Ophelia

by Jackie French

  I lifted my chin. ‘Please tell His Highness that, with all deference, I cannot see him.’ I gestured at the pan on the fire. ‘I have duties I must attend to.’

  The footman bowed. ‘My lady.’

  Twenty flickers of the candle and he was back. ‘My lady, Prince Hamlet asks when it might suit you to see him?’

  ‘Please give him my most loyal regards, as befits … um …’ I tried to find the right words. ‘As befits Denmark’s most loyal servant. But I cannot see him. Simply that.’

  The footman stared. One does not dismiss a prince.

  ‘Go,’ I told him. He left.

  As soon as he was gone, I wished I hadn’t said it. I dared to do so much that my father did not know. Why did I not have courage to see Hamlet? Just see him, that was all. Advise him. Make it clear I could be a friend, but not a mistress.

  But that would mean disobeying Father, and in his own house. And each time Hamlet called here, there would be more gossip. Gossip breeds gossip, like a marsh breeds midges.

  I took the pan off the fire. If only I had a mother to ask for advice, or a friend. It was impossible to speak of Hamlet’s desperation and its cause to Lady Annika, Lady Anna or Lady Hilda, much less to the queen.

  The queen. Had she failed to call for me today because she too had heard the gossip that I had vanished into the forest alone with her son?

  I took a deep breath. Prince Hamlet had his friend Horatio to keep him steady. He had even told me he had a plan, though I had let passion take over before he shared it with me.

  I could not risk shaming my father further. Father had given his whole life to guiding Denmark and its kings. A scandal between his daughter and the heir to the throne might lose Father not just his reputation but his position here at court.

  My night wanderings up the tower were possible only because no one knew of them. If only I had been as discreet with Hamlet. I had been proud, thinking people would say: ‘There goes the girl who will be queen.’ Instead, they had whispered, ‘There goes the prince’s new light-of-love.’

  I clenched my fists. Hamlet, who was older than I and knew so much more about the world, had not thought of me. To take me out without a chaperone, with all the eyes of Denmark on us. To kiss me like that, in the snow … I touched my lips. I could feel the kiss again, feel its warmth in my body.

  I rubbed my lips hard, to take away the memory. I had to trust the wisdom of my father and my brother. I had to tell Prince Hamlet, ‘No.’

  The days passed. The sun rose earlier each morn. Gradually the air smelled of mud and flowers, not of snow and tin and ice. We drank in the sunlight like a kitten laps up milk. Still I did not speak to Prince Hamlet. Nor did the queen call for me to attend her. She had been the object of murmurings about her own affairs; she did not need to add to the gossip with whispers about me and Hamlet. Her Majesty had given me leave to walk with her son, but not to dance about the trees of the forest, to leave my maid behind and go unchaperoned. Perhaps the queen too thought me shameless.

  I tried to dull the pain with duty. The spring’s sunlight showed the winter cobwebs. I ordered every corner of the house swept. Every carpet was taken out and aired and beaten; every pane of glass was polished with vinegar and soft cloths. My duty was in this household, and here I stayed. I did not even visit my tower at night.

  Safe among the dishcloths and cheeses of home, Hamlet’s declaration that the king had been murdered seemed more and more absurd. Kings died in battle; or, if they were poisoned, it was slipped into their wine at a banquet, as was done in Rome or Venice, and their dying agony was witnessed by all the court. Our king had died napping in the sunshine in his garden. How was it possible to poison an ear? Except, I thought, with malice. Or with careless words of love, like those that had so damaged me.

  I inspected the household linens; engaged a woman to darn the frayed edges; had my father’s cuffs re-whitened; wrote out the household accounts in my neatest hand for him to inspect. I looked at the pages and tried to smile: I had done well. Only half of the house allowance had been spent. A wise housewife filled her cellars for winter from summer’s plenty, rather than buy salt pork, dried fish or cheese at high winter prices. We still had good supplies of salted butter, along with cheeses that would mature for next year or the year after. A good cheese grows more valuable the longer it spends in the cellar.

