Such Sweet Sorrow (3 page)

“Shelter,” the friar spoke up, laying a warning hand on his companion’s arm. “Shelter and something to eat, before our pilgrimage carries us far from here. We wish no quarrel.”

In taking stock of the pretty man’s appearance, Hamlet had already noted the spider’s web of silver guarding the hilt of a sword beneath his cloak. They wanted no quarrel, but they had not come unprepared should one arise. Why did a pilgrim need so fine a blade? “I want no quarrel with you, either. Indulge a poor drunkard’s curiosity. Where do you journey? You’re Italian, that means you came from the South. Or perhaps you’re traveling homeward? Where did you come from? There’s nothing above us but sea, and beyond the sea, more Northerners. Worse than us, even.”

“Would you kindly shut your mouth?” The younger man no longer masked his fury. The conversations around them quieted.

The priest was quick to calm his companion. “Now, wait, wait. You are tired and discouraged, that much is true. But perhaps this man could help us. We’ve come this far, Romeo.”

With a pained sigh and a flexing of fingers into a fist that Hamlet deduced was meant for his face, the man called Romeo said, “I am on a quest.”

“I suppose I didn’t realize people went on quests anymore.” The idea held a world of appeal to Hamlet. Striking out for an adventure, with a purpose, seemed far less dangerous than staying within his uncle’s reach. “What kind of quest?”

Romeo’s patience had worn visibly thin. “We came here because I was told to go north, to the seat of a murdered king, at a castle by the sea. Now we’re here, where a
living
king sits in his castle by the sea, and I’ve no idea how to proceed. Is that enough for you, or would you like to sketch us so you’ll have something to remember us by?”

The hairs on the back of Hamlet’s neck stood. This Romeo spoke of a secret only Hamlet knew, and then only through supernatural means. Were they soothsayers? Did they suffer the same spectral affliction as he?

Or, perhaps, had Claudius sent them, to ascertain if Hamlet knew the truth of his father’s death? Were that the case, the sword beneath Romeo’s cloak would make all the difference in Hamlet’s answer.

“You shouldn’t speak about murder so openly here. Especially as it pertains to the king.”

“Can anyone here understand Italian?” the priest asked quietly.

Hamlet checked about doubtfully, then called out in the same tongue, “The next round is on me!” When the other patrons paused to look incredulously at the man who spouted foreign gibberish loudly, he shook his head. “It doesn’t appear so. How did you know the king was murdered?”

Some of the color drained from Romeo’s sunburned face. “Call it a religious vision.”

If the Italians would not share their true purpose, Hamlet could force the information from them. “Any charlatan could claim God spoke to him. But this vision seems too specific. You say you seek the seat of a murdered king…what assurance do I have that you’re not here to kill the king? Perhaps my grasp of your language isn’t as good as I thought it was. Should I find a royal guard and see if your religious vision can save you?”

“No!” The priest’s face paled; even his sunburned pate lost a shade of red at the threat. “No, please good sir, I beg of you. You misunderstand. We are but two wicked pilgrims, sent here on a foul lie. We mean your king no harm.”

That’s a shame
, Hamlet thought uncharitably. But if these men feared the king, perhaps they had not been sent by the king.

Or perhaps it was another part of their ruse. “Wicked? I don’t care for the word. Isn’t killing a king wicked?”

Romeo turned to the priest, who nodded and pressed the rosary clenched in his hand to his lips. His shoulders slumping in resignation, Romeo admitted, “A witch told me. I asked her how I could bring my beloved back from the dead, and the crone told me to seek my answer here.”

“Did she?”
A witch?
That was no good at all. Hamlet had always believed in and feared witches, for it seemed unlikely to him that he was the only mortal afflicted with a supernatural curse. He’d never met a witch, so he had no clue if one would want to meddle with a corpseway. It was no coincidence that the Italians had shown up, eager to contact the dead, after Hamlet had been handed the awesome responsibility of protecting the portal. “Who have you spoken to here? How did you find me?”

