The snow outside sang to me as Gerda stirred up the bedroom fire the next morning. I had slept late, too filled with happiness to fall asleep easily after my expedition to the tower. Now the sun shone her first beams across the snow, turning the world from black to white. I could have danced across the room like a snowflake. But a lady waits to be dressed properly. And this morning, I was a lady again.
‘What dress today, my lady?’ asked Gerda.
She had been my mother’s maid, and then mine since I grew too old to have a nurse.
‘The green with silver lacing.’
The queen had forbidden the court to wear black for King Hamlet now that she and King Claudius were wed, yet too bright a dress might offend his son. But I was tired of lavenders and white.
Gerda built up the fire. It blazed away the cold. Even my feet were warm on the bearskin by my bed as Gerda put up the screens and washed me with rosewater, then slid on a fresh shift, a petticoat of silver, the green overskirt and green sleeves.
A footman brought in my breakfast: warm ale with rye bread sopped in it, and cold venison — the king must have found time to hunt in the past few days, I thought, as well as to marry — and half a dozen Hardy Orange cheeses, each one no bigger than a walnut. They were laid in straw baskets on our estates in summer, till the whey dripped out and a grassy mould grew a skin to protect the cheese inside. You had to cellar a Hardy Orange carefully — a break in the skin would send it bad.
I cut into the first one. Perfect, as it should be. A good household and a good estate meant excellent cheese.
‘Has my father breakfasted?’
‘Hours ago, my lady, with Lord Laertes,’ said Gerda. ‘They have gone to the council chamber.’
I nodded. While Laertes had been in Paris, Father had talked to me of state business over breakfast, for lack of any other audience for his speeches: how many ships of stockfish were needed to feed the people through winter, when the ships could no longer sail, and through the hungry spring until the harvest; if the rye crop had gone well, or had been attacked by rust; how the French king had married his daughter to the king of Scotland to seal an alliance. My father had his son home again to share his talk now, but Laertes was to start back to Paris this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow my father might share the world with me again.
I motioned Gerda to sit on the small stool by my side. When we were alone, I had her eat with me. She took a tankard of the ale and dunked her bread in it.
I spread a thick slice of Hardy Orange over my bread, and took a bite. ‘What is the talk in the servants’ hall?’
Gerda lowered her voice, even though there was no one else to hear. ‘Oh, such a fuss, my lady. Lady Annika’s maid is big with child. We’ve known for weeks, though she tried to hide it with tight lacing. But now the man will marry her, so all is well.’
‘Who is he?’
‘The palace blacksmith’s son, apprenticed to the trade.’
‘Didn’t his sister …’ I stopped.
‘Oh, yes, that was sad. The one who drowned herself in the stream for love.’
Or for despair, I thought. If a maid gave herself to her lover and he did not marry her, what could the girl do — her honour gone, no way to feed herself and her child? Few families, poor or rich, would keep a daughter after she had disgraced their house. The palace blacksmith had shut the door upon his daughter, and now she lay, her unborn child with her, in a suicide’s grave outside the churchyard. Even death had not washed her sins away.
‘Other news,’ I pleaded. ‘Happier news.’
Gerda’s smile returned. ‘Oh, there’s very happy news, my lady. News of love, and a wedding in the summer. The whole palace is talking about it.’
‘Whose wedding?’
‘Why, yours, my lady.’
I flushed and looked down at my bread and cheese. Was there a servant hidden behind every tapestry that lined the palace walls? ‘There has been no talk of weddings.’
‘But there has been of love?’
I didn’t answer.
The doors opened. A footman in the queen’s red and gold brocade bowed low. ‘Her Majesty would see you, my lady.’
I stood quickly; you did not keep a queen waiting, even if you were in the privy. I was glad the summons hadn’t come before I was properly dressed. ‘Where is Her Majesty?’
‘In the solar, my lady.’
The footman followed me along the corridors to open the doors for me, and Gerda followed too, carrying my silver fox cloak lined with green velvet in case the queen wished me to accompany her into the royal garden. Today’s sun might tempt her into the fresh air. The palace draughts snickered about my skirts and I almost asked for the cloak now. But that would be unseemly, as if accusing the king and queen of such poor hospitality that their company must wear their cloaks indoors.
