The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (6 page)

I looked away as he turned on the saw and his grip tightened. I heard the noise of the saw change as it began to cut. But I didn’t feel any pain. I did, however, smell smoke.

I dared a look at my hand and saw my plan wasn’t working. Frankenstein was trying to cut off the finger at its base, but the ring had shifted up to meet the saw, and the blade was spinning against it without cutting anything. Sparks flew into our clothing.

“It’s not bone,” Frankenstein remarked. “At least not any bone I’ve ever seen before.”

He slid the saw down my finger and the ring moved to match it, all the way to the fingertip and then back to its original position. It shrank and expanded as needed to fit. Frankenstein turned off the saw and looked at the blade. It was bent and blackened, and little chips were missing from it.

“It appears to be your ring and your ring alone,” he said.

I sighed and looked down at my finger, which was unscathed. The ring sat fused with my finger like nothing had happened. I cursed Morgana for the nth time, but the thought of her just filled me with longing and emptiness again. Can you be filled with emptiness? Well, I was.

Frankenstein put the bone saw away and leaned against the bookshelf. He folded his arms across his chest just like a real person would. Yeah, he’d come far.

“Perhaps it is meant to be,” he said.

“Nothing is ever meant to be,” I said, closing my hand into a fist.

Frankenstein shrugged. “Sometimes we cannot be freed from the things that make us what we are,” he said. “It is good to understand that.”

“Did you get that from one of your philosophy books?” I asked him.

“No, I learned that from being alive,” he said.

I smiled and stood. “Next time I won’t come asking favours,” I said.

“I am just happy to see you again,” Frankenstein said. “You are one of my few friends.”

Yeah, some friend. I don’t visit for decades and then when I do show up I want a body part cut off and I drink half his scotch. Well, at least I’d never stuck a blade in him, which was more than I could say for some of my friends.

“Tell Victor I said hello,” I said, and Frankenstein nodded.

“He says he wishes you well in your quest,” Frankenstein said.

I didn’t think I’d talked about anything personal other than the ring, but Victor always did see things the rest of us missed. Then again, I’d been on many quests over the ages, even if most of them were misguided. It was probably just a good guess on his part.

We hugged again and then I went back down the hall. Frankenstein’s voice carried after me as he returned to his work on the corpse.

“I remember, I remember,

the fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky.

It was a childish ignorance,

But now tis little joy

To know I’m farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

To know I’m farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.”

Outside, I stood in the parking lot of the crematorium and watched the sky for a moment. As usual, there weren’t any answers there. But there were developments.

A raven came gliding over the trees and circled around me. I recognized the whites of his eyes, so I held out my arm and he landed on it. There was a piece of paper in his beak, which I took, because that’s what you do when ravens show up with pieces of paper in their beaks.

It was a theatre ticket.
Hamlet
. For a matinee performance in a few hours at the National Theatre.

I looked at the raven.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you,” I said.

It looked back at me and I expected it to caw or croak or something like that. Instead, it just took wing silently and disappeared back over the trees. A little unnerving, that.

Well, I had some time to kill. There was nothing to do now but drink.

So I found a pub and went about it seriously.

When it was time, I went down to the National Theatre, on the bank of the Thames. I was tempted to join all the people who were enjoying the day by wandering the walkway beside the river. In fact, I was tempted to walk right out of London and all its troubles. But I had a dead daughter to save.

I arrived a few minutes after the matinee time on the ticket, so the theatre’s lobby was empty. There was only Puck sitting in the box office, wearing a shirt and tie but making no effort to hide the haunch of meat he was chewing on. He waved at me with his free hand.

“We were beginning to think you wouldn’t show,” he said.

“Did I have a choice?” I asked.

“No, not really,” he said. He wiped his lips with his tie.

I went past him and to the usher waiting at the door to the theatre. She was human, I think, but who knows for sure? At least the murmur of the crowd reassured me that I wasn’t about to enter another theatre of the dead. I knew I hadn’t been brought here just to enjoy the play, though. As the usher took me into the dark and led me to my seat, I sighed and waited for bad things to start. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Well, it’s about time,” said the woman sitting beside me. “What have you been doing?”

I looked at her. Morgana. I couldn’t stop myself from touching her arm, breathing in the scent of her. I sighed again and glared down at the ring, which was probably never going to come off. The thought of that filled me with joy and rage at the same time.

“Is the curse afflicting all the productions of
Hamlet
now?” I asked, looking around at the theatre. I couldn’t recall reading any bad news about the play in any of the papers, but then theatre didn’t really make it into the papers much these days.

“Just the ones we involve ourselves with,” Morgana said. “Whatever the problem is, it seems to have started in the glamour.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” I said.

