His hand rises to my face, the fingertips tracing a path similar to the patterns I’ve wiped across his skin. He studies me as though I’m something rare and precious and wonderful, a gift in the midst of his pain. I’ve never seen this in him before, and my pulse races beneath his gentle touch. “How,” he whispers, “are you the only one who can make this feel real without it being overwhelming?”
It is overwhelming—he is overwhelmed, but before I can find a way to say this, his lips brush against mine and my eyes flutter closed. His thumb still traces patterns against my cheekbone, the corner of my eye, but his fingers slide against my neck, twine through strands of hair, to pull me closer against him. No longer a brush of butterfly wings, he kisses me again, deeper, mouth moving against mine as though he would consume me.
Panic steals my breath, but in the airless void, in each flex of his fingers against my scalp, each wordless murmur against my lips, seeds of fire bloom to push away the lingering cold of death. This is new and terrifying, but there’s also joy, a wildness that belongs with the songs outside the churchyard, with the feral cries of the Hunt as it rides endlessly through the woods.
He pulls away, presses another soft, tentative kiss against my temple. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you for staying with me.”
My lips shape the word I have no voice to give sound. Always.
CHAPTER 4
A thundercloud of black clothing, interspersed with flashes of deep jewel tones, drifts between the entryway and the banquet hall of the Headmaster’s House, small china plates and crystal punch glasses in their hands as they speak in hushed tones. Infrequent bursts of laughter fall too harsh, too loud against the sepulchral atmosphere.
As soon as we walk in, Father pulls me from Dane under the guise of introducing me to someone. Then he hands me an empty plate and tells me to occupy myself in some manner that will neither disgrace myself and my family nor burden the Danemarks. Part of me wants to ask why he doesn’t just pat me on the head like a five-year-old while he’s at it, but I know he didn’t mean it the way it came out. Father can be awkward and consumed by his tasks, but he is never intentionally cruel. Mama was, sometimes—especially to Father—but he’s never taken her example.
I can’t stand the crush of people, too many that I’ve never seen before. Some of them share stories of Hamlet; too many speak of business or politics.
After the sixth time I get stopped by some woman who wants to cluck over my empty plate, I finally drift by the banquet tables and load a few things onto it, enough that people will leave me alone. There are chairs lined against the walls, and some have moved them into tight little knots, pockets and clusters of people all talking over each other and barely making a dent in the silence.
Laertes watches me. I don’t know if he’s under orders from our father or if it’s simply something he’s taken upon himself, but his eyes follow my progress about the room. Perhaps it’s both. I doubt he believed that I was struck by the light when the keening rose.
I wait until a portly man in a too-loud tie engages him in conversation and then leave the hall in a cluster of black-clad people who join the line to speak to the Danemarks. Easing past them, I slip up the stairs to the second floor. The servants have turned off all the lights on the upper levels to discourage guests from exploring the living areas, so the reading nook is pleasantly shadowed. Despite the comfortable chairs, I sink down onto the rug and press my cheek against the wooden banister.
I’m invisible here. Even those below who examine the entryway with curious, nervous, or acquisitive eyes miss me in the shadows. I wonder what kind of compromises and sacrifices had to be made to let so many people come here on such short notice. There are jobs and families, travel arrangements and accommodations, so many details to maneuver in only three days.
Dane stands at the bottom of the stairs, his hips against the elaborate rail post. Even from here I can see the muscle jumping in his jaw. He stares past the well-wishers, the strangers who want to shake his hand, the former students who think that loss of the Headmaster is equal to the loss of Father, even those who were here long before Hamlet was a student, much less the Headmaster. They try to touch this piece of his father, but he says nothing, offers nothing. He stares off into space as though he would force the air into the shape of his father and breathe life into it again.
Beside him, Gertrude is more gracious. She accepts all the words with murmured thanks and gives a name to every single person who approaches. She has smiles for them, nothing too broad or inappropriate, but small gestures of strength and elegance even in the face of grief. I can hear her weeping at night; she’s never been alone—she doesn’t know what it means—but a social event is something she knows. It gives her poise.
A hand floats, pale and assuming, at the small of her back. Claudius is Hamlet’s brother, his blood. It’s natural and right for him to be in this line of condolence, but he takes a strange place in it. Dane said his uncle had already made his bid to become Headmaster, but he acts as though it already is his. His gestures and words take on a propriety air, not just in the way he greets the guests but in the hand at Gertrude’s back, the way his thumb rubs small circles into the layered silk and linen.
His face changes with every word, shifting from restrained grief to welcome to curiosity, whatever it is that’s silently asked of him by those he speaks with. The muscles move, the expression shifts, but his eyes never change their calculating expression even as people offer their sympathies for his loss.
His eyes are like the hand at Gertrude’s back: they have lost nothing.
Part of me waits for Gertrude to move away from his over familiar touch, to remind him of the impropriety, but she is like my father in some ways, or perhaps my father is like her. She is not going to create a Scene.
Laertes escapes from the fat man in the suit of poor taste; I can see him stalk through the gathering in search of me. He even checks the alcove beneath the stairs and rakes a hand through his ear-length hair when he cannot find me.
