Here's to Thy Health

by Stranger

Summary:

Even those who sent for Parl Dro were seldom glad to see him. Neither were the members of the Danish court who had not sent for him. Nevertheless, he had a ghost to pursue.

Notes:

Written July 1988. It's my take on the canonical Hamlet and Kill the Dead, which make a better fit than it might seem at first.

Even those who sent for Parl Dro were seldom glad to see him. They merely wanted an unpleasant task done. Seldom was he summoned for friendship's sake, and less often did he respond. It was not wholly friendship which called him at present.

There is work here for your trade. I cannot promise you thanks except my own, which shall be great whether to see yourself alone or unsee a ghost by your doing, Horatio had written him. The letter had been waiting at the last city he'd visited, in the hands of a nondescript young man who was no doubt another of Horatio's unrespectable sources of practical knowledge. This person had found Dro when his presence became known in the town, and had fished a clean parchment packet from his stained apothecary's cloak, with a flourish of borrowed splendor for the parchment's newness and extravagance.

Horatio could not have afforded new parchment before, though there was a clue of sorts in the letter. It continued: The need is great, as are the affairs that give rise to it. For friendship's sake, I beg you will join me at Kronborg Castle, where I shall tell you more of the matter.

Horatio, an affable gentleman with more curiosity than might be seemly in one of birth, had entertained Parl Dro when he was last at Wittenberg, and had listened with an air of grave interest to his account of ghostly activity. He had neither laughed nor recoiled and his questions were intelligent, though Dro had not been sure that it was more than an intellectual puzzle to him. Parl Dro did not think of Horatio as a friend, but the man was honest and not inclined to mistake simple facts.

If there were a ghost amid great affairs, Dro would investigate. His steady stride covered the ground before him at a remarkable pace, for he had had years of practice at taking himself where he needed to go.

Kronborg Castle was no rustic petty monarch's seat. Danish affairs were uneasy after the old king's recent death, but, excluding the natural speculation among neighboring countries about the change, there was no particular threat. The Danish crown, with all the shipping revenues of its capital port, was a rich, well-defended monarchy. Horatio at Kronborg Castle could send messages (and Dro speculated that more than one such letter was waiting for him in other cities he might have visited) sealed in new parchment. He had enough standing to summon his own guests to the castle, it seemed. Horatio had risen in the world.

Kronborg Castle presented a square, stony, martial front to the land, its severity somewhat undermined by the expanse of city around it that was obviously busy, prosperous and accustomed to peace. Dro made his way through the dusty streets to the castle itself, found the servants' entrance, and strode unchecked into the under-household.

He asked for Horatio, scholar-gentleman of Wittenberg. A well-dressed page recalled the name as belonging to some resident of the castle and at Dro's plea, he ambled away to investigate the truth of the rumor. Dro seated himself on a bench to wait, without expectation of any hasty outcome.

Expectation, for once, was foiled. Less than half an hour later, Horatio himself appeared, slightly threadbare as ever in his scholar's gown, but clean and cheerfully well-fed. Indeed, he was munching on a pear which, Dro suspected, had been snatched from a larder between whatever upper room the page had found him in and the outer servants' passage where Dro sat.

"Parl!" Horatio swallowed, wiped his hand inadequately on an ink-spotted handkerchief, and extended it in greeting. His smile was as quick and genuine as ever, but Dro detected a new aura of strain in him as well, perhaps a lessening of the scholar's unworldliness. "Welcome to Elsinore. Come up to a room where we can talk."

Dro nodded, quite ready to hear either new pleasantries or real problems, after the boredom of the journey. Horatio gestured at a scullion, and Dro surmised they were to be brought food. He hoped so.

In an upstairs room that was obviously Horatio's own apartment for an extended stay, Dro ate meat and bread, drank ale, and listened to Horatio's troubles. Horatio, it seemed, was afflicted with friendship in the wrong part of the royal family.

"The humour of the inner court has been unsettled ever since the old king died and the electors called on his brother to succeed. The son isn't very pleased, naturally, and he's popular with the crowd."

"That's not surprising," said Dro mildly, wondering what else there was. "Surely the crowd's likes are inconsequential?"

"Of course. But it seems the queen's second marriage is rather — hasty. She meant it to prejudice the election, or the prince thinks it did, and he's not happy with her or the outcome."

"I'm not sure I follow the connection."

