Dating Hamlet

  “That, love, I could not bear. Do not trouble thyself with thoughts of Norway. I am assured by my father’s advisers that ’twill not amount to much.”

  He kisses my forehead, then looks to the clouded sun, and finds the hour growing late. He stands, brushes the dry grass from his tunic and hose, then helps me to my feet.

  “You know what you are to do now?”

  “I do, sir,” I answer. “But I would linger here a moment to gather my thoughts and prepare for this role. You will find me in the castle anon. And ready.”

  Hamlet nods, stuffing the parchment into my palm. He places a kiss upon my mouth, then whispers in my ear:

  “Days hence, together we shall confess these necessary sins.

  Let madness now protect this vengeful Prince. So it begins.”

  When he is gone, I remain beside the stream for a time, enjoying the crispness of the breeze and the memories that accompany it. The stream glistens; farther down it swells to become a crystalline pool, surprisingly wide, dangerously deep, in which my mother taught me to swim when I was but four in years. We always swam in secret, as the old beliefs often cited the ability to float a characteristic of witches. My lady mother found this laughable; it had always seemed to her that the black, leaden soul of a sorceress would surely cause her to sink like a stone rather than float. Buoyancy, she said, was surely more akin to goodness.

  Only Laertes and Anne know that I swim. Not even Hamlet is aware of it.

  There is a cluster of winter flowers growing round a stone near the stream, a type I do not recognize. I collect them, and will consult my volume later for their name.

  At last, I turn to begin the journey back to Elsinore; I take a step … then another … . Then stop, compelled to turn again to face the brook, and beyond.

  He is there, atop the hill, and I see him as clearly as though he were but a foot in front of me.

  The gravedigger.

  And he is singing.

  “Oh, my lord, my lord …”

  My father whirls when I fling myself into his room. I have loosened my hair from its pins, pinched my cheeks to draw a troubled hue, and I breathe deeply in a broken rhythm.

  “I have been so affrighted!”

  “With what, in the name of God?”

  Pressing my palm to my bosom, I tell him that Hamlet came to my room whilst I was sewing. I describe the Prince in a state of near undress, with his shirt open, his stockings falling slack. He was pale, I tell my father, and his knees did knock together as though from fear.

  Polonius leans toward me with his mouth agape, his hands reaching as if for the next word I will add to this ghastly description.

  “Mad for thy love?”

  I am momentarily stunned. That was almost too easy! He is already imagining according to our design.

  “My lord,” I say, with heaving breaths, “I do not know.” Then I add, “But truly I do fear it.”

  “What said he?”

  I close my eyes, as though to remember—this scene that ne’er happened.

  “He took me by the wrist,” I impart, “and held me hard.”

  Dramatically, I lay my arm against my forehead. Polonius gasps at my re-enactment. He is an easy mark!

  “Long stayed he so,” I tell him. “At last … he raised a sigh so piteous and profound that it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being.”

  I describe his departure from my room—Hamlet holding his gaze on me as he made his exit, as though he could not bear to pull his eyes from mine.

  Polonius is in a state. He paces the room, his arms flailing.

  “Come, go with me! I will go seek the King.”

  He catches my arm and tugs, while I pretend a puzzled look.

  “This is the very ecstasy of love!” he cries, then stops and faces me with knitted brow. “What, have you given him any hard words of late?”

  “No, my good lord!” (Such an innocent look I would not have believed I could muster.) “But, as you did command, I did repel his letters and denied his access to me.”

  I hand him the note, which he devours with his eyes, and I can see, even as he reads, that his thoughts pivot on his own significance; he pays no heed to mine.

  My father bids me wait in an empty hall whilst he searches out the King.

  “Pssst.”

  “Anne?”

  She approaches on tiptoe. “I have been listening to Claudius and Gertrude. They converse with fellows of the Prince, friends from his blithe childhood. Mayhap you remember them—Rosey Plants and Gilded Lily.”

  “Do you mean Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?”

  “Yes. It is them. The taller one has lovely curls.”

  “And the shorter?”

