Ophelia

by Jackie French

  I paused at the door of the prince’s chamber, and let the footman knock and open the door. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he intoned, ‘the Lady Ophelia.’

  ‘Madam?’

  The prince wore black still, but not his travelling clothes. This was black velvet, so dark it seemed to drink the light. He had put on his prince’s crown, a plain circle of gold. His face was sombre, but when his eyes met mine, they were warmer than the fire.

  I curtseyed deeply. ‘I come from your good mother, Your Royal Highness. She may receive you now.’

  I knew my words and his would be repeated throughout the servants’ hall, and find their way up to their masters’ chambers before the hour was past.

  ‘Then I will go to her. I thank you, gentle messenger.’

  I let him lead the way, as was proper, the servants and footman trailing behind us. We waited, still in a line, for the footman to open the door to the queen’s bedchamber.

  ‘His Royal Highness, the Prince Hamlet,’ he announced. ‘And the Lady Ophelia.’

  The queen rose from the chair by the fire. Her hair was undone, brushed down her back, a little red among the grey. She wore the purple dress still, but had covered it with a black lace shawl. Was this to show her son that she still mourned his father? Yes, I thought. Her role tonight would be as calculated as her son’s, and mine.

  She held out her hand. ‘Hamlet, my dearest son.’

  They were words for us to hear, and for the servants. But I heard warmth in her voice too. For this man was her son, her only child. Whatever she has kept from him, whatever she has taken from him, I thought, she loves him still.

  He kneeled before her, waited for her hand to bid him rise. She offered him her cheek to kiss. He pressed his lips upon it. I felt a tension leave the room; a breeze of breaths exhaled.

  ‘I am glad to see you well, my son. And more glad to see you home than I have power of words to express.’

  ‘I am glad to see you well too, madam.’ He turned and met my eyes. ‘And to be home.’

  More breaths, drawn in now, and whispers not yet spoken. ‘Did you see how he looked at Lady Ophelia?’ they would mutter later. ‘Did you see how she gazed at him? And how the queen smiled upon them both?’

  Silence stretched. The queen was waiting for more from Hamlet: congratulations on her marriage; sympathy for her loss. But he said nothing.

  A second before the silence began to strain, she asked, ‘Will you wait upon your stepfather, the king, tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, madam, I will greet my stepfather.’ Again the pause lengthened before he added, ‘The king.’

  I let out my own breath. Well-played, I thought. Not quite acceptance, but not rebellion either. The court will remember this. And his mother understood it.

  Men’s laughter floated down the hall. The king approached. I glanced at Prince Hamlet; he heard it too.

  So did the queen.

  ‘Go then, my dear Ophelia, and guide our son back to his chambers, in case he forgets the ways of Elsinore.’

  It was a warning, and a gift.

  Prince Hamlet accepted both. He stepped back and took my hand, and raised it to his lips for all to see. ‘Some flowers bloom despite the winter chill.’

  He bowed — a son’s bow, not a courtier’s — to his mother, then offered me his arm.

  I glanced at the queen. She nodded. So I took the prince’s arm and walked with him along the silent corridor as the bawdy jokes of the king’s men filled the corridors below.

  The queen’s footman was at our house the next morning with a message for me to wait upon Her Majesty. I had expected it and risen early, my candle nibbling at the dark. The morning after a royal bedding was as public as the wedding.

  I’d had Gerda dress me in cream silk, with swansdown at the cuffs and hem; not mourning, but not coloured either. The footman held the torch as I slipped through the door that linked us to the palace. It was too cold and dark to use the front entrance so early in the day.

  The queen was still abed, alone. Whatever had happened in the night, the king was gone now. Lady Annika sat before the fire, warming her hands and the queen’s shift. Lady Anna and Lady Hilda added attar of roses to the washing water. All three wore black silk with satin overskirts. I blushed to think I had mistaken the morning’s mood.

  But the queen smiled at me. ‘A summer’s bloom indeed, my young white rose.’ She held out her hand for me to kiss.

