And, whispered a small voice inside me, Prince Hamlet cannot kiss you with Gerda looking.
Would he ask me to marry him today? Was that why he wished to walk with me alone?
We walked across the palace courtyard, over the drawbridge and into the marketplace. The people stood back to let us pass, bowing and curtseying. Despite my arm resting on his, Hamlet seemed far away. Was his mind back at Wittenberg?
I stayed silent as we crossed the marketplace, then walked down the road. A man bringing firewood for the palace quickly moved his ox and cart out of our way. A woman ran forward to sweep the ox dung away before we dirtied our shoes. I smiled a thank you, though I knew she would value the dung. A high dunghill meant a happy house. The dung fed the fields; the fields fed the cows; the cows fed the cheese; the cheese fed us … I smiled at myself, thinking of dung when I should be thinking of love.
‘You look happy, my lady.’ The prince looked at me, his eyes like a puppy’s that had been beaten.
‘I am happy.’
‘Why? What is there in this heavy world to smile about?’
I let go of his hand and danced upon the snow, feeling it crunch and squeak under my feet, just as I had imagined. ‘Because I am with you. Because the world is washed white and clean with snow. Can’t you hear it sing?’
He frowned. ‘I hear no birds, no music.’
‘The snow sings, my lord. Listen!’
I stood still so he could hear it too; not just the faint crackle and drip as the snow melted in the sun, but the deeper music of the expanse of white.
All at once his frown lightened. ‘I think I hear it. You give even winter a sweet voice, my lady.’ His eyes were less sombre now. He gestured towards the trees in the king’s forest to our right, each branch hung with snow. ‘Will you walk in the forest with me?’
I hesitated again. A walk in the woods was different from a walk down the road, with farms on either side. Prince Hamlet must know that the entire palace — even the whole town — would soon know that we had walked alone together. Surely there was only one reason he would so publicly take me walking in the forest. He must be going to ask me to marry him.
I smiled. A girl has a right to privacy when a young man is asking for her hand.
The sun was as high as it would rise today, hovering like a tired orange above the horizon. Hamlet held out his hand. I took it. Our shadows skittered winter black upon the snow. It stuck to my boots, so I had to keep shaking them clean.
Each tree stood like a silent soldier in its armour of white. If there was a path, the snow had hidden it. We ducked under trees. Snow fell off their branches and exploded up in a white powder that stung my face and eyes. All the while Hamlet didn’t speak, pushing his way through the branches with a strange eagerness.
I wiped the snow from my cheeks. ‘Where are we going, my lord?’
He glanced at me almost as if he had forgotten I was there. ‘A place.’
I laughed. I felt as if the pigeons might sing in chorus above us, as if the voles and hedgehogs might wake up and dance about our feet. I was in love with the world today, not just with Hamlet. Poor Hamlet, who had lost so much. But I would make him smile. ‘Is there anywhere that is no place?’
He looked at me and seemed as weary as if it was he who carried the great load of snow, not the trees.
‘My dreams,’ he said abruptly. ‘My fears. They are no place. But they are real.’ He held out his black-gloved hand to catch a drop of snow melting from a branch. ‘At times I wish I could dissolve into dew, like this poor scrap of ice. How weary, stale and unprofitable seem all the uses of this world.’ He gestured at the trees around us. ‘Life seems an unweeded garden, like this forest, rank, unpruned.’
‘Look again, my lord,’ I said softly. ‘God weeds the forest. It has no need of man, except to give us wood, and beauty.’
He looked at me, not at the trees. But he almost smiled.
‘So what is this “place” you take me to, my lord?’
‘Can you guess?’
‘A flour mill?’ With servants to greet us with mulled wine and toasted cheese, I hoped.
He shook his head.
‘A woodsman’s cottage?’ And a woodsman’s wife, a fire-cheered kitchen and ham bone soup.
He did smile at that. ‘No. It is a place I have not seen for more than ten years, since I left Elsinore. But it is beautiful. As beautiful as you.’
