Ophelia (13 page)

"I have quarreled with my father and Laertes, who suspect our love and doubt your good intentions. They have been watching me. I feel like a deer beset by hounds!"

Hamlet held out his arms to me and sang,
"Come to me, my Rosalind, I am a hart that lacks a hind,"
but I drew away.

"I am not in the mood for merriment today, Hamlet. I only wish to be free, and wherever I am, someone is trying to bind me," I said, struggling to describe my fears without seeming to complain. "Your embrace is just the trap where my father would wish me to be caught."

"You do me wrong, Ophelia, for I would not yield you to him or his hounds," said Hamlet.

"Then they will tear me to pieces there! My honor sullied, I will be dismissed from court and packed off to a nunnery somewhere, never to marry!"

"That will not happen, for I will marry you."

"Hamlet, I warned you that I cannot bear your teasing today, is your lightness a ploy to put me off from you? Tell me in plain words that you regret our embracing!"

"I do not jest," he said with a wounded look. "I have pledged my love to you, and now I will marry you. Then we may touch each other most nearly without it being a sin, and no one else may touch us."

I hardly believed his words. It was true that being married to Hamlet would free me from my father's power. It was a tempting thought. But how could I be certain that Hamlet spoke in earnest?

"You know you are not free to marry me. You have said so yourself."

Hamlet started up and spoke with sudden passion. "Not free to marry? Who will stop me? My father? He is dead. My mother, who married again almost before his body was cold? No! May Claudius command me in this? Never! He is not my father, nor is he justly my king."

"But my father would not permit me to many whom I wished," I lamented.

"On the contrary, nothing would suit Polomus's ambitions better than for you to marry me," said Hamlet coolly.

"Fie on his ambitions! I do not want his permission; I will not please him!" I cried in confusion and frustration.

"Then marry me and thwart him forever!" Hamlet replied swiftly, like one who delivers the winning thrust in a fencing match.

I scrambled from the bower and seized my cloak as if to flee. Hamlet followed me on his knees into the sun, which shone full on him. His tunic was open at the neck and his sleeves were rolled to the elbows. His black hair was tousled, his cap and rude leather shoes thrown on the ground close by. He smiled, his blue eyes sparkling, and I felt weak with love. I knew I would do anything he asked of me.

"Marry me, Ophelia," he said, reaching for my hands, which clutched my cloak.

I gasped, for he had read my very thoughts.

"I swear to you, my ambitions aim no higher than your heart," he said with feeling. The top of his head was level with my bosom, and I resisted the urge to bury my fingers in his hair. "If you were beside me, I would choose this grassy seat over Denmark's gilded throne."

My eyes grew wide to hear him renounce all desire for the throne unjustly seized by Claudius.

"In faith, I think you speak in earnest," I said slowly. "You will not wrong me, love?"

"I swear by heaven, though now I must be shriven for doing so! Therefore come, let us go and together lose our sins."

I let him take my arm. He led me to his horse and lifted me into the saddle. He mounted behind me, and the horse with its double burden earned us easily into the pathless wood as if it knew our destination. Leaves lightly brushed us as we passed, and birds flew before us, drawing us on with their calls. The trees grew straight, then arched overhead like the vaulted ribs of some great church, their stained-glass windows the green leaves dappled with golden sunlight. We did not speak, but breathed as one person.

We came to the tumbledown stone cottage where we had met before. There, a figure waited, dressed in a brown cloak with a hood. It was the village priest, brought there by Horatio to forgive, as he was told, a poor soul near death.

"I am he," said Hamlet, "who will die if this lady will not have me."

Then Hamlet instructed the priest, taking his Bible and showing him which passages to read.

"We will have the Song of Solomon, the praise of love," Hamlet said. Then aside to me he added, "I doubt the education of maids permits the reading of this scripture."

The priest took the Bible from Hamlet and considered the passage, stroking his bearded chin. Then he cleared his throat at great length before speaking. The thought came to me that he should be treated with a hot mustard plaster, but I chased it away as unfit for the solemn moment at hand.

"This book indeed is most fit for this occasion," the priest began, "for it expresses Christ's own espousal of his Church, who promises fidelity to her Lord."

Hamlet interrupted with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Save the preaching, good father. Make haste to marry us, and God will reward you." Horatio jingled the coins in his purse, and the priest nearly dropped his Bible in his eagerness to comply. He commenced to play his part with the zest of one who delighted in marrying secret lovers. If he suspected that it was Denmark's prince who stood before him, he did not reveal it.

"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land,"
he read. How aptly the verses suited the forest scene, I thought.
"My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!"
That would be Hamlet, my wild lover, I thought. The priest held the book in one hand while gesturing with the other toward the woods around us as if summoning this gazelle, which was no doubt some marvelous creature, a wonder suited to a tale of romance. My delight in the moment was so great that I had to close my eyes to hold back my joyful tears.

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,for his love is better than wine,"
the priest intoned, while Hamlet kissed me most tenderly. Though we stood in Denmark's woods, there floated as on a breeze the imagined scents of the distant Bible lands: myrrh and aloe and henna and cinnamon. But Hamlet's touch told me that I did not dream.

"Yes, I will be married now," I whispered, consenting to myself before I would consent to Hamlet.

"My beloved is mine and I am his. Set me as a seal on your heart, for love is as strong as death."
With these words, a holy stamp was set on our desires. Hamlet had proved the truth of his love for me. He held my hand firmly to his breast, and my own heart beat with unaccustomed joy.

So Hamlet and I were married in our rustic attire, with woodland flowers to deck us. I said my vows believing that I would love Hamlet until my death. He also spoke his vows with evident faith, and Horatio was our witness.

