The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (7 page)

I went onstage and sneered a bit at Claudius, then argued with Laertes and moved things along to the duel. From the moment our rapiers touched I knew that’s where the curse lay. Mine rang hollow with the fake collapsing blade, but his had the solid sound of a true blade instead of the other stage sword it was supposed to be. I quickly hissed out the words of the counterspell, but not too loudly. I didn’t want anyone else to hear them. And I’m not going to let you in on them either. That kind of knowledge can be dangerous, and we can’t have every actor in an amateur theatre production muttering Witches’ spells because they think their show is afflicted with some enchantment. Magic has a life of its own sometimes, as the curse was ample evidence of.

Laertes lunged forward, as the script called for him to do. And I lunged at him, as was my role. Our rapiers passed each other’s guard. I smiled at Morgana in the audience. I wanted to show her I had found the curse and dispelled it. I wanted her to approve of me. I wanted her to love me like I loved her.

The blade of my rapier collapsed back into itself when the point hit Laertes’ chest. His blade bit into my chest and kept going, piercing my heart and continuing on through me. Laertes’ eyes widened as I cried out, and the audience gasped as one. Except for Morgana. I heard her sigh in exasperation, and I felt a fresh pain in my chest at having let her down.

I’d been wrong. I’d been wrong about everything. The Witches’ counterspell didn’t work, which meant it wasn’t the Macbeth curse. Either that or the Witches had tricked me. That was a possibility, granted, but I couldn’t see them doing that when their safety was at stake. Besides, they’d already given me their punishment.

“O, I die,” I heard myself say. I looked around until I caught sight of Amelia standing to the side, her hand over her mouth, as if to smother a scream. I dropped my rapier and reached out to her. Then I collapsed to the wooden floorboards of the stage, and into a mess of my own blood.

And then, of course, I died.

I woke lying on a mess of ancient books.

There were a few things strange about this. First, I woke on a mess of ancient books and not the wooden floorboards of the stage. I had so much grace in my system from Baal that I should have resurrected before anyone had a chance to move me from the theatre. Yet somehow I’d moved or been moved to wherever I was now.

The second strange thing was that I woke, not resurrected. Instead of the sudden and violent surge of life into me that usually accompanies a resurrection, I gradually came to, like out of a dream.

The third strange thing was some of the books were burning. I leapt to my feet to get away from the books blazing around me. That’s when I noticed the next strange thing.

The rapier was still stuck through my chest, although it didn’t hurt any more than as if I’d been hit with a prop sword. I looked over my shoulder and saw the point sticking out behind me, through the shirt. The blade was covered in my blood, and it was still wet. I couldn’t have been dead for that long.

I decided it was time to figure out where I was, so I looked around. And things got stranger still.

I was in a library of some sort. I thought it was a library, anyway. The walls were lined with books. In fact, the walls were made of books. They rose up all around me, thousands of them stacked upon one another, forming their own shelves. Leather volumes and texts bound in other sorts of hide. They were jammed together in no order I could tell: some were spine out, others were face out, while others still were upside down. The covers and spines were damaged or outright destroyed on most, but I could make out a few names on some of the others.
A Botanist’s Guide
to the Aether. The Collected Works of Fairlisle, an Angel of the Seventh Rank. A Most Memorable Account of a Pope’s Exorcism. The Goblin Index, Third Edition
. And so on.

They formed the floor, too, spreading out everywhere underfoot. And the ceiling: they hung in a sagging, interlocked jumble that looked as if it should have collapsed already but somehow hadn’t. Books were burning here and there in the midst of all this, but their flames didn’t seem to be spreading to the adjoining books. Perhaps because many of them were dripping wet with water, or covered in mud or mould. There were even tables and chairs made of books. On one of the tables sat an inkpot turned on its side, as well as a white quill and sheaf of papers. The quill and papers were the only things in the library not made of books. Besides me, that was.

“Well, well, well,” I said to no one in particular.

But it turned out there was someone. When I spoke, a section of books in the floor near me exploded outward as a hand thrust through them. Then a second hand punched through the books, followed by a head. I watched as a man climbed out from underneath the floor. He’d been lying in what looked like a grave of books, but my words seemed to have woken him. He stood and turned to me, and I recognized him.

It was Polonius. The same Polonius who’d been skewered on the stage in Berlin. Just like I’d been skewered on a stage in London. He wore the same costume as when he’d been killed, the same bloody stains on it, although he was lacking a blade through his body. I remembered he had slid off it and to the floor when he’d been stabbed, giving Puck and Morgana the opportunity to defile his body a bit more with the prop turned weapon. His face was pale and tears ran down his cheeks.

“I thought you were dead,” I said by way of greeting. At least, that’s what I tried to say. Different words came out of my mouth instead, unbidden.

“What may this mean?” I asked. “Why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?” I recognized the words. They were from one of Hamlet’s speeches.

The words weren’t the only thing that came out of my mouth. A mist came out as well when I spoke, forming the shapes of letters that faded in and out of one another. The letters hung together like words before drifting apart, but they were no words I recognized. It was as if they were in some strange language that I didn’t know, and I thought I had learned them all over the ages.

I looked around again at the room made of books and wondered if this was some sort of faerie hoax. Or maybe a dream. Because those were the only things that made sense to me.

