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Horatio first learns the name Ophelia when Hamlet returns to Wittenburg sun-golden and smiling. Half a moment of hesitation, a summer’s worth of distance between them; Horatio wrote diligently, so he could feel, as he poured the week onto the page, the ghost of conversation between himself and his friend; so he could feel, for a moment, that he were travelling elsewhere even as obligation and circumstances held him far from Elsinore and Wittenburg both.
Hamlet was not a constant writer; Horatio imagined him dashing out the letters when he had the time, caught between the rigors of his own scholarly pursuits and the demands of state. The letters were long, touching on all matters in his friend’s thoughts but none in the earthly realm, and Horatio could only imagine the events of the summer were so out of his friend’s hands, all princely matters of duty and none of choice, so his letters were one of the few freedoms allowed one who had grown with the shackles of statehood.
The quieter worry crept into his head now and then that perhaps writing to Horatio was a stray thought that passed through Hamlet’s idle hours now and then; another obligation to a man best dismissed to past memories of mouths on mouths in a maze of spines and words.
Then the half-moment ends, and under threshold of the doorway both of Horatio’s misconceptions quietly die. The second, when Hamlet’s mouth meets his as easily and fondly as he had kissed him farewell months before; the first, when Hamlet’s doublet slips under Horatio’s hands to reveal a trail of bruises blossoming down the skin of his neck.
The summer, Horatio learns, had not taken a companion from him. Nor had Hamlet passed it in staid, scholarly thought and family obligation.
Hamlet had not thought to write of it, he maintains, with an uncharacteristic laugh of surprise; he had no intention to lie, only knew Horatio would have no interest in sunny hours passed in the meadows outside Elsinore, of things like flowers and the whispered words of pretty girls, things that mattered not. Hamlet says this in such a careful, insistent way, with such an arrogant tilt to his smile, that Horatio knows these things matter quite a lot.
Ophelia matters quite a lot. That was the name Hamlet finally murmurs, some weeks later, when Horatio brings up the bewildered refrain of their reunion. Ophelia, and though the glow of the hours he passed with her in the sun and the blossoms of her teeth on his neck have faded, by then, Horatio finds flowers pressed in books Hamlet passes to him, and he tastes the name on his tongue. Ophelia.
*
Hamlet is reticent; Horatio knows he likes to build walls around the bonds he constructs, walls to keep the unwieldy bodies of friendship and lordship from crashing into each other. In Wittenberg, Hamlet is a student, Horatio’s friend, in Elsinore, Hamlet is a prince, his father’s son, and in the meadow, Hamlet is Ophelia’s, and what that means, Horatio is not meant to know.
Hamlet kisses Horatio in the cold, shadowed corners of the library and teases a smile from him with pieces of Sophocles and Chaucer and Hamlet kisses Ophelia in the meadow under the sun and helps her thread flowers into her hair. The two are separate, in his mind, the walls of the seasons and distance keeping the emotions from meeting and entangling.
But Horatio is not content with that, as much as he tries. Intertwined with Hamlet in the cold confines of their students’ quarters after Hamlet’s January return to Wittenberg, Horatio finds, as always, that he can breath easier again; but also, that he cannot stop thinking of the notes he found earlier, tucked with care amongst the clothes in Hamlet’s trunk. Reading the letters would be a betrayal he could not imagine; but neither can he escape seeing the blossoms pressed carefully between the pages, the scent of petals and perfume still lingering in the paper. The scrawling hand, so light and yet so much like Hamlet’s.
Horatio does not push. It is not his nature, not when Hamlet shies away from speaking of Ophelia. Days pass when Horatio does not think of her at all, caught up in the way Hamlet smiles slyly across the lecture hall to him, content with being able to call the room he shares with Hamlet home. The parts of Hamlet’s life he shares are the part of his own life he likes best; but he’d like to share all of it with Hamlet, not only the vaunted halls of Wittenberg, but his own humbler home too, and maybe… maybe even Elsinore. And now and then, he finds another flower tucked in the carefully-printed pages of Hamlet’s collection and he wonders if she chose this poem on purpose, thinks he should like to meet this Ophelia.
*
At first, the only language Ophelia and Horatio share is Hamlet, and they speak only in entrances and exits.
Hamlet comes home to Elsinore with the merriment of their farewell festivities still ringing in his head, his fingers stained with ink and the careful path of Horatio’s kisses etched into his skin. Perhaps Ophelia reads this; Horatio reads an answer, certainly, in the fact Hamlet returns to him in the fall again with skin golden and blossoming. Ophelia has perfected the art of drawing flowers from Hamlet’s skin; Horatio marks kisses like a scholar marks pages, denoting interesting passages, but Ophelia kisses like she likes the way those kisses look on Hamlet’s skin.
One summer, as Horatio carefully pours out the sum of delights and miseries of his week to Hamlet, he scribbles a fragment of a poem at the bottom of the page. Something he ran across in a latin text, a metaphor about flowers, clumsily and hastily translated to Danish not for the benefit of Hamlet- who is as well versed, if not so devoted to the language- but for Ophelia.