  “Nice teeth.”

  “Have they come to mourn the father of their friend? Do they seek to comfort Hamlet in his grief?”

  Anne shakes her head. “They come at the behest of Claudius.”

  “Touching what purpose?”

  “To spy on gentle Hamlet.”

  “Devil take it! The King …”

  “And Queen.”

  “She is in on it as well? Arrggh! She is beyond frailty, then. She is false! She plots against her own son. Have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agreed?”

  “Aye, they have.”

  “The curs! The dogs! Oh, there is a plague of disloyalty upon this castle!” I stamp my foot. “Damn Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to hell! The only benevolence is that their wretched treachery will serve to expedite our efforts in proving the Prince is mad.”

  Anne frowns. “So you are glad for their presence?”

  “Glad that they will corroborate our deception. Furious that they betray Hamlet’s most excellent esteem so easily.”

  “Besides lovely curls and nice teeth,” Anne says, “men have little to recommend them.”

  How to proceed? My brow does crease in thought. “Dear Anne, will you find my love? Will you tell him what you’ve heard regarding his fellows, so that he may behave appropriately when he does meet them?”

  “As you wish, Lia. I shall tell him all I heard.”

  “Godspeed, then.”

  She departs, her slippers scuffing the stones. Then—an approaching commotion. I shield myself round a corner, to bend mine eye upon my father. He makes a windy entrance as he leads the King and Queen, talking—nay, rambling—about Hamlet as he comes!

  “Your noble son,” he states, “is mad.”

  He withdraws the note, Hamlet’s and mine, and reads the words aloud.

  Gertrude hears, transfixed. “Came this from Hamlet to her?” she asks.

  Polonius confirms it, and then I am interrupted from behind by a kiss to my shoulder. I turn to face my love. His hair is tousled—oh, beauteous—and he carries a book.

  “Hush,” I tell him, pointing round to where his mother-aunt and uncle-father endure Polonius’s palaver.

  “Kissing is quiet,” he tells me, placing another on my neck.

  “Hath Anne met with you?” I ask.

  “On the issue of my guests who come as spies? Aye, she has.”

  “You are prepared, then.”

  “As ever I shall be. ’Tis another cut into my heart. Thank God that you exist to mend it.”

  And then Anne comes skidding in, breathless. Her eyes fix Hamlet with a cautious look. “Are you certain, lady, that this man is not genuinely mad?”

  I glance a narrowed gaze at Hamlet, who lifts one shoulder in a gesture so casual I know he’s committed some friendly mischief on Anne.

  “What hath he done, Anne?”

  “Turned cartwheels, for one! Kicking his feet skyward and rolling over himself on his hands. And singing all the while! Wild-eyed and laughing one moment, then sobbing the next.”

  “I thought,” he confesses, shrugging, “that she might be a good one on whom to rehearse my madness.”

  Poor, gullible Anne! Even as she knew the game was afoot, she believed my love was ill. I turn to Hamlet. “You are good.”

&
nbsp; “I am better.” He winks at me, then reaches for Anne’s hand, to which he presses a most courtly kiss. “My dear one, I’ve yet to thank you for the delicious mutton enjoyed at this noon’s dinner. And more thanks come to you for apprising me of the King’s deceitful usage of my friends.” He withdraws his book, which he has tucked beneath his arm, and slaps it softly. “I go now to perform.”

  “Do it well, my lord,” I wish him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALONE IN MY CHAMBER, I EXAMINE THE NEW plants I gathered near the river.

  There is a spiky quality to the leaves, which are a green that falls somewhere between bright and mellow. I brush them against my palm, and wonder what properties they hold.

  I break off one lacy leaf and tear it into pieces, which I sprinkle in a crucible. Then I find my flint, bring forth a small flame, and use a dry twig to ignite the contents of the bowl.

  The smoke rises in whitish whirls, like windblown wisps of fairy hair.

  Sweet, so sweet, this scent. Earth’s aroma, pungent-fresh and woodsy-green, and warm.