The solar faced south, with thick glass in its windows and braziers around the room, as well as the big fire, to keep it as warm as summer. The queen sat on a silk cushion, her ladies on cushions too, sewing their tapestries. Or rather Lady Hilda and Lady Anna sewed, and Lady Annika dozed. In the past year she had managed to stitch only the nose of the hound in her tapestry. I doubted the poor beast would ever be granted an ear, much less a tail.
I curtseyed deeply. ‘Your Majesty. I hope I see you well.’
The queen smiled. ‘You do.’
She did look well — a new husband in her bed, a new throne, her son home in her palace. And the old king, my mind whispered, with his cruel jokes and mistresses, safely gone.
‘I have a task for you, my dear.’
‘Of course, Your Majesty. Your will is mine.’
She laughed. ‘I am glad to hear it. Would you carry an ox for me to Paris?’
‘Of course, Your Majesty.’
‘And sweep a mountain free of snow so I could climb it?’
I smiled too. ‘Whatever Your Majesty wishes.’
‘Then this is today’s task. You will walk with my son, and make him smile. His temper has too much of winter in it. Can you manage that, do you think?’
I curtseyed again, hoping it hid my flush. I heard a maid giggle. ‘I hope I can fulfil Your Majesty’s will.’
‘Then off with you. Enjoy the brief sunlight while you may. Leave us old crones to our sewing, and be young.’
‘Your Majesty will never be old,’ I said. ‘You are like the sun, newborn each day.’
‘An excellent answer.’
I heard laughter behind me as I left.
He was waiting for me in the great hall. Gerda had been summoned to bring fur-lined boots, a fur hat, fur gloves and muff, and a green silk jacket lined with felted lambswool to go beneath my coat. Lucky lamb, I thought, to wear only one pelt, when a lady must wear twenty. But at least I would be warm.
I stepped up to the prince and curtseyed as gracefully as I could in six layers of silk and linen and fur. ‘My lord, your gracious mother bids me to walk with you.’
He took my hand to raise me from the curtsey. ‘I am glad.’
He didn’t look glad. He looked tired. More than that, I thought, suddenly worried: he looked as if the life was being drained from him with each hour he spent at Elsinore. The queen was right. He must be made to smile.
Gerda began to follow us down the palace steps.
Hamlet waved her back. ‘Your mistress has no need of you now.’
‘But, Your Highness …’ Gerda halted, looking at me helplessly. A maid must obey a prince.
I glanced back at her, uncertain. A young girl shouldn’t walk alone with a man. But this was the prince, and I had the queen’s permission. Not just that. Her order. And I wanted to walk! To dance! Away from the smoke and shadows of the palace, the intrigues of the past month. I wanted to feel the snow break like a bread crust under my feet; breathe deep of air with all the shadows frozen out.
And, whispered a small voice inside me, Prince Hamlet cannot kiss you with Gerda looking.
Would he ask me to marry him today? Was that why he wished to walk with me alone?
We walked across the palace courtyard, over the drawbridge and into the marketplace. The people stood back to let us pass, bowing and curtseying. Despite my arm resting on his, Hamlet seemed far away. Was his mind back at Wittenberg?
I stayed silent as we crossed the marketplace, then walked down the road. A man bringing firewood for the palace quickly moved his ox and cart out of our way. A woman ran forward to sweep the ox dung away before we dirtied our shoes. I smiled a thank you, though I knew she would value the dung. A high dunghill meant a happy house. The dung fed the fields; the fields fed the cows; the cows fed the cheese; the cheese fed us … I smiled at myself, thinking of dung when I should be thinking of love.
‘You look happy, my lady.’ The prince looked at me, his eyes like a puppy’s that had been beaten.
‘I am happy.’
‘Why? What is there in this heavy world to smile about?’
I let go of his hand and danced upon the snow, feeling it crunch and squeak under my feet, just as I had imagined. ‘Because I am with you. Because the world is washed white and clean with snow. Can’t you hear it sing?’
He frowned. ‘I hear no birds, no music.’
‘The snow sings, my lord. Listen!’
I stood still so he could hear it too; not just the faint crackle and drip as the snow melted in the sun, but the deeper music of the expanse of white.
All at once his frown lightened. ‘I think I hear it. You give even winter a sweet voice, my lady.’ His eyes were less sombre now. He gestured towards the trees in the king’s forest to our right, each branch hung with snow. ‘Will you walk in the forest with me?’
