Agnes is sitting on the floor by the pallet, next to Judith, a cloth in her hand. She has been there all night: she will not rise, she will not eat, she will not sleep or rest. It is everything Mary can do to get her to drink a little. The heat from the fire is so great that Agnes’s cheeks have scarlet spots upon them; strands of hair have escaped from her coif to write themselves in damp scribbles on her neck.
As Mary watches, Agnes dips the cloth into the bowl of water and wipes Judith’s brow, her arms, her neck. She murmurs some words to her daughter, something soft and soothing.
Mary wonders if the child hears her. Judith’s fever has not broken. The bubo in her neck is so large, so taut, it may burst. And then all will be lost. The girl will die. Mary knows this. It may be tonight, in the deepest dark, because that is the most dangerous time for the sick. It may be tomorrow or even the day after. But come it will.
There is nothing they can do now. Just as three of her own daughters were taken, two when they were just babies, Judith will go from them. They will not have her any more.
Agnes is gripping the child’s limp fingers, Mary sees, as if she is trying to tether her to life. She would keep her here, haul her back, by will alone, if she could. Mary knows this urge – she feels it; she has lived it; she is it, now and for ever. She has been the mother on the pallet, too many times, the woman trying to hold on, to keep a grip on her child. All in vain. What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any moment, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.
Mary feels tears gathering in her eyes, feels her throat closing over. The sight of Judith’s hair, still plaited, the line of her jaw and neck. How can it be that she will no longer exist? That, before too long, she and Agnes will be washing this body, combing out that plait, readying her for burial? Mary turns briskly, taking up a pitcher, a cloth, a plate, anything, moving them to the table and back again.
Eliza, who is seated at the table, her chin in her hand, whispers, ‘I should write. Don’t you think so, Mamma?’
Mary glances at the pallet, where Agnes has her head bowed, almost as if in prayer. All day, Agnes has refused to let Eliza write to Judith’s father. All will be well, she has kept saying, as she ground up herbs, with increasingly frantic movements, as she tried to get Judith to swallow tinctures and tisanes, as she rubbed ointments into her skin. We mustn’t alarm him. It is not necessary.
Mary turns back to Eliza and gives her a quick, single nod. She watches as Eliza goes to a cupboard and takes out ink, paper and quill; her brother keeps them there for when he is at home. She sits down at the table and dips her quill into the ink and, hesitating for just a moment, writes.
Dear Brother,
I am sorrie to tel you that Judith, your daughter, is verie sick. We belief she has not manie hours left to her. Pleaƒe come bak to us, if you can. And make hast.
God ƒpeed to you, dearest brother.
Your loving sister,
Eliza
Mary melts the sealing-wax over a candle; she sees Agnes watching as they drip it on to the folded page. Eliza writes the address of her brother’s lodgings on the front, then Mary takes up the letter and goes next door with it, to her own house. She will find a coin, open a window, call to whoever is in the street to take it to the inn on the road out of Stratford and ask the innkeeper to convey it, fast as he can, to London, to her son.
Not long after Mary leaves to find a coin, to hail a passer-by, Hamnet drifts to the surface of sleep. He lies for a while under the sheet, wondering why nothing feels right, why the world feels as though it has slanted slightly, why he feels so dry of mouth, so heavy of heart, so sore in the head.
He looks one way in the dark room and sees his parents’ bed: empty. He looks the other and sees the pallet where his sisters sleep. Only one body is under the covers and then he remembers: Judith is sick. How could he have forgotten?
He lurches upright, pulling the bedclothes with him, and makes two discoveries. His head is filled with pain, like a bowl brimful of scalding water. It is a strange, confusing kind of pain – it drives out all thought, all sense of action. It saturates his head, spreading itself to the muscles and focus of his eyes; it tinkers with the roots of his teeth, with the byways of his ears, the paths of his nose, the very shafts of his hair. It feels enormous, significant, bigger than him.
Hamnet crawls from the bed, dragging the sheet with him, but no matter. He needs to find his mother: amazing how strong this instinct is, even now, as a great lad of eleven. He recalls this sensation, this urge – just – from when he was much younger: the driving need to be with his mother, to be under her gaze, to be by her side, close enough to be able to reach out and touch her, because no one else would do.
It must be near dawn because the new light of day is seeping into the rooms, thin and pale as milk. He makes it down the stairs, which seem to lurch and sway in front of him, one step at a time. He has to turn to face the wall because everything around him is in motion.
Downstairs is the following scene: his aunt Eliza is asleep at the table, her head resting on her arms. The candles have burnt out, drowned in pools of themselves. The fire is reduced to a heap of idling ashes. His mother is bent forward, her head on the pallet, asleep, a cloth gripped in her hand. And Judith is looking right at him.
‘Jude,’ he says, or tries to say, because his voice doesn’t seem to be working. It rasps; it prickles; it seems unable to get out of his dry and raw throat.
He drops to his knees and crawls along the straw to reach her.
Her eyes glitter with a strange, silvery light. She is worse: he can see this. Her cheeks are sunken, white, her lips cracked and bloodless, the swellings in her neck red and shining. He comes to crouch next to his twin, careful not to wake his mother. His hand finds hers; their fingers twine together.
He sees Judith’s eyes roll back in her head, once, twice. Then they open wide and slide towards him. It seems to take her a great deal of effort.
Her lips curve upwards in what might be a smile. He feels a pressure on his fingers. ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispers.
He feels again the sensation he has had all his life: that she is the other side to him, that they fit together, him and her, like two halves of a walnut. That without her he is incomplete, lost. He will carry an open wound, down his side, for the rest of his life, where she had been ripped from him. How can he live without her? He cannot. It is like asking the heart to live without the lungs, like tearing the moon out of the sky and asking the stars to do its work, like expecting the barley to grow without rain. Tears are appearing on her cheeks now, like silver seeds, as if by magic. He knows they are his, falling from his eyes on to her face, but they could just as easily be hers. They are one and the same.
‘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.