"The queen married the new king, the old king's brother," said Horatio, hushed. "Three months ago."

A moment of shock passed over Dro, and he hoped it hadn't shown on his face. "Her... brother, you say?"

"Her husband's, yes."

"No wonder there's unease. I suppose we should be grateful she did not favor her son."

Horatio took on an embarrassed and somewhat guilty expression that Dro interpreted to mean he'd had the same thought, in strict silence.

"Yes, I'll hold my tongue," said Dro to Horatio's uneasy face. "You didn't call me here to gossip, in any case."

"I did not." Horatio was visibly relieved at the chance to change the subject, but he remained troubled. "There's a ghost as well."

Dro gave him an inquiring look over his ale cup and waited.

"I was called here two months ago—"

"Just as you called me?"

"Very like it," said Horatio thoughtfully. "I'd met some of the gentlemen of the court, along with the prince, at Wittenberg. When Marcellus saw what he thought was a ghost and wanted another opinion, I came with them to see what was happening."

"Out of pure curiosity," said Dro dryly, then shrugged. "Yes, you did. I should have known."

"Known what?"

"That you'd want to see it for yourself."

"I did want to see it, of course," said Horatio. "And— it's the old king, or looks like him."

"Whom, of course, you knew well."

"Oddly enough, I did know him by sight," said Horatio, ignoring Dro's habitual sardonic tone. "The others who saw the ghost concur, including Prince Hamlet."

Dro put down the ale cup. "And thus, do we come to the heart of the problem?"

"Yes. He saw the ghost, and spoke with it. He hasn't been the same since."

"And this leads you, having heard my speculations on such appearances, to think there is cause for alarm."

"The prince seems much as ever, but his mind is... troubled. I can't say too much, you understand. However, if you are right about ghosts, and this is indeed a ghost, no matter who—"

"It can only harm him," interrupted Dro, "no matter who it was. I see your dilemma."

"One doesn't wish to tamper with a king's shade, naturally."

"Or unnaturally," said Dro.

"Please!"

"Your sensibility does you credit, I'm sure. However, you've heard what I know of ghosts, and I almost expected you, of all the world, to understand it." Horatio looked puzzled and flattered at the same time. Dro gave him the first line of the argument. "The ghost is not the living person."

"Agreed," said Horatio, instantly picking up the academic style of debate.

"A ghost is not the true and proper form of the afterlife, as good men deserve to experience it."

"Stipulated. And that King Hamlet was a good man."

"So I hear. A good king, certainly."

"He was."

"Very well. I shall not argue the form of afterlife, but only that its true form is preferable for a soul, to a false form."

Horatio nodded. "You have said the ghost that manifests to us is unfairly caught between worlds, neither living nor dead."

"It cannot be made to live again. It can be freed to die. That, I can do." Dro knew his voice sounded cold, not sad. Perhaps that was best.

"For my lord Hamlet's sake, as well," said Horatio.

"Ah?" Dro thought Horatio sounded uneasy on that point.

"He is distracted, beyond annoyance with the electors and the queen. It's becoming worse, not better. If the ghost is the cause, your service will quiet his mind, and ease the temper of the court."

"Are you sure?"

"I saw the ghost. I'm sure the prince is... less himself than he should be."

"If you want me to go further, I should see him. I appreciate this matter may take delicate handling."

Horatio sighed his relief. "There's a company of entertainers due to show up soon. I know them — we all do — from when they were in Wittenberg. I can ask them to introduce you as one of their group while they're here. Hamlet likes them; he'll speak to them. It would be a way for you to stay in the castle without exciting comment."

"Perhaps only some comment," said Dro, who had become accustomed to hearing himself the object of others' conversations, often well before he gave them cause. "Has the ghost manifested again?"

"Not to me."

"When did you first see it, and where?"

On the east guard platform of the castle, after midnight, two months ago."

"Not since then? Nowhere?"

"No. I think..."

"What?" asked Dro sharply.

"It's possible Hamlet has seen it. I can't say why I think that."

Dro pushed the trencher with the remains of his meal aside. "Your senses may know more than you do. I don't suppose you could conduct me around this guard platform, could you?"

"Possibly. Now?"

"Now," said Dro. "Before I get mixed up with a troupe of mountebanks and jugglers." He was looking forward to the experience very little, even though he recognized it might be his best ploy to see the "distracted" prince, with or without the ghost.

