“What madness, Your Majesty?” asked Hamlet.

  “The way you spoke to my daughter,” said Polonius. “And to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And to me!”

  “If I said something I should not have said, then I’m ashamed, and heartily beg your pardon.”

  “The icehouse will not be opened,” said Claudius.

  “Then open the ancestral tomb and let me in,” said Hamlet, “so I can see where my father’s body will lie.”

  “Hamlet,” said Mother, “that’s morbid.”

  “No, Mother,” said Hamlet. “It’s lunatic. I mean to play at juggling with my ancestors’ skulls.”

  She looked as if he had slapped her.

  “Do my mother and my uncle mean to keep me from anything that has to do with my father? I last saw him alive four years ago. I look around this court, searching for some sign of grief for him, and I see none.”

  “There was much grieving before you came home,” said King Claudius.

  “I came home quickly, and yet the grief was so far done with that I found my widowed mother already married, and a new King on a throne whose previous occupant was still unburied.”

  “We did as the barons wanted,” said Claudius. “Fortinbras is coming.”

  “I do not argue with the barons’ choice,” said Hamlet. “I was not ready to lead Denmark’s ships and soldiers, and they must be led. You know you have my love and loyalty in all things, Your Majesty. But I am also a son, not only a loyal prince, and I owe a duty to my father. Will you shame me by forbidding me to have any access to the poor remnant his spirit left behind him when he died, or even to the stone house where it will dessicate?”

  “The tomb will be unlocked for you,” said King Claudius.

  “Pardon me, but I would rather have the key, so I can come and go as I wish.”

  “Then have it,” said Claudius. He waved a hand at Polonius. “See to it.”

  “I thank Your Majesty with all my heart,” said Hamlet.

  “Please,” said Mother. “Come and see me today. You’ve been home for more than a week, and you haven’t come to see me.”

  “I was not invited until now,” said Hamlet. “Of course I’ll come. Give me an hour in my father’s tomb.”

  It took more than a little argument to get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to let him visit the tomb alone. It was obvious they had been assigned to stay with him whenever he ventured out of the walls of the castle. But they had been his Companions, and they knew that when he entered the graveyard he must be alone.

  The tomb’s lock was ancient but well oiled; it opened readily. The door also opened silently. The house of the royal dead was well tended.

  Not so their bodies. The moist sea air could not be kept out, however tightly sealed the tomb might be. The place was damp inside, and the bodies that still had flesh on them sagged onto their stone beds, their fine robes sliding into ragged patches. It looked as if this were some great oven, and the corpses all were melting like butter. The freshest body here was Father’s mother, whom Hamlet had known when he was little; she was a nightmare of decay, if Hamlet had not already seen the spirit of her son. Corpses that had no power of speech, that could not lay dire oaths upon him, could not frighten him. What children imagined, terrifying themselves in the dark of night, Hamlet had seen with his own eyes, and lived.

  There was no place prepared for Father. No new bed of stone. Did they plan to toss his body on the floor?

  Or did they have some plan to bury him at sea, on a flaming ship, like the Viking Kings of an earlier time?

  It was not about keeping the body cold. It was not about waiting for Laertes. King Claudius did not want his brother’s body seen.

  There must be some mark on the corpse, after all. Some proof that he was murdered. There could be no other explanation for this. He would never lie here in the tomb. Whatever Claudius and Mother might have planned, it did not include putting Father’s body on public display.

  Hamlet came forth out of the tomb and locked it behind him. The dead were safe enough from his intrusions now; would that he had been kept safe from theirs.

  The graveyard itself was familiar ground. What was not familiar was Horatio, perched like a gargoyle atop a simple headstone belonging to some loyal family servant.

  “They sent you?” asked Hamlet.

  “You’re a lunatic, and must be closely watched,” said Horatio.

  “Better you than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They’re not the friends that I remember.”

  “Things changed in the four years you were gone. When the Companions were dissolved at your parting, they decided not to dissolve themselves. Living four years together on Guildenstern’s estates has made them as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple. I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house.”

  “They’re not my friends at all, I think,” said Hamlet.

  “They serve the King.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  A new-dug grave lay open only a few steps away from the stone where Horatio perched. “Who’s to be buried here?”

  “A cousin of the royal house,” said Horatio. “The body will arrive in a day or two. They’ve already had the funeral; it’s just a matter of laying it in the ground.”

  “I wonder if it’s someone that I knew.”

  “It’s your family’s graveyard,” said Horatio. “You knew them all.”

  Only then did Hamlet look at the name on the stone where Horatio sat. “Yorick,” he read aloud. “Yorick’s dead!”

  “You’ve been here this long and didn’t notice he was gone?”

  “But no one wrote to me,” said Hamlet. “I assumed he was away. Or living privately, pensioned off. But dead!”

  “Not long after you left,” said Horatio. “Suddenly, in his sleep.”

  “He wasn’t old enough to die.”

  “How old is that?” asked Horatio. “I think there are tiny graves enough to prove that death knows how to find us all, however old we might not be.”

