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Horatio speaks until the day has drifted into a sullen, gloomy night, tossed about with uncertain clouds; to Fortinbras and the soldiers and others in the castle. He is the only one to know of the whole dreadful story, from the apparition to Hamlet’s vows, and it falls to him to tell the tale. He speaks until his voice is hoarse, and those around him pass him drinks to ease his speech—but none touched with that potent poison that had since slain Hamlet. His hand shakes upon the glass, and a few droplets of red fall upon the ground.
By morning of the next day, the clouds have broken into a grey rain, fit for the funeral of the prince—and the rest of the royal family as well, though what with tales of poison and murder it is uncertain what honors should be afforded them. Still, rites are rites, and there is something to the satisfaction of having a thing done, and then forgotten about. The graveyard where Ophelia has late been interred now has her brother beside her, as her father is; and there is Hamlet with his family—the slain and the cursed by fortune. There are no skulls yet to speak of, or too; Horatio watches the pale strange creature that is the mortal shell of his once-companion and wishes he could bring himself to feel a pure, clean grief; but all he feels is anger, boiling in the cold breeze, bringing the blood to his cheeks. He stays long after the rest have gone and talks to the new-turned earth regardless of the body that cannot hear him any longer, and the soul that is in heaven, or is perhaps on its way there still.
“‘Abstain thee from felicity awhile’—how long, Hamlet? Your story has been told—is that enough? And yet the cup is empty, you drank the rest yourself. You are free of this wretched world at last, and yet I am not free of misery, though I wish I could be.”
He waits, while the dark grows around him, half hoping—as if it would!—to see another pale visage, no matter what torments it would promise, to see sweet Hamlet’s face once more, walking beside his grave—but there is nothing.
“For all my science, you have me praying for signs like the meanest beggar,” Horatio murmurs, reproachfully; and then he turns away, and puts that place behind him, and does not go again.
If only it were that easy to rid himself of memories.
The last letter he had ever received from Hamlet lies in his room still, tossed carelessly upon the table—he takes it up and reads it under the flickering lamplight while beside him his half-packed things languish like spectres, reproaching him for his delay. He is to make back to Wittenberg in the morning, and he dreads the thought; to return there without Hamlet. To return. So far, life has seemed like a mere dream, lost in the vague unpleasantness of waiting, but he feels sure that he will break the surface soon, and find himself struck once more by cuts from every turn. Here is the bold script with which his prince used to write, shaken, perhaps, by the rolling deck, or the tremors of a brain too touched by fate and greatness.
Farewell.
—He that thou knowest thine,
Hamlet.
“Farewell,” he says.
They had met at University in Wittenberg. Horatio had heard of the Danish prince before he saw him; they said he had too much of a temper, too much of a tongue in him. He had been caught in two brawls before the first week was out and then cooled his heels writing lines and under the lash. He took it well, prince or no, and Horatio had seen him enter their first class together, head held high, dark hair pushed from eyes that seemed too thoughtful, a smiling mouth. While Horatio studied dutifully, Hamlet perused his materials with a sharp wit. “Why?” he said. It was that which always got him into trouble. He was never appeased with the learning of the greats, though he admired them; “why?” he asked, and then made his own philosophies and his own myths. There was something so bold in that, something that brought Horatio to by turns engage him and disagree, that and his irreverent humor. Sometimes the talk would turn from Latin to Greek, and they would speak of the myths and the old gods, whose symbolism was still apt, though they had been o’ertaken by more rational, Christian beliefs. And sometimes from there they would turn to admiration of the Greeks, and, well—
“Our teachers would have your head if they saw you reading such things,” Hamlet said, holding his crumpled notes in hand and flinging them with some interest at the other boy, from where they lounged on facing beds in their room; Horatio looked coolly up from his perusal of the Symposium to say, “Only if they knew I was reading it, and they won’t, will they?”
“No,” Hamlet said, suddenly serious. “I was speaking in jest—come off it, Horatio.” There was awkward silence for a moment, and then Hamlet said, “that one—it’s about love, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All forms of it. Philia, and Eros, love between woman and man, and… other notions.”
“Mostly other notions,” Horatio said drolly.
“Do they come to any conclusions, then, on the nature of love?” Hamlet said.
Horatio kept his place with his finger and watched Hamlet’s studied indifference. “Have you?”
“Me?”
Horatio shrugged. “You’re a philosopher, aren’t you?”
Hamlet laughed, and said, “You’re the philosopher, Horatio. If anyone could unravel the notions behind the movements of the stars and the ills of man it would be you. I only doubt, continually, and pray to Heaven that I haven’t erred in some egregious manner from sheer simpleness.”
“You understate your own brilliance,” Horatio said, but Hamlet shook his head.
“Still, humor me,” Horatio said.
Hamlet sat up, facing him, and frowned. “Love?” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it.”
“Oh, haven’t you? You’ve sent enough letters back to Denmark. Ophelia, was it?”
