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It has been a long month that I have waited out the reconstruction of the Danish court; long, cold, and entirely without saving grace. Even the last of the heavy winter snows, falling silently over the funerals of the high-born, were drained of the beauty they should have brought. The entire country was plunged into mourning by the deaths of the entire royal family, and a noble family besides, and so the elections of the new king were overshadowed by the darkest of mourning clothes. When the titled families came to an accord, young Fortinbras of Norway was chosen to ascend to the throne.
Though the days were dark and long in the melancholy fashion of the season, they were nothing compared to the blackness in my heart. As my prince had asked of me, I told the story of the elder Hamlet, killed by his brother Claudius, usurper to the throne, and the story of the good Prince Hamlet himself. I argued Fortinbras’s position to the court of nobles, taking advantage of Hamlet’s contacts to press the gentry. I ensured that my friend received the bravest of funerals, the most blessed burial ground, where his bones would rest undisturbed. I waited.
I waited for my duties to end. I am no statesman, no courtier. I am a scholar, but I could no more read a tome today than I could take a breath of air without expecting Hamlet’s scent to be carried on it. He asked me to stay in this heartless world until his affairs were settled, and that is what I promised. That is all I promised, and that is all I will deliver.
Fortinbras is King, Hamlet is gone, and so I must be as well. No one at court will be surprised when I disappear. I have made me grief plain these last months, as obvious as my prince did after his father’s death, but with all the more desperation, for I fear not the undiscovered country: I welcome what dreams may come.
It is spring at last. As I walk through the trees, sunlight glistens on snow, birds wake, ice melts from branches and drips to the ground. The sounds of life are everywhere, the smells of yawning earth and greenery beginning to wake. Such life, such hope… such things are not for me. I walk on.
The entrance of the royal family’s mausoleum is made of pink stone, imported from Italy. Inside the walls are decorated with carvings, tapestries, stone polished to a shine out of respect for those laid to rest within. I could barely see around me the last time I was in this building: my eyes were so constantly wet I could barely see the Doctor of Divinity as he performed prayers over Hamlet’s casket. Now, I am calm as I walk through the short hallway that leads to his final resting place. For the first time in a month I am at peace, and soon I will be at rest.
I kneel beside his tomb. A stone casket carved out of the floor, a statue of my prince lays atop it, eyes shut, arms crossed and hidden under a shield. If the statue-maker knew my prince, a book would be tucked beneath the shield so he could peek at it when he got bored. The thought brings a slight smile to my face, and with this last thought of my beloved, I pull the knife from beneath my coat.
“A most convincing likeness, is it not?”
I spin around, still kneeling, and fall back against the tomb. Hamlet laughs from the doorway leading to the church and steps forward. “Surprised, my friend?”
“What is this? Hamlet?” I whisper. My hand flinches around the knife, drawing his attention. His face twists in sorrow.
“An antique Roman, so you claimed to be, and here before me word to action suits.” He crouches before me and reaches out. “Lay off this bodkin, dear Horatio: thy business here in Denmark is complete.”
I shake my head. “I see though rosy lenses of a dream, not eyes that have by painful truths been pierced. My friend is gone!” I close my eyes and rub at them, but when I look again he is still there, pity and compassion in his gaze. “Thou art an apparition like the king, a fleshless spirit come to tease my heart!”
“No spirit, worthy friend, but solid clay!” Hamlet thumps on his chest with a fist, and the sound is as true as any I could make. “When I was slashed with devious Laertes’ blade and poison through my blood began to run, I knew its nature from my days at school. The poison was well-known to we who drank: our ale was laced to keep the rats from theft. Such practice is not known in this dead land.”
He gestured to the outer door of the crypt with a look of loathing I recognized from many a rant about Denmark. Hamlet was never happier than when he was at school, he always hated to be dragged back home. I swallow heavily, almost daring to believe.
“The father of this church, a loyal friend, kept my survival secret as I begged. I have no wish to rule, Horatio, as you well know; nor does Ophelia.”
He sits beside me now, his back to his own tomb, and in the motion he does not see my hopes crash to the cold stone ground. “Ophelia lives on, my lord? But how?”
Hamlet smiles, eyes bright. “She played the part of madness much like I, desiring to escape our graceless cage. She leapt into the river like to drown, but when from those dread waters she was pulled she took a draught to mimic lifelessness. My friend the priest helped her wake up and flee within the very hour of her death.”
“And you rise from the dead to be with her,” I whisper. I cannot look at him, only at the stone of death before me, whose inhabitant has as much life in him as I do in this moment. I should have known better than to let myself hope. My hand tightens on the knife once more.
“Ophelia with her dear maid doth elope,” Hamlet says urgently. He moves in front of me, touches my chin to break my eyes from the dagger. His skin against mine is proof of more than life; it solidifies the fire inside me that has no hope of meeting its match, at least until he speaks again. “And I return to be with none but you.”
I stare at him in shock. His lips tremble, pursed white; he swallows. “I told thee true, Horatio, that I could hold no soul above thine in my heart. Thy endless patience, constancy, thy blood, which tempered long yet flows the deepest red, are cure to every flaw that I possess, are water to the fire in my bones, quenching the thirst I knew not that I had. For you, dear one, I have come back from death.”
The knife clatters to the ground as I rise to hold him in my arms. He returns the clasp just as tightly, as though the last four weeks have cut him just as deeply as they have cut me. For a time, I know nothing but the weight of him against me, the sounds of his breath and his heart, and then his scent breaks through my addled mind. I breathe him in just as I have in my dreams for the past month, never expecting the chance to see him again, and close my eyes, my soul finally at rest.
“What now, sweet prince?” I whisper. “Where shall we go from here?”
“Our fortunes lie beyond this graveyard land,” he says, voice rasping. When he pulls back, there are tears on his cheeks, and I wipe them off with a shaking hand. I still cannot believe he is here.
He takes my hand, his smile telling me he is just as amazed. “In what land we set down I care not of, as long as you beside me are avowed.”
I press a chaste kiss against his lips. “Fore’er, my lord, and not a second less.”