  This is all I can ever hope for now, I thought: to tend my father’s household well; and, perhaps, one day, a husband’s.

  I did not go marketing in case the sight of me revived the gossip. I saw no one, except Father and the servants. Even Father stopped telling me the news of court at breakfast. Perhaps he thought that he had given me ideas above my station. Never had I been such a dutiful daughter. Never had I felt as though chains hung from my wrists and ankles, and I would never get them loose.

  Prince Hamlet did not come to our house again. But his letters did, one each day, handed by a palace servant discreetly to Gerda at the marketplace, sealed with the prince’s imprint. They were letters of love, of loneliness, of longing. I tried to tell myself that he had made an image of me, as he had of his dead father. It was the image he loved, not me. If he truly loved me, he had only to speak to my father, to claim me as a husband should. He didn’t. Yet my heart bled with every page.

  A dutiful daughter would show her father every letter. I did not. I had so little now, just these crumbs of love. Letters could not be gossiped about if no one saw them. And if I did not reply, Gerda would not gossip either — or, at least, not about me.

  But she brought me gossip from the market, and I swallowed it hungrily, eager to hear about the world beyond our door. The barrel-maker’s apprentice wanted to marry. Who had heard of such a thing, a lad not yet a journeyman thinking he could marry? Someone had planted snowdrops on the grave of the poor girl who had drowned herself and her unborn babe. Was it the man who had ruined her? Were the flowers of guilt or love? Lady Anna had a new cloak trimmed with bearskin, which had given her an itch. Everyone knew, said Gerda smugly, that bearskin was too coarse for a lady’s skin.

  At last, as the flies arrived with the first warm breeze, Father began to speak again of court affairs at breakfast. There was to be a new tax on French wine instead of on dried fish — the queen’s suggestion, said my father. It was a tax the rich could afford, which did not hurt the poor. The king of Norway was paying Fortinbras a large sum of money to attack Poland with his army.

  ‘There is no danger of Prince Fortinbras invading now,’ Father said cheerfully, peering at me over his cold veal chop and mustard. ‘A firm hand and firm mind, and the kingdom is kept straight.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, Father.’

  I thought: he has not said, ‘The palace is gossiping that King Claudius murdered his brother.’ Perhaps Father would think gossip like that unsuitable for his daughter’s ears. But Gerda hadn’t brought back a tale like that either.

  The palace bred gossip as a bearskin breeds fleas. If Lord Claudius had poured poison in the king’s ear, if he had even been in the garden, surely someone on one of the towers would have seen him? If there is no gossip, even among the servants, I thought, it cannot be true.

  If only Hamlet could accept that too.

  Chapter 12

  The first day of summer blew gusts of snow, as if the year laughed at us for trying to keep it confined to a calendar, and white tops on the harbour’s waves. It brought a letter from Hamlet too, the first in a week. I had begun to think he had let me go. But these pages were delivered by a footman from the palace an hour after Father had left me, instead of thrust into Gerda’s hands more discreetly in the marketplace, and were waxed with the prince’s seal.

  I wondered how many people knew already that Prince Hamlet had sent a letter to the Lady Ophelia this morning, and to her own hand, not through her father as was proper.

  I thanked the footman and waited till he had left the room. Then I broke the seal and unfolded the pages. The prince wrote in a scholar’
s script: the writing gracious, but hurried today and smudged, as if he had not paused to blot his words.

  To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia …

  Beautified, I thought; celestial. I am neither of those things. I am a girl who knows her country and cheese. Then I read the words below. My heart stopped, then began to beat again. I heard his voice in every word.

  Doubt thou the stars are fire;

  Doubt that the sun doth move;

  Doubt truth to be a liar;

  But never doubt I love.

  Oh dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee, oh most best, believe it. Adieu. Thine evermore, most dear lady, while this machine is in him, Hamlet.

  The locket he had given me burned against my skin. I did not doubt his love. But his love could scorch me, like the fiery stars. It had already blackened my name.

  Nor did I doubt his pain.

