A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult) (29 page)

CHAPTER 39

I could escape.

Statement or question? Dane seems so sure of it, but then he so often does. Dane lives in a world of certainties where even the worst torments might be escaped if one has the courage to take arms against them. He never woke in the middle of the night to his mother’s soft kiss before she fled to that strange world beyond, my own undiscovered country. He never saw her eyes with her inevitable return, always a little more broken, a little more heartsick. A little more wild.

Of course, Mama also never had someone to run
to
, never had someone to make a place for her as Dane says Reggie Fortin would make for me. A place in a school that challenges the girls as much as the boys, a place where I could truly learn. Maybe even become.

Become what? Mama had to read me Dane’s letter because the words on the page shattered. Monticello has strong girls who make names for themselves; I can’t even make sense of my own name on a sheet of paper. Monticello has no place for my fragments.

I shrug off Horatio’s blazer, peel out of Mama’s fancy gown and leave it next to her on the shore. Delicate ice crystals, with little more substance than wishes, break against my bare legs as I step into the shallows of the lake. The cold shocks the breath from my body, but I take another step, then another, aware of Mama’s hungry attention at my back. My slip soaks up the water, the stain and damp drifting above my waist, rising nearly to the murmuring star.

I could keep walking.

I could escape.

I can’t tell anymore if they’re the same thing. Maybe I never could. Could Dane?

I remember death. I remember the silence and the stillness, the absolute serenity. I remember that there was no fear, no dread of something after. This constant terror, this uncertainty, this unceasing pain didn’t exist, but beyond the gates of Elsinore, they exist in abundance. Mama was so afraid, until she went into the lake and she wasn’t. Barely an echo of memory remains anymore.

Somewhere in Virginia, there’s a school of red brick and white plaster and marble, a school without a cemetery, without despair and death and every choking thing. There’s a school with its arms open, willing to embrace a shattered girl, to do everything it can to keep her from breaking further.

The lake can never break a whole person.

It can only fill the empty ones.

Dane put a gun to his temple and asked a question, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. The specter of dreams gave him pause. Fear is such a creeping thing, but it doesn’t have to exist. Just a few steps …

I walk back to the shore, where Mama wordlessly helps me back into the dress, and I sit shivering next to her on the tangle of roots. Her hands move over my knotted hair, tying in bits of leaves and dried flowers from deconstructed crowns. She hums softly, a song I used to know, something about unfaithful knights and too-loyal damsels and tragic endings.

I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I just don’t know how to be less than afraid for Dane.
For
Dane, never
of
him. Never of him, never truly. There’s a girl who could do as he asks, who could take action unfettered by pale thoughts, who could race out into the unknown and trust people to catch her, who could throw herself headfirst into life and forge an unbreakable name, an identity that stands on its own without fathers or brothers or loves who devour and shatter.

I’ve never been that girl.

When Mama slips gracefully back into the lake to rejoin the morgens, I listen to the whispers of the star in my veins and wait for Horatio to make me feel real again, even if it’s only for a little while.

It isn’t Horatio who comes back for me, though, but the youngest under-gardener. As he eyes my sodden gown with concern, he tells me that Horatio has been sent on an errand for the Headmaster, and I marvel that it was asked of him, that he went.

The under-gardener follows me into the house, and as I pass through the kitchen I can hear his half-formed protest meant to keep me there, but the cook touches his arm, tears in her eyes, and shakes her head, and he lets me go without argument.

Gertrude rushes past me when I reach the stairs, one hand clapped over her mouth and tears bright in her eyes, on her cheeks. Rushing away so no one can see her cry, because she doesn’t realize we can hear her through the walls.

Skirts in hand to keep from stumbling on them, I retrace her steps to the Headmaster’s study, the door still slightly ajar. My brother paces inside, his fury a living force within him that will not let him stand still.

I sink down into a fountain of fabric in the doorway, hands clasped in my lap, a little girl ready to hear her lessons and lies. So I used to sit as I listened to Mama’s stories of bells beneath the waters or rage in the woods. So I used to sit as I listened to Father’s insistence that there was no such thing.

