a_t_rain

At last. See here if you want to catch up on past events. Plus, this installment has bonus Hamlet / Ophelia!

Act Three: The Watchers

After supper, Helena retired early, pleading tiredness. They had agreed that Severus would wait a quarter of an hour and do the same. Upstairs, she pulled on her cloak and took the most essential items from her bag of medical remedies. She was not quite sure what they would find at the Capulets’ tomb, and there were people who had a nasty reaction when the Draught of Living Death began to wear off.

She had expected Severus to tap at her door when he was ready to slip outside, but instead she heard his voice in the hall. “Go away, you silly girl – it’s no concern of yours.”

“It is my concern. You are a guest in our house, and I will call up my mother and father – and my little sister! – if you will not tell me where you are bound. ‘Tis dangerous to walk the streets at night.”

“Very well. I’ll tell you what I can – only don’t call Livia.”

Helena emerged from her chamber. “What’s the matter?”

Rosaline looked her up and down. “You are wearing your traveling cloak, too. Whither go you?”

Helena met Severus’s eyes. Rosaline was plainly determined to know what was going on, and no useful lies came to mind. “To St. Peter’s Church,” she admitted at last. “We think ... someone ... may be about to – er, desecrate – your cousin’s tomb.”

“Grave robbers? Should we not call up the watch?”

“No!” said Severus.

“Not yet,” said Helena. “We know not whether anything will happen.”

“Let me go to the church with you,” said Rosaline, and it sounded more like a command than a request.

Helena and Severus looked at one another again. Severus hadn’t looked an absolute no, so Helena made a swift decision. “Very well. Come with us, but you must say nothing to anyone of anything that may pass tonight.”

* * *

The three of them waited, crouched in the shadows behind the Capulets’ vault.

“There’s someone inside the church,” whispered Severus in Helena’s ear. “They may be watching us.”

Helena looked up. Sure enough, there were candles burning inside the church, and she could see a flicker of movement beyond the windowpanes. “Friar Laurence, do you think?”

“It could be. He’d be watching the grave, wouldn’t he, if he expected her to wake.”

Helena stood up and took her wand from the inner pocket where she usually kept it. “I will go and see. I’ll tell him I came into the church to pray.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Helena shook her head. She could not imagine Severus doing a convincing impression of someone who had casually dropped into a church to pray. “No. You and Rosaline wait for me here.”

* * *

Severus and Rosaline had not been alone long before a figure approached the tomb.

“Who is it?” demanded Rosaline, and without waiting for an answer, “Oh, why do you not stop him!”

“Shh! I don’t know who it is, and he hasn’t tried anything yet! Be patient!”

“Oh! ‘Tis only Paris. How sweet, he has brought flowers for Juliet.”

Paris? But why would Juliet fake her own death to meet a man she was about to marry, with her family’s knowledge and blessing?

“Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew,” intoned Paris. “O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones, with which sweet water nightly I will dew; or wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans...”

Severus wondered, not for the first time, why people in the sixteenth century were so fond of declaiming poetry to themselves.

The flash of a torch and a flurry of footsteps announced an additional visitor. Instead of flowers, this one bore a crowbar and a pickaxe.

“Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, thus I enforce thy wanton jaws to open – and in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food!”

Judged as poetry, this was less elegant than Paris’s speech but a great deal more forceful. Severus caught a glimpse of the speaker in the moonlight: a young man, slimmer and lighter on his feet than Paris. Severus had no idea who he was, but it was plain that Paris did. Rosaline did too, for she drew in her breath.

“Stop thy unhallowed toil,” Paris commanded, “vile Montague! Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee! Obey, and go with me, for thou must die!”

The stranger turned and dropped his crowbar. “I must indeed, for therefore I came hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man!” He said something else, which Severus could not catch; his voice was low and filled with a profound weariness.

Whatever he was saying, apparently it did not satisfy Paris. “I do defy thy conjurations, and apprehend thee for a felon here!”

“Wilt thou provoke me?” The stranger drew his sword. “Then have at thee, boy!”

* * *

The figure in the church was not Friar Laurence. It was Lady Montague; Helena had seen her, but not spoken with her, at Mercutio’s funeral. She was kneeling in one of the chapels, and looked ill.