I hoped my smile might bring an echo on his face. ‘Perhaps in ten years it has changed.’
His face clouded. I wished I could swallow my words. ‘Change? Ay, time eats constancy. Women are the frailest of all.’
One did not argue with a prince. Not even one who said he loved you. I bit my lip to stop my tongue.
‘But this place does not change.’ He lifted a branch, heavy with snow, which cascaded to the ground with a soft thud. His face relaxed properly for the first time today. ‘See, here is my place that lives on earth, and also in my dreams. No rank trees, to sully its purity. What does not grow can never change or putrefy.’
I looked. It was a glade, no larger than my room. A silver snake through the snow showed where a stream would run in summer.
Hamlet gazed around, the depression sliding from him, like snow from the trees. ‘When I was locked in my chamber for giggling when the Spanish ambassador tripped in the throne room, when my tutor beat me at school, I thought of this place. Pure, and full of happiness. I came here as a child to fish,’ he added softly.
‘With your father?’
‘My father? No, of course not.’ He smiled down at me. ‘A king has more important tasks than fishing with his son.’
Like hunting deer and boar, I thought, and bedding mistresses. How well did Hamlet know this father that he mourned? I was beginning to suspect his memory had made the father he would rather have had.
‘The jester brought me here. Old Yorick.’
I dimly remembered Yorick: a small man with one shoulder higher than the other and a smile of patient pain. The late king had made him dance with a bear. The bear had lashed out and suddenly Yorick’s face was red with blood. The king had laughed, and my father had hurried me from the room. I forced myself back to the king’s son, standing with me now.
‘Old Yorick told me jokes too.’ For the first time, Hamlet’s eyes danced at me. ‘When can’t a fish swim?’
‘I don’t know, my lord.’
‘When it’s a dish of fish.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘It seemed funnier when Yorick said it. I caught a fish too. Or rather, Yorick held both lines and when one hooked a fish, he told me it was my line that had caught it. He pretended to be my horse on the way back, and I rode on his shoulders, carrying my fish. He took it to the kitchens, and brought it up to me for my supper, before he attended the king.’
It seemed that Yorick had been more of a father to Hamlet than the king. I wondered if old King Hamlet had even known his son had caught a fish? How could such a man have a son like this? No wonder both father and son had been content for Hamlet to continue his studies rather than helping to run the kingdom. They employed my father to do that.
Hamlet gazed at me. ‘Your thoughts are far away, my lady.’
I smiled at him. ‘No, of course not. I am here, and my thoughts too.’
‘I am a bad companion. Things are … not as they seemed yesterday.’
I looked at him, alarmed. ‘How, my lord?’
Had King Claudius withdrawn his offer to make Hamlet his heir? I could think of nothing else that could weigh him down so much, lower even than when he had realised he had lost not just his father but his kingship.
He hesitated. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy books, Ophelia. Matters too weighty for a girl.’
‘I am not a girl! I am your friend. You called me wise counsel.’
His face lightened, as if a ray of sun had caught it. ‘You are most certainly a girl, and I a man. Nor would I have you bear what I was shown
last night. I have a present for you.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
His grimness lessened even more. ‘I like it when you say “Yes, my lord” like that. You are a gentle woman. A flower blooming in the dung heap that is Elsinore.’
‘No dung heap, my lord. Just cautious lords, who do their best …’
I stopped as he put his hand into the pouch at his belt. A betrothal ring, I thought. Something glittered in the winter sun. He held it out.
I took it. A gold chain, and on it a heart-shaped locket. Despite my disappointment, its beauty made me catch my breath. It was old gold, almost red, with a polish that came through age and love. I looked at Prince Hamlet in wonder, then opened it. Inside was a lock of hair.
‘My lord, thank you! Whose is it?’