He found nothing on the battlements, beyond a disgruntled guardsman or two who accepted Horatio as a visitor to be tolerated for his association with their prince. That, and the faintest of chills in the afternoon sunlight that might have been no more than anticipation or nerves, after Horatio's story.

# # #

Horatio's company of entertainers proved to be displaced actors of dramatic literature, of tales both classical and contemporary. Parl Dro found himself welcomed (as a quite temporary addition) for his looks, which surprised him only a little. His face had caused him enough trouble, good and bad, that he supposed it might as well be of use for once.

With the gaggle of chattering men, the boy, and the sullen young fourth player who was no longer a boy, he came into the great hall of the castle. They were introduced with ceremony as artists, rather than only as servants, and he concluded that Horatio's estimation of the prince's interest had been correct.

Horatio had described Prince Hamlet unmistakably: thin but alert, wearing rather affected mourning black that stood out amid the brilliant, fashionable tunics of the courtiers who followed him. He showed neither distress nor irrationality as he greeted the company and spoke to some of the players individually. It was obvious that he had prior acquaintance with them, and equally obvious that his pleasure at seeing the group again was sincere.

Altogether, aside from a taste for dramatic criticism, his mind seemed perfectly sound. He drew the lead player into an exchange of speeches on some excessively gory subject:

"And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks."

The lead player picked up the speech, extending the Trojan gore:

"When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs...

In the midst of Hecuba's tribulations, Dro's attention was caught again by Hamlet. The prince was following the actor's words with intense, almost morbid introspection, and something in Dro's seventh sense knew the echo of a ghost.

The impression faded, the speech came to a close, the lords and company laughed at their own cleverness. When the prince sent the players off with the eldest of the court lords to find them lodging, and held back the leader alone, Dro lingered as well, unobtrusively, for his own purposes. He might be a kind of actor after all, he thought, one whose art was to go unseen rather than to make himself visible.

Dro eavesdropped without shame or scruple and was rewarded. The prince had evidently chosen a particular play and meant to tailor it for his purpose. There was, indeed, more on his mind than ordinary entertainment.

The lead player came away, and the rest of the courtiers, but the prince remained alone with his thoughts.

He stank, then, of haunting.

Even from a discreet distance and camouflage, Dro knew there was a ghost somewhere, a ghost that troubled Prince Hamlet very much. There was no need even to wonder where the physical link might be: the prince surely carried it or kept it close, to produce so strong an effect.

He was planning — hindered by his ghost-drained will, but now determined anew — some action based on what the ghost was to him. That was almost certainly bad. It would strengthen the ghost, weaken Hamlet and probably worsen the state of the family politics, whatever they were. For everyone's sake, it should be circumvented.

Until Parl Dro knew what the ghost's need was, and therefore what the goal of Hamlet's action would be, he could hardly afford to prevent a member of the royal family from taking action. Nor could he rifle the prince's possessions to search for an undetermined ghost-link. Frustrated for the moment, he retired to find the troupe's lodging and review his own thoughts.

Horatio was waiting for him outside the great hall. "Eavesdropping is not generally considered polite," he offered, voice neutral. His eyes asked, What did you learn?

"There is a ghost," said Dro, abruptly. "The prince is its focus. I'm surprised he's as well as he is, when the haunting is so strong."

"My lord Hamlet has a very keen mind," said Horatio stiffly.

"So he should, if you befriend him. I meant no discourtesy to his faculties. But there is a ghost with him and that will take its toll, now or later."

"What do we do?"

The passageway was intermittently peopled with servants, so Dro picked a direction he hoped would lead to the rest of the players, the kitchens, or both. Walking, he said, "Can you tell me if the prince has anything of the old king's? Personal items?"

Horatio frowned at the question but said, "Something, perhaps. He hasn't talked about it to me."

"Perhaps not. Could there have been something of the sort on that guard platform you showed me?"

Horatio's face showed comprehension at last. "Ah, something to bring the king's ghost there." He kept his voice low. "No, I don't think anyone would have cared to go too near the place, even in daylight. I know I didn't, if it meant an armed ghost rising at me."

"And thus, no one would have picked up any odd objects in that corner of the guard-walk."

"Hamlet might have. He's been up there now and then, ever since it happened."

"You say the ghost spoke to him. Did you hear what it said?"

