Hamlet: a novel Part 5

"The queen, in great affliction of spirit, has sent us to you . . ."

"And you are welcome."

But now Guildenstern had had enough. Normally the quieter of the two, he felt he had lost enough dignity in front of Horatio, and so stood upon the little he had left. "Your Royal Highness," he said coldly, "you tell us we are welcome, but your courtesy is not of the right breed. If it pleases you to make us a straightforward answer, we will carry out your mother's wishes; if not, you must give us permission to withdraw, and that will be the end of our business."

To the surprise of everyone, Hamlet answered calmly, in the lilting voice he used to chat to servants about their babies, or diplomats about their hats. "Gentlemen, I cannot."

"W-what, sir?" Guildenstern stammered.

Horatio, for some reason that he did not understand himself, felt a sudden surge of care for Hamlet. He eased a little closer to the prince.

"I cannot give you a plain answer. My mind is diseased. I am ill. However, I will answer you as best I can, so go ahead - if you have a message from my mother, as you seem to, then deliver it."

"Then, sir," Rosencrantz said nervously. "She says that your behavior amazes and astonishes her."

"Oh, wonderful son, who can astonish a mother. But is there a sequel to this? I can hardly believe you have come here to tell me just that."

It was Guildenstern's turn again. "She would like to see you in her apartment before you go to bed."

"She is not likely to see me in her apartment after I go to bed. That would be a strange state of affairs." Hamlet had danced away again, back to the edge of the precipice. "But palace life these days is nothing but strange affairs. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern looked aghast, fearing they were about to hear terrible words that would make them partners in some sort of conspiracy. "I beg you, Your Royal Highness," they said in perfect harmony.

"Well, that makes it unanimous," Hamlet said. "Anyway, I would obey any summons from the queen, even if she were only one-tenth of the mother she is. Have you any further business with me?"

"Highness," said Rosencrantz, wheedling now. He reached out a hand as if to take the prince by the shoulder. "You loved me once."

"And still do," said Hamlet, unflinching.

"Then, please, why do you behave like this? You have been lost to your friends, to those who love you. Where is the sweet prince who was once such a merry companion?"

You didn't know him too well, Horatio thought.

And Hamlet had an almost identical reaction: If that's all they knew of me, they knew little indeed.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I lack prospects."

"But you will inherit one day! The king has always spoken of you as the one who will replace him. How can you say you lack prospects?"

Hamlet shrugged. "Amid the growing gra.s.s, the horse can still starve." He picked up a flute and handed it to Guildenstern. "Play this for me," he said.

"Highness," said Guildenstern, putting his hands behind his back, "I cannot."

"Please?"

"Sir, I can't!"

"I beg you."

"It is not possible, Your Highness, believe me. I don't know how!"

"Go on."

"I wouldn't know where to start. I have never learned music."

"Oh, you're making too much fuss. There's nothing to it. It's as easy as lying. Use your fingers and thumb to cover these holes - give it breath with your mouth, and it will make the most beautiful music. Look, here are the stops."

"But I can make no harmony. I don't have the skill."

"Why, then, look at what you are doing to me. You would play upon me as though I am a flute, you think you know my stops, you would sound me from the lowest notes to the highest . . . yet here is this little flute, which contains much excellent music, and which you cannot make speak. By G.o.d, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, try as you might to reach my heart, you cannot play upon me, sir!"

Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were unable to respond. As they looked at each other in consternation, Polonius appeared silently behind them. He seemed to have shrunk in the s.p.a.ce of an evening. Hamlet had always thought of him as old, but now he looked ninety. Huddled into his robes with just his dry, wrinkled little head protruding, he called to Hamlet. "Highness, the queen would like to speak to you, as soon as possible."

Hamlet stared at him. "Do you see the cloud through the window there?" he asked. "The one that looks like a camel?"

Polonius made a pretense of looking through the window. Outside was black as a grave. "Indeed, it is like a camel," he said.

"Actually, I think it's like a rabbit."

"Yes, now that you mention it, it does have the shape of a rabbit."

"Or a whale?" Hamlet asked.

"Very like a whale."