“Laertes, you cannot simply announce in front of Gertrude that you intend to kill her son!” snaps Claudius. Crystal clinks against glass.

“Do not think you can talk me out of it.”

“I have no intention of doing so.” The astonishment is heavy in Laertes’ silence, and Claudius knows to press his advantage. “The boy killed your father, and your desire for revenge is both natural and understandable. But you must
think
, Laertes! We do not live in a time of such lenient laws. Every death must be accounted for. You cannot go around proclaiming your intent to kill someone, especially not in front of that someone’s mother! For all his faults, Dane is her son, and Gertrude loves him deeply. To hear you speak so causes her great pain, and I cannot have that.”

“But—”

“If you are to achieve your aim, you must be more careful.”

“You’re serious about this.”

“I am. To have Dane arrested, to have him tried and imprisoned … it would be a wound forever against the Danemark name, against this school. I love this school, Laertes, as your father loved this school and dedicated his life to its well-being. If you race ahead without thought or planning, you will bring this school to its knees.”

For all his passion, my brother has never stopped to think what it actually means to kill someone. Claudius has.

He would have had friends in England do it for him, but now he has something better, something closer, something that cannot be placed upon him.

He has my brother.

Laertes, the biggest kind of fool, more than ever our father’s son.

Claudius sighs and presses a glass into my brother’s hand, a glass filled nearly to the brim with bourbon. “Drink this, Laertes, and sit down, and for love of all that’s holy, listen to me. You can have your revenge, and I will assist you in it, but you must trust me, and you must listen to me.”

“You would help me k—”

“I would help you avenge your father,” Claudius corrects with a pained grimace.
Killing
, after all, is such an ugly word. “Dane will be back in a few days—”

Laertes cuts him off with a furious stream of words and the scrape of a chair against a hardwood floor. He’s pacing again, lashing out against framed certificates and stacks of books and knickknacks atop filing cabinets, a storm of destruction confined in such a narrow space. My brother the boxer.

“Laertes Castellan! Sit down!”

Claudius has never been a father, but he is a man used to giving orders that must be obeyed. Laertes sits before his body even registers the command.

“As I was saying,” Claudius continues, his face and voice so very strained, “Dane will be back in a few days.” He holds up a letter on heavy, familiar paper. “I’ve sent Mr. Tennant to escort him back from Virginia, but we have some time to make our plans. His return will give us the opportunity to do what needs to be done.”

What needs to be done? Dane used those same words, minutes—hours—ago, days ago as he wrote the letter that sealed his promises in ink.

“Like what?”

“The first thing we must do is salvage the Danemark reputation. Elsinore Academy must be above reproach, so we must appear to welcome Dane back.”

“Welcome—”

“Shut up,” he says icily, and my brother sinks back into the chair, his protest dead on his lips. “We must
appear
to welcome him. Rumor is a plague, but there’s no
proof
that Dane killed your father. Only what Gertrude saw, and we will not ask her to speak against her son.”

“But—”

“Laertes, you will have your revenge, but unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison for murder, you will help me in this! We must kill these rumors! And the swiftest, surest way to do this is for you to be the one who welcomes him back. After all, what son would knowingly embrace his father’s killer? Whatever happened in that room, we call it an unfortunate accident and say that Dane ran because he was scared. We can make up an intruder if we have to, but we show the world that there’s no ill will between the two of you.”

“I’m not that good an actor,” spits Laertes.

But Claudius chuckles, a menacing sound nearly lost to the splash of bourbon in his glass. “Your father thought you were a virgin; you lie well enough.”

Blood rushes to my brother’s faces, even as he gapes soundlessly.

“The Board of Governors is uneasy, and rightly so. We are going to reassure them.” Claudius takes a long drink and sets his glass down with a heavy thunk against the desk. “We are going to give Dane a few days to settle back into his home. Then we are going to invite the Board and their wives for a dinner, where they will see you and Dane being friends. Lie to them half as well as you’ve lied to the girls in your bed, and we’ll be well placed.”

