Ophelia: Chapters 28-38

“I pray this grief of yours will soon abate and that you will return to your usual self.”

Annoyed that Horatio should remonstrate with me, I spoke sharply.

Behind him came a motley rabble of about thirty men armed with sticks and rocks.

At once the king’s soldiers fell upon them, their swords smashing the men’s wooden staves like twigs.

Three guards seized my brother, who writhed, cursed, and spat upon them.

Behind me was the malign Edmund, before me an angry Claudius deep in private conversation with Laertes.

“Here’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance,” I said, tucking a sprig into his doublet, which had been ripped and smeared with dirt in the fray with the guards.

“And there’s a daisy,” I said, throwing a circlet of the white flowers with their sunlike centers.

With their bright innocence I mocked his evil and called him usurper.

His sudden return had been providential after all.

This was not the crumbling hermitage where Hamlet and I used to meet.

Horatio settled himself on a stool near my pallet, resting his elbows upon the thighs of his bent legs.

“The woman was most distraught. She anointed and wrapped your body, while weeping copious tears. She did not suspect that you only slept.”

“The woman was most distraught. She anointed and wrapped your body, while weeping copious tears. She did not suspect that you only slept.”

He rubbed his temples in consternation.

“As Hamlet and I spoke, your funeral procession passed by with Claudius and some lords who were your father’s friends. Gertrude strewed flowers. Laertes wept loudly over your sheeted body and rebuked the priest for his paltry prayers.”

“Do not stint on the truth now, Horatio. Though it be painful, I will not hold it against you,” I said.

“Seeing him so intemperate, I knew you would not wish it. And I would not break my promise to you.”

“And my brother still plays, unwary of his foe. Laertes is vengeful and rebellious. You saw him threaten the king. I fear he may be the next victim.”

Mechtild fell to her knees with an agility that belied her age.

“What was most natural and unfeigned, however,” Gertrude went on, “was Horatio’s look of desperate grief when he bore your limp, wet body, and his tears when the physician pronounced you dead. He is no actor who can dissemble his feelings.”

“As I came nigh to the cottage door, I heard your accusations of the king.”

Confusion rendered me speechless.

“To my regret, I have overlooked his crimes. But I will abet his evil no more. I will not be accountable for your destruction, Ophelia. Perhaps that will atone...”

I did not doubt Mechtild’s wisdom, but I struggled to take for truth what I had hitherto only suspected.

She handed me the bag and left me alone, while surprise, relief, and dismay stirred inside me like the ingredients of some strange, unsettling elixir.

“Now I am no longer Ophelia. I am Philippe L’oeil, bound for France under the protection of King Claudius,” I remarked wryly.

The brazen rats that ran throughout the ship would often wake me with their scrabbling and squealing.

I did not relish using my dagger, so I befriended a jolly friar large enough to be of some protection.

I knew that I should rise and pray in thanksgiving for my deliverance, but I felt too weak to move.

“I do not understand everything. I am still unwell,” I said, hearing the contrast between my rough, foreign accent and her lilting, native one.

I felt a oneness with the trees that changed their leafy vestments with the seasons.

With impatient, shaking hands I broke the seal in order to devour the good tidings I had waited to hear.

I secrete the pages in my mattress.

Her bright voice fills my room like the music of a lute, and she is like a troubadour with her tales, though none are bawdy or bad.

"Yes,” I say, for I have seen, even from a distance, that her nose is fine and her skin like whitest alabaster.

Here Isabel crosses herself, then adds, “And the goodwill of the count, and the dispensation of the bishop. We pray for her always.”

Sensing my hesitation, Isabel urges me gently through the alleys of the cloisters.

I kneel before the prioress of St. Emilion so that I see only the broad swath of her simple habit edged in green velvet.

I kneel before the prioress of St. Emilion so that I see only the broad swath of her simple habit edged in green velvet.