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 travellers 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 mid-afternoon, it was heavier than ever. Hamlet could see the figure of a man, working at one of the grave sites, but he could not recognise 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, manoeuvring among the gravestones until he was closer to the labourer. 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 shovelling 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 traveller,’ 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 labours 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 God 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 shivered 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, traveller. 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 onto 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 nobody 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 Yorrick, 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 Yorrick sooner or later. No doubt there’s a good bit more of him around my feet.’
‘Yorrick?’ the prince repeated, gripped by horror. ‘Yorrick 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 Yorrick I’d say we’re deep enough.’
He sprang out of the grave with amazing agility. Embarrassed, 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 marvelled 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.’