There’s a small, traitorous part of me that admires Claudius’ directness. He has my brother squirming in his seat, his reputation dependent on Claudius holding his silence in the matter. Between that knowledge and the offer of revenge, he has my brother firmly in his debt.

A debt is a promise.

And Hamlet taught us to keep our promises.

Laertes swallows hard and shoves his tangled hair out of his face. It never used to be so long; Father wouldn’t allow it. “What then?” he asks hoarsely.

“As a cap to the evening, you and Dane will entertain our guests with a boxing match. An exhibition of sorts.”

“A boxing match!” Laertes kicks the desk, but under Claudius’ minatory glare, he stays in his seat. “So I give him a good beating, so what? He
killed
my
father
!”

“You’ve never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?” Claudius leans back in his leather-backed chair, a dangerous smile on his lips. Smiles are supposed to soften, to brighten, but Claudius’ smile is like a razor slashed across the skin. He sips the spirits, replaces the glass exactly where it was. “The ring is where you’ll have your revenge, but the beating is only the beginning.”

“How?”

Leaning down, Claudius twists a key into a drawer of his desk and slides it open, rummaging briefly through its contents. “With these,” he answers, laying the objects on the smooth wood.

I can’t see the first from the floor in the doorway. Something metal that catches the light. But the second …

“Is that poison?”

Milky-white and semiopaque, clinging to the sides of the glass vial, and only half full.

Oh, Laertes, my stupid brother, can you really be such a fool? Do you really think he’ll let you live to tell his part in this?

“Coat the knuckles in the poison and wear them inside your glove,” instructs Claudius. “If you can deliver a few good blows, you’ll open the skin and that’s all this needs to work. A little goes a long way and will be less suspicious. Aim for his head, if you can. Boxing is a violent sport, you know. Aneurysms are an unfortunate consequence.”

Laertes stares at the weapons on the desk. “What if it’s … what if …” He closes his eyes, block them from sight, and tries again. “What if it’s not enough?” he whispers.

Irritation flashes across Claudius’ face, gone before my brother can open his eyes. “I intend to give each of you some wine for a toast before the match. Dane’s will have a potent … additive.”

Dane would never accept a glass from Claudius, and a heartbeat later, Laertes puts my thought into words.

“He will from his mother.”

Will she know? Will she ever know or wonder? Does she wonder about her husband?

His hands shake so badly the glass rattles against the metal knuckles with their vicious points, but Laertes takes them anyway and slips them carefully into his pocket. “How will you get Dane to agree to all this? There’s no prize, nothing to make it worth the risk.”

“Ah, but there is a prize.” That smile again. Goose bumps prickle along my spine. “One Dane cannot possibly resist.”

“Which is?”

“Before I tell you, there is one condition to all this,” he says firmly. “You must not speak of any of this. To anyone. As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, your father’s death was a regrettable accident and you look forward to Dane’s return. You absolutely cannot mention this to Gertrude; it would destroy her. Though it must be done for the good of us all, I would spare her what pain I could.”

The way he speaks, sometimes it’s easy to believe he really loves her, that all these years it’s been love alongside the jealousy that drives his actions. But such a love can only ever be poisoned, such a love can only ever bring about destruction and death, because such a love always wants the very thing it cannot have. It’s the love that leaves a good man dead, that breaks a boy who loves his father.

“I promise,” Laertes snaps. “What prize?”

Claudius turns his chair slightly, and suddenly he’s looking right at me with that horrible smile. He’s known I was here all along. “Your sister. With your father dead, Gertrude is now her legal guardian. If he comes back for anything, he’ll come back for her.”

Horatio isn’t here, he’s gone and isn’t here, and I have no way to tell him now—now while I can keep the thoughts where they ought to be—the danger that Dane faces, that my brother faces. I can’t write it because the letters and shapes lost their meaning, can’t tell someone else because they won’t believe me.

The star blazes down to my fingertips, fingers that trace the ring of bruises around my neck, my arms, the silver ring that keeps my soul tied to my body. It blazes and burns until there’s no air, not even the memory of what it means to breathe.