“What about it?”
The jester found the frontispiece, showed it. A line engraving of the Roman emperor on his great horse, hand raised to the crowd in front of him.
“See the resemblance? That’s where Old Hamlet got the idea. Your father’s way of taking the piss out of mine. You lot do that quite a bit. Have you thought of getting a dog? They always cheer people up.’
“No.”
“I’ve never fully trusted people who don’t like dogs. They rarely turn out well.”
Hamlet grabbed for the book. The clown withheld it.
“Not till you tell me what good this is, child. And what you plan to do with all this dry and pointless knowledge. Waste your time thinking or something?”
The prince leaned back in his chair, nodded.
“Maybe. What’s wrong with that?”
“Old saying round here. You know what thought did? Followed a muck cart. Thought it was a funeral. Doing stuff.” He raised his fleshy fist. Parried with an imaginary blade. “Being a man. That’s what counts.”
He handed over the book.
“A touch of rumpy-pumpy in the night. We all require that.” A smile. “Even you.” A nod, a wink next. “And the Queen of course.”
Silence. The jester folded his arms.
“There’s a question on your face, Prince. Care to voice it?”
Nothing.
“Let me guess. You’re asking yourself… does she know something she’s not saying?”
He jumped onto the desk, sending the books there flying.
“I mean… eleven weeks after your old man pegs it, snake bite in the garden, poison dripping out of his ear… whatever. Dead’s dead. Who cares? And there she is. In your uncle’s bed. Happy as a lamb in spring. Lord knows we hear that every night, don’t we?”
Hamlet extended a hand and prodded the front of the jester’s harlequin jacket.
“There are limits.”
A grin.
“Aye, Prince. But do you know what they are? Three months. Most people would say that was a decent enough space for mourning. That a widow’s got a right to happiness too, even if her only son don’t want it. And your uncle… Nice man, Claudius. Bookish like you, though a bit more diplomatic with it. Not like your father…”
“My father was a king!”
The little man laughed at his fury.
“If by that you mean he’d lop off your head for nothing more than a sideways glance… I suppose he was. Didn’t get him into Heaven though, did it? There he is, stuck in that place your friends in Wittenberg don’t think exists. Purgatory. Waiting for all his foul crimes to get burned away or a ticket out from you.”
A snigger.
“Unless it’s not your father at all. But a demon up to mischief. An imp whispering in your ear. As if you need another one of them.”
Hamlet looked at his library. The day book he kept for his own thoughts. In Wittenberg these things made sense. They were the rules and boundaries set for an ordered life, one ruled by logic and the law. But in Elsinore, behind the castle’s dank, cold walls, they seemed like nothing more than props for a pointless play. Devices that sought to hide the truth, not reveal it.
“Did she know?”
“Why ask me? I’ve no more idea than you. We’re not going to find out either, are we? While you sit here scribbling and whining like a monk in solitary confinement there’s devilment on your doorstep.”
“I told you. I’ve been playing my part.”
Yorick grinned.
“So have I. Good news, Hamlet.”
The prince turned away from his books.
“Which is?”
“Entertainment! The splendours of the theatre. Well… a bunch of travelling actors if you can call that splendid. Here to perform whatever tragedy the court chooses to ask of them.”
He bent his head, gross ear comically listening.
“Any ideas, Prince?”
“A tragedy. Perhaps…”
“No! Shush!” the clown cried. “I’ve a better idea.”
Not long after Hamlet was born the Queen had demanded her own quarters. Marriage was a duty not a choice. Not with her first husband anyway. Grudgingly Old Hamlet had allowed her an adjoining apartment. After all, she’d delivered what he wanted: a son. There she could find some peace during the day and rest when he had to work – or carouse – late, though only if he gave her express permission. Most nights when he was home she was to wait for him in his chamber. There was never any argument about that.
Claudius was easier in everything. She was allowed to come and go as she pleased, to pick her own servants, arrange her own time.
She knew that Polonius heard every sigh and whisper in the castle anyway and would relay what he heard to her husband. There was no need to keep her close. Old Hamlet did that out of possessiveness only. To let the world know she was his.
Three months dead, interred in a cold tomb in the castle chapel. A lifelike statue of him, fierce in armour, long sword in hand, stood above his stone coffin.
She hadn’t followed his interment closely. Men and women died. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly and in agony. Hamlet was on his own, reading alone in the royal garden when it happened. Cold by the time the servants found him. A snake had bitten him, they said, though it was late in the year for adders and no one ever found the creature. Just a king, eyes open in terror, puke around his mouth, stiff and dead on the autumn grass.
Perhaps it wasn’t a snake at all. Sometimes, she thought, men just died and no one knew why, even if the doctors felt they had to offer some explanation to save face.
Still the sight haunted her. She’d never witnessed such a death. Never seen fear and horror like that on his ruddy and frozen face.
There was a madness within the man. She’d come to understand as much not long after they married. Her husband possessed a hard, unyielding fury against the world that rose without warning, full of anger and violence, brought about by nothing she could guess at.
