Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

Shaping the Ends by Judith Cutler

Judith Cutler is the author of two acclaimed series of crime novels set in Birmingham, England. One stars amateur sleuth Sophie Rivers, the other Inspector Kate Power (who lives up to her name). A third protagonist will soon join these two successful Cutler creations; watch for painter and decorator turned amateur detective Caffy Tyler. Ms. Cutler’s most recent novel, Scar Tissue, was published by Allison & Busby in 2004.

If only Hamlet had been tried for Polonius’s death the truth would have come out.

Why was it my destiny ever to be involved? God knows it was not my choice, at any point. I was unprepared for any of it. I had always been content with my lot, a serving woman, waiting on Her Majesty. I would mend her clothes, dress her hair, and sleep on my pallet across the door to her apartment to keep her safe and preserve her reputation. There were times, of course, when I heard the measured gait of His Majesty approaching, and knew to make myself scarce. Those times came less and less often once His Majesty’s younger brother Claudius returned, when it seemed to me the whole court spent its time carousing. After our seemly, plain suppers, the rich food and Rhenish disagreed with His Majesty, and he came hardly ever to Her Majesty’s chamber. I thought at first it was she who went to his, she came reeling back to her boudoir so late, but I have since had cause to change my mind.

To my astonishment, the celebrations changed the Lord Chamberlain. I’d always thought of him as a prosy old fool, given to smutty jokes in the presence of us underlings, as if bestowing largesse. Imagine my amazement when he went further than occasionally fondling my bum or squeezing my breasts — much further. I found myself having to fight him off in the dark corners on the turns of stairs. When I complained to the queen that this man old enough to be my father had tried to ravish me, she blushed and with downcast eyes admitted that he was so taken with me he wished to make me his mistress.

Down in Jutland we don’t become mistresses. We marry or we stay maids. And so I told Her Majesty.

She raised an eyebrow. “But his children? They are both — difficult, Maria.”

I nodded. I could hardly do otherwise. Lacking a mother so long, they had become unruly, wayward. He, the older by some years, was inclined to give himself airs, as if he were the head of the house. He’d been sent to Paris, to acquire a little polish and less learning, as his father was wont to say. He was certainly a hothead who would brook no opposition, and I was glad he spent so much time abroad. His sister missed him grievously, and used to pen long, effusive letters in response to his, as if he were her absent betrothed. Then she found other objects for her unruly affections. For a week she swooned for the English ambassador, and when he was recalled a few weeks later, wept over his miniature painted by Master Hilliard. Then it was for the captain of the guard she sighed, then a player from a group of itinerant actors. I said it was because she was young, with too much time on her hands. My advice was that she should fill her hours with plain sewing and visiting the sick, but her father spoilt her yet. Goodness knows whom she would next turn her lovelorn eyes upon. The more trouble for him, said I.

“It seems to me that even if it’s a bedding on the wrong side of the blanket, madam, I’ll offend his children. In a small place like this, everyone knows everyone else’s business.” There was much of her business I rather more than suspected — recently concerning the lord Claudius. “Mistress or wife,” I continued, “I won’t please them. And if I can’t be his wife, you must make him keep those pickers and stealers to himself. I’ll not tolerate the tedious old fool’s antics any longer.”

“It’s not to be a love match then,” the queen sighed, as gusty with emotion as young Ophelia. At her time of life, too. Thank goodness she was past the age to worry whether paddling palms with the king’s brother would have dire consequences. Or perhaps — just in case — that was why every so often she’d lure the king back to her boudoir, so he could have no doubts over any love child. “But it would be sensible, Maria — it’s better to be a rich widow than a poor spinster.”

So wed we did, but without the pomp I’d have liked. A very hole-in-corner affair it was, with the pastor mumbling away to himself and my new lord giving a homily as long as any preacher could wish. Then, for all the premarital fumblings, my maidenhead was as intact at the end of our wedding night as at the beginning. Of course, he was not a young man, and there was wine aplenty: However much it provokes the desire, they say, it always takes away the performance. But not the need for the pisspot under the bed. Was there ever such a man for a weak bladder? Faugh! And such stinking breath, too.

What I certainly did not expect was my instant despatch to my lord’s country estate. There were affairs he wished me to oversee, he told me, going into much precise and tedious detail. Indeed I judiciously applied my spur to my steed, all the while pretending I was trying hard to control it and attend to his instructions.

Lord Chamberlain the old man might be, and almost running the country, but he had no more idea of how to run a farm than the crown prince would have of swimming the Skagerrack. It must have taken me six or eight weeks to instill some basic principles of domestic economy into the housekeeper, while my new stepson would have been better employed, despite his French silks and clever words, learning to run the farm.

One day all the church bells tolled, one by one, in every hamlet and village in the district. Were we at war? Giving strict instructions that all our treasures were to be sealed and buried deep in the cellar, I summoned my horse and rode home.