Romeo straightened at the affront. “What are you blathering about? You’re the only soul, besides Friar Laurence, to whom I have told this tale, and then only at his misguided urging.” He scoffed. “What guard would believe a word of it anyway? You stink of ale and speak nonsense.”

“And you just happened to come here, to tell a convoluted story of lost love and triumph over death?” Hamlet’s mouth was thick, his thinking muddled. He’d had a point to make before, but now it slipped away, under the calm, soothing waves of intoxication. He struggled to keep his head clear, but it was futile; his earlier goal of oblivion had been achieved, but only after he’d changed his mind. These men had offended and confused him. Somehow. He wasn’t entirely clear on how. “My god, you’re probably not even Italians, are you? Just some peasant farmers come to torment me for curiosity’s sake!” Hamlet slapped his palm on the table. “Oh, what that witch must have paid you. What vile favors did she bestow upon you? What does she seek? Power over the fates of men? Or is it something deeper? I’m sure she thought I would be moved by your story of love stronger than death. Well, you can tell your witch to go back to hell from whence she came, for she’ll have none of my secrets.”

Romeo’s hand snapped to the grip of his sword, and the priest hurried to intervene. “He speaks madness, Romeo, stay your hand!”

“Mad, am I?” Hamlet rose, and downed his cup. “You’d be driven mad, too, if were suddenly forced to defend yourself from witches and wicked pilgrims! You would be mad if unquiet spirits tormented you in the night. Mad, you call me. We’ll see how mad I am when I make you one of them.”

He did not have a knife to draw, but Hamlet thought he’d made himself fairly clear. He intended to duel this stranger. Not now, with his limbs still unsteady from drink, but in a few hours. “Meet me, at dawn. On the public green in front of the castle gates. We’ll see who is a mad man then.”

He did not await a reply. He staggered from the alehouse, not certain if he’d settled up with the barman or not. Horatio would take care of it tomorrow, if Hamlet were to meet his death in the duel. Horatio was a good friend that way.

“A good friend,” Hamlet burped, addressing the specter of an old man who slumped against the alehouse doorway. “A good friend, and the best of men.”

…

Romeo stared after the figure departing the tavern, a sense of understanding creeping over him. The exchange had been so bizarre, like falling into a tossing ocean and not knowing which way to swim, but with the confusing man departed, small pictures stood out. The cut of the man’s clothing, the fine silver buttons on his doublet…he was a rich man. A rich mad man, perhaps.

“Laurence,” Romeo said slowly, his tongue thick in his mouth. “I think mayhap divine provenance has lit the way to my Juliet.”

“Do not put too much stock in the words of a lunatic, or you may be disappointed.” The friar bent his head as though he would withdraw into his scratchy robe.

“No… this man knows something. Madman he may be, but a drunken one. Tomorrow morning, he is sure to be sober.” Romeo chewed his thumbnail and hunched his shoulders, avoiding the stares of the other patrons. “Did you see how he reacted, when I told him the strega’s words? He seemed nervous.”

“Because you were speaking treason freely,” Laurence scolded. “It means nothing, Romeo. Let it be.”

“I could meet with him tomorrow. Ask him what he meant by his words, and tell him all that I meant by mine.”

“You’ll win the confidence of a madman,” Laurence said with a lift of his eyebrows and the tone of Pontius Pilate washing his hands. “I believe I’ve made my objections known, so I won’t waste my breath objecting further.”

“Beer loosens men’s tongues,” Romeo said, shaking his head. “Any information he might have given us tonight could be lost to sobriety. And if he insists upon dueling, I shall have to kill him, and then it is lost for good.”

Laurence grew thoughtful. “Do not kill him, Romeo. There is already a stain on your soul from your past deeds. Tybalt? Paris? Or have you forgotten your life before this sacrilegious quest?”

