Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

by A. J. Hartley

  “Hamlet believes he’s not safe in the castle.”

  “What? That’s absurd. Why would he think that?”

  The words of a dutiful wife, he supposed. But they came too easily and there was something beneath them, a shadow of doubt and anxiety. Even dread.

  “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carried a document which bore the king’s seal. Forgive me, madam, but there’s no easy way to say this. The letter demanded Hamlet’s immediate execution by the English king.”

  She laughed, a single gasp, cut off by a hand to her mouth. Then she rose. For a moment Horatio thought she would command him to leave, and not long after he’d be dead himself. Instead she began to pace and when she spoke it was as much to herself as to him.

  “That’s not possible. Why would the king do such a thing? Because of Polonius? It makes no sense. Why…?” She stopped and directed the question directly at Horatio. “What reason would my husband have for wanting his nephew – my son – dead?”

  “Because,” said Horatio, gripping the arms of the chair, “ Hamlet believes – swears – the king poisoned his father.”

  No laugh this time. She stared, eyes wide. This was not outrage or horror. It wasn’t even doubt. She knew.

  Horatio sat very still, his eyes fixed on the rush-strewn floor.

  “My son shouldn’t believe cruel gossip. Does he think he has... evidence? Proof?”

  It wasn’t a refutation or a challenge. Just a question.

  “In his own mind he has no need of it.”

  The change which came over her was profound and instantaneous. On the bench seat she slid down into a crouch, hugging her knees to her chest like a child, tears running down her cheeks. For a long while, she stayed there, saying nothing.

  “I should go,” said Horatio.

  “You should. Tell him something from me. Say this.” Her tears had stopped, her voice was steady and low. “I knew nothing of my husband’s death. Though I imagine he believes I was in some way partly responsible through my love for his uncle.”

  He nodded.

  “Will he believe me?”

  “Why shouldn’t he, madam?”

  “Ophelia…” Her hand to her mouth. The tears started again. “Oh my God… Ophelia…”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been away from Elsinore for three days arranging Hamlet’s ransom. What of the lady? How…?”

  “Leave me now. Leave me I beg you.”

  “What should I tell Hamlet about Elsinore? He aches to come here…”

  “Then bring him,” she cried furiously. “What’s done is done. What follows no man can halt.”

  “And do I tell him it’s safe?”

  Tears streaming down her cheeks she laughed at him.

  “Safe, child? Safe? We’re human, boy. Frail and fallible. This word means… what, precisely?”

  He had no answer.

  “I can promise him nothing,” she said. “What help I can give, he will have. For whatever that is worth. Now go.” She looked at her regal dress of purple velvet. “I’ve a funeral to attend. And black to wear again.”

  Gertrude screwed her eyes tights shut.

  “Black. My son’s colour. He wore it before all of us. He saw the need.” She glared at him, eyes ablaze. “Black, black, black… Go, Horatio! You bring news both foul and welcome. Be gone from my presence. Before I lose my reason.”

  The cemetery was deserted except for a pair of workmen digging a grave on the western side. A thick ground mist clung to the grass. Hamlet moved slowly through the fog, black cloak billowing behind him, trying to avoid headstones rising through mist.

  The sextons were always here, constantly unearthing the old bones for the charnel house or the fire, making space for the new.

  “All very symbolic,” Yorick declared, loping in an ungainly waddle at his heels.

  “Have a little respect,” said Hamlet.

  “For what? Dust and clay? That’s what man comes to in the end, isn’t it? Returns to, if you believe your Bible. The stuff you might mould into a pot, or the putty for a crack in the window sill. All the great men of the past, Caesar and Alexander the Great – your sainted father too – all no more than dirt for growing plants and filling holes. Gives you a little perspective, doesn’t it?”

  Hamlet drifted closer to where the grave diggers were at work. One had a barrow and was dragging buckets of earth out of the pit on a rope. Another was shovelling dirt, singing nonsense songs as he laboured.

  “Going to tell them to show some respect too?” asked Yorick, plucking an apple from his pocket and taking a bite.

