This much is sure: The spirits of the righteous do not walk the earth. They are caught up into heaven, and look no more upon this poor land of shadows, having beheld the light that can be seen only by the pure in heart. My father is here because he was a wicked man. Now he is an angry spirit, and mine are the hands that he has chosen to act out his rage.

  And yet by justice and ancient law, my hands do belong to him, until his murder be avenged.

  Horatio and the others were waiting at the bottom of the stair.

  “Go up,” said Hamlet. “Resume your watch. He’ll never come again, or if he does, it’s just to speak to me, and all you need to do is fetch me here at once. But swear to me now that you won’t speak of this to anyone.”

  “I swore as much before you asked,” said Bernardo. “Do you think I want my friends to think I’m a superstitious fool? But I swear again, a solemn oath.”

  “I swear it, too,” said Marcellus. “No man will know of any spirits walking here, tonight or any other night.”

  “And you, Horatio?” said Hamlet.

  “Do you need any more oath,” he said, “than my vow of loyalty and obedience from when we both were lads? Then you have my oath all over again. No one will learn from me of anything you tell me to keep to myself.”

  “You have always been worthy of my trust,” said Hamlet. “I know you still are. So you, Marcellus, Bernardo, is it still your watch?”

  “Till dawn,” said Marcellus.

  “Then go up and keep watch. Fortinbras might come at any time.”

  “We will, sir,” said Marcellus.

  At once they jogged up the stairs, leaving Hamlet and Horatio by themselves.

  “What did he want to say?” asked Horatio.

  “Good-bye,” said Hamlet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “He wanted to tell his son good-bye,” said Hamlet. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Horatio laughed nervously.

  “What passed between my father and me is for us alone,” said Hamlet. “For him to say, and for me to remember.”

  “I’ll never ask again, my Prince,” said Horatio.

  “Even if I choose not to tell,” said Hamlet, “I’ll never be offended by the asking.”

  “Then I’ll ask this: Was he murdered? Did he ask you to avenge him?”

  “Do you believe that someone murdered him?” asked Hamlet.

  “It would take a fool not to wonder,” said Horatio. “Too many people stood to benefit from his death. It might have been some spy from Fortinbras. It might have been an agent of some baron.”

  “But there was no mark on the body,” said Hamlet.

  Horatio laughed. “I’m only a soldier,” he said. “But I always thought assassins must know ways to kill a man that leave no marks upon the body.”

  “I want to hear more of your suspicions, Horatio,” said Hamlet. “Who you think did the deed, and how.”

  “You’ve already heard it all, my Prince,” said Horatio. “I only wondered if your father’s death might have been unnatural. But I couldn’t bring myself to suspect those who benefitted most, since one is King, and the other is the mother of my dearest friend.”

  “You think this is a benefit for her, then?”

  “Isn’t a younger husband always better for a woman?”

  “Faithful love of your husband, that’s what’s better,” said Hamlet. “And I’ll kill any man who says my mother wronged my father before he died.”

  “No one says she did,” said Horatio. “But it’s hard for some to believe she would have wed so quickly if she hadn’t already felt some swelling of affection for your uncle.”

  “Then I hope such people keep their opinions to themselves, so my sword can stay unstained with such unworthy blood.”

  Horatio put a hand on Hamlet’s shoulder. “I don’t believe any story that would have your mother or your uncle doing wrong by your father. I believe them both to be honorable. And their quick marriage was, I think, to ensure your place. Doesn’t your uncle mean to adopt you as his heir?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him alone since I got home,” said Hamlet. “He seems shy to speak to me.”

  “For fear you believe the rumors, I’d bet,” said Horatio.

  “No one has anything to fear of me,” said Hamlet. “And yet they all walk around me as carefully as if I were a skittish horse, ready to kick at the first shadow.”

  “What did the ghost say to you? I heard you say, ‘I swear.’ ”

  “Then you were listening closer than a loyal friend should have.”

  “You shouted it, Hamlet. How could I help but hear the words and wonder what great oath you had taken with a ghost?”

  “An oath of filial duty,” said Hamlet. “Beyond that I’m sworn not to say, and I’d count it as a kindness if you didn’t ask, after all. Now walk with me to the garden where my father died. I want to see the place.”

  “Garden?” asked Horatio.

  “He told me he lay sleeping in the garden.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Horatio. “I thought they found him in his bed.”

  “He said the garden,” said Hamlet.

  “Then let’s go look at it.”

  It was a private garden, walled off from the rest of the grounds of the castle. From the outside, it looked cold and stony; once Hamlet passed through the doorway, though, he could see why Father had come to the place, had considered it a refuge. The walls were not visible, completely hidden behind greenery. The stones were covered with ivy, and the ivy was hidden behind shrubbery, much of it evergreen. A few stately shade trees offered respite from a summer sun; tall firs blocked the northwest, shielding from the blasts of winter; and yet the garden was large enough for flowerbeds to flourish in full sunlight.

