A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult) (19 page)

CHAPTER 24

My father clears his throat to finally claim his share of attention. “Headmaster, I know it’s very late, but could I impose? I believe it will be worth any inconvenience.”

“It’s time for rounds; can this conversation be held while walking?”

“Ah … it can, if you so wish, but it might perhaps be best saved for a more private venue such as—”

“Excellent. Follow along, Polonius.” Chair legs scrape against polished wood. “The exercise will do you good, confined behind a desk as you always are!” Claudius laughs at his own observation. After a moment, Gertrude’s light, soft laugh weaves through in a delicate harmony.

It’s a wife’s duty to support her husband by laughing at his jokes, even when they aren’t particularly funny.

Claudius walks past me without noticing me. I don’t think he’s ever looked directly at me. I don’t think he’s ever had a reason to. Gertrude smiles when she sees me, but the faint line of a concerned frown is permanently carved between her eyes these weeks past. Father gives me a concerned glance and closes his hand around my wrist as he passes, tugging me to my feet. His fingers press against the shadows of Dane’s, and I bite my lip against the hiss that wants to snake through. Blood blossoms in a copper splash against my tongue, a reopened wound I don’t remember receiving the first time around.

I obediently stumble along behind them until Gertrude frowns at my father and frees my wrist from his grasp. She tucks my hand into the crook of her elbow so we walk a few steps behind the men. We could be on a Sunday-after-Mass stroll, except Father and Claudius walk too briskly, too business like, men with things to do and places to be. Twice a week Claudius takes his turn at rounds with the professors, making a full circuit of the inside of the school to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be. At this hour, everyone should be in their dormitories, though the common rooms and attached study spaces are still acceptable.

It isn’t until we’re actually in the school, our steps ringing on wood and tile, that Claudius seems to remember why he has three extra shadows. “Now, you were saying, Polonius?”

Father clears his throat, a little winded from the speed of our journey from the house. Perhaps Claudius was right, and he should leave his desk more often. “Brevity being the soul of wit, I will be brief: Dane is insane. Well, I call him insane, but to define true insanity, where there are so many breeds and variations, such distinctions as to render the term nearly incomprehensible, but yet, what can his behavior be but insane?”

Gertrude shakes her head with a fond half smile. “My dear Polonius, we are not all such complicated minds. Your words are lovely, but perhaps you could speak less artfully?”

“Madam, I swear I use no art at all!” he protests. If he were a chicken, all the feathers around his neck would be ruffled with his indignation. “He has succumbed to just such a breed of insanity, but it is one with a cause that I have recently—just this very evening—discovered. Ophelia, being an obedient daughter and a good girl, just gave me this.” He pulls the crinkled note from his pocket and holds it up. The heavyweight cream paper was folded in smooth, flawless lines when I reluctantly gave it to him in my room, but like everything else about my father, it has become somewhat rumpled. Dane’s writing, tall and precise, marches in uniform lines across the page. The letters used to be private, a way to circumvent the e-mail for which my father chose the password. He unfolds it, clears his throat again, and begins to read aloud. “‘My dearest, loveliest Ophelia’—what a ridiculous greeting, that, a vile way to begin anything—‘In a night of such interminable, unrelieved darkness, you are the one star in my Heaven, the only point of light and hope and goodness. The compass needle spins and spins with no direction for there is nothing to lay claim to it, nothing that pulls through the Earth to render direction, so I set my sights on you and follow you through the night, and only by gazing at you do I avoid the obstacles and terrors that plague every other path.’”

“Dane wrote this?” Gertrude asks with understandable amazement.

Claudius gives me a swift, penetrating look. “How did
your
daughter receive these letters?”

Father puffs up, his spine straight with the offense. I’m hardly hurt by the slight; Claudius is a man half blinded by glitter. Why would he notice a shadow? But there’s Father, sputtering as he tries to find the right words, and I love him a little more for his indignation.

“Now, now, I mean no offense,” Claudius soothes quickly, one hand extended in a placating gesture.

But it isn’t enough to remove the fault entirely. Father tugs irritably at his unbuttoned blazer, an adjustment without discernible effect. “I would certainly hope so, but whatever you might think, as soon as I saw the heat of his feelings for her—as I perceived them, I must tell you that, before any word passed my daughter’s lips—well, what might you think of me had I kept my silence or offered to ignore it in any fashion or even, God forbid, to have assisted it in some way! What might you think of me! But no, I bent immediately to the unpleasant, necessary task, and impressed upon my daughter the importance of severing this affection. ‘Dane is a prince out of your star,’ I told her. This must not be.”