  We washed and dressed her: in black this morning too, a widow, not a bride, with purple stones at her ears and a small ruff also of purple.

  Lady Hilda called for breakfast. We sat and embroidered as the queen ate her barley bread, fresh baked that morning and dipped in ale we heated with a poker from the fire; hot barley porridge with salted butter and a compote of dried fruits in damson wine; cold meats from the night before, well-minced to suit the queen’s age and lack of teeth; and Queen’s Cream cheese, named in her honour and so soft there was no need to chew.

  I had hoped Prince Hamlet might join her for breakfast. He didn’t. Perhaps he was tired from his journey, of both body and emotions, the day before. Probably he thought his uncle might be here too. I wondered if I would have a chance to see him before he presented himself to the king this morning. A queen may call a man to her. A lady-in-waiting waits: for the queen to finish eating before she eats too; for a prince to call her, or for his mother to send her to him. I waited.

  At last the queen finished, and we four ate. There was some Queen’s Cream left. I waited again, in case the more senior ladies wanted it, then swallowed it all with chunks of bread, suddenly ravenous.

  It was mid-morning by the time the queen was ready to go to the throne room. We proceeded down the corridors, three black ducklings and a white one, behind the wider, richer skirts of our queen. The torches flickered, holding back the gloom. The horizon was still grey as the midwinter sun struggled to rise out of the stones of winter’s night.

  The chamber doors opened. I bit back a gasp. Yesterday there had been one throne up on the dais, gold, or gilded, with rubies inset across the head. Beside it had sat a chair with red silk cushions, where the queen had sat beside her lord. Today, two thrones stood there side by side.

  A lady-in-waiting knows what not to see. I kept all expression from my face as the queen glided down the room and sat upon her throne. She let her hands rest upon the arms, as if she and her throne had grown together. As, I thought, they had.

  I remembered when I was a child, the royal beekeeper had shown me the hives. He’d meant it as a lesson: don’t go too near when the bees are among the apple trees or you’ll be stung. But I was fascinated.

  ‘Only one queen in every hive,’ he’d said. ‘All the young bees are her children. And when she dies, they raise a new queen to take her place.’

  ‘What about the king?’ I’d asked.

  He’d laughed. ‘No kings in beehives, missy. Only the queen.’

  If there had been no wedding yesterday, I thought, there would be no second throne. Now Denmark had a king and queen as equals. A true queen, a ruler in her hive.

  ‘Lady Ophelia.’ I blinked as Lady Annika nudged me. ‘The queen has given us leave to go.’

  To go? But the queen was always attended by her ladies. Soon Prince Hamlet would come here to the throne room, and the king would tell him formally that he was both son and heir.

  And then I understood. The queen might rule with the king now, but this was still a parliament of men. The queen would be the only woman in this room while state business was discussed.

  I followed the others out, as the youngest, then stood aside to allow the king and his retinue to enter. We curtseyed deeply. I looked up through my lashes, but there was no sign of Prince Hamlet. Of course not, I thought. He would not join the king’s retinue.

  We straightened, then sank into a curtsey again. For here was the prince. Black silk stockings, black leather boots trimmed with bear fur. The boots stopped in front of me. A white hand wearing a gold
ring with a black stone extended from his fur-lined sleeve. ‘My Lady Ophelia.’

  I took his hand as I rose from my curtsey, and felt mine kissed; another true kiss, lips on skin.

  ‘Good morning to the rose of Elsinore.’ His voice was light, a courtier’s words, but I could hear the warmth below.

  ‘Good morning, Your Royal Highness.’

  He smiled, made a short bow, then he was gone, into the throne room. The footmen closed the chamber doors behind him.

  Lady Anna cackled. ‘So that is how the wind blows, eh?’

  ‘So like his father,’ murmured Lady Annika vaguely. ‘No,’ said Lady Hilda quickly. ‘He favours his mother surely.’

  Lady Annika seemed to wake up at that. ‘Ah, yes. I had forgot. The prince has his mother’s eyes.’

