‘You shall be well,’ she murmurs.
He grips her fingers in anger. ‘I shall not.’ He passes his tongue over his lips, tasting salt. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ll go together.’
Again, the flicker of a smile, the pressure of her fingers. ‘Nay,’ she says, his tears glistening on her face. ‘You shall stay. They need you.’
He can feel Death in the room, hovering in the shadows, over there beside the door, head averted, but watching all the same, always watching. It is waiting, biding its time. It will slide forward on skinless feet, with breath of damp ashes, to take her, to clasp her in its cold embrace, and he, Hamnet, will not be able to wrest her free. Should he insist it takes him too? Should they go together, just as they always have?
Then the idea strikes him. He doesn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. It occurs to Hamnet, as he crouches there, next to her, that it might be possible to hoodwink Death, to pull off the trick he and Judith have been playing on people since they were young: to exchange places and clothes, leading people to believe that each was the other. Their faces are the same. People remark on this all the time, at least once a day. All it takes is for Hamnet to put on Judith’s shawl or for her to don his hat; they will sit at the table like that, eyes lowered, smiles concealed, and their mother will place a hand on Judith’s shoulder and say, Hamnet, can you bring in the wood? Or their father might come into a room and see what he thinks is his son, dressed in a jerkin, and ask him to conjugate a verb in Latin, only to discover it is his daughter, hiding her laughter, revelling in the illusion, and she will push aside the door to reveal the real son, hidden away.
Could he pull off their trick, their joke, just once more? He thinks he can. He thinks he will. He glances over his shoulder at the tunnel of dark beside the door. The blackness is depthless, soft, absolute. Turn away, he says to Death. Close your eyes. Just for a moment.
He slides his hands underneath Judith, one palm under her shoulders, the other under her hips, and he shunts her sideways, towards the fireplace. She is lighter than he expected; she rolls to her side and her eyes open a crack as she rights herself. She watches, frowning, as he lays himself down in the dip her body has made, as he takes her place, as he smooths his hair down, on either side of his face, as he pulls the sheet up over both of them, tucking it under their chins.
They will look, he is sure, the same. No one will know which is which. It will be easy for Death to make a mistake, to take him in her place.
She is stirring beside him, trying to sit up. ‘Nay,’ she is saying again. ‘Hamnet, nay.’
He knew she would know straight away what he was doing. She always does. She is shaking her head, but is too weak to raise herself from the pallet. Hamnet holds the sheet fast over both of them.
He breathes in. He breathes out. He turns his head and breathes into the whorls of her ear; he breathes in his strength, his health, his all. You will stay, is what he whispers, and I will go. He sends these words into her: I want you to take my life. It shall be yours. I give it to you.
They cannot both live: he sees this and she sees this. There is not enough life, enough air, enough blood for both of them. Perhaps there never was. And if either of them is to live, it must be her. He wills it. He grips the sheet, tight, in both hands. He, Hamnet, decrees it. It shall be.
usanna, shortly before her second birthday, sits in a basket on the floor of her grandmother’s parlour, her legs crossed, her skirts billowing up around her, filled with air. She holds a wooden spoon in each hand and with these she paddles as fast as she can. She is sculling down the river. The current is fast and weaving. Weeds waft and unravel. She has to paddle and paddle to stay afloat – if she stops, who knows what may happen? Ducks and swans drift alongside her, seemingly serene and unruffled, but Susanna knows that their webbed feet are working, working beneath the water. No one but she can see these animals. Not her mother, who stands at the window, her back to the room, scattering seed on the sill. Not her grandmother, who sits at the table, her workbox open in front of her. Not her father, who is a pair of legs, encased in dark stockings, pacing from one wall to another. The soles of his shoes scuff and thud on the surface of Susanna’s river. He walks past a duck, through a swan, across a bank of reeds. Susanna wants to tell him to be careful, to check if he can swim. She has a vision of her father’s head – dark, like his stockings – disappearing beneath the brownish-green lapping waters. She feels her throat clutch, her eyes sting at the thought.