"Hamlet said..." Horatio looked guilty. "I swore not to tell anyone what happened that night. Hamlet wanted secrecy, although I don't know why. I saw the ghost for myself on the guard platform, before then, as I've told you."

"Whatever the ghost's link might be, I'm sure Hamlet has it now, and it seems likely it was on the platform before he found it. Ghosts are drawn to the link object, and don't appear elsewhere."

"Why do you say Hamlet has it?"

They had reached a doorway where the fourth player peered at them, mouth smeared with gravy. Dro nodded at him and pulled Horatio further along, out into a courtyard and the summer daylight. No one followed them. "He's being drained by a ghost. That ghost, unless there's another one. He must have the link with him, or in a place where he sees it constantly, for the effect to be so strong."

"You think he's in danger."

"Until the ghost is stopped, everyone here is in danger."

# # #

There were no gaps in the acting company's scheme for presenting The Murder of Gonzago, or none that Dro could bridge, so he merely listened to them practice. The prince had chosen this play on purpose, so Dro tried to ascertain what the choice might imply. It seemed to be an Italian piece about murder, fickle womanhood, and the sanctity of marital love.

The third time, however, that he heard,

"Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and times agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing...

from the actor with the fondness for broad gestures, he decided he knew enough about the play and not enough about the court, and so escaped to wander the castle.

He learned nothing, except that the inhabitants were uneasy; and where a uneasy ghost was in residence, that was hardly surprising. Even Horatio seemed distracted, though whether from haunting or merely in his customary rapture of knowledge, was not plain.

# # #

Dro spent the performance, for which he was instructed only to avoid getting in the players' way, watching the royal audience. It might be his best chance to learn what was going on. That, after all, was the reason prince Hamlet had arranged this performance.

The prince himself wore court clothes, correct if somber, correctly ornamented with miscellaneous items of jewelry and utility, though which were which wasn't always apparent. He sat with engaging informality on the floor, a posture Dro assumed he had chosen for the benefit of the very nervous young court lady whose chair he sat beside.

Familiar by now with the course of the drama, Dro heard the prince's running commentary and the court's reactions with interest. The play began with an overloving couple, fancifully represented to be at ease in a garden. At length Gonzago, being wearied in rhymed couplets, lay down for a nap. A poisoner entered and announced his purpose: "Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit..."

Hamlet sat up, eagerly alert, patting something at his belt, ignoring the young lady for nearly the first time since the play had begun. The play-poisoner, having made his purpose crystal clear, carried it out, also fancifully. The unlucky Gonzago's body contorted in horrible spasms, to Hamlet's ready explanation as the symptoms progressed. The rest of the watchers were more puzzled than entertained, though they paid dutiful attention.

"...the murder gets the love of Gonzago's wife," said the prince, far too clearly, into a pause. He sounded rather too satisfied about it, and a ripple of tension suddenly flowed through the hall, silencing the play for a moment.

The audience stilled and stared at the prince. Someone took a breath. Loudly. And all hell broke loose. The Danish king rose, purpling, and shouted. The queen and courtiers followed suit in a sudden, anxious babble. Unappeased by wife or stepson or anyone else, the king motioned to his torchbearers and headed a parade out of the room.

"Lights," cried the Lord Polonius, who appeared to be in charge of torchbearers, as well as actors and other distractions. "Lights," he repeated, unnecessarily, for the room was nearly empty now. The frightened company of players lost no time in removing themselves as well.

"Lights!" Polonius commandeered the last two torch-bearers for himself, and swept majestically out behind the king's procession, leaving the great hall illuminated by scattered candles and the smile on Hamlet's face.

The prince prattled jubilant nonsense at Horatio as Parl Dro took himself into the same obscure corner as before, now even darker. Whatever it was that had happened meant a great deal to Hamlet; the prince carolled, "I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound," and called for music.

Well, that was clear enough.

The play was about a king who had been poisoned, the poisoner subsequently marrying the victim's wife. At the moment that became clear, King Claudius had stopped the performance, precipitately and in high emotion. Hamlet took it as confirmation of his suspicions — no doubt, of what the ghost had told him.

