Hamnet: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

In the 1580s, Mary makes Agnes sleep in Eliza’s bed between her arrival and the wedding. When Mary announced the arrangement, Eliza felt a momentary shock; the last person to share her bed was her sister, Anne. She wants to ask her mother if she, too, still  misses Anne. Eliza often thinks—or wishes—that she’ll wake up one day to find Anne back in her old place. On this morning, as she lies next to Agnes, she thinks about the fuss and bother of the wedding arrangements. It will take place tomorrow morning, officiated by a priest who lives at Temple Grafton and is Agnes’s friend. Agnes announced her choice of priest matter-of-factly in the parlor one evening. Her frank cheer and unselfconsciousness shocked Mary, angered John, and impressed Eliza. No one in her family speaks that freely.

Eliza wants to walk down the street in bright sunlight to her own wedding, crowned with flowers. She doesn’t want a furtive ceremony miles from town like Agnes will have. But she knows it’s not her business. In the early morning light, she whispers an offer to make Agnes’s bridal crown, certain the woman will refuse. Instead, Agnes turns to face her soon-to-be sister-in-law and accepts with gratitude. Soon the two are conspiratorially deciding which plants they can find to use this late in the year. Agnes catches hold of Eliza’s hand, ostensibly to allow her to feel the child —whom she’s certain is a girl—moving in her belly.

Agnes’s grip disconcerts Eliza. Then Agnes asks, quietly, about Eliza’s sister. Eliza answers briefly. She does not say what she feels, does not say that she often worries about Anne being on her own wherever she is. But Agnes seems to know her thoughts. She assures Eliza that Anne is with their other two sisters, the ones who died before either Anne or Eliza were born. Eliza asks how Agnes knew about them; she doesn’t believe Agnes’s answer that the tutor told her. Still, Eliza explains that she has the same name as one of them, and that her brother Gilbert warns her that its ghost may come back someday to demand she relinquish the name. Agnes assures her that won’t happen. When she lets go of Eliza’s hand, there’s a bright red spot where she pressed with her thumbnail.

On the morning of the wedding, Eliza weaves a crown of ferns, evergreen boughs, and asters, while minding her youngest brother, Edmond. He’s only two and just beginning to speak. In the cookhouse, she can hear Mary venting her impotent rage on the food. Upstairs, her brother the tutor wrestles with siblings Gilbert and Richard until one of them gets hurt. Then the trio bounds down the stairs into the parlor. The tutor picks up Edmond, spinning him around to the boy’s great delight. Then he puts Edmond down and bounds out into the street. In his absence, Agnes slips into the parlor in a pale yellow gown.

The wedding party walks to the chapel through the frosty morning with the men leading the way. Agnes walks with Eliza (carrying Edmond), Mary, and a few friends. Joan, Caterina, Joanie, Margaret, and baby William walk off to one side in a cluster. Agnes notices Eliza’s sad jealousy as she watches Joan’s girls together. Agnes notices everything, both visible—unpicked berries in the hedgerow, birds in the trees—and invisible—which of her stepsisters will be lucky and which will not. She senses the water flowing in the plants in her crown and the blood coursing through her body and the baby’s in her womb.

Because she knows her mother would have been beside her in life, Agnes feels confident her spirit is with her as she walks to the church. She looks intently at the tutor, willing him to turn to her. She feels no surprise when he does. He makes a gesture, maybe miming putting a ring on her finger, maybe something cruder. As the priest solemnly declares the banns three times, Agnes begs her mother’s spirit for a sign. Other members of the party fidget, but she remains still. And then, as the tutor impatiently takes his place by the priest and Bartholomew prepares to hand her over to her groom, a cluster of berries falls from the rowan tree overhead onto her shoulder. She catches it and holds it out to her brother; they both know it to be a sign from their mother, who was named Rowan, just like the trees.

Bartholomew grips the tutor’s shoulder and quietly says that if he fails to take good care of Agnes, he will have to answer for it to Bartholomew. Then he steps back. The bride and groom slip holy-water-wetted rings on to each other’s third fingers—from which a vein runs directly to the heart, according to the tutor—as the priest solemnly makes the sign of the cross in Latin. Agnes feels the cold ring warm on her finger. As she enters the chapel to hear the mass, she’s keenly aware of the ring, the rowanberries in her palm, and her new husband’s hand.