She lets out a cry, turns back to her brother, her hand over her mouth.
Bartholomew shrugs. “I told you not to look.”
—
When they reach the other side of the river, Agnes leans into her saddlebag and pulls out the playbill Joan gave her.
There, again, is the name of her son and the black letters, arranged in their sequence, shocking as it was the first time she saw it.
She turns it away from her, gripping it tightly in her hand, and waves it at the next person who comes near the flank of her horse. The person—a man with a pointed brushed beard and cape thrown back from his shoulders—indicates a side-street. Go that way, he says, then left, then left again, and you shall see it.
She recognises the playhouse from her husband’s description: a round wooden place next to the river. She slides from her horse’s back, and Bartholomew takes the reins, and her legs feel as if they have lost their bones somewhere along the way. The scene around her—the street, the riverbank, the horses, the playhouse—seems to waver and swing, coming in and out of focus. Bartholomew is speaking. He will, he says to her, wait for her here; he will not move from this spot until she comes back. Does she understand? His face is pushed up very close to hers. He appears to be waiting for some response, so Agnes nods. She steps away from him, in through the large doors, paying her penny.
As she comes through the high doorway, she is greeted by the sight of row upon row of faces, hundreds of them, all talking and shouting. She is in a tall-sided enclosure, which is filling with people. There is a stage jutting out into the gathering crowd, and above them all, a ceiling of sky, a circle containing fast-moving clouds, the shapes of birds, darting from one edge to the next.
Agnes slides between shoulders and bodies, men and women, someone holding a chicken beneath their arm, a woman with a baby at her breast, half-hidden by a shawl, a man selling pies from a tray. She turns herself sideways, steps between people, until she gets herself as close as she can to the stage.
On all sides, bodies and elbows and arms press in. More and more people are pouring through the doors. Some on the ground are gesturing and shouting to others in the higher balconies. The crowd thickens and heaves, first one way, then the next; Agnes is pushed backwards and forward but she keeps her footing; the trick seems to be to move with the current, rather than resist it. It is, she thinks, like standing in a river: you have to bend yourself to its flow, not fight it. A group in the highest tier of seats is making much of the lowering of a length of rope. There is shouting and hooting and laughter. The pie-man ties to its end a laden basket and the people above begin to haul it up towards them. Several members of the crowd leap to snatch it, in a playful or perhaps hungry fashion; the pie-man deals each of them a swift, cracking blow. A coin is thrown down by the people above and the pie-man lunges to catch it. One of the men he has just hit gets to it first and the pie-man grabs him around the throat; the man lands a punch on the pie-man’s chin. They go down, hard, swallowed by the crowd, amid much cheering and noise.
The woman next to Agnes shrugs and grins at her with blackened, crooked teeth. She has a small boy on her shoulders. With one hand, the child grips his mother’s hair, and with the other, he holds what to Agnes looks like a lamb’s shank bone, gnawing at it with sated, glazed indifference. He regards her with impassive eyes, the bone between his small, sharp teeth.
A sudden, blaring noise makes Agnes jump. Trumpets are sounding from somewhere. The babble of the crowd surges and gathers into a ragged cheer. People raise their arms; there is a scattering of applause, several cheers, some piercing whistles. From behind Agnes, comes a rude noise, a curse, a yelled exhortation to hurry up, for Lord’s sake.
The trumpets repeat their tune, a circling refrain, the final note stretched and held. A hush falls over the crowd and two men walk on to the stage.
Agnes blinks. The fact that she has come to see a play has somehow drifted away from her. But here she is, in her husband’s playhouse, and here is the play.
A pair of actors stand upon a wooden stage and speak to each other, as if no one is watching, as if they are completely alone.
She takes them in, listening, attentive. They are nervous, jittery, glancing about themselves, gripping their swords. Who’s there? one of them shouts to the other. Unfold yourself, the other shouts back. More actors arrive on the stage, all nervous, all watchful.
The crowd around her, she cannot help but notice, is entirely still. No one speaks. No one moves. Everyone is entirely focused on these actors and what they are saying. Gone is the jostling, whistling, brawling, pie-chewing mass and in its place a silent, awed congregation. It is as if a magician or sorcerer has waved his staff over the place and turned them all to stone.
Now that she is here and the play has begun, the strangeness and detachment she felt during the journey, and while she stood in his lodgings, rinses off her, like grime. She feels ready, she feels furious. Come on then, she thinks. Show me what you’ve done.
The players on the stage mouth speeches to each other. They gesture and point and mince back and forth, gripping their weapons. One says a line, then another, then it is the first’s turn. She watches, baffled. She had expected something familiar, something about her son. What else would the play be about? But this is people in a castle, on a battlement, debating with each other over nothing.
She alone, it seems, is exempt from the sorcerer’s spell. The magic has not touched her. She feels like heckling or scoffing. Her husband wrote these words, these exchanges, but what has any of this to do with their boy? She wants to shout to the people on the stage. You, she would say, and you: you are all nothing, this is nothing, compared to what he was. Don’t you dare pronounce his name.
A great weariness seizes her. She is conscious of an ache in her legs and hips, from the many hours on horseback, of her lack of sleep, of the light, which seems to sting her eyes. She hasn’t the strength or the inclination to put up with this press of bodies around her, with these long speeches, these floods of words. She won’t stand here any longer. She will leave and her husband will never be any the wiser.
Suddenly, the actor on stage says something about a dreaded sight, and a realisation creeps over her. What these men are seeking, discussing, expecting is a ghost, an apparition. They want it, and yet they fear it, too, all at the same time.
She holds herself very still, watching their movements, listening to their words. She crosses her arms so that no one around her may touch or brush against her, distracting her. She needs to concentrate. She doesn’t want to miss a sound.
When the ghost appears, a collective gasp passes over the audience. Agnes doesn’t flinch. She stares at the ghost. It is in full armour, the visor of the helmet drawn down, its form half-hidden by a shroud. She doesn’t listen to the bluster and bleating of frightened men on the battlements of the castle. She watches it through narrowed lids.
She has her eye on that ghost: the height, that movement of the arm, hand upturned, a particular curl of the fingers, that roll of the shoulder. When he raises the visor, she feels not surprise, not recognition, but a kind of hollow confirmation. His face is painted a ghastly white, his beard made grey; he is dressed as if for battle, in armour and helmet, but she isn’t fooled for a moment. She knows exactly who is underneath that costume, that disguise.
She thinks: Well, now. There you are. What are you up to?
As if her thoughts have been beamed to him, from her mind to his, through the crowds—calling out now, shouting warnings to the men on the battlements—the ghost’s head snaps around. The helmet is open and the eyes peer out over the heads of the audience.