2

The Play’s the Thing

Three days later Ophelia sat in her room, sewing idly, mending her father’s clothes. Eyes straying to the window. The river was frozen. The trees bare of leaves. Winter had Elsinore in its relentless grip, and it was so cold she wondered if spring would ever come.

There’d been few words that morning at breakfast. He’d taken the food from her, given some orders about the housekeeping and the servants. Left matters at that.

But Polonius needed to say no more and knew it. He had her secret. The failed clandestine affair. The lost child. He thought he knew everything, but in that he was wrong, though the knowledge only made Ophelia’s private grief more painful.

She stabbed at the sheet on her lap. The needle missed, stuck into her leg. A gasp of pain. Ophelia lifted the soft damask fabric over her knee, looked at the pale flesh just above, saw a tiny pearl of blood begin to grow on her skin.

Stood up, dropped the sheet, dabbed at the wound with a spare length of thread.

Then looked and saw someone at the door, leaning against the frame, watching her avidly.

Hamlet walked in and closed the door quietly behind him. Ophelia forgot the sharp needle, stiffened her back, held up her head defiantly.

“My father says…”

He was on her then, strong hands lifting the fabric higher, fingernails brushing lightly against her thighs.

“The Lord Chamberlain insists…”

Hamlet pushed her against the wall. Held her there, tight against the fabric of the one tapestry she owned.

“Not now, Hamlet,” she whispered. “Not here.”

“Says who?”

“Polonius. And I must obey him. As you…” She shook her head. A stupid thing to say. “As you must obey the King.”

“Says who?”

Ophelia folded her arms, looked him in the eye. The dreamy, wistfulness she’d loved when they were in the woods by the river was gone. Now he looked hard of heart and manic.

His fingers briefly brushed her stomach.

“You were plumper before, lady. Or so my mother says. She thinks you’re sick. Wasting away. And all since my father died. Why? He was mine not yours. With you there’s a reason to argue for a necessary boundary of grief.”

She didn’t answer.

“And yet…” He stood back, put a thoughtful finger to his chin. “You look much the same as I remember when I went off to Wittenberg. My mother…” He paused and said this very carefully. “Perhaps she’s mistaken. Or lying.”

Close again, he stroked her flaxen hair, moved it from her cheek.

“Slender. Charming. Beautiful.” His eyes were laughing, even if the rest of him seemed wrapped in misery. “Willing. That was a splendid summer, Ophelia. Did I learn more from you? Or you from me?”

“I never touched another man!”

His hand briefly stroked her cheek.

“I could tell you I was a virgin too I suppose…”

“And in Wittenberg?”

He did laugh then.

“In Wittenberg mostly I read books.” A shrug. “Or sleep. And sometimes dream.”

“My father has commanded me. I mustn’t see you.”

“Why were you fat before? And thin now? Or is my mother lying? Again.”

“Stop this.”

He touched her shoulder tenderly.

“No. I won’t. I’m your… beloved, aren’t I? Prince of Elsinore. I’ll do what I damned well like. If I fancy a roll with the chief counsellor’s daughter I’ll have it. Whether he’s willing… or she…”

“This isn’t you!”

There was a madness in his eyes then.

“Do you think you know me, lady? If so you’re a better judge of character than I. If…”

“I had your child!”

He blinked, recoiling as if struck.

“What?”

“I had your child…”

He shook his head, squinting at her as if trying to make sense of a code or foreign language.

“It died,” she went on in the silence. “He died.”

Another long stillness, but in it Hamlet seemed to freeze. His eyes which had been momentarily full of pain, hardened.

“I lost the baby,” she went on, desperate to finish the story now, “the night Old Hamlet passed away. There was a commotion in the castle. They said there was a viper loose. For a while my father seemed terrified. Perhaps he thought the Norwegians had come too…”

A sly, sarcastic nod.

“We blame the men from Oslo for everything, don’t we? I had a child? Was that a man from Oslo’s doing too?”

“Yours! Two months. Perhaps three.” Her eyes drifted to the window. “A gift from the long summer. I lost it. I thought no one knew except a nurse I used. Who’s now in France at my command. Yet my father seems to have spies within the fabric of this bloody place…”

Hamlet jabbed a finger at his bare chest.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I had a child and you kept me ignorant.”

That goaded her.

“What was I to say? You were beside yourself with grief for your own loss…”

“It was mine!” He stopped, thought. Closed his eyes. “Ours. So what got rid of it? A potion from your French bitch? Or a…?”

Her hand flew at his face and slapped him hard.

“What kind of love demands the life of another? A child at that?”

“Danish love, my sweet. Can’t you smell it?”

“I lost the baby through grief and fear and… and shame.”

He had his hand to his cheek, as shocked as she was.

“And if I’d carried it? What then? Would you have married me? Or paid for the bastard to be raised elsewhere out of embarrassment? While you took a more suitable noble lady for your wife? Because a fallen woman could never be your queen now, could she?”

His fingers gripped her throat. Any tears she had were gone.

“I would have wed you. Without a second thought.”

She dragged herself from him.

“But only if I was a virgin. Your family would have demanded that. And there’s the problem, sir. What you… what we wanted… ruined the game. I was your summer love and grateful for it. It was more than I expected. And if I could have kept that child I would have loved it all the same.”

“So that’s two murders then.”

“Two?” she asked. “What madness is…?”

She stopped. There was a new look to him, and something there she’d never witnessed before.

“Don’t hate me, Hamlet. I beg you.”

“You could have been my queen.”

At that she laughed.

“What me? Your secret mistress by the water? I’m too easy. Too lustful. Spare me the compliments.” She pointed at her breast. “Queens aren’t made of this.”

He stepped back, staring at her with those cold, hard eyes.

“You had no faith in me. In us.”

His face was blank, his voice level. But she could hear the rage within him, trapped like a wolf inside a cage.

He retreated to the door. Without another word, he was gone.

Across the Øresund, in a makeshift encampment behind Helsingborg, Fortinbras sat in his commander’s tent, listening to the Scottish warlord Gregor go through the numbers.

A thousand Norwegian foot. Four score knights on horseback. Two hundred and fifty bloodthirsty foreign mercenaries, the only battle-hardened warriors he had. Supplies for a week’s campaigning, no more without support.

“Could you find more hired men? Quickly?”

Gregor was a gruff, ginger-haired giant. The leader of the mercenaries. Veteran of a host of campaigns throughout Europe. He scratched his head and asked the question Fortinbras knew was coming.

How much?

“You know the coffers are empty, Scotsman. They get paid out of booty and what they can find.”

The giant laughed until he shook.

“No offence, sir, but my comrades rarely get off their arses without a penny in their hand. As for plunder... it’s Denmark. Pretty as their women are there’s not much worth nicking outside Elsinore except herring. And we’re drowning in them already.”

The Norwegian took a sip of the cold, sour beer. Even that was running out.

“We could take Elsinore with these men. And hold it too. Claudius is quaking in his bed. Sending begging messages to my uncle...”

“I believe that’s called diplomacy. It’s his trade.”

“And warfare’s mine. My uncle will be dead before winter turns to spring. He won’t stop me...”

The Scot smiled.

“But he won’t send you more men either, will he?”

“Get me over there and I’ll give you half of Jutland.”

Gregor shrugged his shoulders.

“Give me the ships. Or a thousand sets of wings and I’ll do it. There’s that small matter of the Øresund. I know you could spit from one side to the other if the wind’s in the right direction. But it’s too far to bridge or for men and horses to swim. If...”

Fortinbras got to his feet. He was thirty. Three years old when his father died and his uncle Magnus was elected to the throne. That was the way the crown worked in Norway. The man the nobles liked – or feared most – became monarch.

“If I can take Elsinore they’ll make me king of Denmark and Norway together. And then...”

“This is all a matter for diplomats, Fortinbras. Men like Claudius over there. Not soldiers like me. Nothing...”

“I pay you to fight, Scotsman! Not to argue with me.”

The giant got up, walked to the open door of the tent. They had camped on a hill overlooking the small port below. The slender strip of water lay beneath them, placid on this bright, calm winter’s day.

“I’ve served with the best of them. Learned from them, too. One of the finest, a condottiere from Milan, told me something I should never forget. We’re mercenaries. We’re not paid to fight. We’re paid to win.”

“And?”

“Only fools die for nothing. Not us. If there’s a chance of seizing Denmark and getting rich from someone’s coffers we’ll take it. But if it’s just a matter of sitting here freezing our balls off...”

He thrust his fists in his pockets. Gazed at the distant blue horizon.

“Scotland’s lovely in the spring, lord. I’ve got women over there. And kids. Wouldn’t mind seeing them. For a little while anyway. Until I’m bored.”

Fortinbras shoved him out of the way. Stretched out his arm, pointed at the distant shape of Elsinore across the water.

“Twenty seven years ago the Øresund froze. My father died there on the ice. Through Old Hamlet’s treachery. Did you know that?”

Gregor tapped his ginger head.

“Got half the history of Europe in there, mate. Not much room for anything else.”

“The sea froze! My father had his entire army across there, beneath the castle walls. Could have taken Denmark like a wolf seizing a lamb if that bastard hadn’t talked him into single combat. While Claudius watched from the bedchamber of his queen...”

The Scotsman looked interested finally.

“If it freezes, we can walk across. Gregor, will you be with me? Will you lead my men?”

“If it freezes like you say.” He looked up at the clear blue sky. “But will it?”

“I don’t have mastery of the weather. Just money. Men. And you.”

Gregor sniffed, wiped his nose with his sleeve.

Then shivered and pulled his fur cloak around him.

“We’ll give it a month at most. After that it’s Perth for me and mine.”

Polonius was in his study, listening to reports from two of his spies. Violent men his daughter knew and feared. He mixed with them so easily, always had. And yet to the court he could appear the most gentle and urbane of lords.

Voltemand, the man from Copenhagen who had been dispatched to the royal court in Oslo, was there too, eyeing her as she walked in.

Back already. She wondered if that was good news or bad. She loathed politics.

Her father glared at her when she entered, told her to wait outside until he called.

An hour it took and when the spies came out they were grinning and counting out gold pieces in their fingers. One of them held up a coin, winked at her. Made a coarse gesture and asked, “Up for it?”

Ophelia laughed in his face. Watched his hand rise.

Voltemand was behind them, struck him hard with the back of his hand, then fetched a knee to his groin and sent him gasping to the floor.

“Offend this lady again and neither of you will leave Elsinore alive.”

The one who was still standing looked terrified.

“He thought she was a servant girl,” the spy said, then kicked his compatriot hard to make the point. “Didn’t mean nothing.”

Voltemand smiled at her.

“The Lady Ophelia’s no servant. Too lovely for that.”

She pushed past him.

“You flatter me without purpose, sir. No good reason at all.”

Her father was at his desk, poring over papers and maps. Books open in front of him. Danish, English, Latin. Military tomes from what she could see.

“Don’t walk in on me freely again,” he said without looking at her. “Not until we’re done with all this business. We’re as near as dammit in a state of war. I’ve affairs to manage that shouldn’t reach a woman’s ears.”

Finally he put aside his quill and documents. Checked his watch for no reason other than to show he owed the damned thing. Glared at her.

“After all I said last night… did I waste my breath?”

“Father?”

“Hamlet visited you. In your room. When you retired there this morning. It was a brief encounter. Raised voices. Afterwards you were flushed and near hysterical. The way feeble girls are in love…”

“You do not know!”

“If I can’t stop you rutting I’ll dispatch you to a convent. Or marry you off to a farmer.”

“He came to me. I didn’t want it. Any of it…”

“But you let him…”

“He wanted nothing more than to talk to me. He’s distressed. I’ve never seen a man in such pain. Perhaps his mind’s adrift or something. I don’t know.”

Polonius looked interested. He got to his feet.

“You think he’s mad?”

“I’m not a physician. Just a feeble girl…”

His hand struck her cheek, hard enough to bring up a blush.

“Don’t mock me, child.”

She didn’t cry. Refused to. But she held her fingers to her face.

“The prince is sick. He needs help and comfort. Perhaps if you told his mother …”

“You’re saying he did nothing?”

“I am.”

Another blow. She took it, stared at him.

“You’re lying.”

“I fear he may harm himself. Or others. There’s a violence to him I’ve never seen before. I tell you this because you’re my father. And the king’s adviser. What you do with it, sir…”

“If he presses himself upon you again keep him interested. Keep him on the hook. Let’s see what happens. That’s my wish.”

“It’s not mine. And I…”

His hand was raised a third time.

“Best hit me somewhere private, sir. Unless you want him to see.”

“You’re an insolent child. Do as I say.”

“If you’ll tell the Queen he’s sick I’ll do it. And report back to you with everything. Like a spy so you can love me.”

He looked at her with interest then.

“Don’t fail me, daughter. There’s a price for that. You wouldn’t like it.”

Hamlet was toying with the penknife again.

“I’ve been giving some thought to this weapon of yours.”

The dwarf looked up, interested.

“And which way are you pointing the blade, Prince?”

“That seems to be the question, doesn’t it? Such a little thing, the pressure it takes to push the tip of a good dagger through flesh.”

“Makes a mess though.”

“Of all kinds,” Hamlet agreed. “Perhaps this is easier.”

He reversed the knife so that its tip pressed softly into the skin of his own throat.

Yorick watched him, unimpressed.

“Probably. Still a bit bloody. No thought for the poor bastard who’d have to clean up after you.”

“That’s all that worries you?” Hamlet asked, still holding the blade against his neck as if testing it.

“Pretty much. What do you want? A few home truths? A sermon on despair, the unforgiveable sin against the holy spirit? I could maybe rustle up a few woodcut prints showing the torment of those damned for suicide if that would help.”

