Hamlet Read online

  But then he stopped, and the black dog lay down on the path beside him and whimpered.

  Hamlet was aware of the sharpness of the night air, the gravel and the dead leaves that crackled like bones under his feet, the lonely cry of a distant curlew. He thought about the fresh grave he had stood coldly above, fewer than five months earlier. He recalled the clod of frozen earth he had tossed onto the coffin. He heard again the echo of the clod as it bounced off the wood, as though the box were hollow.

  As Hamlet walked toward him, the man in the distance seemed to grow bigger. Somehow the boy was unafraid. Oh, he trembled, but so did Horatio, so did Bernardo, so would anyone in the midnight cold. Only the man waiting, with the shadow of an alder tree across him, only he was still. And his hair had stopped blowing.

  Hamlet got close enough to see him clearly, except for his face, which looked to be all stubble and eyes, white eyes that seemed to have no pupils. He noticed that the brown cloak had a thin red collar. Now Hamlet felt, if not frightened, then disturbed. In the months since the funeral, the boy had forgotten most of his encounters with his father. During that time it was as though his mind concentrated on three images only: his father’s terse smile when he gave him the long-legged chestnut colt, the proud hands he laid on his head when Hamlet won his first fight, and the gentle hands that picked him up one night and carried him to bed, when the boy was felled by influenza and went to the doorway of death, lingering a long time, as if he would pass through. As if he wanted to pass through. Then he had returned.

  But this meeting, this strange encounter between the two stone lions, brought back a flood of other memories: battles and beatings, painful lessons in riding, tests of strength, and cold, hungry nights spent alone in his tower room when Hamlet had failed those tests. For the first time the boy faltered. He wanted so much to show the silver in his veins. He wanted to be the size of a king, man enough for anything. But Horatio and Bernardo were far behind, out of hearing, the night was as cold as the tomb, and the man in front of him was rotten with death.

  In spite of this, the boy spoke. “What do you want with me?”

  His question was enshrouded with mist from his mouth, as though he had forced open a cranny to hell. He tried to make his voice sound strong, but it cracked on the last two words.

  The man placed his left hand on the head of the lion. When he replied, Hamlet saw no mist of breath from his mouth. “Pay attention to what I have to tell you.”

  “I will.”

  “I have come to speak to you one last time.”

  “I am listening.”

  “I am the spirit of your father.”

  Hamlet could not open his mouth, could not take his eyes from the emaciated face, could not even nod for fear his head would fall off.

  “By day I am condemned to twist in fire, until the sins of my life are burned away. And by night doomed to walk, for some short time yet.”

  “I’m sorry indeed, sir,” Hamlet gasped.

  “There is no need to pity me. I have not come here to torture you, to burn your ears with such stories. Indeed, it is forbidden for me to talk about these matters to one who is of the earth. I have returned for another reason.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “If you ever loved your father . . .”

  The man left the words hanging in the air, and this time Hamlet was not able to speak, just nodded dumbly.

  “If ever you did love your father, I call upon you now to take revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  “I call upon you to avenge my foul and unnatural murder.”

  The ghost growled the last word. Hamlet thought it the loudest sound he had ever heard.

  “Murder?”

  “Murder most foul.”

  In agitation the man began to walk away from the lions, as if he did not know where he was going.

  Hamlet stumbled after him. Behind him, Horatio too started to walk, and farther behind, Bernardo. The dog slunk away toward the eastern corner of the courtyard, then broke into a run, disappearing around the side of the library.

  Bernardo wished he could hear the conversation happening in front of him. What a story this would be to tell back in Gavatar. Perhaps Horatio could hear some of it and would tell him later. Bernardo did not expect Hamlet to confide in him. But the boy did not like to get any closer. After all, it was his cousin who was Hamlet’s friend, not him. Strange, though: you’d think you’d hear their voices on such a clear, still night. But so far, not a word.