To find chaos.

The King, the good old King Hamlet, had died. There was so much grieving and despair it took me a few hours to discover that he had died, not as befitted a great man like him, heroically on the battlefield, but stung by a bee in his orchard where he was having a nap in the sun. I wept with the others. But there must be a new king. With great gusto I set the staff about spring-cleaning young Hamlet’s room. It might have been fit for a prince before: Now it was fit for the king he was about to become. Flushed with my endeavours, it took me a few hours to realise that no one else talked of expecting him any moment. No one spoke of his coronation. They spoke of something else. It wasn’t one rat I smelt, more a whole cellar full, as I cornered my lord that night.

“The queen to remarry!” I squeaked. “Whom, my lord?”

“The new king,” he said, trying to avoid my eye.

“The queen can’t marry Lord Hamlet! Even the worst heathen wouldn’t suggest that!”

“Go to, go to. The queen marries my lord Claudius—”

“How can he be king? When the old king’s son lives? And is,” I added, “a good man, very like his father — kind to the poor, never giving himself airs.”

“A young man,” my apology for a husband muttered. “Inexperienced.”

“A man of near thirty! And a student at Wittenberg, no less. What he doesn’t know about kingship he’ll soon learn. As for that Claudius,” I continued, “the man’s a rider, a lecher, a libertine, the owner of no one good quality—”

“A king. Our king. And not inclined to favour fishwives,” my lord said tartly.

Our marriage was not consummated that night, either.

Within less than no time, as the newly arrived young Hamlet observed, Their Majesties were man and wife — such a hugger-mugger affair it was, too. Almost as quiet as mine. And no wedding journey to compensate. It seemed that the Norwegians had the measure of King Claudius and were planning an invasion, so he made it his business — oh no, not to ride out as King Hamlet would have done, and deal swiftly and surely with the matter, but to send a pair of underlings with a message. My husband and his newly returned hothead of a son almost came to blows over the decision. It certainly wasn’t how Laertes felt a king should behave.

As for young Hamlet, you’d have thought all his philosophy would have taught him how to deal with the situation. In his place I would have disobeyed the king’s wish that he stay at court and forthwith returned to university where he’d have been happy. If I’d stayed, it would have been to slit the usurper’s throat in the church. But he merely sat in a corner and moped, making odd utterances no one understood. He managed but one sensible thing. Despite the winter weather, despite what should have been a year of mourning, the entire court was supposed to wear bright summer garb. Only he had the sense to swathe himself in his thickest clothes, complete with scarf and cloak. I would slip into his hands sweetmeats I had about me, just as when he was a boy: He would always favour me with a kind word, and sometimes a smile that lit his whole face. Often he seemed about to confide in me, but on cue up would come my husband, so promptly I’d swear he’d been listening.

At last Hamlet seemed to turn a corner, and became downright coltish. Perhaps it was his newfound love. He and Ophelia seemed well on the way to consoling each other, with some encouragement from both me and his mother, I have to say. But both blew hot and cold: The more he pursued, the more she skittered away, and when she turned up the heat, you couldn’t see him for dust. A good box about the ears, that’s what they both needed, and so I told Polonius.

“Can’t you see it’s for the best?” he whispered, looking about all the while as if the very dust motes might spy on him. “If he can’t bed her till he’s wed her, the good king and queen, fearing he’ll go mad for love, will grant their consent and then I’m made for life, Maria. You and I,” he added, somewhat as an afterthought.

“If you ask me, he’s so many cares a silly girl playing fast and loose with his emotions can only be bad for him,” I said. “His father dies, he comes bustling home expecting a coronation — his own, my lord — and what does he find? What he should, his mother in widow’s weeds, preparing for a dowager’s life in a convent? His uncle on his knees before him, swearing due allegiance to his new liege lord? No! He finds his throne usurped, his mother open-legged for a man not worth the snap of her fingers!” I might have added that, king’s brother or not, Claudius’s behaviour was far from regal: His hands were always trying to find their way into serving maids’ plackets or tugging their bodices till their nipples peeped out. Fine manners in a newlywed.

“Hush. Prithee, wife, hush.”

“And what are you planning, Polonius? You play your cards so close to your chest I sometimes think you can’t see them yourself!”

He went off huffing and puffing. I was left to consider a new addition to our court, one of Prince Hamlet’s fellow students. Horatio. Such a lovely pair of legs he had on him. Though he said little, what he did was always to the point — and he had the sweetest turn of phrase. I began to regret my overhasty marriage: A woman might expect apter treatment from this young man. But in time I began to suspect that he was not, as one might say, a marrying sort. Certainly he was as tender to the melancholy prince as a lover would be.