“Madam?” Helena asked. “Are you well?”

Lady Montague looked about vaguely. “What? Oh, aye, I am well enough. I have seen a sign...”

“A sign?”

Lady Montague motioned toward a statue of an obscure and balding saint that stood in an alcove of the wall. “Do you see?”

“No,” said Helena.

“St. Romuald. He has a halo.”

“Does he?” said Helena, baffled. There was a candle burning in a smaller niche above St. Romuald’s head, but she could see nothing else unusual.

“Aye. Romuald – Romeo – ‘tis a sign from my son. I know not what it means, but I thank God that I had the grace to receive it.”

“Madam, you had better go home. I do not think you are well.”

Lady Montague got to her feet, unsteadily, and tottered out of the church.

Helena thought over the encounter, frowning, but before she could do anything else, a shout from the churchyard and a clash of swords shattered the peace of the night.

Interlude: Meanwhile, at Elsinore

The tragedians of the city had returned to the palace for their first engagement since their disastrous performance of The Murder of Gonzago; or, The Mousetrap. They had elected to play The Tragedy of Orestes, which seemed calculated to appeal to the young King Hamlet’s tastes, as it was very long, filled with philosophical speeches, and based upon a play in the ancient Greek tongue. It also had several sensational murders, a ghost, and Furies who appeared and vanished in a blast of smoke, so it would appeal to normal people’s tastes as well.

The play had gone over well for the most part, but it had been impossible not to notice that the king was weeping openly through most of the play. The players conferred among themselves afterward, wondering whether they had given offense; but then King Hamlet presented them with three times their usual fee for a court performance, so they supposed it was all right. Whatever the new king’s faults might be (and they included amateur directing), at least he was not anything like his uncle Claudius, who would offer you your fee with a smile and then clap you in jail half an hour later.

* * *

Ophelia found the king pacing up and down the gallery after the play.

“My lord, are you well?”

“Very well, very well, I thank you,” said Hamlet, but Ophelia did not find his manner altogether reassuring.

“I fear you did not take much pleasure in the play.”

“On the contrary. I took very great pleasure in it. ‘Tis a tragedy finely acted, not a gambol or a jig.”

“I understand it is a tragedy. But–” But what? Ophelia thought. It was true that most people managed to watch tragedies without bursting into very public tears, but King Hamlet had never been most people, and she liked him the better for it ... at least some of the time.

“In Orestes’ case,” said Hamlet after a moment, “I see much of my own.”

Ophelia wondered what had become of Orestes later in life, and whether he had ever married, but she was anxious not to betray her ignorance. There were some fathers, she knew, who had their daughters educated in the classics, just as boys were; but Polonius (when he lived) had not been one of these. She did know that witches did not come off well in those stories. She had heard of Circe, and of Medea, although she did not remember precisely how she had learned about them. Possibly her father had told her, as an example of what good women were not like.

“You have seen, in the play tonight, the nature of revenge,” said Hamlet. “It is a kind of madness that wipes all else from the brain. You understand me?”

“In part, my lord.”

“I will speak plainer, then. I have been cruel to you. You never gave me cause.”

They were in the same gallery, Ophelia realized, where they had been when her father had sent her to spy on Hamlet, who had then seemed to be very mad. He had never spoken since of what had passed between them that day. Now that he had alluded to it, she found it suddenly hard to breathe.

“My lord, it is not true that I gave you no cause. I did – what I needs must do in obedience to my father. But I fear that I did you a great wrong.”

“I cannot judge you. I have obeyed my father too.” And killed yours hung unspoken in the air.

“It is not well to think too much upon what is past,” said Ophelia.

“No,” said Hamlet. He had stopped pacing, and drawn very close to her now. “Can we not forget the past, and start anew?”

“No,” said Ophelia, “but we can live our lives. Can we not?”

“Aye, for we have lives, and they are ours. That’s something yet.” He stared at her for a moment, as if this thought had taken him by surprise, and then kissed her.

It was at that moment when Laertes burst into the gallery.

“Let my sister be! She is no strumpet – not even for a king – and thou’rt no king, indeed no gentleman, if thou takest her for one!”