“Seems unlikely.” Hamlet removed the knife and looked at his face reflected in the blade. “Still, not much of a reason to live, is it? The fear of being punished for killing yourself? I thought God was supposed to be full of love and forgiveness.”

Yorick tugged on his long, untidy hair.

“I’m sorry. Have me we met? I’m the king’s underpaid jester.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you treating me like a priest or – worse – a philosopher? If you wanted reflections on the nature of the universe and your place in it, you should have stayed in school. You want fart noises and cock jokes, I’m your man. If it’s sympathy you’re after talk to your chum Horatio. Or Ophelia.”

“I’m done with Ophelia.”

“Or she’s done with you.”

“Amounts to the same thing.”

Yorick grinned.

“Not the same as rejection though, is it, Romeo?”

“It doesn’t feel anything at all.”

“Oh.,” The jester drew out the single syllable. “So that’s the pose of the day, is it? Fine. You’re a man of iron. Of stone. A stoic of pure purpose, undistracted by feeble human emotions. You’ll make your father proud yet. Were he not dead…”

Hamlet turned quickly on him, the knife sweeping out towards the dwarf so that he jumped back and ran away, cackling.

Then stopped at the door, looked serious for a moment.

“So let me understand this, Hamlet. Neither of us has room for error. A spook on the battlements says your father was murdered by your uncle. And the game is… what?”

“I play the fool.”

“That’s my job, not yours.”

He poked Yorick’s harlequin jacket.

“The mad fool. The lunatic. The king’s deranged stepson. More to be pitied than feared. Ignored. An embarrassment to the court. And so… invisible… I bide my time…”

He stopped. Yorick cocked his head to one side.

“And…?” He waved his hands for more.

“I think. Got a better idea?”

A pause then, “Not at the moment I’ll admit. But if this is the game, you need to play your part to the full. As if you mean it. No point in shrieking at the walls in here. Mingle. Mooch.” He slapped Hamlet’s leg. “Look at things that aren’t there. Weep. Sigh. Groan. Groaning’s always good. And do it…” His stubby arm pointed at the door. “Out there. Where they’ll all see.”

A hard nudge with a bony elbow then.

“Quite futile trying to prove your madness to me, sunshine. I know it only too well.”

Hamlet grabbed at his cloak.

The jester dodged him, rubbed his hands together in glee.

“And now I’m off to exercise my third best talent, after telling ribald stories and juggling.”

“Which is?”

A bright, broad grin. “I’m going… snooping.”

Claudius sat at his desk, peering at a shag-edged roll of parchment on which a map of the country and its neighbours had been etched and shaded in colour. A series of dated notes had recently been written in.

“The Lord Chamberlain, my liege,” said the page at the door.

“Good. Send him in.”

He went back to his examination of the papers, barely looking up when Polonius entered.

“I’ve been tracking Fortinbras’s movements.” He tapped a circle of red ink. “We’ve heard nothing for days.”

“May I?”

Polonius sidled over to the desk and ran his fingers over the map. Then the old man reached for the quill, dipped it, and added a new red circle – just across the Øresund.

“So there’s only that narrow puddle of water between us?” the King asked, rising from his chair. “You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely, my lord. Though this is not what I came to report.”

There was something in the old councillor’s tone.

“Which is?”

“A delicate matter, my liege. It pertains to your...” Polonius hesitated. “To Prince Hamlet.”

Claudius tapped his finger on the map.

“A Norwegian army on our doorstep’s more pressing than my nephew’s misery.”

A pompous smile broke on the old man’s face.

“Stability at home is never more important than at times of diplomatic crisis.”

Another easy adage. Half of what he said sounded like an old wives’ motto.

Claudius frowned.

“Very well. Out with it. What’s my beloved nephew done now?”

“It’s not so much what he’s done. More what’s happened to him as a result. It involves, I’m ashamed to say, my daughter. The two of them have been… involved.”

Polonius let the phrase hang in the air.

“Just how involved?”

“Too much for a caring father and a virtuous household to be comfortable with. Illicitly, behind my back I fear she… seduced him.”

Claudius laughed at that.

“It’s always the woman when there’s blame to be apportioned, isn’t it? Is this affair common knowledge? Or can we keep it quiet? They’re young. She’s beautiful. He’s a handsome lad, too. It’s understandable. But I’ll need Hamlet betrothed to a foreign princess one day. If there’s a girl who’ll have him. I can’t have gossip. It has to stop.”

Polonius nodded.

“It has. Only those in my employ know of it. A serving girl who’s now far from Elsinore. And the guilty parties themselves. That’s it.”

“And you’re sure this is done with?”

“From the moment I learned of it. Unfortunately the prince is mightily distressed by my daughter’s rejection of his company. He has become... unbalanced.”

Claudius shook his head.

“Lovelorn, you mean?”

“No. Much worse than that. You’ve seen for yourself. His behaviour has become erratic and unpredictable. Ophelia, finally showing the duty she owes to me, reports that his...dealings with her show him to be unstable. Prone to violent outpourings of emotion which, apart from being unseemly about the court, may – I fear – turn dangerous.”

“Dangerous? To whom?”

Polonius licked his dry lips and stared at the King.

“To himself in the first instance. To those who are – or seem to him to be – involved in his misery too I imagine. My daughter. Myself. Even others who are unconnected to this matter but against whom he wishes to bear a grudge.”

Another phrase left floating in silence.

“You mean me?”

“The prince has spoken openly of his dissatisfaction with the circumstances of your coronation. The haste of your marriage to his mother. He is neither rational nor reliable, and I’m afraid that some desperate act of violence is not beyond him. The odd death of his father from a snake in winter.” A smile. “We never did find that viper, did we?”

“No,” the King snapped. “As if I need this now. What do you propose?”

Polonius produced a notebook and turned to a page marked with a red ribbon.

“We double the guard on your royal person. We surround him with those we can trust to relay his words, his thoughts directly to us. Ophelia may be one of them.”

“Is there anyone you wouldn’t use as a spy, Polonius?”

A diplomatic smile.

“Not if they’re needed. She’ll do as I tell her.”

“What about friends of his? Drinking mates. Find out which of them can be bought.”

The old man nodded and made a note.

“But not that chap Horatio,” Claudius added. “He worships my nephew. Those two you sent to Wittenberg to watch him when he first went out there? I forget the names. Sycophantic little turds, always dressed to the nines.”

Polonius scowled.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Minor nobles. They never earned the pittance I paid them. They can start now. I’ll have them here by tomorrow.”

“Your daughter and two so-called friends. Is that enough by way of spies? Can they handle a distraught young man like Hamlet?”

“We’ll see. I believe so.”

The King returned to the map.

“Good. And keep this between us. No word to the Queen. She’s… easily upset.”

He stabbed a finger on the narrow stretch of sea in front of them.

“If that freezes…”

“It won’t.”

“Your spies can read the weather now, can they?”

“No.” Polonius stared at him with a sour face. “But there’s plenty of men in the harbour who can. Ship’s captains. Your admirals. Fortinbras won’t find his way here that way.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Polonius smiled.

“I am, sir. I warrant it.”

Inching along the Elsinore road between town and castle were a pair of horse drawn wagons loaded with a dozen men and an assortment of crates and trunks. English actors touring the continent. The public theatres were closed for the winter, so they picked their way around the surrounding countryside, playing in the stately homes and palaces whose owners didn’t threaten to set the dogs on them when they came calling. It was an uncertain way to make a living, and Richard Burbage, the company’s veteran thespian and unofficial leader, had already voiced his dissatisfaction about their current excursion.

“Three days through snow and ice with a wind that could cut you in half,” he remarked, “and for what? So some lackey can greet us at the gate and tell us to piss off?”

Kemp, the clown, the only person who had been with the company long enough to stand up to him, shrugged.

“Might go all right.”

Burbage glared him.

“You think so? Because what a new king wants, what an unpopular king wants, a monarch being watched by every foreign power for signs of weakness, a rogue Norwegian army on his doorstep… what a king like that desires most in life is to watch a play.”

“Might lighten his mood,” Kemp suggested with half a smile. “Christ knows they could use a little entertainment.”

The road inclined as it snaked up to the fortress. The wagons’ wheels began to slip on the frozen cobbles so that the actors had to dismount and shove. One of the boys who played the women’s parts slipped and fell flat on his face in a muddy ditch. The hired men guffawed, but Burbage shot the boy a murderous look.

“When we reach the gates, stay out of sight. And the first thing you do if we get inside is scrub your damn clothes spotless. I don’t care if you have to stand naked in the snow while you do it.”

The boy nodded, chastened, and Burbage relented a little.

“You know your lines, boy?”

“For what, sir?”

“The Malcontent, The Spanish Tragedy, Friar Bacon...”

He ticked them off on his fingers.

“Every one.”

Burbage wasn’t sure he believed him.

“You’d better. Another performance like that one last week and I’ll beat you till you can’t stand up straight. You hear me?”

Kemp shot him a knowing look. They both understood Burbage wouldn’t hurt the lad. Audiences could smell fear and terrified boys on stage were nightmares to work with.

“Maybe they’ll turn us away,” the actor said. “I heard that Prince Hamlet was home for his father’s funeral. Or his mother’s wedding, I suppose.”

Burbage just shrugged. They’d performed for the prince two years before. Apparently Hamlet liked the theatre. Some of the servants said he took parts in plays at school. A friendly ear inside Elsinore might be what they needed to get their foot in the door. And with it decent food, a warm bed for a night or two, and a fee that would see them through the end of the month.

The grim outline of the castle loomed over them.

Kemp’s mood was growing gloomy.

“Never much liked this place. It’s creepy.”

Burbage grinned.

“Not here to like it, are we? We’re the bringers of theatre. Supplying imagination to the gloomy Danes. The harbingers of joy… Oh God…” He scowled. “What were we thinking when we took that ship here, Will?”

Kemp smiled.

“Something about all the world being a stage. And we’re just players in it.”

The old actor roared with laughter.

“Oh yes. That!” He turned to yell at the hired men struggling with the wagons in the mud. “Push at it, you lazy bastards. Put a little colour in your cheeks. The King of Denmark awaits us.”

Then, more quietly, “It could be worse I suppose. We might be playing for the Welsh.”

While Claudius surveyed the two young men Polonius had delivered, Gertrude sat by the table in the study, lost in her thoughts.

The tall visitor was Rosencrantz, skinny, lean and weasel-faced, sly-eyed. The diminutive one Guildenstern, tubby and with a fawning manner and even more garish clothes. Both wore new-fangled pistols on their right hips, short swords on the left. Neither looked as if they knew how to use them.

Minor nobles from Aalborg in Jutland. Impoverished, ambitious, stupid.

“I’m grateful you could get here so swiftly,” the King said.

“A monarch’s desire…” Rosencrantz replied then winked at his fat companion.

“Equates to his subject’s duty,” Guildenstern added. “May I say, on both our parts, your majesty, that never has Elsinore looked finer, yourself in better health, the Queen more lovely, the nation more secure. Were the Almighty himself to occupy the throne…”

“Yes, yes,” Polonius snapped. “That’s taken as read. Do you know why you’re here? Have you heard rumours?”

They twitched nervously.

“Rumours?” the tall one said. “You mean about the Norwegians?” His hand went to the flashy new pistol. “Did you… did you bring us here to fight?”

Claudius scowled and cast Polonius a vicious glance.

“By the looks of you those things on your hips are no more than jewellery. No, no fighting for you my fine mannequins. You’re friends with my nephew, Hamlet?”

They smiled and looked relieved.

“Oh, yes,” Guildenstern replied.

“Like a brother he was to us in Wittenberg,” the other went on. “For which we shall always remain both grateful and honoured. That a prince of the realm should deign to mix with fellows such as…”

Gertrude stared at them.

“I heard you spent most your time in brothels and taverns, sirs. Are you saying you took my son with you?”

The edginess returned.

It was Rosencrantz who spoke.

“When I say we were friends, my lady, I may have overstated the case. We know him more academically than socially. That would be improper given the difference between our respective stations.” A glance at Polonius. “But we reported back all the same. As the Lord Chamberlain requested.”

“So you met him in the hallways now and again?” she asked. “Between lessons?”

The fat one leaned forward.

“Also on occasion outside. In the courtyard. A polite and pleasant student. More bookish than us, I’ll agree. A finer prospect for the Danish throne it’s hard to imagine…”

“Except for you, your grace,” Rosencrantz broke in hastily. “Long live your majesties, and good health attend all your…”

“Shut up!” Claudius barked. “Be silent and listen.”

They were quaking then, their shiny pistols tinkling against their silver brocade belts.

“Hamlet isn’t himself. He’s always had a solitary, introverted nature. A tendency to the reclusive…”

“Truly I never noticed that,” Guildenstern began to say only to be quiet when his neighbour gave him a look.

“He takes more note of his inward thoughts than the world around him,” the Queen explained. “It’s a temporary affliction made worse by his father’s death affecting a sensitive nature.”

“Sensitive,” the fat one agreed.

“He needs company. Familiar faces around him. Reminders of his happy student days.” She glanced at Polonius. “We were told there was no one in Denmark he better admired in Wittenberg than…” Gertrude looked them up and down. “Than you.”

“And Horatio,” Guildenstern conceded, shame-faced.

Gertrude nodded, pleased that they weren’t totally without self-awareness.

“What do you truly want of us, madam?” Rosencrantz asked. “If it’s within our power we’ll surely give it. If not we’ll do our best.”

Gertrude leaned forward from her chair and begged them, “Be his friends, sirs. Lighten his day. Ride with him.”

“Riding? We’re pretty good at that.”