But Dane
is
the star, spinning and burning and keeping the lake at bay.

“I told her then that she was not to be around him without either myself or Gertrude present, that she should encourage him in no way, and as she is a good girl, she obeyed; she repelled his advances and kept her distance. As any young man rebuffed must, he fell into sadness, even into sulking, but where a young man who felt less might have soon returned to a customary lightness, Dane declined further into his present madness.” Father seems pleased with the case he’s pled.

Claudius leads us up a set of stairs and into the mathematics hall. In the dim night lighting, I can barely see the smirk that twists up his lips. “And you believe this?”

“It may be,” says Gertrude, the words slow and reluctant. There’s hope there, too, some fragile chance of an explanation to excuse her son’s behavior. She reaches out to touch her husband’s arm, light and delicate as a butterfly’s wing. “He is very fond of Ophelia.”

“And has there ever been a time, I would ask you now, that I have ever positively said a thing was so when it proved otherwise?” Father demands.

I look away to hide my smile. Poor Father, all prickly and unappreciated. Claudius is wise to know how important my father is to keeping the school running smoothly, but he hasn’t yet learned how to keep him unruffled. Hamlet had a great deal of skill in that arena. I wonder if Father misses him or if it’s the school he serves, regardless of who runs it. If you count when he was a student here, Claudius is his fourth headmaster.

The smirk abruptly vanishes; Claudius has realized his mistake. And yet, he is still not as careful as he should be. “Not that I know,” he allows cautiously.

“Strike my head from my shoulders should I lie even by mistake. If circumstances will allow, I will find the truth of this no matter how it may be hidden.”

“What do you propose?”

Now Father is in his element. Make a plan, implement it, something that should always be as easy as reciting steps off the blackboard. Paperwork always proceeds exactly as you expect it to. There’s so much he’s never learned about people.

“You know that Dane sometimes paces here in the school after hours, especially in the portraits hall.”

“So he does,” murmurs Gertrude, “for hours on end.”

“We’ll arrange for Ophelia to already be present, seemingly by herself, and we may observe the encounter for ourselves from the security office. If he does not love her, if this is not the reason for his disconsolate and bizarre behavior, you may expect my resignation to follow.”

Father never offers to leave his job unless he is very, very certain he’s right. It’s his promise, his guarantee that what he says is the truth, and always that has played out like a check-mate seen from five moves away.

But he’s wrong this time. Dane isn’t mad for love of me. His madness comes from madness, from playing too close to a deadly truth until he can’t discern the act from the fact.

And Father can’t know. I could tell him now, tell all of them, and finally be free of this terrible truth. I could tell them about the poison, produce the syringe from the clothespress at the foot of the bed.

Gertrude and Father slip into easy and meaningless parental prattle—hormones and phases and other nonsense I can hardly bear. And I could silence them so easily. I could tell them how Claudius murdered his sleeping brother, stole from his corpse all life, love, and position. I could tell them of the ghost that mourns and the ghost that rages, could tell them that Dane lulls them into complacency, because what I’ve finally begun to understand is that madness allows for an appalling honesty.

Horatio once spent all night walking me around the gardens and grounds because honesty spilled from my lips in broken shards that cut too deeply. I’d let too many days pass without pills. I can’t be disingenuous without the chemicals to teach me how to lie. It’s the reason Father locks me away in the cold place until they can find the right balance of lies to make me question my truths, until they find the combinations that veil another world. I couldn’t lie about why Mama took us into the lake that evening, couldn’t conceal the promises she’d made.

And now Dane, too clever for the rest of us, for himself. This is why he plays his long, terrible game. When they finally believe he’s mad, he can say things no one else could get away with, the things that aren’t polite or fit for company. He can use his words as weapons and watch the truth bleed from their eyes.

If he can get that far.

For the first time, Claudius pins that cold stare on me and studies me from head to toe. His thoughts are uncharacteristically near the surface. Who is this creature? Who is she that Dane could ever lose himself in her? What game is she trying to play? “I think, Polonius, your plan may well be the right one.”