Before either Hamlet or Ophelia could react, Laertes struck the king and knocked him down. The two young men were scuffling on the gallery floor when Ophelia, half by instinct, reached for her wand. There was a loud CRACK, and Laertes and Hamlet were flung to opposite ends of the gallery.

Ophelia was almost as startled as they were; she had studied her books, but had not actually attempted to practice magic since Severus had left Elsinore. The fact that she could do that sort of thing surprised her, and frightened her a little.

Laertes, meanwhile, had come to his senses and realized that he had just committed high treason. “My lord – I do not ask pardon – I commit myself to your majesty’s mercy – but I wish it to be understood that I forgot myself.” He tried to kneel to the king, but this was difficult when the king was still spreadeagled on the floor, so he prostrated himself as Ophelia had seen in pictures of Eastern courts.

“Stand up, Laertes,” said Hamlet, who had collected himself and was now standing up as well. “No offense i’ th’ world; I can well see how you may have misunderstood. I was about to ask you for your sister’s hand in marriage.”

“Marriage, my lord?” Laertes was still ghost-white.

“‘Tis a thing people do with rings and a priest. You may have heard of it before.”

Laertes slowly took in the idea that the king’s intentions had been honorable. “I struck you, your majesty.”

“So you did. And we are to be brothers, and I think there is no brother in the world who has not struck his brother at some time or another. I beg you, think no more of it.”

Slowly, the color came back into Laertes’ face, until it was suffused with red. “My lord. I ... I thank you. ‘Tis more than I deserve.”

“I have your consent, then?”

“What? Oh. Oh, yes. Forgive me; Cornelius has been awaiting me in my chamber for this half hour.” Laertes made a hasty exit.

“I have heard,” said Ophelia, “that in some countries, it is the custom for the gentleman to seek the lady’s consent as well. I believe he does this before he considers himself betrothed to her.”

“Why, thou hast given it already.” Hamlet stopped short, abruptly less sure of himself. “Didst not?”

“Yes,” said Ophelia. “Yes.”

* * *

At breakfast the following morning, the king announced that he and Ophelia were betrothed.

“I am glad of it,” said Gertrude. “So am I.”

Hamlet choked on his bread and butter. “You’re betrothed?” he asked in a strained voice when he could speak again. “To whom?”

“To Marcellus,” said Gertrude. “We would have told you sooner, but we feared that you – er – might not like the match.”

As the rest of the court remembered Hamlet’s reaction to the news of his mother’s last engagement only too well, this was generally understood to be a masterpiece of understatement.

“No, no!” said Hamlet, still sounding rather strangled. “Marry whom you will! I’ve no objection – as long as you do not mean to wed the man who killed your last husband.”

“Of course not, dear,” said Gertrude, her eyes wide and innocent. “That would be incest.”

Hamlet stared at her for a long moment, and then exploded in laughter. “Touché, Mother!”

The courtiers began to breathe again. So did Ophelia, who had been very much afraid that Hamlet had been about to point out that this consideration had never stopped his mother before.

Laertes, feeling as if he needed to do something to make amends, sent one of the servants for the champagne he had brought back from France, and stammered his way through a toast to the happy couples. Unfortunately, he seemed unable to keep himself from alluding to the fact that he had once attempted to murder the prospective bridegroom, and had also picked a quarrel with him at the funeral of the bride-to-be, who had fortunately turned out not to be dead after all. His general point seemed to be that all was well that ended well. Hamlet, rather quellingly, observed that it was a little premature to say that all had ended well, as none of them were dead yet – and after they were dead, posterity might well have a different opinion.

Gertrude kicked her son under the table and ordered him, in a slightly-too-audible whisper, to hold his peace and drink his champagne. So he did, and they were all having a very merry breakfast when a messenger interrupted them.

“Begging your majesty’s pardon, but the pirates have been plundering the west coast again. We thought your majesty ought to be informed, particularly since the fishermen have been grutching and grumbling. Begging your pardon again, but they say that the pirate captain is ... as it were ... an old school-fellow of your majesty’s.”

“Aye,” said Hamlet, reluctantly rising from the table. “You are right. Something will have to be done about Guildenstern.”