Hamlet: a novel Part 10

Laertes: "So you'll do nothing else for her?"

Priest: "We would be in savage breach of the church's rules to say prayers over the grave. Such a privilege is for those who have departed their lives in peace."

Laertes: "Let me tell you this, you sour and miserable minister of G.o.d: plant her fair and uncorrupted body in the earth and watch the violets grow from her. My sister shall be an angel ministering to others while you lie howling in h.e.l.l."

Slow fear had been growing inside Hamlet while the two men were talking. Now the fear flowered into a garden of huge and terrifying cactus plants. Each plant shouted the name "Ophelia" at him. The prince tore at his throat as if to rip out every word he had ever said to his beloved.

The queen was already scattering flowers over the coffin, which had been lowered into its home in indecent haste. "Sweets to the sweet," she crooned. "I thought I would have been weaving flowers for your wedding to my son, not throwing them in your grave."

Laertes and the priest had advanced toward them. Laertes, his temper already stirred by the priest's churlish words, came to the boil at the mention of Hamlet. Springing forward, in a voice barely recognizable, he cried, "A hundred curses on that miserable name, the one who sent my sister mad. Ophelia, I cannot let them cover you in earth."

Before anyone realized his intention, he leaped straight into the grave. A cracking noise gave those gathered around the pit the terrible thought that he might have burst the coffin, but it was not that, just the impact of his feet and some falling rocks on the wood. "Bury me with her," he sobbed. "Please! Pile the earth on both of us."

Hamlet began to advance from the shadows. He was deaf and blind to the feelings of Laertes. He could think of nothing but his own despair. "Who has grief like I do?" he mumbled. Then, louder, "Who is the one who stops the stars in their tracks with his grief?" Then, louder again, almost shouting, "Who is the one whose grief freezes the sun itself?" And at full volume, facing them all, the shocked bystanders and the incredulous king and queen, he answered his own question. "It is I, Hamlet the Dane."

With a flying leap, he too jumped into the grave, almost landing on Laertes. "The devil take your soul!" shouted the aggrieved brother, and threw himself at his childhood friend. Frantically, they wrestled. Above them circled the helpless, frightened officials, bleating and protesting. In the pit the two men shook and rattled each other, searching for a good grip, but each unable to get one. "Separate them, d.a.m.n you!" the king roared at his servants. "Separate them!"

One of the footmen, afraid to touch the prince, but more afraid of the king's wrath, jumped down and pulled the two apart, managing to hold both of the sweating, staring men. Only when they were calmer did the servant allow them to climb out of the grave. Even then, Hamlet, spoiling for a proper fight, could not hold his tongue. From the top of the mound, on all fours, spitting like a cat, he snarled at Laertes, "If I have to do battle with you a thousand times to prove my point, I'll do it."

The queen, unwisely, asked, "But to prove what point, my dear Hamlet?"

"That I loved Ophelia! Fifty thousand brothers, with all the love they can summon, would not equal my love for her. Ophelia, Ophelia."

The king stepped across the corner of the grave to stop the enraged Laertes from springing at Hamlet. "He is mad, Laertes; you know that. Take no notice of him."

"Hamlet, you must stop this!" Gertrude begged.

But Hamlet, torn apart by shock and sadness, hardly heard them. "Show me what you would do for her!" he cried to Laertes, but almost as if to himself. He sank back onto his haunches. "Would you weep, fight, fast? Would you tear yourself to pieces? Would you drink vinegar? Would you eat scorpions? I would. Do you come here to whine? To outdo me by jumping into her grave? Do you want to be buried with her? Well, so too I, all of these. And if you tell them to build a hill over the grave you share with her, then I'll tell them to put a million acres of earth on her and me, and then another and then another, until they have built a mountain like the world has never seen before. A mountain that touches the sun." He shook his head and sobbed bitter, dry sobs.

The onlookers were standing well back, alarmed by his ranting. Many had never seen him like this. "Please, this is nothing. He is upset," the queen told them. "Soon he will calm down. Please."

Laertes, still blocked by Claudius, went to speak, but the raised finger of his monarch stopped him. Not daring even now to flout his commander-in-chief, he stayed silent, trembling with feeling. "Your time will come," the king whispered to him. "Not now. Not now."

Hamlet turned to leave the awful place. As he went, he snarled back at Laertes, "Not even Hercules could stop a cat from meowing or a dog from barking. Believe me, this cat will meow and this dog will have his day."

He sprang from the mound and ran away into the mist, into the heart of the cemetery.