"Then I will come to my mother in the next ten minutes."

"I will tell her, Your Royal Highness."

Polonius withdrew. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern took advantage of the moment to go with him. Hamlet nodded to Horatio, who gave a slight bow and followed the others.

Hamlet was left alone, his mind still whirling with the excitement of the evening and the success of his plot. He felt that events were now about to accelerate toward a terrible climax. Gazing out the same window that Polonius had glanced at, he noticed the extreme darkness. The wind was still pulling at the building and rattling the shutters. It's the witching time of night, he thought. When graves yawn open and h.e.l.l itself exhales diseases and decay. Now is my opportunity. Now I could commit bitter acts, of a kind that daylight would fear to look upon. Now my sword can become a serpent. Now I could drink hot blood. But first, I will go to my mother.

He drew a deep breath and straightened up.

Oh heart, he told himself, do not lose your nature. Let me not be evil, think evil, or act from evil thoughts. I will say what I want to say to my mother, but I will do nothing violent toward her. With her, my tongue and my soul shall contradict each other. I will speak daggers to her but use none. However much I shame her with words, I shall do nothing shameful to her.

He left the room.

There had been a day in their childhood when Ophelia saw the timidity of Hamlet. It was in April, the weakest month. He picked up Horatio and Ophelia one morning, when the two boys were nearly twelve and Ophelia nearly eleven, and led them from the southern wing back to his tower, down the final steps and out of the castle. They ran through the western gate, yelling cheek at the young Dutch guard, whom they liked, and on into the village.

Hamlet went this way often enough. The people here admired him and stopped what they were doing when they saw him coming, left their work, moving forward eagerly. Some clapped; a few girls called his name; half a dozen boys ran down the hill after the young prince and his friends.

Hamlet, however, paused for nothing and no one until they were in the forest. By then Horatio was nearly fifty meters behind and Ophelia was white in the distance, a goose perhaps, a bird struggling for her life.

Hamlet stopped and watched her. He seemed fascinated with her today.

"What are we doing?" Ophelia asked when she caught up to them and had finished panting.

"I don't know. Looking for the monster? Searching for dragons? I felt possessed by the running urge."

Horatio looked cross. "I thought we were doing something special."

Hamlet ignored him and smiled at Ophelia. "We are. Maybe. Who knows?"

They walked on, calm now, chatting only of the here and now, the faint track to the left, the spider scuttling across their path, the piece of bark patterned like the king's personal standard.

"Do you know this road?" Horatio asked the prince.

"No. But I imagine it leads to Eligah."

"I went there when I was little, with my father. But I don't think we came this way. Anyway, we were in a carriage. I wasn't paying much attention."

"What's Eligah?" asked Ophelia from behind them.

"A village. They make cheese, mostly. Haven't you heard of Eligah cheese?"

She didn't answer.

A thumping from the left hinted at a wild boar, and the three children walked closer together, looking eagerly and anxiously from side to side. Only a few weeks earlier a baby had been taken by a boar, or so it was believed, and the villagers were still trying to hunt the beast down. But the forest was quiet and the road clear.

Soon it became monotonous, and Horatio, who liked everything to have meaning and purpose, almost suggested turning back. But a glance at Hamlet's face dissuaded him. The young prince was intent on something. He looked more like a jungle hunter than a boy traveling through the woods in Denmark.

They walked for nearly two hours and reached the outskirts of Eligah. Now Horatio became more interested. Here was an interruption; here was the quickness that comes only with people. The village was larger than he remembered, with an ancient bridge just ahead of them and a tall church spire in the distance. On both sides of the track were pig and dairy farms, the tiniest farms Horatio had ever seen. He began to wonder if he had ever been here at all.

To his frustration, however, Hamlet stopped.

"Time we were heading back," he announced.

"But why have we come all this way?" Horatio objected. Already he was sulking, knowing that his wishes would not prevail. It was not just that Hamlet was a prince; it was also that Horatio was not quite strong enough.

"How would you like it," Ophelia said shrewdly, "if you couldn't go anywhere without people making a fuss of you? He's ent.i.tled to some privacy."

