‘Old friends from his childhood. The king has called them here.’
My hope walked out of the room. These so-called friends would be allies of the king. My father was still talking, as if puzzling the matter out. He too suspected Hamlet’s madness did not spring only from lost love. Love may have fanned the fire, but it had not lit the flames.
‘I heard him speak with all good accent and discretion due a prince to a group of players come to Elsinore.’ Father’s voice was careful.
‘Players?’
‘Actors. A travelling troupe. He knew them at Wittenberg, and bade me see them well-bestowed and comfortable. A princely act. And yet,’ Father shook his head, ‘when he had the master player speak a speech, he lost his colour. I saw tears in his eyes.’
‘What was the speech?’ I asked quietly.
‘A matter most properly said, with noble words, concerning the revered ancient Priam, slain most treacherously by Pyrrhus. The part that moved him was when Hecuba, Priam’s wife, comes upon her husband’s body as Pyrrhus hacks at it with his sword.’ Father shrugged. ‘What is he to Hecuba, or Hecuba to him, that he should weep for her? And yet the prince said …’ Father frowned. ‘He said his madness is only north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, he knows a hawk from a handsaw. Sometimes I think that though it be madness, there may be method in it. Their Majesties must be sure that this sad feeling comes from love of you, not from … other causes.’
I nodded. A prince who was mad from righteous anger at having lost his throne might try to raise an army. It would be a hopeless cause, unless he had some of the great houses at his side, but still dangerous — for both Their Majesties and for the realm.
‘How can they tell what has caused his … madness?’ It was hard for me even to say the word.
My father stood. ‘You must come to the palace. Sit in the hall reading. We will watch from behind the tapestries to see what Prince Hamlet says to you.’
I sat silent. Was this a trap? Was the king trying to make my father a witness should Hamlet speak treason? If Hamlet claimed the king had married adulterously, much less murdered his brother, the king could have him executed.
I thought of Hamlet’s head laid on the block, the axeman’s sword slashing down. Three years ago, the old king had had a lord executed just for singing a song when he was drunk about a man who cheated another of his lands. The head had stood on a pike all summer for the crows to eat; and its bare skull had watched us all the winter.
I shivered. A daughter must do her father’s will. A subject must obey her king and queen. At least if I went to the palace, I could see Hamlet, speak to him. Perhaps undo some of the harm I had caused. I could make sure I stopped him saying anything treasonous.
I nodded. ‘I will do your bidding.’
Chapter 13
I had Gerda dress me carefully: a blue silk petticoat, so dark it might almost be mourning, pale blue sleeves and overskirt. No jewellery except the locket — against the cloth of my dress this time, so Hamlet would see it, would understand that by wearing it I declared he was still next to my heart.
I walked with Father across the courtyard. No connecting door and passage today. The world should see me come to the palace. Did I imagine people pointing, whispering? ‘See how her father makes sure she doesn’t stray today,’ they’d say. I looked straight ahead.
Over the drawbridge we went, and into the great hall. Servants bowed, as they had always done. At least there were no whispers — or not till we had passed.
Up the stairs, past the petitioners waiting to see Their Majesties, and into the receiving room. The king and queen sat side by side on their thrones. Lady Annika, Lady Hilda and Lady Anna sat on their stools as usual. The embroidered whiskers of Lady Annika’s hound were still unfinished. Did I imagine a faint smile as she saw me? But if there was a smile of welcome, it vanished almost immediately. She bent her head again to her embroidery.
The king and queen made no sign they had noticed us. We stood while they considered petitions from two farmers arguing about who should have the water from a stream: he who owned the land where the spring rose from the ground; or he who owned the land the water flowed across — except his neighbour had diverted it all to clean his cow byre. It seemed such a simple matter, too easily solved to bother a king. But I knew from my father that a ruler’s days were made up of such small things.
The king looked bored. I wondered how long he would bother to consider affairs of state like these. The old king had mostly left them to my father.
King Claudius waved a hand wearily at the two farmers standing so earnestly in their cleaned leathers and work boots. ‘Gertrude? What do you say?’
The queen smiled at the men. ‘With your permission, my lord, I give this judgment. That the owner of the spring shall take no more than half the water at any one time, and his neighbour shall have access to the other half. And he who took the water and left his neighbour with none shall give a dinner which both families will attend. There will be ale, and dancing, and both shall shake the hand of friendship across the table.’
The farmers bowed. Neither looked especially happy, but not unhappy either. The judgment, perhaps, would work.
‘Well thought,’ muttered Father. ‘Her Majesty has a man’s mind along with the dignity of a queen.’
The queen caught my father’s eye. She whispered to the king, who stood.
‘We will hear the other petitioners anon,’ he said. ‘Chancellor, will you and your daughter walk with us?’
I curtseyed deeply as they approached. How would the queen treat me with the whole court looking on? To my relief, I saw her hand extended. I kissed it as I stood up.