Somehow all who lived or worked at Elsinore knew that the day had come. Everyone in Denmark seemed to know it. The wolves loping through forest grinned harder, bared their teeth wider. Cats uncurled, spat at their owners, ran away to cellars, and made nests behind bags of potatoes, yet gave birth to no kittens. The milk of goats curdled, or tasted like vinegar.

Brothers and sisters went away from their parents and fought with quiet ferocity, with intent murderous but mute. In Clennstein a baby vomited and died.

Thunder rolled in from the north, and the rain slashed across the sky. The wind blew so cold that nothing could keep it out. None went outside except those who were compelled to do so, and they cursed and complained at the snow and the ice and their skimpy clothing. In the castle the baker slapped his apprentice a dozen times before he had even lit the oven. When the bread refused to rise, he threw a knife at the boy and called him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, called his own sister's son a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The cooks went sullenly about their work, thinking of nothing but s.e.x and hangovers and their hateful jobs. In the chambers and bedrooms the maids shook out blankets and hung clothes, but today everything seemed bespattered and stained. They grimaced as they took sheets away, cringed at the rats creeping through cupboards, moaned with each gust of wind.

Only Garath the gardener sucked on his pipe and said nothing. There were no more strange deaths in his domain these days. No more goslings slung against walls and left to die. No more stabbings under the full moon. Garath was coming to the end of his days, and his secrets would die with him.

Inside the king's favorite conference room, the n.o.ble Majesty of Denmark sat locked together with Laertes. He and Claudius whispered into each other's beards, telling stories of past treasons and present hates. They stroked as fondly as lovers while they inseminated each other with plots. For a week now they had swapped a.s.surances of malice. Poisoning the air with their fetid breath and rotten words, they gave birth to the plot.

And now it was time.

Hamlet leaned against a corner wall at the west of the parapet, hugging himself with both arms. The wind was democratic: it blew as keenly into his face as into any other's. The snow stung his eyes and melted on his cheeks till it looked like tears. The guards watched him crossly: they were always suspicious that he was there to spy on them. Because of him, they had to patrol the walls more a.s.siduously, they had to leave their cold sentry boxes for the colder walls. Because of his brooding presence, they had to peer into the driving sleet until their faces blistered. The news of his return would once have filled them with joy, but now it gave them a sense of foreboding. They paid him homage when they saw him, but they did their best to linger and stamp their feet at a safe distance along the parapet.

Horatio, however, sought him out and, as friends do, found him. They hugged joyfully. The wind could find no c.h.i.n.k in their friends.h.i.+p. Seeing them locked together, an observer from far off might have thought he was looking at a new species of bear. Both were dressed in green jackets and black pants. Horatio wore a brown scarf and white hat; Hamlet wore a deep red scarf and was bare-headed. Against the gray stone wall they stood out: they were alive.

"Welcome back," Horatio said when the hug was done. "In spite of the circ.u.mstances, I welcome you back to Elsinore."

"Elsinore. Or else I snore. Or else I sleep. I have done too much sleeping, Horatio. We have all done too much of that. I am done with sleeping."

"Hamlet, a man who does not sleep must die."

"And a man who dies does nothing but sleep. Away with sleep, I say. If the king had his way, I would be asleep now, and a long sleep it would be."

Horatio stirred, and checked that his collar was high around his neck, keeping out the bitter cold. He was afraid that the prince might again say dangerous words, voice dangerous thoughts.

"Look there at what you see, Horatio." Hamlet threw his right arm out to embrace the view of the graveyard, the river, Clennstein, the plains, and the forest. Fields formed a chessboard with many shades of black, and a white road wound its way down the valley like a ghostly snake. "It is worth keeping the eyes open for that."

"Indeed. It is your home. One day, dei volentes, it will be your kingdom."

"Do you want to hear what happened to me? Why I am back in Denmark instead of arriving in England?"

"Yes, of course."

"I acted rashly, Horatio. I felt a rash and I scratched it. And sometimes when we act rudely and quickly, without thinking, it works out for the best. And do you know what that tells me?"

"No."

"It tells me that an energy carves out our futures for us, and although we take a hammer and chisel and try to reshape them, we do so without effect."

"'There's a divinity that shapes our ends,'" Horatio muttered, "'rough-hew them how we will.'"

Hamlet looked at him with surprise and pleasure. "Yes, that's it! Where did you get that from?"

"I don't know. I read it somewhere."

"I'd like to get that book."

He said nothing more for several minutes, until Horatio dared to ask, "You were saying that you acted rashly, and it worked out for the best?"

