But Hamnet’s hand is silent. Agnes listens; she strains. She tries to hear what might be under the silence, behind it. Could there be a distant murmur, some sound, a message, perhaps, from her son? A sign where he is, a place she might find him? But there is nothing. A high whine of nothing, like the absence of noise when a church bell falls silent.
Someone, she is aware, has arrived next to her, crouching down, touching her arm. She doesn’t need to look to know it’s Bartholomew. The breadth and weight of that hand. The heavy tread and shuffle of his boots. The clean scent of hay and wool.
Her brother touches her dry cheek. He says her name, once, twice. He says he is sorry, he is heart sore. He says no one would have expected this. He says he wishes it could have been otherwise, that he was the best of boys, the very best, that it is a terrible loss. He places his hand over hers.
‘I will see to the arrangements,’ he murmurs. ‘I’ve dispatched Richard to the church. He will make sure that all is prepared.’ He breathes in and she can hear, in that breath, all that has been said around her. ‘The women are here, to help you.’
Agnes shakes her head, mute. She curls a single finger into the dip of Hamnet’s palm. She remembers examining his palm, and Judith’s, when they were babes, lying together in the crib. She had uncurled their miniature fingers and traced the lines she found. How remarkable had seemed the creases of their hands: just like hers, only smaller. Hamnet had a definite deep groove through the middle of his palm, like the stroke of a brush, denoting a long life; Judith’s had been faint, uncertain, petering out, then restarting in another place. It had made her frown, made her raise the curled fingers to her lips, where she kissed them, again and again, with a fierce, almost angry love.
‘They can . . .’ Bartholomew is saying ‘。 . . lay him out. Or they can be with you while you do it. Whichever you prefer.’
She holds herself very still.
‘Agnes,’ he says.
She uncurls the fingers of Hamnet’s hand and peers at the palm. The fingers are not noticeably stiffer than before, most definitely not. There it is, the long, strong line of life, coursing from the wrist to the base of the fingers. It is a beautiful line, a perfect line, a stream through a landscape. Look, she wants to say to Bartholomew. Do you see that? Can you explain this?
‘We must prepare him,’ Bartholomew says, tightening his grip on hers.
She presses her lips together. If they were alone, she and Bartholomew, maybe then she could risk letting out some of the words jamming up her throat. But as it is, the room so full of silent people, she cannot.
‘He must be buried. You know this. The town will come to take him if we do not.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Not yet.’
‘Then when?’
She bows her head, turning away from him, back to her son.
Bartholomew shifts his weight. ‘Agnes,’ he says, in a low voice so that, maybe, no one else can hear them, although they will be listening, Agnes knows. ‘It is possible that word may not have reached him. He would come, if he knew. I know he would. But he would not find it amiss if we were to go ahead. He would understand the necessity of it. What we must do is send another letter and in the meantime—’
‘We will wait,’ she gets out. ‘Until tomorrow. You may tell the town that. And I will lay him out. No one else.’
‘Very well,’ he says, and stands up. She sees him look at Hamnet, watches his eyes travel from the bare and blackened feet of his nephew, all the way to his ravaged face. Her brother’s mouth presses itself into a line and he closes his eyes briefly. He makes the sign of the cross. Before he turns away, he reaches out and rests his hand on the boy’s chest, just above where his heart used to beat.
A task to be done, and she will do it alone.
She waits until evening, until everyone has left, until most people are in bed.
She will have the water at her right hand and she will sprinkle a few drops of oil into it. The oil will resist, refuse to mix with the water, and will instead resolve itself into golden circles on the surface. She will dip and rinse the cloth.
She begins at the face, at the top of him. He has a wide forehead and his hair grows up from the brow. He had, of late, begun to wet it in the morning, to try to get it to lie flat, but the hair would not listen. She wets it now but it still does not listen, even in death. You see, she says to him, you cannot change what you are given, cannot bend or alter what is dealt to you.
He gives no answer.
She wets her hands in the water and then draws her fingers through his hair; she finds flecks of lint, a teasel, a leaf from a plum tree. These, she lays aside, on a plate: flotsam from her boy. She combs with her fingers until the hair is clean. May I, she asks him, take a lock from you? Would you mind?