“Seven months ago I went to Wittenberg thinking I left Elsinore in a fit and happy state.”
The little man shook his head.
“You believed that? Really? How depressingly naïve ...”
“One month later your father’s executed for treason and I never saw or heard a harsh word between him and the king.”
“Or any word. Old Hamlet wasn’t a fellow for jokes.”
“What...?”
Yorick slammed his bishop on the table, so hard the pieces jumped.
“Why ask me? I spent most of my life shambling from one dingy inn to the next. Touring Europe as Elsinore’s present to others. Why else do you think none here but you seems to know me?”
“I did wonder.”
“When all this happened I was in Moscow trying to make the Russians laugh. There’s an engagement for you.”
Hamlet took the piece from his hands and put it back in place.
“On whose orders? Claudius?”
“No.”
“The king’s.”
“Wrong again. It was my father. I imagine he wanted me out of the way. If... Shit!”
He leaned back on the stool, caught the edge of the table with his feet and stopped himself tumbling to the floor. The little man had the agility of an acrobat when he needed it.
“There boy. You made me say it. I can’t be drinking enough. This is a shameful lapse. It’s all your fault.”
He got up, checked the corridor both ways, slammed the door hard shut then came and moved the table as close to the window as it would go.
“My head may mean little to you, lord. But I’m rather fond of the thing. I don’t want it stuck on a pike on the ramparts too.”
“My father…”
“… was a monster. A vicious, bloodthirsty beast.”
Hamlet didn’t move, didn’t speak.
Yorick folded his fat arms.
“You took that better than I expected. You knew, of course. My father on the other hand...” Beneath his heavy brows the jester’s eyes became misty. “He was kind and gentle, a generous man.”
Hamlet nodded. “I remember that.”
“So you should. When you were a boy he was the one who spent days on end with you. Not the king.” He leaned across the table, peered into Hamlet’s eyes. “Him and Claudius. A devious cove your uncle. But a man with a warm heart nonetheless. You had the benefit of that as much as anyone. The son he never had. Gertrude the wife he lacked too.”
“Tell me, fool, or I will give you up I swear.”
Yorick’s exaggerated face was wreathed in hurt fury.
“There’s no need for threats. You’ve a cruel and heartless streak in you sometimes. No need to guess where that came from.”
“Tell...”
“Very well!” the little man snarled.
He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around his shins, miserable and angry at this forced recollection.
“Shortly before I was sent to Moscow my father called me into his room. He’d been out with the hunt and wandered off when they were about to kill a stag. Never liked blood much. Or possessed a talent for direction. So he came upon Claudius together with the queen in one of the royal lodges in the forest. Their particular hunt was a private one and had reached a heated moment. So happily they never noticed him goggle-eyed at the window.”
He sighed. Picked up a piece of cold sausage and gnawed on it.
“I told him that if he didn’t forget the entire matter immediately I’d be the one who murdered him. Not Claudius. Or Hamlet. Or your mother. One week later he dispatches me to crack jokes to drunken oafs in wolf skins. When I get there I find a letter from him saying his conscience demanded he tell all to the king and he’d rather I wasn’t there when that happened. One week after that I get another letter telling me crows are pecking out his eyes on a spike outside the walls.”
Yorick took a big and ugly bite of the meat.
“Decapitate the messenger. Originality isn’t a royal forte, is it?”
“Claudius...”
“It wasn’t Claudius who killed him!” Yorick’s eyes strayed nervously to the door. “Too loud, you make me too loud, Prince. You’ll be the death of us both. It was...”
“A just and honourable king doesn’t murder an honest man for speaking the truth.”
The man in the harlequin suit blinked.
“The relevance of that remark being...? Oh to hell with it...”
His stout arm reached across the table, took Hamlet by the collar, dragged him close.
“One last time. Your father was a bloodthirsty tyrant. You sit in grand judgement on your mother because she found love and happiness in the arms of a man who wasn’t her husband. Yet Old Hamlet had mistresses and bastards the length of this land and never set foot outside the castle without knowing the name of the next whorehouse along the way.”
A dagger came up between them, tight in Hamlet’s hand.
Yorick laughed.
“You know that vile statue of my father naked on a tortoise?”
“What about it?”
“It was made by a curiously nasty sculptor from Florence. A man named Benvenuto.”
“So?”
“So why keep it after he’d killed the man who modelled for it?”
“Nostalgia? Regret? Maybe he had a change of heart.”
“You’d have to have a heart to change. No. It wasn’t enough to kill him. That’s what I think. He had to do more than take my father’s life. He had to piss on his memory too. So there he is. Sitting on a tortoise in the altogether. Not funny. Not charming. Grotesque. A freak. A monster. Forever. Why? Because he’d dared tell the king the hard truth that not everyone loved him. That, your highness, was your father.”
“Liar,” the prince said but it was barely a whisper.
Yorick scowled at him.
“Why would I invent such tales? What gain is there for me? The facts are simple enough. Your father knew of your mother’s affair with his brother. I don’t doubt he had plans to deal with it. And the last thing Old Hamlet needed around him was a jester with secrets burning in his heart and a habit of blabbing. I’m afraid we’re all like that really. But Claudius has friends here too. He was a powerful man before he ever sat on the throne. It would take time and cunning.”
