The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (10 page)

Of course, it’s never that easy. Not for me, anyway.

A dark fog poured through the front gates of Elsinore as I approached them, and the blue sky overhead darkened to night in the space of a few seconds. If that wasn’t enough of a sign that this was no longer a normal day, lightning split the air.

For a few seconds, I wondered if the Black Guard had found me. They worked fast, but this would have been moving quick even for them. And it was rather public for the Black Guard. They didn’t like to show themselves unless they had to because they didn’t like to leave witnesses. That usually meant a lot of cleaning up after themselves whenever they travelled anywhere. I knew the Royals truly hated me, but did they hate me enough to slaughter every tourist and staffer at Elsinore today?

I looked around to see how the others were reacting to the sudden shift in weather. The Danes were a hardy bunch, but this was a lot even for them. I didn’t see anyone else at all. The courtyard of the castle was empty of everyone except for me and the fog, which was spreading around the walls of the place now. Everyone else had vanished.

That’s when I realized what had happened. They hadn’t vanished. I was the one who’d disappeared.

I was in the glamour.

As if to confirm my suspicion, Morgana emerged out of the darkness in front of me, wearing a flowing black dress and leading a mob of the faerie and fey. It looked like most of her court. A dozen or so of the fey were dressed in uniforms from different ages and different military branches. A couple of men wore muddy garb I knew all too well from the trenches of the first world war, a few more wore dress uniforms from different ages of the English navy, one man was dressed in torn desert camo from Afghanistan or Iraq, while another wore the gear of what looked like the flight deck crew of a modern aircraft carrier. They all had one thing in common: they carried bared swords in their hands.

Behind them came the rest of the fey, and many of them were dressed in other costumes. A few wore the helmets of knights, while others rode about on sticks with stuffed horses’ heads. Several of them carried a large, four-poster bed on their shoulders, with veils hanging from the posts.

There were other strange things, but there are always strange things when you’re dealing with the faerie. I didn’t pay any attention to them. Instead, I scanned the crowd for Amelia.

I saw her standing in a dress made of cherry blossom petals with a battle axe made of cardboard on her shoulder. I had enough time to see that she looked unharmed, at least as unharmed as someone already dead can look. Then I couldn’t help but look back at Morgana.

“Hello, pet,” she said.

Her words stung me. Perhaps they would have stung me to my very soul if I still had ownership of it. “Pet.” Not “my pet.” I was just like any other pet to her. She cared so little about me that she didn’t even bother mentioning ownership of me. I was nothing. I wanted to find out what I had done wrong, so I could become her pet again. And then I wanted to slit my own wrists for even thinking such a thing.

“What is it now?” I sighed.

Morgana just smiled as she looked around the castle courtyard. The rest of the faerie and fey spread out to form a circle around me, although they gave me plenty of room. I caught sight of Puck grinning at me from within a knight’s helmet with the visor up. The helmet was in the shape of a snake’s head.

“I thought I would check in and see how things were proceeding with your little quest,” Morgana said, as if my daughter’s fate meant nothing to her. And maybe it didn’t.

“You could have just called me,” I said. “They have these things called phones now. Much easier than taking your whole court on an expedition around the glamour.”

“I’ve always preferred face-to-face encounters,” Morgana said, moving around me in a circle. Whichever way I turned to look at her, she wasn’t there. Instead, she was suddenly behind me. “You can’t tell someone’s real character until you see them break in person,” she said.

I stopped trying to keep an eye on her and studied the fey with the swords instead. “Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “Are you going to break me even further?”

“Now, why would I want to do that?” Morgana whispered in my ear.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me? The things you’ve been doing lately, they’re extreme even by your standards. And I didn’t even think you had standards.”

“I thought you might say something like that,” she said. “That’s why I brought along my court for this little scene.”

“Not another
Hamlet
show,” I pleaded. “Not yet.” I wasn’t ready to save anyone yet. Not Morgana, not Amelia and certainly not myself.

“Oh, it’s not
Hamlet
this time,” Morgana said. And now she was suddenly lying in the bed the fey were carrying. She pulled one of them into the bed with her, an old man with a long beard who wore the battered armour of a knight. He began to weep, until she ran a hand over his eyes and he fell asleep beside her. I wanted to kill him for being so close to her. For taking the place where I should have been.

“Do you not recognize the scene, pet?” she asked.

For a moment, I didn’t know what she was talking about. And then I did.

“It is the moment we met,” I said. Her in bed with a slumbering knight, surrounded by an armed guard under an enchantment. “When you were a prisoner of Meleagant.” And I was tasked by King Arthur to free her from the enchanted tower in the English countryside if I was to join his merry knights of Camelot.

“Do not forget I am queen of the faerie,” Morgana said. “I was not a prisoner.”

“And this is not Meleagant’s castle,” I said.

She shrugged as she looked around the glamour version of Elsinore again. If only the tourists could see us now.

“One mortal castle is the same as another,” she said. “It’s just bricks and mud, mortar and blood.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“I am reminding you of our history together,” she said and nodded at Puck. He threw me a sword I had no choice but to catch, and then the fey in the uniforms rushed me.

I slaughtered them just like I had slaughtered Meleagant’s men all those centuries ago. The circumstances weren’t that different, after all. Meleagant’s soldiers had been under a spell to guard his tower in the woods near where I’d found Arthur and his ragtag band of knights. They didn’t put up much of a fight because they couldn’t. It was as if they were half asleep, or in a daze. I’d thought Meleagant had been the one who had enchanted them, but I didn’t realize until later that Morgana had been responsible. These fey were no different. They stumbled toward me like they didn’t know what they were doing. They struck clumsy blows at me that I easily deflected or dodged. They left openings in their guards that I couldn’t help but take advantage of. One by one they dropped, all with a look of relief on their faces as I finally freed them from Morgana.