  Hamlet had caught up with the figure of his father. In horror, desperate for details, he asked, “But if you were murdered . . . how did it happen? Who would do such a thing?”

  The ghost stopped and stared with his blank, blind eyes. “You know the story they tell of my death? That I was walking through the orchard and was bitten by a snake?”

  “Yes!”

  “The story has been believed from one end of the country to the other.”

  “Of course.”

  “I tell you, and mark the words well, it is a lie. A bloody and vicious lie, as bloody and vicious as the act of murder itself.”

  Hamlet tried to ignore the hectoring tone, to force back the memories of his father’s lectures in the past, to overcome the weakness that crept through his limbs when in the presence of his father alive.

  “Then who . . . ?”

  “Know this, Hamlet. Know it well. The snake that bit me now wears my crown.”

  The great voice that had once been a mighty roar was now a feeble wheeze. But the impact of the words was enough.

  “M-my uncle!” Hamlet stammered. “My uncle! Your brother!”

  “No other.”

  Hamlet, unable to continue in the presence of such drama, stared at his father, shaking his head. The man stared back for a few moments, then took another step, a half step, which brought him terribly close to his son. Struggling to hold his ground, Hamlet looked away, to the sky, to the castle.

  “It was not enough that he seduced your mother,” the ghostly figure whispered. “The woman I loved and trusted, and the man I shared my childhood with, the two people in the world who were closest to me! Betrayed by them both!”

  “My mother,” said Hamlet, thinking at the same time: Then I was not one of the people in the world closest to him?

  He did not know which betrayal hurt him most.

  His father showed no interest in how the fusillade of news was affecting his son.

  Hamlet noticed something new now about the figure before him. It seemed to have faded and moved away, even though Hamlet could swear the man was still standing in front of him.

  When the ghost spoke again, his voice sounded vague and fretful. “He killed me as I lay in the orchard. He poured poison into my ear.”

  The young prince could think of nothing to say. His father was like an old man complaining that someone had taken one of his slippers. Yet he was talking about death. Death and murder.

  “The night is fading away. I have a long way to travel. I leave you to your responsibility. I go to mine.”

  Hamlet shook his head, not so much to stop the ghost leaving as to save his father a little longer from the awfulness of which he had spoken. He reached out with his right arm. But without success. In front of his eyes, the ghost evaporated. For a few moments there was a smell, obnoxious to the nose, sulfur mixed with the mustiness of his father alive, then not even that.

  Hamlet, frozen to the spot, had to be turned and made to walk and talk and breathe again by Horatio and Bernardo. It was as though he had gone through a door to some terrible place and they had to reach through it themselves to pull him back. The excitement they felt earlier was gone; now they were frightened for the prince. They plied him with questions to which he made no reply. “Was it your father? Did he speak to you? Did you say anything? He looked like he was talking! What did he say? Were you scared? Why did he come here? Does he want something of you?”

  Her Majesty Queen Gertrude was looking up at her new
husband and at the same time fingering the pepper pot. She appeared as glacial as ever, her fair skin coldly beautiful, her eyes steady. Her hair, hinting of red, was swept back from her face, giving her a high forehead and allowing her strong, clear eyes to meet the gaze of anyone in the room.

  Some forty guests were seated around the table in the state dining room, not the great hall used for official banquets, but the less formal one on the ground floor of the royal apartments. Pale sunlight through the stained-glass windows cast colors from hunting scenes on the king’s face, but all the warmth in the room came from the log fires burning in vast fireplaces at each end.

  The luncheon was over, and Claudius’s speech was drawing to an end. Bearded, beefy, red-faced, slightly hoarse, he was not a natural orator, more at home in the hunting field, but he had a forceful style of speaking that commanded respect. Shorter than most men, yet with a big head, he compensated for his height by standing on his toes, leaning forward as though he were looking for a fight. He was fifty years old, balding, with watery eyes, yet Claudius still had a sensual quality that attracted women, in a way that his dignified older brother had never understood.