  It was among the flowers that two stone benches were arranged so that two might sit on each bench, across from each other in earnest conversation; or one might lie down on a single bench. A tall man, like Father, could not lie on his back without his legs dangling; but he could curl up on his side, his knees bent, his head pillowed on one arm, and nap in the sunlight on a day in spring.

  And someone could creep up behind him and pour cold poison into his ear, first to chill his skin and then to burn its way into his brain.

  Did he waken at the cold touch of the poison? Waken, and try to rise? What if the killer held him down? Covered his mouth until the poison had done its work? Hamlet tried to picture what the murderer had seen. He must have been fearful of being discovered. He must have planned what to do or say if Father was awake. He must have had a legitimate errand. Yet it could not have been a decision of the moment—the murderer had to be hoping the King would be asleep, and brought the poison in the expectation of using it.

  Hamlet turned and looked upward toward the battlements of the castle itself. It loomed to the northeast of the garden, where it would never cast shade.

  But between the castle and the garden a row of pines had been planted. All year they would thickly block any view of what took place in the garden, except at the northwest and southeast corners. The garden was a place for privacy. Once inside these walls, a man could do what he wanted without fear of being seen, unless he was careless.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Horatio.

  “There’s no view of this place from the battlements.”

  “He didn’t come here for company,” said Horatio.

  “And yet he had company,” said Hamlet.

  “Once too often, I suppose, if this is where it was done.”

  “If it was done,” said Hamlet.

  “Do you doubt his word?”

  “I haven’t told you what his words were,” said Hamlet. “Nor shall I. So I can hardly tell you my doubts, or if I have any.”

  “Then you have no need of me here,” said Horatio.

  “More need than you know,” said Hamlet. “Because you knew him.”

  “Who?”

  “My father. Who else?”

  “I feared that you thought I knew his murderer.”

  “If you did, you would have told it,” said Hamlet. “You knew my father, as I could not.”

  “If anyone knew him,” said Horatio.

  “Everyone knew him better than I did,” said Hamlet. “Why would a man come to a garden to sleep on a hard bench, when he has a dozen soft beds he could sleep in, if he chose?”

  “A King is a warrior. Perhaps he hardened himself for war.”

  “The way a monk punishes himself, to get ready for the fires of hell?”

  “I thought they did it to avoid those fires,” said Horatio, chuckling.

  “It depends on the monk,” said Hamlet.

  “I think it likely,” said Horatio, “that your father slept in the garden when he wearied himself with working here.”

  “Working?”

  Horatio looked embarrassed. “Working here,” he said. “Gardening.”

  “My father? Gardening?”

  “He pruned and planted here. It was spring. My guess is that he lay down in the warm sun after planting those flowers that are already blooming now.”

  “My father, with his own hands?”

  “He kept a pair of shears, a hook, a knife, a saw, and several spades. I thought you knew. This garden was only worked by him, except for carrying away the winterfallen twigs and dead plants. What had died was not for him, but what was alive, that he loved and cared for.”

  It struck Hamlet with new bitterness. He had more love for plants than for his son.

  “This wasn’t a secret, surely,” said Hamlet.

  “Everybody knew. It was how he stilled his mind. After councils, after judgment, he’d come out here. No one disturbed him.”

  “Yet no one told me,” said Hamlet.

  “Perhaps,” said Horatio, “it did not occur to anyone that you might not know.”

  “Then someone would have said in passing, Oh, Prince Hamlet, when your father comes in from the garden, or Oh, Prince Hamlet, have you seen the fine work your father has done with that old hedge?”

  Horatio looked away.

  “Everyone knew that I was not to be spoken to about my father.”

  “It seemed to cause you pain,” said Horatio. “No one wanted to hurt you.”

  Hamlet sighed. “I wish I were back in Heidelberg.”

  “You’ve spoken to your father now,” said Horatio. “He came to talk to you, even after death. Hell could not stop him.”

  “Nor heaven,” said Hamlet.

  “I imagine God could have stopped him, but chose not to.”

  “A spirit comes to me,” said Hamlet. “Does that mean it has God’s consent to come? Are its words therefore the words that God intends for me to hear?”

  “Did the spirit of Samuel come to Saul through the witch of Endor by God’s consent?” asked Horatio. “Or does hell send its angels to further the cause of evil in the world?”

  “So you’ve studied the Old Testament,” said Hamlet. “And philosophy.”

  “I was tutored by a priest who loved to terrify us with ghost stories.”

  “Spirits of the dead with messages for the living. Do they ever come with good news?”

  “Did this one?” asked Horatio.

  “No,” said Hamlet.

  “I wonder,” said Horatio, “on which of these benches your father lay when he was slain.”

  “I wonder,” said Hamlet, “who was the slayer?”

  Horatio looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you wonder, my Prince?” he asked.

  Hamlet shook his head. “No,” he said. “My father told me who it was.”

  “And you don’t believe him?”

  Hamlet didn’t know how to answer. He believed—of course he did. And yet, despite his oath, he felt a terrible dread at the thought of acting on that belief. “I believe and don’t believe,” he said.

  “Why? Do spirits lie?” asked Horatio.

  “Spirits from hell might deceive,” said Hamlet.

