Alas, Poor Yorick

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  She has made herself a nest in my old, chaff-filled pillows and is industriously washing herself with her tongue. She pays no notice of me as I take my chaperon from the press and check its bells to be certain that none of them are in danger of falling off. Only the high sound of their jangling attracts her attention: she pauses in her work with a flag of pink showing beneath her nose. When I chuckle, she looks offended. “It’s only bells,” I tell her, shaking them again.

  There are those who say the faces of animals are expressionless, but I can see how offended she is. She sniffs disdainfully and resumes her washing.

  As I dress I talk to her, reminding her that she has mice to kill in the kitchen, for surely they will be swarming after the feast tonight. I flatter myself that she is entertained by my conversation, for when she finishes cleaning herself, she curls into a knot and watches me through the long fur of her tail, purring softly.

  I have taken out my fringed leggings, the ones that are yellow-and-red, like the chaperon. The movement of the fringes catches the eye of the cat, and she lifts her head, her eyes growing narrower as she decides whether or not this is worthy prey. Slowly her eyes become huge and her breathing changes as she fixes on her purpose. As I tug the right one on, she attacks.

  Her claws are small and very sharp and I howl as they sink into my calf. But I cannot bring myself to fling the cat across the room as many another would. The priests and the knights dislike cats and often kill them to cast out the devil, or for sport. She is only doing what she was made to do, and I will not punish her for that. The Male Goddess has always been kind to cats, for they are so like He-in-She—loving, protecting, sensual, and cruel. I admire how this cat keeps herself to herself and curries favor with no one. At court, such independence is a rare thing, and such unconcern without contempt is unheard-of. I grab the scruff of her neck and pull her off, and see her eyes sulking. “You must not hurt the one who feeds you if you like to eat,” I tell her as I put her on the bed again.

  The scratches are sore but there is little blood, and it is on the red side of the leggings where no one will notice. I shake my head at her but I cannot reprove her more than that, which gains me nothing in her eyes; she curls up again, this time with her back toward me.

  By the time I leave the room, she has already left it ahead of me, tail high, bound on errands known only to her. The room is not so pleasant with her gone.

  JESTERS

  It is a rowdy night, with a band of Hamlet’s Captains sitting at his central table, just below the King’s own tables, and below the salt. Most of the men have had beer and mead with their first serving of bread, and several are ruddy-cheeked and belching already. The men below the salt have been given vast trenchers of bread and have a first course of thick vegetable-paste to spread on the broken bits of crust. Because this is a celebration, the paste has been livened up with spices—cinnamon and ginger and cloves. Above the salt, where we jesters eat, the paste is served mixed with butter and hard-boiled eggs, along with expensive pepper. It is rich to the tongue and filling; those below the salt will eat twice as much and feel more empty than we.

  Above the Banquet Hall there are two galleries. In one scarcely heard musicians play. In the other, much larger, the Queen, her ladies, and the wives of the men below have a feast of their own, less grand than the men eat but fancy in its way. Gertrude rarely looks down, and when she does, she does not often watch Hamlet.

  Hedrann is the first of us to get to work, and he devotes himself to the men below the salt, distracting them with capers and antics while those above the salt fill this time with conversation. He tires quickly because he is old, and being simple, he does not try to continue beyond his strength, or seek to dissemble in order to appear more devoted to the King. As he steps aside, Tollo takes over while the servants carry in platters of broken chapters of roasted ducks and chickens for those below the salt, while whole roasted geese and swans with their skins and feathers wrapped around them are brought for those above.

  For all his deformity and bouts of madness, Tollo is a very good mime, and he keeps the men laughing as he silently acts out both sides of a peasants’ courtship, and then the courtship of nobles. His actions cannot be misunderstood, and it is apparent from the expression on the Bishop’s face—he is sitting four places away from the King—that he wishes it were otherwise, for as the others roar their approval and cheer him on, he watches silently, pulling on his lower lip. Tollo is unaware of this, being wholly in the spell of his own illusion. Then he crosses his lovers, his peasant maiden with a noble knight, and a great lady amusing herself with a tenant. This brings more whoops and hollers, and the mead and beer are poured out again, and Tollo is saluted for his amusing performance by everyone except the Bishop, who glares at the distant door.