Father flits between the door and the banquet hall, his tasks split between managing the line of mourners and the catering staff. There’s a crash of crystal and china, followed by the piercing wail of a small child, and he rushes away from the door. Like little puppets on their miniature stage, everyone moves about, using the rest of the gathering as an audience. My hands will never hold their strings, but from above I can see the patterns that their audiences can’t.
Here the women who hated each other in school loudly exclaim over pictures of children, words like cute and adorable floating in a haze around them even as each is convinced that her brood is far superior to anyone else’s. Here are the men making business deals and hoping no one sees it. Most of the current students clump together in uncomfortable pockets, wearing their uniforms in honor of the Headmaster, ill at ease amidst so many strangers. Others stand at their parents’ shoulders, bored or ambitious as they’re introduced to Invaluable Contacts.
“Ophelia.” A hand lightly touches my shoulder and I flinch. Horatio smiles down at me and with his other hand offers me a plain, sturdy mug of milky coffee. When I accept it, he digs a few packets of raw sugar from his pocket and stacks them neatly on my abandoned plate.
He’s the only person I know with my talent, the ability to disappear right in a crowd of people, and he uses it much the same way. Watch, observe, don’t bring attention to yourself, or they might remember all those other things they think they know about you. He wears his uniform not because it shows support for his school but because it’s the nicest thing he owns.
He isn’t like the rest of us, who’ve grown up with unthinking wealth. His family put every penny they had into getting him here. While others talk of vacations and shopping, he just listens with this half smile on his face and gives them no reason to notice that he isn’t part of their world. Of our world, I suppose, though Laertes and I often stand outside it as well.
He folds his long legs against his bod
y so he can sit with me on the floor of the nook, his back pressed against the rails right on the edge of the stairs. The edge of his polished dress shoe, still with bits of grass and soil clinging to it, nudges my plate closer to my knee. “At least eat the roll,” he whispers. “That coffee will burn a hole in your stomach otherwise.”
“I ate breakfast.”
“No, you attended breakfast.” He smiles and shakes his head. “You don’t eat when you’re nervous, Ophelia, because you can’t keep it down.”
I should be irritated, but it’s different than the way my father or brother would say it. Horatio isn’t accusing me of anything; he doesn’t think me incapable of taking care of myself. Because of his smile, the same smile he’s always given me, I take the airy roll from the plate, pinch off a piece, and drop it on my tongue. It melts there, more breath than substance, but suddenly—painfully—I’m hungry. I slowly eat the rest of the roll to make my stomach think there’s more of it because the rest of my plate is filled with raspberry and blackberry tartlets. The catering service handles all special events for the school, and the tartlets are always so sweet they make my teeth ache. I only put them on the plate because they’re pretty and they take up room.
There’s nothing to stir the sugar into the coffee, but I sprinkle it in anyway and watch the clear brown crystals dissolve in the steaming, milky liquid. Horatio looks washed out in the shadows, the way I or Dane or Laertes look out in sunlight. He spends the summer outdoors swimming and rowing in the lake, sometimes helping Jack in the gardens, so where we’re pale, he’s deeply tanned, his chestnut hair bright with blondish sun streaks. Even his eyes belong outside, a dappled hazel of deep earthy browns and forest greens.
He twirls his silver class ring on his finger, the oval sapphire flanked by rectangular chips of aquamarine. He never would have had it on his own; the cost of it could have paid his family’s rent for at least a month. It was a gift from Hamlet, done as quietly and with as much of an eye towards dignity as everything the man did. The upcoming seniors received their rings the week before classes let out, and none of them have been seen without them since. Even Dane wears his, though now on his right hand to balance out his father’s wedding band on his left. It’ll be another two years before I see mine.
Two years younger and yet always a part of their group. I know it started as protectiveness; when I got back from the cold place, Laertes didn’t want to let me out of his sight, even snuck into my room at night and slept on an air mattress on the floor. As soon as his classes were done and my tutor released me from my lessons, he took responsibility for me. First, Dane, then Horatio when he came, joined in looking out for me, but they didn’t smother me as Laertes in his fear so often did.
“I took my pills this morning.”
As soon as the words spill from my mouth I want to take them back. They don’t mean anything, can’t mean anything, and I’ve never liked useless words.
But Horatio simply takes one of the tartlets, bites into it, and chews with a slight grimace. “I believe you.”
“Laertes doesn’t.”
“He’s scared.” He swallows and considers the rest of the sweet, then eats it anyway. “If you’re taking your pills and still seeing things, he has to face the possibility that maybe you really are just seeing more than the rest of us can.”
“Or I’ve more madness than the pills can handle.”
“Or that,” he agrees readily enough. “There are good days and bad days; you’ve said that before. Besides …” He picks up another tartlet but turns it over in his hands, the sugar crumbling against his fingers. “You said you hear the bean sidhe, right?” He stumbles only slightly over the unfamiliar pronunciation. I love him a little for that. “That they mourn for the dead?” I nod and he gives me a small smile. “I like the idea of Nature mourning for the Headmaster. He was a good man.”