  If I’d had no father, I would have gone to Hamlet then. Would have cast all away to make him smile, as I had before.

  I tucked the letter into my bodice. It felt cold at first, until my body warmed it. Warm as the locket, next to my heart. Another letter like that and I doubted I would have the strength to stay away.

  By midday, the snow had gone. The sky hung as blue as if it had never tasted a cloud, the sun straining once again to reach the topmost sky.

  Doubt that the sun doth move …

  The image clutched me. I couldn’t shake it off.

  I climbed up to the attic to check that the winter furs were guarded against the moths. From the top window, I saw fields green with barley stretched like a green carpet to the horizon. On the other side, pigs rooted under the oak trees, hoping for acorns left uneaten from last autumn. Hares would duck and run in the forest, and deer too. Last summer, I would have called Gerda and a footman and we’d have gone berrying, or gathered mushrooms under the trees. Not now. Not till the gossips’ tongues had quietened.

  When the queen calls for me again, I thought, I shall know that I have been redeemed.

  Perhaps she never would.

  Stop it, I told myself. Stop sighing for the moon.

  Doubt truth to be a liar, the wind whispered at the window.

  Something about the letter niggled me. But never doubt I love. Why should I doubt him? I didn’t doubt his love, only his ability to love me honourably, as a wife, not a prince’s mistress. Surely he realised that now.

  Doubt thou the stars are fire … It was almost as if the letter held a hidden message, not just telling me he loved me and always would — a small sword stabbed my heart at the thought — but saying something else, in words that no one else might understand. But what?

  I sat on a chest of old linen. I went through the poem in my mind, the words that followed it. Each was blazed on my mind now. But if there was a hidden message, I couldn’t see it.

  Stop thinking about it, I told myself. Stop thinking of Hamlet too, of dreams and kisses. Think of cheese instead. Cheese was sensible, dependable. I could never have the moon, but I did have cheeses: three score of them, all sealed in wax; and the shelves freshly scrubbed for the first spring cheeses from our estates. I had a storeroom full of linen; a feather bed that smelled of sunlight and lavender. I had a father who kept me safe from harm. I was one of the most fortunate girls in the whole kingdom and I should remember it.

  And I had my father’s cuffs to embroider if I had nothing better to do. I took a last look at the cows munching the new green grass that turned the sunlight into cheese, then headed downstairs. Placid obedient cows, just like a well-mannered daughter.

  I had already finished one cuff. I looked at it critically. It was good work, good enough for the king’s lord chancellor. No one would ever say, ‘Ah, look at Lord Polonius’s cuffs, so cunningly embroidered.’ But they would notice if his cuffs were unadorned. I began on the next, stitching a row of small flowers, and then our family’s crest: two deer upright against a shield. White thread on white cloth so it spoke of carefulness, not boasting … Someone screamed below. A maid has seen a mouse, I thought. I must tell Gerda to put out cheese mixed with henbane …

  ‘My lady.’ The footman panted at the door. ‘My lady, please, you must come!’

  ‘What is it?’ Had the cook set the kitchen on fire?

  ‘It’s Prince Hamlet.’

  ‘I … Please tell him I cannot see him.’

  The footman looked at me imploringly. ‘My lady, I dare not. Please see him.’

  ‘My father —’

  ‘John has gone to fetch Lord Polonius.’

  I could not understand why the man was so urgent. To be sure, it was a great thing to turn a prince away from the door, but I had done so often by now.

  ‘Give Prince Hamlet my most deferential regards,’ I began.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs. And there was Hamlet. Not a prince today, just a man. But I had never seen any man like this, except the mad beggar who had capered by the church one summer, asking for alms. Hamlet’s careful black garb was gone. He wore only a white shirt, its buttons all undone, showing his chest. Red stockings hung below his knees. I had never seen a man’s bare legs before. Had never realised they were so hairy.

  I stood, putting the cuff and needle to one side. I forced my hands and voice to be calm. ‘My lord,’ I began.

  I stopped as he staggered across the room to me, his face so twisted I should hardly have known him. He grabbed my hand.