“Go hunting.” They fell silent. “Fill his hours with pleasant activity. An intellectual young man needs something to occupy him. Otherwise his mind will dwell on dark and unnecessary thoughts.”

The tall one bowed and flourished his hand.

“Your highnesses ask that which you are entitled to command. On behalf of us both we give ourselves up to your wishes…”

“And freely lay our services at your feet,” the fat one finished.

Polonius stepped in front of the pair and gave them a small black book.

“Keep close to him. When he speaks stay silent and listen. Then afterwards write down what he says and bring it to me.”

They smiled and took the notebook.

Claudius waved at the door.

“That’s it!”

“They’re idiots,” Gertrude said when the two were gone. “Hamlet will see through them in an instant.”

Claudius got up and wandered to the window, stared out at the grey sea and Helsingborg across the water.

“The crown needs idiots from time to time. We’d be lost without them.” He pointed at Polonius. “Make sure they do their job.”

“As if I’d countenance otherwise,” the old man replied sourly, joining him at the window and peering down to where men and wagons had gathered at the main gate. “Are we finished here? It seems there are other matters needing my attention.”

“Oh look!” Yorick scampered across the room, threw himself on the floor at Hamlet’s desk, rested his cheek on his right hand, grinning madly. “There I was thinking the dear boy would be out there sighing and groaning. All the time he’s back in his bedroom, reading booky-wookies again. What a fine and noble student. All those miserable grey Germans in Wittenberg will love you.”

He scrambled to his feet, snatched the leather volume from Hamlet’s fingers.

“The meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Stoic stuff. Anything saucy in it? A touch of rumpy-pumpy?”

“Bit heavy for fools.”

“True. Though that statue of my father out in the hall, sitting stark naked on a tortoise…”

“What about it?”

The jester found the frontispiece, showed it. A line engraving of the Roman emperor on his great horse, hand raised to the crowd in front of him.

“See the resemblance? That’s where Old Hamlet got the idea. Your father’s way of taking the piss out of mine. You lot do that quite a bit. Have you thought of getting a dog? They always cheer people up.’

“No.”

“I’ve never fully trusted people who don’t like dogs. They rarely turn out well.”

Hamlet grabbed for the book. The clown withheld it.

“Not till you tell me what good this is, child. And what you plan to do with all this dry and pointless knowledge. Waste your time thinking or something?”

The prince leaned back in his chair, nodded.

“Maybe. What’s wrong with that?”

“Old saying round here. You know what thought did? Followed a muck cart. Thought it was a funeral. Doing stuff.” He raised his fleshy fist. Parried with an imaginary blade. “Being a man. That’s what counts.”

He handed over the book.

“A touch of rumpy-pumpy in the night. We all require that.” A smile. “Even you.” A nod, a wink next. “And the Queen of course.”

Silence. The jester folded his arms.

“There’s a question on your face, Prince. Care to voice it?”

Nothing.

“Let me guess. You’re asking yourself… does she know something she’s not saying?”

He jumped onto the desk, sending the books there flying.

“I mean… eleven weeks after your old man pegs it, snake bite in the garden, poison dripping out of his ear… whatever. Dead’s dead. Who cares? And there she is. In your uncle’s bed. Happy as a lamb in spring. Lord knows we hear that every night, don’t we?”

Hamlet extended a hand and prodded the front of the jester’s harlequin jacket.

“There are limits.”

A grin.

“Aye, Prince. But do you know what they are? Three months. Most people would say that was a decent enough space for mourning. That a widow’s got a right to happiness too, even if her only son don’t want it. And your uncle… Nice man, Claudius. Bookish like you, though a bit more diplomatic with it. Not like your father…”

“My father was a king!”

The little man laughed at his fury.

“If by that you mean he’d lop off your head for nothing more than a sideways glance… I suppose he was. Didn’t get him into Heaven though, did it? There he is, stuck in that place your friends in Wittenberg don’t think exists. Purgatory. Waiting for all his foul crimes to get burned away or a ticket out from you.”

A snigger.

“Unless it’s not your father at all. But a demon up to mischief. An imp whispering in your ear. As if you need another one of them.”

Hamlet looked at his library. The day book he kept for his own thoughts. In Wittenberg these things made sense. They were the rules and boundaries set for an ordered life, one ruled by logic and the law. But in Elsinore, behind the castle’s dank, cold walls, they seemed like nothing more than props for a pointless play. Devices that sought to hide the truth, not reveal it.

“Did she know?”

“Why ask me? I’ve no more idea than you. We’re not going to find out either, are we? While you sit here scribbling and whining like a monk in solitary confinement there’s devilment on your doorstep.”

“I told you. I’ve been playing my part.”

Yorick grinned.

“So have I. Good news, Hamlet.”

The prince turned away from his books.

“Which is?”

“Entertainment! The splendours of the theatre. Well… a bunch of travelling actors if you can call that splendid. Here to perform whatever tragedy the court chooses to ask of them.”

He bent his head, gross ear comically listening.

“Any ideas, Prince?”

“A tragedy. Perhaps…”

“No! Shush!” the clown cried. “I’ve a better idea.”

Not long after Hamlet was born the Queen had demanded her own quarters. Marriage was a duty not a choice. Not with her first husband anyway. Grudgingly Old Hamlet had allowed her an adjoining apartment. After all, she’d delivered what he wanted: a son. There she could find some peace during the day and rest when he had to work – or carouse – late, though only if he gave her express permission. Most nights when he was home she was to wait for him in his chamber. There was never any argument about that.

Claudius was easier in everything. She was allowed to come and go as she pleased, to pick her own servants, arrange her own time.

She knew that Polonius heard every sigh and whisper in the castle anyway and would relay what he heard to her husband. There was no need to keep her close. Old Hamlet did that out of possessiveness only. To let the world know she was his.

Three months dead, interred in a cold tomb in the castle chapel. A lifelike statue of him, fierce in armour, long sword in hand, stood above his stone coffin.

She hadn’t followed his interment closely. Men and women died. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly and in agony. Hamlet was on his own, reading alone in the royal garden when it happened. Cold by the time the servants found him. A snake had bitten him, they said, though it was late in the year for adders and no one ever found the creature. Just a king, eyes open in terror, puke around his mouth, stiff and dead on the autumn grass.

Perhaps it wasn’t a snake at all. Sometimes, she thought, men just died and no one knew why, even if the doctors felt they had to offer some explanation to save face.

Still the sight haunted her. She’d never witnessed such a death. Never seen fear and horror like that on his ruddy and frozen face.

There was a madness within the man. She’d come to understand as much not long after they married. Her husband possessed a hard, unyielding fury against the world that rose without warning, full of anger and violence, brought about by nothing she could guess at.

When she first saw that red anger inside she’d tried to argue, to comfort him, to reason. To be the good and loyal wife. It was a week before she could come out of her room; it took that long for the bruises to heal enough to be covered up with powder. And all the time he’d tried to drag her into public. To show her beaten, swollen face and proclaim to the world, “This is mine. Behold what I’ve done. That proves it.”

And Hamlet was his offspring. No doubt about that. Sometimes she saw in her slender, sullen son his father’s eyes. Bleak. Cruel, even, sometimes. Unrelenting in their fierce thirst to leave a mark upon the world.

If that crazed blood had been handed down...

This dark reverie was interrupted by a rap on the door. Claudius stood there smiling; in his right hand a single white rose.

She laughed straight away. He’d had the ability to amuse her from the very beginning, long before she realised there was a look in his eyes that unsettled her. Interested her, too.

Gertrude walked over, sniffed the flower, looked at the stem. He’d removed the thorns already.

“Where on earth do you get a rose in Elsinore in the middle of winter?”

“Don’t you want it?”

She took the flower from him, kissed his cheek. No bristles. No beard. A clean-shaven man with a kind and amiable face. Scheming. She didn’t doubt it. But he was a diplomat by training. It was only to be expected. And if he’d lacked those skills perhaps neither of them would have managed Old Hamlet’s death, the marriage, the succession so easily.

“Where did you get it?”

He looked grave.

“It struck me a while back that you didn’t seem yourself. I wondered if this was because you regretted marrying an unworthy man. Which would be understandable...”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Claudius, my sweet...”

“So I sent a ship south. To Africa. I told them not to return until they’d bought the most precious and beautiful flower they could find. And to bring it back to Elsinore so I could possess two such wonders...”

Gertrude laughed again.

“They braved storms and pirates. Half the crew died of disease or combat. The cost to the treasury will require numerous measures of fresh taxation...”

“Liar!”

He shrugged.

“Only about the flower. It came from some gypsies who turned up at the gates. Where they got it...?”

She sniffed the bloom.

“What are we going to do?”

“About Fortinbras? We make sure his uncle keeps him on a short, tight leash and that’s the end of it. If I have to throw a little territory or money their way I’ll do it. If...”

Her hand went to his arm.

“I meant about Hamlet.”

Her husband fell quiet. She could picture him with her son when he was a boy. Claudius and the jester Yorick had been the only men in his life when Hamlet was young. Both kind and interested, friends to a troubled child whose own father largely ignored him. Saw him as too bookish, too weak and intellectual to be of much interest.

“We do what we’ve always done. We treat him with love and patience and generosity. And hope that one day he’ll once again return us with the same... No... What do I say? He loves you, Gertrude. Don’t doubt it.”

“Sometimes I see his father in his eyes. There’s a fierceness. An instability...”

“Then we’ll make him whole again.”

She ran her fingers down the rose’s delicate stem.

“I hate the idea of spying on my own son.”

“You’re a loving mother. Of course you do.”

Gertrude shook her head.

“The old man… Polonius. I feel he watches us all. Every minute of the day. It’s as if he inhabits the fabric of the castle somehow.”

“My sweet...”

He reached for her hand.

“You’re going to tell me it’s necessary.”

“It is.”

“And Hamlet? Will these fools of Polonius’s see something that will cure him?”

“If they don’t I’ll find someone who will. He’s my flesh, my blood as well.”

But he’s his father’s son too, she thought again. More than Claudius appreciated.

The King bent down and sniffed the flower.

“Summer’s fragrance in bleak midwinter. I’ve no need of it. Not if I have you.”

The sight of his kind face cheered her. She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

“Words. You’re so good with them, my dear.”

“They’re all I have, love. I pray they’re all I need.”

Polonius sat back in his desk chair and considered the young man who stood so stiffly in front of him.

“Leave us,” he said to the guard, waiting until the door latched closed and they were alone. He took out his watch, checked the time, noted how the young man stared. Such fine instruments were rare in Elsinore. “So, Reynaldo. You’ve been with us, what? A year?”

“Eleven months, sir.”

Polonius nodded.

“And in that time you have worked in the buttery and, most recently, in the armoury, yes?”

“That’s right. Mainly accounting. I’m good with numbers, they say.”

He smiled nervously, then looked down, fearing he had sounded arrogant.

“ And you have some languages.” It wasn’t a question. He was consulting a note book. “Latin and French.”

“I attended the Canute school. On a guild scholarship.”

“Most impressive. And your French is good? Be honest, boy. I’ve no time for empty claims.”

“Almost fluent. I had an aunt from Rouen who came to live with us…”

“Very well. Do you know my son, Laertes?”

“Not to speak to. I’ve… I’ve seen him in the castle…”

“Would he recognize you if he saw you?”

“I don’t see why…”

“Very well. You no longer work in the armoury. You work for me.”

Reynaldo looked around, his eyes wide.

“Thank you, sir.” He couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice. “In what… what manner of work?”

“An easy, pleasant task. You’ll go to France. You will take up lodgings close to my son’s school. Follow his movements, his activities, his friends – that is most important – and you will write to me weekly with a full account of everything he does.”

“Everything, my lord?”

“That’s what I said. Who he’s seen with. How he spends his time. What people say about him. That last is also most important. How is my son reputed? Is he considered studious, respectable, trustworthy? Or is he a gambler, a drunk, a frequenter of whore houses…?”

“I’m sure your son would never do such things.”

Polonius sighed and glared at him.

“I don’t care what he does, you fool. Only what he’s thought to do. Reputation is all.”

The young servant hesitated, then asked, “And if I’m caught?”

“They’ll hang you as a spy.”

Reynaldo swallowed hard and looked at the man in front of him.

“And if I say I would prefer to stay in employment at Elsinore? Doing my duty here?”

“Then I’ll look at your book-keeping and find reasons to hang you for thievery here. Any more questions?”

Terrified the young clerk shook his head.

“Good. Gather what things you have. I’ll find you a ship. Be ready to leave when I tell you.”

Burbage had known warmer welcomes for his troupe. The Lord Chamberlain had seen the players’ arrival from one of the upper windows and made a point of sending one of his minions to say that their services were not required “at this time.”

The actor had watched the look of smug satisfaction on the doorman’s face when he came back with the news. Then he played the only card he had left before the sentries started forcing them back over the bridge.

“Prince Hamlet sent for us personally. He won’t be happy if you thugs lay a finger on artists like us. He’s an intellectual fellow, after all. Many’s the time we’ve discussed Petrarch and Dante together late of an evening…”

This was not strictly true or, as Kemp later pointed out, even slightly so. But it did the trick. The doorman sent a kitchen boy up to the prince’s quarters, closing the door in their frozen faces while he waited for confirmation. When he stuck his head out again, the sour look of disappointment on his shiny mug said it all.

They left the larger boxes in the courtyard and followed the kitchen boy up to the Great Hall where they found Hamlet dragging benches aside with a manic energy to give them room to play.

“We’re in your debt, my lord,” said Burbage. “Polonius wasn’t for bringing us in.”