“The show must go on,” Morgana said, frowning. “Now.” She clapped her hands and, as if on cue, the rest of the audience applauded as well. Probably more faerie or fey. Or just regular people who didn’t know what was going on.

A man walked onstage and into the beam of a spotlight. He didn’t look like an actor. He wore a simple pair of pants and a cardigan instead of a costume, and he held a clipboard in one hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid we have a problem with this afternoon’s show,” he said to the audience. He wiped sweat from his brow and squinted against the light.

“Oh dear, whatever could be wrong?” Morgana murmured, smiling that nasty smile of hers.

I tried to sink down out of sight in my chair. I didn’t like the way this was going. But then I never did when the faerie were involved.

“Our lead Hamlet, Malcolm, has had an accident backstage and broken his leg,” the man in the spotlight said. “Obviously, he won’t be able to perform tonight.”

“The curse strikes again,” I said to Morgana.

“Not yet,” she answered. “Not if dear Malcolm is still alive.”

“Unfortunately, our understudy is also out of commission,” the man went on. “He’s been stricken with food poisoning.”

“Actually, too much hummingbird wine,” Morgana murmured to me. “He wound up at a pub with Cobweb and the others last night and, well, you know how these things go.”

The man sitting on the other side of her laughed and pulled what looked like spider’s silk from his sleeve. “He’s still sleeping it off,” he said and made a quick Jacob’s ladder with the silk. “In the glamour.” He blew the silk off his hands and it drifted away, coming apart in the air as it went.

Now I definitely didn’t like the direction this was heading.

“We have no one who knows the part,” the man onstage said. “So it’s with great reluctance I announce we have to cancel the show.” He wiped his brow again. His sleeve already looked drenched with sweat.

There were groans from all around, but they weren’t loud enough to drown out Morgana, who stood and waved her hand at the man.

“Not true,” she said. “We have someone who can play the part right here,” she said.

“Don’t do this,” I said. “I’m begging you.”

Everyone in the audience turned to look at her, and the man on the stage held up a hand to shield his eyes from the spotlight as he looked our way.

“You have a Hamlet?” he asked.

“No!” I said, but Morgana just waved me down.

“We have a Hamlet who’s played the role more times than any of your actors. He knows every line of the play, including the ones that have been lost to the ages.” She looked down at me, still smiling. “Tell him.”

Now everyone looked at me. So much for hiding in the crowd.

“It’s true,” I sighed, sitting back up. I decided to embrace events like the actress in the
Macbeth
play had. Like a professional. Plus, I was certain that no matter what I said it wasn’t going to change whatever Morgana had planned anyway. “I know the part.”

“Put him on the stage and you will have a Hamlet like you have never seen before,” Morgana said. Of that I had no doubt.

The man hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “This is . . . irregular.”

“It is,” I agreed. “Very irregular.” I tried to pull Morgana back into her seat, but she resisted me.

“What choice do you have?” she said to the man on the stage, and I recognized the tone to her voice, the charm of it. I was instantly jealous of the other man, to be on the receiving end of that.

He was oblivious to me now. He just smiled and nodded at Morgana. “Of course,” he said. “The show must go on.”

“Indeed it must,” Morgana said and pushed me toward the stage.

I went because of course I would do anything for her. How could I not? And I went because, well, what would you have done? It’s not like there were other options waving from the audience. But I couldn’t help but frown at the other man as he climbed down off the stage and went to sit with Morgana. I found myself hoping she didn’t turn him into a fey, because I didn’t want to see him with her again, and then I shook my head to clear such thoughts. I tried to tug the ring off my finger once more, but it was stuck on there as solidly as usual.

A couple of stagehands dressed in black met me at the stage and pulled me into the wing.

“You’re sure you know all the lines?” the man asked as the woman pulled a tunic over my head.

“Oh sure, I’ve seen this play thousands of times,” I said.

He paused in buckling a belt around my waist. “Seen it or acted in it?” he asked.

“Both,” I said. Which was probably true. When you’ve been alive as long as I have, who can remember every moment?

The woman dusted my face with some makeup. “We don’t have time to walk you through all the staging,” she said, “so just try to follow the other actors’ cues as best as you can.”

“I don’t see as I have any other choice,” I said.

She frowned and shook her head, no doubt at the insanity of the situation. But that’s theatre for you. Then the lights went down and actors pushed past me to get on the stage and it was show business like usual. I stood off to the side and tried to remember the lines of the play, but all I could think about was Morgana sitting out there in the audience, watching me. I adjusted my costume again to make sure I looked my best as the other actors went on with the play. I ran my hand through my hair one way and then another. I tried to remember when I’d last brushed my teeth. I cursed Morgana’s name to all the hells, and then I checked my clothes again.