Then I was surrounded by bodies without a wound on me. Puck moved among them, checking their pockets for valuables and giggling to himself. There was no one between Morgana and me. No one except the man in knight’s armour slumbering in the bed beside her.

I looked at Amelia and she looked back at me without expression. I wanted to apologize for what she’d just seen. I wanted to apologize for what her father was. But then Morgana spoke my name and drew my attention back to her.

“Cross, do you recall what happened next?” she asked. “Do you remember how you saved me from the evil clutches of the dark knight Meleagant?” And then she took one of the sleeping man’s hands and laid it on her breast.

The rage swelled up inside me and I couldn’t help myself. I lunged forward and drove my bloody blade through Meleagant’s chest. I mean the poor fey cast in the unfortunate role of Meleagant. I even threw some grace into the blade to make sure it pierced the sleeping man’s armour.

He gasped and opened his eyes as I rammed the blade through his heart. He looked up at me and I couldn’t look away from him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t. The rage and jealousy from Morgana’s enchantment were still upon me.

“Don’t be,” he whispered, and then the life faded from his eyes.

“I see it’s coming back to you now,” Morgana said.

“Damn you,” I said to her and dropped the sword to the ground. “Damn you to all the hells.”

“You are the one who is damned, pet,” she said.

She ran a finger down her dress and her nail slit the fabric. It fell away, leaving her naked.

“Not in front of Amelia,” I said, but I was already falling into the bed with her, pushing the body of the dead fey aside. I could not look at my daughter.

But I didn’t have to, as the veils on the bed posts fell around us, blocking the others from view.

“Oh, I will not share this with anyone else,” Morgana said. “This is our moment and our moment alone.” And the world outside the veils darkened, and I had a feeling that if I looked out there I wouldn’t see a world at all.

“Now what have you done?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself from running my bloody hands along Morgana’s naked body.

“We are in a glamour within the glamour,” Morgana said. “What happens here, only we will know it.”

“There’s another glamour inside the glamour?” I asked. I shook my head. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“The glamour is what I make it,” Morgana said, and then she pulled me down to her.

It went more or less like the time we’d shared in the real Meleagant’s bed. The dead fey watched us with sightless eyes just as the dead knight had centuries ago. By the time we were done, we were all covered in blood: Meleagant’s, mine, and Morgana’s.

I collapsed in between the two of them, gasping for breath. I stared at the veils drifting overhead, with nothing beyond them.

Morgana ran a finger idly down my leg, drawing more blood in the process with her nails as sharp as a knife.

“That first time, do you remember it?” she asked.

“How could I forget?” I said.

“I thought at last I’d found a mortal worthy of me,” she said. “One who would slaughter the entire world if I asked for it.”

“I would,” I said. “I will.”

“And do you remember what happened then?” she asked.

I did. I pulled my pants back on, because I had a feeling our pleasant time here was done.

“Arthur,” the corpse beside me said. Only when I looked at it, it wasn’t the dead fey anymore. Now it was Puck lying in the bloody bed beside us. He grinned at me and wiggled his eyebrows like he knew what we had been up to. I wondered how long he had been there.

“Arthur,” Morgana agreed. “You tried to capture me just like so many other mortals had over the ages. And you took me and threw me at Arthur’s feet. Like I was some fey and not the queen of the faerie.”

She stood and stepped off the bed, pulling down the veils as she went. Now we were back in the regular glamour, surrounded by the faerie and fey again.

“And do you remember what Arthur would have done to me?” Morgana asked. She surveyed her court with her back to me, but I could hear the smile in her voice. I went to pull my shirt back on before I dared look at Amelia, but then Puck was throwing himself past me, swinging a blade at Morgana.

I moved reflexively, dropping the shirt and snatching up the sword. I met Puck’s blade with my own. I caught it mere inches from Morgana’s back. Just as I had when I’d delivered Morgana to Arthur and he’d tried to kill her with Excalibur. Puck grinned at me and then Morgana turned around and I saw she was indeed smiling. She didn’t seem surprised at all by his attack. I would never understand life in the faerie court.

“Arthur would have slain me when you gave me to him,” Morgana said.

“I guess it’s a good thing I was there then,” I said. I shoved Puck back and he fell to the ground, rolling in a backward somersault and then springing to his feet again with a laugh.

“Yes, you saved me when no others would have,” Morgana said.

“I’ve got a long history of making the wrong choices,” I said.

Morgana stepped closer to me and ran a hand down my cheek. I felt the trickle of fresh blood follow her fingertips.

“The question is whether you were acting of your own free will,” she said. “Or were you already under my spell then?”

I didn’t answer her because I didn’t have an answer for that.

She slipped past me and walked back toward the gates, hidden in the churning fog. Her court followed along after her, the fey picking up the weapons and the dead as they went.

“You wonder why I am treating you in the fashion I have?” Morgana said over her shoulder. “How could you even ask?”

“Where are you going now?” I said. I stared after Amelia, whose back was to me.

“We are going where we are going,” Morgana said. “And we will arrive there when we arrive there.” She turned and looked back at me once more. “What of you, pet? What will you do now?”

“I’m going to find out the secret of
Hamlet
even if it kills me again,” I said. “Who better to ask about it than the author?”

Morgana raised her eyebrows. “You’re going to raise Will? Even I would not dare such a feat. His grave is well guarded, as I’m sure you well know.”