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"He might be this way," Guildenstern noted. If he remembered the layout of the castle correctly - and it had been a good while, but he wasn't about to admit to his uncertainty. He strode down a stone corridor with more certainty than he felt, the sounds of his footfalls echoing off of the walls. He paused as he realized only one set of footfalls was returning to him. He looked back to see that Rosencrantz was engrossed in examining a wall sconce.
“They were talking about Ambassadors from Norway?" the man noted, and Guildenstern wasn't sure if his curious tone was meant for the idea of the Ambassadors or for the wall sconce. "I hadn’t noticed.”
Guildenstern sighed, resigned to however long it would take for the man to satisfy his childlike curiosity. “What is there to notice? They’re men like any other.”
“I thought they’d be taller than most.” Rosencrantz pressed at the sconce, twisted it, searching for… something? Guildenstern had no idea what went on in that man’s head. “And blonde.”
“Lots of men are blonde. Hamlet, for one.”
“But he’s not tall. As tall as people from Norway are. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard…” The sconce came off in his hand, and Rosencrantz looked at it, seeming more confused than chagrined.
Guildenstern carefully took it, with the endless patience of a tolerant parent. He pressed it back into place… then frowned as the sound of Polonius’s voice came through the wall. He sounded emotional, and he was discussing bosoms, both of which Guildenstern found quite interesting. He leaned into the wall, pressing his ear against it.
Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET. This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me …
“He’s reading his daughter’s love letters,” Guildenstern told Rosencrantz, frowning.
“Who?” Rosencrantz asked, his brown furrowing.
“Lord Polonius,” Guildenstern replied.
“His daughter is writing him love letters!” Rosencrantz gasped, indignantly. “That’s not cricket, is it?”
“She’s not writing love letters to him,” Guildenstern replied, testily. “Hamlet is writing the love letters.”
“To her dad?" Rosencrantz gasped.
Guildenstern pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, taking a deep breath. Would he never remember how clear he had to be, with Rosencrantz? “Hamlet wrote Ophelia love letters. She gave those love letters to her father. Who is now reading them to the King.” He pressed his ear back to the wall to listen in on some more of the conversation.
“Well, the first part of that makes sense,” Rosencrantz noted. “Why give them to her dad, though? For constructive criticism? Were they not very good love letters?”
“Well…” Guildenstern shrugged, frowning at the bits of conversation he got through the wall. “Some business about how beautiful she is, and how excellent her white bosom is.”
Rosencrantz leaned back against the wall, giving Guildenstern a look that seemed a bit lost. “That’s just a bit generic, isn’t it? Plenty of women have excellent white bosoms. Plenty of men, too, come to that,” he added as an aside. “Why doesn’t he talk about how good she is at pinochle? Or taking her horseback riding, or swimming? She likes that!”
“She never told me she likes horseback riding,” Guildenstern groused. “And you’re the one who dragged me into the pinochle." Which he regularly lost – she was very good at it. Rosencrantz seemed rather to enjoy losing, or perhaps it was just Ophelia’s glee when she won. "Regardless." Guildenstern focused his mind back on their situation. Rosencrantz had such a way of distracting in interesting ways. "We weren't summoned here because of Ophelia. She's been acting sane."
"It's not insane to be dismissive of Ophelia," Rosencrantz sighed. "It seems like everyone is doing it. The King, even her father."
"Maybe they're all insane," Guildenstern suggested. That would be something, wouldn't it, if everyone other than Rosencrantz were insane. If he were the one sane man making his way gently and smoothly through a mad world. "It makes far too much sense, really."
"But sane just means whatever most people do," Rosencrantz noted, walking over to a small side-table and taking the fine lace-edged tablecloth in his hands, looking at it with great interest. "So if most people are dismissive, then that's sane." He frowned. "Even if it's not right." A door slammed in the distance, and he jumped in startlement, ripping the tablecloth out from under the decorative vase and tea-set on the table, leaving them undisturbed. He looked at the cloth in his hands in surprise.
"Does it mean that? So if one man wanders through the halls with his with his doublet all unbraced, no hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle, pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other - that man is mad, but if everyone else does it, too, it's suddenly sane?"
"That's very specific," Rosencrantz noted, but he was distracted by removing the vase and tea-set from the side-table, putting the tablecloth back on, and replacing the tea-set and vase.
"Oh, it was just an idea that came to me," Guildenstern replied, archly, "no particular reason. A pure hypothetical." He walked over to have a better view of what Rosencrantz was doing.
"Take a look at this!" Rosencrantz noted, with great pride. He took the table-cloth in both hands, gave Guildenstern a cheeky grin, and yanked the tablecloth up and off of the table, sending the vase and tea-set crashing to the ground, where they shivered into many pieces.
"I think there are better ways of getting rid of unwanted crockery," Guildenstern noted. He plucked at Rosencrantz's sleeve. "Come on, we have a job to do." Preferably, before anyone saw them...
"The grave's a fine and private place..." The words came to Guildenstern, even if nothing else did. It was private, to a certain extent. And quiet. If he said nothing... it seemed there was nothing to hear.
"Not bad, that." Death did not seem to have made Rosencrantz less cheerful. And if that did not, nothing could, truly. "I mean, it could be a lot less fine. It's quiet. Relaxing, really. Nobody wants us to do anything, nobody needs us to do anything. We can just... rest. That feeling of mortality, the one we're born with? We must have known, somewhere, somehow, that it would be like this. That it would be all right, in the end."
"We can rest." And if Rosencrantz was able to, he had one up on Guildenstern. He felt unsettled. Unfinished. "Is that all there is? Play a tangential little part, then rest for all of eternity? What was this for?"
"Didn't you enjoy it?" Rosencrantz replied, some vague umbrage sounding in his voice. "We had fun, as kids. You, me, Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia - we played and swam and laughed." The pause was brief, but pregnant. "You used to laugh, you know. It's been a while."
"Life got less fun, at some point," Guildenstern replied. "It just all turned into politics and madness and murder. I suppose that's what politics is. Madness and murder."
"Maybe that's why Ophelia ducked out when she did. Good timing," Rosencrantz noted. "She must be around here, too. Resting. Nobody is bothering her, nobody is writing her hopelessly generic love letters."
The next pause was lengthy. It was impossible to determine how long it lasted, without heartbeats or breath to judge it by. It might have only been a moment, it might have been aeons. There was no need to rush anything, not now. They had, quite literally, nothing but time.
"Still," Rosencrantz said, finally. "It's nice to be here with you."
Guildenstern contemplated that for a moment. "Yes," he finally agreed. "It wouldn't feel right to be with anyone else."