Such Sweet Sorrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

long room. He stopped at the pile of clothing on the floor beside the wardrobe. “You know, clothes can be poisoned as easily as food.”
    “No, not as easily, actually.” Hamlet sat and cut into the cheese with the knife from his belt. “I’m not taking any chances. Not after what my father told me.”
    “Your father’s ghost,” Horatio corrected. “Hamlet, I know you put faith in apparitions, but I do not. There must be another explanation for your father’s death.”
    If anyone else had suggested such a thing, Hamlet would have had them thrown in the dungeon. This was Horatio, gentle Horatio, who cared only for his best friend’s well-being. Perhaps Horatio felt Hamlet’s doubt. It was an uncomfortable possibility, but Hamlet wouldn’t discount it. Horatio had an uncanny ability to see what Hamlet would never confess to another soul. Gently, he observed, “You saw him too.”
    “I did,” Horatio admitted, after a time. The war in his rational mind would not be won over a meager breakfast of cheese.
    So Hamlet changed the subject again. “What would you have me do about this duel?”
    “I would have you choose someone to fight in your stead,” Horatio suggested, then quickly, with both hands held in the air before him, said, “Not me. Someone competent.”
    “No, no one competent. I don’t want this fellow to die.” Hamlet had, the night before, when he’d been confident that he would murder the fiend in a single, glorious blow. The morning light had brought him clarity. Searing pain, as well, that had eventually dulled to a throb behind his eyes—he might never touch a drop of ale again—but clarity, foremost.
    The specter of death, always around Hamlet, had intensified tenfold once he’d ventured through the glittering corpseway. What could his uncle, the new king, do if he gained knowledge from the world of the dead? Hamlet didn’t know, and that made the prospect of Claudius discovering the gate to the underworld all the more terrifying.
    “These men claimed to be on a quest,” Hamlet confessed, looking away from Horatio. It sounded almost too absurd. “I thought they might be my uncle’s spies.”
    “What kind of a quest?” Horatio seated himself on the mass of clothing. It was almost as tall as a chair and would do nicely in the role.
    Hamlet hesitated. He did not fear ridicule, for Horatio had mocked him many times, and Hamlet always took it for an expression of love through sarcasm. He feared the possibility that Horatio, upon hearing the strangers’ tale, would agree that they were spies. It would make his uncle’s treachery that much closer.
    “They were sent by a witch, to the seat of a dead Northern king. The young man, Romeo, believes he can bring his lost love back from the dead. A bit dramatic, but touching, really. A love stronger than death.” Something crucial twisted up from the broken pieces of his drunken interlude. “No. They did not seek a dead king. They sought a murdered king.”
    Horatio took a long, deep breath, but said nothing.
    “You see, then, why I might find their story suspect. Of all the ale houses, and in Denmark, of all places, they find the one man who knows the king was murdered?”
    “Not the only man,” Horatio reminded him. “King Claudius almost certainly knows it as well.”
    “Then you see my dilemma.” Hamlet shook his head, a rueful smile tugging the corners of his lips. “It seems too coincidental.”
    “Perhaps it is fate?” Horatio shrugged. “Stranger things have happened in the course of human history, I’m sure of it. But as you say, it is very convenient. The night after you learn the true circumstances of your father’s death, these strangers appear?”
    “And yet that information may also prove their tale without any connection to my uncle. Suppose a witch really did tell him to seek the seat of a murdered king. No one else on earth, save vile Claudius, could possibly know that. No rumor doubting the nature of my