This reminded me of your Ophelia, and I thought you might like to share it with her, he writes, and then crosses it out, and writes I thought Ophelia might like this.
Whether Ophelia does or does not, whether she finds a poem a presumptuous gift from a man she never met, or whether Hamlet himself thinks to share it with her, Horatio never knows; what he does know is after that, Hamlet seems to concede some piece of the walls he built to keep his affections separate.
He writes of Ophelia’s love of words, of her sweet voice, of a wit so sharp her tongue could cut without a man even knowing his blood was being drawn. Of long hours spent with her, away from the war brewing in the court, away from the bloodlust that stalked the castle’s halls. How she alone at home can see Hamlet as he is; how he misses Horatio abroad, who shares her skill.
But Horatio only knows he loves Ophelia, just a little, when the first letter in her own hand arrives.
*
Ophelia’s correspondence does not end when Hamlet returns to Horatio; all throughout September and October, she writes to her lover’s lover of her garden, of the matters of state that crash about in her life as the warfever in Denmark ebbs and flows, of the frustration of being cooped up in the castle under her father’s eyes and the joy of the freedom she steals by slipping out to the woods and foraging for wild flowers and mushrooms before the snow comes. I am fortunate the queen has a taste for mushrooms, she writes. For my father will allow us any action that will please the Queen in his name. Else he would not even allow me beyond the castle gates ever.
She has as sharp a wit as Hamlet always alluded to; she writes with pointed humor of the political mishaps and scandals of the court, particularly of things she overhears, when others think her incapable of understanding. I write you this, she confesses, in one letter, for the pleasure of telling another, for I feel I hold too often the secrets of others, and yet, these trivial things could turn serious were I to pass them onto my lord Hamlet. You know nothing of any of this, Horatio, and that is why I tell you.
Horatio writes back to say, he is pleased she tells him what she likes; but keeping secrets from Hamlet is not something he is sure he is capable of; in truth, not something he wants to do. It is not that their are not boundaries between them; it is that he does not want to have to worry. There are so many other things to worry of, and Hamlet is flighty, prone to high emotions and equally prone to repressing them. Should something like a secret come between them, Horatio worries how long it would take for him to pry that from Hamlet. Horatio does not want to worry.
He spends weeks worrying instead of offending Ophelia, of betraying her confidence.
Her next letter comes with a dismissal of his worries, and a confession. In truth, I made it sound more serious than it is, she writes. Hamlet has little interest in these small intrigues; he loses patience with talk of them very quickly. But you, on the other hand, are not a lord and so they cannot burden you, so I will continue to write to you of them as long as they do not.
Horatio is only too happy to agree to that. He knows too well the weight of too many words, waiting to be spoken to someone, anyone.
*
Another summer comes, and Horatio finally works up the courage to confess the realization that has been blossoming in his mind all spring. He opens his mouth one afternoon, sitting with Hamlet in the chill, late spring sun.
“I don’t want to go back home,” he says, at the same time Hamlet says “Come home with me,” and they stare at each other for a moment. Hamlet’s dark eyes are wide and startled and then he laughs, and that is that.
The reality of meeting Ophelia does not occur to him until they are almost to Elsinore; it feels as if they should already have met, he knows her from the ink-scrawl of her words and the traces of perfume on the papers she send, the flowers pressed between them, the marks she leaves on Hamlet.
It is strange at first, that the quiet girl Hamlet greets so formally is Ophelia. She’s just as Hamlet described, but her eyes are downcast, her voice quiet as she receives Hamlet along with the rest of the court. But Horatio waits, and listen, and realizes the stern-looking man at the king’s right hand always has his eyes on Ophelia, measuring the way she curtsies to Hamlet, the way she sits, the way she even draws breath with a cruel and measuring eye. So often Ophelia writes of her father, but always with scorn, with dismissal; Horatio realizes he did not understand at all how that, too, was a confession, a defiance she was only safe to share with him and perhaps Hamlet. It is only, in a moment when the king finally draws the man’s cruel eyes away, Ophelia’s slide to Horatio and a flash of a smile crosses her face.
Out of the weight of her father’s eyes, Ophelia unfolds like a flower in the sun, suddenly having space where there was none before. Horatio realizes, for the first time truly, Hamlet is not the only one to whom the walls of Elsinore are a binding weight.
*
It is that weight he feels again, standing beside Hamlet as Ophelia holds out the letters, letters from two and a half falls winters and springs apart. Ophelia speaks, her voice restrained, her eyes wary, and it should not be so, not when they three are alone.
Horatio realizes this before Hamlet; Hamlet is too caught up in his own griefs.
Horatio is caught for a moment; his breath is stolen the walls of Elsinore closing in to crush the two he loves.
But Ophelia’s eyes find him, as Hamlet’s voice rises. They have had so much practice speaking without words here; her eyes flicker to the wall, her eyes afraid, asking him to catch her meaning.
Horatio understands, a moment before Hamlet would have realized himself. He catches Hamlet’s shoulder, and then Hamlet’s hand in his own, and leans in to murmur Ophelia’s message in his ear.
And from then, the story is a bit different.