  Hamlet laughed bitterly at that, ashamed of the tears that streamed down his cheeks. “I know you’re right, Horatio. But Yorick—it’s a terrible thing to say, but his death strikes me harder than my father’s.” And with that, he turned away and sank down to his knees, crossing himself in respect for the old fool. “He spoke the words I might have heard from my father, if I’d had a father,” he said.

  “Oh, you had father enough, I think,” said Horatio.

  “One father too many, I sometimes thought,” said Hamlet, “and yet one too few. I hated you, every one of you, when he took you with him, spent hours with you, and yet never had time for me.”

  “It was never by our choice,” said Horatio.

  “I know it,” said Hamlet. “But I’ve always been a lunatic.”

  “Playing among the graves? No doubt of it—we all knew it. But what’s your game now? Sometimes mad and sometimes lucid.”

  “It’s a lunar lunacy. It rises and sets, waxes and wanes.”

  “And brings the tides along, no doubt.”

  “Don’t blame the tides on me.”

  “I blame you for nothing,” said Horatio. “I’m only sorry for how things turned out for you. Who would have guessed that your father’s death would not mean your accession to the throne? Your mother dotes on you—I would have thought she’d rather die than marry the uncle who took your rightful place.”

  Hamlet knew he should be angry, to hear Horatio criticizing Mother. But it was the simple truth, and no man should be punished for saying it aloud. At least in private. To a friend.

  “Everyone finds his own way in the world,” said Hamlet. “And does what seems right. Or at least most useful. Or most desirable.”

  “Most desirable,” said Horatio. “They only do what’s right if they desire what’s right. Or most useful if they desire to be useful. Always it comes down to desire.”

  “Then all men are equal, the good and the bad,” said Hamlet, “since they do no more than follow their desires.”

  “But wouldn’t you rather live in a country governed by those who desire to do good?” said Horatio.

  “And haven’t you always preferred to be friends with women who desire to do bad?” said Hamlet.

  “I want them to do bad, but do it well.”

  “Where I try to do good, but do it badly.”

  “Tell me the burden the ghost laid upon you, Hamlet. Let me counsel with you. How can you be bound by an oath to the dead? Think about it—the most solemn of oaths—holy orders, matrimony—those sacraments dissolve at death. All sacraments do, all oaths, death’s the end of them. So how can you even call an oath binding when you make it with one who is already dead? It was dissolved before you swore.”

  Hamlet shook his head. “I’ve chopped logic with better hypocrites than you,” he said. “Your oath as a Companion is dissolved, and yet you still honor it.”

  Horatio laughed, but Hamlet had hit him square, and he made no more argument.

  “I have to see my mother,” said Hamlet.

  “And I have to look for the mother of my children,” said Horatio.

  “Do you have someone in mind?”

  “As always, I ask for volunteers, and then choose the best.”

  “Princes aren’t so free.”

  “Princes are as free as they want to be,” said Horatio. “Virtue—which you desire—is what keeps you chaste.”

  “I wish that women were as good company as my Companions were,” said Hamlet. “Women seem to want so much. The ones I’ve met—as a man, that is—they’re all enticement, but when you let yourself be lured a little closer, you find out that they have all their plans laid out, and want only a fly to wander into the web. The fly is never consulted about how the strands of the web should go, or where it should be placed.”

  “There’d be a world of hungry spiders if that were how it worked.”

  “And far too many flies,” said Hamlet. “The analogy breaks down. The parable is false. Aesop’s animals are not at risk from any fable of mine.” He arose from the ground. “I sat upon old Yorick’s grave, and felt the grass of it in my hands. That’s more funeral than I’ll ever get for my father.”

  “I thought they waited for Laertes.”

  “They wait forever. I’ll never see my father’s body.”

  “You’ve seen his spirit,” said Horatio. “Isn’t that more? You’ve had the walnut; why would you need the shell?”

  “I couldn’t weep over the ghost—it wouldn’t stop talking long enough.”

  “Will you weep over the body, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you often said that you hardly knew him.”

  “That’s what I’ll weep for.” He threw his arms around Horatio and held him close. “I’ll weep for the boys we were, and for the man I’ll never be.”

  Horatio followed him as he walked away. “What’s that supposed to mean? The man you’ll never be?”

  Hamlet had no intention of telling him how soon he expected to die. “I think I would have been a better man if I’d had a father,” he said.

  “And what if I say not? Did knowing your father make better men of us?”

  “It might have,” said Hamlet. “But you had your own fathers, all of you—I had none.”

  “You had Yorick. You had your uncle Claudius.”

  “Horatio, all I meant was, I’ll never know what I would have become, if my father had been a father to me. Now leave me, my friend, unless you intend to greet my mother with me.”

  Horatio laughed then, and let him go.

  On his way to his mother’s chamber, Hamlet passed the chapel. He heard a voice inside—a priest at prayer, no doubt. And yet he knew the voice, and stopped, and stepped inside.

  It was King Claudius who knelt at the altar before a statue of bloody-handed Jesus. Hamlet could not hear his words.

  Here he is, alone, with no one to see or hear. I have no sword, but I have my dagger. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.

  But his hand would not move toward the hilt.

  If I kill him at his prayers, his shriven soul will go to heaven, he thought.

  And mine will not.