When she first saw that red anger inside she’d tried to argue, to comfort him, to reason. To be the good and loyal wife. It was a week before she could come out of her room; it took that long for the bruises to heal enough to be covered up with powder. And all the time he’d tried to drag her into public. To show her beaten, swollen face and proclaim to the world, “This is mine. Behold what I’ve done. That proves it.”
And Hamlet was his offspring. No doubt about that. Sometimes she saw in her slender, sullen son his father’s eyes. Bleak. Cruel, even, sometimes. Unrelenting in their fierce thirst to leave a mark upon the world.
If that crazed blood had been handed down...
This dark reverie was interrupted by a rap on the door. Claudius stood there smiling; in his right hand a single white rose.
She laughed straight away. He’d had the ability to amuse her from the very beginning, long before she realised there was a look in his eyes that unsettled her. Interested her, too.
Gertrude walked over, sniffed the flower, looked at the stem. He’d removed the thorns already.
“Where on earth do you get a rose in Elsinore in the middle of winter?”
“Don’t you want it?”
She took the flower from him, kissed his cheek. No bristles. No beard. A clean-shaven man with a kind and amiable face. Scheming. She didn’t doubt it. But he was a diplomat by training. It was only to be expected. And if he’d lacked those skills perhaps neither of them would have managed Old Hamlet’s death, the marriage, the succession so easily.
“Where did you get it?”
He looked grave.
“It struck me a while back that you didn’t seem yourself. I wondered if this was because you regretted marrying an unworthy man. Which would be understandable...”
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Claudius, my sweet...”
“So I sent a ship south. To Africa. I told them not to return until they’d bought the most precious and beautiful flower they could find. And to bring
it back to Elsinore so I could possess two such wonders...”
Gertrude laughed again.
“They braved storms and pirates. Half the crew died of disease or combat. The cost to the treasury will require numerous measures of fresh taxation...”
“Liar!”
He shrugged.
“Only about the flower. It came from some gypsies who turned up at the gates. Where they got it...?”
She sniffed the bloom.
“What are we going to do?”
“About Fortinbras? We make sure his uncle keeps him on a short, tight leash and that’s the end of it. If I have to throw a little territory or money their way I’ll do it. If...”
Her hand went to his arm.
“I meant about Hamlet.”
Her husband fell quiet. She could picture him with her son when he was a boy. Claudius and the jester Yorick had been the only men in his life when Hamlet was young. Both kind and interested, friends to a troubled child whose own father largely ignored him. Saw him as too bookish, too weak and intellectual to be of much interest.
“We do what we’ve always done. We treat him with love and patience and generosity. And hope that one day he’ll once again return us with the same... No... What do I say? He loves you, Gertrude. Don’t doubt it.”
“Sometimes I see his father in his eyes. There’s a fierceness. An instability...”
“Then we’ll make him whole again.”
She ran her fingers down the rose’s delicate stem.
“I hate the idea of spying on my own son.”
“You’re a loving mother. Of course you do.”
Gertrude shook her head.
“The old man… Polonius. I feel he watches us all. Every minute of the day. It’s as if he inhabits the fabric of the castle somehow.”
“My sweet...”
He reached for her hand.
“You’re going to tell me it’s necessary.”
“It is.”
“And Hamlet? Will these fools of Polonius’s see something that will cure him?”
“If they don’t I’ll find someone who will. He’s my flesh, my blood as well.”
But he’s his father’s son too, she thought again. More than Claudius appreciated.
The King bent down and sniffed the flower.
“Summer’s fragrance in bleak midwinter. I’ve no need of it. Not if I have you.”
The sight of his kind face cheered her. She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.
“Words. You’re so good with them, my dear.”
“They’re all I have, love. I pray they’re all I need.”
Polonius sat back in his desk chair and considered the young man who stood so stiffly in front of him.
“Leave us,” he said to the guard, waiting until the door latched closed and they were alone. He took out his watch, checked the time, noted how the young man stared. Such fine instruments were rare in Elsinore. “So, Reynaldo. You’ve been with us, what? A year?”
“Eleven months, sir.”
Polonius nodded.
“And in that time you have worked in the buttery and, most recently, in the armoury, yes?”
“That’s right. Mainly accounting. I’m good with numbers, they say.”
He smiled nervously, then looked down, fearing he had sounded arrogant.
“ And you have some languages.” It wasn’t a question. He was consulting a note book. “Latin and French.”
“I attended the Canute school. On a guild scholarship.”
“Most impressive. And your French is good? Be honest, boy. I’ve no time for empty claims.”
“Almost fluent. I had an aunt from Rouen who came to live with us…”
“Very well. Do you know my son, Laertes?”
“Not to speak to. I’ve… I’ve seen him in the castle…”
“Would he recognize you if he saw you?”
“I don’t see why…”
“Very well. You no longer work in the armoury. You work for me.”
Reynaldo looked around, his eyes wide.
“Thank you, sir.” He couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice. “In what… what manner of work?”
“An easy, pleasant task. You’ll go to France. You will take up lodgings close to my son’s school. Follow his movements, his activities, his friends – that is most important – and you will write to me weekly with a full account of everything he does.”
