Hamnet: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

On a May morning in 1583, Agnes leaves her house with a basket on her shoulder. During the night, she dreamed of her mother walking past as Agnes stood in the farmyard at Hewlands, held in place by a waterlogged skirt and a flock of birds—ducks, hens, partridges, doves, wrens—trampling its hem. Her mother called out, “The branches of the forest are so dense you cannot feel the rain.” Trying to follow, Agnes fell to the ground in the dream and awoke with a jolt in her bed. She snuggled next to her slumbering husband. She knows he worries about her delivery. She doesn’t. She knows they will have two children, and that these children will live long lives. Agnes rose from bed and scratched out her mother’s words on a scrap of paper as a message for her husband. Then, she started for Hewlands.

Now, as Agnes walks along the path, she notices, as she always does, the flowers blooming along its edges. She passes the farm carefully, unwilling to encounter anyone who will stop her. She enters the forest, pausing occasionally to let her labor pains subside as she walks to a fallen fir tree where she and Bartholomew used to seek shelter from Joan during their childhood. Agnes understands about giving birth; she helped deliver Joan’s babies. Still, the intensity of labor surprises her, making her feel her weakness and inadequacy rather than her customary strength. It feels like trying to stand in a gale or swim against the current of a flooded river. She catches sight of a rowan tree, her mother’s namesake, across the clearing. She gathers strength from it as another wave of pain breaks over her body.

Back in town, Agnes’s husband eventually wakes. Disconsolately, he considers the two Latin tutorials he will teach that afternoon. He wonders if he will be stuck in this small place forever. The farthest he’s managed to get from his family is the other side of the wall separating their adjoining houses. He knew that he and Agnes would have to wait for the baby to be born, of course. But that will happen soon, and he has no real plan for afterward. Considering this, he begins to wonder where Agnes is. He calls her name and receives no reply. He begins to worry and gets dressed. Then, he notices her message on his desk. He can’t make out all the words, just that it’s something about “branches” and “rayne.” Downstairs, in the yard, neither Mary nor Eliza have seen Agnes either.

In the woods, Agnes’s daughter (Susanna) grows pink as she takes her first breaths. Agnes lays the newborn gently on a blanket and works to cut her cord at its belly, surprised by its toughness and resilience. Then she lifts the baby to her breast, delighted when she begins to suck, knowing even better than Agnes herself exactly what to do. 

Back in town, there is enormous panic. Eventually, the husband finds Bartholomew, who’s angry when he learns that the husband lost track of Agnes. He reminds the lad—for he cannot think of the husband as being anything other than young and soft—of his promise to take care of her. He says he doesn’t understand why she married him. Still, he took her at her word when she said the husband had more hidden inside of him than anyone else she’d ever met. Agnes, Bartholomew knows, is rarely wrong about such things.

The husband tells Bartholomew about the note Agnes left about rain and branches. Bartholomew thinks briefly, then tells the husband he knows where Agnes is. Whistling for his dogs, he heads for the forest with the husband trailing behind. Soon, they find Agnes and the baby (Susanna). Bartholomew brushes off the husband’s offer to carry Agnes back to the house, gently lifting his sister and her child into his arms and leaving her basket—if it’s not too heavy—for the husband.