“I love her,” Hamlet said. “I couldn’t not; she is so—”
“Well-endowed…”
Hamlet looked on the way to becoming really wrathful, so Horatio finished hastily, stifling a laugh, “with kindness, and virtue?”
“You’re a miscreant,” Hamlet said. “If you were anyone else I’d have to fight you in her honor.”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” Horatio said, feeling suddenly penitent. The joke had been more than he usually would have dared, yet he’d been so uncertain of their conversation that he felt he must hang on to something familiar.
“Tell me what they say of love,” Hamlet said, at last. “Your philosophers, Horatio.”
“Not my philosophers.”
“Your philosophy. Is it not, though? Do you disagree with their conclusions?”
“They come to no conclusions, my lord.”
“They strive, but they do not come?”
“They talk of death—”
“Oh, of the French sort?”
“Amongst other things. Do you really wish to know, or do you wish to continue in that manner?”
“Forgive me,” Hamlet said, though he did not sound touched by any repentant spirit. “What do they say of death?”
“That a lover will follow his beloved into it; that is the kind of foolhardiness—or courage—that such a state engenders.”
“Death is such a strange place, Horatio. To think of Lethe, and what lies beyond, it makes one—”
“Wonder?”
“Yes.”
There was a moment’s morbid silence, and then Hamlet spoke again. “What else? I know they talk of more than death.”
Horatio looked down to where his finger had marked the spot, and with a sudden recklessness, perhaps driven on by the late hour, and the giddiness that had not yet faded from passing their exams earlier that day, read out what was before him, speaking before his courage had the chance to desert him, “when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.”
“Ah, that is the section about the men with half a nose.”
Horatio raised an eyebrow. “Careful, my lord, you show your knowledge of the text.”
Hamlet smiled, without any shame at the deception, such as it had been. “I have a thought, Horatio.”
“Oh? Of what sort?”
“Of the practical kind, that might further our explorations into the nature—uh, of science.”
Horatio couldn’t look away from Hamlet’s teasing glance, bold and yet—still uncertain, underneath it all. If he were to refuse, this could still be laughed off and forgotten. Nothing had yet been said that could not be unsaid, in the cold light of morning. Oh, but what was time, and reason? He resented them all.
“Is that so, my prince? Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?”
Hamlet stood up, awkwardly—and for one moment they only watched each other, and Horatio wondered if Hamlet would flee, for the trembling that went through his frame seemed to proclaim the sort of reckless fear that could fall either to one side or to the other—
“Art... thou all right?” Horatio said, at last, quietly. There was something in Hamlet, something to do with his terrible genius, that always seemed to hover about a horrible end, something that could plunge and break itself, and he found that at that moment he was concerned wholly with making sure Hamlet didn’t spin away to dash himself to pieces rather than whatever fun they might get up to.
But at his words, Hamlet smiled softly, and grew calm, as though something in his words had been enough. “Yes, I am. Move over, then—or there won’t be enough room—”
Horatio placed the book aside and then turned his attention away from all higher thoughts, for the evening. There would be time enough to ponder.
So thou, sick world, mistak'st thy self to be
Well, when alas, thou'rt in a lethargy.
Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then
Thou might'st have better spar'd the sun, or man.
That wound was deep, but 'tis more misery
That thou hast lost thy sense and memory.
'Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan,
But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown.
Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast
Nothing but she, and her thou hast o'erpast.
“In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story,” Hamlet had commanded him.
Horatio had, and would, and is still doing so. But the true irony of it all—and of course Hamlet had known! Was that whatever difference any of it could make upon the world would be fleeting at best. He goes back to Wittenberg, and tells of Hamlet’s story there, and learns more of Art, and Science; and is sick to death of philosophy, which always seems to intrude itself upon a quiet afternoon when he is otherwise engaged, bringing to mind questions of the world beyond, and of what is left. His schoolmates are saddened and interested, for the story of Hamlet’s madness had traveled far, but even that passes, to make way for new days marching unceasingly upon each others’ heels. He studies, and writes treatises, and poetry, and goes about his life, for though he could interpret his duty to Hamlet as finished, he knows that to do so would be churlish. There comes a day when even the thought of the king’s ghost, as he had appeared to them all that night when it began, seems to be hardly more than the product of a dream, though in his heart of hearts, he cannot doubt but that it had occurred.
He keeps the letters—for there had been enough, in their time—enough, but not enough at all—folded, in a drawer, and when he fears that he is coming to forget the shape of Hamlet’s words, he pulls them out and studies the loops inked into the paper, worn smooth by his fingers. It seems a sorry bounty, all that he has left of Hamlet. Missives that tell of where he had been, once upon a time, and where he was about to be. Even Ophelia had gained declarations more avid, made pretty for her eyes to see, but all that Hamlet had said to him had been told in confidence, with nothing but the air disturbed by their passing, and the only thing that he has any longer, of Hamlet’s, is himself.