Alas, Poor Yorick Read online

  ALAS, POOR YORICK

  a fool’s tale

  by

  CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO

  HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

  2002

  The entire contents

  of this edition

  Copyright © Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  All rights reserved

  In accordance with the International Copyright Convention and federal copyright statutes, permission to adapt, copy, excerpt, in whole or in part in any medium, or to extract characters for any purpose whatsoever is herewith expressly withheld.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, apply to publisher below.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, except for historical persons and places, are the products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. All incidents involving historical persons and events are fictitious, and have been created for literary purposes only. Any other resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  You, the owner, may make backup copies and/or put a copy on a second or third computer or reading device. You may print out a copy for your own use. You may lend the book, sell it, or give it away, as long as you lend, sell, or give away all copies. You may have the text read aloud by reading machines or computers or people.

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  Just treat us the way you would like to be treated yourself.

  — THE PUBLISHERS

  Published as a digital book by

  Hidden Knowledge

  1181 Martin Avenue

  San Jose, California 95126-2626

  http://www.hidden-knowledge.com

  First Edition (Release 1.06)

  16 May 2005

  For

  my old friend

  and colleague

  Dennis Etchison

  and under

  the circumstances

  with a nod to

  Laetitia

  and

  The late, great

  Pimpernel

  my cats

  Introductory Notes

  In HAMLET, Shakespeare is a little fuzzy about the historical context of his play, and tends to adapt his own period to this uncertain-but-earlier time. I have made an effort to do the same thing; the clothes are Medieval but the musical instruments are Elizabethean; the food is some of each. Events external to the story—what few there are—are fudged over 150 years of European politics.

  C. Q. Y.

  First Gravedigger:

  …Here’s a skull now: this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years.

  Hamlet:

  Whose was it?

  First Gravedigger:

  A whoreson mad fellow’s it was: whose do you think it was?

  Hamlet:

  Nay, I know not.

  First Gravedigger:

  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a’ poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.

  Hamlet:

  This?

  First Gravedigger:

  E’en that.

  Hamlet:

  Let me see. (TAKES THE SKULL) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that.

  HAMLET, Act V, scene 1

  ALAS, POOR YORICK

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  ELSINOR

  It is easier to make the King laugh than the Queen. He is a staunch soldier, ready to be merry when battle is done. He is used to the rigors of the camp and the hardship of campaign, and he is happiest among his men, sharing their mead and their fortunes. I have followed him for more than a dozen years and have seen him in defeat and victory, where he has learned to find enjoyment how and when he might. But she? Ah, she is young, far younger than he, and this place is strange to her, our ways rough and clumsy compared to the court of her father, who rules in Lorraine. She is his second wife and everyone is waiting to see what sort of child she will bring into the world, for none of the first Queen’s chicks lived long enough to walk. He dotes on her, of course. I do not know what she feels for him beyond her duty.

  There is feasting tonight, a celebration of the victory over the Swedes. Farmsteads for eight leagues around Elsinor have been raided for swine and bullocks and fowl in order to provide for the two hundred guests the King honors at his table. There are odors in the air from the kitchen that have had everyone slavering since sunrise. For once the peasants did not grumble at the demand for meat and grain and butter; the Swedes have taken much more from them than ever their King did, and they will not begrudge his soldiers their due. It is a good thing that the early crops have been plentiful and prices high, or the peasants might not have been so willing.

  I have put on my cockscomb and my dagged chaperon made of yellow and red samite with bells at the points of the dags, and I have my sceptre with its two balls. I fear the Queen does not like how I use it, but the King bellows with laughter when I thrust it up the skirts of the women in the court. Tonight I will find a way to please them both, if the old Male Goddess does not desert me.

  * * *

  The Queen has miscarried, but four days after the triumphant feast. She is in the care of nuns, for the Abbess is skilled with herbs and has sworn to stop the bleeding and the fever. All of us have been told to pray, and so I have left flowers with my little statue of the Male Goddess, who is either a long-necked woman with big breasts or an upstanding cock, depending on how you look at it; all that is creative and fecund and mortal is contained in the Male Goddess, including the getting of children. Surely He-in-She will come to Gertrude’s aid.

  There are priests everywhere and I have to keep my statue well-hidden; now He-in-She is under my mattress, to serve as inspiration as well as to have protection.

  * * *

  Fortinbras has sent a messenger to the King, stating that he is willing to accept the terms of alliance which were offered, and with only slight modifications. He, too, has felt the might of the Swedes encroach his borders, and is not willing to share his lands with them. Hamlet has declared that on Sunday all of Denmark will give thanks to God for our deliverance, and he swears that he will fast for three days to show God his gratitude for our vindication. He has already dispatched the youngest of his Council to Norway for the purpose of completing the understanding between himself and Fortinbras.

