Ophelia

by Jackie French

  I strode up and down the room, unable to settle. What was Hamlet doing? He had said he must see his mother, but was that all he planned? Would he confront the king before he left for England? Even fight him for the kingdom? Hamlet wore a rapier, like every man of fashion.

  No, King Claudius would not let a fight settle who would win the throne of Denmark. He already had the kingdom. He was an old man too; he would not risk a fight, certainly not against a much younger man. He would call his guards and have Hamlet executed; end the risk like a farmer chopping off a goose’s head.

  Or would he? To openly execute Hamlet now would be admitting his own guilt. Surely Hamlet would have the sense to leave the court for England quickly, as he had planned. To let gossip against the king brew, while he was safely away …

  I shook my head to try to clear it. I could not think here, confined inside the house. It was obvious that Father wasn’t coming straight home. Whatever was happening at the palace, he was part of it. He might even sleep there, as he did some nights when the parliament sat late.

  I made myself wait till all the lights in our house were out. I took a candle and crept to the door to the palace, still in the clothes I had worn to the play. It was a risk, but a slight one. I had never met anyone in my journeys to the tower before. Except, of course, a ghost. With so much happening tonight, I could not risk being found in boy’s clothes. I might need to speak to Father, even to attend the queen.

  I opened the door and peered down the dim corridor. No one.

  I left my candle on the lower steps up to the tower, so it would not blow out, and climbed the rest of the way by starlight. Doubt thou the stars are fire … Oh, Hamlet, I thought. My heart felt ripped to linen shreds.

  The wind moaned around the battlements. It felt strange to be up here in a dress. The wind tugged at my skirts and I had to hold them down, till I realised that no one could see my legs here, except perhaps an owl.

  I sat on the battlements, drawing my skirts around me for warmth. The sea muttered behind me, but I could smell dung heaps and green grass. Yes, I could think up here, with the kingdom stretched before me.

  Hamlet was not mad. He was playing at madness; like the actors played, in a play he had arranged. His wild story was true. King Claudius was guilty. But who else? The queen? No. I knew her too well. She had looked puzzled, not stricken.

  My father? A definite no to that too. Father could never imagine murdering a king. Or that his daughter might dress up as a man to have her freedom for a few hours each night.

  I felt the wind pull and twist at my petticoats, while slapping the waves against the castle walls. The graveyard and royal garden lay dark below me, but I could almost see the far-off forest in the starlight. A thousand blue-black greens touched with gold and silver, winking at the stars until the forest met the sky. On the other side, I could just make out the farms with their earth formed neatly into rectangles, the fields of beet and barley and rye clothing the world, the black splodges of pigsties and dung piles.

  Most ladies of the court held clove-studded oranges to their noses when their litters were carried past a farmer’s pigsty. But I enjoyed the smell. Pigsties meant sausages and hams; they meant red-cheeked children, not starving waifs. Dung heaps stank, but when the dung was spread out on the fields, it made them green.

  Dung heaps were … sensible. Like cheese. Pretending to be mad wasn’t sensible. Denmark’s lords would never accept a madman as their king. Hamlet was a scholar; surely he must know that. But he had pretended madness. Why?

  And suddenly I saw it all, as if daylight speared down onto my tower.

  From the moment he heard that his father had been murdered, Hamlet had known that the king planned to kill him too.

  My advice to make alliances with the lords of court had been most sensible. But it would have killed him. A sensible young prince, the true heir to the throne — especially one married to the lord chancellor’s daughter — would be a threat. One day, King Claudius would offend this lord or that, and they would say, ‘The king dodders. And, after all, he is no true king. He is but a steward for Prince Hamlet.’

  Hamlet had to pretend to be mad with me as well. Anything I repeated to my father or the queen about ghosts and poison in the king’s ear would be dismissed as a madman’s ravings.

  I clutched at my skirts again as the wind tried to carry them away. Claudius had killed once — not a man in battle, not even an enemy, but his own brother and his king. A man who had killed his king and brother would kill his nephew with no more concern than if he slapped a gnat. Hamlet’s pretended madness had saved his life.

