Tricks of the Wind
Written for Zara.
The wind in Denmark never stops blowing.
It threads through the soft yellow hair of the Prince, touches its fingertips invisibly to Horatio's face, finds Ophelia in the garden and ruffles her skirts, dances in the curtains of Gertrude's room and makes her shiver, curls around Claudius' crown, makes whispers without sound in the empty ears of the dead King hidden below the earth in a stone vault where the cracks are not too small to keep it out, plays riddles with Laertes as he goes to the docks to find a ship to take him away. It laughs and rustles and makes the leaves turn anxiously, the grass, like thick green silk, change colour as it is blown first one way dark and another way light. The wind in Denmark sweeps behind doors and gravestones, in among the flicking flames of the fire in the stone fireplaces, between the candles of the hanging iron chandeliers, over the halls which are so quiet often. Claudius likes revelry, but during the day the castle seems almost empty--the people recover in their rooms, and the Prince ventures out of his, commanding the stairs with his dark black-clothed presence, frightening courtiers away because he is still mourning while they celebrate with their king.
Horatio is coming home while Laertes leaves, and they are only separated by a day, else they might have met by the tall ships, greeted each other with reserve while the wind tickled the ivory sails and traced the lines of the figureheads. Horatio and Laertes were both the sons of men of the court: Horatio was a dark-eyed boy who thought too much and always spoke respectfully; Laertes was blue-eyed and golden-haired and handsome, liked to make up games about princes and dragons where his sister was the distressed maiden. He was always the dragon, and the Prince was always the prince--of course. Horatio was made the magician, and he left halfway through to read in the library. They were never good friends. But they are a day too early and a day too late, and Horatio comes the night before Laertes goes away, and they never meet.
Ophelia is planting fennel, planting rue, planting pansies. Ophelia is tending to violets, although taking care of flowers isn't her business; her only obligation, the only thing expected of her, is that she wear them when they bloom; but Ophelia is tending to daisies and columbines, and carefully teasing the sprouts to make them grow tall. Ophelia is watching over the rosemary, last year's rosemary, growing strong and smelling stronger. Ophelia is watching over the rosemary.
Gertrude has a little trouble sleeping at night, a little more than she used to, although stiffness in her hands and feet always kept her awake before, too--she goes at night to the vault and prays that God has forgiven her for marrying so soon again. She loves both her husbands, the grey dead one who she remembers like dust and the living, breathing, fine one who loves her when she cannot sleep. Surely God would forgive--she is Queen, a beautiful Queen, and even the stiffness and pain in her body does not take all her beautiful pride away. She is not afraid as long as she prays, and the wind makes hollow sad sounds inside her dead husband's vault, and she pretends not to hear. Once she did weep, but the pain was worse that night than usual, and her poor son was dressed in black, and lonely, and she knows she is too proud--and God must have forgiven her--and it was not because she was afraid or sad that she wept. It was only the pain, which has already passed.
Claudius also prays, in the little chapel inside the castle. The wind makes the tapestries shiver, blows at the candles in front of the little icons, does somersaults over the paintings of the Christ and the small wooden saints who have their hands raised in blessings for-ever and for-ever. Claudius prays also, and no one sees him, no one knows what he is praying for.
The Prince has left the staircases and now he sits in the library, reproaching anyone who comes in and disturbs him with eyes the colour of the stormy wind-blown seas that took Laertes away and brought Horatio back--and Horatio, because he has returned, come down from the battlements with tales of ghosts that make the Prince sombre and sad, also comes to the library. He brings old books from Wittenburg, and new words of wisdom that they taught him at school there. He is a true philosopher now, not simply a courtier's son with thoughtful dreams about the sky and the earth and heaven and men. With his old books piled beside him, he reads in the library, and here is a man who became something. The Prince watches him, and sometimes he comes away from the seat by the window that looks across the empty field next to the castle, the field into which the graveyard will spill when all the places there are filled up. Sometimes the Prince comes and sits beside Horatio, and thumbs through his books.
The wind in Denmark never stops blowing.
When they were boys, the Prince fought the wind with the beautiful sword his father gave him, parrying, lunging, disengaging, making touches on the chest of an invisible enemy who wouldn't be defeated. He was a good fencer then, just as he is now, and he would have pleased the master who taught him swordplay; but he didn't please Horatio. Horatio watched with dark thoughtful eyes and heard angels in the wind, singing too beautifully to be understood. The angels spoke in soft tongues, in languages that nobody would have known, invisible as the Prince's enemy, and Horatio wanted to see them as well as he could hear them.
