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    Hamnet
    Hamnet
    Hamnet
    Ebook398 pages7 hours

    Hamnet

    By Maggie O'Farrell

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time. • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe  

    England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

    A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateJul 21, 2020
    ISBN9780525657613
    Author

    Maggie O'Farrell

    MAGGIE O'FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include The Marriage Portrait, Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You'd Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She lives in Edinburgh.

    Read more from Maggie O'farrell

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    Reviews for Hamnet

    4/5

    1,356 ratings126 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Am going to risk being ostracized by admitting that I didn’t find this book particularly astonishing. I realize it’s been praised by a lot of reviewers smarter than me, but while I found some of the prose to be lovely, some other elements of O’Farrell’s craft – characterization, plot, theme – left me unimpressed.

      Part of my frustration may stem from still not being entirely sure what the book was meant to be about. (I get that books don't necessarily have to be "about" anything, but bear with me.)

      Was it meant to be a story of Hamnet, the son of Will Shakespeare and his wife Anne/Agnes – as the title would seem to imply? If so, then why does O’Farrell spend almost no time endowing Hamnet with any sort of memorable personality? Instead, Hamnet comes off as a rather average lad of his age and time; neither the fact that he is the son of a brilliant poet, nor being raised by an unconventional mother, nor that he is a twin are ever explored in any sort of depth.

      Or was it meant to be an exploration of his eccentric mother Agnes, portrayed here as a sort of an Elizabethan forest sprite/Earth mother/witch? If so, then why does O’Farrell strip her of these eccentricities as soon as she marries Will? The blurb on the back of the book calls her a “steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband” but I struggled to see how she contributed much of anything to the marriage. (It’s her brother, not some extraordinary quality of empathy or insight, that finally helps her figure out why her husband is so moody; also, her supposed gift of foresight is weirdly off-again/on-again, seeming to have more to do with narrative convenience than logic.)

      Is it supposed to be about two parents grieving the loss of a child? If so, why spend so little time establishing any sort of special emotional link between Agnes, Will, and their son? (And if they're such doting parents, why do they treat their other children with such indifference after Hamnet’s death?) Why choose as father a poet/playwright who never wrote a single play or poem about the death of a child? Why set the story in the time of the plague, when lifespans were short and children died all the time?

      Or is it supposed to be about the dynamics of the marriage of two unconventional souls? If so, then why is Will’s creativity almost never explored or acknowledged? Anne supposedly marries the poet because she is attracted by his imagination, but once married, this aspect of their mutual attraction pretty much vanishes from the narrative.

      And the bit at the end where the couple supposedly begins to heal? Maybe it’s just me, but O’Farrell’s attempt to convince us that the play “Hamlet” is somehow intended by Will as a tribute to their dead son struck me as improbably strained, the product of narrative necessity rather than any sort of genuine epiphany.

      I’m willing to grant that O’Farrell’s prose is lovely and her imagery evocative. This is a veritable banquet of sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and textures. (Though I did feel like, in too many instances, the author indulged her enthusiasm for imagery at the expense of maintaining dramatic momentum; it's the rare and gifted author who knows how to maintain an effective balance.) Also, O’Farrell has this technique of taking an idea and then elaborating on it in a series of clauses/short sentences that creates a sort of lyric cadence, which is lovely though, over time, can begin to feel a bit repetitive. (Take these examples from a single page, chosen at random: “But the magnitude, the depth of his wife’s grief …” “is so breathless, so seamless, it is quite possible …” “he would find them as they were, unchanged, untrammeled ….”)

      Feel like this had the potential to be astonishing, but that it falls disappointingly short of the mark.
    • 5/5
      This prize winning novel is a fictional retelling of the short life and death of William Shakespeare's only son. It contains two time tracks, starting with Hamnet's illness and death, with alternating chapters going back to his parents' marriage. For much of the novel, Hamnet's mother, here called Agnes (Anne) Hathaway is the dominant character, a semi-magical white witch character (for which there is no historical evidence). But the last third of the novel follows on from the young boy's death from plague, centring on his parents' contrasting reactions to his passing, expressing their grief in very different ways, Agnes by being unable to move or carry on with her day to day life, William by returning to London and throwing himself into his dramatic work. The other two Shakespeare children, Judith, Hamnet's identical twin, and the elder daughter Susannah, also come across clearly with distinct characters. The author's writing style is very evocative of the sights, sounds and smells of Elizabethan Stratford and (in brief at the end) London. I greatly enjoyed the novel, though I thought the descriptions of grief, while very evocative, were perhaps a little overdone, and was initially slightly confused by the rapidly changing timestreams. The close connection of the names of Shakespeare's only son and his most famous play, crucial to the novel's ending here, is not accepted by all historians, though. A powerful novel.
    • 5/5
      A truly remarkable novel, so finely wrought, conjuring up a powerful sense of the past, creating palpably real characters. A must for Shakespeare fans, but even if you don't know your Stratford-upon-Avon lore, there's a lot to be found here.
    • 5/5
      Hamnet is written by Maggie O’Farrell.
      This is a brilliantly, lovingly written book.
      It is so emotional with quiet yet powerful, lyrically written words.
      The writing seems ‘to transport’ one to the late 1500s in England. I was completely
      caught up in the day-to-day currents of the the town and its inhabitants. So historically
      and culturally accurate.
      Hamnet “is a luminous portrait of a marriage, of a family ravaged by grief, and a boy
      whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time.”
      ***** I am so glad I read this book.
    • 5/5
      This novel was at the top of my reading list for quite a while, but I was reluctant to start reading it. Something about it being about Shakespeare (even if his role in this is not central) created a certain expectation that was putting me off. It proved to be completely wrong.