“Why did you come with me?” Yet Romeo knew why. Because Laurence could not have considered letting his young friend take up such a dangerous journey alone. Because he felt guilty that his plan to save Romeo’s marriage to Juliet had instead doomed her to hell, and Romeo to a living one. Because he had regretted the antidote he’d administered from the moment Romeo had opened his eyes.

Laurence’s spine straightened, his chin lifted. “You know why I am here. And you know that I will follow you into the underworld itself if I must. But I will not stand by idle while you send yourself there. What good is recovering Juliet, if only to separate yourself from her in the hereafter with your earthly deeds?”

“You make a good point.”

Romeo paid a wench for a pitcher of ale and two suppers, but he was not inclined to eat or drink. His heart no longer rejoiced in living, not with Juliet still cold in her tomb—yet the traitorous organ still beat within his chest.

After several ravenous spoonfuls of the muck the barmaid had returned with, Laurence looked up, then cast his gaze down again to hide his worry. “I doubt dry bones will be able to complete this quest as ably as a living body. I beg you, Romeo, sustain yourself.”

“You are too good a man to refuse.” Romeo tried not to smell the greasy stew as he lifted his spoon to his mouth. It was better to ignore the scent. The taste was diminished that way. He remembered the days when he and his friends existed only to laze in the sun, rising at night to drink their fill and feast like kings. So many of them were gone now, lost to foolish feuding. Mercutio had died in his arms. His beloved Juliet had forsaken her own life. It was all so senseless, and so he had to try to bring it to right, no matter the consequence.

Even if it cost him his soul.

“I will go,” he said at last, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “To duel with the madman. If it proves a false end, if that witch has tricked us, then I say we turn for home.”

Laurence stared in open-mouthed disbelief, a pity, for he had not finished chewing. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? We’ve been at this for months, and we’ve found nothing.” It made Romeo feel foolish to admit it now, when they’d traveled so far from home. “We came all this way on the word of an old woman who had no stake in any of this.”

“When you emerged from the witch’s house, you told me of strange sights and terrible rituals. You believed then. Why does your trust in her words falter now?” Laurence raised one bushy eyebrow. “If you have forsaken your faith in God to confer with witches, what do you have left when you cast those sinful beliefs aside?”

“Nothing.” Romeo had taken stock all along the difficult journey. Yet every day that passed without even a glimmer of hope that Juliet would be returned to him, he longed for that cold tomb and for just a drop more poison.

His body ached, unaccustomed still to the weakness the vile potion had left in its wake. Though he boasted of skill and the certainty with which he would kill his opponent, he doubted his chances of besting the man at dawn, be the young Dane mad or drunk or both. “Do you really believe our answer lies at Elsinore?”

The friar considered. “
You
seem to. Have you taken my advice yet on this journey?”

Romeo rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I will meet the madman at dawn, then.”

Chapter Two

“
You’re doing what?”

“I’m going to duel an impertinent Italian,” Hamlet repeated calmly, taking a few clumsy thrusts at the air with his sword. He frowned at the inelegant swipe that left the heavy blade quivering comically before him. He should have kept up his fencing studies while at university.

“Where did you meet an Italian?” Horatio closed the dusty tome he’d been studying. The small desk he sat behind swayed dangerously with the motion, laden down with too many books to remain upright for much longer.

Hamlet mimed a parry and knocked over a history of Caesar’s exploits in Gaul, seven volumes that turned into a landslide. “At the ale house.”

“Of course.” Horatio rubbed his hand over the close-fitting linen cap he wore. His pale blue eyes rolled heavenward. “Are you certain they were even Italian? They might have been just as stinking drunk as you were.”

Hamlet winced, and even that small motion made him feel the wrath of last night’s demons fighting it out inside his head. “They were Italian. Trust me.”