  Nothing I do will let my soul go to heaven. Let him live and I’m damned. Kill him and I’m damned.

  I can’t do it secretly. The way he killed my father—I won’t do that. When I slay him it will be in the open for all to see, for everyone to hear me tell them why. He killed my father with stealth, so he could steal all that my father had; I want nothing that he has, and so I do not have to hide my deed.

  That’s my reason for staying my hand.

  And the fact that it is not my desire to kill him, or any man.

  And rank fear.

  Cowards strike from hiding; but I strike not at all. What does that make me? More fearful than a coward.

  He moved silently out of the chapel and moved on, threading his way to his mother’s room.

  Mother was not alone. The door to her chamber opened as Hamlet approached, and there stood Laertes.

  Hamlet cried out his name, joyfully, and took a step toward him. But Laertes stepped back, and his manner was cold.

  “I hear that you’ve been trifling with my sister,” he said.

  “I haven’t,” said Hamlet.

  “She needs no lunatics,” said Laertes.

  “Then she’ll have none,” said Hamlet. “Laertes, is this our greeting after four years?”

  Laertes bowed. “My Prince,” he said. “You look well.”

  “And you do not,” said Hamlet, trying to jolly him into a smile. “You’re thin. Don’t you eat? You look as if you’ve sharpened your face.”

  “I live by the blade now,” said Laertes. “Haven’t you heard? I’m quite the swordsman now.”

  “What, have you strewn the fields of France with the bodies of duelists?”

  “I’ve watered them with their blood, though none have died,” said Laertes. “So be warned. I’ll brook no insult to my sister.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you of the consequences. Good day, sir.” Laertes pushed past him and was gone.

  Hamlet looked after him for a moment, then turned and strode into his mother’s chamber. “Why is Laertes so angry with me?”

  “He’s had a hard four years,” said Mother. “But he’s home now, and we’ll get him right, soon enough.”

  “If he doesn’t kill me first,” said Hamlet. “What was my offense?”

  “That mad display you put on for Ophelia,” said Mother. “You have to tell me now, my son. Was that some attempt to show her how much you love her? Or something else? She’s a sweet girl, and worthy of a prince, if you want her to wife; but too good to be trifled with, or teased, or mocked—there are girls in the kitchen who will play those games with you, if that’s the sort of man you are.”

  “You know it’s not.”

  “I know that I don’t understand a thing you do or say since you returned.”

  “Which brings us to a balance, my lady mother.”

  “We’ve hardly seen each other,” she said.

  “I’ve seen enough of you to know what you’ve become.”

  “Have you forgotten the respect you owe me?”

  “No more than you’ve forgotten it yourself,” said Hamlet. “Did you have them put my father’s corpse on ice so you’d be sure it was cold before you got into my uncle’s bed?”

  She flung out her hand to slap him, but he caught her by the wrist. “You won’t strike me for saying the truth,” he said.

  “You don’t know what’s true,” she said.

  “I know my father hated me,” said Hamlet, “and yet I seem to be the only one in Denmark who ever loved him.”

  “Don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

  “If there’s something I don’t understand, is that my fault? No one has told me anything my whole life. Did you hate my father? Is that why he hated me?”

  “Your father never hated you,” said Mother.

  “Then why didn’t he ever take me with him? I had no part of him.”

  “Because I forbade it,” she said.

  “You—why?”

  “For good enough reason,” she said. “And that’s the end of it.”

  “That’s not even the beginning,” said Hamlet. “That was nothing—do you think you’ll make me love my father better by making me hate you?”

  “Your father’s dead. It came in good time for Denmark—and for me.”

  Hamlet seized her by the shoulders and dragged her from her chair. “So you knew! You knew that Uncle Claudius murdered him!”

  “Let go of me!”

  He threw her down onto the ground. “You don’t even deny it.”

  “Of course I deny it! Your uncle never raised a hand against your father!”

  “Who did it, then? You? Poison is a woman’s tool—I should have known.”

  “What are you talking about? No one murdered your father!”

  “I know a lie when I hear one. All you’re doing is convincing me that you’re part of the conspiracy.”

  He drew his dagger. If Claudius was still in the chapel, he would kill him now, prayer or no prayer. After what he’d said to his mother, there would be no secret about who did it.

  But when she saw the dagger, she mistook the prey he intended to kill with it.

  “Help! No! Someone help me! He means to kill me!”

  And then a second voice, behind a tapestry, crying out. “Stop! Help! To the Queen!”

  Hamlet whirled to the curtain, saw the hands trying to brush it aside, saw the feet moving blindly forward, and in a moment he had his dagger through the cloth and into the man’s chest, whoever it was.

  For a moment the man hung heavily upon the blade, supported by the thickness of the tapestry.

  The fabric was thick, and held; the blade was strong, and did not break. But the hangings of the tapestry were slender and too few, and they gave way. The tapestry came down, and the man pitched forward. Hamlet pulled his blade away, which turned the body from him; when it fell, he lay upon his back. It was Polonais.

  “You killed him!” cried Mother.

  “He was hiding in your chamber,” said Hamlet. “What was he doing here? Concealed? I thought he was a murderer.”