Frozen strawberries and cold milk


It's cold again. The air around him is cold. He tugs the sleeves of his lovely black clothes, rearranging the velvet and smoothing. His rosemary is laced into his hair as always, and his hair is fluffy as always. Fluffy. Ha.

The cold is, of course, because he's out in the open air. Outside of the castle. On the outskirts of a field. A wide field. A field dotted with little tents, everywhere, and little cooking fires, and men, warming themselves. They are the men of Norway. He sighs at them, wondering why they don't just go away. There's nothing to find in Denmark but a mad prince, a failed wife, a damnéd king, and a fair young girl with some old letters and a bracelet with blue stones. It's not exactly a prize.

And the mad prince is leaving, as well, going to England. In the back of his mind, something insists that that shouldn't be so. It's not the prince that should be going to England. He disregards this. It's like the burn on his collarbone. It's another odd instance that makes no sense and comes out of nowhere.

He sighs again. How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge, he says.

There is a heavy silence. He has more to say, much more, but he's waiting... just a moment...

Let me speak to th' yet unknowing world how these things came about.

He knew it. It's the same voice he's heard before, speaking over him. It's the same voice, pleasant and harsh at the same time, gentle and cynical at the very same time. If it wasn't always talking over him, he might be fond of it. If it didn't always try to obscure what he was saying, he might like it.

Suddenly, he smiles. Just a little.

It's time to play the game.

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time is but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused!

Let the voice answer to that. A goodly statement, to be sure. A good point he's making.

So shall you hear, the voice counters, of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts...

His only quarrel with it is that it always cheats. It always speaks of things that have absolutely nothing to do with what he's saying, and yet these insignificant, meaningless things always give him pause. They always make him think. He wants to know what caused these terrible events. Will the person who enacted them be punished? Will the people disturbed by them be well again?

It's just like the night when the voice spoke of rosemary. Rosemary, that's for remembrance, he thinks proudly. He remembers. He uses it properly always. He smears the juice on the spot that burns, and he wears it in his hair like a crown of laurels so that he never forgets. He knows how to use his rosemary. The only difficulty is that the voice was the one who taught him to use it, while speaking over his more important speech. One cannot win.

He whispers to the voice, Now, whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on th' event -- a thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward -- I do not know why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do", sith I have cause and will and strength and means to do't: examples gross as earth exhort me; witness this army of such mass and charge led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd makes mouths at the invisible event, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an egg-shell.

The voice seems rather reproving when it speaks again, as though telling him without words that he's spoken too much. Well-- it was perhaps a little long of a thing to say...

Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, the voice goes on and stops. Amazing. He says everything he has to say all at once when he plays the game, and the voice makes every sentence stretch five metres or so. How can it stand to do that?

Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake. There. That was short, wasn't it? A little sentence, a scrap.

Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause...

Damn the voice for being so good!

It's evident he's losing. He holds a piece of his nice rosemary in both hands and quietly tells the voice, How stand I then, that have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep, while to my shame I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, that for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain? Is it any good to be brief when brevity does not explain the truth? Better, than, that he be long-winded and go on and on, than risk the voice not understanding how important this is.

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook fall'n on th' inventors' heads, the voice adds. It isn't listening to him! He shouldn't have expected it. It's pleasant enough, but why should it care?

He finishes angrily. O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!

All this I can truly deliver, the voice completes its sickeningly drawn out sentence.

By now, he's forgotten almost what it was about. It was about things that came about. Things that fell, but perhaps not into place. His crushed rosemary tells him so. He waits a bit, to make sure, but no further words come. He looks out at the army before him. The men from Norway. He sighs for them, and turns. The mad prince is going to England.

"Lord, but you do fall asleep in cafés often. Someday it won't be me who finds you. Someday Courfeyrac, or Bahorel, will chance in, and then you'll be a right situation."

Christophe-Marie lifts his head, and groans. "Oh, for God's sake."

"Oh, for God's sake. It's best you finish this play soon. You keep reciting things in your sleep. Entire unconscious monologues."

Christophe frowns. "You were the one reciting along. Stop that. I don't want you meddling with my dreams."

"You can hear me? The man can hear me! Do you listen to me?"

"Yes, and I think you're a fool."

"Don't say that."

"I'll say what I please. Stop interfering with my dreams. They're my dreams."

Rodolphe grins. "I like interfering."

Exasperated, Christophe gives up, gathering a few books together. "Good-night, Grantaire."

"Don't go yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I asked. But that's not a good reason. Why should you listen to me? What right on earth do I have to ask you anything? Beg pardon, of course, Lord Hamlet."

"Do you have any idea how much I hate being called that?" Christophe turns away.

Rodolphe catches him by the shoulder and turns him back, kissing him quickly and softly, and, as always, with the air of a child taking something he shouldn't. "I'm sorry, then."

Christophe doesn't move. "You really must stop doing that."

"Must I? I shan't." Rodolphe kisses him again, and this time, Christophe finds himself returning it just the slightest bit.

It's nice to have someone show him affection, although it oughtn't be. It's such a difference from the way the Amis regard him, because that's exactly as Pontmercy said. Somehow he's convinced them he's distant and cold and wouldn't ever have time for love or anything of the sort. It's only that he doesn't want to be distracted from his work because he can't afford to be, and he tries not to be. He tries to concentrate on the fifty thousand things that are always taking up his mind, every hour of the day. There's school; there's all the writing - always something to finish that isn't finished that's always important - there's acting, and everything that comes with it, the rehearsing and the performances and needing to remember all the lines! There are fencing classes, those, that he's been forgetting to go to recently. There's never much time to sleep. There are meetings at the café when they can be stuffed in among all the clutter. He never has time for anything, because he has to free France and write papers for school and learn to be Hamlet all at once, and sometimes it's hard to remember which is most important. He never wanted to be the sort of man Courfeyrac is, and spend all his time with grisettes. Before all the many things, he used to imagine he might try to fall in love and have a wife. It was Fate being heartless that had caused him to want the one girl who was Pontmercy's sweetheart.

And between all the hell that is making up his life right now, it can't be wrong to want a little affection from someone. So he returns the kiss just the slightest, and tries not to feel guilty for it.

"Poor, ragged Hamlet," Rodolphe whispers, and Christophe doesn't argue.


Chapter Twelve.
Back to Chapter Ten.