When the Prince dropped his foil and sat in the grass, out of breath and sulking because the wind was still blowing and he had not won his fight, Horatio sat beside him and touched the blade of the foil with pensive fingers.
"Thou wert fighting with angels, my Lord."
"Horatio!" The Prince leapt to his feet imperiously, and looked down at Horatio. "'Twas no angel!"
"Thou didst not see them," Horatio murmured, looking up. "Angels. Couldst not see them? Neither could I, but--they were singing, in the wind, my Lord." The Prince has a name, but Horatio was always a respectful boy who knew that he was only a courtier's son. As a boy he talked like a man, and now that he is a man he talks like an old man, slowly, as though every word were meant to be considered and turned over before it is spoken, so that nothing will come out wrong. Back then, he did not speak so slowly, but he spoke with as much consideration. The Prince sat again next to him.
"Tell me," he said commandingly.
"What shall I tell thee, my Lord?"
"Tell me how thou didst hear angels where I saw devils!"
Horatio closed his eyes, opened them again thoughtfully, looked at the Prince, and closed his eyes again, and rocked a little as he tilted his face up to the sky. "Canst not hear them, my Lord, when thine eyes are closed? The wind doth sing, and 'tis them--I hear their voices, and I do wish--"
"What dost thou wish? Not to leave me for them? Thou'rt not to leave me, not for all the angels in heaven! Thou'rt mine!" The Prince glared fiercely, and rose again, taking his sword from the ground. "I'll fight--I'll fight God Almighty for thee, I will!"
"My Lord!" Horatio snatched at the Prince's hand. "Thou canst not speak so of the Lord!"
"He is only the Lord! I am thy Lord! I shall never let angels take thee!"
Horatio sat and stared, as though he expected the Hand of the Lord suddenly to strike the Prince from out of nowhere, as though he expected the ground to open and swallow him, as though the sky must fall or the wind pick up and blow the Prince away to hell. His dark eyes were wide and shocked, and he hardly breathed. He waited. The Prince stared back angrily, helplessly, like anybody's boy, ordinary and no Prince at all, and the wind blew around them.
Nothing happened. The wind in Denmark continued to blow.
"My Lord," Horatio whispered at last. "Never say so again. I shall never leave thee. I shall stay here with thee, and I shall never wish to go--but pray, pray, never speak so again!"
The Prince dropped his arms shakily, as though he had been almost frightened and was unable even to pretend, but a moment later he was steady. He was a Prince again. He sat down once more, and took Horatio's hands in his, left his sword on the grass, and spoke earnestly. "Thou art not to leave me."
"I swear I shan't!"
"Dost thou?"
"Ay, ay, I do, but speak no more of the Lord!"
The Prince smiled. "Nay, I will not."
The wind in Denmark still blew, and rustled their clothes, and kissed their faces, and Horatio heard no more angels.
That was long ago now. Horatio sits in the library with his books, and the Prince, as graceful as one of the otters that slide into the water of the dark rivers, climbs onto the table and picks them up, turns the pages carelessly with long tapering fingers.
"Thou dost read religion, Horatio."
"Religion and philosophy walk hand in hand, my Lord. 'Tis possible to have one without the other, but 'tis preferable to marry them."
"How wilt do that? Religion may marry a maid and a man, but 'tis unlawful to marry twice. Then what shall marry religion?"
Horatio pauses to sort that out, and smiles when he does, or thinks he does. "Thou dost mock me, my Lord. I pray thou wilt be kind to me, though I know thou dost not love what I study."
"Thou'rt in the wrong. I do love thee, and that which thou lovest, so do I love it. Look you: I read it." The Prince holds the book up and hides his face in it, and Horatio watches him curiously for a moment.
For a moment: and then he goes back to his own book and reads, as slowly the Prince lowers the book and looks again at Horatio. Forgotten on the table, the pages of the book flip silently as the wind touches them. The Prince stretches out his hand and his body, lowering himself onto the table, closer and closer to Horatio, as lithe and smooth as a golden fox stepping across the ice when the dark rivers freeze, until his face is next to the cover of the book Horatio holds.
"Philosopher."
"My Lord!" Horatio starts and puts his book down.
"If thou wilt marry religion, thou canst not marry another maid."
He pauses, contemplating. "It doth seem so."