      This was such an enjoyable book in a literary sense (emotionally, it was gut-wrenching).
      The words flew off the pages so naturally. For a story centred around grief (with some extraordinary passages on it), there was a strange fairytale-like lightness to it.

      The character of Agnes was written especially well. I loved the way certain things were portrayed with a touch of almost magical realism. It helped transport me back in time. But, unlike "regular" historical fiction, where the setting rules over everything else, this is a universal story of loss. Having a famous historical figure among the characters, unnamed, just made it more intriguing.


    • 2/5
      I hated this book. Such one-dimensional characters (and way too many characters, too). Shakespeare's abusive father John is all bad. Agnes' stepmother Joan is all bad; no drop of affection whatsoever for two children she raised from babies. Shakespeare's mother Mary is a dolt; I never thought less of the two main characters, with whom we're supposed to feel sympathy, than when they literally laughed at Mary behind her back for being upset that her son was moving to London.

      A couple of the characters see Agnes not as a mysterious woodsprite but as an imbecile. I thought it was an interesting perspective and chose to see her this way through the remainder of the book, which helped me get through it.

      And hate it I did! I wanted them all to get the plague.
    • 5/5
      One of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, finely wrought novels I have read in many a year. I fell into it and was besotted from the first page. I cannot stop thinking about it.
    • 5/5
      The author can transport you brilliantly to another time and place: Stratford on Avon in Elizabeathan times. The characters she creates come alive vividly. It is a testimony to her skill that this book was a page turner for me even though I really dislike the flashback narration that was in the first part of the book.The narrative often goes into extended detail about everyday life but it is done with such a fine stroke that you are transported.
      The book is current in that losing a child is a tragedy for families today too. But I have to say that Agnes' reaction was selfish to me, she had two surviving daughters, didn't they deserve her attention and support? Only Hamnet? Also I found the magical powers Agnes has to be far fetched, but it's a story.
    • 5/5
      I’m still a bit teary eyed, having just spent the past hour reading a description of grief so compelling I was unable to keep my emotions under control.
      Maggie O’Farell’s story about Shakespeare’s wife and family immerses the reader so firmly into the family drama I am quite bereft to have to put them aside and go back to my everyday life.

      It also makes me want to go back and gut my work in progress and start over, try to create at least a shadow of the feeling she was able to reveal in me.

      The creation of Shakespeare’s time and world is marvellous. I can smell the camomile, the sheep, the mud. I saw London as Agnes sees it, the smells, the noise, the casual acceptance of death and torment.

      The relationships between the characters are strongly evocative- Agnes’s coolness to her husband after sensing his activities when away, her resentment of his being away while she coped with the family tragedies- these all read true. She forgives him again and again, and this rings true, too.

      What really gutted me was the description of Agnes’ grief after the death of Hamlet. I have a child, a grown man now, who, while still alive, refuses to have anything to do with me. The grief associated with this has been as sharp as if he had died, adding the additional barbs of being rejected again and again, day by day. I’ve found it hard to express what that feels like- O’Farrell has done this for me, described the endless searching for him wherever I go, the wishing for one more contact. Anyone who has lost a child will be able to identify with her writing of this grief.

      It may hurt to revisit it, but it’s a good hurt, to see one’s feelings laid out by someone who, seemingly, understands.
    • 3/5
      A view of Shakespeare from another angle. Well told story.
    • 5/5
      Although historical fiction is not a favoured genre for me, this was a superb fictional account of Shakespeare’s family. It successfully evoked the era and created well drawn characters. I wasn’t completely sold on the ending but the quality of the rest of the book made this a minor quibble.
    • 4/5
      Ugh why do people like sad books. I am not familiar with the content of the works of Shakespeare, beyond the names and genres, so the fact that he never wrote about plague despite being personally aquatinted with it is surprising and telling. I'm really glad we've figured out vaccines and antibiotics now too.
    • 5/5
      This is a historical fiction story about Agnes Shakespeare, the wife of the renown playwright. History does not reveal a great deal about Shakespeare’s family life so it takes the very talented Maggie O’Farrell to produce this fascinating fiction about Agnes. She is portrayed as a psychic and herbalist who marries William when she is 3 months pregnant with their first child Susanna. They are living in Stratford next door to Shakespeare’s parents. His father is a brutal, angry man and his mother is more subdued. The family tolerates Agnes’ oddness and clairvoyance and respects her intelligence. As William becomes more successful he spends more time in London, leaving Agnes, Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith alone. The plague visits the family home and a child’s death becomes a heartbreaking fissure in the couple’s relationship.
      This story is a page turner. It is very well written, characters are well developed and the natural world that Agnes explores and uses for medicines is beautifully described.
    • 5/5
      This book does a great job presenting the era of Shakespear's life! Suggesting the tragic family life and origins of the play Hamlet are well done. I did read the authors notes in back before reading so I knew she was working from what little information there is on Shakespear's family life. I llke to know how much is true before I get caught up in a story. There was love, family tragedy, magical realism (a little) rich writing, and history, and the plague!
    • 3/5
      Did you ever read a book that was superbly written, with deeply developed characters and settings and yet you just couldn't connect with it? That was Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell for me.

      The book tells a story inspired by the only son of Shakespeare as his twin sister takes to her bed with a fever. Through various perspectives and backstories, we learn the story of Hamnet and his extended family weaving in the meanings of grief, love and what kind of legacy we can leave on the world.

      This book is acclaimed and deservedly so, but I found it only picked up in the second half. For the initial chapters I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the revelation of his father’s career and it’s impact on the family, for a significant plot point to happen so we could move past it and get to the meat of the story. The ending for me, while beautiful was predictable given the nature of other revelations in the book.