I can object, but no one will listen. Not even Gertrude, who believes in the difference between the concerns of men and the duties of women. No one asks me if I’ll do this thing, no one asks for my opinions, and no one will hear it even if I offer it.

The star burns in my chest. A little brighter. A little hotter. A little larger. It expands into my lungs with tongues of flame that scald my breath into nothingness, not even ash to mark that it once existed. Heat blazes behind my eyes, dries them out to keep the tears from forming. I am a ghost, a bruise, a whisper.

And now …

Claudius nods once, a sharp, decisive gesture. “We will try it.”

… now I’m a blade that kisses with death on my lips.

CHAPTER 25

Sleep eludes me and I’m grateful for it, grateful for the dry and burning eyes that stare at the painted-over holes in my ceiling because the pain is so much easier than the dreams that await me. Every time I close my eyes, even for a moment, blood and blades battle against an endless spill of ice blue, cold blue, drowned skin blue. The star spins with a steady murmur of
danedanedanedanedane
, but the bells from the lake toll in a different rhythm; none of it matches the laughter of the morgens as they play through the dark, frigid waters that blaze with thousands of candles of a forgotten city.

When the morning comes, I look like I haven’t slept, so Father lays the hoarseness of my voice to fatigue and not to the dark ring of bruises I hide beneath a turtleneck sweater. He accepts my silence through early Mass and even puts his hand to my shoulder several times through the service. From him, this is effusive affection indeed. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. A headmaster gave his blessing to a plan
he
constructed, and Father does love a vote of confidence. Cheerful and oblivious, he can indulge in this expansive mood. He even gives Horatio a magnanimous smile when my friend asks to escort me back to Headmaster’s House.

I know Dane doesn’t tell Horatio everything that passes between us, but I’ve always thought he must say something. Now I know he does, because Horatio walks so slowly that the distance stretches easily between us and everyone else. When the others are out of sight, he stops on the path and turns to face me. His hazel eyes are darker than they should be. His hand trembles finely as he gestures to the neck of the sweater. “May I?”

I tug the fabric down without a word.

His breath hisses through his teeth, making me wonder how bad the bruises look. His fingertips gently brush against my throat. “I went to check on you, after he told me. You weren’t there.”

“Father.”

“He saw?”

I shake my head and adjust the fabric so it conceals everything it should. “Something else. They’re springing a trap, Horatio.”

“I saw the Toms crossing to the south guesthouse last night.”

Easier to nod than to speak. We resume our progress up the path, each step slow and carefully placed to give us as much time as possible. With each forward motion, the syringe sways in the pocket of my skirt to tap against my thigh. I clutched it through the night to help keep myself awake, the glass cold in my palm, and brought it down with me to church for the same purpose. The touch of it makes my skin crawl, pushes the exhaustion just a little farther away.

“Just the one trap?” he asks finally.

I shake my head again. The Toms are one trap; I am another.

I am the blade that sings silver in the moonlight.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so scared as last night.”

“I could have pushed him away.”

“Could you?”

No, of course not. The ability to speak the words is always there. It’s the will that’s lacking.

But he doesn’t press me on it because he already knows the honest answer. He’s heard the truths that taste of blood and tears.

“What happens if you let him go too far?” He puts an arm around my shoulders like the touch comforts him. “If he hurt you that badly, Ophelia … it would destroy him.”

“I trust him.”

“He doesn’t trust himself.” We stop outside the door for another moment of peace before all the games and the traps resume. He glances around, then presses a gentle kiss against my temple. “Promise me you won’t let him choke you again.”

“Horatio—”

“Please. It’ll make me feel better, and it’ll make Dane feel better. You bruise easily, Ophelia, we’ve always known that, so the marks on your wrists, on your arms … you have those pretty frequently. Don’t let him put a hand to your throat again.”

“He scared you last night.”

He gives a short, humorless laugh. Autumn cold leeches the color from his skin. “I think he scared everyone last night, except you.”

“And that scares you most of all.”

“Yes.” He sighs and a plume of grey trails from his chapped lips. It’s unexpectedly lovely, like the words have an image, a shape. “Ophelia … I am never scared of you. But more and more, I’m scared for you.”

An important distinction, and one I can understand. I wrap both my arms around one of his to borrow some of his warmth and bury my face in the thick knitted scarf with its panels of school colors. “He’s in so much pain.”

