Hamlet: a novel Part 9

No, no, he is dead.

Go to your deathbed.

He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,

All flaxen was his head;

He is gone, he is gone,

He is on his cold bed,

And to my cold bed I will go."

Still singing her mournful song, Ophelia eddied out of the room. The melody could be heard for a long time as she drifted down the staircase.

"Oh, dear sister," Laertes muttered, "if your mind was whole and you had a thousand words to persuade me to seek revenge, you would not be more successful than you are now."

Laertes, head in hands, was slumped on the edge of the platform on which the two thrones sat. He looked up and met the king's eyes.

"Does G.o.d see this?" he groaned. "How can he allow such offense to all that is fair?"

"Laertes," said Claudius urgently, "we are in this together. We are on the same side. If you ever find that the queen and I conspired in any way to do you harm, you can have my kingdom. You don't have to ask for it. I will give you everything: crown, castles, treasure. My life, even. Have it; take it. Instead of blaming us, find your true enemy. And, where the offense is, there let the great ax fall."

"I know you're speaking of Hamlet. But if it is true that he took my father's life, why have you let him go free?"

"Laertes, good Laertes." The king helped him stand, then walked him down the room, away from the queen's hearing. They stopped in front of a giant portrait that hung on the southern wall. It showed a Madonna cradling the body of her crucified son. "Magnificent, isn't it?" said the king. "It was a gift from old King Fortinbras of Norway, twenty years ago. Grandfather to the Fortinbras who pecks at our borders now."

The king turned and faced the young man.

"Laertes, you should know, one of my problems in dealing with Hamlet is his mother. She wors.h.i.+ps the ground he walks on. To her, he can do no wrong. And the queen is so conjunctive to my life and soul that I revolve around her - like a star moving in an orbit which cannot be altered. It is my virtue and my plague that I am so dependent upon her. But the same problem exists with the general population. Hamlet is loved by the common people. He is the pet of the public! If I put him on trial . . . well, my arrows, aimed against him, would turn back on me and deliver me a mortal wound. Don't you understand that? My position is not what you think."

"And so I lose my father. And now my sister too, it seems, is slipping away."

"No, no, you underestimate me. I have made arrangements that I think you will smile upon. You may not have heard that I dispatched Hamlet to England. In the company of those fine fellows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Now, there's a pair of conspirators, if you like! Who knows what they might get up to in England, with their royal charge."

"Your Majesty is mistaken," said Laertes coldly, sniffing for a plot closer to home. "Hamlet is not a hundred miles from Elsinore."

"I think not," said the king, smiling. "He will have arrived at his final destination by now. His final destination - do you understand what I mean? I am waiting for news from England that Hamlet is - let me put it delicately, in his mother's presence - that Hamlet is most finally arrived."

"Whilst you are waiting for that news, you might speak to Horatio, my lord. Horatio has in his hand a letter from Hamlet advising that he has just landed in Denmark after a devilish bad voyage. I believe he abandoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Calais, giving them strict instructions to continue their journey to England without him."

Claudius staggered where he stood and gaped at the young man. "Can this be true?"

"Horatio recognizes the writing, and the letter is blood-red with the prince's seal."

The king threw back his head and roared like a lion. Spittle flew from his mouth. Laertes stepped back. Claudius tore away from him and paced up and down the floor, swinging his cloaks about him. The queen, wisely, slipped out of the room. After two agitated minutes, Claudius turned again to Laertes and bellowed at him. "Then you shall have your revenge! On the one who is the instrument of all your misfortunes! I'm not so feeble that I'll allow people to pull my beard while I sit there giggling at their play. Have your revenge. And I will have mine!"

"Then hurry, Hamlet, to Elsinore," Laertes growled back. "It warms the sickest parts of my soul that I will soon be able to say to him, 'Now your turn has come!'"

"Wait! Wait!" The king strode to the door and checked that they were un.o.bserved. "Softly, my dear fellow. If you will be ruled by me on this . . ."

Laertes bowed his head. "Majesty, you are my king."

"Good. Then do as I say. We will fix this so that, whatever happens to Hamlet, no blame can fall on either of us, you especially."

"Is that possible?"

"Certainly. I have an idea already. I remember reports that you are much improved in swordsmans.h.i.+p since you went to France?"

Laertes nodded.

"Good. That's a start. Now, Laertes, let me ask you this. Did you love your father? Or are you merely a painting of sorrow? A face without a heart?"

"How can you ask?"

"Oh, I know you loved him. But love is controlled by time, dear Laertes. There lives in the flame of love a kind of gas that will abate it. Just as a candle has its wick, no matter how bright the flame burns, sooner or later the wick gives out and the flame dies. What we would do, we should do. But 'would' soon gets eaten away by the cancers of time and change and words and indecision. How far are you prepared to go to show that you are truly your father's son?"