"Yes." Hamlet's tone became matter-of-fact. "On the boat for England I could not sleep. My heart was in a state of civil war. Something about the two people who accompanied me, and their dealings with my n.o.ble stepfather, added to my chaos. In the middle of the night I went to the cabin of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I took the letters they carried from Claudius. I went back to my cabin and broke open the seal and read the contents. And what did I find, Horatio?" He gave a nervous laugh. "Why, a request to have my head struck from my shoulders by his English friends. By the king's friends."

Horatio stood and took several agitated paces toward the other side of the parapet, away from his prince and friend. "Hamlet, is such infamy possible?"

Hamlet gazed steadily at him until Horatio realized he was not going to get an answer to his question. He asked, "What did you do then?"

"I love certainty," the young prince replied almost without blinking. "When I am certain of my ground, I build what I need and what is right. I wrote a new letter to England, a fine letter, pretending to be from the king, asking a favor: that as England was a friend of Denmark, so she would do us a great service by putting the carriers of my letter to death."

Horatio gulped. This was a resolute prince indeed. This is a man I could follow into battle, he thought. But then, almost as quickly, came a second thought: Why did he have to get the English to do the killing for him? Out loud, he said, "How did you seal it?"

"I have the seal of my late father. It so resembles that of my uncle that no one would notice the difference."

"And so," said Horatio slowly, trying to adjust to a new world without these two young aesthetes whom he had known all their lives. He remembered his father saying that they would come to no good. It seemed that they were coming to bad, very bad. "And so, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go to their deaths."

"I have no conscience about them. They stepped between two opposing forces, like flies that buzz between the right hand of a man and his left. Now the hands have slapped together.

"Soon the word will come from England that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been splattered like flies. The king will know.

"And in the short time before that happens, the s.p.a.ce is mine. The earth and the sky and this castle are mine. All I regret, apart from my wasted life, is the way I treated Laertes at the cemetery. I lost my senses there, and I am sorry for it. To me, Laertes and I are in the same room, looking at each other in mirrors."

"His grief is great. He has lost his father and his sister, and he believes that you . . ."

"Yes, that I am responsible. I who am irresponsible. But he's right enough, on the face of it. I caused the deaths, in the same way that a Danish archer kills a Norwegian foot soldier, and at that moment neither man thinks of the kings who started the war."

They walked in silence along the parapet until they came at last to shelter in the officers' post.

"There's someone coming," Horatio said.

It was Osric. "Ah, Your Royal Highness, my lord," he said, pulling off his hat and giving an exaggerated bow to Hamlet, and then Horatio. "Here you are. Not easy to find. Well, well. I trust you are both well? Highness, what a terrible homecoming, to hear the sad news in such a way. She was a splendid creature, to be sure, the finest-looking filly in Elsinore."

He seemed nervous, prattling like a child in front of a strict and feared teacher.

"You may put your hat back on your head," Hamlet said. "It belongs there: that is its right and proper place."

"Why, thank you, my lord. It is a cold day. I am most exceedingly grateful."

"Now, there you are wrong," Hamlet said. "It is actually quite warm with this southerly wind."

"Warm? Well, yes, indeed, there is a warm aspect to the wind. Yes, yes, you are right, sir. I have not been out in it long enough to understand how warm it truly is."

"Sultry," Hamlet remarked thoughtfully, gazing around him. A few drops of sleet, almost snow, blew around him. "Very sultry and hot for my complexion."

"It is that, sir; why, for your complexion, yes, yes, I can understand that the sun would burn on such a day. Very sultry, very hot, why, that's true."

He took a confidential step forward and whisked off his hat again. Hamlet coughed discreetly and nodded at the offending item. Osric blushed and restored it to his head. He had been about to speak, but he now had too many issues to deal with. It took him some seconds to remember what he wanted to say.

"The king, His Royal Majesty," he began, and was so moved at the thought of his royal master that he reverently removed his hat again, "has sent me to you . . ."

"The hat," Hamlet said.

"Ah, the hat. The hat? Oh yes, I beg Your Royal Highness's pardon. I am a little overheated."

"Heat? Would you call today hot?"

"Well, well, perhaps not exactly hot, sir, but tending toward heat at times." He wiped his brow.

"The hat," Hamlet reminded him again.

"Ah!" The hat went back on the head, and Osric plunged in again. "The fact is, n.o.ble sir, that the king, His Royal Majesty, has asked me to step in your direction to speak to you, sir, of Laertes. Now, there is n.o.bility, sir, both of you sirs. Laertes is a man who is the very definition of a gentleman. If I were to write a book, and I have sometimes thought that I might or should, if I were to write a book on the makeup of a gentleman, what const.i.tutes a gentleman and so forth, and if I were to write it entirely about Laertes, I would not go very far wrong, insofar as his manners, indeed his manner to all people . . ."

