“What if Hamlet should beat Laertes by, say, seven to nothing?” Horatio asked.
Osric smiled indulgently and doffed his hat to the prince. “The affair would not proceed past the third round in that eventuality, and of course Laertes would lose his rapiers.”
“And what is Laertes’ weapon of choice?” asked Hamlet.
“Rapier and dagger.”
“That’s two, but let it be.”
“Will Your Royal Highness accept the challenge?” Osric asked eagerly.
Hamlet thought, but only for a moment. “You may tell the king that I will walk in the great hall in an hour or so. I won’t fight with daggers; they are weapons for assassins. But if rapiers are brought and the gentleman likes to attend, then I shall do my best to win the king’s bet for him.”
Osric was enraptured. “How chivalrous!” He held his hat over his heart. “Truly, you and Laertes are well matched. Perfect, sir, perfect. I shall inform His Royal Majesty, if the prince will give me leave to . . . er . . . leave.”
“Certainly.”
After Osric exited, with more flourishes and bows, Hamlet turned to Horatio. “Who knows what this is about? But it is good, I think. Something may happen or it may not, but at least there is movement.”
“You had better be careful of Laertes. I believe he improved greatly whilst in France.”
“I’ve beaten men who have beaten him,” Hamlet said excitedly. “You don’t realize all the practice I’ve been having. I’ve been training hard the last year, with some fine teachers. Prince Heinrich von Bellheim, for one, and Monsieur Paul D’Eglantine. A start of three? I’ll win easily.”
Horatio smiled. He had never heard Hamlet boast before.
“I think I’ve been approaching this the wrong way,” Hamlet said. “I’ve been wanting to design the world all over again, to rearrange it according to . . . well, according to the way my father would have wanted it. But I haven’t been able to, and that’s because I’m not God. This is better now. This way I don’t create a new world; I just tweak it a little. As it flows along, I move a rock or take away a dead branch. I’m not in charge of the world. That was a conceit on my part.”
Horatio nodded. He was not entirely sure what Hamlet was talking about, but that was common enough. He appreciated that at least, since his return, the prince seemed rational with him. He suspected no one else saw that side of Hamlet anymore. But this was a new mood now. Hamlet looked absurdly young again. There was a freshness about him, an energy. Something about the bet had excited him. It seemed that the thought of action had tipped him into a new state. The thought of action, there was a funny idea. Didn’t they contradict each other, those words: “thought” and “action”?
Horatio smiled to himself. He opened his mouth, but it was Osric who spoke. The foolish young man had returned to the rocky point where they were sheltering from the bitter wind, and was standing in front of them. He held his hat behind his back and spoke with less ceremony. “Your Royal Highness, His Majesty sends me to ask if your pleasure is still to play with Laertes, and whether you will do so now, or whether you need a longer time?”
Hamlet shrugged, but Horatio could sense that he was bursting. “I am as always the king’s to command. If he is in a rush, I will accommodate him.”
Rather more confidently, Osric performed a bow and replaced his hat on his head. “Sir, the king and the queen and indeed all the court are on their way to the hall now to enjoy the entertainment.”
“Then I too am nearly at the entrance. Not here, Osric, but just outside the hall. Half a dozen steps away.”
Horatio expected that this would be enough for Osric, but not so. Now he executed another bow, removed his hat, and added, “Most Excellent Highness, I am bidden by that most noble lady the queen your mother to convey a further request to you.”
Hamlet was leaning against the stone wall, as he had been for some time. Yet Horatio was aware that he was never still. Now, at Osric’s words, Hamlet stood rigidly, and the difference was stark. The twitching finger, the lively eyes, the nervous jiggle, all were gone as he waited in straining silence to hear the message from his mother. What power she has over him, Horatio thought.
Hamlet waited until Osric spoke again.
“Well, noble prince, it is simply this, that she desires you speak warmly to Laertes before the bouts begin. I believe she seeks a rapprochement. I understand there was a certain indelicacy at the cemetery. . . . I was not able to attend, but the queen spoke most feelingly upon her return. . . .”