"I would cut Hamlet's throat in church," said Laertes without blinking, without a tremor. "In front of the altar, with Christ looking on. Does that satisfy you?"

"Well, you're right," said the king. But even he blinked and trembled at the savagery of the younger man's rage. "You're right, of course. There should be no place sacred against a murderer. Not when you are acting properly, for the honor of your family. Even a church. Well, well. But as I was saying, let us try to be more subtle. When Hamlet does reach here, why don't you keep to your own apartments and let us devise a plan. We'll cast out a bait and let him rise to it. When the time is right, we'll organize a sword fight. He's such a trusting fellow, we can accidentally leave the protector off the tip of the sword, so instead of a hit leaving nothing but a faint mark, you'll run him through. How's that for a plan?"

"I'll do better than that," Laertes snarled. "I have a poison I bought from an old witch in a back room in Ma.r.s.eille. It's lethal enough to shrivel a tree and send the leaves falling. I'll daub the tip of the sword with it. One scratch with that and he can call to the highest heaven for help, but nothing on earth or beyond it will save him."

"Good, good. Anything we can do to make this a certainty is worth doing. We can't afford to fail, dear Laertes. In fact I have some poison too, a concoction I have used only once, to get rid of an old bull. A sniff of it would dispatch a wayward calf." Claudius burst into a fit of coughing and had to wipe his eyes and blow his nose before he could go on. "I'll add it to Hamlet's winegla.s.s. A bit of hot sword fighting, a pause while he takes a drink, and if you can't scratch him with your weapon, then, as his limbs become sluggish with the venom, you are not the duelist whose praises I have heard sung throughout Denmark!"

"I'll do it," said Laertes, fervent and red-eyed. He clasped the king's hand in a double grip, and the two men clenched fists until their fingers were white and bloodless. Then, satisfied with their afternoon's work, they went their separate ways, each smoldering, each ready to burst into flames.

The cemetery had not changed much. It would be a wonder if it had. Hamlet approached it slowly, keeping to one side of the path, barely visible to travelers on the road. There were none, anyway. He had not intended to pay the graveyard a visit, but something within him dragged at his legs and sought distraction, wanted to delay his arrival at the castle. That impulse turned him sideways, so that he found himself standing at the foreigners' gate. There was activity in the distance, beside the old quince tree that marked the southern boundary, but the morning mist had not cleared; indeed, now, in midafternoon, it was heavier than ever. Hamlet could see the figure of a man, working at one of the grave sites, but he could not recognize him at this distance. Probably that old bearded fellow, the prince thought. Or has someone buried him now, and replaced him at his melancholy task?

He opened the gate and wandered in, maneuvering among the gravestones until he was closer to the laborer. It was indeed the same gravedigger Hamlet had seen at his father's funeral. His beard was at least a foot longer than Hamlet remembered, and he was shoveling the loamy soil. He was in it up to his shoulders, almost, and as he was a lanky brute, it meant that the grave was nearing completion. He flung out another load. The lift needed was tremendous, and Hamlet was impressed that he could still manage it at his age. Most gravediggers would have used a pulley.

"Who's there?" the man said, squinting through rheumy eyes.

His arms may be strong, Hamlet thought, but his eyes are failing. "Just a traveler," the prince replied. His words were turning to mist. "Whose grave is that?"

"Why, it's mine, sir. Whose do you think it would be? There are nigh on ten thousand who reside in this place, and two thousand and twenty rest in graves of my making."

"That's a fine tally."

"It is indeed, sir, and I'm hoping to add to them. It's a funny thing, but people keep dying, and so my score increases."

"Do you think they'll ever stop?"

"I don't, sir, and that's a fact." The man was leaning on his shovel now and wheezing. It seemed that the break in his labors had come at the right time. "No, sir, not until the Day of Judgment, when they'll disturb the earth and put all my work to naught. What a mess the place will be on that day, sir. I often think of that."

"I suppose so." Hamlet smiled to himself. "But tell me, who will be buried in this grave?"

"Why, someone dead, sir, to be sure. It'd be a terrible thing if it were anyone else."

Hamlet smiled again. He walked over to peer into the pit. "It's a fearful deep hole."

"It is, sir, yet some of them are in a rush to get into it. The young lady who will be lodged in it presently, now she were in a terrible rush, sir. And it were in the rushes they found her, where she'd drowned herself."

"Not her fault, though, I suppose," Hamlet said. "It must have been an accident, or they would hardly be burying her in this holy ground." A tremble ran through him, knowing how close he himself had come to self-slaughter. "To those who deliberately end the lives G.o.d has given them, a special place is reserved."