  On the king’s other side was Polonius, his chief adviser. Polonius gazed steadily at Claudius. His expression was composed and calm. His hands were in his lap. Although he had written the speech, he listened to it now with the demeanor of a man who was weighing every word.

  Horatio, at the foot of the table, trying to look interested in Claudius, took a moment to look around. He noticed Gertrude’s unconscious fiddling with the pepper pot and wondered at it. She had always been so punctilious when it came to table etiquette. She snapped at him or Hamlet when they fidgeted during speeches. Especially Hamlet. “You will have to listen to thousands of speeches,” she had told him. “Many of them boring. But the fate of Denmark may one day depend on your manners. A yawn at the wrong moment can be a grave insult.”

  Polonius was the exemplar today, Horatio thought. Not a flicker of movement. Other men his age were beginning to tremble, but not Polonius. Those sharp eyes and big ears had seen and heard many secrets, and his crafty brain processed them to his advantage. He had served five kings, and each one had found him indispensable.

  I bet he was an old man when he was twenty, Horatio thought. Not so many wrinkles, maybe, but I can’t see him playing football or getting drunk or going in a farting competition. The thought made him smile.

  Polonius’s son, Laertes, was only seventeen but already a hard drinker and a keen fighter. He was away in France, studying. “If Polonius knew half of what Laertes got up to . . .” Horatio had said to Hamlet a couple of days earlier. To which Hamlet had grumpily replied, “Polonius knows everything.”

  Opposite Horatio were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two young men who hung around the court trying to eke out a living by picking up minor missions. They had been favorites of Hamlet’s grandmother. Since her death, they lacked patronage, but Claudius seemed to be growing fonder of them every day. Never seen apart, they could have been twins: Rosencrantz dark, Guildenstern blond, both lean, tall, sharp-faced, and always exquisitely dressed. Horatio did not know them well, but he knew that he did not like them. They wore too much jewelry, and he had the feeling they were laughing at his country manners when they whispered to each other, their mouths hidden by their elegantly manicured hands.

  On Horatio’s left was Osric. A friend of the king’s, Osric was one of the new men who could be found everywhere at court these days. He was a rich young farmer whose only virtue was that he owned a lot of dirt, but he would rather be in the middle of the glitter and fun of court life than supervising gnarled old farmhands who grunted a couple of times a day and spent their nights in a drunken stupor induced by potato vodka. Tall and awkward, fair-haired and blue-eyed, he could have been good-looking, but his eyes never stayed in the one place for more than a moment. He twitched when anyone spoke to him. Giggling at Claudius’s jokes, wiping greasy hands on the tablecloth, standing and stretching across the table to take another portion of venison, Osric was uncouth in a way that Horatio, who was naturally courteous, could never be. Yet Osric’s clothes were elaborate and expensive, and his manner exaggerated. In the presence of food, he regressed.

  Beside Osric was Ophelia, daughter of Polonius. She gazed at the king as though entranced by his every word, but Horatio found it difficult to believe that she was interested in the details of the new treaty with Lithuania. Ophelia’s white-haired beauty seemed to derive from a secret spring inside her. Occasionally, when they were children playing together, Horatio had realized with a shock how beautiful she was. Most of the time he saw her just as a girl, a person, a friend, someone his own age. But then he would catch a glimpse of her and stop as if turned to stone, hardened by her perfection.

  Horatio felt awkward when he was with her alone, though. She seemed always beyond his reach. In sunlight she was sunlight; in darkness she was shadow. It made conversation with her difficult for the unimaginative young man. How was it that Hamlet struck a fire from her that he could not? What magic did the prince bring that sparked her, yes, and other girls too, and made Horatio feel dull, clumsy, something of a brute who might always be left with the plainer girls.

  Now, though, gnawing on a chicken bone, Horatio preferred to watch Hamlet. The young prince was tracing a design on the stiff linen tablecloth with a knife. Every few moments he pushed back a strand of white hair that kept falling over his eyes. Horatio was troubled by his expression. The prince’s face, always fair, was now pale and anxious.