Claudius had indeed married the former king's widow. By the look of it, Prince Hamlet now believed his new stepfather had killed the old king as well. If the ghost had put that in his head, it was no wonder he had been upset, "distracted," and also careful to hide it in court company. Whether the ghost spoke any truth or not, Prince Hamlet would believe that he couldn't honorably fail to claim revenge for his father's murder. Having all but made his accusation to the court, he was bound to follow it up with action, and the only action he would accept in such a case would lead to the death of King Claudius. If it were true, the former king would have demanded the same, as indeed the ghost seemed to have done.

Dro could hardly judge of the possible regicide, and had no intention of doing so. His profession was not to judge the affairs of kings, but to deal with ghosts. The former king's spirit deserved the same rest any man's should be given.

All in all, it promised to be a difficult exorcism.

King Claudius' reaction meant only that he understood the accusation, but the ghost's tale, true or not, had now taken even firmer hold on Prince Hamlet. His behavior at the moment with two returned courtiers was scarcely rational:

"The king sir," said one of them, a bit helplessly, and was interrupted by Hamlet.

"Ay, sir, what of him?" The prince was vastly, ostentatiously amused, which didn't suit any view of the situation. Dro feared that his mental state was finally being affected by the haunting.

"Is in his retirement marvellous distempered," continued the courtier, doggedly.

That was another thing. The king could hardly ignore this unfilial behavior, even if he could not act openly against his stepson. Prince Hamlet might be too animated to recall such a thing, for in the face of the messenger's courtly style, he went on wielding wordplay with intent to irritate, succeeding brilliantly.

"Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair," said the courtier. If he was willing to be so nearly rude to the prince, Hamlet must be under royal displeasure, and even this courtier knew it. And disgruntled kings had a variety of subtle and direct means by which to express themselves. Unless the ghost was eliminated and Hamlet came to his senses, he might not have a future to enjoy. Anyone now associated with him might have an equally short future — except the ghost.

The case had become quite serious. Prince Hamlet must have the ghost's link with him, but that didn't make it easier for Dro to detect. It could be anything of the old king's that the prince now carried. Was his dagger an heirloom? Were any of his jewels? The leather glove tucked, mateless, like a favor in his belt? It looked too large for that dainty girl in the play audience. What of the preposterous tiny painting he wore like a jewel? The ghost had appeared in the old king's armor, recalling his career of combatting Poles and Norwegians and anyone else he perceived as threatening Denmark. Did the prince cherish an odd buckle or tie-strap as a memento of his father's famous career?

The prince finally tired of baiting the courtiers, and allowed them to deliver their message, that the queen wanted him for a conference. "We shall obey, were she ten times our mother," said Hamlet, but did not dismiss them. The musicians arrived in answer to his earlier call, and the prince spent another interminable while making airy speeches that trapped the courtiers in metaphors and silliness.

When, at last, they were all dismissed, Dro allowed himself to be swept out by Lord Polonius with the rest of the players. The situation needed action, as quickly as possible. Dro dropped behind the players and discovered that Horatio was waiting for him.

"What— ?" began Horatio.

"No time," said Dro, interrupting. "Where are the royal apartments?"

Above the great hall. You're not— ?"

"I'm not going to upset anyone more than they'll be upset if that ghost stays active. Less. Do you know what the prince suspects?" The look on Horatio's face was answer enough. "Then you know what he'll try to do. If he kills someone, it will imperil his soul, it will strengthen the ghost, and it won't do the victim much good, either."

"He wants revenge. It's his right."

Dro was patient. "And suppose the new king becomes a ghost as well? It's all similar enough; it's that kind of situation. Hamlet would probably think it a great joke. He's more affected by the ghost than I thought at first."

Horatio stared in horror, obviously contemplating the possibility of two ghosts, both battening on Hamlet.

"Strong personalities can hide the strain, transform it into temper or humor," Dro went on. "He's been doing that for a while, hasn't he? But it doesn't work forever. And after him, who? The queen? The whole court?"

Horatio shook his head, silent.

"I plan to see him before he can do anything irreparable. Now, where can I find him?"

"Up those stairs," said Horatio, quiet and pale.

Dro took the stairs upward for three landings, found a tapestried corridor, and began a new exploration. If Prince Hamlet carried the link himself, and the ghost's tale was as he deduced, there was no reason for it to manifest anywhere but near the prince, and more reason than ever for it to show itself at intervals to encourage him to the vengeance it apparently desired.

