Not Hamlet

 Not Hamlet

     by Dr. Polonius Shelley

Down in a little village near the ancient city of Kiels lived a young man whose father had recently died and whose mother was about to marry again, even though the funeral had so recently passed (attended by members of all classes from dozens of miles around). Colin, as he was affectionately called by all who knew him well, was not the only sad one in the village. His brothers, too (and there were many), all grieved equally with him. It was Colin, however, whose grief took precedence and made impressions. He sighed, equivocated, spoke of murder and mayhem, called out to friends importunate things that made them out to be responsible for it all, and thrashed about in bed at night.

    The story of the death is easily told. An uncle, Merlin Whelps by name, of Colin‘s father’s side, his father‘s eldest and by no means most handsome brother, had arrived on a visit at their fair village in the springtime exactly a year before, bearing gifts for both royal father and mother. For father it was the French razor he had always admired and had considered on occasion, in his cups, to send an emissary to Paris to obtain. For mother it was two gifts: a négligée of filmy, pink silk brought up some years back from Istanbul by daring traders and sold to Merlin’s grandmother’s husband, a Mennonite whose Russian homeland had by then long lost all its hold on him, both hereditary and supernatural, and whose laughter at all things bedroom astonished the court and attracted the farming girls living nearby at the foot of the castle hill. The second was a shell of exquisite colour and texture, a creamy lacquer thing as smooth as smooth as can be, with the oddest shape imaginable, long and slender as an egg laid by a snake who wished to be a duck. When she held her ear to it she could hear the seas’s wave’s ebb and rise, faint, and beyond the pales of anxiety. 

     No one knew the disaster to come, nor how near it hovered, lurking in time’s shadows. No one guessed the horror about to drift down over their lives all, and none could have seen, without the help of seance or druid, the terrors about to break their sky-crafted chains, chains even Hephaestus would have been proud to call the product of his own hammer. 

     One morning, Colin, lying in bed still asleep, woke to the roar of his father’s voice from another part of the castle, near the keep. He could not decide whether to get up and go to his assistant or to leave him alone. He had on other occasions made the mistake of arriving to help his father when help was not needed, and decidedly unwelcome. Now he waited. Then the roaring diminished. Finally his mother knocked him up and the two hurried round to see what was the matter.

     The king was dead! A pale liquid draining down the side of his cheek under one ear provided the only sign of unnatural activity. Mother and son rolled him over. They cried. They held each other in dismay. And they began a long search for the murderer. Murder it seemed likely to have been. They did in the end ask vainly of Merlin to advise them, though they told him nothing of their suspicions, for by now uncle was king and their heads would have rolled had he even inhaled the smallest whiff of suspicion. Soon, though, too soon, Colin‘s mother married the new king. What was she to do? There was no other remedy. The queen must be for a king, a king must be for a land, and a sad prince must be for the death of a king father at the hands of a most unkingly uncle. Colin‘s lover, Soffula, already conditioned to expect years of odd behaviour from this family, made herself scarce and immediately departed for a year-long stay at a sanitarium abroad when she heard of her lover’s desperate difficulties. That was fine by Colin. He had hurts to resolve, griefs to console, without the busy requirements of a teenage relationship.

    He grew sadder and less joyful as the year rolled on. His mother’s wedding had taken all the salt remaining to him out of his blood. Now, pale, lacking sanguinity, uncertain about his next move or the state of heaven’s moods regarding kingly death, he waited. He waits still, moody, deranged, sadly pondering himself and the wrongs heaven has done him. He will die before forgetting that fathers, kings or not, die