Chapter 1: The Ghost

A long time ago, before you were born, there was a prince whose father had died in the prime of his life . . .

On the castle battlements of Elsinore, a jumpy guardsman stood watch, shivering in the rising fog and rubbing his gloved hands together in the hope of gathering heat between them. The hour was late, and he was desperately eager to be relieved of his shift as it was always during this hour when the strange apparition chose to wander the castle's battlements, clanking and moaning and gliding past in the pale and shivery form of a man.

And so Fransico shivered and shifted from foot to foot, blowing occasionallly on his hands and rubbing them briskly together as he cradled the long staff of his spear in the crook of his arm. There was a thump and a sudden cry of pain rang across the battlements, echoing into the still night air.

Fransico leapt three feet on the spot and squeaked in a shamefully strained voice, "Who's there?"

"No, you answer me -- who are you?" replied a deep and brisk voice familiar to Fransico. And yet, for all its familiarity, the voice was bodiless. Was the ghost of the castle battlements playing tricks on Fransico's mind?

Fransico, terrified still, dropped his partisan with a clatter to the stone flags of the battlements and lifted his hands nervously, "Long live the king?"

"Fransico?" called the voice, full of incredulous laughter.

Fransico felt his heart sink. "Bernardo?" he groaned, knowing he would never live this down.

"It is he." Grinning widely, Bernardo stepped out of the fog and sheathed his sword again. "Are you so easily startled, you great coward?" he asked his friend, clapping his arm hard.

"I'd be a fool if I wasn't," Fransico snapped grumpily, gathering his partisan. "You're right on time, Bernardo."

"Aye, it should be twelve now," agreed Bernardo, nodding. "Get you to bed, Fransico -- you seem to have more need than I." He laughed again.

Fransico chose to ignore the last comment and said, "Much thanks, brother. It's too cold for a body out here, and I am weary and sick at heart."

"Have you had a quiet watch, then?"

"I have, thank god. Not a mouse stirring."

"Good. I anticpate the same," said Bernardo with satisfaction. "Now get you to bed -- Oh! And if you see those sloths Horatio and Marcellus, tell them to hurry up, damn them. What loyal guardsman is late for his watch? They make a mockery of their captain!"

"Wait -- I think I hear them," answered Fransico, looking relieved that he would be joined by even more men. It seemed to him that thick company would keep the ghost at bay, and he welcomed the sight of Horatio and Marcellus strolling at their leisure out of the shifting fog toward he and Bernardo.

"Make haste, ruffians!" Bernardo barked, frowning.

"Peace, Bernardo, peace," chuckled Horatio. "We are friends to these grounds."

"And to Dane," added Marcellus, grinning rogouishly in the face of Bernardo's disapproval. "I think I know why Bernardo is anxious to have company anyway," he taunted.

Fransico started as if he did not like the turn of the conversation. "I leave you now," he said quickly, glancing around with shifty eyes, as if he feared the ghost would suddenly spring up from the flagstones.

"Oh! Are you relieved?" Marcellus asked.

"In more ways than one," chuckled Bernardo. "He wet his leggings when I came, this one."

The others laughed, and Fransico said grumpily, "I give you good night!" and stalked away.

"Welcome, men," Bernardo said to the newcomers, still glowering his disapproval. "So Horatio is here at last, is he?"

"A piece of him," Horatio joked. "So what was with Fransico? Has the supposed spirit appeared again tonight?"

"Nay," said Bernardo, chuckling and shaking his head. "I have seen nothing. Besides, you know how Fransico is."

"Horatio says tis but our fantasy," teased Marcellus, as if goading his friend on an oft-debated subject. "And that cold and suffering on the castle's cruel battlements makes our imaginations run wild, so I asked him along to witness the apparition for himself."

"Please," said Horatio, rolling his eyes. "Tis but vain fantasy, my brothers, nothing more. The both of you are merely bored and seek to invent wild stories with which to entertain the fair wenches at feasts."

"If that were our reason for the story, you'd think a man would have had more women in the hay!" said Bernardo, laughing with Marcellus. "But tis true, brother," he said gravely to Horatio. "What Fransico feared and leapt ten feet in the air to avoid was the ghost of a man."

"Go on, Bernardo," said Horatio, wearily resigned to humor his friends. He leaned on the battlements with great amusement, as if watching a spectacular show. "What of this supposed ghost, hmm?"

Bernardo breathed deeply and a white puff hissed from his pale and shivering lips as he said in a dramatically low voice, "Last night, when Marcellus and myself here stood and the North Star made its course to shine where it now does shine -- "

"Peace! Peace!" cried Marcellus in a voice that trembled. "Look! It comes again!"

