3 minute read
Ophelia Bella Williams
advantage of reach. Don’t need that either.”
The duke still hasn’t accepted, but he’s standing in position, knuckles white around the hilt of Fortinbras’s rapier. “Lady Fortinbras, sit down—”
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A steel-toed boot colliding with polished wood as she lunges over the table. The awfully familiar rip of metal through fabric, through flesh.
Horrified silence as the assembly waits for the guards to apprehend her. A frantic flurry of voices and footsteps as they realize every guard in the room wears her flag. Before Horatio can say anything, the room is empty, save for
him and Fortinbras and the body. “What did you do?” She nudges the duke aside with her foot, pries her sword from his still-warm grip, and rolls her eyes in Horatio’s direction. “Is that a serious question?” “They’re going to kill you.” “They can sure try.” Horatio grabs her by the shoulders with shaking hands. “Do you hear me? Ophelia, digital They’re going to kill you. I’ve seen this all before—” “And you’re going to see it again.” She brushes him off and wipes red hands on her coat. “You should get used to it.”
Scene V
Horatio double-checks the lock on his chamber door that night. He’s going out with the next ship, wherever it’s headed. He’ll find his way back to Wittenberg eventually. Or maybe he won’t. Not like there’s anything left for him there. It’s been four years. All his former classmates have no doubt gone home to become dukes or captains or whatever other titles their fathers left them.
“What? Why?” Fortinbras had said when he requested indefinite leave from Elsinore with what seemed incredibly like genuine confusion. “You can’t just leave now. I need an advisor. And you still haven’t told me the whole story.” He doesn’t know why he even bothered. Habit maybe, a perfunctory gesture of respect to the closest thing Denmark has to a king. Well to hell with kings and to hell with Fortinbras. She’s not his friend—he has no duty to her or Denmark or anyone living. Soon as he can figure out how to put Hamlet into words, into something that makes sense on the blank sheet he’s been staring at for three hours now, he won’t have any duty towards anyone. He can skip off somewhere and go mad with grief like he’s seen happen too many times and should have done himself a long time ago, had there not been some stupid hopeful part of him that thought he could swap out one prince for another, or that maybe this time a Voice of Reason could stop things from going so horribly, almost comedically wrong.
A pair of boots storms through the hallway, loud enough to shake the candle beside him. His hand instinctively reaches into the drawer under the writing desk and settles on the handle of a serrated
dinner knife. He’d slipped it from the dining hall table the night Hamlet was shipped off to England. Of course, rationally, he never thought it would actually help him should someone make an attempt on his life, but at one point it went from a small security blanket comfort to a kind of inside joke, and after everything, he deserves a bit of humor, doesn’t he?
Somewhere outside his room Fortinbras barks his name. Maybe she’s coming to slice him open, too. Horatio doesn’t mind, if only she’d give him time to finish writing. But she’s not that patient.
The double-checked lock only serves to make it louder when Fortinbras kicks his door open. She stands silhouetted in the frame, sword in hand, hair sticking out in every direction, shoulders heaving with labored breaths, eyes darting among the dark corners of the room.
A wry grin pulls at the corner of Horatio’s lip. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She returns his smile like it’s meant for her, like she’s in on the joke. A wheeze of a laugh hisses through her bared teeth like steam from a kettle. “You know, it’s funny you should say that.”
