Ophelia by Lisa Klein

pitted, and stars are only faint specks on the dome of heaven."
    "Tush, Ophelia, you lack a poet's sensibility," Gertrude chided. She picked up the book and read aloud as I brushed her hair.
    "These amber locks, the nets that captured my heart." She looked up and sighed. "Once I had such locks. Now my glass shows white hairs like wires growing from my head," she said.
    "They gleam as silver threads amid the gold," I replied, twining the masses of hair into a single thick braid.
    "Now you speak like a poet," she said. "And poets are all liars."
    Gertrude would not be pleased, so I was silent.
    "Fair is my love, and cruel as she is fair," Gertrude read. "Why is it, think you, that the mistress always disdains the poet who worships her?"
    "Maybe she does not love him," I suggested. Gertrude was silent. Sometimes she posed such questions to teach me of love. "But what think you, my lady?"
    "I think that she must be cruel if she wants to be loved," Gertrude explained. "For once a lady succumbs to the man's desire, he rejects her as unworthy of it."
    Hearing this I grew concerned. Because I showed my love to Hamlet, would his ardor diminish? Was love like a hunger, easily satisfied by feeding? Or did it grow by what it fed on? Should I have withheld my kisses and thus increased his appetite for them?
    But to Gertrude I only said, "Perhaps the lady waits for the poet to marry her before granting him anything."
    "No, they will never marry! It is the nature of love not to be satisfied so easily," she said bitterly.
    "Then the poet does not lie, for thwarted love is the subject of all these sonnets," I said lightly.
    "I concede the argument, Ophelia," Gertrude said with a weary wave of her hand. "Now rub my temples with this oil and let me sleep."
    Alas, Gertrude's discontent could not be eased by my attentions. She and the king argued in her chamber, their voices audible but not their words. I sometimes saw her eyes swollen with tears. I wondered if it was Claudius who sowed a bad seed between them. While the king grew gray and serious with the burdens of government, Claudius, with his brown beard, was still vigorous and lusty. His red lips were moist and his black eyes bold and piercing. Ladies seemed flattered by his attention, but the mere thought of being touched by his fleshy hands made me shudder. Fortunately he left me alone, as game too small for his ambitious appetites. But he often made Gertrude laugh and blush. Perhaps in his presence she imagined herself young and beautiful again, the sonnet lady desired by a man who could not have her.
    I hoped to read of Hamlet's longing for me in his letters, but they were nothing like sonnets of love. One May afternoon, I sat near a window at the west end of the queen's gallery, trying to decipher the tortured wit of his latest letter.
    My love, inflame me no more, lest you consume all my wit and betray my will. Let men not censure my name that I call your love, that for which I rise and fall.
    These words I read over and over, but could make little sense of them. Was this the true passion of a lover in defiance of men or the complaint of a scholar plagued by false passion? Hamlet, absent from me, grew a mystery to me, a masked god with two faces, both of which hid yet another self.
    How should I reply to this strange sentiment? An idea came to me as I looked out over the king's orchard. Not five months ago, Hamlet and I had admired the gold-red apples there. Now the trees were thick with blossoms. I would write a sonnet describing the petals, white and rose-colored, that fluttered to the ground, borne upon the warming breeze. Not knowing the intent of Hamlet's letter, I would take care not to express my longing for him.
    As I wrote and blotted many phrases, lamenting my dull wits, Gertrude appeared at the door of her chamber, looking fretful.
    "Ophelia! It grows late. Has the king summoned me yet?" she asked.
    "No, my lady, I have received no word," I replied, rising. "Perhaps he is