“Not what you’d call a man of culture, our Lord Chamberlain.” He stopped the actor mid bow and shook his hand. “All the way from England, then?”

“Copenhagen actually. Via Hamburg and Amsterdam. It’s a European tour. So many royal houses request our presence these days.” Burbage wiped his brow, then Kemp, sarcastically, did the same. “It’s hard to keep up with demand frankly.”

“Wherever you came from you’re welcome. All of you.”

“Too kind, my Lord,” said Kemp.

The Prince wore a fixed, determined smile.

“Hardly. You’ll earn your keep.”

There was something a little frantic about his manner that Burbage hadn’t seen before. Perhaps, in spite of his sober black clothes, he’d been drinking, not that he had the smell about him.

“We’re used to singing for our supper,” the actor said uneasily.

“How about killing for it?”

The Englishmen exchanged nervous glances.

“My lord?” Burbage asked.

Hamlet put an arm around his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

“I was wondering if you might stage The Murder of Gonzago.”

“Oo,” Burbage grumbled. “That old chestnut? We haven’t performed Gonzago for six months or more. Not so much call for tragedy these days. Comedy’s the thing.” He looked into Hamlet’s eyes and wondered what he saw there. “It’s the way things work, Prince. The more miserable the world, the more the audience craves a bit of laughter. We’ve got some good stuff too. Had the Germans rolling in the aisles and that’s not easy.”

Hamlet’s mood shifted.

“So what use are you? What kind of actors if you can’t brush up a play you’ve done a hundred times in time for tomorrow night? We’re not fond of amateurs in Elsinore.”

“It’s not that we can’t do it, my lord,” Burbage answered, fighting to keep a hold on his temper. “I just thought it was a little old fashioned. Everyone already knows the story for one thing...”

“Then we’ll change it.” Hamlet’s hostility vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by an instant, agitated enthusiasm. “I’ll write you some new speeches. That’ll freshen it up a bit. Give things an edge. If…” A sly glance. “If you’re up to learning new lines that is.”

Kemp butted in, “We mastered Doctor Faustus in two mornings. Devils and all.”

“No devils here. Not on the stage anyway. I can get you copies of the play from the castle library if you need them. You can have the new speeches by nightfall. Good enough?”

“More than adequate,” Burbage agreed, forcing a smile.

“In the meantime…” The prince leapt onto one of the long tables, striking a theatrical pose. “Give me a speech.”

A grumbled murmur went round the company

“We’re auditioning, my lord?” asked Kemp.

Hamlet thought for a moment then snapped his fingers.

“If you want paying. Remember that play you did at the Swan last year? About the last days of the Trojan war?”

“Ilium?” Kemp muttered putting his hand over his eyes.

“That’s the one! There’s a part where someone tells the story of the soldiers coming out of the wooden horse, and Pyrrhus hunting down old Priam.”

Burbage stood back, bowed, flourished his right arm.

“I know it, sir. Every word.”

He closed his eyes, half a recalling of the lines, half dramatic effect, and paused as the rest of the company sat down to watch.

Then there was a loud commotion in the hallway and a man’s angry voice boomed through the hall.

“Who’s behind this? Get these scum out of here. I expressly said they weren’t welcome!”

Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain. The man whose fingers were on the purse strings.

“Oh bugger,” Burbage whispered.

Hamlet was on the old man instantly, twice as loud.

“And I… told them they were!”

The players fell uncomfortably silent as Polonius, red faced, marched into the room.

“Far be it from me to contradict the wishes of the prince...”

“Well shut up, then!” Hamlet yelled, leaping from the table to confront him. “You’re nothing more than a jumped-up clerk in the presence of artists. Take your ledgers and your notebooks and sit in silence. Or get out.”

“Hosting common players,” Polonius began, officious and irritated, “is hardly a suitable activity...”

Hamlet drew his sword and held it front of him.

“One more word and I swear I’ll trim that goatish beard of yours and stuff a pillow with it. So what do you say? Ready to let the man speak?”

Polonius’s back stiffened.

“If you wish it.”

“I do.”

Then he gave Burbage an encouraging nod and the actor, this time pausing for only a second, began.

“Pyrrhus didn’t break stride,” he recited, eyes flashing around the watching faces. “Anyone who got in his way felt the edge of his sword. Each step took him further from the wooden horse and deeper into the city which was already ablaze, and when someone stood in his way – man, woman, or child, they got it in the neck. By the time he found Priam, Pyrrhus looked like a devil, dripping blood from head to foot. A monster.

“The old man spies him, but he’s already exhausted and can barely hold his sword. He starts to beg for mercy, but Pyrrhus just keeps coming, muttering the name of his father, Achilles. Well, when Priam hears that name, he knows he’s a dead man. Pyrrhus hasn’t just stumbled on him by chance, and he’s not looking to capture the old king for ransom. Achilles was dead, killed by Paris, Priam’s son. Pyrrhus is there for revenge, a father for a father.”

“This is too long,” Polonius grumbled.

“A common perception,” Kemp agreed. “All talk, isn’t it?”

“Out!” yelled Hamlet. “Both of you!”

Polonius looked affronted, but clearly didn’t care to listen to any more, of the play or the abuse. He got to his feet and stalked off. Kemp, sulky and unsure what to do, went to the back of the troupe and stayed there out of sight.

“Get to the bit about Priam’s wife,” Hamlet ordered. “Come to Hecuba.”

Burbage braced himself once more, then told the rest, the story of the old queen rushing through the ravaged and blazing city, clad in nothing but her night gown, looking for her husband. He told of how she came upon him, Pyrrhus motionless, sword raised over the fallen king, as if listening to Troy collapsing all around him. For a moment, she thinks he will be merciful, but then the sword comes down, over and over again, and she can only watch and scream, and cry.

It was a moving speech, one the actor delivered with great skill. As he described the awful scene, tears started to his eyes and began to trickle down his cheeks.

“Stop,” Hamlet cried. “That’s enough.”

He took a step towards the actor and studied his face, fascinated. Slowly the rest of the company got to their feet, watching, as spellbound as they had been by Burbage’s performance. Hamlet raised one hand to Burbage’s cheek and touched the trace of his tears, testing it between his fingers then studying his fingers with something like awe.

The other actors shifted uncomfortably. Then the moment evaporated and Hamlet began applauding loudly, hooting and cheering until the others joined in, and Burbage – slightly alarmed – recovered sufficient composure to take a bow.

“Good work, man. Very good. I’ll run up on those new scenes and then you can rehearse The Murder of Gonzago for tomorrow night.”

“Scenes?” Kemp objected from the back of the crowd. “I thought it was just a couple of extra speeches.”

Hamlet sought him out, prodded him in the chest.

“I told you to leave, sir.”

“But my lord! You heard our master? You saw his tears? Who could walk away from such a performance? Such an artist at his very peak?”

Burbage fingered his collar and beamed proudly.

“No man of feeling,” Hamlet agreed. He looked round at them. “Make sure my new words are delivered with such force, I beg you.”

“Tears?” Kemp demanded. “You’ll be wanting tears too?”

“Do they cost extra?”

Burbage wiped his cheeks with his sleeve.

“No, Prince. Since it’s you I’ll chuck them in for free.”

The Scots were getting restless. Two days running Gregor had been sniffing round the tent asking for news from the ailing king. Fortinbras had stonewalled him. But the Scot knew. Letters had come from Oslo demanding he stand down his troops and send the foreigners home. Claudius, the Danish king, was promising gifts. A little land. A little money. And Norway was willing to be bought off for a pittance.

Again.

Mercenaries were always dangerous when they were bored. The encampment outside Helsingborg had few of the amusements they craved. Only a handful of women. A meagre supply of beer. They needed a fight and the chance of plunder. Without that they’d soon be off. Or worse taking their prizes from the locals.

Maps on the table. Fortinbras studied them, thinking of numbers and deployments. The tent flap opened. The big man from Scotland was there again.

“Did I ask for you?” the Norwegian wondered.

“Just come to say goodbye.”

Fortinbras leaned back in his chair.

“You’ve been paid, Gregor. You and your men. Handsomely from my own pocket. You were hired for a campaign...”

‘Aye, sir. That we were. But since there is none…”

That got no response.

“And since your uncle’s deeply pissed off with you coming all this way and shaking your sword at old Claudius across the water there...”

The Norwegian frowned.

“He is? It’s news to me.”

Gregor laughed, shook his head and pulled up a seat.

“You know, mate... I’m very fond of you. Honestly. We all are. Even though you’re a lying bastard when you want to be.”

“You should never call a prince of Norway a liar. That way lies bloodshed.”

“Call it what you like then. Your uncle sent you sealed orders. They turned up with that messenger we saw this morning. I know what they say.”

“Court business. Nothing of interest to you.”

“He told you to stand us all down. Every last soldier of fortune. All the men you’ve conscripted from your estates. This...” The Scot gestured at the tent. “Well, it’s been an unprofitable adventure for us lot I must say. They said Claudius’s court was a fine one, full of riches just waiting to be lifted. Guess we’ll never find out now, will we?”

Fortinbras pulled out a fresh map, drew an imaginary circle around one of the nations there.

“Poland. You know it?”

“Can’t say I do. Is it warmer than here?”

“Much. They grow grapes and make good wine. The women...”

Fortinbras winked, made an obscene gesture.

Gregor laughed.

“You’re a lying bastard.”

“Twice you’ve said that, Scotsman. No more. Not if you want to see your home again.”

The smile disappeared from the soldier’s bearded face.

“What about Poland?”

“My uncle has asked me to divert our attention from Claudius. For the moment. The Poles have been making warlike noises for some time. There’s an internal dispute within the ruling family. If we back one half against the other we’ve been promised land, money... whatever you feel like pillaging from the losers’ cities.”

The Scotsman’s heavy scarred fingers ran over the map.

“Rich are they?”

“Very.”

He nodded towards the sea.

“As rich as our friend over there?”

“No one’s as wealthy as Denmark. Old Hamlet was a parsimonious crook. He taxed the life out of his people and never spent it on anything but soldiers and whores.”

Gregor considered this.

“Minded as I am to remember your words about lying, sir, I must say this doesn’t quite tally with what I’ve heard from a few people who ought to know.”

Fortinbras jabbed his finger at a stretch of land well south of their present position.

“As part of our settlement with Claudius we’ll be allowed safe passage through his territory here. From Malmo to Copenhagen, across the straits. If you want a ship back to Scotland you can find one there. You’d have to go to Copenhagen anyway. Claudius will never let your warriors use his port here.”

The Scotsman nodded.

“That rings true.”

“Because it is. The choice is yours. Either way it makes sense for you to accompany us to Copenhagen. Once there take your ship home if you like. If not... should the fair ladies of Poland catch your fancy... come with us there.”

The man had a bold, hearty laugh. Fortinbras listened, liked what he saw.

“We strike camp in the morning, Gregor. Slowly. There’s no great rush. The Poles are still arranging their own loyalties.”

“And we get to Copenhagen... when?”

‘When we wish.”

He was the most experienced mercenary Fortinbras had ever employed. A veteran of campaigns that would fill the history books. No fool.

“And in Copenhagen if we find that, for some strange reason, we need to make our way north to Elsinore. Not all the way to Poland... how long will that take?”

Fortinbras got up from his seat, walked to the tent flap, opened it, looked out at his army.

“Two days. Three at the most.”

The great castle stood across the water, a hulking shape in the winter sun.

“It’s a formidable place, Scotsman. They say Elsinore has never been entered by force in all its history. I understand your reluctance...”

“I’ve toppled bigger than that. Don’t play those games…”

“No games. So you’re with me?”

“For now.” Gregor nodded at the fortress across the Øresund. “And I want a look in that place too. If there’s half a chance of it.”

Hamlet had sat at the table in the hall, head in his hands, lost in thought until Burbage’s company realised he’d say no more. Then, with a few puzzled words, they had shuffled awkwardly out. For a minute or more after they had gone Hamlet said and did nothing.

Then he spoke softly.

“I know you’re there, fool. You can come out now.”

Yorick rolled grinning from behind a drape at the far end of the room.

“You spot everything, don’t you, Prince?”

“Did you watch the whole thing?”

“Heard enough, thank you. Tragedies. I don’t know what you see in them. Give me a bit of cross-dressing, mistaken identity and ribald banter any day. If it doesn’t make you laugh, what’s the point?”

“You saw what happened to Burbage, didn’t you? As he described Hecuba’s grief and horror at her husband’s murder. You saw? He cried!”

Yorick blew a raspberry.

“Of course he cried. He’s an actor. It’s not emotion. It’s a trick. You just stare really hard till your eyes water.”

“No! He was weeping. For a woman who’s been dead – if she ever existed – for a thousand years or more.”

Yorick yawned.

“This is all so very moving. Where’s the nearest toilet?”

“So what would he do in my place? How would an emotional man like that react if the spirit of his own father charged him to revenge his murder? If Burbage can get so passionate about a woman…”

“I’m slow today, Prince. Your point is…?”

“Can you imagine the play that would come out of that?” Hamlet got to his feet and took up Burbage’s stance, eyes shut.

“Well… I can imagine he might skip the play altogether and simply kill the chap who did it.”

Hamlet glared at him.

“But what if he’s wrong? If it’s your mistaken identity for real? And the ghost’s a liar? Or not a ghost at all? Some kind of devil sent to lead the avenger into damnation?”

The jester scowled.

“You’re a rational, modern man, Hamlet. You surely don’t believe in devils.”

“I didn’t believe in ghosts either.”

“Fine.” Yorick beamed at him. “I’ll play along. What new scheme do I smell a-cooking now?”

