As if following her train of thought, Joan says, “And how is your husband?”
Agnes regards her stepmother for a moment, before replying: “Well, I believe.”
“The theatre still keeps him in London?”
Agnes laces her hands together in her lap and gives Joan a smile before she nods.
“He writes to you often, I suppose?”
Agnes feels a slight adjustment inside her, a minute sensation, as if a small, anxious animal is turning itself around. “Naturally,” she says.
Judith and Susanna, however, give her away. They turn their heads to look at her, quickly, too quickly, like dogs awaiting a signal from their master.
Joan, of course, doesn’t miss this. Agnes sees her stepmother lick her lips, as if tasting something good, something sweet on them. She thinks again of what she said to Bartholomew, years ago, in the marketplace: that Joan likes company in her perpetual dissatisfaction. How is Joan hoping to bring her down now? What information has she that she will wield, like a sword, to slash through this house, this room, this place she and her daughters inhabit, trying to live as best they can in the presence of such enormous, distracting absences? What does Joan know?
The truth is that Agnes’s husband hasn’t written for several months, save a short letter assuring them he is well, and another, addressed to Susanna, asking her to secure the purchase of another field. Agnes has told herself, and the girls, that nothing is amiss, that he will be busy, that sometimes letters go astray on the road, that he is working hard, that he will be home before they know it, but still the thought has gnawed at her. Where is he and what is he doing and why has he not written?
Agnes crosses her fingers, burying them in the folds of her apron. “We heard from him a week or so ago. He was telling us that he is very busy, they are preparing a new comedy and—”
“His new play is of course not a comedy,” Joan cuts across her. “But you knew that, I expect.”
Agnes is silent. The animal inside her flexes itself restlessly, starts to scrape at her innards with its needling claws.
“It’s a tragedy,” Joan continues, baring her teeth in a smile. “And I am certain he will have told you the name of it. In his letters. Because of course he would never call it that without telling you first, would he, without your by-your-leave? I’m sure you’ve seen the playbill. He probably sent you one. Everyone in town is talking about it. My cousin, who came back from London yesterday, brought it. I’m sure you have one but I carried it with me, just the same, for you.”
Joan stands and crosses the room, a ship in full sail. She drops a curled paper into Agnes’s lap.
Agnes eyes it, then takes it with two fingers and flattens it against her mud-splattered apron. For a moment, she cannot tell what she is looking at. It is a printed page. There are many letters, so many, in rows, grouped into words. There is her husband’s name, at the top, and the word “tragedie.” And there, right in the middle, in the largest letters of all, is the name of her son, her boy, the name spoken aloud in church when he was baptised, the name on his gravestone, the name she herself gave him, shortly after the twins’ birth, before her husband returned to hold the babies on his lap.
Agnes cannot understand what this means, what has happened. How can her son’s name be on a London playbill? There has been some odd, strange mistake. He died. This name is her son’s and he died, not four years ago. He was a child and he would have been a man but he died. He is himself, not a play, not a piece of paper, not something to be spoken of or performed or displayed. He died. Her husband knows this, Joan knows this. She cannot understand.
She is aware of Judith leaning over her shoulder, of her saying, What, what is it? and of course she cannot read the letters, cannot string them together to make sense to her—strange that she cannot recognise the name of her own twin—and she is aware of Susanna holding steady the corner of the playbill; her own fingers are trembling, as if caught in the wind from outside, just long enough for her to read it. Susanna tries to tweak it from her grasp but Agnes isn’t letting go, there is no way she’s letting go, not of that piece of paper, not of that name. Joan is looking at her, open-mouthed, taken aback at the turn her visit has taken. She was evidently underestimating the effect of the playbill, had no idea it might produce such a reaction. Agnes’s daughters are ushering Joan from the room, saying that their mother isn’t quite herself, Joan should return another time, and Agnes is able, despite the playbill, despite the name, despite everything, to hear the false concern in Joan’s voice as she bids them all goodbye.
—
Agnes takes to her bed, for the first time in her life. she goes to her chamber and she lies down and will not get up, not for meals, not for callers, not for sick people who knock at the side door. She doesn’t undress but lies there, on top of the blankets. Light streams in through the latticed windows, pushing itself into cracks in the bed-curtains. She keeps the playbill folded between her hands.
The sounds of the street outside, the noises of the house, the footsteps of the servants coming up and down the corridor, the hushed tones of her daughters all reach her. It is as if she is underwater and they are all up there, in the air, looking down on her.
At night, she rises from her bed and goes outside. She sits between the woven, rough sides of her skeps. The humming, vibrating noises from within, beginning just after dawn, seem to her the most eloquent, articulate, perfect language there is.
—
Susanna, scorched with rage, sits down at her desk-box with a blank sheet of paper. How could you? she writes to her father. Why would you, how could you not tell us?
—
Judith carries bowls of soup to her mother’s bed, a posy of lavender, a rose in a vase, a basket of fresh walnuts, their shells sealed up.
—
The baker’s wife comes. She brings rolls, a honey cake. She affects not to notice Agnes’s appearance, her untended hair, her etched and sleepless face. She sits on the edge of the bed, settling her skirts around her, takes Agnes’s hand in her warm, dry grip and says: He always was an odd one, you know that. Agnes says nothing but stares up at the tapestry roof of her bed. More trees, some with apples studding their branches.
“Do you not wonder what is in it?” the baker’s wife asks, ripping off a hunk of the bread and offering it to Agnes.
“In what?” Agnes says, ignoring the bread, barely listening.
The baker’s wife pushes the strip of bread between her own teeth, chews, swallows, tears off another shred before answering: “The play.”
Agnes looks at her, for the first time.
—
To London, then.
She will take no one with her, not her daughters, not her friend, not her sisters, none of her in-laws, not even Bartholomew.
Mary declares it madness, says Agnes will be attacked on the road or murdered in her bed at an inn along the way. Judith begins to cry at this and Susanna tries to hush her, but looks worried all the same. John shakes his head and tells Agnes not to be a fool. Agnes sits at her in-laws’ table, composed, hands in her lap, as if she can’t hear these words.
“I will go” is all she says.
Bartholomew is sent for. He and Agnes take several turns around the garden. Past the apple trees, past the espaliered pears, through the skeps, past the marigold beds, and round again. Susanna and Judith and Mary watch from the window of Susanna’s chamber.
Agnes’s hand is tucked into the crook of her brother’s arm. Both their heads are bowed. They pause, briefly, beside the brewhouse for a moment, as if examining something on the path, then continue on their way.