One moment, she and Hamnet were pulling bits of thread for the cat’s new kittens—keeping an eye open for their grandmother, because Judith had been told to chop the kindling and polish the table while Hamnet did his schoolwork—and then she had suddenly felt a weakness in her arms, an ache in her back, a prickling in her throat. I don’t feel well, she’d said to her brother, and he had looked up from the kittens, at her, and his eyes had travelled all over her face. Now she is on this bed and she has no idea how she got here or where Hamnet has gone or when her mother is coming back or why no
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