“This. Tomorrow night I’ll have the actors play Claudius’s crime right in front of his eyes. Every detail as the ghost reported it. Then we’ll see, won’t we? The guilt will be all over his face. Maybe my mother’s too. Then we’ll know. Then we’ll act.”

“In which sense?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll act, you say. Meaning you’ll take action and slit his throat? Or act in the sense of perform? Put on another of these little plays you like so much? A touch more make-believe to pass the time?”

Hamlet glowered at him but said nothing.

“Right,” said Yorick. “That’s what I thought.”

The following day the castle was as quiet as it could be with a bunch of noisy, argumentative thespians going about their business. Hamlet wrote the new scenes for Gonzago and gave them to Burbage with directions. After that he stayed in his room, thinking, sulking, fiddling with his new-fangled pistol, practising with his rapier.

The jester was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Ophelia and he felt a touch guilty about how he’d treated her the day before. Around midday his mother came to see him and asked how he was. Didn’t listen much to the answer. Didn’t stay when he grew silent and unresponsive.

He ate little except bread, drank nothing but water. Then in the afternoon, before the sun set, there was a break in the weather. Hamlet went to the stables, found his favourite horse. A piebald stallion called Zeus. Claudius had given him the mount when he was ten, saying it was a present from his father, away on a campaign against the Poles.

Even at that age Hamlet hadn’t believed his uncle, though he’d wanted to. Old Hamlet never gave anything away lightly or without reason. And there was no point in handing his son an expensive pedigree horse newly imported, Claudius said, from France.

He was a brave mount, full of spark and character. As a teenager, Hamlet had spent many hours on his back, riding through the woodlands around Elsinore, galloping through fields, leaping hedges.

Later he’d lifted Ophelia into the saddle and led her quietly, discreetly into that same forest for different, more private purposes. By that stage Zeus was getting slow, wheezy and easily tired.

On this day there was nothing godlike about him at all. He was old. Not yet broken, not ready for the final, quiet ride to the slaughter yard. But the years were eating at him visibly. Even so, when Hamlet approached, his grey head bucked up, a delighted whinny came from his throat and his tail swished in welcome.

The stable hand came up. A young lad Hamlet hadn’t seen before. The boy patted Zeus on the back, fed him some straw.

“I bet he was a fine one, sir.”

“The finest,” Hamlet answered.

“Of his time. In his day. They’re like us, aren’t they? Bold and so full of life for a while. Like it’ll never leave them. Then one day… not so quick as they were. And the next a little slower.”

Zeus nudged the boy for more straw. The bond between them was obvious and affectionate.

“He’s your favourite.”

“That he is. Always has been since they took me in here a year ago.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s a lonely old soul, that’s why.” Another slap. Just a touch more hay. “Don’t you eat too much old, lad. Then you’ll get fat and sick. And slower than you are.”

“Lonely?”

The stable lad pointed at the castle keep.

“He was the prince’s horse. Hamlet. Had him from when he was a boy. Present from his dad, the old king.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s what my master told me. Young Hamlet loved this big, grey rascal. Used to ride him everywhere. Every day.” He laughed. “They may be kidding me here but they reckon now and again he used to come and muck him out too. Would sleep with him in the stable if old Zeus didn’t feel too well.”

He shook his head.

“Imagine that! A prince who mucks out horses. Who cares. Shame is he’s been in Wittenberg for a couple of years, studying. And when he does come home it’s nothing but tragedy, is it? Poor bugger…”

Hamlet snorted.

“I heard he was a cruel and selfish bastard…”

“I will not listen to that, sir! Whoever you might be. My master’s lived here all his life. He reckons Prince Hamlet’s the best of them all. A fine young man. Bright as a button and strong too. Upset over his father now, but who wouldn’t be? I lost mine when Old Hamlet went to war over Jutland. I know what it feels like. And that young prince didn’t just lose a dad. He lost a king…”

Hamlet patted the horse on the neck and said, “I’d like to take him out.”

The lad’s cheery disposition disappeared.

“This chap’s not yours to ride, now is he?”

Hamlet reached into his purse, took out a couple of gold coins. As much as a stable hand like this would earn in a year.

He held out the money.

“But he’s not yours to ride, sir,” the lad repeated slowly.

“And if I told you I was the Prince?”

The boy gulped.

“Then I’m dead, aren’t I? And asked for it.”

Silence between them.

Hamlet walked to the horse’s head. Looked into his grey eyes. There were cataracts forming there, like milky glass. But Zeus could see him. He was sure of that.

“He’s too old for the saddle,” the stable lad said. “The master keeps on saying we should do him a favour. Take him you-know-where. But I tell you…”

His voice was breaking.

“When I come down in the morning. Feed him. Water him. Deal with his business. This old fellow looks at me and smiles. I swear he does. So I walk him out of them gates and let him nibble some grass down by the meadows. If there’s grass there that is. And if not we just wander around a bit. Then I bring him home and that’s that.”

His calloused hands went to the horse’s head. Zeus neighed, yellow teeth showing.

“Whether you’re the prince or not you can’t ride him, sir. He’s not up for it and he’ll never be again. I’m sorry. And if in any way I’ve offended…”

“You haven’t.” Hamlet placed the coins in his hand. “But you will have these.”

“But…”

“And no arguments!”

There was a commotion by the gates. The lad stuffed the money in his jerkin pocket.

Two men in fine robes were dismounting near the keep. One short and fat. One tall and slender. Both familiar.

“Lot of coming and going at the moment,” the stable hand said. “People reckon it’s for these players who turned up. They’re putting on a show.”

The lanky one turned and stared in Hamlet’s direction. He seemed embarrassed for a moment then waved, called out the prince’s name.

“It is you, isn’t it? Me and my big mouth.”

Hamlet held out his hand. Got a puzzled look in return.

Then the stable lad took it and grinned.

“Enjoy today, my lord. I hope it eases your pain.”

“That’s lifted a little already.” He had found their names now. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Two students who’d followed him to Wittenberg where they were never close but rarely distant.

The spies of Polonius, he thought. An employment joined but never left.

Claudius sat at his desk in his study, Gertrude by the window, staring down into the courtyard. Polonius silent in a chair, awaiting instructions.

“These players,” the Queen said. “I heard my son’s been speaking to them.”

The old man grunted.

“At length. I wish they’d never come. The boy has no need of any more fantasies in his head. I detest these theatricals. They demand good coin for nothing but acting! Pretence! Nothing worthwhile.”

She stared at him.

“Everyone likes a little amusement from time to time, Polonius. Don’t be so dry. No wonder your daughter seems so miserable every time I chance upon her. I met her this morning. She would scarcely look me in the eye.”

He glanced at the King.

“Ophelia’s upset about the attentions of your son. I apologise on her behalf. He can be quite… persistent.”

“Hamlet’s distraught. It’ll pass.”

“He’s mad,” Claudius said without looking up from his maps and letters. “Show her.”

Polonius took a piece of parchment from his coat and held it up to the light to read.

“To the celestial beauty and the idol of my soul, the most beautified Ophelia.”

He shook his head and swore.

“What a filthy phrase. Most beautified… what does that mean? And this?” He stabbed his finger on the page. “In her excellent white bosom. Filth.”

She snatched the paper from him.

“You say this is from my son? To Ophelia?”

“Who else?” he snapped.

Gertrude ran over the lines, reading them in a soft, shocked voice.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.”

She handed it back.

“Most of us wrote something like that when we were young. Perhaps… later too.” Polonius looked baffled. “Though not all I imagine.”

“These are the words of a prince to my daughter. Had I known this illicit affair was on the cards I would have stamped it out immediately. Be assured of that.”

“And now you have and you claim he’s mad.” It wasn’t quite a criticism, but it wasn’t the commendation he expected.

Claudius shook his head.

“You think this has more to do with the girl than his father?”

“Perhaps. He doesn’t talk to me much anymore. It’s almost as if I’m a stranger. If his heart’s set on Ophelia we should allow it…”

“A man of noble standing wouldn’t fall so far over a mere girl of the court,” Polonius scoffed. “There’s more to it than that. Sometimes he walks round the castle – four, five hours at a time, talking to himself. He’s been heard in his room, chattering away as if he’s got company. My men have noticed. If…”

“Discover the root of this,” Claudius ordered. “Diagnose the sickness. Treat the cause. Hamlet’s my nephew and my preferred heir. A fine young man worthy of that honour. I want him back.”

Polonius put a finger to his cheek.

“If we find him in the lobby… I could arrange for my daughter to be there. I’ll set her loose on him. Tell her to be affectionate and welcoming.”

“And?” Claudius asked.

“And then you and I can wait behind one of those tapestry hangings. We’ll listen…”

“You’ve already set those clowns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him!” Gertrude cried. “Now you’re going to do it yourself?”

Polonius looked at the king.

“If you want the cause of the malady…”

“Arrange it,” Claudius ordered.

“He’s there,” the queen cried, pointing out of the window.

The two men walked over to join her. In the courtyard below, dressed in black again, Hamlet paced to and fro, a heavy book in his hands.

“Leave this me,” Polonius said. “I’ll talk to him and gauge the state of his mind. Then report back here immediately.”

The book was in German, a tedious philosophical tome. Once he’d read such works avidly, listening to the words of his tutors, taking notes. Now they seemed irrelevant. A real world was swirling around him, one full of dangers and possibilities. A realm more mutable and insidious than he could ever have imagined before.

He strode around the courtyard trying not to shiver, knowing he would be seen. Madness was an inward mask. It hid itself from the victim. The insane saw themselves as lucid, just as criminals so often believed themselves wronged and justified.

And he was bait. Soon Hamlet saw his catch, Polonius wriggling on the line.

“How’s my Lord Hamlet?” the old man asked cheerily as he approached.

“Who?”

“Hamlet. Prince of Denmark.”

“Oh him? He’s well I believe.” He felt his arms and legs. “Yes. Well enough. Is he yours then?”

Polonius smiled.

“Pardon?”

“You said your Lord Hamlet. If he belongs to you perhaps you ought to take ownership. The man’s been behaving rather oddly of late.”

Polonius gathered his cloak around him.

“Do you know me?”

Hamlet squinted and peered at him.

“Of course. You’re a fish, aren’t you?” A laugh. “No. Stupid of me. A fishmonger. That’s it.”

The Lord Chamberlain shook his grey head.

“No, sir. Not me.”

“What’s wrong with fishmongers? They’re honest enough…”

“Nothing,” Polonius interrupted brusquely. “But I’m not one.”

“Honest, you mean?”

“A fishmonger.”

Hamlet tucked his book under the arm.

“You’re full of riddles, I must say. Do you have a daughter?”

“I do…”

“Is she honest?”

“As much as any woman.”

“Not a lot, you mean?”

Polonius smiled.

“If this is madness, Prince, I have to say there’s method in it.”

Hamlet pointed at the sky.

“You see that cloud? The one shaped like a weasel?”

Polonius looked up.

“Yes. Very like a weasel. What about it?”

“I think it’s more like a whale.”

“So… so it does.”

“Or a lobster.”

Polonius looked again.

“Quite right. Exactly like a lobster.”

“Or if you squint a little.” Hamlet closed his right eye. “Much like a sycophantic old fool, don’t you think?”

The Lord Chamberlain came closer and scowled.

“Do you really not know me, Prince? Or do we have one more actor in the palace than we bargained for?”

“A fishmonger. I can smell it. Unless your pretty daughter serves herring for breakfast. Which is it?”

Polonius patted the book and smiled. “I must take my leave of you.”

“You can’t take anything I’d more willingly give, Sir Herring. Except my life.”

Hamlet watched him wander off.

“There is method in my madness,” he whispered. “And that tedious old fool can see it.”

Footsteps across the cobbles. The tall one and his little fat friend were walking daintily over, smiling, fawning, yipping like little dogs.

“Hamlet! My dear lord!” Guildenstern cried. “Finally we’ve found you.”

“God save you, sir!” Rosencrantz chirruped. “God save us all.”

Hamlet retreated from their outstretched hands.

“Not all, surely.”

They stared at him.

“By which I mean there are men out there too damned to be saved by anyone.” Hamlet’s eyes drifted to the castle. “And women too for all I know.”

Rosencrantz slapped his companion’s shoulder.

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Such an insight had never crossed my mind,” Guildenstern added. “Even the most knowledgeable of tutors back in Wittenberg…”

“How are you, chaps?”

Rosencrantz sighed and nudged his companion.

“See. He does remember us. As well as can be expected, my lord.”

“Content,” Guildenstern agreed. “One aspires to happiness, but not too much since one would not wish to be disappointed. On fortune’s cap we’re not the smartest feather. Actually not a feather at all…”

“Perhaps she wears you on her shoe?”

“Feels like it sometimes,” Rosencrantz agreed. “Trudging through horse crap mostly.”

“Or somewhere around her waist?” Hamlet bent towards them and said behind his hand. “You’re her privates.”

The two snickered.

“If only we should be so lucky,” the little one said with a grin. “We haven’t been close to a lady’s secret parts in ages.” He tapped his belt. “Money you see, sir. Lack of it.”

“So what brings you to this prison?”

The two men looked around them.

“Elsinore’s a prison?” Guildenstern asked.

“No,” Hamlet replied. “Denmark is.”

Rosencrantz nodded.

“In that case so’s the world.”

“Why are you here?”

They shuffled and looked awkward.

“Out of friendship,” the tall one answered eventually. “To see you. No other reason.”

“Except my uncle summoned you.”

Guildenstern stared at his fancy shoes.

“We’re just impoverished students, Hamlet. Humble fellows.”

“And being humble fellows you can tell the truth. You were called for.”

The two exchanged worried glances. Then Rosencrantz said, “It’s true. We can’t lie to a fellow student. The king requested our presence.”