      Overall, I think this book was great… just not for me.
    • 5/5
      The tragedy of life itself.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written imagining of Ann Hathaway’s marriage to Shakespeare. Great descriptions of the bubonic plague & how it spread across the trading world.a. But most of all an atmospheric, slow moving story of a deserted wife and a grieving mother.
    • 4/5
      Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell received many accolades in the months after its release, and I can see why. It is a beautifully written novel that bridges the years between today and Shakespeare's era. The attention to detail is exquisite, and the characters are larger than life.

      For all that, I found Hamnet a challenging listen at times. My personal opinions regarding infidelity made me less sympathetic to the husband and his suffering than I should have. Without that sympathy, the story loses some of its power.

      Then, there is the abuse we must endure, the husband's at his father's hand and Agnes's at the hands of her stepmother. I know that the era in which the story occurs had different opinions regarding bodily harm, but even Ms. O'Farrell takes it beyond what is acceptable then or now. When an author writes so well that even a reader with no imagination can picture what is happening, scenes like these are tough to endure.

      Still, Hamnet is a haunting portrayal of a wife and mother who must suffer the loss of a child without her husband. Her pain is your pain, and her fears are your fears. Agnes suffers every parent's worst nightmare, and we are there for every agonizing moment.

      Ell Potter does a superb job narrating this story. Her performance is subtle but effective. Ms. Potter uses her narration to ensure you can differentiate between the characters in dialogue and nothing more. She lets Ms. O'Farrell's words speak for themselves, as one should.

      I thoroughly enjoyed Hamnet until I could no longer do so. The husband's philandering during their mourning period ruined the story for me. I lost all sympathy for the husband and was unhappy with Agnes for allowing it to continue. No matter how much I loved the first three-fourths of the novel, my morals got in the way of me being able to enjoy the last of it.
    • 5/5
      Subtitle: A Novel of the Plague

      From the frontspiece
      HISTORICAL NOTE
      In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins
      The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven.
      Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.

      My reactions
      Wow. You think you know where a story is headed because you know something of the historical figures depicted, and then an author completely surprises you.

      O’Farrell focuses the story on Agnes, the wife, mother, sister, daughter, stepdaughter and daughter-in-law. She peoples the novel with a wide variety of villagers: shopkeepers, cleric, farmers, midwife, and neighbors; all of whom give the reader a sense of time and place and who provide a vivid background for the intimate story she tells.

      Gosh but I loved Agnes … a strong-willed young woman who knew her worth and her gifts, a loving wife and mother, a woman struck down by tragedy, and a woman who harnessed her anger to seek truth.

      The writing is beautiful and engaging. I kept reading passages aloud. The last 20 pages or so were simply marvelous. And the last line … perfect.

      I can hardly wait for my book club discussion!
    • 2/5
      Grossly overwritten. How much more powerful would it have been if stripped to a hundred pages. In the last part every paragraph could have been just the topic sentence. Bin the rest.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! It is a brilliant imagining of Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William and Agnes, mostly focused on Agnes’s love for her family. The author takes a different angle on the person we know from history as Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare is not the focus of this book, though he plays a crucial role (so to speak). In fact, he is never mentioned by name, and only referred to as “the tutor” or by Agnes as “my husband.” It is set in the 1580s to 1600, and covers the courtship, marriage, birth of children, home life, and the tragedy that befalls them.

      The book It is beautifully written. O’Farrell has a knack for establishing the ambiance of the era, and I felt transported back in time. I could almost feel the atmosphere of England in the late 16th century – the sights, smells, and sounds. The details are superb, particularly the intimate details of family life. It is a beautiful contemplation on motherhood, portraying deep love, small pleasures, joy, guilt, and grief. It suggests the role of art in healing emotional wounds.

      The author explains her research, identifying fact from fiction, and most of it is fiction since little source material exists on the life of Hamnet. This is historical fiction “done right,” at least it is for me. It will make my list of favorites for the year.

    • 4/5
      This novel is based on William Shakespeare's family life, particularly, the death of his young son. The writing is lyrical and resonant, but I found this fairly short book to move slowly, possibly because the plot gets lost in the meandering metaphor now and again. I also felt like there were plot points that never paid off -- what was up with John's shady dealings with the wool? The kestrel seemed important early on, but then it just went away. I'm also not entirely sold on the ending. I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as I expected to.
    • 5/5
      Set in Strarford on Avon the imagined relationship between Shakespeare and his wife Ann Hathaway and how the dealt worth the loads of a spoon Hamnet to the bubonic plague. Captivating imagination of long ago times. Ann is the central player along with her twin children and the plague. Shakespeare's identity is only jointed at until the end.
    • 4/5
      I'm usually yawning when it comes to the big S... he is just over the top drama. I won't say his name like this book doesn't. The focus is elsewhere! Not with the big S! Which I like. This book just seems like a big crowd pleaser, focusing on the grief of a family. That pestilence. Whew. I would have liked the note in the acknowledgments to be in the front of the book, rather than the back, which might have had me appreciating things more (the note mentions that it isn't mentioned anywhere how the real Hamnet died and that his dad's plays never mentioned pestilence.) I expected this book to stick with me better, but it does have lovely memorable passages that will linger with me.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. William Shakespeare family focusing on his wife and children
    • 5/5
      Wonderful, heartwarming, tragic - an amazing fictionalization of the short life of William Shakespeare's only son Hamnet.

