...To Their Graves Like Beds

Executing people’s inconvenient relatives was still the fashion in England, it seemed, but not for free, and they were still haggling over his price. Hamlet was to be kept safely boxed-up at one royal residence or another until it had been determined what to do with him. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had played their part as hapless intelligencers to the hilt, but it seemed the political climate in England was a bit more tense than even Claudius knew – or perhaps he had been counting on it, trapping the both of them in an endless bureaucratic hell even if they did perform their fatal task to satisfaction. The English ambassadors to Denmark had yet to appear, and war was in the air.

Hamlet hadn’t seen sleep since – it certainly felt like since their forceful departure from Elsinore, and there hadn’t been much rest in whatever sly hours had been snatched in between. He did not dare sleep, so he got to reading, squinting in the light of a half-smothered fire and with his concentration punctured by the sound of dripping. His cell had generously been furnished with someone else’s dog-eared Book of Hours, and he was fiercely of a mind to take it with him upon departing as compensation for his trouble. Fumbling over the lines in the dying light gave him little comfort, but it made a pious excuse to center his thoughts. No doubt his schoolmates were less comfortably accommodated elsewhere – and across the sea, his mother the queen was enduring unholy things, unthinkable indignities. At last he’d moved her as to the seriousness of her transgressions, but he hadn’t had the time to offer her any real protection – only words, and she’d wept. She was in God’s hands, he supposed, but given his present state of theological anxiety it wasn’t a very comforting thought.

He didn’t startle at the sound of someone approaching, and a key at the lock, but he did roll over into a suitably erratic reading position.

“So you’re young Hamlet.” He did startle a little at that; not a coarse kind of voice, issuing from the doorway, but as educated as his own, and affable. “I thought you would be older.”

Murderer or no, Prince Hamlet of Denmark was not just any prisoner, and he was deserving of a princely jailer. Out of habit, he supposes, he had been picturing someone cast in young Fortinbras’ mold – martial, hard-faced, a sterner version of his own appearance. His impression of the English king himself had only been fleeting, as he’d encountered him en route to some other more pressing business, but he had not looked like a particularly well man – stocky and bearded and grey with fatigue. Young Henry of England was jaunty and red-lipped and very young. He was dressed in the height of English fashion, rumpled like a player-prince whose costume had been laid up in a chest for too long – it ought to have looked laughable on him but didn’t; even his high coloring suited him. There was a suggestion of serpentine intelligence in his keen pale eyes.

Prince Henry balanced himself on the edge of a desk, swinging one long leg jauntily. His lamp now rested beside him, next to Hamlet’s still-damp sea gown and a few more unhelpful articles that had been recovered from the wreckage.

“Regem occidere nolite timere,” he said to himself, cheerily, “bonum est.”

Hamlet rose and shut the book, the bit of his brain responsible for the translation of spontaneously declaimed unfamiliar epigrams scratching away diligently. He was much more annoyed than he is menaced; he ought to have said something feigned-mad, but could only come up with, “What?”

“Just an amusing bit of family lore. Anyway, you’re not a king yet, and the polite request for your assassination was much more clearly-worded.”

One of those amusements that’s only funny if you’re having it at a friend’s expense, probably. He held up a cut-open letter.

Hamlet sprang up and moved to snatch it from his hand – which the prince coolly allowed, drawing forth another letter, equally familiar in appearance. He made no show of reading it off, only his possession of it, but the absent seal said enough.

“You’ll notice some discrepancies between the two, I’m sure. My father and his closest advisors are still trying to make sense of what this signifies; it’s a rather odd state of affairs, isn’t it? The one saying to do away with the last king of Denmark’s inconvenient son, and the other one saying to lop the heads off a pair of Wittenberg scholastics and let you go unmolested. And you’re my prisoner, so I thought I’d have a look.” He fiddled at the edge of the folded papers with a dagger, as if to let the wax bearing the royal seal of Denmark catch the light. “You have an excellent scribe’s hand, you know that? If you ever get tired of being a madman, you’d make a fine forger.”