  King Claudius would kill me too, if he suspected I was plotting with Hamlet; or even if he simply thought he would be safer with me gone.

  I looked out at the darkness. Where was old King Fortinbras when I needed his advice? But he would not help me now. King Fortinbras might forswear vengeance, but I didn’t think he would help the son of his enemy.

  What could I do? What could any girl do? Only kings and queens had power.

  The wind was sweet, the breath of flowers. Below me in the palace, I heard curses, shouting, a woman’s scream. A servant had dropped a tray, I thought. Broken china, food on the floor. A broken kingdom would be ripe for civil war, or for invasion. Could it be pieced together again?

  I breathed in the scents of grass and ripening cheeses. Men made war. Women made cheese, tended boys who cut their knees, nursed wounded warriors. Perhaps women could mend cracked kingdoms too.

  I must go to the queen. She would be cleft in twain tonight, seeing her husband’s guilt, learning the role she had been fooled to play. She loved her son, and her husband. Perhaps she even loved me too, a little. But she loved another more than any of us. The kingdom. If anyone could untangle the threads of Denmark’s future, it would be the queen.

  I must ask for a private audience with her; no old ladies nodding over their embroidery. Hamlet would not give up his vengeance, nor the king give up his throne. I could see only three possible futures: Hamlet would kill Claudius, or Claudius would kill Hamlet; or both would raise an army and lead the whole kingdom into civil war. It must not happen! The queen and I could prevent it. She could speak to the king, and I to Hamlet.

  Men enjoyed hearing the trumpets calling them to war, fighting with rapiers and spearing deer with lances. Women know the important things: children, cheese, fat pigs and love.

  Suddenly I could see a fourth way. A sensible solution, bringing peace, not clashing swords. Hamlet must go to England, let the talk die down. King Claudius could enjoy some years in the sun. When Hamlet returned in two years, or three, the court’s memory of his madness would be forgotten. King Claudius would abdicate. There would be no accusations of murder; just an organised handover of crown and power. No vengeance, nor justice either. Peace and prosperity instead. Cheese does not care about justice, as long as it is drained and turned. A kingdom too needed care more than justice for its prince and king.

  Queen Gertrude would understand that. And Claudius could not rule without her favour, if she gave it to her son.

  The wind gusted around me, cold and strong, as if trying to blow my thoughts away. The stars twinkled like fire-lit tin. Hamlet still loved me. He would listen to me. Even pretending to be mad, he had sat by me, claiming me before the court. And one day — a peaceful day — King Hamlet and Queen Ophelia might sit side by side on their thrones, all the roses of summer around them, while Gertrude sat with her grandchildren around her knee …

  A cry split the darkness.

  ‘Murder!’

  Chapter 17

  The dream shattered. I gathered my skirts and sprinted down the tower steps. The candle flickered and went out. I smoothed my hair and ran along the privy corridor, then out into a larger one, well-lit.

  I grabbed a serving woman’s arm. ‘What’s happened?’

  The servant pulled away from me and swept her apron over her face. ‘Oh, woe! Woe! Alack, for he is dead!’

&
nbsp; ‘Who is dead? Answer me!’

  Hamlet, I thought. King Claudius has murdered Hamlet. Killed my dreams, my future, my love …

  ‘Lady Ophelia!’ It was Lady Annika’s maid, a quiet woman, sensible. She curtseyed deeply. ‘Her Majesty would speak with you.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said automatically. ‘Please, who is dead?’

  She looked uncomfortable. ‘It is that which the queen wishes to speak to you about, my lady.’

  ‘Is it Prince Hamlet?’ I whispered.

  The maid shook her head, obviously surprised at the suggestion. ‘No, my lady.’

  ‘The king?’ How would the lords react if Hamlet had killed the king? Would they support him? Or execute him?

  ‘Not His Majesty either, my lady.’

  I felt my heart unclench a little.

  ‘If your ladyship will come?’

