Loud Rumour
All hail, the King of Denmark!
Magisterial vacuousness.
All hail, imperial jointress!
Casual sennet, pomp's remark.
How is our young prince of Denmark?
More than cloudy, less than sunny,
More than kinsman less than son.
Less a father, more a sort of
Lord that lords it over thus.
'Cast thy nighted colour off',
She purposed to entreat her son,
And yet I think her blemished soul was
Blacker than young Hamlet's was.
Good, good, always good -
That's how his mother thought of him.
And he had thought of her as madam,
Since his father lay in dust
He had no care for parental trust.
'Get thee to a nunnery!'
The lachrymose Ophelia must
Have died a little then. She was
a paragon of beauty, lust
No more in her eyes could be found.
Flowing flowing, riverrun,
The fatal streams made Polonius' gown far
Blacker than young Hamlet's was.
The whisper of a town circumambulates, as a river
That collects debris from muddy shoals, and the,
Perhaps, pure truth of how it started is sullied,
Much. A letter here, a conversation there.
Words, words, words, absurd
Conclusions reached from
False assumptions,
Matched with
Presumptions,
Contribute to a
'Truth', the 'only truth',
A truth in an abyss. What
Is passed, and what is believed
To have passed, are, here, two quite
Separate entities. Catches of hearsay,
Fragments of truth amalgamated with new
'Truths' born of uncertainty. What results...that
I have set down. And now for what occurred, we
Shall see. But for the amount, order and coherence...
A bold crash of a titanium wave sent a pair of lovers scattered across the bay. Clothes flew, glass shattered, steel cans clattered and a rough wind cycled through the airborne waves, Nature her holiness breaking out torrents of supernatural carnage. It was almost too much for the small tribe of that little nation to bear: except that they had been bearing it for over a thousand years. The Danish were no strangers to the harsh truth that moonshine and tide were not curious as to the workings of the law; no, in fact, it was only custom that prevented them from giving up altogether and just leaving the coastal towns to rot. The custom was not any one in particular; merely a general tradition, a shared heritage, a collective life force. A sort of service owed, a debt needing to be repaid. A debt for what? The gracious state of Denmark would protect them from plague, keep them from poverty, and generally permit them to do as they pleased. Brother and brother would stand together and face the world as one. Well. Nearly all brothers.
An inconceivable, immeasurable lag between the water slapping the shore and the unavoidable smash that greets one's ears with scream invited an ethereal sense of calm (before the storm, almost,) into the heart of each who heard. One of these was a young man, trimly dressed with a compact form, and his brother, older by some fourteen months or a year, of slightly more generous dimensions. The pair reached the base of a tattered tower, looked at it enquiringly, and proceeded indoors. What passed within these walls is by and large unknown, but what is known is that only one man emerged, not too much later, and, putting on a hat, kept true down a perpendicular alley until out of sight.
Many theories have emerged as to the whereabouts of the older brother. Some say young Claudius was jealous of old Hamlet's power and rule. Others say he felt deprived of his father's love. Cynics and gossips have even speculated that doubt had been cast over the circumstances of the younger's birth, and he took it upon himself to silence his sibling. Of course we will never know. But we can say that it could be the former, the latter, the one in the middle, or all of them at once. The only mind in which a certain truth exists is that of he who committed the act. A mind which we are unlikely to access, soon.
After the storm, a shape appeared from a dark recess behind the tackle shop and lurched around a corner. A man approached and the shape slowed. He was taken aback, visibly afeard. Gently he tipped his toe upwards, knee bending, face cast down. Madam, he said. He passed, she waited, she continued. Past designer brands, past the new issues of Morning magazine, until she reached the end of the street. A left, a right, a dark cave, that wasn't a cave, more like a ravine, between which were...stone steps. One, two, one, two, feet ascending, the hem of her dress flipping up on every second clip of the heel. She could see high over the town now. What a thing it was, to climb and clamber up a giant mountain, how excellent, how wild. It was these days for which she lived. Not the days of the castle, but Elsinore days, where she could dip in amongst the lusty labourers and get by on stealth and quality, rather than composition and dull formality.
After passing the fierce cleaner on the first floor, Laertes jumped the last two steps to the courtyard, still chewing the stale bread he took from the pantry that morning. The swinging of his bronzed arms and angle of his chin gave away that the tired, moody man of yesterday, had died, in a sleep, giving way to a more lively, youthful man, who woke the fools he passed with his mere existence. It was doubtful that there was a single thing that evening could faze Laertes. Clang. Wait. Grind. Stop. Thump. Creak. Pause. Slam. A woman ran past him, drenched through her gown. Ophelia? Doubtful. Man on the wall. The guard. A figure behind him. Two more approaching from the courtyard. What's this? What's this? The guard turns. Weapon raised. Voice more terrified than any he would ever hear again.
"Who's there?"
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