  The smoke billows, lifting to caress my face and settle in my hair; it stings my eyes, but only slightly, as tears of gladness might.

  I breathe in deeply as the world wavers.

  Oh, wondrous,

  Oh, wishful,

  Why and wherefore …

  How numb! How filled with feeling, and yet how numb! My fingertips tingle as they gather diamonds from this haze. And then the mist makes shadows of itself, and then again within itself, and there, in the smoke, is a daydream that is not at all a daydream but a figure, aye, a shape—with eyes and lips and fragile chin. And hair, unbound and strung with flowers, flowing as mine flows when the cool stream in summer shimmers round me while I swim …

  Swim …

  Through the smoke,

  Through the sparkling stream,

  To my mother.

  My mother. Who speaks.

  She speaks! With a lonely lilt and yet ethereal joy in her voice. “Ophelia.”

  ’Tis my mother’s saintly spirit! Oh, blessed mercy, can this be so? She extends her pretty arms and smiles.

  I would run to her, but the smoke distorts the room as though I must cross a plain too broad, too narrow, too solid, and too soft.

  “Ophelia …”

  The word enters me at my heart, and I am at once so filled with love and longing that I expect my soul to burst forth from my breast.

  “Lady?” I whisper, then again I part my lips and the word sings itself: “Mother?”

  The apparition nods.

  “Why do you come?”

  The spirit, my mother, steps forward—it is as a sunbeam shimmering on water.

  “Child. Daughter. Woman. You are all of these, and lovely at each.”

  “With all credit gone to you, dear lady. For ’twas you taught me to be who I am, and all who knew you say that I am nothing if not your very image.”

  I feel pride radiate from her lightness, and then sadness intervenes. “I come because Polonius does cause you great pain.”

  In the haze, the hurt comes back—his disregard, his pure indifference.

  “Yes,” I answer on a sob.

  “Hear me, dear one. Listen well. Though I fear what follows may cut as certainly as it cures, I must impart to you a truth—I pray you will find comfort in’t, even as I know it will stun thee.”

  The smoke curls, and for a moment she is gone. But she returns, and her voice carries as clearly as peals of church bells through thin morning air.

  “He is not yours.”

  The figure falters in the mist, and again she is near lost. Light calls upon darkness, and together they churn before my eyes. I reach for my mother; again she speaks.

  “You are not his.”

  “I am not … whose?” I shut my eyes to summon thought. The smoke invades me at every pore, and with it an understanding, a most marvelous reckoning. “Polonius!” I cry. “He is not mine. I am not his!”

  The ghost replies in silence so profound I know there is only truth between us. O in the name of all that is holy, I can scarce contain my relief!

  Polonius.

  Is.

  Not.

  My.

  Father.

  Breath comes up short, and I spin inside myself

  “Sweet, gracious ghost, tell me, please, shall I believe this?”

  Her speech is moonbeams and lark song and stars. “If it heals thee, Ophelia, then, aye, believe it. If it brings thee greater pain, then believe it not—you need not take our secret beyond this mist. You may leave it here to vanish with this sleepy smoke.”

  My eyes flutter. “This smoky sleep …”

  “I would beg your forgiveness,” the spirit says.

  “Forgive thee?” I cry in joyous disbelief “For telling now this secret? Nay, this sudden truth does lift in me bubbles of irreconcilable happiness. For he … is … not … mine!”

  Laughter tumbles forth from me, and I am helpless to resist it. I am grateful and weak with the freedom brought by this news; my senses abandon me until laughter is all there is. Laughter.

  “Oh, if I be unloved, unloved I am by one who hath no reason to love me at all.” I offer my gaze to the apparition. “Tell me, lady, Mother, ghost, and friend, what of Laertes? Does he share this fate, and if he does, do we also share our father?”

  “Aye.”

  “And do I know him?”

  “You will.”

  “Pray, how?”

  “By his singing.”

  And now I hear the voice—a rich and distant manly timbre. The singing wraps around me with the smoke.

  “Am I the child of one who would love me if he knew?”