“I trusted you to be in the hall for the banquet last night! ‘I have a headache, go down without me, I just need a moment to rest my eyes in the dark.’ I didn’t realize that you meant you were going to rest them in a dark tavern and leave me to make your excuses all night.”

“If it makes you feel any better at all, I have a headache
now
.” With a sigh, Hamlet tossed the blade aside. It clattered onto the floor. He paced across his chamber, his boot steps echoing hollow off the stone. He resolved to be kinder to Horatio in the future. After all, the man had left the university to accompany Hamlet to Elsinore. His friendship had kept Hamlet from withering away in total despair while he had watched his father die a slow death.

A death that was not natural,
Hamlet reminded himself angrily. He strode to his wardrobe, reaching for the key around his neck. Slipping it into the lock, he opened the doors and selected a loaf of bread and some hard cheese, then, securing the lock behind him, he turned and raised the food in silent offering.

“I’ll pass.” Horatio rose and carefully navigated the slowly narrowing path across the long room. He stopped at the pile of clothing on the floor beside the wardrobe. “You know, clothes can be poisoned as easily as food.”

“No, not as easily, actually.” Hamlet sat and cut into the cheese with the knife from his belt. “I’m not taking any chances. Not after what my father told me.”

“Your father’s ghost,” Horatio corrected. “Hamlet, I know you put faith in apparitions, but I do not. There must be another explanation for your father’s death.”

If anyone else had suggested such a thing, Hamlet would have had them thrown in the dungeon. This was Horatio, gentle Horatio, who cared only for his best friend’s well-being. Perhaps Horatio felt Hamlet’s doubt. It was an uncomfortable possibility, but Hamlet wouldn’t discount it. Horatio had an uncanny ability to see what Hamlet would never confess to another soul. Gently, he observed, “You saw him too.”

“I did,” Horatio admitted, after a time. The war in his rational mind would not be won over a meager breakfast of cheese.

So Hamlet changed the subject again. “What would you have me do about this duel?”

“I would have you choose someone to fight in your stead,” Horatio suggested, then quickly, with both hands held in the air before him, said, “Not me. Someone competent.”

“No, no one competent. I don’t want this fellow to die.” Hamlet had, the night before, when he’d been confident that he would murder the fiend in a single, glorious blow. The morning light had brought him clarity. Searing pain, as well, that had eventually dulled to a throb behind his eyes—he might never touch a drop of ale again—but clarity, foremost.

The specter of death, always around Hamlet, had intensified tenfold once he’d ventured through the glittering corpseway. What could his uncle, the new king, do if he gained knowledge from the world of the dead? Hamlet didn’t know, and that made the prospect of Claudius discovering the gate to the underworld all the more terrifying.

“These men claimed to be on a quest,” Hamlet confessed, looking away from Horatio. It sounded almost too absurd. “I thought they might be my uncle’s spies.”

“What kind of a quest?” Horatio seated himself on the mass of clothing. It was almost as tall as a chair and would do nicely in the role.

Hamlet hesitated. He did not fear ridicule, for Horatio had mocked him many times, and Hamlet always took it for an expression of love through sarcasm. He feared the possibility that Horatio, upon hearing the strangers’ tale, would agree that they were spies. It would make his uncle’s treachery that much closer.

“They were sent by a witch, to the seat of a dead Northern king. The young man, Romeo, believes he can bring his lost love back from the dead. A bit dramatic, but touching, really. A love stronger than death.” Something crucial twisted up from the broken pieces of his drunken interlude. “No. They did not seek a
dead
king. They sought a
murdered
king.”

Horatio took a long, deep breath, but said nothing.

“You see, then, why I might find their story suspect. Of all the ale houses, and in Denmark, of all places, they find the one man who knows the king was murdered?”

“Not the only man,” Horatio reminded him. “King Claudius almost certainly knows it as well.”

“Then you see my dilemma.” Hamlet shook his head, a rueful smile tugging the corners of his lips. “It seems too coincidental.”