  ‘And someone else’s heart,’ said Lady Anna.

  I blushed, my cheeks as hot as the hall fire.

  Chapter 6

  It seemed I had a morning of freedom if the queen was going to be in council. Lady Annika, Lady Anna and Lady Hilda tottered down to the great hall, and the castle’s largest fire, to sit with their embroideries. I didn’t join them. I pitied anyone who had to sit on the lumps my tapestry made of chairs.

  What to do? I could go home: inspect the furs in the garderobe for moth; order new sweet rushes for the floors to get rid of some of the fug of winter; make more bilberry and willow cordial for Lady Hilda to ease her indigestion. But I wanted to know what was being said behind the closed doors of the throne room. It might take a day for palace gossip to reach our kitchen, and then filter upstairs to Gerda and to me. Here, in the hum of the palace, a servant serving hot wine and ale would hear what Prince Hamlet said to the new King Claudius, what the queen said, and how they all looked. By midday I might know it too.

  And if I stayed in the palace, I’d have a chance to see Prince Hamlet. He might stay with the king and queen and council now — I hoped he did, to begin to understand the ruling of his country — but he would not dine with his uncle. Back to his rooms? No. Too like a sulky child.

  I grinned. I knew exactly where he would go.

  The library was a long room, with fires at each end that were lit throughout winter to keep the books and manuscripts and maps dry and free of mould, and torches along the walls. Winter’s thin light was too small for the large room. I doubted the late king had ever been in the room, but some earlier king had stocked it well.

  There were books written in the ornamental scripts of monks, bright with reds and scatterings of gold; large manuscripts rolled up and carefully stored; printed books of quarto paper with leather covers finely stitched. Most were in Greek or Latin, which, as a girl, I had not been taught to read. But some had been translated by a long-gone monk — I recognised the same hand in them all. How many years had he sat here, I wondered, twisting words from one tongue to another? What king had ordered him to do so, and why? Or had it been a queen — a girl like me perhaps, untutored in Greek and Latin but curious to read about the world?

  I took out my favourite book. Indeed, it was so well-loved I had left fingermarks along its edge, though I doubted anyone would notice for generations to come. It was called Great Dialogues of Plato, but was about another man called Socrates. A man who questioned rather than ruled, who talked of good and evil. Had he been a king? The book didn’t say. I didn’t think he was. He talked about his friends, not his subjects.

  I would have asked my father or my brother who Socrates had been, but then they would have realised I came here, and might have forbidden it. It is well-known that too much learning sends a woman mad. But I was not mad yet, and I had found I could best be a good daughter by making sure my father never guessed what to forbid. Why couldn’t my father be like Socrates? My father proclaimed; he did not discuss. And yet, I thought, Socrates had a daughter and a wife, but there were no women included in his and his friends’ dinner conversations.

  I took my book as close as I dared to the fire without scorching my skirts. If I had been in my own rooms, I would have lifted my skirts to warm my legs, but a footman might come in at any moment to bid me to attend the queen. I had told no one where I was going, but the servants always knew.

  I opened the book and started reading my favourite conversation: about the kinds of love. So many kinds, and yet they did not talk of the love of a mother for her child, or a queen for her people. Socrates’s friends needed a woman there, I thought, to teach them of the world beyond the experience of men. Plato didn’t even mention what they ate for dinner as they talked. What people eat tells you a lot about them. The old king had liked bear steaks, red and bloody, or boar he’d speared himself. King Claudius dined on venison with French sauces. My father liked plain roast mutton, well-cooked, or stuffed pike. My cheeses talked to me not just of the seasons, but of the kingdom beyond the palace: spring grass up in the summer-grazing meadows, or autumn blight upon the farmer’s hay …

  A soft laugh interrupted me. ‘The stars have come to dance with us, and arrows play upon the air. A girl who reads!’

  ‘Your Highness.’ I turned around and curtseyed quickly as Prince Hamlet strode down the room towards me.

  ‘This is the one place in the palace where we can be sure of being alone,’ he said. ‘I doubt anyone except you has come here since I left for Wittenberg.’