‘We have missed you, child,’ she said.
I glanced at her, and saw that she knew my relief. I had been afraid of her anger — anger that Hamlet was distraught because of me; or that a lady of hers had risked her reputation, and with her son too.
Once again, I almost loved her. I looked at her, tall and gracious, her hand now on King Claudius’s arm. Impossible that she could have been part of a plot to pour poison in her husband’s ear; that she could take her son’s kingdom and give it to his uncle simply for lust. This was a good woman, who acted from good motives. And yet her actions had still lost her son his throne, and possibly his mind.
We walked behind Their Majesties, down a corridor. I did not ask where we were going. At last, the footmen opened the doors into the library.
I glanced around; my friends, the books, gazed back at me. I had missed them, even more than I had missed Her Majesty’s favour and the world outside our house.
Two young men stood as we entered, then bowed low. They were Hamlet’s age, dressed in what had been high fashion five years ago. Now, their shoes were too long, their hats the wrong shape, one in too bright a yellow, the other in clashing pinks.
‘Good Rosencrantz, kind Guildenstern,’ murmured the queen.
The king beckoned them. ‘You have seen Prince Hamlet?’
‘We have, Your Majesty,’ said the one in pink, bowing again so the feather in his hat scraped the floor.
‘And can you get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating all his days with dangerous lunacy?’
Dangerous indeed, I thought. If they say he is dangerous, he will be locked up; not just his kingdom lost, but all his world.
‘He does confess he feels himself distracted,’ said the one in yellow. ‘But from what cause he will not speak.’
‘He stays away from us,’ said the one in pink. He sounded affronted. ‘And with a crafty madness keeps aloof when we would bring on him some confession of his true state.’
Spoken in true courtly flowery fashion, I thought, like a dog licking the king’s boots. No wonder Hamlet would have none of these friends.
‘Did he receive you well?’ asked the queen quietly.
‘Most like a gentleman,’ said the one in yellow.
‘But with much forcing of his disposition,’ said the one
in pink.
‘Niggard of question; but of our demands, most free in his reply,’ said Yellow.
‘Did you see him with any … pastime?’ asked the queen.
I looked at her sharply. Was she wondering if Hamlet was, after all, sounding out the loyalty of other lords?
Yellow smiled, and nodded. ‘Madam, he has ordered certain players to put on a play for him tonight.’
My father stepped forward. ‘It is most true. And he beseeched me to entreat Your Majesties to hear and see it.’
King Claudius smiled. I thought I saw a tinge of relief too.
‘With all my heart,’ he said. ‘It makes me most content to hear this. Good gentlemen, drive him on to these delights.’
I was relieved too. There could be no harm in a play. And it might remind Hamlet of Wittenberg and his contentment there.
Pink and Yellow bowed so low they might have swept the palace floor.
‘We shall, my lord,’ said Yellow.
They left, and the king turned to his wife. ‘Sweet Gertrude, leave us too. We have sent for Hamlet. Lady Ophelia’s father and I will wait here, hidden, so we may judge if his affliction comes from love.’
The queen inclined her head. ‘I shall obey you.’ She held out her hand for me to kiss, as if there had been no awkwardness between us. ‘And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauty be the happy cause of Hamlet’s wildness.’
I looked at her doubtfully.
She smiled at me. A true smile. ‘I hope your virtues will bring him to his former way, to both your honours.’
I curtseyed again. ‘Madam, I wish it may.’
My heart burned. ‘To both your honours’ — what did she mean? Was she suggesting that if I could soothe Hamlet out of madness, she might allow our marriage? I tried to stop my thoughts dancing with the moonbeams. Just speak to him, I told myself. Comfort him. Make sure he says nothing that is treasonous.
I thrust away the image of the rotting skull on the pike. I would not see Hamlet there, traitor’s food for crows.
My father talked. I didn’t listen. I took a book, any book, from the far shelves.
The library doors opened. I stood back, in the shadows. The king and my father slipped behind a tapestry hanging on the wall.
Hamlet was dressed in black again. This time his shirt was buttoned, his stockings up, but he wore no hat. His hair had not been attended to since I had seen him last. It looked rough as a rat’s nest.
I had hoped Hamlet would look across the library and see me. But he crossed to the window and stared out. ‘To be, or not to be — that is the question,’ he murmured to the clouds. He shook his head. ‘Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them?’
I froze. Was Hamlet talking about an uprising against the king? I had to stop him. I stepped forward as he continued his conversation with the sky.
‘To die: to sleep, no more; to end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ He closed his eyes, as if he could feel that final sleep already. ‘To die, to sleep …’
I stopped as suddenly as if a tree root had snaked up and bound me to the floor. Hamlet spoke of suicide, not rebellion. Was this the man I had loved? I ached with pity for him.