  “Then spirits from hell will say they came from heaven,” said Horatio, “so how can we know which ones to trust?”

  Father did not pretend to come from heaven. “Spirits from hell might sometimes lie and sometimes not.”

  “What will you do, if you become certain?” asked Horatio.

  Hamlet looked away at the flowers. Bees alit and rose again from the blooms, yellowed with pollen. How quickly the flowers must have bloomed, if Father only recently planted them. If you asked me, from the evidence of my eyes, how long these plants had been in place, I would have said a month at least. Yet I believe Horatio because he’s a truthful friend, and because he has no reason to lie. Was that faith? Knowledge? Probability? Mere desire to believe?

  “Certainty is a hard thing to achieve,” said Horatio.

  “If to know a thing is to feel certain of it, then most people achieve it all the time, especially about the things they think about least. But if to know a thing is to be certain and be right, and know that you’re right, then that’s another matter.”

  “Certainty is about how you feel,” said Horatio, nodding. “But being right is about what truly happened in the past. What you feel means nothing.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Hamlet, “since I feel no certainty.”

  “And yet you swore an oath.”

  “I can be certain of what I will do, even when I’m not certain of what others have done.”

  Horatio smiled grimly. “But can you be certain of the rightness of the act?”

  “Some acts are always right,” said Hamlet. “And some are always wrong.”

  “You learned more in Heidelberg than I thought was possible,” said Horatio. “If they told you which was which.”

  “I’m not sure where I learned it, except that I know it’s true.”

  “In other words,” said Horatio, “you feel certain that it’s true.”

  “Something has to be sure in this world,” said Hamlet.

  “Why?” asked Horatio.

  “Because if we could never be sure, we’d never be able to act. No man would ever marry a woman, no soldier would ever fight for his King and his country, no tailor would ever cut his cloth, and no man of trade would ever trust the value of the money he was paid.”

  “As long as we’re talking philosophy,” said Horatio, “then just because people have to believe in something enough to act on it doesn’t mean that they’re right, not ever.”

  “Then we live like animals in this world, not knowing right from wrong.”

  “Muddling through,” said Horatio.

  “And God judges us for that?” asked Hamlet.

  “Let God judge as he judges. Let us remember that we don’t have God’s knowledge.”

  “Amen,” said Hamlet.

  Horatio rose to his feet, agitated. He moved away from Hamlet, then came back. “I don’t believe you believe what you said, my Prince. That some things are always right or always wrong.”

  “I do believe it,” said Hamlet.

  “What if one of Herod’s men, hearing the command to slay all the innocent babes of Bethlehem, had decided instead that he would strike down the giver of that command rather than obey it? It’s always wrong to kill innocent babies, isn’t it? Even if your King commands? And it’s always wrong to kill the King, isn’t it? Even if he means to do something evil?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t sneak off to some university yourself?” said Hamlet.

  “You don’t need a professor to wrestle with the hard questions,” said Horatio. “And you wrote me letters.”

  “Not about this.”

  “You told me what the great questions were. And your father let me read his books.”

  “Father read books?” asked Hamlet.

  “The testaments only,” said Horatio. “But I have Latin enough for that.”

  “So all your philosophy comes from scripture.”

  “You didn’t answer me about Herod’s good soldier.”

  “Why must he choose between murderous treason and murderous obedience? Why not run away?”

  “Like Jonah?” said Horatio. “If you know that King Herod’s vile order will be obeyed by someone, and you run away when you could have prevented the slaughter of the innocents, then how are you any less guilty than the ones who wield the swords?”

  “But if you kill Herod, you’ll die. They’ll torture you to death as a traitor.”

  “There are worse things than death, my Prince.”

  “Are there?” asked Hamlet.

  “Of all men, you should be most certain of that,” said Horatio.

  “Why?”

  “Other men fear death because they don’t know if the soul survives. But you’ve spoken to your father. You know the ghost was real because I and two other witnesses also saw him. Why would you fear death now? Or me? Knowing that life continues.”

  “It’s the continuation of life,” said Hamlet, “that might be the most fearful thing. Maybe death would hold less fear if we knew it was the end of all.”

  “Is this what you pondered all those times you went to the graveyard alone?” asked Horatio.

  “What this garden was to my father,” said Hamlet, “the cemetery was to me.”

  “A place to nap?”

  “A place to listen to my own soul.”

  “My Prince,” said Horatio, “you know that whatever you decide is right, I will be your true friend and loyal servant.”

  “You’re not my Companion any more, my friend, and your duty is to your King, not to a prince who will never ascend a throne.”

  “You don’t know you’ll have no throne,” said Horatio.

  “I would refuse it if it was offered me. That’s how I know. But it will never be offered.”

  “Then your resolve will die untested,” said Horatio.

  Hamlet laughed. “My whole life is one long round of preparing for a test I’ll never face. To be King, but now I’ll be no King. To be a good son to my father, but while he lived he never gave me the chance to try. As a child I dreamed of greatness. I practiced for war. I practiced for government. At the university I even practiced for holy orders. But I’ll never govern, never go to war, and never take orders, either.”

  “You might,” said Horatio.