Hamlet

by John Marsden

  Gertrude shrugged. Her hand still held the cup. She offered it now to the prince. Claudius watched, indifferent. Hamlet would drink or he would not. He would live or he would not. It didn’t seem important anymore. Through the window at the end of the hall, the king saw three swans on the mound above the pond. The shadows of the castle made them look black. He almost smiled. Black swans. The day swans turned black, truly that would be the end of the world.

  “I dare not drink yet, madam. In a while.” Hamlet pushed his mother away.

  “Come, let me wipe your face properly.” Her voice was more throaty than ever. There had been a time when Claudius had thrilled to that voice. All through those years while his brother courted and won her and took her, the younger man had been a willing prisoner of her voice. Now Claudius had her, and he thought her voice sounded like the honk of a swan.

  She clung to Hamlet, but he tried to push her away again. Claudius became aware that Laertes had somehow drifted to a position near the throne. With everyone watching the mother and son, the young man muttered, “Your Majesty, I could do it now. I’ll hit him now.”

  Both of them knew of the deadly venom on Laertes’ sword. They knew because they had anointed the tip themselves, not much more than half an hour earlier. None but they knew. They were a pretty pair, these two, one intent on power, one on revenge, and both riddled through and through with the most potent force of all, hatred.

  “No, no,” the king mumbled. “Not now.”

  “This is not the time to be troubled by conscience,” Laertes whispered, as if to himself. “Even so, I am troubled . . .”

  But no one heard him say it, so perhaps he did not say it.

  They all heard a scornful Hamlet. He had cast his mother away. She staggered, although he had used no force. Now he challenged Laertes. “Come for the third round, Laertes. You are wasting our time. Don’t you take me seriously? Or are you getting nervous?”

  “Say you so?” bellowed Laertes. “Come on, then.”

  He rushed out in a clumsy charge more fitted to a drunk farmer trying to drive a cow into a bail. Hamlet was disconcerted and missed an easy chance for a hit. For a few moments the young men, so graceful and accomplished in the previous round, fought with all the skill of five-year-olds wrestling in a sandpit. They met and grappled and parted again, three times, except that as they parted from the third grappling, both stabbed at each other. They turned to the judge, each hoping he might have nicked the other.

  There was a pause, then the judge, an old man named Voltimand, said quietly, “Nothing either way.”

  Hamlet grimaced and made to step back, to ready himself for the resumption. As he did, Laertes, now chaotic with rage, shouted, “Have at you now,” and with a sudden awful stab wounded Hamlet in the arm.

  He felt a certain dark relief that the poison was now irreversibly inside the prince’s body. Ophelia could rest in whatever peace she was able to attain, and his father could go to his last destination. But he was unprepared for the immediate outcome. With a roar Hamlet threw himself upon the young man, he who had once been his friend and who, unbeknownst still to Hamlet, had now murdered him.

  The two fought furiously and had to be dragged from each other. Hamlet felt a curious buzzing in the head but was not yet slowed by the poison. The moment they were released, both rushed for their rapiers and picked them up.

  “You’ve got the wrong ones,” called Osric, but neither man took notice. Hamlet heard the words but attached no importance to them. Either sword suited him well enough. Laertes heard the words but did not understand them until a sudden tearing pain burned into his heart. It all happened so quickly. The cut on his chest was nothing, yet it was everything. The pain should have been slight, but it was the bearer of a deeper pain that could not be borne. Laertes dropped to one knee, realizing with awfulness what had happened and now hearing Osric’s words properly. “The wrong sword,” he whispered. “The wrong sword.”

  Osric appeared at his side. “My lord, are you all right?”

  “All right? No, Osric, all wrong.”

  As if through a dense thundercloud, he heard someone call, “Look after the queen. Quick. Something’s wrong.”

  “She’s fainted.”

  “Get a doctor.”

  Laertes looked up and saw Horatio at Hamlet’s side. To his right he saw the queen lying on the floor, surrounded by attendants. He heard Hamlet asking, “The queen? My mother? What is wrong with her?”

  From the throne came the king’s frightened voice. He seemed unable to move. “She swoons to see her son bleed.”

  “My lord, are you all right?” Osric asked again. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  Before Laertes could answer, the queen’s voice, suddenly shrill with fear, cried, “No, no, the drink, oh God, the drink, it was poisoned. Dear Hamlet, I am poisoned.”

  Despair filled Laertes. His voice filled the hall, even though he did not seem to speak any louder than usual. “Like a rabbit caught in his own trap, Osric, I am killed with my own treachery.” He forced himself to stand. When he did, he found himself confronting Hamlet again.

  The prince was struggling to his feet, his face demented. “Let the doors be locked!” Hamlet shouted. “There is villainy here. There is treachery. I will seek it out.”

  Laertes felt an extraordinary calm. A new strength entered him, to sustain him for the last moments of his life. “You do not have to seek far, Hamlet,” he said. “It is here, in me. Hamlet, you are murdered. You have only a few minutes to live. The weapon is in your own hands: the sword you hold is poisoned. It is I who applied the poison to it, and it is fitting that the foul wasp has turned on me and stung me as well. Your mother has sipped poisoned wine, which we also meant for you.”

  With no warning, all his strength rushed from him. He was staggered by its swiftness. He dropped to his knees. No act in his life took more resolve than the simple raising of his hand to point at the king. “There is your enemy,” he said. With a sudden surge, a last expression of the life force, he stood, then in an instant fell forward, lifeless, hitting the hard stone floor with a thud that must have broken every bone in his face.

  To see Horatio now was to see love at work. His expression was as demented as Hamlet’s, but he held his friend even as he shouted to the servants to carry out his prince’s orders. “Seal the doors! Let no one leave. Let no one draw a weapon, should he set any value on his life. Hamlet, over here.”