“There! That wasn’t hard, was it? And I’ll tell you why.”

They watched him keenly.

“Just recently I’ve lost my appetite for life. I waste my time. Nothing delights me. I walk through this grey world and find it barren and full of nothing but despair.”

There was a cold, disdainful look on Guildenstern’s face at that moment.

“What is it?”

“We’re penniless, sir. Our families too. No prospects. No rich wives on the horizon. No future. You’ve scant reason to feel so sorry for yourself. What have you to complain of next to us?”

“Hush, you idiot,” the other one whispered.

A dangerous moment between them. Rosencrantz stared his companion down, then gave Hamlet a reassuring smile.

Across the courtyard some of the actor’s men were lugging costume baskets and primitive scenery into the castle.

“There’s a play tonight,” Guildenstern said brightly. “You always liked the theatre, sir. I remember that in Wittenberg. Surely… surely a spot of theatre will cheer you up a bit.”

His hand went briefly to Hamlet’s arm.

“You’re not mad, you know. Just a touch down. That’s all.”

Hamlet shook his head and glared at them.

“But I am mad. Who denies it? When the wind’s from the northwest anyway. If it’s southerly I’m as sane as you.”

Guildenstern licked his finger and held it up in the light breeze.

“Easterly. What does that mean?”

“That’s for others to judge. You will excuse me now.”

“The play?” Rosencrantz asked.

The Prince smiled.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

After Hamlet left them the two men went to see Polonius and reported back. Then the Lord Chamberlain found Claudius in his study and related what the prince had said, to him and the men in his employ.

“So what do we make of that?” the king asked.

“He’s mad, after a fashion. When he wants to be.”

Claudius raised his head from the latest reports from Norway.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. When I spoke to him he rambled. Told me I was a fishmonger. Talked nonsense about my daughter. The same with those two fools who watched him in Wittenberg. Spies they’ll never make but from what they say they think he’s deranged too. He wittered on about how Denmark’s a prison. Some filthy nonsense, the kind of chat students indulge in I suppose. Whether it was about Ophelia…”

Claudius got up from the desk.

“Am I wasting my time here?” he demanded. “Fortinbras is playing games in the south. Claiming he’s headed for Poland, not that I see any sign of it. And here you are, obsessed with my lunatic nephew…”

“It’s a curious lunacy, my lord.” Polonius paused, tried to find the right words. “A very rational kind it seems to me.”

“You mean it’s an act? A performance?”

“Perhaps.” A shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know. One moment he talks gibberish. The next he seems as sane as anyone. Perceptive, too.”

Claudius looked round. The door was open. He closed it, came near to the old man.

“You think he suspects?”

The old man stiffened and his hand gripped the king’s robe.

“How can he know? By what possible means…?”

“I asked if he suspected. Not whether he knew.”

“What’s the difference?” Polonius responded in a low voice, one eye on the door. “I gave you the poison. You delivered it. No one else was privy to our intentions. At least…” His eyes moved away from the king. “I’ve told no other.”

“Any more than I have. Hamlet’s not stupid. He may never find proof. But if he harbours suspicion… who knows what he could do?”

“He’s your nephew. You’re the king. If he suspects us we can deal with that. Through exile. A trip to Italy, say. A spell with the Medici in Florence would do him good. Wine, women and art. It might soothe him. If not there are other avenues to explore.”

“I will not murder my wife’s son,” Claudius vowed. “My nephew. I love Hamlet. He was like my own. You know this.”

“All the same you wronged him, sir. You killed his father. He doesn’t love you.”

“We killed his father. Who merited it ten times over.”

“And had a beautiful queen,” Polonius added.

“You over-reach yourself, Lord Chamberlain. Were my brother alive you’d never have voiced a sentiment like that.”

“No. And we’re both complicit in his death. If somehow Hamlet comes to realise…”

“Keep Rosencrantz and Guildenstern close to him. Get better intelligence out of them than this nonsense they gave you this morning. Make inquiries of the Florentines. Give me options should I decide to take them. And arrange this meeting with your daughter so you and I can watch. With luck he’s simply love-struck. And all this nonsense will pass.”

“Perhaps.”

Polonius didn’t move.

“Do we have more business?” the king asked.

“A monarch must be merciful and heartless in equal measure. Old Hamlet knew this. Sadly he lacked the gentle touch to keep the balance. I hope we haven’t exchanged one disproportion for the other.”

The king grabbed the collar of his velvet jacket, dragged the old man’s whiskery face close to his own.

“You put the blasted idea in my head. You found the poison. You told me he was alone.”

Polonius met his stare.

“I’m a servant of the realm. It’s my role to understand your wishes, even if you don’t fully appreciate them yourself.”

Claudius pushed the old man away and sent him out into the corridor. Then went back to the maps. Fortinbras was out there, with an army strong enough to take Denmark if he wanted it badly enough.

Perhaps Hamlet was right. The place was a prison, and he the king of nothing more than finite, shrinking space.

“Chess!” the jester declared and started to set the board on a small table beneath the window.

Hamlet didn’t move from the bed.

“Come along, Your Royal Slothfulness. Time to sharpen your strategies. Before this odd show of yours.”

“They’re sharp enough.”

“You’re just terrified I’ll win.”

He got up, shambled over to the table, dragged up a stool.

“Pawn to Queen Two,” Yorick announced. “Always lull your enemy into thinking you’re predictable.”

“How did your father die?”

Yorick yawned.

“Not that again? I thought we were about to have some fun.”

“Seven months ago I went to Wittenberg thinking I left Elsinore in a fit and happy state.”

The little man shook his head.

“You believed that? Really? How depressingly naïve ...”

“One month later your father’s executed for treason and I never saw or heard a harsh word between him and the king.”

“Or any word. Old Hamlet wasn’t a fellow for jokes.”

“What...?”

Yorick slammed his bishop on the table, so hard the pieces jumped.

“Why ask me? I spent most of my life shambling from one dingy inn to the next. Touring Europe as Elsinore’s present to others. Why else do you think none here but you seems to know me?”

“I did wonder.”

“When all this happened I was in Moscow trying to make the Russians laugh. There’s an engagement for you.”

Hamlet took the piece from his hands and put it back in place.

“On whose orders? Claudius?”

“No.”

“The king’s.”

“Wrong again. It was my father. I imagine he wanted me out of the way. If... Shit!”

He leaned back on the stool, caught the edge of the table with his feet and stopped himself tumbling to the floor. The little man had the agility of an acrobat when he needed it.

“There boy. You made me say it. I can’t be drinking enough. This is a shameful lapse. It’s all your fault.”

He got up, checked the corridor both ways, slammed the door hard shut then came and moved the table as close to the window as it would go.

“My head may mean little to you, lord. But I’m rather fond of the thing. I don’t want it stuck on a pike on the ramparts too.”

“My father…”

“… was a monster. A vicious, bloodthirsty beast.”

Hamlet didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Yorick folded his fat arms.

“You took that better than I expected. You knew, of course. My father on the other hand...” Beneath his heavy brows the jester’s eyes became misty. “He was kind and gentle, a generous man.”

Hamlet nodded. “I remember that.”

“So you should. When you were a boy he was the one who spent days on end with you. Not the king.” He leaned across the table, peered into Hamlet’s eyes. “Him and Claudius. A devious cove your uncle. But a man with a warm heart nonetheless. You had the benefit of that as much as anyone. The son he never had. Gertrude the wife he lacked too.”

“Tell me, fool, or I will give you up I swear.”

Yorick’s exaggerated face was wreathed in hurt fury.

“There’s no need for threats. You’ve a cruel and heartless streak in you sometimes. No need to guess where that came from.”

“Tell...”

“Very well!” the little man snarled.

He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around his shins, miserable and angry at this forced recollection.

“Shortly before I was sent to Moscow my father called me into his room. He’d been out with the hunt and wandered off when they were about to kill a stag. Never liked blood much. Or possessed a talent for direction. So he came upon Claudius together with the queen in one of the royal lodges in the forest. Their particular hunt was a private one and had reached a heated moment. So happily they never noticed him goggle-eyed at the window.”

He sighed. Picked up a piece of cold sausage and gnawed on it.

“I told him that if he didn’t forget the entire matter immediately I’d be the one who murdered him. Not Claudius. Or Hamlet. Or your mother. One week later he dispatches me to crack jokes to drunken oafs in wolf skins. When I get there I find a letter from him saying his conscience demanded he tell all to the king and he’d rather I wasn’t there when that happened. One week after that I get another letter telling me crows are pecking out his eyes on a spike outside the walls.”

Yorick took a big and ugly bite of the meat.

“Decapitate the messenger. Originality isn’t a royal forte, is it?”

“Claudius...”

“It wasn’t Claudius who killed him!” Yorick’s eyes strayed nervously to the door. “Too loud, you make me too loud, Prince. You’ll be the death of us both. It was...”

“A just and honourable king doesn’t murder an honest man for speaking the truth.”

The man in the harlequin suit blinked.

“The relevance of that remark being...? Oh to hell with it...”

His stout arm reached across the table, took Hamlet by the collar, dragged him close.

“One last time. Your father was a bloodthirsty tyrant. You sit in grand judgement on your mother because she found love and happiness in the arms of a man who wasn’t her husband. Yet Old Hamlet had mistresses and bastards the length of this land and never set foot outside the castle without knowing the name of the next whorehouse along the way.”

A dagger came up between them, tight in Hamlet’s hand.

Yorick laughed.

“You know that vile statue of my father naked on a tortoise?”

“What about it?”

“It was made by a curiously nasty sculptor from Florence. A man named Benvenuto.”

“So?”

“So why keep it after he’d killed the man who modelled for it?”

“Nostalgia? Regret? Maybe he had a change of heart.”

“You’d have to have a heart to change. No. It wasn’t enough to kill him. That’s what I think. He had to do more than take my father’s life. He had to piss on his memory too. So there he is. Sitting on a tortoise in the altogether. Not funny. Not charming. Grotesque. A freak. A monster. Forever. Why? Because he’d dared tell the king the hard truth that not everyone loved him. That, your highness, was your father.”

“Liar,” the prince said but it was barely a whisper.

Yorick scowled at him.

“Why would I invent such tales? What gain is there for me? The facts are simple enough. Your father knew of your mother’s affair with his brother. I don’t doubt he had plans to deal with it. And the last thing Old Hamlet needed around him was a jester with secrets burning in his heart and a habit of blabbing. I’m afraid we’re all like that really. But Claudius has friends here too. He was a powerful man before he ever sat on the throne. It would take time and cunning.”

“Polonius?”

“He’s the Lord Chamberlain. I’m shocked you’ve forgotten since you bed his daughter. Or used to.”

“Did he know?”

“Search me!” Yorick cried. “Am I an all-seeing apparition too? I’d imagine so. Kings are too high and mighty to be lone assassins. They crave accomplices. But your father was old and despite all the lip service to the contrary a lot of people hated him. A Lord Chamberlain serves the state, not the king. If he were in the picture…”

He opened his big, rough hands.

“You think Polonius was as likely to work for Claudius as my father? Even in matters… of this kind?”

“Murder, you mean?”

Hamlet flinched at the word, then nodded reluctantly.

“I would assume he’d back the most favourable horse to his personal cause. Wouldn’t you?”

The prince put the dagger on the table.

“Sorry.”

Yorick bent forward and looked up into his eyes.

“Don’t forget our respective places here. I’m your clown. Your plaything. Your toy. Scarcely human. No need to apologise.”

Hamlet carved himself a piece of meat with the blade. “You’re the only friend I’ve got.”

“Flattering but I’d have to say that’s somewhat unfair on young Horatio. While l agree I am by far the more entertaining let’s not forget I’m nothing more than a joke, a bad one usually. I never do.”

He was scarcely listening. Hamlet had picked up two pieces from the table. Black king, black queen. Was running his finger along their wooden crowns.

“My father would have killed them both?”

“In his own time and in a way that would have given him some political advantage.”

“And instead, with the old man’s help, they murdered him?”

Yorick retrieved the pieces from his fingers and placed them on the board.

“That dread creature you saw on the walls spoke only of Claudius. Your mother’s a virtuous woman...”

“I know. I hear her proclaim her chastity every night.”

“Perhaps you should ask her,” the jester said in a miserable, sullen voice.

With a flick of his finger Hamlet toppled the black queen.

“Perhaps I will.”

It was dark now. The players would be getting ready. Time to go.

“Let’s take our seats.”

The jester shook his head.

“Not me.”

“I demand it.”

“Demand all you like, sunshine.” He stood up, straightened his collar. “I’m a thespian myself. A better one you’ll never meet though much under-appreciated. If you want a tragedian’s turn I’ll give you one...”

Yorick raised his hand and declared in a ringing stentorian tone, “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable...”

“Quite,” Hamlet interrupted. “Suit yourself. I’m going to watch the play. I hope it’s better than that.”

Rosencrantz intercepted Hamlet as he made his way through the gallery, took him into the neighbouring loggia and talked idly and at tedious length about the statues there. Polonius told his daughter to stand close by, then led the king through one of Elsinore’s many winding private passageways to hide behind a giant Flemish tapestry of Hercules and his labours.

“This disgusts me,” Claudius whispered as they stood and waited. “I’m King of Denmark. Not a common spy.”

Polonius took out his penknife and carved tiny eyeholes in the tapestry.

“You wish to know whether it’s the girl that ails him. Or something else. Don’t you?”

“What else? He can’t know about his father. This is grief and grief passes.”

The old man stayed silent.

“Perhaps there’s more to it than that,” the King admitted. “Your daughter. We’ll…”

Polonius put a finger to his lips, placed his eye close to the rough back of the fabric.