Hamlet seemed to shudder for a moment. Horatio could not understand his reaction. But he sounded willing enough when he answered. “She gives good advice.”
Osric made off, glad to be gone. Hamlet drummed his bottom lip with a finger. Horatio waited to hear what he would say. At last he spoke. “He thinks he is the new Polonius,” he remarked.
“Osric?”
“Yes. Pulling our strings and expecting us to dance. But Osric to Polonius is as a stuffed sheep to a fox.” Horatio didn’t reply. After a minute Hamlet added, “You wouldn’t believe how sick at heart I feel, Horatio. A strangeness has come over me.”
“Sir —” Horatio began.
But Hamlet cut him off. “It’s nothing. It might trouble a woman, perhaps, but I’m not letting it concern me.”
Horatio took a step toward him. “Hamlet,” he said, “if your heart dislikes anything, obey it. Trust your instincts, which are good ones. I’ll go and tell them you’re not fit and they’ll have to postpone.”
“No, no. I defy these feelings. When a sparrow falls from the sky, it affects the whole universe. If something happens now, it won’t happen later; if it happens later, it won’t happen now. Since no one leaves with anything, what does it matter when we leave?”
Again Horatio was baffled by his friend. He stared at him as the sky turned red around them and the new detachment of guards marched past to take over the watch.
The great hall was the coldest place in Elsinore. Even with huge logs banked in the giant fireplaces at either end, the temperature seemed hardly above freezing. The king sprawled on his cedar throne, crown by his side, a pewter mug to hand. Despite the temperature, he was hot and sweaty and from time to time wiped his brow with a grimy handkerchief.
The queen, in white fur robes, sat on a settee, avoiding the throne beside her husband. She too seemed nervous. Horatio wondered if she had lost weight; she looked much leaner, almost gaunt. He remembered how when he was little she had seemed kind, most of the time, remembering to order Horatio’s favorite meals after his mother died, giving him little presents for his birthday, taking the boys to the circus. She had never been warm or funny or loving, the way Horatio’s own mother had been, but he had never felt unwelcome at the palace. He knew she could be sarcastic, and that she could lose her temper in an instant, but when she was in a bad mood, he and Hamlet had learned to melt away to the tower or the woods or the fields and let the servants suffer her wrath.
The sudden passing of the old king, Hamlet’s father, had put Denmark on a different path, but no one had been sure at first where it would lead. There had been trepidation, and almost a stench around the new regime from the first days, but as far as Horatio knew, these feelings had not been articulated by anyone. Gertrude had still been all right, he thought. A bit grimmer, a bit sharper, a bit more cynical. Just a bit more of everything, really.
The most noticeable changes had come since the death of Polonius. Nothing had gone right for her and her new husband these last few months. It was as though the old man’s death had put an end to the momentum of the tawdry couple. Hamlet’s mad stabbing of Polonius had been like a kiss of corruption on the lips of the royal couple. It had blocked all exits, closed off all possibilities.
Hamlet and Horatio walked into the great hall as though they were actors entering a scene. All the others were assembled, not just the king and queen, but Laertes, standing alone and carving figures in the air with a rapier; Osric, dancing
in front of the throne like an annoying grasshopper; three ladies to wait upon the queen; a group of minor lords clustered around the king; attendants and servants and courtiers, spectators and minor relatives . . . The two young men stood out. Hamlet for his sheer physical beauty, of course, but those in the castle were used to that. It was more that he and Horatio possessed a certain lightness of being. It would not be too fanciful to say that a glow surrounded them. They seemed as much like acrobats as actors, connected to the earth only by the thinnest of lines, almost invisible bonds.
The great hall fell still as they entered. Horatio came to a halt halfway between the door and the thrones. Hamlet went forward alone. The only person moving in the whole vast space, he was the focus of every eye. He strode straight up to Laertes. “If I have hurt you, Laertes,” he said in a strong voice, “I say now, in the company of all present, that I regret it. I have not been myself. And if I am not myself, then whoever wronged you was not me. In fact, the unbalanced Hamlet who wronged you wronged me also, for to be out of my own mind is not a condition I would ever desire.”