    • 4/5
      Maggie O'Farrell has written a remarkable book here. Apparently this is a book that she had wanted co-write for years. She has taken a look at William Shakespeare - his early life, his marriage, his wife, and the demons that she thinks he fought every day. The language is truly beautiful, and the characters are real and multi-dimensional. Very little is known about Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway, and Maggie O'Farrell has created a remarkable, enigmatic picture of this woman who has been largely forgotten over time. History tells us that William was 18 when he married a 26 year-old Anne. They had three children, a daughter Susanna and twins Hamlet and Judith. They lived in Stratford-on-Avon, and that is where Will and Anne lost their 12 year old son Hamlet to small pox. The book goes into the dark corners of their lives and creates a moving story about love and loss, family dynamics (both good and bad) and life and death. Ms. O'Farrell also provides her interpretation of how Shakespeare's most moving play came into being. It's all so believable, and I honestly couldn't tell where history morphed into fiction. I found the book profound and very deep. Where the book fell off a bit for me was in the over-long descriptions that occur here and there throughout the book. I'm not sure of Ms. O'Farrell's personal details, but i think she has experienced great loss in her life. For Ms. O'Farrelll to describe the grieving process that Will and Anne went through after they lost their son Hamlet so realistically, makes it all appear that she experienced a great loss in her life. For anyone who loves to read realistic and poignant historical fiction that blurs the lines between reality and imagination, this is a must-read.
    • 3/5
      It’s the 16th century. 11-year old Hamnet and Judith are twins and have an older sister, Susanna. When Judith becomes ill, Hamnet tries to find someone to help.

      I didn’t like the characters. The story was told as it followed different characters and in fact, went back and forth in time. I found it hard to follow at the start, maybe the first 1/3 of the book or so: who was who and how are they connected to each other? I wasn’t a fan of the writing style: everything felt detached to me – maybe this is why I didn’t like the characters? Why oh why did we need to include the magical realism (did NOT like that at all!): in addition to Agnes’s (the mother’s) foresight, which wasn’t bad, there was another part that changed a huge part of the story, and I thought it was stupid! I really did.

      I thought there were “spoilers” given away in Historical Note at beginning of book! Given this, I assume they weren’t meant to be spoilers and I had heard before I read it, but I feel like I might have enjoyed it more if they had remained unknown until revealed in the book. I feel like with everything I didn’t like, I should rate it lower, but I am rating it ok, based on the story itself.
    • 4/5
      Mostly very enjoyable. I did find some of the prose over the top and thus hard to read. A clever story but am afraid it didn't bring me to tears.
    • 4/5
      Read for book club.

      I found Part 1 of this novel (the bulk of it) compelling, albeit in a muted, sad way. The second part didn't work so well for me - it had just the one timeline, and was even less joyous than the first. Every character in the novel led a life of quiet compromise and dissatisfaction. I found Agnes' grief very bound up in her outraged pride that she had neither foreseen Hamnet's death nor been able to prevent it. Her 'mystical' powers seemed to wax and wane and be more or less specific in their insight as it suited the plot.

    Book preview

    Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

    I

    He is dead and gone, lady,

    He is dead and gone;

    At his head a grass-green turf,

    At his heels a stone.

    —Hamlet, Act IV, scene v

    Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

    —Steven Greenblatt, "The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet," New York Review of Books (October 21, 2004)

    A boy is coming down a flight of stairs.

    The passage is narrow and twists back on itself. He takes each step slowly, sliding himself along the wall, his boots meeting each tread with a thud.

    Near the bottom, he pauses for a moment, looking back the way he has come. Then, suddenly resolute, he leaps the final three stairs, as is his habit. He stumbles as he lands, falling to his knees on the flagstone floor.

    It is a close, windless day in late summer, and the downstairs room is slashed by long strips of light. The sun glowers at him from outside, the windows latticed slabs of yellow, set into the plaster.

    He gets up, rubbing his legs. He looks one way, up the stairs; he looks the other, unable to decide which way he should turn.

    The room is empty, the fire ruminating in its grate, orange embers below soft, spiralling smoke. His injured kneecaps throb in time with his heartbeat. He stands with one hand resting on the latch of the door to the stairs, the scuffed leather tip of his boot raised, poised for motion, for flight. His hair, light-coloured, almost gold, rises up from his brow in tufts.

    There is no one here.

    He sighs, drawing in the warm, dusty air and moves through the room, out of the front door and on to the street. The noise of barrows, horses, vendors, people calling to each other, a man hurling a sack from an upper window doesn’t reach him. He wanders along the front of the house and into the neighbouring doorway.

    The smell of his grandparents’ home is always the same: a mix of woodsmoke, polish, leather, wool. It is similar yet indefinably different from the adjoining two-roomed apartment, built by his grandfather in a narrow gap next to the larger house, where he lives with his mother and sisters. Sometimes he cannot understand why this might be. The two dwellings are, after all, separated by only a thin wattled wall but the air in each place is of a different ilk, a different scent, a different temperature.

    This house whistles with draughts and eddies of air, with the tapping and hammering of his grandfather’s workshop, with the raps and calls of customers at the window, with the noise and welter of the courtyard out the back, with the sound of his uncles coming and going.

    But not today. The boy stands in the passageway, listening for signs of occupation. He can see from here that the workshop, to his right, is empty, the stools at the benches vacant, the tools idle on the counters, a tray of abandoned gloves, like handprints, left out for all to see. The vending window is shut and bolted tight. There is no one in the dining hall, to his left. A stack of napkins is piled on the long table, an unlit candle, a heap of feathers. Nothing more.

    He calls out, a cry of greeting, a questioning sound. Once, twice, he makes this noise. Then he cocks his head, listening for a response.

    Nothing. Just the creaking of beams expanding gently in the sun, the sigh of air passing under doors, between rooms, the swish of linen drapes, the crack of the fire, the indefinable noise of a house at rest, empty.