  He tried to draw Hamlet to a seat, but the prince threw him off easily and staggered to his mother. Hamlet had so much he wanted to explain to her. He wanted to tell her all the reasons for everything he had ever done, everything. But time had lost interest in them both. Time had already turned itself to other affairs. Gertrude had slipped away while the men were shouting, her tortured soul gone to another world where her first husband awaited her and her second was about to join her. Her eyes were closed and her skin cooling. The ladies-in-waiting were starting to step back, to distance themselves. Gertrude had never inspired affection or devotion in other women, and they understood already that their futures lay elsewhere. They had to think of themselves.

  Hamlet wanted to shout obscenities at them for their lack of loyalty — they did not love his mother as much as he did, and that was unforgivable — but he knew time would not spare him for such things. All he could hope now was that it would grant him another minute, for the last task of his life, the one he had been charged to do so long ago. His failure to execute it had caused chaos. It had caused tragedy.

  Claudius trembled to see him coming. “Guards,” he called feebly. “Guards, seize him.”

  “Let no one move!” bellowed Horatio. He held a rapier in each hand. Feet apart, he faced the guards. “Move, and I’ll skewer you.”

  No one moved, and Claudius watched the terrible specter come at him. Hamlet’s face appeared to be all stubble and eyes, not gray anymore, but white, with no discernible pupils. He was relentless. A rapier appeared as if by magic in his
hand, and Claudius found enough spirit to stand. The sword ran him through. A cold line went through him from front to back, and the king understood that nothing would ever be the same again. The line ignited and turned to fire inside him, an awful fire that burned everywhere and could not be put out. “Guards,” he whispered, “guards, I am not yet dead. I might yet live. Put a stop to this. Stop him.”

  No one responded.

  “Not yet dead?” the ghastly apparition screeched at him. “Then try this.” The prince’s hand was at his face; the back of the hand hit him and it hurt; how it hurt; didn’t the prince realize he was hurting him? He should stop. Claudius’s mouth was forced open and cold wine was splashing inside him. Perhaps it could put out the fire. Perhaps this was love. The king drank eagerly. Yes, it was working. The fire was going out; the furnace in his stomach was becoming cold. The wine turned into a snake and crawled down into its hole and wrapped itself around the hot bear that now lived in his bowels; it was a desert and ice rolled across it and all turned to ice it became a cave the blackest cave Claudius had ever been in too black nothing could be this black or this cold and the king’s eyes rolled back in his head and he died.

  But by then Hamlet was lying on the floor, his head cradled in Horatio’s lap, his face beginning to contort as death went to work on him. “May heaven take care of Laertes,” he said. “I will follow him soon enough. Oh, Horatio, I feel I have everything to say, and I know there is no time to say any of it. At least be sure to tell the world what you know. Tell my story fully and frankly, but try to find some virtue in me when you do.”

  A spasm shook him; he clenched his eyes and teeth, but soon it passed. He hardly seemed to hear Horatio’s staunch statement: “I will follow you, beloved friend. There is wine in the glass yet.”

  But when Horatio reached for the fatal dregs, Hamlet pushed his arm away.

  “Give me the cup,” he begged. “Do not take that easy path. Stay in the world instead, and speak for me. I fear the reputation I will leave.” He half sat up, racked by pain. “Horatio, I beg of you, forget your own pain awhile and defend my good name.”

  Horatio marveled that the bright and beautiful prince had come to this, caught up so intensely in his fear for the regard of history. But no sooner had the thought crept into his brain than Hamlet lay down again, whispering, “I suppose I am king of Denmark for these few brief moments. Let the crown pass to Fortinbras, Horatio.” He raised his voice and shouted through the great hall, “I am Hamlet, King of the Danes, and I say the crown shall pass to Fortinbras.”

  “Your Majesty,” Horatio murmured to him, “it shall be as you say. Fortinbras.”

  Hamlet coughed and cramped and coughed again, then whispered to Horatio, “The rest is silence.”

  Horatio held him for some minutes more. He could not tell when life left his friend. In time Voltimand tapped him kindly on the shoulder. “My lord,” said the older man, “we have much to do. Our duties lie elsewhere now. It is over. We must prepare the kingdom for the news, send urgent messages to Fortinbras, and begin the funeral rites. My lord, come away.”

  Horatio sat there another long minute. A servant handed him a cushion, and he placed it under Hamlet’s head. He climbed awkwardly to his feet. He looked down at his friend’s body. “Good night, sweet prince,” he said. “May flights of angels sing you to your rest.”

  John Marsden is the author of more than thirty popular and acclaimed novels, including the classic Tomorrow series and the Ellie Chronicles. About Hamlet, he says, “What a guy! What a play! Hamlet’s father makes a mean enough ghost, but Hamlet’s done a good job of haunting my life. I read the play when I was sixteen, saw a film of it when I was seventeen, and haven’t been able to shake the story since. I loved writing this novel as a way of getting to know the mysterious Hamlet just a little better.” John Marsden lives in Australia.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2008 by John Marsden

  Cover illustration copyright © 2009 by Helen Wright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First U.S. electronic edition 2011

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Marsden, John, date.

  Hamlet : a novel / John Marsden. — 1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Grieving for the recent death of his beloved father and appalled by his mother’s quick remarriage to his uncle, Hamlet, heir to the Danish throne, struggles with conflicting emotions, particularly after his father’s ghost appeals to him to avenge his death.

  ISBN 978-0-7636-4451-2 (hardcover)

  [1. Princes — Fiction. 2. Murder — Fiction. 3. Revenge — Fiction. 4. Denmark — Fiction.]

  I. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. Hamlet II. Title.

  PZ7.M35145Ha 2009

  [Fic] — dc22 2009007331

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5433-7 (electronic)

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