Smile and Be a Villain by Yves Donlon

Author:Yves Donlon [Yves Donlon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yves Donlon
Published: 2023-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

scene eight

hamlet

“I saw Fortinbras in the marketplace today,” said Rosencrantz, his arms folded across his chest. “Alive, I should say.”

Hamlet shrugged and continued spooning hot beef stew into his mouth. The gravy was delicious, bursting with savoury flavour, and he forced his thoughts to stay on how the cook had achieved it instead of acknowledging Rosencrantz’s words. Odd, beef stew for breakfast. An unusual start to the day.

Ros snorted. “Lord, never go into acting.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” said Hamlet. “He mustn't have had the wine.”

“I have an answer to that,” said Guildenstern unexpectedly, without looking up from his own bowl of stew.

Hamlet’s stomach dropped. He remembered the stain of the wine on the freshly-fallen snow: had Guildenstern seen, somehow? Had he followed him?

“It turns out our friend Fortinbras recently gave up drinking,” Guildenstern continued, and Hamlet repressed a sigh of relief. "Probably some sort of bizarre pre-war cleansing of the soul, or something like that.”

“Oh, well I am pleased he’s found God,” said Rosencrantz bitterly. “Good for him. You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?”

“Nah,” said Guildenstern. “Didn’t want to be involved in all that murder business. I do still count myself as a Christian, you know.”

Maybe Guildenstern is the only person here with any brains, thought Hamlet. Or a moral compass.

He was quietly grateful to his friend, who had melted into the background these last few days. Rosencrantz, with all his heady confidence, suddenly seemed like such a precarious character. He stood over them, observing, the cold light of morning turning his skin as pale as the frost outside. Guildenstern ate industriously, and he only slid his eyes across to Hamlet once, a secret glance not shared with Rosencrantz.

Until Rosencrantz suddenly burst out, “Christian! You consider yourself a Christian? Then you should stop playing with magic, and men. And stop having sex altogether, until you’re happily married to a nice woman. Even then, should you wish to lie back and let your lady love take her pleasure, you might want to think twice.”

There was a moment’s confused silence. “Are you scolding me or making a point?” Guildenstern asked.

“Just a gentle reminder that that the church won’t even let a man fuck between his wife’s thighs without calling him a sinner and a sodomite,” Ros said. “I’m no heretic, but perhaps—given you are still living in the house of two 'murderers'—we should take the church’s words with a grain of salt.”

Guildenstern rolled his eyes, shaking Rosencrantz’s bad humour off like a horse twitching its flank to ward off an annoying fly. “I’m starting to think my mother was right when she said you were a bad influence.”

“Is this it, then?” Ros asked impatiently, turning his attention back to Hamlet. “One failed attempt to win the war and you’re giving up? Just like that?”

Rosencrantz’s foot tapped furiously against the wooden floor. Energy seemed to radiate from his very pores. He was wound tight like a spring, and there was something accusatory in his gaze, a challenge. Not for the first time, Hamlet wondered if Fortinbras was the first person Rosencrantz had ever attempted to kill.

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