“He walked along the rail like he was looking for something,” Horatio continues, his voice low and grim. “I asked if there was any message we could deliver, anything he needed, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything, but sometimes his mouth would open like there was something he needed to say. Even had his robes and mortar on, like at the funeral. He paced and paced and paced, and then, when it was almost dawn, he just disappeared.” He gives me a quick, cautious look. “I’ve never seen a ghost before. I know you see them, Ophelia, but I never have, never thought to, and here he was.”
“A ghost …” Dane’s hand curls into a fist so tight his knuckles pop. Caught between his fingers, my hair tugs away from my scalp, stings tears into my eyes. “How can he be a ghost? He had a heart attack, he was blessed by the priest, and he was buried in sanctified ground. It isn’t possible that he’s a ghost.”
“The priest tells us of demons who take on a loved one’s form,” I murmur. Please, let this be enough, let this idea take root so he doesn’t look too closely for the truth. “It’s a cruel trick.”
“And you believe in demons?”
“If we believe in Heaven, in Hell, don’t we have to? If there are angels to watch over us, there must be demons to plague our steps.”
Jack shakes his head and lifts his eyes to the lake. The bells carry over the surface of the water where the moonlight gleams off the pearl-white bodies of the morgens come to soak in the light. They float in clouds of hair, unashamed of breasts and bellies and thighs. “No good can come of spirits,” he mumbles in his weary, cracked voice. “Never a good thing to come of them, no matter their origin.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll find out anyway.” Dane takes a deep breath. He stares at the bench, at Jack and Horatio on the curved stone, but I know it’s his father he sees, dead in the warm afternoon sun. “If there’s even the chance that it’s him … maybe …”
Maybe he’ll tell his son to put aside his grief, to remember what it is to be alive and cling to that rather than to what is lost and irretrievable.
And maybe the City of Ys will rise from the lake in a flood of gleaming towers and bronze walls.
Because even though I haven’t asked, even though I won’t, I know which ghost Horatio has seen. It is not the echo of dignity and grace and love, not the form with a head bowed from sorrow. That ghost sits atop the headstone and waits patiently for the nights to end. The ghost that walks, that challenges, is the fury that murmurs through his son.
There are only so many ways a heart can break before it shatters to dust that cannot be mended into something whole once more.
Fiercely, passionately, with a strength that surprises me, I wish Horatio hadn’t said anything.
“There are too many people on the grounds tonight,” Dane continues in a more even tone. “Tomorrow, around midnight. We’ll go up to the walk and see for ourselves if it will reappear. If it doesn’t, then it’s just a trick. Moonlight off the lake or a shred of fog.”
“And if it isn’t?” Horatio asks softly. “If it’s real?”
Dane shakes his head, and finally his hand eases in my hair. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
The whole world will find out if anyone does. The sun explodes within my heart, and I can’t breathe, can’t make sense of the words that flow over my head, all around me.
A rough, callused hand takes mine, and a silken soft flower is pressed against my palm before the hand drops away. I curl my fingers and feel the sting of death as the flower is crushed.
There is nothing of life in this endeavor.
CHAPTER 17
Laertes’ chagrin at finding out that Father and Claudius staged the entire “favor” last night is nothing to his panic at finding out that he must pack and leave for the airport by five o’clock. The maids spend the morning washing nearly all of his clothing so he can decide what to bring, and I spend the afternoon sitting on his bed with the clothing in a mountain on one side and his vast suitcase open on the other. As he selects each item, he hands it to me to fold and pack into the case because he can’t fold a shirt to save his life.
“Thanks, Ophelia,” he says as I fold yet another button-down shirt. The gratitude is so unlike him that I know he’s freaking out.
But I tell him that he’s welcome and make no mention of how grateful I am for the distraction. Mindless folding keeps me from remembering that at midnight tonight, we go to see if Hamlet has rediscovered his voice.
Eventually, with all the clothing sorted, folded, and wedged into the suitcase, he turns to all the other things he’ll need for four months away. For lack of anything more productive to do, I curl up against his headboard and watch. He’ll never fit half of what he’s dragging out, but it should be fun to watch him try.
I don’t realize I’m turning Dane’s ring through my fingers until I notice Laertes’ eyes riveted on the silver band. “Something?”
“You’re still wearing that?”
“I don’t have any particular reason to take it off, do I?”
He sighs and sits down next to me on the bed, tosses the toiletry bag into the suitcase, and immediately regrets it when he has nothing to fidget with. “Look, I know you think he loves you, and for right now, maybe he does. Maybe he loves you while he needs your help to deal with grief, while there’s no one else here, and maybe he’ll even love you for a little bit longer, but Ophelia—please listen to me this time—it’s not going to last. Even if he wanted it to, it couldn’t. He’ll almost definitely be Headmaster one day; the woman he marries will be the official hostess, will have to be someone who can ably deal with all of the arrangements and gatherings, not someone who disappears into reading alcoves or haunts the edges of crowds.”
So I’m not the only one who thinks I’m sometimes a ghost.