  From his place on the dais, Hamlet toasts his Captains.

  The various fowl are followed by fish—a thick soup of mixed fishes cooked in beer called Monks’ Stew for those below the salt, a broth-cooked gelleé with oysters and clams with the fish for the high tables—while we jesters are given a short while to eat and drink. We sit together on the floor at the edge of the dais, our trenchers full of good things, our faces stuffed with food as we try to make the most of the short time we have. It will be more than an hour before any of us can rest again.

  Oduvit has been drinking mead and his eyes have taken on the telltale shine of intoxication, in his case from more than the mead. He laughs immoderately at his own jests and tells us all how he has hit upon the best entertainment for tonight that has ever come to his thoughts. “You’ll all be jealous of me, come morning,” he informs us as his cheeks bulge and he sprays us with bits of half-chewed bread.

  Tollo is sulking, as he always does after he performs, and he pays no attention to Oduvit’s boast. Beside him Mect is uneasy, anticipating one of Tollo’s sudden bursts of rage or weeping; Mect is not comfortable with the rest of us because he lacks the gifts a jester must have. Most of the time it is not apparent, but when he is confronted with occasions like this one, it is obvious to almost everyone that he has no business here but service to the Emperor; he is regarded not as an intruder might be, but as one who has accidentally strayed into the wrong part of the castle and although lost cannot make himself ask the way. He watches Oduvit a short while as he finishes his tankard of beer. “Why should we be jealous.” “Yorick will be the most jealous,” Oduvit says with a smile that would horrify more than amuse. “Because I will be King’s jester then, and Yorick will be below the salt, performing antics for the lesser folk while I entertain the Counsellors and the Bishop at the King’s request. I have hit upon the very thing that Hamlet will reward.” He hoots at his own vision of my downfall and turns to give me a hard stare. “You are about to be dishonored beyond repair of your protests, and I will emerge triumphant.”

  I will not be baited, especially now while I am composing myself for the evening to come. I speak softly so that only the jesters can hear me. “If that is what the King wishes, so be it.”

  Oduvit, robbed of his chance to argue, becomes truculent. “You don’t believe that. You say it only in case you might be overheard by one of those men.” He gestures toward the table at our backs, his little eyes bright with victory and mead. He makes an obscene gesture with his left hand, adding to the insult. “You want to hang onto the things you have secured. But your day is over, and mine is beginning. Surely you will not have to be reduced to beggary, will you? After all this time and good service, there are gold coins squirreled away somewhere, aren’t there?” His concern is so exaggerated that it is nothing more than a malicious burlesque, which does not earn him much encouragement from the others.

  “That’s the King’s decision,” said Mect, who has a greater understanding of the way of royal courts than jesters. “You may try to influence him, but he will not be guided by you alone, or by any man in this hall.”

  Oduvit has no wish to know of this and raises his voice so that he will not have to admit
that he heard Mect’s warning. “How do you think you will feel when the King dismisses you? You will crawl back to your little room and hide there in the darkness, with no consolation or hope of any.” He chuckles and drinks more mead. “I will come to your door and I will laugh so that everyone in Elsinor will hear the echoes.” I wonder if the Male Goddess will guard me from such a fate. It is said that He-in-She may do it, if it suits Their purpose. But who can read the purposes of such beings? I cannot ask the Bishop his opinion, that’s certain. No doubt the handsome, favored, young Polonius thinks tonight that he can behave with impunity, but I cannot make myself believe it. “If you come, everyone will listen.” Among us jesters only Mect smiles, and it is with such a private amusement that I know better than to enquire as to its purpose. He wets his lips and studies Oduvit for a short while. When Oduvit demands to know the reason, he answers mildly, “I was about to suggest that you be careful of the drink. There is so much you want to do tonight that it would be well not to fuddle your thoughts. Given the men you are entertaining, you will want to keep your thoughts clear.”