Laertes swallowed. He had been caught off guard. “Your Royal Highness, I accept what you say on a personal level,” he said at last. “But I cannot yet accept your apology. I must be guided by advisers who are older and wiser. In the meantime, I will treat the friendship you are now demonstrating as though it is true.”
Hamlet had to be satisfied with that. He nodded and turned to take the foil offered to him, while Laertes accepted his from another servant. They each tested the blade.
“Too heavy,” cried Laertes, laying his down.
“I am content,” said Hamlet.
The king watched anxiously. “You know the wager, Hamlet?” he asked, his voice thick. He had to clear his throat before he spoke, and again as he finished.
“Certainly. But Your Majesty has laid the odds on the weaker side.”
“Well, well, Laertes has made himself a proficient swordsman. But the odds are fair, I think.”
Laertes had chosen his weapon and now turned to face the young prince. The king spoke out again. “Set the stoups of wine upon that table. If Hamlet scores a hit in the first three rounds, I’ll drink his health; nay, I’ll do more than that. I’ll drop a jewel into his glass to spur him further. A jewel brighter than any worn by the last four kings of Denmark! There’s motivation for you, my son.”
Claudius burst into a fit of coughing so severe that the two sportsmen waited for him to finish before they began their duel. At last, however, the king was able to signal to them to start. “Let the judge bear a wary eye,” he commanded, before putting the mug to his lips once more for another long drink.
And so they went to it. Hard, too. The audience knew straightaway that this was a match charged with potency for them both. Spectators retreated as the two young men, quick and graceful, slashed at each other from one end of the hall to the other. The beginning was all Laertes; he believed he had improved so much since Hamlet had last seen him that he could take the prince by surprise and score easy points.
Yet smugness allows no other point of view; smugness lacks imagination. It never entered Laertes’ head that the prince, who had been his superior when they were children, might have improved too. In truth, Hamlet had spent as many hours at practice as Laertes, and with better teachers.
At first Hamlet foxed, doing no more than he had to, allowing Laertes to believe that victory would be quick. But Laertes found attack after attack failing, finding space where there should have been flesh, or Hamlet’s rapier where there should have been an opening, and he began to suspect that this might not go as easily as he had planned. And then, in the course of a spectacular turn that should have left Hamlet’s flank exposed, Laertes heard his opponent cry out, “A hit!”
“No,” shouted Laertes, but he wondered if there might have been a sting on his right side.
“Judgment!” demanded Hamlet with staring eyes.
“A hit, a palpable hit,” confirmed the judge.
In his excitement the king rose from his throne. He seemed more than excited, agitated even. Horatio thought he was drunk.
“Again! Let’s go again,” shouted Laertes, who was flushed and angry, suspecting that he had been betrayed by his own sense of superiority.
“Wait,” croaked Claudius. “Wait, the pair of you. I promised Hamlet he should have a jewel should he score a strike, and a jewel he shall have.”
Hamlet scowled at his stepfather, but the man appeared not to notice. With some difficulty, fumbling in his robes, Claudius found a large diamond and held it up to the light. The courtiers gasped, and a lady-in-waiting squealed. Osric broke into excited applause. “Most generous, Your Majesty,” he shouted. “Exceedingly generous.”
The king gazed proudly around the great hall. “This is the way we govern,” he proclaimed. “There is plenty for everyone.” He nodded to a servant, and the man, trembling with cold in his threadbare uniform, hurried to fetch Hamlet’s glass of wine. The king held it aloft and, after a last glance at the crowd, dropped the diamond into it. People gasped again, giggled, then a soft tide of whispers ran everywhere at once, like foam fizzing on the beach. Claudius dropped back onto his throne, wiping his face again and nodding to the same servant to refill his glass.