“Whatever he wants to give you now, he won’t be able to give you forever. He won’t be able to marry you, Ophelia, and you need to remember that. You’re … you’re so innocent, and Dane’s … well, Dane. He has a lot more experience than you, and you need to stay away from that. From him. This isn’t a bad novel; he isn’t going to marry you simply because you let him seduce you into bed and you wind up pregnant.”
Like Mama did to Father, only marriage was never what she wanted. She hated it, hated him sometimes, but Laertes has never heard this about them, perhaps never even wondered why there was such a difference between them in so many ways.
“You know what this school is like, and you know how gossip spreads. Your reputation has to be everything, and it would repay Father and Gertrude very poorly for you to throw that away. You owe it to the family, to the Danemarks, to use better sense.”
That he believes what he says I have no doubt.
That what he says makes him a hypocritical prig I am equally sure.
But I don’t want to start an argument right before he leaves for four months, so I give him a small smile even as I drop the ring back into my blouse. “I promise to keep your words close to heart, Laertes, on one condition.”
“A condition?”
“Do not preach to me that chastity and virginity are the steep path to Heaven while you debauch your way through Paris.”
“Ophelia!”
“What? You do it here when Father is only two doors away and the risk is great of getting caught; why wouldn’t you do it an ocean away? Oh, and …” I peel away the lining of the suitcase to show the many condoms he thinks he’s so cleverly hidden there. “You’ll want to find a better way to hide these before Father has Reynaldo go through your things.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Who, Father? Or Reynaldo?”
He doesn’t answer, probably because there’s no true answer he can give without losing face. Father gives our rooms a cursory search once a week, and Reynaldo—technically his assistant, realistically his bent-backed evil minion—never hesitates to invade our privacy at whim, hoping to find some small detail that will further ingratiate him with Father. Reynaldo’s
been gone much of the summer for family concerns, but he’s back now and no doubt eager to continue pawing through my lingerie drawer.
“You could just buy them over there, you know. Unless you think it’s that certain that you’ll join the mile high club, in which case you could just put one or two in your wallet.”
“Ophelia, can you please spare me the pain of having this conversation with my little sister?” God, he’s actually blushing. I think he’d give anything to get out of this.
“You were very eager to have this conversation when it was about me.”
“About you not having sex,” he corrects with a pained grimace, “which is an entirely different conversation.”
“And yet, you still haven’t agreed to my condition.”
A ring scrapes against the outside of the door, and he yanks away the condoms in a panic, shoves them between the pillows and the headboard in the time it takes Father to open the door. He smiles to see us sitting together; it quickly turns to a frown when he sees the open suitcase. “Not ready yet? They won’t hold the plane for you, my boy.”
“No, of course not. I’m nearly done.” He shoots me an anxious look and starts throwing in the rest of his things. With each one, I find a better placement for it, a way to fit more in.
Father clears his throat and clasps his hands before him, a sure sign that he’s about to launch into a speech. “Now, Laertes, there are many things you need to keep in mind as you head out on this venture: be careful of what you say, and of what you do; be friendly, but do not be overfamiliar or vulgar; find some few friends who may be true and steady, but do not seek to be the friend of all, or you’ll attract dullards and leeches and idiots of the worst sort; be cautious in seeking an argument or fight, but should one be necessary, come out on the right side of it; listen more than you speak; be the best judge of character of those you meet, but reserve your judgment; spend what you are given and have earned, let them see your station and accord you your worth, especially in France where the clothes very much make the man; do not borrow money, for you can have no need of that, but do not lend it either, or you’ll find more friends than funds; but this, my boy, above all other things remember: to your own self be true, and it must follow that you cannot be false to any man.”
Laertes’ eyes glaze over halfway through, and he tends to his packing with a feverish nod to pretend that he’s listening. He flips over the lid, tugs me to sit atop it, and struggles with the zipper and locks. It takes both of us, as well as some shifting within the case, to actually get it shut.
Father clears his throat again and hands Laertes a plastic bag stuffed with a credit card, some American money, and more euros than I think any of us would know what to do with at once. “Put that away and hurry down to the car; Reynaldo is waiting to take you to the airport, and there isn’t much time to dawdle.” Despite his brisk words, his eyes are misty as he embraces his son and firstborn tightly.
When he’s finally released, Laertes gives me a more simple hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Remember what I said.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Consider it locked in my memory, and you shall hold the key.”
“What is this?”
Laertes hesitates at the door, flicks a glance between me and Father. I shake my head in subtle warning, but either he doesn’t see it or his elder-brother-officiousness makes him ignore it. “Ophelia isn’t as careful around Dane as she should be.” And before Father can even register the full statement, my brother sprints down the hall with his suitcase dragging awkwardly behind him.
I should have just left the condoms in the bag for Reynaldo to discover and bring to Father.
I ease off Laertes’ bed and walk towards the door, but Father’s hand circles my arm just above the elbow to hold me back. He doesn’t squeeze—yet—but having finally healed from the earlier bruises, I would much prefer not to win more so soon.