  It is, in fact, very prudent advice, and Oduvit receives it as I expected he might. “It is nothing of yours, foreigner,” he growls, and takes another draught of mead, letting the sweet brown liquor splash over his chin.

  Mect is not insulted; he shrugs and tears off more of his bread. “What comes to one may come to all,” he says obscurely.

  I have listened to him with interest, but now is not the time to learn more from him. In time, I decide, I will have to seek out Mect and discover what it is he seeks here in Hamlet’s Denmark.

  There are serving men coming into the hall again, this time with great crockery bowls of custards for those above the salt and honied gruel in tureens to be ladled out for those below. A few of them are already showing the weight of fatigue in their movements and their carriage, which bodes ill for them tonight. As I watch, one of the younger servers, a slender lad from the western region, staggers and nearly slops gruel over the floor. He stays on his feet but his eyes are wild, as if he is a young deer with huntsmen behind him.

  It is time for me to present myself at the King’s table, while the rest are expected to entertain the rest. I get off the dais, square my chaperon, pick up my jester’s sceptre, and bow to the others. “Until they are all too drunk to understand anything we say and cannot follow four words in ten.”

  “Some of them are there already, and will not remember a word of this evening once tomorrow dawns,” says Oduvit. “But they will be sober soon enough for my purposes.” He makes no acknowledgment of my bow but sits with his arms folded and a look of disgust that even a jester does not often encounter.

  The other three give slight salutes with their sceptres, and Tollo does his best to hide a yawn.

  I go to the King’s table and bow to Hamlet; he greets me by saying, “Ah! Yorick is come on duty.” As I bow to the others seated with him, I suppose he has spoken truly, and that I am now on duty, as much as any guard or sentry.

  Polonius, still full of himself, raises his hand to me and says, “On this great occasion your wit must shine brightly, jester.” “As the blade of a sword, good Counsellor,” I answer him as I clamber onto the table. The bow I give him is a thought too respectful. Some of the company know what to expect from it, but Polonius does not.

  I turn and bow toward the gallery where the Queen and her court are dining, hoping that this will give her some amusement. Then I swing around and start to work in earnest. I pretend to dress myself in the grand robes the Counsellors wear, with the wide collar of office around my neck; I place the imaginary narrow coronet upon my brow, standing as pompously as I can. Then I march down the table, pausing to apologize for every cup and tankard of mead or beer I kick over as I pass, and I kick over most of them. My apology is profuse and exaggerated, so extravagant and polite that with each new toppled goblet the laughter I have is greater. No one minds having the mead on their clothes, or if they do, they know better than to remark on it. I make a great sweep of the table, and end up beside Polonius once again.

  “Good lord and worthy Counsellor, pray excuse my inattention to your splendid self; it is not from any desire to neglect you or treat you as less worthy than you are, but I fear you have left nothing in your goblet, and I am therefore forced to improvise. Pray excuse this clumsy gesture of recognition I offer you. I have needed every gesture, every action to ready myself for addressing you with sufficient magnificence. What man, I wonder, can behave himself as virtuously as you?” Before Polonius can discern my intent, I bend down and lift a half-empty pottle of mead, and with a great flourish empty it into his lap, watching the dark, sweet liquid flow over his robe, soaking him to the skin and running onto the dais. “Thus do I honor you, Counsellor.” It is clumsy, but the guests are drunk enough to be amused.

  Polonius rises in his seat, shock and ire in his face, his robe clinging to him. But then he realizes that the rest are laughing, and settles back down, forcing a cackle that has little amusement in it. His glare would pierce armor, but it does not much trouble me, for it is what I expected. “Well done, well done, my Yorick,” declares Hamlet, clapping his hands and rocking with laughter in his state chair. “You are a prince among jesters.”

  I drop to my knee in front of him, reach for the thigh-bone of a goose from the platter beside me. “Dub me, then.”

  Hamlet laughs more loudly, and takes the gnawed goose bone. “All right,” he says, getting to his feet. He touches the bone to my right shoulder and then my left. “I dub thee jester-knight, vassal of the King.” With that he sits down again as those around him laugh.

