“Always at night,” the woman was saying, passing one hand over the other. “Never during the day.”
And so Judith has come, every night since, slipping out of the house in the dark hours, to stand here, waiting, watching. She has said nothing of this to her mother or Susanna. The midwife chose to tell her, and her only. It is her secret, her connection, her twin. There are mornings when she can feel her mother looking at her, observing her tired, drawn face, and she wonders if she knows. It wouldn’t surprise her. But she doesn’t want to speak to anyone else about it, in case it never comes true, in case she can’t find him, in case he doesn’t appear to her.
In the narrow house, these days, in the room where Hamnet died, shaking and convulsing all over, the fever’s poison coursing through him, there are many millinery heads, all facing the door, a crowd of silent, wooden, featureless observers. Judith watches this door; she stares and stares at it.
Please, is what she is thinking. Please come. Just once. Don’t leave me here like this, alone, please. I know you took my place, but I am only half a person without you. Let me see you, even if only for the last time.
She cannot imagine how it might be, to see him again. He would be a child and she is now grown, almost a woman. What would he think? Would he recognise her now, if he were to pass her in the street, this boy who will for ever remain a boy?
Several streets away, the owl leaves its perch, surrendering itself to a cool draught, its wings silently breasting the air, its eyes alert. To it, the town appears as a series of rooftops, with gullies of streets in between, a place to be navigated. The massed leaves of trees present themselves as it flies, the stray wisps of smoke from idle fires. It sees the progress of the fox, which is now crossing the street; it sees a rodent, possibly a rat, traversing a yard and disappearing down into a pit; it sees a man, sleeping in the doorway of a tavern, scratching at a fleabite on his shin; it sees coneys in a cage at the back of someone’s house; horses standing in a paddock near the inn; and it sees Judith, stepping into the street.
She is unaware of the owl, skimming the sky above her. Her breath comes into her body in ragged, shallow bursts. She has seen something. A flicker, a hint, a motion, imperceptible, but there, unmistakably. It was like the passage of a breeze through corn, like the glancing of a reflection off a pane, when you pull the window towards you—that unexpected streak of light passing through the room.
Judith crosses the road, her hood falling from her head. She stands outside her former home; she paces from its door to that of her grandparents. The very air feels coalescent, charged, as it does before a thunderstorm. She shuts her eyes. She can feel him. She is so sure of this. The skin on her arms and neck shrinks and she is desperate to reach out, to touch him, to take his hand in hers, but she dares not. She listens to the roar of her pulse, her ragged breathing and she knows, she hears, underneath her own, another’s breathing. She does. She really does.
She is shaking now, her head bowed, her eyes shut tight. The thought that forms inside her head is: I miss you, I miss you, I would give anything to have you back, anything at all.
Then it is over, the moment passing. The pressure drops like a curtain. She opens her eyes, puts her hand up to the wall of the house to steady herself. He is gone, all over again.
—
Mary, early in the day, opening the front door to let out the dogs into the street, finds a person in front of the house, slumped and crouched, head on knees. For a moment, she believes it is a drunkard, collapsed there during the night. Then she recognises the boots and hem of her granddaughter, Judith.
She fusses and clucks around her, brings the half-frozen child in, calling for blankets and hot broth, for Lord’s sake.
—
Agnes is out the back, bending over her plant beds, when the serving girl appears, saying that her stepmother, Joan, has come to call.
It is a wild and stormy day, the wind gusting down into the garden, finding a way up and over the high walls to blast down on them all, hurling handfuls of rain and hail, as if enraged by something they have done. Agnes has been out there since dawn, tying the frailer plants to sticks, to buttress them against the onslaught.
She pauses, clutching the knife and twine, and peers at the girl. “What did you say?”
“Mistress Joan,” says the girl again, her face screwed up, one hand holding on her cap, which the wind seems determined to rip from her head, “is waiting in the parlour.”
Susanna is running along the path, head down, barrelling towards them. She is shouting something at her mother but the words are lost, whirled away, up to the skies. She gestures towards the house, first with one hand, then the other.
Agnes sighs, considers the situation for a moment longer, then slides the knife into her pocket. It will be something to do with Bartholomew, or one of the children, the farm, these improvements to the hall; Joan will be wanting her to intercede and Agnes will have to be firm. She doesn’t like to get involved in things that go on at Hewlands. Doesn’t she have her own house and family to see to?
The minute she gets inside the house, Susanna starts to pluck at her cap, at her apron, at the hair that has escaped its moorings. Agnes waves her away. Susanna trails her along the passage and through the hall, whispering that she can’t possibly receive visitors looking like that, and doesn’t she want to go and restore her appearance, Susanna will see to Joan, she promises.
Agnes ignores her. She crosses the hall with a firm, quick tread and pushes open the door.
She is met by the sight of her stepmother, sitting very upright in Agnes’s husband’s chair. Opposite her is Judith, who has placed herself on the floor. There are two cats in her lap and three others circling her, lavishly rubbing themselves along her sides and back and hands. She is talking, with uncharacteristic fluency, about the different cats and their names, their food preferences and where they elect to sleep.
Agnes happens to know that Joan has a particular dislike of cats—they steal her breath and make her itch, she has always said—so she is suppressing a smile as she comes into the room.
“…and, most surprising of all,” Judith is saying, “this one is the brother of that one, which you wouldn’t think, would you, if you saw them at a distance, but up close, you’ll see that their eyes are exactly the same colour. Exactly. Do you see?”
“Mmm,” says Joan, her hand pressed over her mouth, standing to greet Agnes.
The two women meet in the middle of the room. Joan takes her stepdaughter by the upper arms with a grip that is resolute and swift. Her eyes flutter closed as she plants a kiss on her cheek; Agnes resists the urge to pull herself away. They ask each other how do they do, are they well, are the families well?
“I fear,” Joan says, as she returns to her seat, “I have interrupted you in…some task or other?” She looks pointedly down at Agnes’s muddied apron, her dirt-encrusted hem.
“Not at all,” Agnes replies, taking a seat, putting a hand to Judith’s shoulder, in passing. “I’ve been at work in the garden, trying to save some of the plants. Whatever brings you to town in such fearsome weather?”
Joan seems momentarily wrong-footed by the question, as if she hadn’t been prepared to be asked. She smooths the folds of her gown, presses her lips together. “A visit to a…a friend. A friend who is unwell.”
“Oh? I am sorry to hear that. What is the matter?”
Joan waves her hand. “It is but a trifle…a mere cold on the chest. Nothing to be—”
“I would gladly give your friend a tincture of pine and elder. I have some freshly made. Very good for the lungs, especially over the winter and—”
“No need,” Joan says hastily. “I thank you, but no.” She clears her throat, looking around the room. Agnes sees her eyes light on the ceiling, the mantel, the fire-irons, the painted drapes on the walls, which feature a design of forests, leaves, dense branches punctuated by leaping deer: a gift from her husband, who had them made up in London. Agnes’s recent and unexpected wealth bothers Joan. There is something unbearable to her about the sight of her stepdaughter living in so fine a house.