“It’s one thing to help someone bear their pain. What he does to you …” His other hand rises to press so very gently against the bruises on one side of my neck. “This is unacceptable, no matter how much pain he’s in, and even you know that. You cannot let him do this to you again.”

“I promise.”

“Thank you.”

We stay outside until I start to shiver in my coat, goose bumps stabbing my skin through my tights. Weather like this usually makes me plead with Gertrude for at least one set of trousers because I freeze in the skirts, but she insists that it’s inappropriate for women to wear them. I have no allowance, no money of my own to spend, so I can’t even purchase them on my own. When my shivers grow obvious, Horatio turns away to open the door and hold it for me.

In the front hall, Dane sits on the fourth step of the staircase, all in black. I can hardly remember what he looks like in color. Black is all he’s worn since his father’s death, an entire wardrobe of grief and recrimination. He attended Mass that morning but left before the benediction; I wouldn’t have expected him to come to the house. He’s waiting for something, but I don’t think it’s us. He looks up when we enter, his eyes wide and horror-struck at the sight of me. I would offer him comfort, but I don’t know that he would believe it from me.

But Horatio sits beside him and nudges his arm with an elbow. “She’s fine, Dane. Promise.”

“Ophelia?”

Shucking out of my coat, I sit to his other side and lean my head against his shoulder. “I’m fine,” I whisper. “Promise.”

“Would you lie to protect me, Ophelia?”

“Do you think I could?”

He doesn’t answer. Because he doesn’t know? Or because he doesn’t think it needs to be said?

Horatio’s stomach growls in the sudden silence. It startles a laugh out of all of us; just for a moment, we feel like we used to. “Is there a reason you haven’t gone into breakfast yet?” he asks, the words distorted by a chuckle.

“Keith was supposed to meet me here, but he’s late.”

“Keith … Keith Hunter?”

“The one and only.”

Horatio and I trade a look, identical expressions of confusion on our faces. Though he’s a senior like the boys, Keith Hunter isn’t someone they spend much time with. Theatre has never been one of the prize jewels of Elsinore Academy, and those who pursue it tend to keep to their own kind. There’s something almost menacing about watching them slide in and out of character, their effortless falsehoods that feel so real. They don’t rely solely on words to lie; they lie with everything they are.

Horatio licks his lips, wetting them to speak, and winces at the sting. I can see the question take shape on his lips, but before he can give it voice, the door opens again. All three of us look up. Dane’s astonishment shakes his entire body.

“Toms!”

Gertrude asked them to find her son last night, to start immediately on their mission, but Dane’s shock is real. Whatever they did last night, it didn’t involve finding Dane. They shiver in clothing unsuited for the swiftly approaching winter. Guil’s dark skin is ashy from the cold. Ros swallows hard and looks to his companion to take the lead.

“What are you two doing here?” Dane asks and lurches from the step to shake their hands. “Aren’t you supposed to be off faking classes, deflowering freshmen, and making your parents thoroughly ashamed of you?”

“We’re taking a break from all that; your uncle was kind enough to let us crash-land here for a few weeks.”

“Flunked out already?”

“Recharging our batteries.”

“Then what’s new with you, that you need to be recharged?”

“Nothing at all, Dane; the world’s grown honest!”

“Did the Rapture happen and I missed it?” laughs Dane. He looks so genuinely happy it makes my heart hurt. He grips both men by the shoulders, shares his smile between them. “But seriously. Why are you here?”

“We’re here to see you, Dane,” Guil tells him. He almost seems sincere until his hand rises to twirl the gold stud in his ear, a nervous habit he’s had as long as I’ve known him. “I don’t much like my old man, but I can’t imagine losing him, and you and your pop … you two were close. You must be having a rough time.”

His words do what his appearance did not. Dane’s eyes narrow, study the men he calls friends. Ros sways back and forth, ever so slightly, shifting his weight between his feet. After a moment, Dane glances back over his shoulder and meets my eye.

I don’t know what he sees in my face. Perhaps the dread that tracks the fidgets of the Toms. Perhaps the pain that comes from being forged into a blade. We learned in one of our history classes how swords are made, how they’re softened and beaten and folded again and again and again until the shape is right and the red-hot steel plunged into water.