  Apart from the servants, I thought. How does the prince think the books are kept free of dust, their covers oiled, the fire lit? But I had never known a man to think of such things.

  ‘Sir, how did you find …’ I was going to say ‘the king’ but changed it to, ‘the court this morning?’

  He shrugged, his brightness turning back to shadow as fast as cloud passes the sun. ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘You are named heir?’

  ‘I am. And I will not return to Wittenberg.’

  I sat down without thinking, I was so relieved. ‘I am so glad. Oh, my lord, I beg your pardon!’ I stood again.

  He chuckled, his gloom gone as quickly as it had come, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘There, I have been thinking of doing that ever since I saw you. Sit, my dear Ophelia. Should a daisy bow its head, or a rose stare at the ground? Sit or stand as you will, forever in my presence.’

  ‘I thank you, sir.’ I sat down again and hugged my knees, suddenly as easy as if he’d been my brother. ‘What else was said in council?’

  He looked at me, amused. ‘Yesterday I thought that frailty’s name was woman. Now I find a girl of steel who would rather talk of council matters than of love.’

  ‘I … I … Sir, I will talk of love if that is what you wish. But you said you needed a guide here at the court.’

  ‘And I have found one. My friend Horatio arrived from Wittenberg last week. He left after me, but had a faster voyage by ship. He chose to be on watch last night,’ his face clouded for an instant, ‘instead of attending the feast.’

  ‘I … I am glad you have another friend here now, my lord.’

  I thought of the two thrones side by side. I must show this prince that a girl could be as valuable a counsel as his friend Horatio.

  He sat on the sofa and took my hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘An hour ago the world was weary, stale, unprofitable, heavy on my shoulders as an avalanche of snow. And now here I find you, and the sunbeams gleam like spring.’

  All at once I realised I had no maid here, nor footman, no chaperone at all. But surely the usual rules did not apply to princes. The queen herself had bid me to walk and talk with him. And Prince Hamlet had kissed me in front of the ladies of the court. One day this man would be our king, and kings and queens made the rules … and could break them.

  Prince Hamlet still held my hand. Suddenly he frowned. ‘Perhaps you may guide me yet, my lily, my rosemary branch. Horatio told me something that troubles me.’

  Something more than his uncle stealing his mother and his throne?

  ‘What, my lord?’

  ‘Have you heard talk … gossip … about a ghost wh
o haunts the palace?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He let my hand fall. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘You have heard talk? Or you have seen the ghost yourself?’

  His face was so dark I was alarmed.

  ‘I … I thought I saw a ghost, years ago. But it was a child’s dream, no more. Night after night I went back up to the battlements, but it was never there again.’

  ‘You were a child?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Yes, my lord. Six years old.’

  He sat back, his eyes clouded. ‘This ghost is born new, hanging helpless between heaven and earth. You have not met any other?’

  ‘My lord, I am sure I would have remembered if I had. It was a dream.’

  ‘A dream. Yes.’ He sat quietly, as if thinking. ‘Last night Horatio was on watch with two guardsmen, Marcellus and Bernardo. Do you know them?’

  ‘I have heard their names, my lord.’

  ‘They seem good men. And Horatio is a scholar and a friend. And yet, they told me that last midnight as the clock chimed they saw …’ His voice faded, as if he could not say the words.

  ‘A ghost, my lord?’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. The joy had gone from his face again.

  ‘My lord,’ I said cautiously, ‘the wine flowed freely last night, and brandy too. I warrant even the watch drank their fill. At midnight in midwinter, a man might see a wisp of mist, a snowfall, or even a petticoat blowing in the wind, and think it a ghost.’

  ‘They say they saw my father’s ghost,’ he said flatly.

  I tried to choose my words carefully. ‘Last night, of all nights, loyal men might well have seen your father’s face in the snowflakes about the palace. Any man who did not say “Nay” when the priest asked for objections to the marriage had reason to imagine King Hamlet’s face at midnight.’