On the Third Night

 

27th of December, 1601

 

YOU ARE AWOKEN from dreams of carnage and disaster by a soft hand upon your face and by a familiar voice in the darkness.

You are woken, yes—undeniably—but the dream lingers, and it clings to you like mist, lending your every moment a quality of odd detachment, an enduring sense of the oneiric.

“Mother?”

You push yourself upright in bed, and you blink hard and you force yourself into wakefulness. In the doorway stands a dark-haired young woman, full-lipped and determined, a certain wildness in her eyes, one hand upon her hips. She is flanked by two others, the twins, a little younger than she, but just as wilful and idiosyncratic in their manner.

Susanna, Judith, Hamnet: the greatest achievements of your life, the best of you, the hope for the future.

“Where is Father?” Susanna asks. “And when is he coming back?”

“Your father has been called away,” you say with as much authority as you can summon under circumstances, “on some very urgent business. He will be with us once more presently.”

“Presently?” This is Hamnet, sixteen now, but still looking a good deal younger, soft-skinned and smooth-faced and boyish. “When exactly is ‘presently’?”

“I cannot be sure, Hamnet, dear. I cannot be certain.”

“But mother—” There is an uncharacteristic plaintiveness to Judith’s voice, a forceful sort of distress. “Please. Why can’t you say more precisely?”

“I’ve told you,” you reply, regretting the snap the moment it emerges. “I have told you all that I know.”

Hamnet sniffs. “He’s never been away before. Not once. He’s always been with us.”

“A lot of people’s fathers go away,” you say. “Many go to town or to the fields. Some to the army or into service. Some even go to London. And once they are lost to that particular stew then they never return. Or, at least, they do not return entirely the same as they were before.”

“But Father...” continues Susanna. “He is—has always been—different. Not like other men. He has always been here. His place—don’t you think?—is with us.”

“And he will be again,” you say, striving to reassure her, filling your voice with a warm certainty that you most assuredly do not feel. “He will be back and all shall be again as it was. Mark my words. Everything will be restored.”

As you speak you hear from outside the first, faint clatter of thunder, its basso profundo growl, the start of a storm which you feel sure, without quite understanding why, will be far worse than any you have known.