“Come on,” he says too lightly, his eyes still on my face. “You were sent for.”

“Dane—”

“Your faces are your own confession. Claudius and Mother sent for you.”

“To do what?” Guil asks with a laugh. “What could they possibly—”

“That you must tell me.” He turns back to them, but despite the mild smile, all the joy is gone from his body. Every muscle is written over in tension, a wound spring about to explode with violence. “But please. We have been friends for so long, and if we have meant anything to each other, if our friendship is as important to you as it is to me, then I beg you. Just tell me the truth: were you sent for or not?”

Ros gives a nervous little titter. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you need to tell me the Goddamn truth. Were you sent for?”

“Yes, Dane, we were sent for,” Guil snaps. He rubs a hand over his closely shaven head. “Your mother and uncle were concerned; they thought … they thought you’d appreciate a visit. They made it possible for us to come.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure they were very concerned.” Dane returns to his space between me and Horatio and leans back on his elbows on the step behind. It isn’t just his voice; everything about him mocks them, from his casual pose to the half smile that teases about his lips. “Shall I tell you exactly what makes them so concerned?”

Claudius meant to spring a trap; now he’s just given the cat new mice to torment.

Of course, cats have a way of eating the mice they play with. What that promises for the Toms probably doesn’t bear thinking of.

“I have lately—though I have no idea why—left off all my normal hobbies,” Dane continues. “Nothing’s funny, nothing’s light.” Guil fidgets with his phone, and in one seamless motion, Dane snatches it from him. He launches the browser and types as he talks. “Everything is bleak and depressing, like the whole Earth is just sterile. And it should be an odd thing, right? Look around you, this beautiful place with as many lights as Heaven, as much gold as Midas’ hall, but to my mind it’s nothing but a foul pit of stench and disease.” A page loads on the phone’s screen, and Dane holds up a choice bit of pornography that makes Horatio close his eyes. Tapping the back of the phone for emphasis, he continues. “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in ability, in form and motion how admirable, in action how like an angel, in understanding how like a god, and yet—so much value do we lay on dust. No, I have no delight in my fellow man.” He glances at the screen. “Nor woman, either, though your smiles say differently.”

His sour look makes them quickly swallow their leering laughter. Ros shakes his head so hard his neck pops. “We weren’t thinking any such thing!”

“No?” Dane arches a dark eyebrow but otherwise doesn’t change his disapproving study. “Why did you laugh then?”

“Well …” Ros gives his partner a panicked look, then forges ahead. “It’s just that, well … if you have no delight in your fellow man, the theatre geeks won’t get much thanks from you, and we bumped into Keith Hunter on our way here. He wanted us to tell you that he’d be late; his sister isn’t feeling well so he’s taking her to the nurse.”

“But he’s still intrigued by whatever you wanted to discuss,” adds Guil, because he can’t stand to not be part of a conversation.

Dane gives him a tight, feral smile. “I see my patience will be rewarded. How like my uncle I am after all.”

Despite the well-concealed dismay on his face, Horatio can barely hold back a laugh. I bite my lip against the same impulse. Dane can be cruel when he puts his mind to it, but oh, what a wonder it is to watch him play.

There’s a knock against the door, solid and confident.

Guil seizes upon the sound with relief. “That must be Keith.”

Dane pushes gracefully to his feet. “Gentlemen, you are welcome again to Elsinore, but my uncle-father and aunt-mother have brought you here needlessly.”

“How so?”

He actually grins at them, but there’s something bitter and hateful beneath it. “I’m only mad north-north-west. When the wind is from the south, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Dane unmutes Guil’s phone just as the piece of work on the video reaches a very vocal climax, tossing the groaning device back to its owner.

Horatio loses the battle with his restraint and laughs softly into his hands to muffle the sound.

The knock sounds again, and this time my father appears from the door of the dining room, his mug of murky coffee still in hand. Guil tries frantically to kill the sound on his phone. “Five of you standing here, and none capable of answering the door?” he grumbles, but he shakes his head with an almost smile and crosses towards the main door.

Dane’s eyes track his progress. “Look, Guil, and you too—that great baby you see there is not yet out of his diapers.”

Ros and Guil have no particular love for my father; he can give them no advantage. Guil smirks and wedges his hands into tootight pockets. “Perhaps he is just in them again. They do say old age is like a second childhood.”