“You will follow me now to the great hall,” he orders.
“May I ask the purpose, sir?”
“Prince Hamlet hath been summoned there. You will arrive as well, a seemingly accidental encounter. King Claudius and I will conceal ourselves and observe this planned-chance meeting. From such observance shall we ascertain the extent of Hamlet’s affliction. If love for you hath made him mad, the proof will produce itself there in your troubling presence.”
“Just yesterday you forbade me speak to Hamlet. Now you command me meet him in the hall at dawn!”
“Think not to challenge me. Do as I insist. Now dress!” He turns and makes to leave, then turns again to face me. “Mark me, girl. Do not dream to inform the Prince of this intrigue! You will not send your maid to tell him prior, nor shall you yourself during the course of the confrontation, give any signal with your eyes or lips or hands to warn him that we watch.” He glares at me. “Know, Ophelia, this guilt is yours. ’Tis the fault of your most reckless beauty that Denmark suffers. Your welcome willingness inspired him, and now he finds you unwilling to be welcoming. This confuses his heart and poisons his mind.”
Anger bristles within me. “’Twas you who turned my will unwilling, sir! Must I remind you of that?”
My insolence causes him to bare his teeth. “I discouraged your encouragement, for in my wisdom I knew that what you might do would be his undoing.”
“Had I remained willing,” I mutter, “and done what I would do, his undoing would not be done.”
Polonius looks blank, then sputters, for my words rattle his empty mind. “Curse the day the Prince laid eyes upon you.”
He storms from the room. I pluck a simple gray gown from the back of a chair and slip it over my head, pausing to touch the chain and charm so recently given me by my love. I am not afraid, I am thrilled to the depths of my soul! Another chance to deceive those who have so deceived the Prince.
We join the others: Claudius and Gertrude, their accomplices, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—curly hair and nice teeth but no honor between them. The King and Queen interrogate their spies, who reveal little. Hamlet may be mad; then, mayhap, not; but if so, they’ve concluded nothing of the cause. Claudius bids them continue the search; they agree and are off.
“Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,” says Claudius, and explains the forced encounter that is to come.
I watch the Queen’s eyes whilst she listens, surprised when she turns to me a gentle countenance.
“Ophelia, I hope your virtues will bring Hamlet to his wonted way again, to both your honors.”
I nod, swallowing words I long to say. Would that I could break the spell her husband casts and show to her the wickedness that surrounds this scene. But I cannot, for I’ve only one role to play this morn. “Madam,” I whisper, “I wish it may.”
She takes her leave, and my almost-father gives me my direction.
“Ophelia, walk you here.” He hands to me, of all things, a book of prayers, suggesting that my reading such will give purpose to my being about alone.
Claudius and my father withdraw to witness. In moments, Hamlet draws nigh. I look up from my missal, and the breath is all but gone from my body. He carries his beauty most dangerously this morn—tousled hair and hooded eyes. He approaches as though he sees me not, and speaks aloud to none, to all.
“To be, or not to be—that is the question … .”
His passion draws me in. My eyes are wide, my lips parted and trembling. It is poetry, pure and dark, and deathish. I have never heard such words as these from Hamlet. He speaks a truth, disguised by madness, and together they chill my blood. Has he thought upon this sin before? Has the notion of giving himself over to an always sleep occurred to him before this game? And dare I confess it hath occurred to me? On the day I lost my mother, aye. The gravedigger. Did he sing that day when I returned alone to the freshly scarred earth beneath which my mother lay? I heard him, aye! Did not I wish to follow her on that most mystical journey to anywhere but here? And did my father’s cold and callused hand clamp firmly on my shoulder without ever reaching to wipe a tear?
Hamlet turns to face me, cutting short his speech.
I nod at him. “Good my lord, how does Your Honor for this many a day?” On impulse, I remove the gilt pendant from my throat and hold it out to him. I feel my father’s wicked wonderment, the King’s concern.
