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How did this happen? My sister, so lovely and fresh in her love for my friend, has died. My friend killed our father, and, now, I stand ready to ensure his death to avenge them both. Perhaps I never should have gone to Paris. Or maybe Hamlet shouldn't have been sent to Wittenberg, if he'd been able to see his father more these past few years, his wits might have remained ordered.
No one wanted to tell me anything. I knew I couldn't make my father's funeral, so I took my time finding cheap passage back from my schooling. Had I not heeded my father's voice in my head telling me to be frugal, without being mean, I might have been back in time to help my dear Ophelia.
There are times when I think my father and the King would gladly have exchanged sons. Old Hamlet was soldierly beyond all else. He needed his advisors -- especially my father -- for diplomacy. Say what you will about the old man, he could talk for hours without giving anything away whereas the late King was more straightforward than the sword which was always sharp on his hip. Between them, Denmark has been at peace since early in Old Hamlet's reign. His sword and leadership defeated our enemies, and my father's words created the treaties which held our borders firm.
How did Hamlet come to run mad? Run Ophelia to madness? He couldn't have thought one his age, untried beyond university, would have been elected. We Danes know the dangers of dynasties, even as we acknowledge the value of good breeding. Claudius was the logical choice, though I doubt he was anyone's first choice, he would have been most of the electors second choice. Diplomacy, the exigencies of the moment, got him his throne on his brother's death.
But no time to think of him now. I must think of my family and my vengeance.
Yet every childhood memory, happy or sad, includes Hamlet. Ophelia could outrun us both. She was a hoyden with a quick wit in the games Hamlet devised for us. I could outride them both easily, though Hamlet was the better jumper on horseback. Ice skates were my purview. Neither of them could touch me on ice skates. He swam best -- Ophelia wasn't allowed -- though I could beat him with any type of sword. (Now is not the time to think on that. Swords will come soon enough.)
Did I ever do anything better than he did in the school room? I don't think so, though we were near enough equals in mathematics, he was my better at geometry and astronomy. Rhetoric. Ophelia could match him for poetry until she was taken to her own schoolroom. But we still ran and played together, in snow in winter; in sun ripe fields come summer. We climbed trees. Was that when Hamlet and Ophelia started to think of each other … differently -- no longer just friends or like brother and sister. There was one day, when Ophelia climbed a wall and Hamlet's hands were on her waist to help her down when she reached the gate. Something began there, on that perfect summer's day, and Hamlet gave her a sprig of rosemary from the garden; for remembrance, he said.
Hamlet, quiet and thoughtful with the others of our set, was garrulous with us. Maybe he thought we'd built up a tolerance for it, like King Xerxes with poison, by living with our father. I have heard from courtiers that whatever his madness is or was, it was not my father he meant to kill that night. I believe them. He might mock my father occasionally (we all did that, and old Hamlet, too when the mood struck us), but he liked my father. At least, I believe he did. What furies pursued him that he hoped to kill his uncle, his King? What the hell was my father doing hiding behind an arras?
People keep pulling me aside to sympathize, they say, but really to impart their view on it all. Hamlet mazing through the court, blacker than any crow -- or lawyer -- reading his books and cracking his wit disturbed people. I wasn't here, but I can imagine that some of the disturbance was how intelligent Hamlet was, how pointed his wit. He could flay the flesh from your bones with words, but I only heard him do it with the cruel.
We played word games together, so often. I rarely won, but Ophelia and Hamlet could get drunk on laughter with the silliness of their words. I hadn't realized how long that continued until one of the "sympathetic" courtiers gave me Hamlet's letters to Ophelia.
It was a shock to discover that not a week went by while he was away that she didn't write him, and, other than at exam time, his missives were just as regular. Last night, I put them in order, read the question put by one to another and then read the reply as if those answers about the doing in court or the beauties of Wittenberg could tell me what happened. Although, it did show me what in meant to fall in love. Their words could pass the censorship of my father, and yet, I could tell when a change came to them, and it seemed as if Hamlet's passion, though respectful, was just as ardent as my sister's. There was one which began, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day which finally let me know, and I assume Ophelia, how deeply in love he truly was.
I never would have thought my younger sister, just one year apart from me, would fall so deeply into uncharted waters. Our families were of a level, when Hamlet finally finished his studies both sides would have danced with joy at their wedding. The union would have ensured that one or the other of us would be King in the fullness of time, the other advisor, brother, most trusted of all the court.
***
There's a knock at my door. It is time. The walk to the throne room seems endless. I see Hamlet, finally out of his inky black, talking quietly to Horatio. I hear him say, "The readiness is all."
I take my sword, unbated, poisoned from the hand of the king. I could change it for one of the others, make this the contest Hamlet expects, were it not for the deaths between us. I take my position. He's right: the readiness is all.