    His fingers tighten around the iron of the door handle. The heat of the day, even this late, causes sweat to express itself from the skin of his brow, down his back. The pain in his knees sharpens, twinges, then fades again.

    The boy opens his mouth. He calls the names, one by one, of all the people who live here, in this house. His grandmother. The maid. His uncles. His aunt. The apprentice. His grandfather. The boy tries them all, one after another. For a moment, it crosses his mind to call his father’s name, to shout for him, but his father is miles and hours and days away, in London, where the boy has never been.

    But where, he would like to know, are his mother, his older sister, his grandmother, his uncles? Where is the maid? Where is his grandfather, who tends not to leave the house by day, who is usually to be found in the workshop, harrying his apprentice or reckoning his takings in a ledger? Where is everyone? How can both houses be empty?

    He moves along the passageway. At the door to the workshop, he stops. He throws a quick glance over his shoulder, to make sure nobody is there, then steps inside.

    His grandfather’s glove workshop is a place he is rarely allowed to enter. Even to pause in the doorway is forbidden. Don’t stand there idling, his grandfather will roar. Can’t a man do an honest day’s work without people stopping to gawk at him? Have you nothing better to do than loiter there catching flies?

    Hamnet’s mind is quick: he has no trouble understanding the schoolmasters’ lessons. He can grasp the logic and sense of what he is being told, and he can memorise readily. Recalling verbs and grammar and tenses and rhetoric and numbers and calculations comes to him with an ease that can, on occasion, attract the envy of other boys. But his is a mind also easily distracted. A cart going past in the street during a Greek lesson will draw his attention away from his slate to wonderings as to where the cart might be going and what it could be carrying and how about that time his uncle gave him and his sisters a ride on a haycart, how wonderful that was, the scent and prick of new-cut hay, the wheels tugged along to the rhythm of the tired mare’s hoofs. More than twice in recent weeks he has been whipped at school for not paying attention (his grandmother has said if it happens once more, just once, she will send word of it to his father). The schoolmasters cannot understand it. Hamnet learns quickly, can recite by rote, but he will not keep his mind on his work.

    The noise of a bird in the sky can make him cease speaking, mid-utterance, as if the very heavens have struck him deaf and dumb at a stroke. The sight of a person entering a room, out of the corner of his eye, can make him break off whatever he is doing—eating, reading, copying out his schoolwork—and gaze at them as if they have some important message just for him. He has a tendency to slip the bounds of the real, tangible world around him and enter another place. He will sit in a room in body, but in his head he is somewhere else, someone else, in a place known only to him. Wake up, child, his grandmother will shout, snapping her fingers at him. Come back, his older sister, Susanna, will hiss, flicking his ear. Pay attention, his schoolmasters will yell. Where did you go? Judith will be whispering to him, when he finally re-enters the world, when he comes to, when he glances around to find that he is back, in his house, at his table, surrounded by his family, his mother eyeing him, half smiling, as if she knows exactly where he’s been.

    In the same way, now, walking into the forbidden space of the glove workshop, Hamnet has lost track of what he is meant to be doing. He has momentarily slipped free of his moorings, of the fact that Judith is unwell and needs someone to care for her, that he is meant to be finding their mother or grandmother or anyone else who might know what to do.

    Skins hang from a rail. Hamnet knows enough to recognise the rust-red spotted hide of a deer, the delicate and supple kidskin, the smaller pelts of squirrels, the coarse and bristling boarskin. As he moves nearer to them, the skins start to rustle and stir on their hangings, as if some life might yet be left in them, just a little, just enough for them to hear him coming. Hamnet extends a finger and touches the goat hide. It is unaccountably soft, like the brush of river weed against his legs when he swims on hot days. It sways gently to and fro, legs splayed, stretched out, as if in flight, like a bird or a ghoul.

    Hamnet turns, surveys the two seats at the workbench: the padded leather one worn smooth by the rub of his grandfather’s breeches, and the hard wooden stool for Ned, the apprentice. He sees the tools, suspended from hooks on the wall above the workbench. He is able to identify those for cutting, those for stretching, those for pinning and stitching. He sees that the narrower of the glove stretchers—used for women—is out of place, left on the bench where Ned works with bent head and curved shoulders and anxious, nimble fingers. Hamnet knows that his grandfather needs little provocation to yell at the boy, perhaps worse, so he picks up the glove stretcher, weighing its warm wooden heft, and replaces it on its hook.

    He is just about to slide out the drawer where the twists of thread are kept, and the boxes of buttons—carefully, carefully, because he knows the drawer will squeak—when a noise, a slight shifting or scraping, reaches his ears.

    Within seconds, Hamnet has darted out, along the passageway and into the yard. His task returns to him. What is he doing, fiddling in the workshop? His sister is unwell: he is meant to be finding someone to help.

    He bangs open, one by one, the doors to the cookhouse, the brewhouse, the washhouse. All of them empty, their interiors dark and cool. He calls out again, slightly hoarse this time, his throat scraped with the shouting. He leans against the cookhouse wall and kicks at a nutshell, sending it skittering across the yard. He is utterly confounded to be so alone. Someone ought to be here; someone always is here. Where can they be? What must he do? How can they all be out? How can his mother and grandmother not be in the house, as they usually are, heaving open the doors of the oven, stirring a pot over the fire? He stands in the yard, looking about himself, at the door to the passageway, at the door to the brewhouse, at the door to their apartment. Where should he go? Whom should he call on for help? And where is everyone?