“My lord,” I say, effecting a tremble so that the chain sounds a hollow jangle between my fingers. “I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver.” As I extend my hand, the pendant slices a shaft of sunlight, exploding in brightness. “I pray you, now receive them.”
Hamlet gazes at the charm and tosses off a shrug of pure indifference. “No, not I,” he murmurs. “I never gave you aught.”
I widen my eyes, and shake my head. “My honored lord, you know right well you died … .” I press the precious pendant in his palm, and finish firmly. “There, my lord.”
I pray the spies see not the sparks that surely fly at Hamlet’s touch, his chain, our chain, clutched between my hand and his. He does not let go as he frowns hard at me and asks me if I’m honest.
I pretend to be stunned. I know he means two words with one—with “honest” he inquires if I be truthful, and also, more scathingly, if I be chaste. He alone knows the answer to both. I plump my lower lip as though I may begin to weep and respond in a quivering voice:
“My lord?”
“Are you fair?”
“What means Your Lordship?”
And now, with fiery speech, he begins a wordy tempest in which he scolds me for my beauty, and insists there can be no honesty in one so beautiful.
“I did love you once!” he roars.
I stammer in reply, “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.”
Now he begins to pace, a purposeless march around me, so that I must spin on the spot where I stand to keep my eyes on him. One hand is clenched in a fist around the necklace, the other he drags through his hair as he hollers, “You should not have believed me … . I loved you not!”
A wail comes unbidden from my throat. Even in this fantasy I cannot bear to hear it. Tears surprise me, and I bellow in return, “I was the more deceived.”
“Get thee to a nunnery” is his evil command. “Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”
Were I not so schooled upon this task, I would laugh. Ordering me to a convent! I can hear Polonius gasping in the shadows. Hamlet does well enacting madness. And his talk of breeding brings a blush to my cheek, for we at length have talked and dreamed of the children we shall have—sturdy sons for him to spoil, and daughters, all darling, to dote on—as many as the good Lord sees fit to grant us. We have imagined their laughter ringing through the halls of Elsinore, the innocent touch of their sweet lips as they kiss us both good night.
Hamlet strokes his chin, then, counting on his fingers, he lists his faults: “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.”
And here he winks so only I can see! The joke, of course, is that he faults his own imagination. No one has more imagination than this Prince, and herein lies the proof! How gracefully these falsehoods fall from his lips! I conjure a look of utter dismay, covering my mouth with my hand (to keep from grinning), and allow my knees to buckle at the thought of his corruption.
With the spittle spraying from his mouth, he barks, “Where’s your father?”
Hiding ’neath the stairs, I am thinking, but make my voice minuscule, as though his cruelty has stripped me of all esteem. “At home, my lord.”
He shouts some more, ordering the doors shut upon Polonius, and I send up a fraudulent prayer. “Oh, help him, you sweet heavens!”
At last, with fists pounding the atmosphere, he makes a stormy exit, leaving me to close this performance. Seizing the opportunity, I fall to my knees, clutch my heart, and cry out, “Oh, what a no
ble mind is here o’erthrown!” I close my eyes and beat my fists against the stony floor.
When I look up again, I see Hamlet peering from around a corner. He rolls his eyes at me but smiles. I would stick my tongue out at him and remind him of his own theatrics, but he makes a soundless exit when the King approaches.
Polonius drags me upward from the stones.
And then—a sentence handed down upon me far worse than even death: the King declares that Hamlet go to England! My knees buckle now in earnest. When Claudius turns to Polonius to beg his opinion, I summon strength to flee.
Up a winding stair, and fleet across the stony floor to Hamlet’s chamber, to tell him of Claudius’s decree to banish him. We must now speed our plan to action and implicate the King. Surely that will save us.
I am poised to pound upon the door when it swings open.
“Hamlet …”
“Love!” He gathers me in his arms and twirls me. “Were we not most expert at our game? Aye, perhaps you did milk it overmuch at the finale … .”