“Do you know me, my lord?” Polonius said, stepping closer to me. He didn’t seem to notice the rapier sticking through me, or at least thought it polite to not mention it. More mist came out of his mouth when he spoke and formed words in the air to match his speech. They were as equally strange and foreign as mine. It was like Baal’s tea symbols all over again.

“You’re the fey who played Polonius,” I said. Or rather, failed to say once more. Instead, I continued on with Hamlet’s words.

“Ay, poor ghost,” I said.

I had no control of my speech. It was as if something was forcing me to say the words it wanted. As if I were possessed.

“That’s very true, my lord,” Polonius said. More lines from the play. It seemed we were both being forced to speak them against our will. It was like the spell I’d used to summon the Witches, where the actors had been forced to say lines from
Macbeth
. Had someone cast a spell on us? Even if they had, it still didn’t explain our strange surroundings.

I noticed now that the burning books still hadn’t spread their flames any. This place should have gone up like a bonfire, no matter the condition of the other books. But the fires didn’t seem to be consuming the books at all. They looked no more burned than when I had first woken here.

Polonius grabbed a book from the table with the inkpot and quill then and thrust it into my hands. It was an ancient folio, like the kind that Shakespeare and the others of his time had used to publish their works. The kind of book that hadn’t been in circulation for hundreds of years.

“Read on this book!” Polonius cried. I looked down at the cover, but it was blank and so faded as to almost have no colour at all.

“Words, words, words,” I said.

A wind blew through the room at that moment, and the flames on the burning books flickered.

“I will most humbly take my leave of you,” Polonius sighed.

Then everything grew dim, like a slow fadeout during a play.

“O, I am slain!” Polonius cried.

And then the room went black and I resurrected.

I sat up on the stage in the National Theatre and tried to parry Laertes’ rapier. But I was holding the book Polonius had given me instead of my rapier. And Laertes’ blade was still buried in my chest. It was back to hurting like hell now.

There were gasps from the audience, and a couple of screams, and the actors and stagehands gathered around me stumbled back. I caught a glimpse of Amelia watching from the wings, but her face didn’t reveal any of what she was thinking now, not even surprise. Like father like daughter, I guess.

“Don’t move,” Laertes said, crouching beside me. “We’ve called an ambulance.” I was somewhat relieved to see that no mist came from his mouth when he spoke.

“You need to stay on script,” I told him. “Good actors don’t break character, no matter what happens.” I pushed myself to my feet and stood there swaying for a moment, still dizzy from the resurrection and the emptiness inside me because of all the grace it had cost. I stumbled a few steps toward Morgana, who was out of her seat and coming up the aisle now, the director following her like a faithful dog.

I slid the book into one of my pockets to keep it safe. Then I pulled the rapier out of my chest in a smooth, well-practiced motion because I’d had lots of chances to do that over the years. Luckily, the grace I had left did its job and kept me alive before the move killed me again. It hurt worse than hell, but I was used to that sort of pain by now. Half the audience applauded, the other half shook their heads and started for the doors, as if they thought this was some sort of experimental theatre production. Well, I’d seen worse.

“It doesn’t look like your little trick worked,” Morgana said, stopping at the edge of the stage.

“No,” I agreed. I handed the bloody rapier to Laertes. “Don’t stab me with that again,” I told him. He stared at me and then the blade in his hands. He was going to be ruined for this play now.

“Do you have any other ideas?” Morgana asked. “Maybe one that could actually take care of our problem?”

Against my will, I fell to my knees to be close to her. Or maybe it was the aftereffects of being killed and all.

“Not really,” I admitted. I reached for her hand to kiss it, but she pulled it away from me.

“You had best come up with a new plan then, my pet,” Morgana said. “Before we put on our next show.”

And then smoke bombs went off all around the theatre, and the faerie began to disappear back into the glamour. Cheap and showy but effective. I got up off my knees and looked into the wings again. Amelia mouthed something to me which I can’t repeat to you now, and then she was gone in thunder and lightning too. There was no one there now but the stagehands and a few bewildered actors. I doubled over from the new emptiness inside me at Morgana’s absence and tried to vomit, but there wasn’t even that in me.

The paramedics came in through one of the theatre doors then, fighting against the crowd, so I ran in the opposite direction, grabbing my street clothes as I went past the stagehands and confused actors, toward the emergency exit door in one of the walls. I couldn’t be too careful with people in uniform in England. Maybe the paramedics were really paramedics but maybe they weren’t. For all I knew, they could be scouts for the Black Guard. Either way, I didn’t need help. Not for my wound anyway.

I found myself in an alley behind the theatre, the sounds of the fire alarm I’d set off when I’d taken the emergency exit ringing in my ears. I stepped behind an overflowing dumpster and changed out of my Hamlet costume. Then I took a moment to examine more closely the book Polonius had given me.

There were no markings on the front or back. It was wet with blood, but I wasn’t sure if it was my blood or Polonius’s. Or maybe someone else’s. I had no idea how it had come back with me from wherever it had been I’d visited when I was dead. Every day is an adventure, whether you want it to be or not.

I figured the book had to be a clue of some sort for solving the mystery. Why else would Polonius have given it to me in that strange library? But when I opened it, I discovered the pages inside were blank too. I looked at the night sky and sighed.

It turned out I needed help after all—help figuring out what was going on. And I knew just who could provide that kind of assistance to me.

The problem was he’d been dead for centuries.