I hesitated again. A walk in the woods was different from a walk down the road, with farms on either side. Prince Hamlet must know that the entire palace — even the whole town — would soon know that we had walked alone together. Surely there was only one reason he would so publicly take me walking in the forest. He must be going to ask me to marry him.
I smiled. A girl has a right to privacy when a young man is asking for her hand.
The sun was as high as it would rise today, hovering like a tired orange above the horizon. Hamlet held out his hand. I took it. Our shadows skittered winter black upon the snow. It stuck to my boots, so I had to keep shaking them clean.
Each tree stood like a silent soldier in its armour of white. If there was a path, the snow had hidden it. We ducked under trees. Snow fell off their branches and exploded up in a white powder that stung my face and eyes. All the while Hamlet didn’t speak, pushing his way through the branches with a strange eagerness.
I wiped the snow from my cheeks. ‘Where are we going, my lord?’
He glanced at me almost as if he had forgotten I was there. ‘A place.’
I laughed. I felt as if the pigeons might sing in chorus above us, as if the voles and hedgehogs might wake up and dance about our feet. I was in love with the world today, not just with Hamlet. Poor Hamlet, who had lost so much. But I would make him smile. ‘Is there anywhere that is no place?’
He looked at me and seemed as weary as if it was he who carried the great load of snow, not the trees.
‘My dreams,’ he said abruptly. ‘My fears. They are no place. But they are real.’ He held out his black-gloved hand to catch a drop of snow melting from a branch. ‘At times I wish I could dissolve into dew, like this poor scrap of ice. How weary, stale and unprofitable seem all the uses of this world.’ He gestured at the trees around us. ‘Life seems an unweeded garden, like this forest, rank, unpruned.’
‘Look again, my lord,’ I said softly. ‘God weeds the forest. It has no need of man, except to give us wood, and beauty.’
He looked at me, not at the trees. But he almost smiled.
‘So what is this “place” you take me to, my lord?’
‘Can you guess?’
‘A flour mill?’ With servants to greet us with mulled wine and toasted cheese, I hoped.
He shook his head.
‘A woodsman’s cottage?’ And a woodsman’s wife, a fire-cheered kitchen and ham bone soup.
He did smile at that. ‘No. It is a place I have not seen for more than ten years, since I left Elsinore. But it is beautiful. As beautiful as you.’
I hoped my smile might bring an echo on his face. ‘Perhaps in ten years it has changed.’
His face clouded. I wished I could swallow my words. ‘Change? Ay, time eats constancy. Women are the frailest of all.’
One did not argue with a prince. Not even one who said he loved you. I bit my lip to stop my tongue.
‘But this place does not change.’ He lifted a branch, heavy with snow, which cascaded to the ground with a soft thud. His face relaxed properly for the first time today. ‘See, here is my place that lives on earth, and also in my dreams. No rank trees, to sully its purity. What does not grow can never change or putrefy.’
I looked. It was a glade, no larger than my room. A silver snake through the snow showed where a stream would run in summer.
Hamlet gazed around, the depression sliding from him, like snow from the trees. ‘When I was locked in my chamber for giggling when the Spanish ambassador tripped in the throne room, when my tutor beat me at school, I thought of this place. Pure, and full of happiness. I came here as a child to fish,’ he added softly.
‘With your father?’
‘My father? No, of course not.’ He smiled down at me. ‘A king has more important tasks than fishing with his son.’
Like hunting deer and boar, I thought, and bedding mistresses. How well did Hamlet know this father that he mourned? I was beginning to suspect his memory had made the father he would rather have had.
‘The jester brought me here. Old Yorick.’
I dimly remembered Yorick: a small man with one shoulder higher than the other and a smile of patient pain. The late king had made him dance with a bear. The bear had lashed out and suddenly Yorick’s face was red with blood. The king had laughed, and my father had hurried me from the room. I forced myself back to the king’s son, standing with me now.
‘Old Yorick told me jokes too.’ For the first time, Hamlet’s eyes danced at me. ‘When can’t a fish swim?’
‘I don’t know, my lord.’
‘When it’s a dish of fish.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘It seemed funnier when Yorick said it. I caught a fish too. Or rather, Yorick held both lines and when one hooked a fish, he told me it was my line that had caught it. He pretended to be my horse on the way back, and I rode on his shoulders, carrying my fish. He took it to the kitchens, and brought it up to me for my supper, before he attended the king.’