“Two parents eavesdropping on their children,” Claudius murmured. “To what have we been reduced…?”

“To caution and common sense, sir. He’s your nephew, not your son.”

“As good as…”

Ophelia wore a summer dress. Polonius had made her pick one Hamlet had liked when they were lovers. Leaf green with flowers round the low neck. Her skin was pale. She shivered in the tall castle gallery.

Rosencrantz called farewell. Then Hamlet bumbled in, reading what looked like a script for the play to come. He’d almost walked into her when she said, “How are you, my lord? Better I hope.”

The prince stood back, looked her up and down, then peered round the gallery, at the shadows, at the tapestry.

“Fair Ophelia. I hope you remember my sins in all your prayers. Keeping well, are we?”

“Very…”

His eyes ran round the round the gallery.

“Isn’t that… spiffing?”

“Don’t be mad with me. I brought you these.” She had a packet in her hand. “They’re the letters you wrote. And the poems. I should have given them back a long time ago. Please…”

She held them out. He laughed.

“What’s this? I never gave you anything.”

“Hamlet. I know you’re not well and there’s so much to worry about what with…” She took a breath, abandoning the train of thought. “When you sent me these they had a perfume so sweet I thought it would never fade. But it did. I pray you now. Take what you sent me. Let’s put an end to this.”

He glanced at her trembling hand and began looking around the room again. When his eyes returned to her they burned with loathing.

“What have you done here, madam?” he growled as he brushed away the offered letters.

“I’m trying to return these tokens of your affection…”

“That’s a harsh, chaste tone. Do you merit it?”

Ophelia blushed.

“I only give back what’s yours…”

He was scanning the walls, the long corridors around.

“You, too, now, eh? I should have known. Put on a black robe like mine and get yourself to a nunnery. Or better still a whorehouse and spread your legs. At least there no one expects to believe what the women say. Do anything for a few pieces of silver, won’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not about money though, is it? Not for the daughter of Polonius. With you everything’s about family. That’s where your real loyalties lie. Which means…”

He began walking briskly along the tapestry, punching it with his fist so that the fabric crumpled against the stone behind.

“Where’s that cunning bastard, your father? There’s an old man’s stale stench here!” Then he was singing it like a child at play. “Out, out Lord Chamberlain! I’m coming, ready or not!”

She rushed him to him, took his arm.

“He’s in his quarters! Where else would he be?”

Another punch on the wall just steps away from the holes Polonius had cut in the tapestry. His knuckles bruised on the unyielding stone behind.

A glint of an eye through the fabric. Then nothing.

“Are you honest, Ophelia?”

“I’m trying…”

He dragged her to him.

“You see what you’ve done? Betrayed me. The one person I thought I could trust! So here’s this in return. If ever you marry I’ll give you this curse. You may be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, but they’ll still damn you, girl. Every man shall cast a stone. Your whore’s reputation precedes you. Anyone with half a brain will know you’re cheating him the moment his back’s turned…”

Ophelia threw the letters in her face.

“For God’s sake, Hamlet, there was only ever you! What reason did I give you to think otherwise? How can you possibly…?”

He kicked the packet, scattering the letters across the floor. She looked at them, at him. He was raging now. Out of control.

“I will pray your health’s soon restored, sir…”

“God can do nothing for me. You might have once. Your beauty… but then that’s not your real face is it?” His voice turned harder still. “Not the one God gave you. You get your little paints out and streak it on: a little shadow around the eyes, a little blush here. That’s an important one, isn’t it. Blush. Since your real face forgot how to do that long ago. Paint it on. Hide your wantonness with innocence.”

“There never was another.”

“And when I’m king I’ll banish marriage. Send you all to brothels where you belong. Exile traitors. Hang spies. Stab this vile world in the heart and…”

He twisted, rolled along the wall, withdrew his short dagger, gouged at the holes in the tapestry. Once. Twice, where the eyes were.

The blade hit hard stone sparking as it ran.

“Come out!” he roared. “Let me see you in the light.”

Ophelia was crying, protesting her innocence again. Claudius could hear her plaintive voice as he followed Polonius into the private passageway they’d used.

Another of the Lord Chamberlain’s secrets. He wondered how many more were withheld from him, had been from his brother too.

In the darkness, brushing away the spider’s web, they stopped by a torch Polonius had set along the way. The old man’s eyes were wild. Frightened.

“He would have stabbed us in the eye if he could.”

“Hamlet will blame your daughter,” Claudius said. “We left her there with him. And his fury.”

The old man scowled.

“I never told her we’d be listening.”

“Ophelia’s no idiot, man! Any more than he…”

“Hamlet’s in love with her. You heard as well as I did.”

“Love?” Claudius asked, amazed. “Did that sound like love?”

“It takes many forms I believe.”

“That’s not one of them. And it wasn’t madness either. There’s something, some worm eating at my nephew’s soul. If…”

“Love, sir,” the old man interrupted. “I’m sure of it. After the play let me try again. We’ll have him speak with his mother and I’ll listen, hidden like before.”

“Better I hope. He knew we were there from the outset.”

“Better. His mother will get the truth out of him. Then we’ll decide how to proceed.”

A fire blazed in the hearth. The torches had been lit and evergreen garlands hung around the frames of the high windows. Burbage watched through a crack in the door of a spacious pantry they’d been given as a dressing room. The players had been ready for over an hour and were getting restless. But nothing would happen till the king gave the order. If he didn’t feel like it, there would be no play at all. They’d still get to eat, but their promised wage would be cut in half, and if they were thrown out into the freezing night immediately, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Burbage drummed his fingers on the door.

“Any sign?” asked Kemp.

“Nah,” grumbled Burbage. “Still eating. Calling for wine. He might have forgotten we’re here.”

Kemp put his eye to the crack.

“Can’t take his eyes off the Queen. Like a love-struck teenager.”

“He did marry her,” Burbage pointed out.

“I thought that was just, you know, politics.” Kemp kept his face up against the door jamb. “You know what royalty are like. But there he is… holding her hand and everything. Smiling. Kissing now! I wonder what Polonius makes of it. Winding that damned watch of his. That old bugger doesn’t want to give us a penny. And there’s our prince too, sitting with his pretty lady.”

“Ophelia,” Burbage pointed out. “She’s Polonius’s daughter.”

“Lucky girl didn’t inherit that old bastard’s mug. She don’t look too happy. Interesting. More of a play going on out there than we’ll have on the stage if you ask me.”

“I’d keep your observations on royalty to yourself if I were you, Kemp,” Burbage declared. “How long are they going to keep us waiting? God, I miss being at home, calling the shots in our own house. You know how long I’ve been a professional actor, Will?”

“Rumour has it you got your first job the day after Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden.”

“Not far off. A little respect wouldn’t go amiss. Why must royalty make us feel like vagrants and street musicians? If we were playing in front of our adoring crowd in London...”

“Well we’re not and they normally chuck cabbages at us,” Kemp said, breaking from the door. “Anyway… Hamlet’s coming.”

The chatter dried up. The troupe of actors stopped lounging, muttering their lines, munching on meat pies, got to their feet, eyes on the door, expectant.

“Ready?” the Prince asked when he came in.

Burbage frowned.

“We’re professionals, sir. We always are. What about your audience?”

“They will be when I announce you. You have the changes memorised?”

Hurried nods around the little room.

“And just the lines as written. No adlibbing. And yes, Kemp, I’m looking at you.”

The actor made an exaggerated face: shocked and hurt. Then grinned.

“And get their attention,” Hamlet added. “Especially in the murder scene.”

More nods, and a hush of expectation.

The Prince smoothed his black doublet.

“Right,” he said. “We’re on.”

He nodded at an actor at the back who wore a drum around his neck. The man began to beat a loud, steady rhythm. Hamlet flung open the door into the great hall wide and led the procession out, through the ranks of spectators, past the statue of Old Yorick, a naked dwarf seated on a laughing tortoise, hand outstretched to the open space before the royal dais.

Actors. Audiences. One watching the other, always. Burbage had seen this so often. The look of anticipation, of boredom among some, excitement among others. And then there was the King. A pleasant-faced man, not cruel or infamous like some of the monarchs they’d played for.

He sat at the head of the royal table, playing the part himself. Waving off Polonius when the old man stooped to his ear to whisper something. Determined to see this through.

The Queen had eyes only for her son though she seemed anxious, sitting up stiffly, smiling too widely to show the royal approval her courtiers and servants should imitate.

There was a polite round of applause. Hamlet led the players onto the makeshift stage then flung himself at Ophelia’s feet, lay sprawled on the floor, facing the stage, with his head resting on her legs. She looked alarmed, her eyes flashing to her father, but then found a version of the Queen’s smile and watched the actors as if afraid to look anywhere else.

Burbage could read his public as well as any man and this was the oddest bunch he’d ever seen. It felt like an audience of one – Prince Hamlet. And a room full of wary actors indulging him and… afraid.

The cagey look on Kemp’s face told him he wasn’t the only who’d noticed something was up.

Afraid of Hamlet? Perhaps. Burbage understood stage fright: the real and paralyzing terror of being up there, suddenly unable to remember your lines or even what was happening in the scene. He knew the bowel-clenching horror of wanting so desperately to get through a speech, stumble off, hide somewhere no one could see you.

He’d just never felt that subtle, lurking terror from an audience.

Kemp declaimed the prologue, a half-dozen lines of apology and throat clearing to beg the audience’s attention.

Then they were off. It went well at first, he thought, watching from the side. Burbage was no fan of Gonzago. It was a posturing, ponderous play. Sound enough if you were in the mood for melodrama, but predictable, especially when you could act it in your sleep.

The first couple of scenes passed without a hitch. Then it was his turn to enter, playing the doomed king. And something curious occurred.

Hamlet got up and left Ophelia’s side, falling into an awkward pose in front of the stage. As Burbage spoke his piece – a tedious declaration in which the whiskery monarch declared his wife should remarry were he to die – he found the Prince staring at him acutely, murmuring the very lines word for word though he had no script in his hands.

The old queen was played diligently by one of the boys shoved inside an old gown and plastered in make-up. In her protestations of undying love for her husband she went so far as to say that sleeping with another man would be like murdering her current husband.

At that Hamlet gasped with delight and clapped his hand like a child.

Then he started talking. Not the play’s lines, like before, but a running commentary, delivered with backward glances to the courtly audience full of observations and pithy remarks.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“Great line.”

“You think she’ll keep her word?”

Each intervention was met with an embarrassed hush. Soon there was a tension a man could cut with a knife.

And then, the scene Hamlet himself had written.

The murder.

Burbage was to lie on his side while Kemp came stalking in and poured a vial of poison into his ear.

The troupe had proved awkward about this in rehearsal. Several actors found it implausible to say the least. But Hamlet had been adamant when a rewrite was suggested. Loudly so. It was murder his way or no play at all. So they did it, Burbage lying there, feeling the thick, cold liquid – treacle in fact – pooling in his ear then running down his neck.

“This is the king’s nephew!” Hamlet announced, standing up and pointing. “He kills him for his crown. Then seduces the monarch’s wife, a woman of his own blood, who had earlier sworn...”

And that was as far they got.

Burbage was lying rigid, his eyes closed, but he heard the tumult in the hall, the shouting, the scraping of benches and chairs, as one by one the place emptied. He sat up in time to see the king leading the exodus, face flushed with fury. The queen was white, eyes bright with tears.

As they left everyone avoided the prince who pranced around the stage with delight as if awaiting an encore.

A hand caught the actor’s arm.

“We will get paid, sir?” the boy who played the queen asked meekly. “I was doing it best I could.”

“Not now, son,” the actor said in the gentlest tones he’d ever used to the lad.

It was clear to him now. These people knew Hamlet. They were afraid of this odd, unbalanced young man with reason. The prince had just threatened the life of the king, all within a few changed lines of a hoary tragedy.

In the drama in his head he was the murderous nephew. And Claudius somehow a victim to come. It was hardly surprising the king had fled in fury and fear.

Burbage looked at the prince whooping like a loon, flipping over tables, singing at the top of his voice.

In previous years he’d been good, intelligent company. One of the few nobles who combined intellect with energy and a sense of purpose.

“Sir,” the actor pleaded. “May we talk a while and…”

But then another hand took his shoulder. A strong one this time, and when he turned he found himself face to face with a burly soldier, Polonius next to him holding out a purse.

“This is half your fee,” the old man said, throwing the money at them. “Think yourself lucky you get a penny out of Elsinore.” He took out his fancy watch. “If you’re still here on the hour I’ll have that back and whip every last one of you.”

Then Polonius bellowed at the shrieking Hamlet, telling the Prince he’d offended his mother and should go to speak to her immediately.

“Time to depart this particular stage,” Kemp said, nudging his colleague’s arm.

“Aye,” the old actor agreed. “I long for England.”

Soon they were outside, seeking cheap lodgings in the town beyond the walls. Glad to get out of the fortress. Bad things were going to happen. Acts of blood and fury, real this time, not imagined.

He wanted to be far away when they started. Assuming they hadn’t already.

“There,” Polonius roared when he saw the players out of the gates and got back to the king’s study. “We have it. He knows. But…” His hand went to his forehead. “For the love of God… how?”

Claudius bent over his desk, a goblet of red wine in his right hand.

“What does it matter? You’re the lawyer here. What can he do?”

The old man scowled.

“Nothing. You’re the king. You are the law. Besides… he has no proof. No certainty. If he had why would he arrange this performance? I’ve seen that damned play before. It never had that scene. Hamlet wrote it. I’m sure of it.”

“He inserted it to prick my conscience fool! If you had one of your own you’d know.”