"Aye, sir, that it is, and the earth is extra cold where they are buried, sir, out by the forest, so they may feel even more warmly the flames for which they're bound. I could take you there, sir, if you like. There's some who like to see it."

Hamlet s.h.i.+vered at the morbid thought. He went to turn away, but his foot brushed something. He looked and saw a skull leering up at him. Curious, he bent and picked it up. "What's this?" he asked the old gravedigger.

"Well, now, I can't quite see what you have there, traveler. My sight is as short as my years are long."

"It's a skull."

"No surprise in that, sir," the man said, reaching out for it. "Where are you more likely to find a skull than in a graveyard? Still, he's a bit too eager for the Day of Judgment, that one. Give it here, sir, and I'll pop him back where he belongs."

"How long do they last before they rot?" asked the prince, still holding the grisly object.

"Well, now, sir, a lot of them are rotten before they come here. Some of them are so riddled with the pox that it's a job to hold them together long enough to get them into the ground. But if they're not poxy, then they last about eight or nine years. Nine years for the tanners."

"Why do the tanners last longer?"

"A tanner, his hide is already so tanned with his trade, that he keeps out the water. And it's the water that rots them. A human can have too much water. Like the young lady that's bound for this hole."

Hamlet grimaced. Suddenly he was conscious of the weight of his head, compared to that of the skull he was holding. "This fellow, who is he? Do you know?"

"He's n.o.body now, sir. No body, do you get it?"

"All right, well, who was he?"

"I can guess who he was, without even looking at him. If he came out of this grave, and it's fair to suppose he did, he'd have to be Yorick, jester to the king. Things are a little crowded around here, sir, as you may have noticed. Dying's a fearful popular activity these days, so we often double 'em up, and then some. There's plenty of graves here with half a dozen in them. I thought we might run into Yorick sooner or later. No doubt there's a good bit more of him around my feet."

"Yorick?" the prince repeated, gripped by horror. "Yorick, you say?" He gazed at the skull, trying to see something familiar in it, trying to find the sharp nose, the ruddy cheeks, the quick laugh. The empty eye sockets stared back at him, seeing nothing. Hamlet shook his own head. "Where are your jokes now, merry man?" he whispered to the skull. "Where are your riddles and your limericks? Where are your musical farts? Is this the fate of all men? Alexander the Great, too, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, do you all come to this?"

There was no reply.

The gravedigger shrugged. "Talk to him as much as you want, sir. But let me have him back when you've grown tired of the conversation. There's a funeral to be had, and I think I hear them coming already. They're a little early and I'm a little late, but if we've reached Yorick, I'd say we're deep enough."

He sprang out of the grave with amazing agility. Embarra.s.sed, Hamlet handed him the skull, and the man threw it back into the pit. He had been right about the funeral procession. Now Hamlet too could hear the soft tolling of the horse bells, although the mist still obscured the people from view. He marveled at the keen hearing of the old fellow.

Visited by irresistible curiosity, Hamlet grabbed the gravedigger by the sleeve. "You say she drowned?"

"Drowned herself, yes, sir. In tears and the river."

"But by accident, surely?" Hamlet insisted. Something in the man's manner niggled at him.

"Well, now, sir, some would say that."

"You mean it is possible that she ended her own life? Deliberately?"

"Now, now, sir, enough, they are almost upon us, and I have work to do."

Hamlet, his curiosity not satisfied, resolved to linger. He retired to a row of young elms behind the last graves and peered into the mist. The procession had reached the main entrance to the cemetery. Hamlet could see the men unloading the coffin from the hea.r.s.e. This was a high-born person then; ordinary citizens like Yorick got no such luxuries as a box to protect their tender flesh.

The priest was opening the gate. He propped it open, then led the way toward the new pit. Behind the robed figure, Hamlet was transfixed to see the king himself, his treacherous uncle, followed by the queen, then a group of servants from the palace carrying the pale coffin.

Looming out of the mist behind them was Laertes, accompanied by another priest. As the coffin and the royal couple took the path that would bring them to the front of the grave, Laertes and the second priest diverged onto the other path, which would take them to the grave's head. But they stopped, just meters away from Hamlet, and began a conversation in angry whispers. Every word went straight to the prince's ears, burning as though they were frost.

Laertes: "What other ceremonies are to be observed?"

Priest: "We cannot do any more. We have already gone as far as we dare."

Laertes: "But what other ceremonies?"

Priest: "Had it not been for the queen's orders, we would not have done as much as this. Were it not for Her Majesty, she should have lain in unblessed ground until the Day of Judgment. Instead of prayers, she would have had rocks thrown at her grave. Here she has flowers. Be grateful for that much at least."