“Ophelia.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and fold my hands in my lap.
Father paces before me, hands clasped behind his back. He doesn’t say anything at first; this is the kind of thing he would really rather work up to. “I’ve noticed that Dane spends a great deal of time with you,” he says eventually, “and Gertrude has mentioned several times how grateful she is that her son finds himself so calm in your presence. Now I ask you, Ophelia, and I expect the truth: what is between you and Dane?”
I take a deep breath to give myself time to sort through the welter of words available. What is the truth? What is between me and Dane?
I have no idea.
“He has, lately, expressed a decided preference for my company,” I answer carefully. “He says I make him feel real.”
“Real? And you believe him, do you?”
Sometimes I do. That isn’t something I should say to my father when he has this look on his face. “I don’t really know what to think.”
“I will tell you exactly what to think: you are a child for having even considered these affections to be real. You must value yourself more dearly, Ophelia, or you’ll be taken by the first hot-blooded young fool and left with a child, a disgrace not only to yourself but also to this family and to the Danemarks who have taken us in so completely.”
“He says he needs me—”
“All he needs is his hand and a magazine.”
“—and behaves most honorably towards that end!” I so rarely argue with Father, but Dane hasn’t done anything I haven’t allowed him to.
“He’s a young man, and he’ll behave as he needs to until you trust him enough to let him take what he wants. Ophelia …” He sighs and crouches down in front of me, his hands over mine in my lap. “Ophelia,” he continues more softly, “I know how it feels to be your age, and I know how easily words come to those who want something so badly. These blazes give more light than heat, and they never last; you must not take them for fire. Dane is a good boy—I don’t mean to imply that he isn’t—but youth and foolishness go hand in hand, and you are both vulnerable.
“From this time forward, you will make every effort to avoid Dane without Gertrude or myself there to act as chaperone. You will not go to him just because he snaps his fingers or asks it of you; you are better than that, and you have a higher duty.” He considers his edict for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, I can see we’re well past avoidance. You will not be at all in Dane’s company without his mother or myself there. Not at all, Ophelia, promise me.”
He really looks nothing like either of his children. There are lonely threads of dark brown woven in with the thick mixture of white and grey atop his head and in his neatly trimmed beard, his eyes a middling brown with no particular shadows or warmth. He was handsome once—I have seen photos from a younger time—but while he has grown into dignity, the virtue of beauty has become worn with time.
Gertrude’s words ring in my head, remind me of the possibility that there might not even be any blood between me and the man before me. I look and I look, searching for some physical sign to connect us, but even the shape of our faces, the structure of the bones, everything Laertes and I have physically, we have from our mother. Even pictures conspire to set our father apart.
But to this man, there has never been a question that I am his daughter, for better or worse. He loves me, however awkwardly he expresses it, and he cares about my well-being. This is important to him.
Dane asked for a promise.
Laertes asked for a promise.
Father asks for a promise.
A promise is a rope around the neck.
Little Ophelia, who’s never been needed before, is suddenly needed in very different ways, pulled in very different directions. I’ve only ever had my own secrets to keep, and now everyone, it seems, is asking for a promise. I close my eyes, feel the weight of words on an unwilling tongue. “I’ll try,” I whisper.
Forgive me, Dane, but I have to try. This pain you’ve recently learned has been my father’s companion longer than I’ve been alive.
For all the heartache my mother’s given him, I have to try.
CHAPTER 18
It’s nearly eleven before I can sneak out of the house to join Horatio and Dane. Father kept me close after dinner—how much of that is nostalgia over Laertes’ absence and how much is his concern over our earlier conversation is anyone’s guess, but he’s strangely reluctant to get pulled into yet another discussion of school policy with Claudius. Eventually, however, his need to make sure everything is ready for the return of the students intrudes and he retreats to his office and closes the door.
I break one promise to keep another, but I’ll break that one too in a few hours, all my best intentions shattered around me.
I run across the school grounds to the light that burns alone in the midst of darkness. The gymnasium is locked, but that poses less of an obstacle than it should; those of us who live here year-round have a talent for acquiring keys we’re not supposed to have. I pull my ring of keys from the pocket of my skirt, where it’s been clicking against the glass tube of the syringe, and find the proper one for the gym.
The tiny lobby is dark and silent. I find the cool glass of the trophy cases and trail my fingers across them until I reach the wall. Through the creaking double doors, the main room is deserted, but light glows through a window on the far side. I cross carefully, hoping there’s nothing strewn over the floor but reach the far door without trouble. The light, yellowed and uneven as it is, stings my eyes as I open the door to the weight room.
No matter how much it’s scrubbed or aired out, the weight room is home to a perpetual funk of stale sweat, deodorant, and body wash, mixed with the lighter smells of sawdust and chalk. It wafts around me as I blink furiously, trying to adjust to the light. An unsteady series of thumps hovers in the air like a panicked heartbeat, accompanied by softer grunts of effort. When the stars clear from my eyes, I see Dane and Horatio at one of the hanging bags.
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