  Hamlet drew closer, kept quiet, watched. Then something like a dirty, misshapen melon was tossed up out of the grave. It bounced on the turf and rolled crazily, stopping at Hamlet’s feet.

  It was a skull. Could be nothing else.

  Hamlet stooped and picked it up. Stained and filthy, the lower jaw had fallen away entirely and there was clay in the eye sockets.

  “Quite a thing, isn’t it?” Yorick said brightly. “Gazing at your own destiny. I hope you don’t find it depressing. I mean… the inevitable. What’s the point of going all gloomy about it?”

  Hamlet’s frown deepened, but he nodded.

  “You think I’ll look like this one day?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  Hamlet sniffed the skull cautiously then thrust it away, his nose wrinkling. Yorick laughed.

  “You’ll need some of that fancy perfume you bought in Paris. And a lady’s make up. She might need to spread it on thicker than usual...”

  “Whose grave is this?” Hamlet called.

  The man in the hole stopped shovelling and straightened up, flexing his back.

  “Mine,” he announced as if the question was idiotic.

  “I meant… who is it for?”

  The gravedigger still wore a bemused look.

  “Dead person. At least I hope they’re dead. Bit of a cock-up otherwise.”

  Hamlet gave him a filthy look. It didn’t seem to have much effect.

  “I guessed as much. What’s his name?”

  “It’s not for a man.”

  “What’s her name then?”

  “Not for a woman neither,” the gravedigger added, a twinkle in his eye.

  “It must be one or the other.”

  “It’s for someone who was a woman but is now dead.”

  “I knew we’d get there eventually.” He retrieved the skull and held it aloft. “And whose grave was it before?”

  The sexton’s smile widened.

  “A mad bugger, he was. Tickled me with a peacock feather once. Take a guess. Bit of a clue. He came to a sticky end.”

  “I’ve really no idea. Or time for these games.”

  “No? He was the king’s jester. His name was...”

  “Yorick,” Hamlet whispered. “I remember him. Of course I do.”

  He gave the dwarf beside him a look which was close to anguish.

  “Your father.”

  “My father?” the gravedigger asked. “Are you soft in the head or something? My dad was a digger of holes like me. He’s safe over the other side. No sod’s moving him while I’m alive. And when I’m gone…”

  “No,” Hamlet said wearily. “I meant... Never mind.”

  He turned the skull to face him and gazed into the ravaged, brown face, trying to see some vestige of the man he’d once loved. The court fool who’d carried him on his back, played with him when his father wouldn’t, told jokes and shown him magic tricks. But there was nothing of Old Yorick there and no memory, however fond, could make the object any less repulsive. He offered it to the little man by his side but the dwarf just shook his head and for once was silent.

  “You’d better get a move on,” said the other sexton. “The funeral party’s here and they got posh folk with them.”

  He nodded towards the cemetery gates where a group in black were escorting a coffin borne by six young men in the livery of the royal court, guards with pikes by their
side.

  Hamlet stood up, bewildered, scanning the faces, the women veiled in black. Horatio was there. Laertes too and, at the back, weeping, Hamlet’s own mother, the king holding her arm as they picked their way across the grass.

  “What’s this?” Hamlet hissed. “Who is it?”

  “I suggest you make yourself scarce, dear boy,” urged the jester. “I doubt you’re welcome here.”

  The prince dropped back behind a heavy yew tree, trusting the fog to cover his withdrawal.

  The party assembled at the grave side and the priest finally spoke a name.

  Ophelia.

  He doubled up. It felt like a kick to the gut.

  For one numb minute he crouched where he was, unable to think or feel anything. He’d no idea how she had died but his heart told him: this was fault, his responsibility. The bleak graveyard her future now, the dank, wormy earth of eternity in a pit that once held the mangled bones of an old jester.

  He almost laughed at that, bitter and hollow though it was. Yorick dead at his father’s hand for doing his duty, telling the truth. Perhaps that moment was the moment when this farcical tragedy began. And now it returned to its source, new bones for old, an assassin’s secrets buried with them.