“Everything, my lord?”
“That’s what I said. Who he’s seen with. How he spends his time. What people say about him. That last is also most important. How is my son reputed? Is he considered studious, respectable, trustworthy? Or is he a gambler, a drunk, a frequenter of whore houses…?”
“I’m sure your son would never do such things.”
Polonius sighed and glared at him.
“I don’t care what he does, you fool. Only what he’s thought to do. Reputation is all.”
The young servant hesitated, then asked, “And if I’m caught?”
“They’ll hang you as a spy.”
Reynaldo swallowed hard and looked at the man in front of him.
“And if I say I would prefer to stay in employment at Elsinore? Doing my duty here?”
“Then I’ll look at your book-keeping and find reasons to hang you for thievery here. Any more questions?”
Terrified the young clerk shook his head.
“Good. Gather what things you have. I’ll find you a ship. Be ready to leave when I tell you.”
Burbage had known warmer welcomes for his troupe. The Lord Chamberlain had seen the players’ arrival from one of the upper windows and made a point of sending one of his minions to say that their services were not required “at this time.”
The actor had watched the look of smug satisfaction on the doorman’s face when he came back with the news. Then he played the only card he had left before the sentries started forcing them back over the bridge.
“Prince Hamlet sent for us personally. He won’t be happy if you thugs lay a finger on artists like us. He’s an intellectual fellow, after all. Many’s the time we’ve discussed Petrarch and Dante together late of an evening…”
This was not strictly true or, as Kemp later pointed out, even slightly so. But it did the trick. The doorman sent a kitchen boy up to the prince’s quarters, closing the door in their frozen faces while he waited for confirmation. When he stuck his head out again, the sour look of disappointment on his shiny mug said it all.
They left the larger boxes in the courtyard and followed the kitchen boy up to the Great Hall where they found Hamlet dragging benches aside with a manic energy to give them room to play.
“We’re in your debt, my lord,” said Burbage. “Polonius wasn’t for bringing us in.”
“Not what you’d call a man of culture, our Lord Chamberlain.” He stopped the actor mid bow and shook his hand. “All the way from England, then?”
“Copenhagen actually. Via Hamburg and Amsterdam. It’s a European tour. So many royal houses request our presence these days.” Burbage wiped his brow, then Kemp, sarcastically, did the same. “It’s hard to keep up with demand frankly.”
“Wherever you came from you’re welcome. All of you.”
“Too kind, my Lord,” said Kemp.
The Prince wore a fixed, determined smile.
“Hardly. You’ll earn your keep.”
There was something a little frantic about his manner that Burbage hadn’t seen before. Perhaps, in spite of his sober black clothes, he’d been drinking, not that he had the smell about him.
“We’re used to singing for our supper,” the actor said uneasily.
“How about killing for it?”
The Englishmen exchanged nervous glances.
“My lord?” Burbage asked.
Hamlet put an arm around his shoulder and whispered in his ear.
“I was wondering if you might stage The Murder of Gonzago.”
“Oo,” Burbage grumbled. “That old chestnu
t? We haven’t performed Gonzago for six months or more. Not so much call for tragedy these days. Comedy’s the thing.” He looked into Hamlet’s eyes and wondered what he saw there. “It’s the way things work, Prince. The more miserable the world, the more the audience craves a bit of laughter. We’ve got some good stuff too. Had the Germans rolling in the aisles and that’s not easy.”
Hamlet’s mood shifted.
“So what use are you? What kind of actors if you can’t brush up a play you’ve done a hundred times in time for tomorrow night? We’re not fond of amateurs in Elsinore.”
“It’s not that we can’t do it, my lord,” Burbage answered, fighting to keep a hold on his temper. “I just thought it was a little old fashioned. Everyone already knows the story for one thing...”
“Then we’ll change it.” Hamlet’s hostility vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by an instant, agitated enthusiasm. “I’ll write you some new speeches. That’ll freshen it up a bit. Give things an edge. If…” A sly glance. “If you’re up to learning new lines that is.”
Kemp butted in, “We mastered Doctor Faustus in two mornings. Devils and all.”
“No devils here. Not on the stage anyway. I can get you copies of the play from the castle library if you need them. You can have the new speeches by nightfall. Good enough?”
“More than adequate,” Burbage agreed, forcing a smile.
“In the meantime…” The prince leapt onto one of the long tables, striking a theatrical pose. “Give me a speech.”
A grumbled murmur went round the company
“We’re auditioning, my lord?” asked Kemp.
Hamlet thought for a moment then snapped his fingers.
“If you want paying. Remember that play you did at the Swan last year? About the last days of the Trojan war?”
“Ilium?” Kemp muttered putting his hand over his eyes.
“That’s the one! There’s a part where someone tells the story of the soldiers coming out of the wooden horse, and Pyrrhus hunting down old Priam.”
Burbage stood back, bowed, flourished his right arm.
“I know it, sir. Every word.”
He closed his eyes, half a recalling of the lines, half dramatic effect, and paused as the rest of the company sat down to watch.
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