A low doleful moan filled the air like the swelling howl of the wind, and the men trembled and drew close, staring with wide eyes as a middle-aged man in ragged armor glided forth. The ghost's face was drawn miserably, his pale and colorless eyes staring vacant and unseeing, and his arms dangling at his sides. His face was lined, haggard, and gray, and his eyes rolled in his head as he moaned again even louder than before.

"The figure of the late king himself!" whispered Bernardo, quivering so hard that his sword clattered against his armor.

"You're a scholar -- speak to it, Horatio," Marcellus hissed fearfully, prodding his friend in the spine.

For a moment, Horatio stood pasty, shocked, and pale and said nothing. Then, quivering with cold sweat, he whispered in a strangled voice, "Nay, not I! It harrows me with fear to the very morrow of my being!" and the three men trembled and wailed afresh as the ghost gave another loud and doleful moan.

"But it would speak to a learned man!" protested Bernardo.

"Aye, aye," added Marcellus. "Question it, Horatio!"

Horatio gulped but called bravely, "What are you that tramps the night in the warlike form of our late king? By heaven I charge you, speak!"

"It is offended," said Marcellus and Bernardo added in much relief, "Good, it stalks away . . ."

"No -- stay!" cried Horatio, trembling still with sweat but (after having gotten over the first nasty shock) suddenly eager to learn more of the ghost. Could this ghost tell him of heaven? Hell? What happened when we died? "Stay! Speak! Speak, I charge you!"

But the ghost merely turned and glided away out of sight.

"Tis gone and will not answer," said Marcellus, wiping his brow with much relief.

The men sighed and drew apart again, adjusting themselves and not meeting one another's eye.

"How now, Horatio?" said Bernardo, chuckling nervously as he drew shaky breaths. "You're as pale as a witch's tit and you tremble like her very victim! Was that not something more than vain fantasy?"

"Before god," vowed Horatio, shaking still, his eyes fixed in disbelief on the spot on which the ghost had vanished, "I can not deny what my eyes so sensibly drank in -- my god! Before mine own eyes!"

"And was it not like the late king?" ventured Marcellus breathlessly, looking at his companion. "Like the old king himself!"

"Aye," answered Horatio. "Such was the very armor he wore against Norway and so frowned he once. Tis strange," he said shakily. "Very strange."

"And we've seen him twice before," Marcellus said with a nod, "at this very hour upon these very battlements."

"It seems we've made a believer of our scholar," said Bernardo, amused.

"Aye, and let us learn from the learned man why at such an hour in the dead of night the ghost of our late king doth so sullenly saluteth us!" added Marcellus, turning to Horatio, who was deep in thought. "Can you inform us?"

"That I can," Horatio said thoughtfully, and his companions raised their eyebrows in surprise. "The ghost is nothing more than a terrible omen: Denmark is headed for some trouble, my brothers."

Bernardo and Marcellus exchanged expressions of dread.

"As mighty Julius fell and fire and blood rained the Roman streets, so shall happen in Denmark, I fear," further ventured Horatio.
"But soft! Here it comes again!"

And once more, the pearly white and transparent figure appeared, gliding gently through the wall, its vacant eyes rolling sorrowfully and its miserable cheeks sunken in.

"I'll stop it," Horatio said quickly and dashed into the ghost's path. "Stay, illusion, and speak to me! What of our country's fate? Speak of it to me!"

"Shall I strike it?" cried Marcellus, rushing in with his partisan.

"Do so if -- where did it go?" Horatio cried, confused.

"Tis there! Tis there!" Bernardo pointed with his partisan to the ghost, which was vanishing into the battlement wall again.

"Tis gone," moaned Marcellus, this time with some regret. "We do it wrong to offer it violence," he said, glancing regretfully at his partisan. "And our vain blows make a mockery of us."

"No, it was not us that offended it," said Horatio in wonder, his voice full of the wisdom of the learned man his friends had named him. "Didn't you see? It looked guilty -- like a child out past its bedtime -- and slunk away at the call of day!"

And indeed, the sun was rising.

"They say," said Marcellus curiously, "that no spirit dareth stir wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, for the bird of dawning singeth all night long . . . and during its singing . . . no witch hath power, no fairy taketh human child, and no planets strike. All is peace."

The men paused to ponder these things and to watch the golden dawn spread its rosy fingers over the rim of the black bowl that was the sky.

Then Horatio heaved a pensive sigh and answered, "So I've heard, Marcellus, and so do I believe. But look, it is the morrow and so our watch is up. We shall have to tell Hamlet of what we have witnessed here to tonight, for, on my life, I am most certain the ghost will speak to him -- and to him alone."

"Well spoken," said Marcellus, eager for the apparition to have no more cause to haunt his watch. "And I know where Hamlet is likely to be this good morrow."

And the three men departed inpursuit of their lord, weary and tired and spent by the night's horrors.