‘To sleep: perchance to dream.’ Hamlet grimaced. ‘Yes, there’s the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Why else bear the horror of so long a life? Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s humiliation, the pangs of despised love, when he himself might his final end make with a bare bodkin?’
I clutched my book to me. I could not bear to hear him talk of killing himself with a dagger. But his anguish so filled the room I could not move.
‘Who would bear this load, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but for the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from where no traveller returns?’ He shook his head at the sky. ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is made sallow with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment turn awry, and lose the name of action.’
Enterprises of great pith and moment — did he mean armed rebellion? I did not know. Who could pluck sense from that great flow of words? But I could not risk what he might say next. My feet found strength and I stepped forward.
He turned, and saw me. I hoped he would come to me. He didn’t. He stood by the window, its light so bright it was hard to read his face.
‘Soft you now,’ he said quietly. ‘The fair Ophelia.’ His voice grew bitter. ‘Nymph, in thy prayers be all my sins remembered.’
I tried to keep my voice steady, tried not to look at the tapestry where my father and the king hid. ‘Good my lord, how has your honour been this many a day?’
He gave a slight bow, as if we were strangers. ‘I humbly thank you. I am well, well, well.’
I touched the locket at my heart. ‘My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to return. I pray you, will you take them now?’
He turned his back to me and stared out the window. ‘No, not I. I never gave you aught.’
Words came to me then; courtly words, words you should say to a prince, especially when your father and a king are listening. ‘My honoured lord, you know right well you did, and with them words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich.’
He heard the sincerity in my voice. His face softened.
I tried to smile at him. ‘Their perfume lost, take these again; for to the noble mind, rich gifts are poor when givers prove unkind.’ I fumbled at the locket and held it out to him. ‘There, my lord.’
He almost smiled as he stepped towards me.
A rat scratched at the skirting board. No, not a rat — a man’s dagger, rubbing against the wall. My eyes darted to the tapestry where Father and the king hid.
Hamlet followed my glance. Saw the tapestry bulge, just for a moment, with a man’s shape. He looked back at me, his face suddenly midwinter. ‘Ha! Are you honest?’
I hesitated. If I told him openly that the king was behind the tapestry, I would be guilty of treason too. ‘My lord?’
‘Are you fair?’
‘What means your lordship?’ I looked at him imploringly, begging him silently not to betray us both.
‘That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.’
I clutched my book in relief. We were back to court speech, playing with words. I could do that too. Safe words, which would not get him killed.
‘Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?’
‘Yes. For beauty will rather transform honesty into a bawd than honesty can make beauty honest too. This was once a paradox, but now we have proof.’
He gazed at me. I bit my lip. He was playing with words indeed, but his meaning was all too clear. Hamlet knew that I was betraying him. My part in this plot had snatched away his last faith in me.
‘I did love you once,’ he said abruptly.
My voice was a butterfly caught in a gale as I answered. ‘Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.’
‘You should not have believed me. A family like mine does not breed truth. I loved you not.’
The old library walls creaked around us, as summer’s sun warmed the stones. Doubt that the sun doth move, I thought, but never doubt I love.
I whispered, ‘I was the more deceived.’
I held my hand out to him again. I tried to make my face say what my voice could not: that I cared for him, would help him, if I could.
He whirled away from me. ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ His voice was harsh, with a depth of bitter rage I had never heard before. ‘Why would you be a breeder of sinners?’
I stared at him, unable to answer.
He grimaced. ‘I am myself indif
ferent honest, yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.’
Something rustled behind me, cloth against cloth. I dared not look around. Was it the king, or my father? Had Hamlet heard it too?
He had. He looked at the tapestry, then at me. ‘Where is your father?’ His voice changed. His speech before seemed aimed as much at the universe as me. This question was soft, and sharp as a rapier.
I hesitated. ‘At home, my lord.’ What else could I say, with Father and the king listening?
He knew I lied. Whatever he had thought of me before, he knew for certain now he couldn’t trust me.
He spoke to the tapestry. ‘Let the doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house!’ he said harshly. And then to me: ‘Farewell.’
‘Oh, help him, sweet heavens!’ I whispered.
Hamlet made towards the door. I thought he would leave me, when he turned again, his face twisted. ‘If you do marry, I give you this plague for your dowry. Even if you are as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, you shall not escape!’
He came towards me so furious I stepped back. I had seen his father strike a serving wench while wearing this same black face of anger. Would Hamlet hit me too?
‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ he repeated. He kept coming, his slow pace more frightening than any rush. ‘Or if you have to marry, marry a fool. Wise men know too well what monsters you make of us.’
I cowered back as he raised his hand. His voice rose to a scream. ‘To a nunnery, go! And quickly too!’
I lifted my arm to stop his blow.
He looked at his hand as if surprised to see it raised, and lowered it. ‘Farewell,’ he said again, and once more turned to go.
I shut my eyes and prayed aloud. ‘Oh, heavenly powers, restore him!’
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