The King took a long swig, wished he had time and space to get drunk. That was new. The world was closing in on him.

“Hamlet knows I murdered his father. He thinks that by telling me I’ll somehow… respond. Give him opportunity to do the same to me perhaps. Or simply dispatch him to the same place.”

Polonius nodded.

“That last’s a possibility. I would wish to arrange it the way we did before. Quietly. Without fuss. He’s popular with the common folk. They love him for some reason. A trial wouldn’t go down well. More likely a sudden and tragic illness that confines him to his room, takes away the power of speech, and sees him off in swift measure. I know the man who can arrange the potions…”

Claudius got to his feet and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

“I killed his father because I had to. It was him or us.”

“And you’ve me to thank for that intelligence.”

The King was getting sick of this pompous, sly old man.

“Yes. You betrayed the old king so I could murder him and take his place. Thereby saving our lives. Yours too, perhaps.” Claudius paused then added, “For now.”

“What are we to do?”

The latest numbers for the treasury had arrived. Late taxes and shortfalls in the army left the kingdom in a weak position, too feeble for any coming war.

“The English have been neglecting the tribute negotiated by my late brother. Hamlet will sail there on the first possible ship. He can remain in London until his humour’s improved.”

Polonius nodded.

“And then?”

“And then I’ll see.”

“This won’t go away. He knows and that knowledge will fester. However long he spends in England.”

“We’re family, Polonius. A better, closer one than you’ll ever understand. And happy once. Perhaps in time again…”

“If I may suggest…”

Claudius slammed his goblet on the desk.

“You have your orders. Send those two idiots Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with him for company. Write the necessary papers to gain him a welcome in the English court. Trade off some of the money they owe us against his keep. If they see him as a hostage so be it. At least they’ll treat him well. Here…”

He handed the Lord Chamberlain the royal seal.

“Use this to finish the papers. I’ve no need to see them once you’ve done.”

Polonius took the seal and looked at it.

“Common practice would dictate the king reads anything that carries his mark. Unless you wish to delegate to me responsibility for…”

“Deal with it! As you see fit. Now leave me. I need some private time to think. And pray.”

Hamlet ranged the castle. Mad then. Truly. He craved Ophelia’s company though in truth there seemed no point in seeking her out. The cruel treatment he’d delivered earlier had a reason. An audience, her father, perhaps Claudius too, there to witness his feigned lunacy.

Yet a part of him had enjoyed uttering those harsh words. It was as the jester said. His father’s blood was inside him, and when the fever raged it took a course of its own.

A dagger in his belt. A pistol too. If he encountered Claudius now…

An hour he wandered. Then finally, down a narrow passageway he saw a familiar figure, harlequin suit, seated on a guard’s chair, fist beneath his chin.

“Back,” Yorick ordered. “Shoo, boy.”

“Don’t shoo me, clown.”

The little man got up and blocked his way. Hamlet realised where his aimless wanderings had taken him. To the anteroom beside the king’s chapel. A few steps led down to a small altar richly decorated with statues of saints, precious paintings from the Netherlands and Italy. Gold and silver. A crucifix that often caught the moonlight falling from the stained glass window above.

His father’s body had lain in state here. In a sealed coffin to hide the horror of the sight.

“We’re going back to your room,” Yorick told him. “There we’ll drink two flagons of wine, one each. Nothing excessive. Along the way we’ll devour half a pig. And I shall recite you an ancient Greek tale. A favourite of mine. It concerns drink, sex and farting. If that doesn’t cure your melancholy nothing will.”

Hamlet pushed past him. There was a sound beyond, a light too. He could just make out a shape. The king on his knees before the altar. Praying out loud, in a voice he could almost hear.

“This is the moment,” Yorick said by his side, voice so soft and concerned it seemed unlike him. “Continue on this path and you may never return to what you once were.”

“As if I want that. As if I could.”

“Of course you can. You’re a prince. An intelligent creature. You have power over your own fate. More than most. If you choose to use it.”

“Out of my way,” he ordered and crouched by the door, one hand on the dagger, the other on the pistol.

Claudius was muttering in a low, frail tone. A soft and tender voice. Like the one he’d used when Hamlet was young, frightened and worried, alone in a castle his father had once more deserted for war.

The chapel was a solitary, private place. No congregation but the royal family and their bishop. Just the king now.

“Don’t do it,” Yorick whispered in Hamlet’s ear.

“Don’t stop me,” the prince said and got closer still.

He was mere yards behind the king’s back now, almost close enough to hear his garbled prayers. Claudius knelt, hands together, eyes closed before the cross.

Hamlet slid his dagger soundlessly from his belt and took another careful step forward.

Claudius’s hands came down. He leaned forward on the cold flagstones, then raised his head to stare at the painting above him: Mary, mother of God, rising to Heaven.

The jester sat beside the prince, arms folded, watching keenly.

Hamlet hesitated, listened. Watched as Claudius raised his hands again, eyes closed.

Lips murmuring a silent prayer.

Yorick clicked his fingers.

“Go on, then. Let’s have done with it.”

He could. One hand to the kneeling king’s face, jerking his head back. The other stabbing him in the throat. A life eking out on the cold the chapel floor…

“And then he goes to heaven,” Hamlet whispered. “A villain who kills my father. This is blood for blood. Not honourable retribution.”

Yorick screwed up his eyes, waved his hands about in bafflement.

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t kill a man on his knees, at prayer.”

Quietly he stepped back. Replaced his dagger in his belt dagger. Walked out, followed by the jester.

“Not now. Another time. When he’s drunk asleep, gaming, swearing, fornicating with her.”

Yorick struggled to keep up.

“Not wishing to be pedantic, old chap, but this seems a touch picky if you don’t mind my saying.”

The prince moved swiftly along the passage, the jester at his heels.

“When there’s no hint of salvation about him. And I know for sure his soul will go damned and black to hell. Then…”

Briefly he clutched at the dagger.

“Then’s the time.”

The dwarf ran in front and stopped him.

“Hang on a minute. How many times lately have you seen dear Claudius without a brace of guards at his side? That was your chance. The one time you might have reached him without taking a poleaxe to your guts. Not that I’m complaining you understand…”

“For someone who hated my father you’re suddenly very keen on seeing me revenge his death.”

Yorick shook his head as if to clear it.

“Not at all. I’m just puzzled, Hamlet. All this faffing about. Do you know what you want or not?”

“I’m not my father! I won’t spill blood unless…”

He went silent.

“Unless?”

“This isn’t black and white, Yorick! It’s complicated.”

Yorick nodded.

“Imagine all you could achieve if it wasn’t. Life would be so much simpler if you didn’t have to think things through.”

“Then better to achieve nothing,” Hamlet answered through clenched teeth. “Wine. Go fetch. I’ll even listen to your bawdy tales.”

He turned to go. In a rush the jester blocked his way again.

“But I told you, Hamlet. No going back. Not in this direction. There.” He pointed. “The queen’s quarters. She’s been asking for you. After that we’ll get drunk for Denmark. If you wish it.”

Hamlet moved on through the darkness, angry at himself, at everything around him. Especially his mother. The blood was singing in his ears as he flew down the narrow hallways, shrieking that this was all her fault.

The Queen’s closet was a tapestry-hung antechamber that led to her bedroom. Normally a place of maids and ladies in waiting. Not this strange and violent night. At Hamlet’s insistent knock, she answered herself. He barged past her, slamming the door behind him, looking around. There was no one else inside. None that he could see.

His mother had pulled herself together and seemed less upset than angry.

“What in the name of God was that?” she demanded.

“What, mother?” he asked with a shrug.

“The play, of course. If that absurd tantrum of yours can be called such.”

“That’s why you wanted to see me?” A post-show critique? Bollocks to that.”

“You forget who you’re talking to!”

“No,” said Hamlet, rounding on her until she took a step backwards. “I remember who you are. I know full well. You’re the one who’s forgotten. You’re the queen, my father’s brother’s wife. And, more’s the pity, you’re my mother.”

Gertrude reached back and slapped him once, hard across the face. Hamlet didn’t pull away, didn’t even flinch. But his eyes flashed, and his hands reached for the dagger in his belt, drawing it in one, swift motion that sent his mother staggering backwards towards her bedroom door.

“What are you doing? Put that thing away!”

Then he heard. A shuffling of feet from the left side of the room. The movement of a man concealed behind one of the wall hangings.

A spy, hiding. This time there would be no hesitation.

“What’s this, mother? More rats in the walls?”

“Wait! Hamlet!” she yelled but already he was on the move.

A shape behind the tapestry. He flung himself at it, hitting with all his weight. A groan from behind. Hamlet brought up his knee hard, grasped the struggling figure.

A man. Tall, but not especially strong. Breathing as if elderly. Perhaps it was the king, and this the moment he’d wished for.

The dagger rose in his hand. But…

He’d left Claudius in the chapel on his knees. There was no time to reach these quarters.

No time to think either. The shape behind the fabric was struggling to roll out of his grip. Together they stumbled, tearing the tapestry from the wall as they collapsed to the floor. Hamlet shifted, pinning him, his mind racing, and through the sudden silence he heard the distinctive ticking of a watch.

Second by second, eking out the time.

Polonius.

Creeping. Whispering. Plotting. With all of them, his mother, his uncle. All Hamlet’s life the Lord Chamberlain had watched them from Elsinore’s shadows. What had his part been in the murder of Hamlet’s father? What had he done since, keeping Ophelia from him, turning her against him?

In fury he stabbed once. Twice. Then paused, breathing hard, as he pulled the tapestry aside to reveal the white bearded face beneath.

There was blood on the pale lips, a gout of it bursting from his throat.

“What?” Hamlet asked lightly. “Speak louder, fellow.”

He put his ear to Polonius’s chest, pretended to listen. Looked at his mother, frowned and shook his head.

Gertrude began to scream.

Another day, another world, he might have been struck with horror at what he’d done. Not now. Not here. He pulled the gory dagger from the body and rose to face his mother, sending a thin rain of crimson droplets spattering across the floor.

“Mother?” he said, pointing the blade in her face.

Gertrude fell silent, chest heaving, sobs subsiding as the fear took over.

“Good. Keep quiet.” His heart was racing. There was a tang of blood in his mouth as if he had bitten his lip during the struggle. Or perhaps it was the stench of the dead man in the room. “You will listen to me, mother. You will tell me what you knew of this business.”

“This business?” she cried. Her eyes wouldn’t leave the pool of scarlet that had begun to puddle around the crumpled tapestry by the old man’s corpse. “Polonius arrived before you. He wanted to hear our conversation. We were concerned about your sanity...”

“This doesn’t concern my health. My father. I want to know what you did.”

“I...I don’t know what you mean, child.”

“Two months you waited! Between my father’s death and your marriage to my uncle. Two months. Makes a man wonder, mother.”

“Wonder? Wonder what?”

She had one hand clasped over her heart, and below it hung a locket. Hamlet snatched the thing from her neck, snapping the chain, then opened it. On one side was a miniature of Hamlet’s father. On the other, newly added, one of Claudius.

“I wonder how a woman who wept for this man,” said Hamlet, holding the first portrait in front of her face, “goes to this, in less time than it took for the funeral banquet to rot. I’ve had dogs that were more loyal.”

“You knew this before,” she said, forcing herself to look at him. “You just killed a man, Hamlet! What’s happened to you? This is more than grief. Your mind’s infected…”

Hamlet gave a shout of derisive laughter then cast the locket across the room. For a moment he stood there, face in bloody hands, eyes shut, rigid with concentration. Gertrude extended cautious fingers towards him, her tears flowing freely now. But as she touched his cheek he seized her by the wrist and flung her backwards.

“No! You won’t treat me like a child. You will listen!”

Like a mad beast he roared the last word. She shrank away, hands over her ears, braced as if he would hit her. Then there was silence again, and at last she turned to see what he was doing.

Hamlet was gazing open mouthed into the bedroom doorway, looking almost as appalled as she did.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to see whatever had caught his attention. “What frightens you now?”

“Look,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “There. You see it?”

She peered again. Still nothing.

“I don’t understand…”

“There!” he shouted, grabbing her head and pointing her face towards the doorway. “Look!”

“I see nothing!”

“My father!” Hamlet screamed, jabbing a finger at the shadow. “In your bedroom, wearing his old robe. As he was in life. As he is in death.”

Gertrude fastened her gaze on Hamlet’s face.

“There’s nothing there, dear Hamlet. Nothing, my son. You’re sick.”

“Look at him!”

“This is a disease of the mind. I understand,” she said, glancing sadly at the body of Polonius. “He was right. He said you were ill... I should have listened.”

“You’ve come to demand why I haven’t done it yet,” Hamlet whispered, staring straight ahead of him. “I tried, but... I will do it. I swear, sir. I swear…”

Her hand fell on his arm and stayed there.

“There’s just the two of us in this room,” Gertrude said calmly, reaching up to stroke his face. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

He was looking at her again, with a new concern.

“Sorry, mother. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Truly…”

One last look in the bedroom and then he nodded.

“He says I should leave you to your grief. The king’s going now. I wish you could see him. It might make you remember who you are.”

“What do you want me of me, son?”

“Pray,” he answered with a shrug. “And when Claudius asks you to join him in his bed, say you’re...sick. Which you are, even if you can’t see it. Stay away from my uncle. It would be for the best.”

He kissed her on her tear-streaked cheek and then moved to Polonius’s blood daubed body. At the sight of it, something of his former mood returned.

“I suppose I’d better lug this old meat out of here before it turns more rancid than it was before. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

He grabbed the corpse by its ankles and dragged it from the room.

“Night, mother!” Hamlet called from the hallway. “Sleep well.”