As for young Hamlet, you’d have thought all his philosophy would have taught him how to deal with the situation. In his place I would have disobeyed the king’s wish that he stay at court and forthwith returned to university where he’d have been happy. If I’d stayed, it would have been to slit the usurper’s throat in the church. But he merely sat in a corner and moped, making odd utterances no one understood. He managed but one sensible thing. Despite the winter weather, despite what should have been a year of mourning, the entire court was supposed to wear bright summer garb. Only he had the sense to swathe himself in his thickest clothes, complete with scarf and cloak. I would slip into his hands sweetmeats I had about me, just as when he was a boy: He would always favour me with a kind word, and sometimes a smile that lit his whole face. Often he seemed about to confide in me, but on cue up would come my husband, so promptly I’d swear he’d been listening.
At last Hamlet seemed to turn a corner, and became downright coltish. Perhaps it was his newfound love. He and Ophelia seemed well on the way to consoling each other, with some encouragement from both me and his mother, I have to say. But both blew hot and cold: The more he pursued, the more she skittered away, and when she turned up the heat, you couldn’t see him for dust. A good box about the ears, that’s what they both needed, and so I told Polonius.
“Can’t you see it’s for the best?” he whispered, looking about all the while as if the very dust motes might spy on him. “If he can’t bed her till he’s wed her, the good king and queen, fearing he’ll go mad for love, will grant their consent and then I’m made for life, Maria. You and I,” he added, somewhat as an afterthought.
“If you ask me, he’s so many cares a silly girl playing fast and loose with his emotions can only be bad for him,” I said. “His father dies, he comes bustling home expecting a coronation — his own, my lord — and what does he find? What he should, his mother in widow’s weeds, preparing for a dowager’s life in a convent? His uncle on his knees before him, swearing due allegiance to his new liege lord? No! He finds his throne usurped, his mother open-legged for a man not worth the snap of her fingers!” I might have added that, king’s brother or not, Claudius’s behaviour was far from regaclass="underline" His hands were always trying to find their way into serving maids’ plackets or tugging their bodices till their nipples peeped out. Fine manners in a newlywed.
“Hush. Prithee, wife, hush.”
“And what are you planning, Polonius? You play your cards so close to your chest I sometimes think you can’t see them yourself!”
He went off huffing and puffing. I was left to consider a new addition to our court, one of Prince Hamlet’s fellow students. Horatio. Such a lovely pair of legs he had on him. Though he said little, what he did was always to the point — and he had the sweetest turn of phrase. I began to regret my overhasty marriage: A woman might expect apter treatment from this young man. But in time I began to suspect that he was not, as one might say, a marrying sort. Certainly he was as tender to the melancholy prince as a lover would be.
Not so the next arrivals at court, as nasty a pair as you’d come across in a week’s work. More students. But though they would merrily chip and chop their logic with young Hamlet, they took back his every word to either my lord or King Claudius.
At last I could bear it no longer, and happened to find my way onto the battlements at the same time as Hamlet. At the sound of my footsteps he wheeled round in what looked like terror.
“It’s only I. Maria,” I said. “Come to blow a few cobwebs away.”
We agreed that the weather was cold despite the bright sun, the wind coming from the northwest, and joked about the shape of the clouds. To my surprise, he scribbled in his tablets when I said one looked like a weasel.
“And talking of weasels,” I pursued, “there are those about the castle who claim to be your friends but who shouldn’t be trusted any more than ferrets in a sack. Not Horatio, my lord. The other pair. Rosenstern and Guildenthing. Whatever they call themselves.” I leaned closer. God, his doublet and hose stank. Waving my hand before my nose, I said, “You were once so well turned-out, Your Highness — the pattern card, the very mirror of fashion. And now a beggar would spurn this doublet. As for your hose—!”
He touched his nose too, but with the sort of tap that told me he had a secret. “There is a reason for all this. And the beard. And the lurking in corners. Trust me,” he said.
“Trust! I don’t know anyone else I’d trust in this place. Well, Horatio, I suppose. But no one else. No one at all.”
“No one? Surely Ophelia—!”
“—would — I have to be frank — do anything her father bid her.” Only that morning, as we were breaking our fast, I had heard him whispering to the king something about privately loosing her to Hamlet. Loosing — as if she were a mare to be tupped. “And he seems to be — nay, is — like this with Claudius.” I crossed my fingers. “Beg pardon — King Claudius. Why don’t you do something, my lord?”
Then I realised why rumours of his madness were no longer whispered, but spoken openly.
Out of the blue, he asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Without thinking, I crossed myself.
It was as if I’d answered another question. “Ah! You think they’re come from the devil to torment us!”
Did I? “Perhaps. Or perhaps they’re heaven-sent to warn us. All I know, my lord, is that I have never yet seen one.”
He gave a short, harsh laugh.
“My lord, you misjudge me. I know they say only the pure can see one.”
“So they do. So an adulteress would not...”
“Adulteress! Not I, my lord!” Should I make it entirely clear? I blushed for my lord Polonius. Did I owe him any loyalty? Not as much as I owed the late king’s son. “Free with my eyes I may be, Highness, but I’m no loose woman. I’m as pure in body as any lady entering a nunnery.”
Another bark of laughter. “A nunnery! Next you’ll be saying Polonius is a fishmonger keeping a bawdyhouse!”
“Not that sort of nunnery, either, my lord. Enough of your jests. As for Polonius, to be wife and no wife is no laughing matter.”
He nodded. “Better that than to be a whore, Maria. When the old man dies, we’ll find you a lusty prince for your bed,” he added, with a courtly kiss of my hand to show he meant no unkindness.
“Dies? Creaky gates always last the longest, my lord. As for a prince — go to! I’d be more likely to fetch up with that court card, Osric. If he could ever frame his mouth round such an ordinary word as marriage. They say that manners make the man — but I’ll swear he bowed to his mother’s breast before he suckled.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “My good Maria! Well, there may be a few soldiers visiting our court. Fortinbras, for instance.”
“Fortinbras!” My eyes must have gleamed. I’d seen him when he’d accompanied his father here on a state visit. Then he’d been scarcely bearded. Now he’d be just the young man for Ophelia to have one of her crushes on. Poor Hamlet. I asked more soberly, “But why should he come here?”
“The esteemed Claudius has given permission for Fortinbras of Norway to lead his army across our soil. He intends to wrest a few acres from Poland.”
“Poland! Such poor farming land it wouldn’t yield five ducats an acre. What a waste of young life. Why doesn’t war carry off the old?” Polonius, for instance. “Sweet Prince, take care, I beg you.”