(He chooses a poor time to be a critic!) “Good my lord, please …”
“And returning my gift, a stroke of pure cunning, that!” He reaches within his shirt to remove the jeweled pendant and replaces it around my neck. “Take care that no one sees it again gracing your gracious form, as it will upset the fragile balance of this plan.”
“Understood, my lord, but, please …”
“Say naught,” he says, then whispers, “We shall talk later, once the play is done. I must go now to meet the players to ensure they do their parts as I imparted.”
With a kiss, he rushes off, leaving me alone to keep my grim news to myself
I take it with me to the stream.
CHAPTER SIX
IT IS AS THOUGH HE KNEW TO EXPECT ME, FOR HE waits at the bank, singing.
The gravedigger. My father.
A great yearning yawns within me at the sight of him. As I approach, I notice that his coat is plain, frayed at the wrists, deeply stained with earth and grass. His hands too seem ingrained with the good brown of fresh dirt. He wears his work upon him, and I admire this. There is nothing ghoulish or macabre in his manner; rather, he has about him a quiet sincerity, a kindness apropos of one who assists others in mourning.
Closer now, I see how very much alike we are. My eyes are surely a gift from him, and the long thin line of my throat indeed resembles his. His hair is the same rich chestnut as Laertes’ hair, and I recognize they have in common a very uncommon squareness of the jaw. Oh, handsome is he!
He sings a ballad I’ve not heard before, as I gather stalks of withered green and slick yellow stems from which I pinch off dead blossoms. Beneath my feet the hedgemaids are crisp, and the rustle they make is a sound like applause.
At last, I speak. “God save you, sir, and a pleasant day to thee.”
The gravedigger, my father, inclines his head. “And to thee, lady.”
“You … knew my mother, I believe.”
“Aye.” He nods again. “Knew her. Loved her.”
His frankness startles me, but only a moment. I bolster my own courage to ask, “Do you know me?”
“You are Ophelia.”
The sound of my name on his lips is a comfort I can not describe! This, I understand, is a most particular piece of eternity we share. His eyes moisten with tears; mine, I am sure, already flow freely, though I am too numb to feel them.
“Shall we walk?” he asks, reaching for my arm.
“Aye.”
The gravedigger, my father, leads me up a winding way to the crest of a small rise I remember all too well, though I have not been back to it near on two years now. It is my mother’s grave, and I am not surprised to see how gently it has been tended.
“Blue vervain,” I remark, brushing my fingers o’er the tips of the tall, slender flowers growing there; the candlelike wands bloom from bottom up, tiny bluish blossoms climbing heavenward like flame.
“’Tis said this flower grew on Mount Calvary,” he says, “and ’twas used to dress the wounds of our Saviour.”
“Yes,” I tell him, nodding. “I’ve heard that. And these”—I crouch low to examine the brilliant red of a Lobelia cardinalis—“they are cardinal flowers, are they not?”
He nods, proudly. “Rare, this time of year especially.”
“Indeed they are.” I palm one graceful petal. “I’ve seen some doing poorly along the water’s edge e’en in midsummer. How is it they flourish here and now?”
“I coax the shoots from pots of soil I keep at home, then bring them to this sacred place and commend them to the earth.”
I sigh. “They will not last, then.”
“Things most rare and beautiful,” he replies, touching the cross that marks my mother’s grave, “are all too often all too brief.”
“Oh!” My hand moves to a cluster of weeds. “Eupatorium purpureum,” I cry, delighted.
“From the Latin,” he says, standing taller, “meaning ‘of a noble father.’”
“Yes, I grow it in my chamber! The weeds are homely but smell sugary when their leaves are crumbled.”
“Your mother, saints rest her, loved the scent, and so I grow them here.” He bends beside me, plucking a pinkish flower. “They yield quite a cogent physic, you know. A medicinal antidote to most any manner of lethal poison.”
I blink in surprise. “I did not know.”
“Good to keep such knowledge handy,” says he, adjusting his ragged cap.