“I fancy that was rather well done, my dear,” he said to his wife, in what he imagined to be a whisper, but which was heard all around the hall. She gave only a nod of acknowledgment. Claudius raised his voice again. “Give Hamlet the glass.”
“Later, later,” Hamlet shouted back. “After the next round, perhaps.”
He did not see the king’s glare. Laertes had already launched himself at the prince, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise. It was within the rules but only barely within the conventions of sportsmanship. Hamlet was able to deflect the blade by nothing more than a centimeter, at the same time trying to sway out of the path of its vicious point. Somehow it was enough, and the thing passed him by. He twisted away and ran half the length of the hall before ducking to the right, turning, and preparing to face the oncoming Laertes.
Now Laertes fought with cold determination. It was all Laertes, wave after wave of skillful flourishes, at times moving so fast that the crowd could barely see the blade, darting and feinting and stabbing, driving the young prince back and back and back, like a dozen waves breaking in quick succession upon rocks that seemed too weak to withstand them.
Laertes’ body and blade had become one; the young man was nothing but movement. Although his mind was diseased, his body, for a brief interval, threw off its knowledge of his intentions and reached the apogee of its physical perfection. Perhaps too the body knew it had only minutes left to live, knew it would soon lie pierced and dying on the floor; perhaps some knowledge of that gave it the power and skill for this last expression of beauty and training.
Whatever, it was a new and glorious Laertes who with passion and grace fought Hamlet. His swordsmanship stopped the breathing of the spectators, returned sudden sobriety to the king, and set the queen swooning on the sofa where she sat.
Then it was over.
Laertes leaped, twisted, and stabbed at the space where Hamlet should have been. For a moment he seemed suspended in the cold air, a god who cared nothing for gravity. But the prince was too quick, and an instant later Laertes felt truth touch him in the side of his ribs.
“Another hit!” shouted Hamlet, emerging from under his opponent like a rat from a collapsed tower.
“A touch, a touch, I do confess,” gasped Laertes. He stood, breathing like man who is about to go to a very different place, one he has never visited before and cannot know. Yet his intention was to send Hamlet there, today, as soon as possible, by means foul or fair.
“Our son shall win,” said the king nervously.
“He’s short of breath,” said the queen. “Look how he sweats. Hamlet, my darling, come.” She went to him and dabbed at his brow with her napkin, then gave it to him so that he could wipe h
is whole face. At this cameo, Laertes stared and glared. No one was left now in his family to perform this service for him.
Gertrude turned and saw what she was looking for. A glass of wine. It was Hamlet’s. It stood on a small black wooden table, cold and alone. She picked it up. The king thought she was about to offer it to Hamlet, and he felt a glow of relief. If it came from her hand, the prince would surely drink! Claudius was so close to the solution! Why the young man was here at all instead of lying in two parts in an English graveyard was a mystery for which he had no explanation, but no matter, a sip from the deadly mixture would clear the air of Elsinore. Drink, drink, drink it!
Instead the queen raised the glass to her lips. “A toast to your good fortune, Hamlet,’ she said in her thick, luscious voice.
Claudius felt paralysis numbing his feet at the same time as it froze his heart. Nevertheless he managed to half rise from the throne. “Dear Gertrude,” he croaked.
She did not hear him.
He saw the arch of her neck as she exposed it to him for the last time. Her beautiful neck, still smooth and unmarked, after all these years. The glass was at her lips. “Gertrude!” he shouted. It was as though he had shocked her into drinking. He saw the movement of her throat as the foul wine ran down into her stomach to begin its work. She drank enough. More than enough. A sip would have done.
“Yes?” she asked, putting the glass back on the table and turning toward him.
“Your Majesty, are you all right?” Osric pressed forward.
The king sank back onto his throne. No matter now. Too late, too late.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “It is nothing. It is all nothing.” Claudius shuddered and wiped his handkerchief over his face. In the space of a moment, everything had gone irreversibly wrong. His reign was over; his life would probably be forfeit. After all, the ancient curse was on him. He had killed his own brother. In his bowels he had always expected this.