“Polonius?”
“He’s the Lord Chamberlain. I’m shocked you’ve forgotten since you bed his daughter. Or used to.”
“Did he know?”
“Search me!” Yorick cried. “Am I an all-seeing apparition too? I’d imagine so. Kings are too high and mighty to be lone assassins. They crave accomplices. But your father was old and despite all the lip service to the contrary a lot of people hated him. A Lord Chamberlain serves the state, not the king. If he were in the picture…”
He opened his big, rough hands.
“You think Polonius was as likely to work for Claudius as my father? Even in matters… of this kind?”
“Murder, you mean?”
Hamlet flinched at the word, then nodded reluctantly.
“I would assume he’d back the most favourable horse to his personal cause. Wouldn’t you?”
The prince put the dagger on the table.
“Sorry.”
Yorick bent forward and looked up into his eyes.
“Don’t forget our respective places here. I’m your clown. Your plaything. Your toy. Scarcely human. No need to apologise.”
Hamlet carved himself a piece of meat with the blade. “You’re the only friend I’ve got.”
“Flattering but I’d have to say that’s somewhat unfair on young Horatio. While l agree I am by far the more entertaining let’s not forget I’m nothing more than a joke, a bad one usually. I never do.”
He was scarcely listening. Hamlet had picked up two pieces from the table. Black king, black queen. Was running his finger along their wooden crowns.
“My father would have killed them both?”
“In his own time and
in a way that would have given him some political advantage.”
“And instead, with the old man’s help, they murdered him?”
Yorick retrieved the pieces from his fingers and placed them on the board.
“That dread creature you saw on the walls spoke only of Claudius. Your mother’s a virtuous woman...”
“I know. I hear her proclaim her chastity every night.”
“Perhaps you should ask her,” the jester said in a miserable, sullen voice.
With a flick of his finger Hamlet toppled the black queen.
“Perhaps I will.”
It was dark now. The players would be getting ready. Time to go.
“Let’s take our seats.”
The jester shook his head.
“Not me.”
“I demand it.”
“Demand all you like, sunshine.” He stood up, straightened his collar. “I’m a thespian myself. A better one you’ll never meet though much under-appreciated. If you want a tragedian’s turn I’ll give you one...”
Yorick raised his hand and declared in a ringing stentorian tone, “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable...”
“Quite,” Hamlet interrupted. “Suit yourself. I’m going to watch the play. I hope it’s better than that.”
Rosencrantz intercepted Hamlet as he made his way through the gallery, took him into the neighbouring loggia and talked idly and at tedious length about the statues there. Polonius told his daughter to stand close by, then led the king through one of Elsinore’s many winding private passageways to hide behind a giant Flemish tapestry of Hercules and his labours.
“This disgusts me,” Claudius whispered as they stood and waited. “I’m King of Denmark. Not a common spy.”
Polonius took out his penknife and carved tiny eyeholes in the tapestry.
“You wish to know whether it’s the girl that ails him. Or something else. Don’t you?”
“What else? He can’t know about his father. This is grief and grief passes.”
The old man stayed silent.
“Perhaps there’s more to it than that,” the King admitted. “Your daughter. We’ll…”
Polonius put a finger to his lips, placed his eye close to the rough back of the fabric.
“Two parents eavesdropping on their children,” Claudius murmured. “To what have we been reduced…?”
“To caution and common sense, sir. He’s your nephew, not your son.”
“As good as…”
Ophelia wore a summer dress. Polonius had made her pick one Hamlet had liked when they were lovers. Leaf green with flowers round the low neck. Her skin was pale. She shivered in the tall castle gallery.
Rosencrantz called farewell. Then Hamlet bumbled in, reading what looked like a script for the play to come. He’d almost walked into her when she said, “How are you, my lord? Better I hope.”
The prince stood back, looked her up and down, then peered round the gallery, at the shadows, at the tapestry.
“Fair Ophelia. I hope you remember my sins in all your prayers. Keeping well, are we?”
“Very…”
His eyes ran round the round the gallery.
“Isn’t that… spiffing?”
“Don’t be mad with me. I brought you these.” She had a packet in her hand. “They’re the letters you wrote. And the poems. I should have given them back a long time ago. Please…”
She held them out. He laughed.
“What’s this? I never gave you anything.”
“Hamlet. I know you’re not well and there’s so much to worry about what with…” She took a breath, abandoning the train of thought. “When you sent me these they had a perfume so sweet I thought it would never fade. But it did. I pray you now. Take what you sent me. Let’s put an end to this.”
He glanced at her trembling hand and began looking around the room again. When his eyes returned to her they burned with loathing.
“What have you done here, madam?” he growled as he brushed away the offered letters.
“I’m trying to return these tokens of your affection…”
“That’s a harsh, chaste tone. Do you merit it?”
Ophelia blushed.
“I only give back what’s yours…”
He was scanning the walls, the long corridors around.