  ‘My lord, please. You are hurting me!’ I tried to pull away.

  Still he did not speak. Instead, he stared into my eyes as a child might look into a well, to see if there is a water sprite hidden in its depths.

  ‘Please, my lord. Tell me what is wrong.’

  And yet I knew it even as I spoke. Knew his anguish. Knew the burden that he carried, the evil whisperings of his father’s ghost. Knew his love too. And that I had spurned him when he needed me so desperately, when I had been perhaps his only true friend at court.

  ‘Hamlet,’ I said softly, ‘my lord, I am sorry.’

  I reached my hand towards him. I had no thought of my honour now, or my father’s, or my lost dreams of being queen. I would throw away all I had just to ease his pain.

  Too late. I didn’t think he even heard me.

  He grabbed my hand, stared at it in disgust, then thrust it away, like a man throwing away a stick he had found to be a snake. He staggered from the room.

  I ran to the window, and watched him run from our front door, towards the palace. Then I sat and cried.

  And then, carefully, I wiped my eyes and prepared to tell my father.

  My father told the king and queen, of course, as a good lord chancellor should. I waited at our house, as I had when I was a child and expected a scolding. At least then I had known it would be bread and water for supper. What punishment would come my way for this?

  I could not even sew. I sat, and thought of Hamlet. At last, I heard my father’s tread on the stairs, slow and heavy.

  I stood to greet him. ‘Father?’

  He nodded at me sombrely. ‘I have told Their Majesties, and shown them the letters that he sent. They think as I do.’

  ‘What is that?’ I whispered.

  ‘That Prince Hamlet is mad for love.’

  I heard the whisper in the breeze down the chimney: Doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.

  I could not think. I could not feel. I had done this to him. I had offered friendship to the friendless; given love to one who had lost a father, a kingdom, even a mother too. Then I had snatched it from him just as his burden grew too great to bear alone. I shook my head, trying not to cry. I should have explained to him. Told him I loved him still, but must obey my father.

  Had I loved him, truly? If I did, could I have hurt him so easily? Had I been more in love with a dream throne, and removed myself from him once my dream had been taken from me?

  ‘Father? What will happen to him?�
� I had heard of mad wretches being locked in towers, chained to the walls so they did not harm themselves or their attendants, and screaming away their lives. I did not think I could bear it if that happened to Hamlet.

  ‘Their Majesties will act with majesty, high ends and higher heart. He will be cared for. But, daughter, they must care for a whole kingdom, not just a son.’

  Which was no true answer, only words. Father had so many words, gathered during a lifetime at court, where true feelings must be concealed behind the right words. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I trusted the king — nor even the queen — to care well for Hamlet. Even without his ghostly father’s claims, they had robbed him of so much already. Would they take his freedom too?

  ‘Father …’ I sought my words carefully. ‘Could there be another reason for the prince’s state?’

  He looked at me, suddenly a chancellor, not just a father. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Sir, his father’s death has hurt him greatly. And he is … in distress at … what has happened since.’

  I felt I was picking the good grains out of a sack of mouldy rice in order to make a pudding. Even to my father I could not say, ‘Hamlet’s uncle stole his mother and his crown. I do not know which he grieves for most.’ Of all the people in the kingdom, I could not tell my father that. Nor could I hint that Hamlet believed the new king to be a murderer. My father must be loyal to the king. My words would be treason.

  Father said nothing for a moment, then murmured, ‘Daughter, truly I do not know.’ He looked out the window. ‘When I was young, I suffered from love, almost like this.’

  I stared. I knew Father had loved my mother too much to leave the home she had made and move into the palace. But to love her to the point of madness? My sedate and careful father, with his strings of words?

  The moment passed. Father looked at me again with chancellor’s eyes. ‘I have watched the young man. He speaks to me like one deranged, and to his old friends too — young Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’

  ‘He has friends come to Elsinore?’

  I hoped he had more friends here than just Horatio, who, after all, had been the one to tell him of his father’s ghost.