"Wilt not marry madness? Religion is no wife for thee."
"Do not fear, my Lord. I did promise thee I should let no angel take me from thee. I swore I should stay by thy side, and thy Horatio doth not break his oaths." He smiles.
The Prince is still for a moment; and then he, too, smiles.
Ophelia is still out in a garden which by now belongs to her, tending to the flowers. She gathers the violets and puts them into little silver jars full of water, and places them in the windows of the castles. Men of the court who stand looking out smile and joke with her, and she smiles back, slivers of smiles, but sweetly, and returns to her garden for pansies and columbine. The rosemary is not ready yet.
Horatio leaves the library and finds a window of his own one day, and takes a violet between his fingers to twirl as he thinks. Outside the wind is making the trees dapple light patterns on the gravestones and around the vault.
Laertes, across the sea, decides to come home. He is too far away from Denmark, too far from everything familiar, too far from his sister and his father. He misses the castle whose dragon he used to be. Across the sea, he gathers his possessions together and finds a passage back. It may take him a month, or two months, to arrive; in the north, the seas are never to be trusted, and one can never be sure. He writes letters to keep himself from feeling lonely, and imagines Ophelia with flowers in her hair, for it will be spring, he thinks, when he returns.
The Prince finds Horatio in the window, looking down, and stands beside him, arms folded on the sill. He takes a pansy for himself and shreds the petals into tiny pieces, whispering so softly that Horatio cannot hear what it is he says.
Gertrude visits the vault where the dead king lies in the day to-day. She is too stiff to get up in the night, when it grows cold; it is too painful to try and move from the warm bed she shares with her second husband. She does not pray to-day. She stands by the door and looks across the graveyard, and thinks about her child, her little fair-haired boy who liked to run and laugh. It was always Horatio, when they were young, who sat about sombrely and pondered things: now it is Horatio who smiles at her and will talk to her for an hour when she is alone. Horatio comforts her so well. He has become a fine young man. She thinks about her son, tall and fine-featured and madder than the wind in Denmark when March comes. Her son is mad. Gertrude presses her cheek against the stone side of the vault, and weeps, and this time she knows it is not from the pain in her hands; she could not pretend it.
Horatio reaches out and clasps the Prince's hand in his own, not looking away from the window nor yet replacing the violet. His hand is not warm, but not cold, either; a soft, dry hand; a firm, steady hand that feels strong and good and safe. It is a hand to trust, and the Prince wraps his other hand around it, so that now he is the one clasping Horatio.
Down in the chapel, Claudius prays. His hands shake, and he has taken off his crown and laid it to the side. The stones gleam in the light from the flickering candles, and the eyes of the wooden saints watch calmly as Claudius stands for a moment and rages, curses, insists that everything is mad and his nephew has the devil inside him and that without the damned boy all would be well--and the colours of the painting on the wall of Saint Christopher glow dully as he goes down on his knees again and prays, prays, fervently, not for the death of the Prince but for something else entirely.
The Prince leans over and kisses Horatio, who only closes his eyes and turns his face towards the Prince, towards the fine-featured tall young man who stands beside him. The air smells of autumn although spring is coming, has come, has begun to spread out, bringing with it pansies and violets and columbine. Horatio's hand--the Prince steadies himself with Horatio's hand, and they are still as a picture by the window, as the wind, which has never truly died down, picks up again and whispers around them both. Horatio hears no angels, but the Prince hears demons, and to hear them is worse than ever it was to see them when he was a boy.
Horatio's hand promises that nothing can take him away, angels or demons; that he is there, that he will stay. When he kisses the Prince, soft as the wind, it means that philosophy has married madness: in health, or in sickness.
The violets smell of the sun.
The book in the library sits alone, open where the Prince left it.
Somewhere in the castle, the foil he used as a boy is hanging neatly on the wall.
The wind in Denmark never stops blowing, never stops touching, never stops whispering or dancing or kissing. The wind in Denmark never goes. It knows the violets and the book and the boy's sword; knows the hands and the cheeks and the lips of the young men; knows Gertrude's stiff fingers and Ophelia's garden and Claudius' candles and loyal Laertes' heart. It knows the fragile, almost yet whole, ears of the dead king. The wind in Denmark laughs and wanders, and ties everyone together, too tightly to let them go.
Horatio cannot let his Prince go, because he is good and steady and because he loves his Prince.
The Prince cannot let Horatio go, because there is nothing else to hold on to.
Back to the Index.