  What happened that night the ghost appeared? If only Hamlet had said something, there in the courtyard, as they tried to make him walk and talk again. Or as they took him back toward his bedroom. But he had brushed away their excited questions, pausing only at the base of the tower to swear them both to silence, which he did in exhaustive detail.

  “Swear you will say nothing.”

  “Swear you will give no hint.”

  “Swear you won’t go around saying, ‘I know something about Hamlet but I’m not going to tell you.’”

  “Now swear you won’t say things like, ‘I could tell you why he’s being so strange, but I’m not allowed to.’”

  He added, “It’s not enough that you must keep this secret, but you must keep it secret that you know a secret.”

  Then he had closed the door in their faces and climbed the stairs to his aerie. Bernardo and Horatio were left in the cold and dark, baffled and angry.

  “We were the ones who saw him,” Bernardo said. “And now he won’t even tell us.”

  “It is his father, though,” Horatio muttered. In his heart he agreed with Bernardo, but Bernardo was just a visitor, a farm boy who did not understand the complexities of rank, and besides, Horatio’s first loyalty was to Hamlet. That was the stronger friendship. Even so, when Bernardo did not reply, he added weakly, “Still, you’re right: he could have said something.”

  Since that night, Hamlet had been odd, even more odd than usual. Most of the time he seemed to be avoiding Horatio, but then would suddenly accost him with a wild speech about the moon, or asparagus, or hopscotch.

  Nobody could accuse the new king of such eccentricity, Horatio thought, settling in his chair to listen to the end of the speech. Claudius was calm, considered, very much in control. He’d just announced the opening of talks with the old king of Norway, to stop the young Norwegian prince Fortinbras from launching attacks on Denmark’s borders. Earlier he’d promised to lower interest rates, increase employment, build better roads and hospitals, and reduce taxes.

  But now, with the official business out of the way, he turned to his nephew, the young man who had become his stepson.

  Hearing his name called, Hamlet jerked in his seat like a harpooned seal. Around the room, others stirred from their languor.

  “What?” Hamlet asked rudely, staring straight at the king.

  Claudius smiled indulgently. “I merely ask, is there anything we here can do fo
r you, we who are your friends, the people who love you most, and have your interests at heart? I fear the clouds still hang heavily over you, my dear Hamlet.”

  Before the boy could answer, Gertrude joined the conversation. “It is time for you to lift your head again, my child, to stop seeking your dead father in the dust of the earth. All who live must die, and your father too has begun his journey into eternity. Of course everyone here grieves for him, but heavens above, my dear boy, the time comes to move on.”

  Hamlet shrugged and looked at the wall opposite, at an oil painting of Joseph of Arimathea.

  “Your sad manner shows a sweetness in you, Hamlet,” the king continued, “that you felt such love for your father, but it also shows a stubbornness that is not so admirable. After all, your father lost his father, Hamlet, and that father lost his, and he his, and so on. These are the laws of God and of nature. For you to spend so long mourning is to spit in the face of God, of nature, and of the dead themselves. Come now, what do you say?”

  “What do I say?” Hamlet stared around him, as if he had seen none of these people before.

  Horatio leaned forward. He was ready to leap from his seat if Hamlet did anything . . . but that was ridiculous. This wasn’t some primitive domain of uncivilized warlords. Hamlet always knew the right thing to say. As if he would ever do anything that was . . .

  “What do I say? Why, sir, I say that nothing is good or bad, unless thinking makes it so.”

  There was an embarrassed pause, broken by Claudius’s awkward laugh. “Well, that’s neatly put. Now, Hamlet, your mother has a special request to make of you.”

  “Yes,” Gertrude said, taking her cue. “Yes, indeed. Hamlet, it is our wish that you do not go back to boarding school for the next semester but that you stay here with us, close by our side.”

  Hamlet gazed at her for so long that it was as if he had never seen his mother before.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “If that is your wish.”