It seemed that Yorick had been more of a father to Hamlet than the king. I wondered if old King Hamlet had even known his son had caught a fish? How could such a man have a son like this? No wonder both father and son had been content for Hamlet to continue his studies rather than helping to run the kingdom. They employed my father to do that.
Hamlet gazed at me. ‘Your thoughts are far away, my lady.’
I smiled at him. ‘No, of course not. I am here, and my thoughts too.’
‘I am a bad companion. Things are … not as they seemed yesterday.’
I looked at him, alarmed. ‘How, my lord?’
Had King Claudius withdrawn his offer to make Hamlet his heir? I could think of nothing else that could weigh him down so much, lower even than when he had realised he had lost not just his father but his kingship.
He hesitated. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy books, Ophelia. Matters too weighty for a girl.’
‘I am not a girl! I am your friend. You called me wise counsel.’
His face lightened, as if a ray of sun had caught it. ‘You are most certainly a girl, and I a man. Nor would I have you bear what I was shown last night. I have a present for you.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
His grimness lessened even more. ‘I like it when you say “Yes, my lord” like that. You are a gentle woman. A flower blooming in the dung heap that is Elsinore.’
‘No dung heap, my lord. Just cautious lords, who do their best …’
I stopped as he put his hand into the pouch at his belt. A betrothal ring, I thought. Something glittered in the winter sun. He held it out.
I took it. A gold chain, and on it a heart-shaped locket. Despite my disappointment, its beauty made me catch my breath. It was old gold, almost red, with a polish that came through age and love. I looked at Prince Hamlet in wonder, then opened it. Inside was a lock of hair.
‘My lord, thank you! Whose is it?’
A smile almost made its way past the grimness. ‘It is yours now. But the locket was my grandmother’s. And the hair is mine.’ He looked at me so intently, I felt the snow would melt all around us. ‘Now you have my heart, Ophelia. I would have you wear it next to your heart too.’
‘I will, my lord,’ I whispered. I would have danced again if his mood had not been so changeable and grim. Hamlet loved me! What was a ring compared to a prince’s heart?
‘Let me fasten it for you,’ he said.
I felt his gloved hands move clumsily around my neck, and then the locket cold on my skin.
‘There,’ he said. ‘My heart is yours.’
‘And you have mine, my lord.’
Why did he not smile again? For we had each other now; our lives and the kingdom stretched in front of us. Or did it? What shadow kept darkening his eyes?
‘My lord, what has burdened you so since yesterday?’
‘Last night …’ he said, and stopped. He looked so serious. I wanted him to share my joy.
‘You saw a ghost last night?’ I teased.
He stepped back, his face so white that I was frightened. ‘How did you know?’
‘I … I didn’t.’ I took his hand, as I would take a little boy’s. ‘My lord, I have met the ghost. He is old King Fortinbras, clinging as mist to the stones of his lost castle. He did me no harm —’
‘Old Fortinbras?’ He shook his head. ‘This was my father’s ghost.’
I blinked at him. How many ghosts had appeared last night on the battlements of Elsinore? The castle had many towers, each hidden from the others by the palace roof. I had a sudden picture in my mind of a crowd of ghosts, each arguing who had the right to haunt which tower.
‘A ghost cannot hurt you,’ I ventured softly.
‘Cannot hurt me! My poor father, doomed to wander upon the earth, and you say this cannot hurt me!’
I looked at his face, the anguish written more clearly upon it than the monk’s script in the books in the library. I had not liked the old king when he was alive. I liked him even less now. ‘I am sorry, my lord. Of course it wounds you.’
‘You believe me?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ I wondered if I should tell him that I had talked to a ghost myself last night. But Prince Hamlet might not approve of my talking to his father’s enemy, even though he was dead. ‘Your father must be vexed for you, my lord, to see his son’s inheritance so delayed.’
Hamlet gazed back in the direction of the palace, almost as if he might see his father’s ghost hovering against the whiteness of the snow.
‘For me? No, my father’s ghost did not speak of me, except to lay me with the duty of a son.’ Hamlet looked at me again, his eyes as bleak as a lump of coal. ‘My father told me he was murdered.’