“You, too, now, eh? I should have known. Put on a black robe like mine and get yourself to a nunnery. Or better still a whorehouse and spread your legs. At least there no one expects to believe what the women say. Do anything for a few pieces of silver, won’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not about money though, is it? Not for the daughter of Polonius. With you everything’s about family. That’s where your real loyalties lie. Which means…”
He began walking briskly along the tapestry, punching it with his fist so that the fabric crumpled against the stone behind.
“Where’s that cunning bastard, your father? There’s an old man’s stale stench here!” Then he was singing it like a child at play. “Out, out Lord Chamberlain! I’m coming, ready or not!”
She rushed him to him, took his arm.
“He’s in his quarters! Where else would he be?”
Another punch on the wall just steps away from the holes Polonius had cut in the tapestry. His knuckles bruised on the unyielding stone behind.
A glint of an eye through the fabric. Then nothing.
“Are you honest, Ophelia?”
“I’m trying…”
He dragged her to him.
“You see what you’ve done? Betrayed me. The one person I thought I could trust! So here’s this in return. If ever you marry I’ll give you this curse. You may be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, but they’ll still damn you, girl. Every man shall cast a stone. Your whore’s reputation precedes you. Anyone with half a brain will know you’re cheating him the moment his back’s turned…”
Ophelia threw the letters in her face.
“For God’s sake, Hamlet, there was only ever you! What reason did I give you to think otherwise? How can you possibly…?”
He kicked the packet, scattering the letters across the floor. She looked at them, at him. He was raging now. Out of control.
“I will pray your health’s soon restored, sir…”
“God can do nothing for me. You might have once. Your beauty… but then that’s not your real face is it?” His voice turned harder still. “Not the one God gave you. You get your little paints out and streak it on: a little shadow around the eyes, a little blush here. That’s an important one, isn’t it. Blush. Since your real face forgot how to do that long ago. Paint it on. Hide your wantonness with innocence.”
“There never was another.”
“And when I’m king I’ll banish marriage. Send you all to brothels where you belong. Exile traitors. Hang spies. Stab this vile world in the heart and…”
He twisted, rolled along the wall, withdrew his short dagger, gouged at the holes in the tapestry. Once. Twice, where the eyes were.
The blade hit hard stone sparking as it ran.
“Come out!” he roared. “Let me see you in the light.”
Ophelia was crying, protesting her innocence again. Claudius could hear her plaintive voice as he followed Polonius into the private passageway they’d used.
Another of the Lord Chamberlain’s secrets. He wondered how many more were withheld from him, had been from his brother too.
In the darkness, brushing away the spider’s web, they stopped by a torch Polonius had set along the way. The old man’s eyes were wild. Frightened.
“He would have stabbed us in the eye if he could.”
“Hamlet will blame your daughter,” Claudius said. “We left her there with him. And his fury.”
The old man scowled.
“I never told her we’d be listeni
ng.”
“Ophelia’s no idiot, man! Any more than he…”
“Hamlet’s in love with her. You heard as well as I did.”
“Love?” Claudius asked, amazed. “Did that sound like love?”
“It takes many forms I believe.”
“That’s not one of them. And it wasn’t madness either. There’s something, some worm eating at my nephew’s soul. If…”
“Love, sir,” the old man interrupted. “I’m sure of it. After the play let me try again. We’ll have him speak with his mother and I’ll listen, hidden like before.”
“Better I hope. He knew we were there from the outset.”
“Better. His mother will get the truth out of him. Then we’ll decide how to proceed.”
A fire blazed in the hearth. The torches had been lit and evergreen garlands hung around the frames of the high windows. Burbage watched through a crack in the door of a spacious pantry they’d been given as a dressing room. The players had been ready for over an hour and were getting restless. But nothing would happen till the king gave the order. If he didn’t feel like it, there would be no play at all. They’d still get to eat, but their promised wage would be cut in half, and if they were thrown out into the freezing night immediately, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Burbage drummed his fingers on the door.
“Any sign?” asked Kemp.
“Nah,” grumbled Burbage. “Still eating. Calling for wine. He might have forgotten we’re here.”
Kemp put his eye to the crack.
“Can’t take his eyes off the Queen. Like a love-struck teenager.”
“He did marry her,” Burbage pointed out.
“I thought that was just, you know, politics.” Kemp kept his face up against the door jamb. “You know what royalty are like. But there he is… holding her hand and everything. Smiling. Kissing now! I wonder what Polonius makes of it. Winding that damned watch of his. That old bugger doesn’t want to give us a penny. And there’s our prince too, sitting with his pretty lady.”
“Ophelia,” Burbage pointed out. “She’s Polonius’s daughter.”
“Lucky girl didn’t inherit that old bastard’s mug. She don’t look too happy. Interesting. More of a play going on out there than we’ll have on the stage if you ask me.”
“I’d keep your observations on royalty to yourself if I were you, Kemp,” Burbage declared. “How long are they going to keep us waiting? God, I miss being at home, calling the shots in our own house. You know how long I’ve been a professional actor, Will?”
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