A smile almost made its way past the grimness. ‘It is yours now. But the locket was my grandmother’s. And the hair is mine.’ He looked at me so intently, I felt the snow would melt all around us. ‘Now you have my heart, Ophelia. I would have you wear it next to your heart too.’
‘I will, my lord,’ I whispered. I would have danced again if his mood had not been so changeable and grim. Hamlet loved me! What was a ring compared to a prince’s heart?
‘Let me fasten it for you,’ he said.
I felt his gloved hands move clumsily around my neck, and then the locket cold on my skin.
‘There,’ he said. ‘My heart is yours.’
‘And you have mine, my lord.’
Why did he not smile again? For we had each other now; our lives and the kingdom stretched in front of us. Or did it? What shadow kept darkening his eyes?
‘My lord, what has burdened you so since yesterday?’
‘Last night …’ he said, and stopped. He looked so serious. I wanted him to share my joy.
‘You saw a ghost last night?’ I teased.
He stepped back, his face so white that I was frightened. ‘How did you know?’
‘I … I didn’t.’ I took his hand, as I would take a little boy’s. ‘My lord, I have met the ghost. He is old King Fortinbras, clinging as mist to the stones of his lost castle. He did me no harm —’
‘Old Fortinbras?’ He shook his head. ‘This was my father’s ghost.’
I blinked at him. How many ghosts had appeared last night on the battlements of Elsinore? The castle had many towers, each hidden from the others by the palace roof. I had a sudden picture in my mind of a crowd of ghosts, each arguing who had the right to haunt which tower.
‘A ghost cannot hurt you,’ I ventured softly.
‘Cannot hurt me! My poor father, doomed to wander upon the earth, and you say this cannot hurt me!’
I looked at his face, the anguish written more clearly upon it than the monk’s script in the books in the library. I had not liked the old king when he was alive. I liked him even less now. ‘I am sorry, my lord. Of course it wounds you.’
‘You believe me?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ I wondered if I should tell him that I had talked to a ghost myself last night. But Prince Hamlet might not approve of my talking to his father’s enemy, even though he was dead. ‘Your father must be vexed for you, my lord, to see his son’s inheritance so delayed.’
Hamlet gazed back in the direction of the palace, almost as if he might see his father’s ghost hovering against the whiteness of the snow.
‘For me? No, my father’s ghost did not speak of me, except to lay me with the duty of a son.’ Hamlet looked at me again, his eyes as bleak as a lump of coal. ‘My father told me he was murdered.’
Chapter 9
There was a river on our estate, which ran smooth and gentle till it passed a giant rock. And then it fell, swift and unexpected; no more a river but an abyss of mist. I felt I had fallen down that abyss now.
Hamlet had faced his father’s death, his mother’s betrayal, losing his crown to the uncle who shared his mother’s bed. With much prompting from me, he was putting these things behind him. But his father’s murder …
‘But how could your father have been murdered, my lord? The whole court saw him lie in state. I swear to you he had no wound on him, no bruise or cut.’
‘He died of poison,’ Hamlet said abruptly.
I shook my head. ‘My lord, I dined with the king and queen that day. Your father ate what we all ate, drank from the jug that my father drank from too. Who could have poisoned him? How?’
‘My uncle. Who else?’ The bitterness in his voice could have shredded bark. ‘My gracious uncle poured poison in my father’s ear as he lay sleeping in the garden.’
Poison in the king’s ear? I stared at him. It seemed more impossible than any story I had read in the library’s books. Men died from the thrust of a spear, or a boar’s tusks, or, yes, from poison in their food or drink. But in an ear? It was the stupidest way of poisoning someone I had ever heard of. How could Lord Claudius have known it would work?
‘But … that is impossible, my lord.’
‘You do not think my uncle capable of murder? Such a villain, a smiling damned villain? You do not think a man can smile and smile and still be a villain?’
I almost expected the snow to steam around us at his heat.
‘Is it impossible that my mother could marry her own brother-in-law, all for incestuous lust?’ His eyes burned now. ‘You think that not possible as well?’