"Well, you do him credit, and he deserves every word you say," Hamlet said. "In fact, to my mind it is almost disrespectful to Laertes to speak of him with your hat upon your head."

Osric jumped as though flicked with a wet towel. "I meant no disrespect, I a.s.sure you, sir," he said with an embarra.s.sed giggle. He swept the hat off and bowed flamboyantly, then in a rush said, "The king has staked six Barbary horses in a bet with Laertes, who has bet six French swords in return. I have been sent here to tell you that."

"Put on your hat," said Hamlet in a kindly tone. "I would not have your ears catch cold."

Osric did so, but now he was getting sulky.

"What kind of swords?" Horatio asked, with the interest of a professional.

Osric doffed his hat again to speak to Horatio. "I know not exactly, my lord, but I warrant they would be of the finest, and I believe they come with girdles and straps and hangers, all in all, sir, a prize worth winning."

He turned to Hamlet and made to speak, but just as he took in breath, Hamlet mouthed the word "hat," and Osric collapsed again.

"Well, I a.s.sume this bet involves the prince," Horatio suggested. "Perhaps you had better tell our royal master how it concerns him."

Now Osric had his cue, and nothing could stop him. He leaned in again, in his confidential way, toward Horatio, whom he felt he could trust. "They were talking, His Royal Majesty and Laertes, about swordsmans.h.i.+p, and of course everyone knows the prowess of Laertes, n.o.ble and starred youth that he is, but the king would have it that you, sir Hamlet, are not to be sneezed at, and so the bet was made. Laertes is certain you cannot get within three hits of him, and so he offers to fight you seven rounds, saying you will not win more than two. In other words, if he beats you by five to two, then the horses are his, but should he only beat you by four to three, then the outcome is the opposite."

"What if Hamlet should beat Laertes by, say, seven to nothing?" Horatio asked.

Osric smiled indulgently and doffed his hat to the prince. "The affair would not proceed past the third round in that eventuality, and of course Laertes would lose his rapiers."

"And what is Laertes' weapon of choice?" asked Hamlet.

"Rapier and dagger."

"That's two, but let it be."

"Will Your Royal Highness accept the challenge?" Osric asked eagerly.

Hamlet thought, but only for a moment. "You may tell the king that I will walk in the great hall in an hour or so. I won't fight with daggers; they are weapons for a.s.sa.s.sins. But if rapiers are brought and the gentleman likes to attend, then I shall do my best to win the king's bet for him."

Osric was enraptured. "How chivalrous!" He held his hat over his heart. "Truly, you and Laertes are well matched. Perfect, sir, perfect. I shall inform His Royal Majesty, if the prince will give me leave to . . . er . . . leave."

"Certainly."

After Osric exited, with more flourishes and bows, Hamlet turned to Horatio. "Who knows what this is about? But it is good, I think. Something may happen or it may not, but at least there is movement."

"You had better be careful of Laertes. I believe he improved greatly whilst in France."

"I've beaten men who have beaten him," Hamlet said excitedly. "You don't realize all the practice I've been having. I've been training hard the last year, with some fine teachers. Prince Heinrich von Bellheim, for one, and Monsieur Paul D'Eglantine. A start of three? I'll win easily."

Horatio smiled. He had never heard Hamlet boast before.

"I think I've been approaching this the wrong way," Hamlet said. "I've been wanting to design the world all over again, to rearrange it according to . . . well, according to the way my father would have wanted it. But I haven't been able to, and that's because I'm not G.o.d. This is better now. This way I don't create a new world; I just tweak it a little. As it flows along, I move a rock or take away a dead branch. I'm not in charge of the world. That was a conceit on my part."

Horatio nodded. He was not entirely sure what Hamlet was talking about, but that was common enough. He appreciated that at least, since his return, the prince seemed rational with him. He suspected no one else saw that side of Hamlet anymore. But this was a new mood now. Hamlet looked absurdly young again. There was a freshness about him, an energy. Something about the bet had excited him. It seemed that the thought of action had tipped him into a new state. The thought of action, there was a funny idea. Didn't they contradict each other, those words: "thought" and "action"?

Horatio smiled to himself. He opened his mouth, but it was Osric who spoke. The foolish young man had returned to the rocky point where they were sheltering from the bitter wind, and was standing in front of them. He held his hat behind his back and spoke with less ceremony. "Your Royal Highness, His Majesty sends me to ask if your pleasure is still to play with Laertes, and whether you will do so now, or whether you need a longer time?"