  I swept along the corridor, hoping my hair was not too out of order. Where there were men and swords and spirits, there would be murder. Some guard with a hip flask had stabbed another. The queen wished her ladies to stay with her while she bade the servants to go about their work, the court to go to bed.

  I almost believed it.

  I waited while the maid opened the door to the queen’s apartments. ‘My Lady Ophelia,’ she announced. I sank into a curtsey, glad I still wore my finery.

  ‘Dear child.’ The queen came towards me from the cluster of her maids and ladies, and took my hand to raise me up. Her own hands were cold. ‘Sit by the fire.’

  She led me to her own chair. ‘Sit,’ she repeated. ‘Lady Hilda, the posset.’

  I took the goblet, felt its warmth on my wind-cold hands. Why did I need a posset?

  The maids left suddenly, without instruction, as if the tide had gone out, leaving Lady Annika dozing on a cushion next to the flames, and Lady Hilda and Lady Anna looking at me with expressions I could not read. Did not want to read …

  ‘I have news for you.’ The queen took my hand again. ‘Ill news, which cannot be kept in a closet till we are ready. Ophelia, your gentle father has been killed.’

  ‘Father?’ I stared at her. Other men died in violence, but not Father. Father was dry and sober, with his accounts and his advice. Men like my father died as old bones in their beds. ‘How? Why?’

  ‘An accident. It was an accident.’ The queen’s voice trembled slightly.

  I sensed Lady Annika glance at us, but when I looked over at her, her eyes were shut.

  ‘What accident?’ Had Father fallen down the stairs? But Father was cautious; he never drank too much, always held the balustrade as he descended the staircase.

  The queen hadn’t cried when the old king died. I had never seen her cry. But her face was wet now. ‘It was my son. My poor, mad son, our Hamlet. He thought he heard a rat behind the tapestry. He stabbed it with his sword.’ Queen Gertrude shut her eyes briefly, as if in pain, then added, ‘But it was your father.’

  Father? Gone? My first thought was of cheese. Goat’s cheeses, made from milk simmered till it was as yellow as honey, then drained. We had two score in the cellar, because Father loved them. No one else in the household could stand the smell. Who would eat his cheeses now? Who would wear the cuffs I embroidered for him, almost complete?

  Only then did I think: Father has left me too. Father was the rock that sheltered me; a rock I had dodged around sometimes, never valuing him enough till he was gone. Gone. My brain could not take it in. All my life had been measured in Father’s breakfasts, dinners, mending his linen, hearing his talk about the world of Denmark and beyond.

  Father had so many words. And now just one. Gone.

  I looked at the queen’s hands with their age spots, at my hands, unwrinkled. Questions seeped into my brain. Why had Hamlet used a rapier on a rat? He’d had larger game to hunt tonight. A madman might have done it. But Hamlet was not mad. Was he?

  And what was my father doing behind a tapestry in the queen’s bedroom? Spying on her? Impossible. Spying on Hamlet again? That fitted. But Hamlet could never have mistaken a man’s shape for a rat; my father’s least of all. If Hamlet had thrust his rapier into someone through the tapestry hanging on the wall, he had meant to do it. But there was only one person Hamlet wanted to kill; the man he had glimpsed behind the tapestry in the library.

  Hamlet had tried to kill the king.

  No accident then, no matter what Queen Gertrude told me now. ‘Murder!’ they’d called; not ‘The lord chancellor has been killed by mistake.’ The court believed Hamlet had murdered my father. It had been murder, even if the wrong man had died.

  I kept my voice steady. ‘Where is Prince Hamlet now?’

  ‘Gone to England.’

  ‘What? Already?’

  I felt cold, as if the fire had vanished. Grief for my father shot through me again like ice-melt down the river. Gone. And Hamlet gone too. My brother far away …

  Suddenly a maid was there with a cushioned chair. Queen Gertrude sank into it, next to me. ‘It was an accident,’ she repeated. ‘I saw it and can testify that it was so. But others might think … It was best to get Hamlet away, my dear, till talk dies down. The voyage may soothe his mind too.’

  ‘He … he left willingly?’

  ‘Yes, dear child.’