Not so the next arrivals at court, as nasty a pair as you’d come across in a week’s work. More students. But though they would merrily chip and chop their logic with young Hamlet, they took back his every word to either my lord or King Claudius.

At last I could bear it no longer, and happened to find my way onto the battlements at the same time as Hamlet. At the sound of my footsteps he wheeled round in what looked like terror.

“It’s only I. Maria,” I said. “Come to blow a few cobwebs away.”

We agreed that the weather was cold despite the bright sun, the wind coming from the northwest, and joked about the shape of the clouds. To my surprise, he scribbled in his tablets when I said one looked like a weasel.

“And talking of weasels,” I pursued, “there are those about the castle who claim to be your friends but who shouldn’t be trusted any more than ferrets in a sack. Not Horatio, my lord. The other pair. Rosenstern and Guildenthing. Whatever they call themselves.” I leaned closer. God, his doublet and hose stank. Waving my hand before my nose, I said, “You were once so well turned-out, Your Highness — the pattern card, the very mirror of fashion. And now a beggar would spurn this doublet. As for your hose—!”

He touched his nose too, but with the sort of tap that told me he had a secret. “There is a reason for all this. And the beard. And the lurking in corners. Trust me,” he said.

“Trust! I don’t know anyone else I’d trust in this place. Well, Horatio, I suppose. But no one else. No one at all.”

“No one? Surely Ophelia—!”

“—would — I have to be frank — do anything her father bid her.” Only that morning, as we were breaking our fast, I had heard him whispering to the king something about privately loosing her to Hamlet. Loosing — as if she were a mare to be tupped. “And he seems to be — nay, is — like this with Claudius.” I crossed my fingers. “Beg pardon — King Claudius. Why don’t you do something, my lord?”

Then I realised why rumours of his madness were no longer whispered, but spoken openly.

Out of the blue, he asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Without thinking, I crossed myself.

It was as if I’d answered another question. “Ah! You think they’re come from the devil to torment us!”

Did I? “Perhaps. Or perhaps they’re heaven-sent to warn us. All I know, my lord, is that I have never yet seen one.”

He gave a short, harsh laugh.

“My lord, you misjudge me. I know they say only the pure can see one.”

“So they do. So an adulteress would not...”

“Adulteress! Not I, my lord!” Should I make it entirely clear? I blushed for my lord Polonius. Did I owe him any loyalty? Not as much as I owed the late king’s son. “Free with my eyes I may be, Highness, but I’m no loose woman. I’m as pure in body as any lady entering a nunnery.”

Another bark of laughter. “A nunnery! Next you’ll be saying Polonius is a fishmonger keeping a bawdyhouse!”

“Not that sort of nunnery, either, my lord. Enough of your jests. As for Polonius, to be wife and no wife is no laughing matter.”

He nodded. “Better that than to be a whore, Maria. When the old man dies, we’ll find you a lusty prince for your bed,” he added, with a courtly kiss of my hand to show he meant no unkindness.

“Dies? Creaky gates always last the longest, my lord. As for a prince — go to! I’d be more likely to fetch up with that court card, Osric. If he could ever frame his mouth round such an ordinary word as marriage. They say that manners make the man — but I’ll swear he bowed to his mother’s breast before he suckled.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “My good Maria! Well, there may be a few soldiers visiting our court. Fortinbras, for instance.”

“Fortinbras!” My eyes must have gleamed. I’d seen him when he’d accompanied his father here on a state visit. Then he’d been scarcely bearded. Now he’d be just the young man for Ophelia to have one of her crushes on. Poor Hamlet. I asked more soberly, “But why should he come here?”

“The esteemed Claudius has given permission for Fortinbras of Norway to lead his army across our soil. He intends to wrest a few acres from Poland.”

“Poland! Such poor farming land it wouldn’t yield five ducats an acre. What a waste of young life. Why doesn’t war carry off the old?” Polonius, for instance. “Sweet Prince, take care, I beg you.”

He looked at me with sudden kindness as I clasped his hands. “We all have to die, Maria.”

“But not before our time, sir, if I may say so. Now, enough of this chatter. They say the players are to come again. Imagine being able to remember all those words! And say them in public! As if they really meant them, too. But perhaps it’s not such an achievement. My Lord Polonius tells me he was a noted actor in his youth. If he ever was young, that is.” I sighed. “Well, I must see they are well lodged and well fed. The poor lads, spending all their time on the road...”

The next thing Polonius and Claudius were plotting fairly turned my stomach. Gertrude was to send for Hamlet and tell him to explain his behaviour. There had certainly been a few moments of oddness during our conversation, but on the whole he was no madder than you’d expect any king to be, with all that inbreeding. But apparently he and Ophelia had had a huge argument, ending in her tears. By some coincidence Polonius had heard it all. Coincidence? I doubted it, especially when I heard his next move. I knew Gertrude was worried about him — were not we all? — but no decent mother would have wanted an extra pair of ears at the interview. Yes, my husband was to secrete himself in the room and spy.