‘Please, my lord …’ I put my hand on his arm to quiet him.
The plot was too incredible to be true. Poison in an ear? And in the royal garden? What if a servant had looked out the door? Or a watchman had looked down from a tower? What excuse could Lord Claudius have given for pouring something into his brother’s ear? Why not just slip mandrake into his wine, like those murderous Italian princes and princesses my father talked about?
I tried to work it out — sensibly, as my father’s daughter should, not wild-eyed like this poor prince. Yes, I believed King Claudius capable of murder; just as his brother, Hamlet’s own father, had cheated a king of his rightful kingdom. Neither were good men. But if Claudius had poured poison in the king’s ear while he was sleeping, how did the ghost of the king know? He had been asleep. Did a ghost find out how he had died after his death?
And even if he did … must a ghost tell the truth? I would not trust the old king to tell the truth about the colour of his stockings. Hamlet spoke of his father as having every virtue, and his mother as ruled only by her passions. But Queen Gertrude cared more for the kingdom than did either the old king or his brother. I might not know much about poison, or the ways of ghosts, but I did know the queen. It was not incestuous lust I had seen in her eyes, but love, and hope. And a priest had married them, just as that English king had married his dead brother’s wife.
‘Your mother deserves some happiness,’ I ventured.
‘Happy! Oh, happy harpy, steeped in the whorish sweat of her unseemly bed.’
I flushed at the image. Hamlet seemed more upset by his mother’s marriage than the loss of the kingdom or his father’s murder.
I stepped back, pulling my hand away. ‘My lord …’
He put his hands up to his face. They trembled as he pressed them to his eyes. ‘The times are out of joint. Oh, cursed spite that ever I was sent to set them right.’
What had that ghost of bitterness and malice done to him? How could a father do this to his son?
‘I have a plan,’ he whispered.
‘You won’t tell everyone that your father’s ghost told you he was murdered by his brother?’ I asked anxiously.
No one would believe him, I thought. Not such a wild tale about poison in the king’s ear. And even if people thought King Claudius was capable of murder — for, like me, they knew both men far better than this prince did — they would want to leave things as they were, at least for now, with Fortinbras’s army still close enough to rampage across the land.
‘The people will not support you till they know you,’ I reminded him.
‘I know. Wise Ophelia, is it a
ny wonder that I love you?’ He tried to smile at me, but it was as crooked as Yorick’s back. ‘No, I have another plan.’
His voice was too eager, excitement lurching out of sorrow. His eyes glittered now, like ice crystals in the trees. He was like a small boat, wind-tossed far from its harbour. I was anchored by a loving father, who was also father to the entire kingdom as its lord chancellor, and by a good brother. And a queen who treated me almost as a daughter.
I stepped close to him and took his hand again. ‘Hamlet, please, be calm.’ In my distress, I forgot to call him prince. ‘It will all come right. The most important thing is that one day you will be king, no matter how your father died.’
‘No! I am called to do a son’s duty. “Remember me!” my father cried. How can I do nothing, and still live? I must wreak vengeance for him. But how can I prove a crime that no one saw?’ He covered his face with his hands again. His words became sobs. ‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, or that the Almighty had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter.’
I stared at him, aghast. I had never realised the old king’s true evil until now. What father would give his son such a burden that he’d rather die than carry it? Death did not make a bad man good. The king’s ghost lied, I thought. He is as malicious dead as he was when he was alive. He hates that another should wear a crown, just as he envied King Fortinbras and stole his kingdom from him. And his son is the only tool he has for his revenge.
‘Hamlet,’ I began, but I had no words to comfort him.
I tugged at his hands. He dropped them from his face, and stared at me. His skin looked as white as the stream’s ice.
‘I must make my uncle admit his guilt.’ His whisper was hoarse with anguish. ‘But you must tell no one. No one! You must promise!’
‘Of course I promise.’
Ophelia Page 6