“Perhaps it is fate?” Horatio shrugged. “Stranger things have happened in the course of human history, I’m sure of it. But as you say, it is very convenient. The night after you learn the true circumstances of your father’s death, these strangers appear?”

“And yet that information may also prove their tale without any connection to my uncle. Suppose a witch really did tell him to seek the seat of a murdered king. No one else on earth, save vile Claudius, could possibly know that. No rumor doubting the nature of my father’s death could have flown south, without our hearing.” Hamlet took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “You’re clever. What do you suggest?” It was a common, albeit surly, way for him to concede he was out of his depth and—grudgingly—that his friend was the smarter of the two of them.

“Your curse is proof enough that stranger things exist than we have dreamt of in our philosophies.” Horatio scowled and shook his head, scratching at his nape as he pronounced, “But it is an awfully big coincidence.”

It was a terrible thing for a scholar to be confronted by that which he could not explain with his rational mind. Hamlet pitied his friend, for Horatio did not have seventeen years of experience reconciling the rational and supernatural, as Hamlet had.

The more Hamlet ruminated on the solution to this puzzle, the more he recalled the sadness in Romeo’s eyes, the hopelessness that some might mistake for the weariness of a tired traveler.

“There was something about him,” Hamlet began slowly, “A melancholy. It was far too genuine to be a forgery. I could believe that he was truly grieving his love.”

“But could you believe he came all this way to try and raise her from the dead?”

Hamlet considered. “I could… if you did.”

“Let us speak with them. Proceed with caution, Hamlet, but I do not believe these men could be your uncle’s spies. After all, his majesty believed you to be in your bed last night. Why send an assassin to an alehouse, when he knew you to be asleep in your bed?” Almost the moment his sentence ended, Horatio’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “You cannot give up sleeping Hamlet, please don’t try.”

“Just not sleeping in the castle.” Hamlet rubbed his jaw. “It is decided then. We will go and meet these Italian fiends and speak to them with words instead of steel.”

Hamlet’s chambers were in a long gallery on the eastern side of the castle. He’d abandoned his place in the family quarters when his uncle had announced his intention to become king in Hamlet’s stead. Uncle Claudius had called him a “boy” and suggested that he “wait to come of age” before inheriting the throne. Hamlet’s mother, the queen, had turned on him, quick as the viper he’d believed had poisoned his father. She had been so eager to marry Claudius, she’d barely worn a scrap of black for King Hamlet. She no longer seemed all that concerned with Hamlet the younger, either. That had been proof enough that his place had been unfairly usurped. His uncle had not only stolen the throne, but Hamlet’s own mother, as well.

In the intervening months, he’d made his new room a home for himself and his friend, and they’d spent many long hours in study and drink, content to be left alone by the rest of the castle. He would occasionally forget his sorrows and think himself back at the university with Horatio. In those moments of blissful denial, Hamlet would imagine his parents in Elsinore, his father stern but proud of his son the scholar, his mother loving. That woman had disappeared when the king had died, and Hamlet had become an orphan. He could not be blamed for savoring the past.

Without the bustle of serving maids stripping beds and kitchen boys bringing breakfast to the royal family’s quarters, Hamlet and Horatio were free to sleep as late as they wanted, and as a consequence, the castle had woken hours before they had. Servants had broken their fast and now hurried about, sweeping the floors, beating the tapestries. Hamlet squinted one eye into the sunlight shining in a narrow shaft across his path as he realized his error. “I…may have told them to meet me at dawn. Do you think they’re still here?”

“Do I think a man waited five hours for a chance to kill you?” Horatio’s disbelief changed mid-thought. “Actually…”

“That’s enough from you, peasant.” Hamlet stalked ahead, through the dark corridors and down a curling stair. At the bottom, he nearly collided with a figure swathed in golden velvet.