  He fought to push down the sorrow, replace it with simple rage. It wasn’t far to cross the cemetery yard. Once there he could draw his sword and plunge it into Claudius where he stood. Was that justice for her? Or brute murder? He didn’t know, couldn’t guess. And it was pointless to in any case. The King was surrounded by his honour guard and they’d slaughter him before he landed a single blow.

  Not that he cared. About anything much any more.

  He watched, hearing the dull familiar murmur of the funeral service. The coffin was lowered into the ground where old Yorick had mouldered away to fragments.

  The Queen stepped forward and started scattering flowers after the casket.

  Even then he might have been able to hold his peace, to keep the acid grief inside. But her brother Laertes was up and shouting, finally leaping into the grave itself.

  And Hamlet could stand no more.

  Out of the shadows he came, marching on, pushing through the mourners.

  His mother’s eyes flashed at him, an expression he couldn’t read. Then Claudius, a look on the king’s face of surprise and horror mingled.

  The coffin had no lid as was the custom.

  Laertes had his sister’s body half out of the casket, a shape as stiff as a board in a white shroud. Blonde hair too clean, face so pale. A mark on her nose. Blood and bruising.

  “Hamlet,” Gertrude cried.

  “Surprised mother?” he asked then reached the coffin, Laertes weeping over the corpse, lost to everything.

  The wind was starting to howl. The mist blowing away. A new man wore the Lord Chamberlain’s chain of office and stared at him, curious and aghast.

  “Prince,” he said. “You are welcome home.”

  “For a funeral, sir? Another? Elsinore seems to treat them like parties.”

  Laertes leapt from the grave flew at him. Two of the guards intervened, kept him back, arms held tightly.

  He looked taller, stronger, older than Hamlet remembered. And his face was full of fury.

  “It’s true we have matters to resolve, Laertes. But not now. How did she come to this end?”

  “You murdered her!” the brother cried. “As you murdered our father.”

  “The one but not the other. I loved Ophelia…”

  “And sent her mad,” this new Lord Chamberlain interrupted. “She lost her senses, sir, and threw herself in the river. It’s a tragedy. But this is a sad and personal occasion. It shouldn’t be damaged by discord and violence. If there’s anything here to be resolved…”

  “Voltemand,” Hamlet said, looking at him. “I remember you now. A collector of tithes.” He glanced at the chain of office. “Newly elevated I see.”

  He strode to the coffin. She’d fallen back onto the plain wood. Dead eyes half open. The blue he remembered had faded. There was a smell, of incense perhaps, or something more familiar.

  “I’ll embrace you lady one last time,” he whispered and bent down, took her in his arms.

  A commotion behind. Laertes was struggling to get free.

  Cold clammy skin greeted Hamlet’s cheek. His grip grew tighter. As he squeezed something bubbled up from her dead mouth. Liquid, water mixed with another substance. The smell again and with it a memory that seared through him like a blade.

  “Bergamot?” Hamlet roared rising, letting the husk of her fall back into the casket. “Since when did the river smell of bergamot? What mischief is this…?”

  A rush of bodies. Laertes came flying at him, fists pummelling, reaching for his sword.

  Men intervened. Soldiers cursed and held them back with strong and certain arms.

  Hamlet stared into the face raging at him. Ophelia was there somewhere. But so was Polonius.

  “There’s a debt to be rendered, Prince,” Laertes yelled at him.

  “Many,” Hamlet agreed. “And for those that stand to my account I’ll be responsible.” He glanced at the coffin. At the silent Claudius and the weeping Gertrude. “But not your sister, sir. I never drowned her in bergamot. Any more than she did so herself.”

  It was dark by the time the funeral party returned to the castle. Claudius and Gertrude retired to the royal quarters, Hamlet to his own. Laertes back to his sister’s rooms.

  When the king got to his study Elias, the old ambassador, was waiting for him. Claudius closed the door, told him to sit down and said, “Your safe return is a happy sight on this grim day, dear friend. I’m grateful for your courage and assistance. Well?”