    —

    Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. Him standing here, at the back of the house, calling for the people who had fed him, swaddled him, rocked him to sleep, held his hand as he took his first steps, taught him to use a spoon, to blow on broth before he ate it, to take care crossing the street, to let sleeping dogs lie, to swill out a cup before drinking, to stay away from deep water.

    It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.

    —

    Hamnet scuffs his boots in the grit of the yard. He can see the remains of a game he and Judith had been playing not long ago: the lengths of twine tied to pine cones to be pulled and swung for the kitchen cat’s kittens. Small creatures they are, with faces like pansies and soft pads on their paws. The cat went into a barrel in the storeroom to have them and hid there for weeks. Hamnet’s grandmother looked everywhere for the litter, intending to drown them all, as is her custom, but the cat thwarted her, keeping her babies secret, safe, and now they are half grown, two of them, running about the place, climbing up sacks, chasing feathers and wool scraps and stray leaves. Judith cannot be parted from them for long. She usually has one in her apron pocket, a tell-tale bulge, a pair of peaked ears giving her away, making their grandmother shout and threaten the waterbutt. Hamnet’s mother, however, whispers to them that the kittens are too big for their grandmother to drown. She couldn’t do it, now, she says to them, in private, wiping tears from Judith’s horrified face. She wouldn’t have the stomach for it—they would struggle, you see, they would fight.

    Hamnet wanders over to the abandoned pine cones, their strings trailed into the trodden earth of the yard. The kittens are nowhere to be seen. He nudges a pine cone with his toe and it rolls away from him in an uneven arch.

    He looks up at the houses, the many windows of the big one and the dark doorway of his own. Normally, he and Judith would be delighted to find themselves alone. He would, this very moment, be trying to persuade her to climb on to the cookhouse roof with him, so that they might reach the boughs of the plum tree just over the neighbour’s wall. They are filled, crammed, with plums, their red-gold jackets near to bursting with ripeness; Hamnet has eyed them from an upper window in his grandparents’ house. If this were a normal day, he would be giving Judith a boost on to the roof so that she could fill her pockets with stolen fruit, despite her qualms and protestations. She doesn’t like to do anything dishonest or forbidden, so guileless is her nature, but can usually be persuaded with a few words from Hamnet.

    Today, though, as they played with the kittens who escaped an early demise, she said she had a headache, a pain in her throat, she felt cold, then she felt hot, and she has gone into the house to lie down.

    Hamnet goes back through the door to the main house and along the passage. He is just about to go out into the street when he hears a noise. It is a click or a shift, a minute sound, but it is the definite noise of another human being.

    Hello? Hamnet calls. He waits. Nothing. Silence presses back at him from the dining hall and the parlour beyond. Who’s there?

    For a moment, and just for a moment, he entertains the notion that it might be his father, returned from London, to surprise them—it has happened before. His father will be there, beyond that door, perhaps hiding as a game, as a ruse. If Hamnet walks into the room, his father will leap out; he will have gifts stowed in his bag, in his purse; he will smell of horses, of hay, of many days on the road; he will put his arms around his son and Hamnet will press his cheek to the rough, chafing fastenings of his father’s jerkin.

    He knows it won’t be his father. He knows it, he does. His father would respond to a repeated call, would never hide himself away in an empty house. Even so, when Hamnet walks into the parlour, he feels the falling, filtering sensation of disappointment to see his grandfather there, beside the low table.

    The room is filled with gloom, coverings pulled over most of the windows. His grandfather is standing with his back towards him, in a crouched position, fumbling with something: papers, a cloth bag, counters of some sort. There is a pitcher on the table, and a cup. His grandfather’s hand meanders through these objects, his head bent, his breath coming in wheezing bursts.

    Hamnet gives a polite cough.

    His grandfather wheels around, his face wild, furious, his arm flailing through the air, as if warding off an assailant. Who’s there? he cries. Who is that?

    It’s me.

    Who?

    Me. Hamnet steps towards the narrow shaft of light slanting in through the window. Hamnet.

    His grandfather sits down with a thud. You scared the wits out of me, boy, he cries. Whatever do you mean, creeping about like that?

    I’m sorry, Hamnet says. I was calling and calling but no one answered. Judith is—

    They’ve gone out, his grandfather speaks over him, with a curt flick of his wrist. What do you want with all those women anyway? He seizes the neck of the pitcher and aims it towards the cup. The liquid—ale, Hamnet thinks—slops out precipitously, some into the cup and some on to the papers on the table, causing his grandfather to curse, then dab at them with his sleeve. For the first time, it occurs to Hamnet that his grandfather might be drunk.

    Do you know where they have gone? Hamnet asks.

    Eh? his grandfather says, still mopping his papers. His anger at their spoiling seems to unsheathe itself and stretch out from him, like a rapier. Hamnet can feel the tip of it wander about the room, seeking an opponent, and he thinks for a moment of his mother’s hazel strip, and the way it pulls itself towards water, except he is not an underground stream and his grandfather’s anger is not like the quivering divining rod at all. It is cutting, sharp, unpredictable. Hamnet has no idea what will happen next, or what he should do.

    Don’t stand there gawping, his grandfather hisses. Help me.

    Hamnet shuffles forward a step, then another. He is wary, his father’s words circling his mind: Stay away from your grandfather when he is in one of his black humours. Be sure to stand clear of him. Stay well back, do you hear?