  There was something in her voice. She spoke the truth, but not all the truth. What was she keeping from me?

  ‘No word to me?’ I whispered.

  ‘My dear, his mind is too disordered. When he is himself again, I am sure he will turn to you. He will love us both again …’ Her voice died away.

  What of me now? I did not say the words aloud, but the queen answered them.

  ‘The king has already sent word to your brother. You must think of us as your parents, until your brother comes.’

  My brother, dear Laertes. He would be head of our house now, lord of our estates. He would direct my life with love and kindness. I shut my eyes in gratitude that I had such a brother, one who had no part in any palace plots.

  ‘My dear?’

  I opened my eyes at the queen’s concern. Did she think I had fainted? I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘Where is Father’s body, madam?’

  ‘It lies in state, within the chapel. Lady Anna will take you there soon.’ She glanced at Lady Anna, who nodded sympathetically.

  The servants will be tidying away all signs of murder, I thought. Changing his clothes, washing off the blood. Neither I nor the court would see my father till he was the lord chancellor again, not a man just slain.

  The door opened. King Claudius strode in.

  I rose and curtseyed, trying to keep the dreadful knowledge from my face. This man had killed his brother; and, somehow, that had led to my father’s death as well.

  ‘Rise, my child.’ The king looked at his wife. ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘I have told her the truth, my lord. That her father was killed by accident. That Prince Hamlet is gone to England. The sea air on the voyage will help him to recover.’

  ‘Yes. It was an accident.’ The king looked at me, his eyes as blank as the inside of a cooking pot.

  He is wondering what Hamlet has told me, I thought. He saw my face when the player king was poisoned on stage. He must be wondering what I will tell the court now. What I might tell my brother.

  I had to leave. Get away from court. Put plots and poisonings behind me. I could do no good here now. If I stayed, Claudius might have me killed.

  ‘I thank Your Majesty for your kindness,’ I said carefully. ‘I beg your permission to return to our estates in the country to wait there for my brother. I … I would like the quiet, to grieve for my father.’

  ‘No, no!’ King Claudius smiled, but those cold eyes stayed watchful. ‘We cannot have you so far from our care, not orphaned as you are. You are ours now, to cherish.’

  I said nothing. What is there to say when a king and queen give an order? I curtseyed again, and let Lady Anna and Lady Hilda lead me from the room.

  I slept at last, an hour
perhaps. I woke as the sun turned the sky grey. The servants were not up. They too, perhaps, had wept late last night. Our house was masterless till Laertes returned. The servants would expect me to sleep late too, but I could not stay in our house, weeping privately as a daughter should. With every glance I expected to see my father there: a gravy stain on his doublet for me to wipe off, calling for extra candles to aid his failing eyesight as he peered at the accounts … Gone. Both of them gone, my father and my lover.

  Sane or mad, Hamlet was beyond my reach. My brother might be weeks away. And I was at the king’s mercy. I couldn’t go to our estates, not against his order. Nor did I dare go up to my tower in daylight.

  But there was somewhere I could go. Somewhere with peace, and beauty. Somewhere that never changed.

  I dressed in a simple shift and took my green cloth cloak. Under its hood I might be a lady or a lady’s maid, or even a tavern-keeper’s wife. I slipped out the servants’ door, then across the drawbridge.

  It was market day in the square. Gentlefolk might sleep until the sun bounced above the horizon, but not farmers and carters. They had been up for hours in the pre-dawn light. The flocks of sheep, the goats and pigs must have been sold earlier so the new owners could get them home by dark. Even the barrels of fish were emptying as other households’ servants bought the week’s provisions.

  I slipped between stalls of red cabbages and vats of spiced herring. A butter-seller held up her wares, a reindeer stamped on each round yellow pat. ‘Sweet butter! New butter!’ Last week I would have stopped to buy some — my father loved fresh butter that tasted of sunlight and green grass after a long winter of eating butter salted and fermented.

  My father. I blinked the tears away.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, then turned at the gates, towards the king’s forest rather than the road. The glade where Hamlet had kissed me would still be there, quiet, unseen by anyone.