  I cannot tell how serious he is in this, but I sense that he was not simply jesting. I know I am expected to expand on this, and so I get to my feet and mime donning a sword. “It is a fine thing to be a knight,” I announce, and swagger down the table as the most arrogant of the fighters do. “Think of the honor. Think of the distinction. No man can want to be more than a knight, to bear himself in battle”—I take a swipe with my invisible sword at the remains of a swan, and kick the platter at the same time to make the ribs jump—“and best the foes of the King.” I swing around again. “And to steal treasure when the Captains are not looking. And to ravish the women of the enemy.” I move my hips to illustrate, my brows rising and falling in time to the thrusts. “And perhaps those of a few friends as well.” “Or the friends themselves,” calls one of the soldiers.

  Most of the table is laughing merrily, but there are one or two of the men there, including old Horatio, who are insulted by my jibes. He straightens in his chair and directs a ferocious stare at me, his white brows drawing down over his eyes as if they were the visor of his helm. “No fighting man does that.” “No?” I approach him without art. “Yet these things do happen, don’t they? Someone must be responsible. It must be the trolls doing it, if the knights are not.” There is laughter, more knowing and sly. “Knights have oaths to honor,” Horatio insists.

  It troubles me for an instant to have to mock this, because I know that Horatio has never broken an oath in his life: he is what a knight is supposed to be, and he supposes, against all experience, that others are the same as he. “Which they do in the breach,” I counter, and bow to him. “A man needs a reward or two when he has risked his life, and life is uncertain in war. Why delay the benefits? What better reward than money and women?”

  “The King makes such disposal,” Horatio says emphatically. He is growing more choleric, his long, somber face darkening with stringent passion.

  I give him a stare of extreme sympathy. “And a few anticipate his benefice, in case he should forget.”

  Now Horatio is on his feet, reaching out to grab at my clothes. I retreat from him to the far edge of the table. “Take that back, here and now.”

  “For what reason?” I ask, though I know the answer. “Take it all back!” Horatio shouts, and the hall goes quiet. Hamlet leans forward, his features grave. “What is the matter?”
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  “This jester of yours has insulted me beyond permission,” Horatio states. “I demand that he take back what he has said.” He points directly at my chest as if his finger were a lance. “Make him say it was a lie.”

  The King turns to me. “And did you insult him?” “Of course not,” I answer, and it is the truth as far as it goes. “l do not say that he has done any of the things I have mentioned, only that certain fighting men do.”

  “And he has faced me while he says it!” Horatio exclaims, unable to keep the wrath from his voice. “He has impugned my honor.” “He is a jester,” says Hamlet reasonably. “He is supposed to speak of things in jest and mockery.” He is leaning forward so that he can look at Horatio, but the posture is awkward and it adds to the upset of the incident.

  “Surely,” Polonius interjects, “if I can be amused by having mead poured all over me, surely you can be amused by a slight toward knights who conduct themselves badly.”

  However well-intentioned Polonius is, his remarks serve only to incense Horatio still more. “It isn’t enough that you permit this poppet-man to insult me,” he shouts at Hamlet, his face becoming ruddy, “you permit your underlings to chide me for defending myself.” He has already moved his chair back, and now he stands before Hamlet. “I regret that I cannot remain in this company, my King. For you I would cross the pits of Hell, but I will not be jeered by any man, no matter what favor he commanded from you. Or what jester,” he adds with all the scorn he can manifest. He looks directly at the King without apology or retraction coming to his lips.

  Hamlet’s eyes are grave although his mouth continues to smile. “You do these festivities a disservice, good Horatio. I love you well and wish you no ill, nor do I see any here,” he tells the straight-backed warrior. “But I will not compel you to do the thing you despise. It makes too much of a minor entertainment, I promise you. We seek only to make merry, not to compromise.” He holds out his hand with his ring and waits while Horatio bows to kiss it. “Go, if that is what you want. But ask my leave before you come again.”