“You cannot do that,” I expostulated as we made our way down to the evening’s performance by the players. “It’s a betrayal of trust!”

“My dear Maria, madness in great ones must not go unwatched.”

“But by his mother, not by the Lord Chamberlain.”

An unpleasant smirk played about his lips.

“And what if he doesn’t confess all? What then?”

“Then he will be sent to England. They owe us tribute and will do the king’s bidding instantly.”

“And what is his bidding?”

The old man’s face closed. “Only His Majesty is privy to that,” he lied, his fluttering left eyelid giving him away.

Hamlet sent to England? The king’s bidding? I must slip away from the play and search the king’s study.

Hamlet to be beheaded! That was what the document on the king’s desk said. Instantly. As soon as he set foot on English soil. Without even time for shriving. Even as I reeled, desperate to warn the good young man, I heard voices and — just as if I were my husband — I hid behind a pillar. Something had truly enraged Claudius: I could hear him in the corridor outside, screaming with fury at Gertrude, who, lacking the backbone of a flea, was yes-sir-no-sirring him like a very drab. But then in he marched, with those two blowflies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he grabbed the letter and pressed it into their hand.

I must warn Prince Hamlet! But how could I do that, when I knew he was closeted with his mother?

I used the secret stair behind the arras, meant to be used for a rapid escape in time of attack. As I ran, I drew from my pocket my scissors. There was just a chance that if Polonius felt their blade at his throat he would believe he was threatened by a man and I could drag him away. Once he was safely bestowed in our chamber, I could run back to Hamlet and get him out of Elsinore via the same staircase. He was king, by every right but anointment. He was my liege lord and he had to be saved, even if I lost my life in the endeavour.

It wasn’t I but Polonius who died. As soon as Polonius felt the blade, he screamed. I slit his throat. My lord must have thought he was threatened by an assassin, and ran his sword through the fabric. Again and again he jabbed, till, fearful for my life, I backed into the secret doorway.

When Hamlet pulled back the arras, he assumed it was his blade that had killed the rash intruding fool. I wanted to step forward and explain, but, one of his fits of madness upon him, he turned from me and berated his mother in such terms that I could not stay to listen. So I turned and ran.

Would staying have made any difference? It seemed at the time that even if I had confessed to the murder, even if I had been hanged for the offence, Hamlet would have been despatched for England. All I could do was slip a hasty letter in his pack, warning him what was planned and telling him to insert on the death warrant their names, not his. For my own protection, I asked him — if he survived — to pretend he had a premonition, and acted of his own accord.

I told myself that this way I could be there to support Ophelia and even Laertes when he returned posthaste to find his father dead and his sister in strong hysterics. As usual, they all indulged her every whim. I advised bloodletting and a lowering diet. They allowed her to roam free and to harm herself. All Laertes did was raid my chest of herbs and simples, claiming he could not sleep for grief. Now that he sleeps forever, I know his true motive for the theft. It was to poison the rapier with which he was to stab Hamlet in a fencing match.

Oh yes. Thanks to my message, Hamlet dealt summarily with the two supposed friends and returned to claim his inheritance. He came back on the worst possible day: that of Ophelia’s funeral. Yes, the silly girl, with no one to curb her wantonness now her father was gone, had got herself pregnant by one of the serving men and drowned herself when the pennyroyal I’d given her did no good. No one could tell Laertes: He would have killed every last man in the garrison in revenge.

I spoke long and stern to Gertrude. There was no one else to convince her that Hamlet was a true loyal son to his father and that her husband was a cheap usurper. And I think at the end that she believed me. Did she not, even in the throes of death, accidentally poisoned by a draught Claudius had prepared for Hamlet, try to protect her son? Even though to do so was to betray her husband? At least she died with Hamlet’s name on her lips.

My dear sweet prince died nobly, in his beloved Horatio’s arms. And then in marched Fortinbras. In the miserable bloodbath that was the court, he silenced all by asserting his rights over the country.

And over me.

“In my country,” he said, in that strange guttural accent of his, “it is the duty of the conqueror to take to wife the widow of the vanquished. You are the senior lady of the court. I claim you as my prize.”

So I ended with the prince Ophelia would have adored. As marriages go, it was neither bad nor good — a matter of convenience. I never wanted for anything, but have never been truly happy.

There are times when I wander the battlements, hoping to hear the ghost of Prince Hamlet assuring me I am forgiven. I know he’s visited Horatio. As he himself pointed out, however, spirits speak only to the pure. So some days I think he judges me as I judge myself. As a failure. But then Horatio will remind me what the prince once said to him:

There’s a divinity doth shape our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

Copyright © 2006 Judith Cutler