    His father had said this to him on his last visit, when they had been helping unload a cart from the tannery. John, his grandfather, had dropped a bundle of skins into the mud and, in a sudden fit of temper, had hurled a paring-knife at the yard wall. His father had immediately pulled Hamnet back, behind him, out of the way, but John had barged past them into the house without a word. His father had taken Hamnet’s face in both of his hands, fingers curled in at the nape of his neck, his gaze steady and searching. He’ll not touch your sisters but it’s you I worry for, he had muttered, his brow puckering. You know the humour I mean, don’t you? Hamnet had nodded but wanted the moment to be prolonged, for his father to keep holding his head like that: it gave him a sensation of lightness, of safety, of being entirely known and treasured. At the same time, he was aware of a curdling unease swilling about inside him, like a meal his stomach didn’t want. He thought of the snip and snap of words that punctured the air between his father and grandfather, the way his father continually reached to loosen his collar when seated at table with his parents. Swear to me, his father had said, as they stood in the yard, his voice hoarse. Swear it. I need to know you’ll be safe when I’m not here to see to it.

    Hamnet believes he is keeping his word. He is well back. He is at the other side of the fireplace. His grandfather couldn’t reach him here, even if he tried.

    His grandfather is draining his cup with one hand and shaking the drops off a sheet of paper with the other. Take this, he orders, holding out the page.

    Hamnet bends forward, not moving his feet, and takes it with the very tips of his fingers. His grandfather’s eyes are slitted, watchful; his tongue pokes out of the side of his mouth. He sits in his chair, hunched: an old, sad toad on a stone.

    And this. His grandfather holds out another paper.

    Hamnet bends forward in the same way, keeping the necessary distance. He thinks of his father, how he would be proud of him, how he would be pleased.

    Quick as a fox, his grandfather makes a lunge. Everything happens so fast that, afterwards, Hamnet won’t be sure in what sequence it all occurred: the page swings to the floor between them, his grandfather’s hand seizes him by the wrist, then the elbow, hauling him forward, into the gap, the space his father had told him to observe, and his other hand, which still holds the cup, is coming up, fast. Hamnet is aware of streaks in his vision—red, orange, the colours of fire, streaming in from the corner of his eye—before he feels the pain. It is a sharp, clubbed, jabbing pain. The rim of the cup has struck him just below the eyebrow.

    That’ll teach you, his grandfather is saying, in a calm voice, to creep up on people.

    Tears burst forth from Hamnet’s eyes, both of them, not just the injured one.

    Crying are you? Like a little maid? You’re as bad as your father, his grandfather says, with disgust, releasing him. Hamnet springs backwards, thwacking his shin on the side of the parlour bed. Always crying and whining and complaining, his grandfather mutters. No backbone. No sense. That was always his problem. Couldn’t stick at anything.

    Hamnet is running back outside, along the street, wiping at his face, dabbing the blood with his sleeve. He lets himself in through his own front door, up the stairs, to the upper room, where a figure lies on the pallet next to their parents’ big curtained bed. The figure is dressed—a brown smock, a white bonnet, the strings of which are untied and straggle down her neck—and is lying on top of the sheets. She has kicked off her shoes, which lie, inverted, like a pair of empty pods, beside her.

    Judith, the boy says, and touches her hand. Are you feeling any better?

    The girl’s lids lift. She stares at her brother, for a moment, as if from a great distance, then shuts her eyes again. I’m sleeping, she murmurs.

    She has the same heart-shaped face as him, the same peaked brow, where the same corn-coloured hair grows upwards. The eyes that fixed so briefly on his face are the same colour—a warm amber, flecked with gold—the same set as his own. There is a reason for this: they share a birthday, just as they shared their mother’s womb. The boy and the girl are twins, born within minutes of each other. They are as alike as if they had been born in the same caul.

    He closes his fingers about hers—the same nails, the same shaped knuckles, although his are bigger, wider, grimier—and he tries to flatten the thought that hers feel slick and hot.

    How are you? he says. Better?

    She stirs. Her fingers curl into his. Her chin lifts, then dips. There is, the boy sees, a swelling at the base of her throat. And another where her shoulder meets her neck. He stares at them. A pair of quail’s eggs, under Judith’s skin. Pale, ovoid, nestled there, as if waiting to hatch. One at her neck, one at her shoulder.

    She is saying something, her lips parting, her tongue moving inside her mouth.

    What did you say? he asks, bending nearer.

    Your face, she is saying. What happened to your face?

    He puts a hand to his brow, feeling the swelling there, the wet of new blood. Nothing, he says. It was nothing. Listen, he says, more urgently, I’m going to find the physician. I won’t be long.

    She says something else.

    Mamma? he repeats. She—she is coming. She is not far away.

    —

    She is, in fact, more than a mile away.

    Agnes has a patch of land at Hewlands, leased from her brother, stretching from the house where she was born to the forest. She keeps bees here, in hemp-woven skeps, which hum with industrious and absorbed life; there are rows of herbs, flowers, plants, stems that wind up supporting twigs. Agnes’s witch garden, her stepmother calls it, with a roll of her eyes.

    Agnes can be seen, most weeks, moving up and down the rows of these plants, pulling up weeds, laying her hand to the coils of her hives, pruning stems here and there, secreting certain blooms, leaves, pods, petals, seeds in a leather bag at her hip.

    Today she has been called there by her brother, who dispatched the shepherd’s boy to tell her that something was amiss with the bees—they have left the hive and are massing in the trees.

    Agnes is circling the skeps, listening for whatever the bees are telling her; she is eyeing the swarm in the orchard, a blackish stain spread throughout the branches that vibrates and quivers with outrage. Something has upset them. The weather, a change in temperature, or has someone disturbed the hive? One of the children, some escaped sheep, her stepmother?

    She slides her hand up and under, into the skep, past its lip, through the remaining coating of bees. She is cool in a shift, under the dark, river-coloured shade of the trees, her thick braid of hair pinned to the top of her head, hidden under a white coif. No bee-keeper veil covers her face—she never wears one. If you came close enough, you would see that her lips are moving, murmuring small sounds and clicks to the insects that circle her head, alight on her sleeve, blunder into her face.