  “His army will be outside the eastern gate tonight. Tomorrow he expects entry.”

  “Should I allow it?”

  “He says he’ll let you and Gertrude enter exile. On one of the islands.”

  “And you believe him?”

  The old man thought for a moment.

  “I do. He’s a decent enough man for a Norwegian. All he wants is Elsinore and the crown.”

  “All?”

  Elias scowled.

  “I’m sorry, my lord. I spend my working life trying to bring together two conflicting sides. To marry black to white. Right to wrong. To find a middle way…”

  “And Gertrude will live?”

  “You both will,” the man said, a little puzzled. “I was adamant on that. The queen in particular carries much affection among the people. Fortinbras has no reason to enrage them. It would only make his task more difficult. Alternatively…”

  He shrugged.

  “The castle is well provisioned. If we hold out for a little while perhaps his Scottish mercenaries will abandon him. Should that happen our men are more than a match for the peasants he’s brought from Norway. We could fight…”

  “Like Old Hamlet did?”

  “That was single combat, sir,” Elias said carefully. “I would not advise it in these circumstances. Fortinbras is young and a warrior. You…” A wan smile. “You’re older, a man more attuned to negotiation than warfare.”

  Claudius scowled.

  “Isn’t that what kings are for? To sacrifice themselves for their people?”

  “Sometimes. But if we can achieve the same result without bloodshed…”

  “I hear your advice, Elias. I’m grateful for it. I could have made you Lord Chamberlain. Perhaps should have.” He shook his head. “Yet Polonius didn’t recommend it and I always listened to him.”

  The old man got up.

  “I bear no grudges. I serve the realm. After this I’ll retire to my country estate to raise ducks and chickens. Both of which seem grateful for my attention. Until I eat them, that is. Such is life.”

  “And did you ask him?”

  Claudius left the most important question till last.

  “About intelligence?”

  “Has he been receiving reports from Elsinore?” the king asked
tetchily. “I made it clear…”

  “Yes. Correspondence. I said I was from the new chamberlain. He volunteered the man’s name himself.”

  Claudius sighed.

  “Is there anyone in this castle I can trust save you?”

  “Diplomacy takes place in no man’s land, lord. It’s a way of making peace with men who hate you. One must always talk to the enemy. How else may we find the middle ground?”

  “Fortinbras turned round in Copenhagen and came here for a reason. He was invited. That’s not diplomacy. It’s treason.”

  Elias nodded.

  “This is a delicate time. There should be room for safe passage out of Elsinore should you wish to take it. If not we stay and fight. Either way… we’ve enough discord in this place already. I would advise you not to add to it.”

  Silence then.

  “Sir?” the old man added.

  “I’ve heard you, Elias. And thank you for your counsel. Go home now. You’ve served Elsinore well.”

  “Mother,” Hamlet said. “You are pleased to see me, aren’t you?”

  She’d come to his old room, sat with him at the table. Yorick had vanished into the shadows cast by the candles near the window as he always did with visitors.

  “You’re my son. I feared you dead. Of course I’m pleased.”

  Still she didn’t reach out for his hands.

  “What happened to Ophelia?” he asked.

  “She feared for you. She tried to send Laertes a letter telling him what the two of you believed had happened. About Claudius and your father. This new man… Voltemand… I think he got hold of it. So Laertes still hates you. And probably blames you for Ophelia…”

  “This man Voltemand murdered her?”

  She closed her eyes, looked ready to weep, but didn’t.

  “How would I know? The king and I are estranged. I don’t know what his intentions are. Even if he does himself. Claudius is a gentle man by nature, trapped by circumstances. They think Elsinore could fall to Fortinbras soon. Tomorrow even. If that happens our private battles will seem irrelevant. Won’t they?”

  “You knew…”

  “I knew none of this! What must I say to make you believe me? My sin was one of love. For a man who was kind to me. To you, too. When your father ignored us. Or bellowed in my direction.” Her eyes darkened. “Or worse.”