Agnes doesn’t know.
He drinks too much, late into the night, not out with his friends, but sitting at the table in the bedchamber. He cuts feather after feather into quills, but none is quite right, he says. One is too long, another too short, a third too thin for his fingers. They split or scratch the page or blur and spot. Is it too much to ask for a man to have a working quill? Agnes wakes one night to hear him shout this, hurling the whole lot at the wall, ink pot and all, making Susanna wail. She doesn’t recognise him, then, holding her screaming child to her side: his livid face, his dishevelled hair, his yelling mouth, the splash of ink, like a black island, on the wall.
In the morning, as he lies sleeping, she ties Susanna to her back and walks the path to Hewlands, stopping on the way to gather feathers, the heads of poppies, sprays of nettles.
She finds Bartholomew by following a noise of repetitive thudding. He is at the nearest fold, swinging a hammer on to the top of a fence post, driving it into the earth: thwack, crack. He is making enclosures for the new lambs. She knows that he could have told one of the others to do this job but he is a good fencer: his height, his extraordinary strength, his unswerving, unstinting approach to a task.
As she approaches, he lets the hammer fall to his feet. He waits, mopping at his face, watching her as she walks towards him.
‘I brought you this,’ Agnes says, holding out a hunk of bread and a packet of the cheese she makes herself, in the outhouse in Henley Street, straining ewe’s milk through muslin.
Bartholomew nods, accepts the food, takes a bite and chews, all without taking his eyes from Agnes’s face. He lifts the corner of Susanna’s bonnet and passes a finger over her sleeping cheek. Then his eyes are pulled back to Agnes. She smiles at him; he continues to chew.
‘Well?’ is the first thing he says.
‘It is,’ Agnes begins, ‘no great matter.’
Bartholomew rips the crust off the bread with his teeth. ‘Tell me.’
‘It is merely . . .’ Agnes shifts the weight of Susanna ‘。 . . he doesn’t sleep. He stays awake all night and then cannot rise. He is sad and sullen. He will not speak, except to argue with his father. There is a terrible heaviness about him. I do not know what to do.’
Bartholomew considers her words, just as she knew he would, his head on one side, his gaze focused on something in the distance. He chews, on and on, the muscles in his cheeks and temples tensing and tensing. He slides the remainder of the bread and cheese into his mouth, still saying nothing. When he has swallowed, he exhales. He bends. He picks up his hammer. Agnes stands to one side, out of range of his swing.
He sends two blows down on top of the post, both true and straight. The post seems to shudder and flinch, drawing into itself. ‘A man,’ he says, then strikes another blow, ‘needs work.’ He swings the hammer again, brings it down on the post. ‘Proper work.’
Bartholomew tests the post with a hand and finds it steady. He moves along to the next, already loosely dug into the soil. ‘He is all head,’ he says, swinging his hammer, ‘that one. All head, with not much sense. He needs work to steady him, to give him purpose. He can’t go on this way, an errand-boy for his father, tutoring here and there. A head like his, he’ll run mad.’
He puts a hand to the post, which doesn’t seem to his liking, because he takes the hammer to it again, once, twice, and the post is driven further in.
‘I hear it said,’ Bartholomew mutters, ‘that the father is free with his fists, particularly with your Latin Boy. Is that true?’
Agnes sighs. ‘I have not seen it with my own eyes but I don’t doubt it.’
Bartholomew is about to swing the hammer but checks himself. ‘Has he ever lost his temper with you?’
‘Never.’
‘And the child?’
‘No.’
‘If he ever raises a hand to either of you,’ Bartholomew begins, ‘if he even tries, then—’
‘I know,’ Agnes cuts in, with a smile. ‘I don’t think he would dare.’
‘Hmm,’ Bartholomew mutters. ‘I should hope not.’ He flings down the hammer and walks over to his pile of posts, stacked in a heap. He selects one, weighs it in his hand, holds it up and looks along it, to check its line.
‘It would be hard,’ he says, without looking at her, ‘for a man to live in the shadow of a brute like that. Even if it was in the house next door. Hard to draw breath. Hard to find your path in life.’
Agnes nods, unable to speak. ‘I had not,’ she whispers, ‘realised how bad it was.’