  The Queen has left her chambers and has been at the side of the King for all the public audiences. She is pale, carrying herself with fragile dignity that entrances and baffles the King at once. Since she lost the babe she carried I have seen her smile but twice, and that with such brittle brightness that I fear they were not smiles at all, but the faces some women wear when their pain in greatest.

/>   I have been sent to wait upon her several times, for the King believes that she must be cossetted and cajoled like a child, coaxed back to health. But Gertrude is not amused by watching me walk on my hands or listening to the songs I know. And as to the tales and jokes I tell, they offend her.

  But I am ordered to her apartments again, and I must go there.

  Her ladies receive me. Two are Danish girls, fair and well-born, subdued in manner by the teaching of the priests and the example of nuns: Ricardis and Margitha. The third is French, like the Queen, a winsome girl lithe as a fawn. She is Raissa.

  “It is Yorick, my lady,” Ricardis tells Gertrude, keeping me standing before the door to her chambers.

  Gertrude gives her answer in French, and I listen with full attention, as if I could learn the tongue that way.

  “She is busy now,” Ricardis informs me. “Another time would be better.”

  I bow my head. My hood and balled sceptre are in my room, and I have brought only my yawp, which I hold up to show the ladies. “The King asks me to play for her.” Ricardis sighs as if I have imposed a heavy burden on her. “He’s supposed to play for you. He has his yawp with him.”

  This time Gertrude speaks in Danish. “The King sent him? You had better let him in, then.”

  “Be welcome, Jester,” said Ricardis grudgingly.

  I cannot come into the room until the ladies move aside, which they do slowly and with relish at making me answer to them, especially Raissa, who likes to taunt me with her body while she complains that I am improper to her. She watches me now, her lips full and pouting, as I bow and bob my way toward the Queen. Gertrude is working at her embroidery frame, the heavy draperies pulled back from the window so that the soft autumn light strikes the expanse of stretched linen and the brilliant woollen yarns, giving the picture she is making the brilliance of life. She does not look at me while she plies her needle. “You may find a seat, Yorick,” she says when I have gone down on my knee to her.

  “Thank you, my Queen.” I know she intends me to select a stool or one of the stiff leather cushions that are used in France. Neither is comfortable for a man with a back like mine, but the leather cushion is the best of a bad bargain.

  “Do you know ‘The Raven and the Linnet’?” asks Margitha when it is apparent that Gertrude will not tell me what she wishes to hear.

  “Certainly.” I take my instrument and set the mouthpiece between my lips. This is always the telling moment, that first tone from its sloping bell. If the reeds are true and the touch correct, the yawp is as plaintive and sweet as the song of the nightingale—if the reeds or the touch fail, then it sounds as if you trod on an angry goose. I see Raissa watching me and I know she hopes I will justify her contempt for me with raucous noises. But today the Male Goddess approves me, and the voice of the yawp is clear. The descending tones are steady and the melody weaves the air, catching even the Queen in its net. All through the song the yawp does not falter, for my breath is steady as the western wind and my fingers ply the stops like dancers.

  When I finish, the ladies exclaim and even Raissa manages to approve, though there is a look about her I have seen before in many others, and it shames me.

  “You do that well.” Her smile makes her eyes seem hard. “Can you also play ‘Purcival and the Grail’?”

  She has probably chosen that tune deliberately, “Alas, my lady, this pipe lacks the notes for that music.” If I had my long shawm, I might have obliged her, but the yawp has only one note beyond the octave, not six. “Is there another melody you would like instead?”

  Raissa shrugs and glances at the Queen, inclining her head as if they were about to whisper secrets. “Do you want to hear anything, my Queen?”

  She does not stop the steady movement of her needle, and her concentration is directed at the thread. “Oh, anything. ‘Frederick at Milan,’ perhaps,” she says remotely, choosing the tune at random, I suppose.

  “I know that one,” I tell her, and prepare to play again. The story is not often told any more, for Denmark does not approve of what Emperor Frederick did at Milan. As I finger the stops, it occurs to me that Gertrude might have chosen the song because Hamlet does not like to hear it. There are three different moods in the song—the first martial, the second a brooding thredony wrapped around a cluster of three notes which burrow into the heart, the third a stirring anthem with a soaring line rising in eager jumps—and each is difficult in its own way. I cannot divert my attention from the yawp as I go from one to the other and then to the third, but I am aware that Ricardis and Margitha exchanging looks.

  “You did that well,” says Gertrude when I finish, and for a moment she actually looks at me, though she does not change her distant expression.