After some blundering about in dark side passages and one or two delays while he employed his talent at remaining unseen, Dro found himself in a well-appointed room furnished with tapestry potraits, where voices sounded faintly from an inner chamber, accompanied by the unmistakable chill trace of a ghostly presence. It was to breath as ice was to water: colder, suspended in stillness, but made of the same elements. Dro kept still and waited. If he'd needed confirmation that the link was nearby, he had it.

Voices rose and fell, one of them Hamlet's. Presently it became louder, intelligible: "Good night, mother," and the prince came into the outer room. Unexpectedly, he carried a large, long object, but it was not until he let it fall onto the floor that Dro realized it was a man's body.

Parl Dro, whose self-protective instincts were as good as anyone's, faded behind a tapestry. The prince's mutterings informed him that the body was very heavy, it was definitely and messily dead, and that it had been Polonius. This last was puzzling: the Lord Chamberlain was an inquisitive and irritating bore but he was not, by earlier events, the ghost's target, nor Hamlet's.

Whatever the reason, the case was clearly more serious than ever.

Hamlet managed to remove the body into a passage, for what purpose, other than the courtesy of relieving the queen's apartment of it, Dro could not guess. He collected his wits and a branch of candles and ventured in pursuit. The prince took the body, which certainly looked heavy, no further than the next room down the passageway, where he set about arranging it as neatly as anyone could unassisted.

Dro walked in. "My lord," he said in greeting, as the prince's eyes were drawn to the lit candles he carried.

"Caught early," said the Danish prince, but his words were the only sign of remorse. He smiled, showily manic.

"You must have had your reasons," said Dro.

"Not truly. I do not count him a great loss, but I did not mean his death."

"Whose, then?"

"None but he who is damned already," said the prince.

He played games far too well. Dro had neither inclination nor patience for it. "King Claudius?"

The prince's smile reappeared, more manic than ever. "Heigh for a riddle. What's a king that bites his own tail?"

"What's a king that bites his own son?" said Dro. He stood poised between the prince and the doorway, holding the candles between them. "His majesty your father deserves your memory, but not your soul."

The prince's eyes widened. "If not he, who does deserve it?"

"Yourself. His ghost has no power to decide your fate."

"Then it is I who choose to heed him," said Hamlet.

"Why?"

"I will not let a usurping murderer take his place." The prince had stopped the smiling play; he was sincere and quite angry.

"Is that how you name the king?" Dro approached the little tableau of prince kneeling over corpse, letting the candlelight pick out details of the live man's clothing: glitter of jewels, gleam of light on a chain and a richly-worked belt, dull reflections from the odd glove he carried. It was covered with iron rings, not courtly ornament, Dro realized. He hoped it was the link he needed, for he needed it soon and, if possible, without offending the Danish crown.

"Actions, not names, will speak for me. What are you?"

"I speak to ghosts," said Dro.

"I've spoken to one."

"So you have. It is leading you to madness and despair."

The prince sat back on his heels, hands going to his belt where he fingered the mailed glove. "And you?"

"I was not its son, nor its subject."

"Then why are you here?"

"To speak to a ghost." The prince's eyes widened again with something like fierce pleasure, his hands moving to swordhilt and dagger. "Not yours or his," Dro nodded at the corpse, "my lord. The same ghost that you've seen." He took two more steps and knelt, candles set on the floor beside him, to face the prince across Lord Polonius' body. "There is something of the king's that holds him here with you. He should be let go to the next world."

"Not until he is avenged."

"If he stayed only to tell you that, he has done so now."

Dro waited, but the prince did not reply. Between them, Polonius' body stank, as a new corpse stinks.

The prince, had the self-assurance of someone uncountably higher than Dro at this court. He was armed, determined, and less than perfectly rational at the moment. There was little chance of getting the link from him by any sort of persuasion. That left trickery.

The link was here. Dro concentrated.

The candles' glow did not lessen but became colder, sharper, less illuminating. The air stilled, and a figure slowly appeared beside Hamlet. It wore armor, its gloves the same as the one Hamlet carried.

It was able to hold its own against candlelight, seeming solid and real.

Hamlet stared and scrambled to his feet. Mad or sane, he had never lost his aristocratic composure at any time with the players, the courtiers, or the corpse on the floor; now he lost it completely. "You have come again. For what purpose?" he whispered, shaking.

The ghost turned silently from Dro to the prince. Hamlet found his natural stance and straightened into dignity. "I have not forgotten your command," he said to the armored figure, ignoring Dro.

