, are hereby ordered not to go out, not to take to the streets, but to remain indoors until the pestilence is past.
Hamnet takes a step backwards and another. He collides with his mother, who is going to the window and opening her hatch to the street. She leans out to examine this person.
Hamnet darts to her side and, for the first time in years, takes her hand. His mother squeezes his fingers, without looking at him. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she whispers. ‘It is only the physician.’
‘The . . .?’ Hamnet stares at him, still there on the doorstep, talking with his grandmother. ‘But why is he . . .?’ Hamnet gestures to his face, his nose.
‘He wears that mask because he thinks it will protect him,’ she says.
‘From the pestilence?’
His mother nods.
‘And will it?’
His mother purses her lips, then shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. Not coming into the house, however, refusing to see or examine the patient, might,’ she mutters.
Hamnet places his other hand inside the strong, long fingers of his mother, as if her touch might keep him safe. He sees the physician reach into a bag and hand his grandmother a wrapped parcel.
‘Tie it to the stomach of the girl with linen,’ he is intoning, accepting some coins from Mary in his pale hand, ‘and leave it there for three days. Then you may take an onion and soak it in—’
‘What is that?’ his mother interrupts, leaning out of her hatch.
The physician turns to look at her, his horrible pointed beak swinging towards them. Hamnet shrinks into her side. He doesn’t want this man to look at him; he doesn’t want to fall into his sights. He is seized with the notion that to be seen by his eye, to be noted or recorded by him would be a terrible omen, that some dreadful fate will befall them all. He wants to run, to drag his mother away, to seal shut the doors and windows so that the man will not get in, so that his gaze will not fall on any of them.
But his mother is not in the least frightened. The physician and Hamnet’s mother regard each other for a moment, through the hatch, from which his mother sells cures. Hamnet realises, he sees, with the cutting clarity of a child poised to enter manhood, that this man doesn’t like his mother. He resents her: she sells cures, she grows her own medicines, she collects leaves and petals, bark and juices and knows how to help people. This man, Hamnet suddenly sees, wishes his mother ill. She takes his patients, trespasses on his revenue, his work. How baffling the adult world seems to Hamnet at that moment, how complex, how slippery. How can he ever navigate his way in it? How will he manage?
The physician inclines his beak, once, then turns back to Hamnet’s grandmother, as if his mother hadn’t spoken.
‘Is it a dried toad?’ Agnes says, in a clear, carrying voice. ‘Because if it is, we don’t want it.’
Hamnet fastens his arms around his mother’s waist; he wishes to communicate to her the urgency, the necessity of ending this conversation, of getting away from this person. She doesn’t move but brings a hand down to his wrist, as if to say, I acknowledge you, I am here.