And then one of the stagehands was pushing me forward and it was my turn onstage. I walked out with Claudius and Gertrude and Laertes and all the others. I tried to hide in the crowd, which was difficult given that everyone in the audience was staring at me. No doubt waiting to see how badly I was going to mangle the part. I thought even the spotlights were shifting to me. I started to sweat.

And then I realized there was a pause in the conversation and all the other actors were glancing at me. It was time for my first line. I delivered it from memory, without even having to think about it.

“A little more than kin, and less than kind,” I said in an aside to the audience, and they applauded my ability to speak.

And so we were off.

What can I tell you about that performance? The rest of the play was adequate. The other actors were true professionals, no doubt trained in the best schools in all of England. It was
Hamlet
at the National Theatre, after all, even if it was a matinee. They did what they could with an amateur in the lead role and carried on. And I did what I could, mainly by lifting bits from other Hamlets I’d seen. I spoke the lines with the confident rhythm of Burbage. I carried myself with the weariness of Betterton. I delivered my soliloquies with the quiet brooding of Olivier. It wasn’t pretty but it was passable. And I think the audience was too bewildered by my schizophrenic performance to really judge me, which is just as well. Or maybe they’d been enchanted by Morgana to clap whenever I spoke. Either way.

It all went well enough until my first scene with Ophelia.

It was in the third act, during my soliloquy on the nature of existence and other such trivialities.

I walked out from stage right and delivered the lines to the audience. “To be, or not to be; that is the question.” I tried to say the lines much in the same way Keats had said them to me when we were in that villa in Rome, dying together. It turned out we had both sides of the question covered.

Anyway, I came out saying my lines and then stopped when I saw Ophelia waiting for me on the other side of the stage. It was Amelia, of course. She had enough makeup on to almost make her look alive. Almost.

The rest of the lines went out of my head, so she jumped in.

“Good my lord,” she said, “how does your honour for this many a day?”

“Well,” I said. “Well, well.”

There were a number of lines I missed in there, about dreaming and dying and sleeping the everlasting sleep, but no one seemed to notice their absence. Or if they did, maybe they passed them off to artistic license.

Amelia crossed the stage to me and took my hands in hers. They were cold to the touch but that didn’t matter. It was the first time I had ever held my daughter. She squeezed my hands and I squeezed them back. It was all I could do but I wanted to do so much more.

“My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed to redeliver,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, as if her words were meant only for me and not the audience. “I pray you, now receive them.”

“No, not I,” I said, the words spilling out of me over the words I wanted to say to her. “I never gave you aught.”

I looked at Morgana in the audience as I said the next lines. My longing for her was as strong as ever, but my longing to kill her for putting Amelia in the play with me, for putting her in the role of the one I had to reject, it was running a close second. A very close second. Morgana nodded at me like she knew my every thought.

“I did love you once,” I heard myself say.

“Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so,” Amelia said.

“You should not have believed me,” I said. “For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.” The words I spoke made me want to cry out in protest, but I couldn’t do that to the audience or the play. I had to stay true to my character, no matter how much it pained me. Now Amelia pulled away from me and we were separated again.

“I was the more deceived,” she said, and I could see in her eyes the same pain I felt.

“I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” I said. “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven?”

Yeah, it was almost like Shakespeare knew me.

And with each word I spoke, I stepped back against my will, away from my daughter, until I stood at the edge of the stage and it was time for my exit.

“Be all my sins remembered,” I breathed and then moved into the shadows, where I leaned against a wall and tried not to let anyone see my face.

Luckily, that was my only part on stage with Amelia. The rest of her lines with me were divided up among the other actors. I suspected Morgana’s meddling. Sweet, beautiful Morgana. I stood in the wings while Amelia was onstage, and while I was onstage I looked at her in the wings. She hugged herself as she watched me. I wanted to talk to her—talk to her for real, not just deliver scripted lines—but I didn’t know what to say.

I was so distracted I didn’t notice the curse until it was upon me.

It was the end of the play, my duel with Laertes, who didn’t much care for Hamlet on account of Hamlet skewering his father, Polonius. The stagehands who had dressed me explained the director’s script called for Laertes and me to stab each other with our rapiers, and for Claudius and Gertrude to drink from the same poisoned cup, which was filled with cheap scotch to make them grimace. They started to explain how the scene was supposed to reflect the dual nature of existence, but I just nodded and told them I got it. I wanted this performance over with so I could go back to Morgana. I mean, talk to Amelia. I wanted it over so I could get the hell out of there.