Dro moved quietly around the living and ghostly figures who faced each other as stiffly as a frieze, staying in the ghost's line of vision. Hamlet was obsessed, unable to ignore the ghost, as Dro had hoped. The prince might be afraid — everyone feared ghosts, even Parl Dro — but fascinated as well, also a common reaction. And the ghost had been his father: in life loved, revered, and probably feared as well.

From behind the prince, Dro glared at the ghost, willing it to him with all the intangible persuasion his seventh sense afforded him. It took a step forward.

Hamlet, uneasy at the still-silent apparition, took a step back, hands raised open and empty. The ghost advanced again. Hamlet bumped, backward, into Dro, who recoiled and exclaimed immediately and loudly in a language that was not Danish, as he steadied the prince.

The pain of the stepped-on foot broke his concentration, and the ghost stumped backwards a pace, wavered, and faded out. Dro felt the rust and leather of the glove now in his hand, knew it for the link, and let the ghost take its leave. An instant later the glove was safe inside his tunic, the movement disguised in the flickering light of the branch of candles, half of which had gone out. Even so, they cast warmer light on the supine body of Lord Polonius than they had on the ghost.

The prince apologized for his clumsiness in measured courtly idiom, obliterating any trace of the genuine emotion he had shown to the ghost. His manner was also quite reasonably sane.

A stir outside announced further intruders. Hamlet said, softly, "Mind this unhappy fellow for me. I'll speak with you again," and went out to deal with them. Dro waited, listening to dialogue progressively more obscure and less helpful to the searchers, who had heard of Polonius' fate and were looking for the body.

Hamlet was in more trouble than ever. He was commanded to the king's presence to explain his recent activities, which seemed to strike him as ironic: "The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing—"

"A thing, my lord!" said a slightly shocked courtier's voice.

"Of nothing," returned the prince, sing-song with affected craziness. Dro wondered how much was affectation and how much real understanding of what was happening. And he wondered if the mad, as he'd heard, were merely more perceptive than the sane.

Considering what he himself saw and did, which was he, by that reckoning?

# # #

Elsinore was a town of commerce and, at the moment, a very busy one. The forges and shipyards were alight and at work even after nightfall, as Parl Dro made his way through the streets toward open countryside. He judged that so active a city would not have barred its gates through the night, and it had not. He went out with a band of late-night sailors, unchallenged.

He fell by degrees into his long, journey-walking stride. He carried bread and cheese and two of Horatio's pears, as well as the worn, armored glove that had so upset the affairs of Kronborg Castle.

Dro went inland, wanting solitude for himself and for the thing he carried. When a day and its miles had passed and night fell again, he found a deserted field and built a fire.

The glove, tattered leather bleached bark-white in spots, sewn with rusty metal rings, had seen a great deal of wear. Dro held it between his two palms and thought of the king who had worn it, the prince who had carried it, and the rest of that uneasy and divided court of Denmark. How much of their trouble was caused by the ghost, and how much came of their lives, inevitable even without other-worldly intervention? Would his own intervention make any difference?

His unspoken call drew the ghost into visibility, armor gleaming faintly in the suddenly-cold light of the fire. Its face was full of the weight of responsibility accepted, of power used with judgment and bold personality. The figure stood silent against the misty night air.

"You son has heard you," said Dro. "Why did you choose him?"

"No one else cared that I had been murdered," said the ghost.

"That is the reward of lifelong toil," said Dro, "as you might have foreseen. You did have one willing avenger. Are you content?"

The ghost motioned, majestically, with the war-baton it carried. "Not until my foul and unnatural brother has his reward."

"He has it," murmured Dro, thinking of the satisfied new king, the devoted queen, the sleek courtiers. He felt very cynical as he held out the leather glove to the flames between himself and the ghost.

It came at him straight through the fire, face still tranquil, one outstretched hand grasping toward his throat. The baton, when it aimed a blow at him, was no more than a brush of glacial chill, but the hands clawed sharply, scoring his face with scratches from the mailed gloves it still believed it wore.

Parl Dro endured the assault, hunching to protect his neck and batting at the ghost one-handed, exerting himself only enough to make sure the real glove remained in the fire. It smoldered grudgingly at first, and the ghostly battering became more frantic, less directed. Finally it cracked and began to blacken, and Dro dropped it into the heart of the flames.

His attacker wavered, wailing, "Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched; cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled! All my imperfections on my head!"