    She brings a honeycomb out of the skep and squats to examine it. Its surface is covered, teeming, with something that appears to be one moving entity: brown, banded with gold, wings shaped like tiny hearts. It is hundreds of bees, crowded together, clinging to their comb, their prize, their work.

    She lifts a bundle of smouldering rosemary and waves it gently over the comb, the smoke leaving a trail in the still August air. The bees lift, in unison, to swarm above her head, a cloud with no edges, an airborne net that keeps casting and casting itself.

    The pale wax is scraped, carefully, carefully, into a basket; the honey leaves the comb with a cautious, near reluctant drop. Slow as sap, orange-gold, scented with the sharp tang of thyme and the floral sweetness of lavender, it falls into the pot Agnes holds out. A thread of honey stretches from comb to pot, widening, twisting.

    There is a sensation of change, an agitation of air, as if a bird has passed silently overhead. Agnes, still crouching, looks up. The movement causes her hand to waver and honey drips to her wrist, trails over her fingers, down the side of the pot. Agnes frowns, puts down the honeycomb, and stands, licking her fingertips.

    She takes in the thatched eaves of Hewlands, to her right, the white scree of cloud overhead, the restless branches of the forest, to her left, the swarm of bees in the apple trees. In the distance, her second-youngest brother is driving sheep along the bridle path, a switch in his hand, the dog darting towards and away from the flock. Everything is as it should be. Agnes stares for a moment at the jerky stream of sheep, the skitter of their feet, their draggled, mud-crusted fleeces. A bee lands on her cheek; she fans it away.

    Later, and for the rest of her life, she will think that if she had left there and then, if she had gathered her bags, her plants, her honey, and taken the path home, if she had heeded her abrupt, nameless unease, she might have changed what happened next. If she had left her swarming bees to their own devices, their own ends, instead of working to coax them back into their hives, she might have headed off what was coming.

    She doesn’t, however. She dabs at the sweat on her brow, her neck, tells herself not to be foolish. She places a lid on the full pot, she wraps up the honeycomb in a leaf, she presses her hands to the next skep, to read it, to understand it. She leans against it, feeling its rumbling, vibrating interior; she senses its power, its potency, like an incoming storm.

    —

    The boy, Hamnet, is trotting along the street, around a corner, dodging a horse that stands, patient, between the shafts of a cart, around a group of men gathered outside the guildhall, leaning towards each other with serious faces. He passes a woman with a baby in her arms, imploring an older child to walk faster, to keep up, a man hitting the haunches of a donkey, a dog that glances up from whatever it is eating to watch Hamnet as he runs. The dog barks once, in sharp admonishment, then returns to its gnawing.

    Hamnet arrives at the house of the physician—he has asked directions from the woman with the baby—and he bangs on the door. He registers, momentarily, the shape of his fingers, his nails, and looking at them brings Judith’s to mind; he bangs harder. He thuds, he thunders, he shouts.

    The door is swung open and the narrow, vexed face of a woman appears around it. Whatever are you doing? she cries, shaking a cloth at him, as if to waft him away, like an insect. That’s a racket loud enough to wake the dead. Be off with you.

    She goes to shut the door but Hamnet leaps forward. No, he says. Please. I’m sorry, madam. I need the physician. We need him. My sister—she is unwell. Can he come to us? Can he come now?

    The woman holds the door firm in her reddened hand but looks at Hamnet with care, with attention, as if reading the seriousness of the problem in his features. He’s not here, she says eventually. He’s with a patient.

    Hamnet has to swallow, hard. When will he be back, if you please?

    The pressure on the door is lessening. He steps one foot into the house, leaving the other behind him.

    I couldn’t say. She looks him up and down, at the encroaching foot in her hallway. What ails your sister?

    I don’t know. He tries to think back to Judith, the way she looked as she lay on the blankets, her eyes closed, her skin flushed and yet pale. She has a fever. She has taken to her bed.

    The woman frowns. A fever? Has she buboes?

    Buboes?

    Lumps. Under the skin. On her neck, under her arms.

    Hamnet stares at her, at the small pleat of skin between her brows, at the rim of her cap, how it has rubbed a raw patch beside her ear, at the wiry coils of hair escaping at the back. He thinks of the word buboes, its vaguely vegetal overtones, how its bulging sound mimics the thing it describes. A cold fear rinses down through his chest, encasing his heart in an instant, crackling frost.

    The woman’s frown deepens. She places her hand in the centre of Hamnet’s chest and propels him back, out of her house.

    Go, she says, her face pinched. Go home. Now. Leave. She goes to close the door but then, through the narrowest crack, says, not unkindly, I will ask the physician to call. I know who you are. You’re the glover’s boy, aren’t you? The grandson. From Henley Street. I will ask him to come by your house, when he returns. Go now. Don’t stop on the way back. As an afterthought, she adds, God speed to you.

    He runs back. The world seems more glaring, the people louder, the streets longer, the colour of the sky an invasive, glancing blue. The horse still stands at its cart; the dog is now curled up on a doorstep. Buboes, he thinks again. He has heard the word before. He knows what it means, what it denotes.

    Surely not, he is thinking, as he turns into his street. It cannot be. It cannot. That—he will not name it, he will not allow the word to form, even inside his head—hasn’t been known in this town for years.

    Someone will be home, he knows, by the time he gets to the front door. By the time he opens it. By the time he crosses the threshold. By the time he calls out, to someone, anyone. There will be an answer. Someone will be there.

    —

    Unbeknown

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