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“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.” –Hamlet, Scene II, Act V, 340-3
The first time Horatio tells his tale, it is to Fortinbras, with the Prince’s body still warm in his arms. He cannot finish, for the tears overcome him; he wishes the bitter taste of them were poison.
But Fortinbras nods his head and says that indeed it is a terrible tale. For Fortinbras is not a pitiless man, in affairs that do not matter.
Hamlet, in life so melancholic, had thought Horatio stoical, balanced. With the Prince now cold and laid on the bier alongside the others, he has no cause to stop his tears.
In the night, after that first jumbled telling of his tale, he whispers to the dark: ‘dear Prince, sweet Prince, I have done as you bid me, I am far absent from felicity, and O, it hurts me to breathe.’
But Fortinbras, wise king, has ensured no daggers, no swords nor poisons, remain in the scholar’s rooms. ‘In order to prevent an insurrection, gentle Horatio’, he had said, and himself taken Horatio’s dagger from him. ‘There are serving-men to cut the flesh at table for you. Gentle Horatio.’
He can still feel the roundness of the goblet in his hands, warmed by the touch of those it had killed.
He sleeps as dawn breaks. No dreams come to haunt him.
He tells his tale a second time, or tries to, and weeps as bitter as before.
The nobles watch him, and how he hates them for it. They are bought over already, votes purchased by lands and jewels, along with Hamlet’s dying voice.
Whores, whores, Horatio finds himself thinking, and is startled by his own venom.
When he can speak no more, which does not take long, he is led back to his chamber, and curses the memories that await him there.
More than the great hall, he feels the phantoms of words, of kisses, perched in the corners and the shadows, hissing like snakes whether his eyes are open or closed.
Fortinbras comes in to him later, for he has taken Prince Hamlet’s rooms, and they are beside Horatio’s.
He tells Horatio, tell me the story. (In fact he asks, and with courtesy, but Horatio knows that a prince’s request is no less than an order.)
And Horatio does, the whole way through, and leaves nothing out, and does not look at this new Prince once, although he cannot help but weep.
When the tale is over, Fortinbras says, perhaps the truth is inadvisable in future. But I thank thee for it.
The familiar address is not lost on Horatio, though he pretends not to notice, and says nothing more.
After a time, Fortinbras leaves.
So now he must think of the best form for his lies to take. He is surprised at how easily the words form themselves. He understands it now, how Claudius took strength from them. There is a rhythm to lies, and a poetry, that does not exist in truth. Life hath neither rhyme nor reason, but falsehoods can be beautiful as music, with a little effort.
The truth of Elsinore had destroyed them all, and so Horatio in turn destroys the truth. He is quicker in revenge than his Prince, he thinks bitterly.
He writes a new story for Ophelia, one sad and uncomplicated, that recovers her honour somewhat. He writes that she loved Hamlet, and Hamlet her, and that grasping Polonius had parted them.
But God help him, hers is the only truth he cannot kill completely. For all men love a bawdy tale, and all women love to sigh at it, and chide their daughters with it.
And he supposes her honour is still somewhat saved, for now the people will believe that the child was Hamlet’s.
The truth is far more profane, too shameful to write. But to have loved a good Prince and be gotten with child by him is a kind lie; kinder by far than Claudius’ lechery, Gertrude’s willing blindness and Polonius’ callous ambition.
But though he has written it, he now envies the drowned woman her legacy, envies the sweet lie that she had Hamlet’s heart.
No, thinks Horatio. No, that was ever mine.
His lies complete, he is ready to tell them to the credulous crowd, at Fortinbras’ coronation.
He has told the story to himself now, told and retold it in the silence of his chamber so many times that his throat knows the sounds, and his tongue, and he can tell it without thinking of his own part in it, or of Hamlet’s. Or at least, not Hamlet as he was, for Horatio could never hope to convey that, in the written word or spoken, and besides would never wish to.
The memory is his own, and damn him, but he will keep it.