  “That is most certain.”

  And now the vision ripples in the smoke.

  My chamber door opens and Anne appears; I see her through the shimmering image of the ghost before me.

  “Ophelia …”

  “Ophelia!”

  My mother’s voice is one with Anne’s. Yes, Anne is here. She is beating at the mist with her hands, coughing, throwing back the fur covering at the window.

  “Lia? Wake! Please.”

  I open my eyes to Anne. They sting, and she looks as though she is melting. “Anne?”

  She leans over me.

  “Good lady, do you breathe?”

  I sit up slowly. “Most excellent well,” I tell her through heavy lips. “My head throbs slightly, but …”

  “Lia, there is a most rank odor in here.” She finds the smoldering crucible and dumps its scorched contents from the window.

  “Actually”—I am enjoying the tingling of my fingertips—“I believe I found it … pleasant.”

  “Pleasant? I daresay, Lia, this smoke hath removed you from your mind.”

  “No, friend,” I tell her, looking to the spot where my mother stood. “I daresay it has restored me to my heart.”

  My chamber has been cleared of smoke, and Anne hath rinsed the stale aroma from my hair using water scented with a blend of lemongrass and lavender. I sit beside the fire and coax away the snarls with my fingers.

  “There is news of a play,” Anne tells me. “A troupe arrived not two hours ago, and are meant to perform tomorrow night.”

  “Players!” I grumble. “This castle verily crawls with players, and the King be the worst of them.”

  We are interrupted by a knock, which Anne answers. I am aware of an exchange of whispers.

  “The Prince sends word,” she reports, reaching for my gown. “You will meet him in the outer bailey—now.”

  I spring from my stool to step into the gown’s billowing skirt, and shove my arms into the snug sleeves. Then I pull on my cloak, and away.

  We meet in moonlight’s faint beginnings ’neath an early-evening sky. It is bitter in the bailey shadows where we hide. Hamlet tells me of his meeting with Polonius, how he played at madness so completely that the man did quake within his shoes.

  “Tell me of this discourse,?
?? I demand. “Leave naught to my imagining. I would know every furrow of confusion in his ignoble brow.”

  Hamlet rests his chin upon my hair. “I called him a fishmonger, to start.”

  “Wise of you.”

  “One must always be wise when one is mad.”

  “Go on.”

  “I carried with me a book, and Polonius did ask what I read. I told him, ‘Words, words, words.’”

  “’Twas a silly answer.”

  “Aye, but ’twas a silly question. What else could one read but words?”

  “Think you he’s convinced, then?” I ask.

  “I do.”

  “And what of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Think they too that you are … shall we say, several fathoms shallow of a full moat?”

  Hamlet laughs. “Aye. Methinks they do, though they are uncertain of what causes my mental drought.”

  “Perhaps it shall rain sanity soon,” I tease.

  “But already I am in it too deeply, love. Indeed, I overrun with reason.”

  “Now, what of the play?”

  “The play,” says Hamlet. “’Twill entertain us tomorrow evening. I confess, I’ve altered the production. Know you The Murder of Gonzaga? They will perform it, however, with a change. They will enact the very tale told to me by my father’s ghost.”

  “Ah!” I nod. “You are beyond reasonable, sir, you are brilliant. Art which imitates life shall be the King’s accuser, and upon seeing his crime enacted, foul Claudius will surely recognize that he is known!”

  “It will unsettle him surely, mayhap extract from him a full admission.”

  “You are shrewd, sweet Hamlet,” I whisper, running my palm o’er the roughness of his cheek. “Yes. The play will be the very thing, wherein you shall expose and catch the conscience of the King!”

  “That, my darling one,” he whispers, drawing my face toward his, “is precisely how I said it.”

  Next morning, I am awakened harshly by Polonius.

  “Up, woman. Your lord has use for you.”

  I stumble, for sleep still floats itself across the surface of my understanding. My mouth is dry, my eyes do battle with the light of day. Cool air ripples along the flesh beneath my flannel gown, and I shiver. “What do you wish of me?”