“Hamlet!” Ophelia’s eyes, greener than any blade of grass Hamlet had ever seen, grew wide as he clasped her arms to steady her. Her waist-length ringlets bounced beneath the linen veil she wore, and the copper circlet over it matched the color glinting off her curls. She frowned as she searched his face. “You must be feeling better, then?”

“Better than what?” Hamlet asked, before Horatio elbowed him sharply in the ribs. Ophelia had a strange power about her, possibly stranger than Hamlet’s own curse, wherein she seemed to muddle a man’s brain by mere proximity. It seemed to only have grown worse as the years went on.

“I was so worried for you.” She placed her hand on Hamlet’s arm and continued their walking for them, gently pulling them along in the direction they had been heading, though Hamlet was certain both he and Horatio had forgotten where they’d been going in the first place.

“Oh, because of the headache, yes,” Hamlet feigned a grimace. “Too much reading by candlelight, I suppose.”

She clucked her tongue. “So much studying lately. Hardly any time at all to speak with your uncle on matters more…personal.”

Ah, so it was that again. Hamlet’s father hadn’t been keen for his son to grow too close to the daughter of his advisor. Somehow, Ophelia had gotten it into her head that the king had been the only impediment to their love, and now that he had passed away, there might be hope for them.

It was not that Hamlet didn’t find her pleasing. He did and enjoyed her company immensely when she was not set on matchmaking. It wasn’t that he never planned to marry. He would have to, at some point, but not now. Not at eighteen, when he hopefully had an entire life ahead of him for such drudgery. He would not resign himself to the prison of marriage at such a young age, no matter how Ophelia might wish otherwise.

Certainly not now when there were other mysterious matters of murder and quests with which to contend. Though he could not openly express it to Ophelia and risk misleading her further; he liked her too well to draw her into danger with him.

“I fear you would find my uncle’s answer much the same as my father’s,” Hamlet told her, hoping his sincerity covered his relief at having put her off a little while longer. “As long as I am heir to Elsinore and all of Denmark, I find myself at the mercy of my uncle’s political maneuvering. But never fear, dearest Ophelia, my heart is ever yours.”

Though she blushed and fluttered like the sweet maiden that she was, she was not a foolish girl. No doubt her mind calculated furiously behind her pretty face.

Nothing was more fearsome than a young lady plotting marriage.

“Are you going out this morning?” she asked sweetly.

“I am. To fight a duel.”
Why
, Hamlet scolded himself,
do you persist in desiring her attention when you mean to discourage her?

“A duel?” Her free hand flew to cover her mouth. “I cannot bear to watch.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” Horatio muttered. Then to cover his gaff, “You would not wish to see a duel. They are messy, violent things.”

Hamlet eased Ophelia’s hand off his arm and raised it to his lips, like a knight in a story book. “If I die, know that I will carry your memory with me, and it will be all the heaven I need.”

She jerked her hand back coldly. “You said that last week, after you slipped on the stairs.”

As they watched Ophelia storm away, no doubt lamenting her poor taste in insincere men, Horatio said, “What has got it into her head that she could marry a prince? Her family may be noble, but your father largely improved their status. People won’t have forgotten that.”

“She’s been planning our wedding since we were five. She believes our great love will triumph the will of a king.” He shrugged. “Can I help it if I’m flattered? I’m rarely set upon as a romantic hero.”

Perhaps that was for the better. If Romeo was not a spy sent by Claudius, but was indeed lamenting a love lost to the grave, Hamlet did not envy the man. If love could wreak such misery as had been written on the poor fool’s face, then Hamlet would do well to avoid it.

As they made their way onto the wide lawn before the castle gates, Hamlet wondered if the Italians had already left. It had been rude of him not to at least send someone ahead at dawn. He hadn’t had the foresight, in the pounding aftermath of his inebriation. But there, just beyond the guard’s post, two cloaked figures waited. They caught sight of him at almost the same moment he’d noticed them, and they started toward him.