"But you don't know if that's what he's thinking," Horatio said.

"Don't talk about him as if he's not here."

"Well, that's exactly what you were just doing."

Hamlet watched the squabble with interest, smiling slightly. He had nothing more to say, though, and started walking back along the clear, wide track. Horatio was baffled. Why had they come here? Had there been no reason after all?

At that moment there was a cry from Hamlet's left and slightly behind him. Horatio and Ophelia stood frozen, listening and staring. Hamlet seemed to need no time to study the situation. At the first sound he was already running, and in a moment had pa.s.sed them.

He has the reflexes of a dog, Horatio thought, grudgingly, admiringly, enviously. Then he followed his prince.

Hamlet had dashed through a screen of trees as though they were not there and was already out of sight. When Horatio burst through the same line of young elms, he saw Hamlet stooping over a dark shape on the ground. Horatio first thought this was the baby taken by the boar but then realized that was not possible; the baby had disappeared three weeks ago.

There seemed to be no danger. The boy ran to Hamlet's side and stood with him looking down at the creature. It was not a baby but a badger, wounded in some wild attack, by a wolf perhaps. Its snout had been half torn off its face. It was an old badger, with a graying muzzle, as much as could be seen of it through the blood. Its teeth, exposed in its distress, were worn and stained.

With the arrival of Horatio, and then Ophelia, the badger stirred and tried to drag itself away, on three wobbly legs, the fourth trailing behind, so impotent that for a moment Horatio thought it was a stick the badger had caught in its fur. The creature struggled about ten meters and collapsed again. It lay there waiting in fear for the end. Until then death had meant nothing more than the avoidance of pain; now the creature understood oblivion.

"Better finish him off," Horatio said to Hamlet.

The prince drew his sword, a short weapon, as befitted boys of their age, but sharp enough. The three of them had followed the badger and now they stood over it once more, watching its heaving flanks and tiny eyes, listening to its grunting breath.

"Do it," Ophelia said urgently. "I can't stand it. Poor thing."

Hamlet held the handle of his sword. He had not yet fully withdrawn it from its scabbard. Horatio realized that he was hesitating, that perhaps he was not yet ready to use it. Some boys were like that, but he'd never imagined Hamlet might be one of them. He didn't know what to say but thought he should say something. Wisely, though, he held his tongue.

"Go on," Ophelia said again. "It's all right. It's the only thing to do. Look at its face. It can't survive."

"I . . ." Hamlet said. "I don't think it's big enough."

"Of course it is," Ophelia said. She had not yet understood the problem. Hamlet could not do it in front of anyone, only on his own. "Please, Hamlet. The pain it is . . . you must put it out of its misery. Nothing in such pain should live."

Hamlet jerked and swallowed. "You . . . I can't . . ." he said. "Why should I? Oh, all right, then." And he stabbed angrily at the badger, missing the heart by such a margin that the sword went in somewhere along the back of the spine, near the tail. The badger grunted and flailed its legs. Hamlet realized the enormity of his mistake and stabbed wildly now, three, four times, until blood was everywhere across the ground and breath was leaving the spasming animal.

For every breath the badger lost, Hamlet breathed harder, and now that the creature had nothing left, the boy panted, as if somehow breathing for them both. Soon, it was over. In anger and embarra.s.sment he looked around for his two friends. They had backed away and were behind him now, Ophelia with averted eyes, Horatio frowning.

"It's different with bow and arrow," Hamlet said. His anger felt like scarlet fever. If I were here on my own, I would stab myself, he thought. That would be easy. But I wouldn't do it in front of anyone. I'd probably mess that up too.

The best swordsman in the castle, for his age! Horatio was thinking. Probably the best in the country! But he went to water. I would have done it with one clean stroke. I'll be better than him one day.

And as they walked home in silence, Horatio trailing behind the other two, he practiced huge stabbing strokes at the prince's back, realizing with terror as he did that such a thing was tantamount to treason.

Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern met in the library moments after the play finished. The king strode up and down the room, past the heavy ranks of books that m.u.f.fled all sound, pulling at his beard, wild-eyed and sweating. "I just don't like him," he said. "I don't care whether he's disturbed in his mind or what his problem is. I'm not going to have him rampaging around the place like a madman. He'll have to go away for a while. Under escort. And you can take him. Yes, that's it. You two shall take him somewhere, shall shepherd him."

Rosencrantz nodded solemnly. "Your Majesty, in a family, the father influences his wife and his children and those others who live in the house. But in the family of a whole country, millions of people rely upon your good government. Whatever it takes to help the security of Denmark, depend on us to do it."

"Truly, when a king sighs," Guildenstern joined in, "the whole nation groans. Any person must have an effect on himself and others, but the impact of a king is magnified a mult.i.tude of times."

There was a time when Claudius dreamed of hearing such things, when he had imagined that the flattery of courtiers would be sweet to the ears and like roses to the nose. But in the heat generated by Hamlet's trick with the play, he had no patience with such talk. He snapped his fingers at the two men and nodded dismissal, just as Polonius bustled in through the little doorway beside the fireplace.

"Majesty," he said, pink-faced with the excitement of a new plot. "Majesty," he repeated, "he's on his way to his mother's suite."

No need to say who "he" was. Hamlet dominated Elsinore tonight, as so often before, even during times when he hadn't done much. This night, with an attack on the king that could hardly have been more direct, he strode the castle stage with una.s.sailable power.

"I'll hide myself behind the screen to hear what's going on," Polonius volunteered. "As you said to me just the other day, and no disrespect to Her Majesty of course, sometimes it's wise not to rely on a mother's account. It is natural for her to be biased, and therefore best for an independent witness to be present."

Claudius betrayed his wife without a second thought. It was just another business matter, another precaution, one more hole in the fence to be checked. All measures were justified if Hamlet was planning a coup. "Good, very good, my friend, tell me everything. I have just arranged with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet away somewhere. They will escort him and keep him safe - and, by the way, keep me safe at the same time. Now make haste."

The old man, glowing with the righteousness that only the rudest know, hurried away to his self-appointed task.

Now at last the king was left alone. It was not common for him to be alone these days. He stood still for a full minute after Polonius closed the door. Then, unexpectedly, he sank to his knees. He was even surprised at himself. He was always strong in front of others, but suddenly there was no mask to be kept in place. Take away the mask and what is left? Take away the facade of a building and the interior is exposed. And sometimes the building is empty.

A deep sob arose in him, and he realized he would not be able to hold it back. It was like a huge bubble in a hot mud pool, coming to the surface and flowering in black. "Oh!" he half grunted, half groaned, as it burst from his mouth. "Oh! My crime is foul. It smells to the highest heaven. A brother's murder. The earliest of crimes, the worst of crimes. Cain killed Abel, and I have followed in his path. I want to pray! I feel such a desire to pray. Yet I cannot. Forgiveness might be mine, if I could pray. The whitening rain of heaven might fall upon me and wash me clean. But I can't find the words. 'Forgive the awful crime I have committed'? How can I say that when I am in possession of all that I gained from my b.l.o.o.d.y deed? My crown, my queen, and the life I coveted. Can one be pardoned yet still retain the profits? On earth, yes, perhaps, maybe, with a word here and a payment there, but in heaven, no. There the sight is keen and the understanding perfect. What is there to hope for?"

The long lines of leather-bound books looked down on him impa.s.sively. Behind Claudius came Hamlet, on his way to his mother but entering the library in search of a lavatory. By the dying light of the coals in the fireplace, surrounded by shelves of Bibles and religious commentaries, he saw a dark shape crouched on the moth-holed carpet. He crept forward and was transfixed to see his enemy delivered up to him, kneeling with his back turned, like a target at the archers' range. He was mumbling away to himself, but Hamlet could not make out the words above the scream of the wind at the windows. The prince stood in an ecstasy of shock. This was the very thing he wanted, the moment he had longed for. If ever a time offered itself up to be seized, this was it. King on a plate, and Hamlet had the cutlery. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword. For so long now, he had lain awake or walked the castle's ramparts with his hand on that sword, dreaming of killing the monster. The uproar at the play had brought matters to a head. Blood must be spilled.