He tells instead of the Princes actions, his inactions, and nothing of his fears, nothing of his doubts. No, the Hamlet of his story is a good Catholic, and a wise Prince. He is believed, for the people want to believe him. He almost wants to believe himself; wisdom would have made things easier. The number of brawls at Wittenburg, however, that Horatio had been obliged to drag the Prince from, belies that claim.
He tells the story, fully, in all its false glory, to the open-mouthed crowd, and by the end they are many of them weeping, though he does not. His duty done, he praises the great wisdom and virtue of Fortinbras, in words he has not written, then joins the lines of seated nobles at the side of the stage.
The Prince is crowned King, and if he squints (which he does), he can half-convince himself it is his Prince, dressed all in mourning black, his crown blazing golden as the sun, beautiful as a lie.
‘Thou’st done well, gentle Horatio,’ the new King tells him, later. He has appeared again in Horatio’s still-daggerless chamber. It’s becoming habitual. Princes, thinks Horatio, almost amused.
‘I am a scholar, my lord,’ he shrugs. ‘Lies come easily enough to us.’
‘To Hamlet, also?’ asks Fortinbras. He doesn’t get an answer; Horatio doubts he expected one.
And he doesn’t flinch, when the King puts a hand on his shoulder. He does flinch from the kiss, moving away as lips touch lips.
‘Gentle Horatio-‘
‘It is a month, good my lord,’ he spits, ‘but a month ere he was buried. My lord, you not only speak ill of the dead, but you do ill to them. No more of this.’
He had not meant to sound so vehement; until this moment, he has kept the poison safely locked within him. For a moment, he does not breathe, and Fortinbras looks as though he will strike him.
‘I do no ill.’
‘Not purposely, perhaps, my lord,’ the scholar says, all but inaudibly. ‘But you know not the ways of Elsinore. Great harm is done here, without intent.’
‘I do thee ill, then?’
‘My lord, you do.’
‘Thou’rt not amongst the dead,’ the King says, sounding almost puzzled.
‘Not yet, my lord,’ says Horatio, with a grotesquery of a smile. ‘Not yet.’
Horatio retells his story for a week, for now that he has set his lies upon paper, all wish to hear of them. He tells it, and retells it, and grows swiftly sick of its telling.
At last he asks King Fortinbras (who has returned to ‘you’, thank God, but retains his pained look whenever the scholar appears) for leave to return to Wittenburg. He grants it; another corpse at Elsinore would hardly distinguish his still-young reign.
He doesn’t say that, of course. He says, ‘yes, ‘twould be best for you to return to your studies; the scene of such bloodshed cannot be healthful, to one as melancholic as you.’
(Horatio cannot tell, now, if the blood still staining the flagstones of the great hall is in his mind or outside of it. He can hardly ask.)
Horatio thanks him, and takes his leave, and pretends this upstart’s pity does not choke him. Pretends he does not feel that unwanted pressure of lips still, along with the goblet. Both are still warm; at night they burn him in his sleeplessness.
On Horatio’s last night at Elsinore, he cannot sleep. He has not planned to.
And so at midnight, as on that night so long ago, Horatio walks the walls of the castle, alone where he was once in such sweet company. As that night, the air is cold, the wind bitter. As that night, he tells himself no ghost will appear.
He has not stood on these castle walls since that night, when his Prince saw the ghost of his father, and the skeins of thread that made their lives all began to unravel. He has not dared to return to these walls, for fear of what he will not see, as much as what he will.
There are more soldiers now, different ones; they let him pass. He is free to pass through the whole castle, the stones of the walls themselves, should he wish to. But one echoing chamber is as good as another.
So now he stands on the battlements, firmly in the course of the tearing wind, and defies the dead to rise.
The dead defy him, and do not.
And he thinks, ghosts return only when there is something to return to.
Face glittering with frozen tears, he returns to his chamber at dawn, and prepares for the long journey back to Wittenburg.
In the pearl-grey air, no ghost whispers.