  “Thank you, my Queen.” I lower my head where I sit, trusting this will be enough. “It is my honor to please you.” “I suppose so,” she says, and resumes work on her tapestry.

  “I would like to hear one more,” exclaims Raissa, with a sudden gaiety that takes us all by surprise. “‘The Cid and Ximene’. Can you play that?”

  The song is demanding, full of turns and tricks, but I accept her challenge. “I have not played it in a while, but I think I can manage.” Once again I take the reeds in my mouth, pressing them just so with my lips as I begin. The note almost cracks, for it is high and soft, but the Male Goddess is good to me, and the pitch holds, like the heart’s anguish at the loss of love. I stumble only once in the whole melody, and that is at the part where there are three quick jumps with ornaments at the end of them. Many another player has come to grief at that place in the song. The rest is strong and faultless, and I know I can be proud of the way I have performed. I have not caused the Queen any disappointment.

  This time when I finish, Raissa applauds with her fingers, her smile as wide as it is shallow. She leans forward a bit, innocent and tantalizing at once. “For a Danish jester, you play that piece quite well.”

  “My lady is kind,” I say to her as I rise. My duty is complete and I do not wish to remain here to be the object of the women’s derision, which I am afraid may happen. “My orders are not to tire you, my Queen, and therefore I will take my leave, if you will permit. I am grateful for this chance to entertain you. It is the King’s wish that you have pleasant things about you, the better to bring about another child.” I try my best to behave as Gertrude has told me she prefers, but I can see from the way her mouth purses that she does not approve of my conduct. I drop to one knee and lower my head. There is not much more that I can do. No matter what Hamlet asks of me, he should not have required me to speak of children, I can see that now.

  “Tell the King that I do not need to be entertained by his jester, though I am grateful for his concern. It will not be necessary for him to send you again, Yorick. I will improve if left to the company of my ladies and my confessor, as he is improved by the company of his officers.” She waves me away, breaking the rhythm of her sewing.

  “My Queen,” I say before half-backing out of her presence. Ricardis and Margitha follow me to the door and close me out.

  JESTERS

  There are four other jesters at court, but I am the one the King has favored by designating me his own. For three of the four this is not cause for trouble, but Oduvit is ambitious. Hedrann is old, nearly forty, and he is simple as well; Tollo is not right in his head and his face is deformed; Mect is only here to spy for the Emperor and no one expects much from him. We get on well enough. But for Oduvit, all would be well. “Dallying with the Queen again, are you?” Oduvit asks, making a host of implications in his tone and the movement of his eyebrows. He has a voice as disturbing as his appearance, low and whispery most of the time, but when enlarged becomes twotoned, like defective reeds. “I do my King’s command,” I tell him, determined not to become embroiled once again in needless bickering. “And now he commands me to entertain his guests.”

  He pays no heed to what I say. “And what does Hamlet command you? To make his Queen enough of a wo
man that she will welcome him to her bed again long enough for her to increase once more? No matter what the King may wish, someone will have to do it eventually, don’t you think. And given the state of their marriage, the King’s jester would be as appropriate a deputy as any. Better than one of his Captains, most certainly. How better to serve the King than to take on the tasks he dislikes.” Oduvit does a dance step—not an easy thing for one with such misshapen legs as his—and makes a motion with his hands that is unmistakable.

  “Let King Hamlet see you do that, and you will suffer for it, I promise you,” I warn him. “You may say such things to me, but you had better not repeat them in the Great Hall. Not if you want to enjoy the King’s favor. He may laugh easily enough at the misfortunes of others, but he will not tolerate slights to his honor.” In the past Oduvit has not done what I have recommended, and this once I hope he will act contrary to my advice again.

  “I am a jester, not a fool, Yorick,” Oduvit says, mocking me. “And you are the King’s dog, aren’t you. You will forgive him anything as long as you are in his favor.”

  I bow to him, and try to leave his company, but he follows me, staying half a step behind me, his head permanently cocked at an angle, which makes his insinuations all the more grotesque. “You are the one he sends to his Queen, always you.” He clicks his tongue and kisses the air. “The rest of us are not permitted to approach her. You are welcome there. So the King must trust you. Or he knows you to be a eunuch, or one with such tastes as his own, and has no fear of what you could do.” He is often dressed in bright colors, and today his chaperon is a deep yellow, giving him the look of a malign sunflower.

  “’I am grateful for the service he permits me to give him, and I carry out my appointed tasks the same as any knight would do,” I say to Oduvit, ready to make the argument more immediate if he insists. Most of the court is afraid to hurt jesters, because we are seen to be at such disadvantages because of our malformed bodies or blasted wits. But I have no such reluctance, and Oduvit is well aware of it.