I sip the coffee and rest my cheek against the wooden post. The line of people wanting to talk to the Danemarks is as long as ever, but Dane isn’t holding up. It’s harder for him to stare off into space, harder to grit his teeth against the inanities, against the apologies that are as inadequate as they are inaccurate.
“He’s going to bite someone’s head off in a minute,” says Horatio, following my line of sight.
“His mother will send him to get her something to drink before he has the opportunity,” I murmur.
“I don’t know how to help him.”
I study him from the corner of my eye, all his attention on our friend at the bottom of the stairs. “Nor do I.”
“So what do we do?”
I shake my head, the polished wood rough against my cheek, because I don’t have an answer. We sit in easy silence, tucked away from the rest of the world as we so often are and watch with the relentless fascination of outsiders.
Laertes leans against the wall by the door, the vertical line back between his eyes. His gaze darts through the gathering, his left hand twisting the class ring on his right. I sip my coffee and watch him search for me. A kinder person—a better sister—would go down and reassure him, allow herself to be shepherded around the rooms with an iron grip on her arm.
I am not always a kinder person, or a better sister, and that iron grip too often bruises.
A harsh, unnatural fit of laughter bursts from the space below us, followed by an embarrassed hush. Laertes glances at the source of the outburst, then tracks up towards the ceiling. I know the moment he sees me because his entire body stiffens. He gives the Danemarks on the other side of the stair base a wide berth and stalks up the carpeted steps to tower over us.
Horatio gives him a lazy, two-fingered salute. “Laertes.”
“Horatio, would you excuse us? I need to talk to my sister.”
He glances at me, and while I’m grateful for the silent offer of support, I shrug. Laertes has a difficult time scolding without working up to yelling, and he can’t yell without creating a Scene. Unfolding his legs, Horatio picks up the plate and shoves gracefully to his feet. “I’ll bring you back something more to your taste,” he promises.
“Ophelia—”
“Father told me to stay out of the way,” I tell him. “I don’t do well with crowds. Laertes, you know that. Up here, there’s very little chance for me to embarrass us.”
“It isn’t … appropriate for you to hide in dark corners with boys, especially not at a funeral.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “It’s Horatio, and it isn’t a dark corner, it’s a reading nook in full view of the people below. And there was at least two feet of space between us. Save your scoldings for when you can mean them.”
He sighs and sinks down on one of the chairs a few feet away, his hands buried in his hair. “I need something to do,” he admits quietly. “I can’t stand down there and listen to everyone talk about the Headmaster and not have something to do.”
“Then stay here with me, and with Horatio when he comes back with food, and keep us company and out of trouble. We’ll be Dane’s silent cheering section.”
As if he could somehow hear, or perhaps he simply followed Laertes’ progress up the stairs, Dane turns and looks straight at us, his face sickly pale from the strain of keeping it together. I raise my mug in salute, and he almost smiles, gives an imperceptible nod, and straightens his shoulders. When he turns back, he actually manages to give a polite response to one of the endless well-wishers.
That’s enough for Laertes to drop down beside me on the floor and tug at the knot in his tie. Now when Father asks him where he was, he wasn’t just keeping an eye on me, he was also keeping Dane from making a Scene without being obtrusive. Laertes needs a reason to do things, just as he needs things to do.
So maybe, in giving him that, I can be a good sister after all.
When Horatio rejoins us, fingers of one hand threaded through the handles of three mugs and three plates balanced along the other arm, Dane can look up as often as he needs to and see the three of us supporting him. Maybe it’s enough
for now.
CHAPTER 5
The reception drags on but finally ends, and the last of the stragglers bid farewell to the exhausted Danemarks and make their way out of the Headmaster’s House. As soon as the door closes on the last person, Gertrude sighs and sinks down into a chair for the first time since the hard wooden pew of the stone church. I’ve lived with her all my life and never seen her slouch, but now she folds in on herself, her face buried in her hands as she ignores her brother-in-law’s hand at her shoulder.
Dane sits beside her before his uncle can and drapes an arm across her back, returning some of the strength she fed into him all through the long day. She leans against him, grateful. I have always been so used to thinking of Dane as Hamlet’s son—his namesake though we never call him by that name—but he is Gertrude’s son as well. Sable and strawberry blonde, their heads hover close together against the endless buffeting of grief.
Claudius flinches from his nephew’s touch. His hands snap behind his back, return to that vaguely military stance he always has despite never having served. He steps away from Gertrude and Dane, pulls my father from his tasks with the caterers for another of the hushed conversations that have become a common sight these days past. Father will be a formidable ally in Claudius’ quest to be the new headmaster. Father makes all the day-to-day decisions for the school, manages all the numerous, smaller tasks that keep him working long hours in his study. He doesn’t actually get a vote in the matter, but the Board will listen if the Dean of Curriculum gives his support to a candidate.
What kind of man can think of such things when his brother has been dead barely three days?
But then, Gertrude has attended to every detail of the funeral despite her grief; I should not judge Claudius too harshly for what may be no more than an occupation to keep him from dwelling on his loss.
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