The family all had a courtly turn of phrase even under stress. Dro supposed the ghost had conversed with its son in that same idiom.

The old king was a faint outline against the night, a distant voice. Dro picked up a stick and poked at the glove in the fire, separating its ashes from the bits of iron that would not melt in a plain wood fire, but which were innocuous in themselves. The screams went out, and the field was quite empty, to all of Dro's senses.

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Parl Dro, who walked on two feet, arrived in Wittenberg some weeks after Horatio, whose purse could now command a horse of his own. Horatio could also eat at a tavern that did not welcome most students. A wealthy gentleman scholar was welcome nearly everywhere, and Horatio and his guest dined unmolested by either gowned carousers or irritated townsmen.

Despite his prosperity, Horatio was white and thinner, and did not eat much of the meal they were served. At last, left with only a flask of very good German wine, Dro cut into Horatio's dissertation on Greek precedents. "You've moved beyond my poor understanding, I'm afraid. Can we speak of something more immediate?"

"You sound like an undergraduate." But Horatio looked less vague now, less buried in his philosophical retreat.

"I don't aspire even to that status. I am merely curious on some subjects."

Horatio nodded. "As I know." He did not smile. "I have learned stranger things of you than I hoped."

Dro shrugged. "I thought that was what you hoped."

"It was." Horatio drank from his winecup. "Philosophy surpasses facts, facts exceed philosophy. Do you like the paradox?"

"I don't deal in paradoxes, Master Horatio."

"Don't you?" Horatio sighed. "I supposed you want to hear how the affair in Elsinore ended."

"Badly, I assume."

Horatio did not attempt to conceal a flicker of surprise before he said, "Why do you say so?" in his best theoretical manner.

"There is what I see in you; and there is what I saw in Denmark," Dro answered in kind, willing to spin out his understanding step by step, for his sake as well as Horatio's.

"Go on. You see that I am affected by the events."

"You anticipate me."

"You were not surprised by my gloomy disposition," continued Horatio, measuring out his return argument with imperfect detachment.

"I am not surprised that you hosted me graciously in spite of it," said Dro.

"The soul being stunned with grief, the body must do what it can in recompense."

"Nevertheless, I appreciate your courtesy. I feared that the matter in Denmark would go badly, whatever I did."

Horatio took another large swallow of wine. "It did. It most unambiguously did." He sat up and resumed the scholarly dialogue. "Why do you say so, not having seen the ending?"

"I saw the events in motion. Any direction they took would be unhappy."

"All dead," said Horatio, blurrily. He refilled his cup. "My lord Hamlet dead, and the queen and king, and all his friends from the court, all except myself."

Dro did not try to hide his reaction to that announcement, but he knew habit would keep most feeling from his face. "Your cause for grief is great." In truth, he was appalled, and could not cease to be appalled even as he told himself his traffic with so many of the dead should free him from horror at death. These people had been living, their deaths tragic rather than necessary.

"What of the old king — the ghost?" asked Horatio.

"He is dead as well," said Dro, wishing there were some less cruel words for what he'd done. He found some: "He is made complete instead of half held here, half gone on."

"That's your philosophy" said Horatio, using the word like a liferaft for his drowning emotions.

"Yes."

"Do you treat them with mercy?"

"Sometimes," said Dro. "When I can. When I know what mercy is."

"Why must such things happen?"

Dro framed his reply carefully. "The ghost set those events in motion, from the first time it spoke to Lord Hamlet. Events having been started, nothing the ghost could do, nor I, nor you, nor anyone in Denmark, would stop the storm."

"That's not much comfort."

"Your heart may have told you that you should have stilled the storm, because you saw it play out. You are a scholar, not a witch."

"There are those who say otherwise," Horatio was half-drunk and morose.

"They are ignorant."

"What do they call you?"

"It doesn't matter. I do what I do, because I know what I know. The ghosts are not real; they are merely a more or less substantial pretense of reality. I make them... truly unreal." Dro wondered if he knew that, or only believed it.

"Does it do any good?"

"I don't know," said Dro, and he didn't. The court at Kronborg Castle had been explosive even without the ghost's intervention; that much he had seen. Had the ghost's word set light to the powder keg, or only set the first light? Dro had no way to know. Judgment of living men was not his occupation.

He filled his cup with numbing wine and drained it, while Horatio did the same.

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