“It’s not forgery, it’s self-defense. That seal was my father’s. I wish it had been cracked in two.” It was impossible not to sound sullen about it; the thought of its twin residing somewhere among Claudius’ personal effects like any other trinket was profoundly galling. The prince wore his own ring with a signet on it, and Hamlet couldn’t help staring at it where it sat on his long finger.

“Fair enough. My father, in his infinite wisdom, believes that line of nonsense about pirates and shipwrecks. Your king, whatever kind of man he may be, seems to believe we fear the Danes enough to work their will even at a distance. I don’t know which of them has most grievously misplaced his confidence. Your king’s picked a hell of a time to call on an old debt. Your poor countrymen say you’re a murderer as well as a lunatic, is that so?”

“I killed an old man, a spy in the king’s employ. It was by mistake, and it’s hardly a great loss for the common weal anyway. They were going to ship me off to England either way; the king of Denmark is chiefly concerned with his own crimes, not mine.”

“Why not exile outright, if that’s so? He’d have spared himself the further guilt of contriving to kill a kinsman, and you’d be entertained at the best houses on the continent.”

“Exile, and risk my returning with an army? It’d be terribly impolitic.” Better to have a foreign power take care of it for him; the English were treacherous by nature, even against their indisputable own. “And he’d hate to trouble my mother.”

The prince came a little closer, still regarding him with a kind of drowsy curiosity.

“What could you have done to make him hate you so? Besides being grim and inconvenient to succession. Have you contrived treasons? Sided with his enemies? As your royal equal, you can speak freely with me. Make your plea, and I’ll see what I can do for you without interference from above. Only don’t lie,” he said, eyes twinkling now. “I know all about lying, and I’ll know.”

He wasn’t in Denmark any more. The worst they’d do is kill him. They’d send his head back to Elsinore in a basket for Ophelia to cherish like a golden ball. Hamlet squared his shoulders, feeling uncharacteristically small and drab in the face of this regal young giant.

“He hates me for being well-liked, and for being young, so he seeks to bring about my death by any means he can devise.” His voice has gotten very flat in his own mouth. “He killed my father and ruined my mother. What else am I meant to do?”

“What business is that of mine?”

“I need to get back to Denmark as fast as I possibly can,” Hamlet said, and then, self-conscious of its unsubtlety, added: “It’ll be worth your while.”

“And what incentive could there possibly be for the Prince of Wales to assist in the escape of a political prisoner entrusted to our care by a well-regarded royal peer?” The word ‘our’ hangs uneasily in the air, uncertain if it wants to be the royal kind of plural, imbued with sacred pomp and gravitas, or the my dad could thrash your dad kind.

“The opportunity to see justice done and my nation’s throne delivered from the hands of a vile and contemptible usurper?” (Prince Henry raises an eyebrow, and Hamlet revises his approach.) “A service to Christendom and a jewel of virtue in England’s crown? A deed of love between your nation and mine? When I am king, I’ll owe you a great debt.”

“If you are king,” the prince said, very lightly. “King Claudius is a first-rate schemer, if half of what you’ve told me is true. You’ll need to be at the pinnacle of your craft to best him.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of. I’ll take my chances once I’m on my way.”

“Give me one good reason to risk my own reputation in releasing you from custody.”

“If justice is executed I’ll see no Dane ever extorts a single shilling out of your countrymen ever again. You’ll be absolved of all future tribute.” Hamlet thought back, and struck on a particular article of notoriety that had been known to him even at Wittenberg – the general rumor being that all King Henry’s sons are itching to come of age and overthrow him, that they’re unnatural as can be, vipers fostered in the art of treachery. Not especially endearing traits, but he was desperate. “You’d strike a blow for all young princes–”

“And inconvenience the hell out of my father. Very well. I’ll see to it, and I wish you luck.” Young Prince Henry’s face split in a smile that was disarmingly boyish. “At the very least it’ll be a good time.”

“First I’ve got a letter to write.” Maybe even two. He’ll make the first one brief.

“Go ahead, and take your time. I’ll martial my forces and return under cover of nightfall.”

*

By daybreak, the exiled prince of Denmark was found to have escaped the Tower by means unknown, believed to have commandeered a sailing vessel – last seen in the company of two gangling rogues in sailor’s garb and a prodigiously fat old man.