“Verily.” There is a pause. “Good sire, how came you to know my mother? Was she married when you met? Or was it when you were both younger? And why, pray tell, if she loved thee, would she bind herself to such an addle-pated knave as Polonius?”
He chuckles, deep in his throat. “You are a most inquisitive female, you are!”
“But I would know. I must know!”
“So you shall.” The gravedigger’s eyes go distant, and his voice is mild, musical. “We met just days after her father promised her to Polonius. I was, at that time, a traveling player, a minstrel, come to Elsinore with my troupe to entertain the good King Hamlet’s court.” He draws a quivering breath. “She was mayhap the age you are today. I loved her of an instant, and she swore the same feeling for me. But she could not disgrace her family by forsaking her betrothed. She despised him but could not bring dishonor to her family by running off with a mere player.”
“And so?”
“And so … when my fellows departed, I stayed behind, took up a pickax, and commenced digging graves, only to be near her.”
“And you were?”
“Of that,” he says, with a playful pinch to my cheek, “you and your brother are the proof.”
I smile. “I would know where you reside.”
He jerks his thumb toward the far slope of the rise. “I’ve a small stone house at the end of the croft there. You will find it by the smoke that comes from its chimney.”
“And the song that comes through its windows?”
He smiles. “Aye, daughter.”
At this, I fling myself into his arms, and he holds me as though he’s dreamed of doing it. “Daughter,” he whispers against my hair.
From out of a dream, I feel another’s arms surround me and know my mother’s angelic spirit has witnessed this healing.
Together, we spend the afternoon. I tell him of Hamlet, and the strife alive at Elsinore.
He listens and offers his assistance, if e’er I require it.
Later, I depart with a plump bouquet of sweet purpureum; my father’s ballad follows me with the sound of the stream.
And I prepare to see the play.
I am excited and frightened to the depths of my soul.
The play is about to begin.
We sit together, I and Hamlet, and for the case of his madness, he speaks to me so lewdly that it brings to his cheeks a faint blush that only I behold. At times I need urge him continue his sordid seduction. All who hear are o’erwhelmed and mortified th
at one formerly so gallant would speak such vulgar propositions.
The King watches Hamlet, and Hamlet watches the King.
And we all watch the play, unfolding in an argument familiar to the one murderer among us. I turn ever so slightly in my seat, just the breadth of breath, to bend mine eye on him.
Now the player upon the stage creeps silently toward his victim. Claudius, in robes of richest silk, goes pasty gray. I feel Hamlet tense beside me, and my heart aches, for I imagine he imagines this deed delivered upon his sire.
The player sweeps his arm in a silent circle round the head of his fellow who reclines upon a bench as though asleep amidst the garden. Claudius trembles, his eyes widen, water, bulge, and blink. Aye, ’tis a mirror in which he gapes. ’Tis art which imitates life, and also death.
The player-King produces, as though by magic, a jeweled cruet, which he holds aloft, then lowers, slow, so sinister and so slow, toward his fellow thespian’s ear. He tips it so that the candlelight catches the trembling drop which falls from the spout like a tear. I shiver, lean near to Hamlet’s warmth, but there is little. He’s gone cold with the thought of what’s to come. Wretched Claudius sees clearly his deed of evil in the enactment. At the moment the glittering trickle enters the actor’s ear, Claudius leaps to his feet, wailing.
The audience gapes, and Gertrude holds her heart. “How fares my lord?”
A silly question! Ashen is he, and trembling, clutching his middle as though demons threaten to birth themselves from within him. He makes for the door. Hamlet squeezes my hand, then springs from his own seat in pursuit.
Shrieking, Claudius goes, calling for light. Hamlet is close upon his heels, gathering this victory. Around us, players turn up their palms in confusion, and the audience runs hither and yon with worry for their counterfeit lord.
I would go after Hamlet, to see how the condemnation finishes off the stricken King, but at Horatio’s insistence I am swept away from the commotion roughly by the guard Barnardo.