That night at Elsinore no royal banquet celebrated the prince's marriage. But Hamlet and I feasted on each other's sight and touch, and we dared to sleep in his bed. As the clock struck the midnight hour, a loud knocking made me start up with fear. The door burst open, its lock giving way, and Horatio stumbled into the room.

"To the ramparts, Hamlet. It comes! It comes anon!"

Hamlet bolted from the bed without a word, seized his clothes, and disappeared with Horatio into the darkness.

Chapter 16

I lay like a still and silent effigy on a tomb in the blackness of Hamlet's chamber while questions coursed through my brain. What terrible thing would lead Horatio to disrupt our wedding night? Had our secret marriage been discovered? What was the meaning of his fearful look and his words,
It comes?
Was Elsinore being attacked? I listened but could detect no disturbance in the castle. Only my heart made a pounding sound I mistook for footsteps. No one stared or shouted. Silence covered Elsinore like a heavy blanket.

I did not think it safe to stay in Hamlet's bed. So I dressed, and through the deep and unfamiliar dark, I crept back to my room and lay upon my maiden cot. I listened to the mournful calls of the doves in the stone crevices of the castle walls and envied the lowly birds who nestled freely and without fear.

When daylight broke, I arose and put on my yellow damask gown. I picked up some embroidery, but my fingers would not even hold a needle. I only gazed at the unfinished piece with its gillyflowers and pansies in blue and purple silk, while I whispered to myself, "I am Hamlet's wife." The words sounded strange and impossible. I began to doubt the prior day's events, as one would suspect a vision of the open heavens to be a figment of the mind. Had I merely dreamed our wedding?

I leaned on the window ledge and watched the morning sun contend with the fog. Its weak rays shone on the dewy grass and made the herbs in the garden glisten as if under a spell.

"Hamlet is my . . . husband?" I said to myself, the statement rising to a question as I recalled how suddenly he had abandoned our bed. Why had he leaped up and vanished, without a word of explanation, a kiss, or a promise to return? That was no good omen for our marriage.

Thus I plucked at my worried thoughts that stuck like buns in my brain. When I heard a deep sigh, I looked up, startled to see Hamlet framed by the stone arch of the doorway. How long had he been standing there? Why did he not greet me?

"My dear, my love," I said, "I could not sleep for missing you." I spoke mildly, for I did not want to scold my husband on the morning after our wedding, though I thought his behavior warranted it. "What was the matter—?"

I broke off when I noticed his unkempt appearance. His stockings were torn and dirty and his doublet unlaced. His face was pale and he shook as from the cold, though it was July.

"Why, my lord, you look as though you have been visited by a ghost!"

He started like a guilty man.

"Have you seen it, too?" he whispered.

"Seen it? What do you mean? Hamlet, you frighten me." I stood up to go to him.

"Come no nearer, Ophelia." He backed up and held me at arm's length.

"That is no proper way to greet your new wife," I complained.

"Shhh. No word of that now; be more secret."

"Why? Who will hear us in this room? My lord, you look so distracted. What troubles you?"

"I cannot tell."

"Trust me. I am your—"

"No! You should remain innocent of my deeds," he said with sudden feeling.

"What have you done?" I asked, my voice rising with fear. When he replied, his words were weighty and spoken with a grim resolve.

"Nothing yet. But what I am bound to do will drive a wedge between me and you."

"I do not understand, my lord. Pray explain your meaning," I begged. Did he mean to divorce me?

I leaned closer so that he could smell my rosemary-scented hair, and I put my hand to his cheek. He held it there for a moment. Then he thrust my hand away and shook his head once, twice, and then a third time.

"Do not push me away," I said, my voice choked with tears. "I am bound to share your fate, and you mine."

I could see him struggling with some inner force.

"Speak to me," I whispered.

"Swear that you will tell no living soul what I am about to reveal to you." His hands pressed on my shoulders.

"I will tell no one." Despite my confusion, I felt excitement, waiting for his revelation.

Then I listened in amazement as Hamlet related how he had gone with Horatio to the parapet last night, to the very place of our embracing. There the guards had lately seen a ghostly apparition. My skin prickled as Hamlet told how he, too, beheld the ghost of his dead father, armed from head to toe. How he followed the beckoning vision into the darkness despite Horatio's warning that it might tempt him to madness. How his very bones froze as the perturbed spirit revealed that he, King Hamlet, had been murdered.

"Murdered?" I echoed. "But how? And why?"

"Yes, murdered. Claudius was the serpent who stung my father," Hamlet said, agony in his voice and eyes. "The spirit told me how my uncle poured juice of henbane into his ears, curdling his blood and cutting off his life."

I remembered Mechtild's cabinet with its array of poisons, an easy means of evildoing for a villain with the heart of a fox. I thought of the bad blood between King Hamlet and his brother, the rumors that flew after the king's death, and my father questioning what I had seen.

"It is the crime of Cam, a brother's murder," I said.

"This Cam then stole his brother's wife and took her to his incestuous bed. And he stole his brother's crown—my father's crown and mine by right!" said Hamlet through clenched teeth.

"I thought you did not want the crown! Only yesterday, before we wed, you said you would forswear Denmark's throne." My protest seemed a feeble one now, and Hamlet ignored it.

"But beware, Claudius, for I have sworn by my father's sword to avenge his foul and most unnatural murder." Each deliberate word measured his firm intent.

I shuddered to hear Hamlet's vow. I struggled to understand the horror he described, a murder spurred by jealousy.

"This is the stuff of a strange fiction." I shook my head in disbelief. "How can you take the word of a ghost for truth?"