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“Sweets to the sweet: farewell! I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife; -Queen Gertrude, Hamlet
She bows her head over the cloth in her hands, pricking her needle through it with measured care. Three more stitches and the gold thread resolves itself into another tiny bloom. From a distance, it will be nothing but a glitter of caught candlelight on the Prince's wrist. That is the beauty of embroidery: it is a thousand little secrets laid out in full view and somehow still untold. Ophelia smiles at the golden flower, brushing the pad of her thumb gently across the petals. It’s perfect.
“Smiling, Ophelia?” the Queen asks. Ophelia bites back her expression, schooling her face studious again as she begins the next flower. She had thought the Queen would keep at her correspondence longer. “Is that my Lord Christian’s coat you are so engrossed in?”
“No, my lady.”
“Then whose is it, that you stitch so carefully?”
The Queen is teasing again, her tone playful. Ophelia’s cheeks burn, and she wishes that Gertrude had not dismissed her other maids in waiting so early, for they offered her a measure of protection from such familiar conversation.
“You know it is your son’s, my Lady,” she says quietly, tying off the thread with great care and reaching for a skein of green silk.
“Aah,” the Queen says. “Yes, of course.”
She stands in a rustle of wool and silk, and Ophelia pauses in her stitching as a shadow falls over her hands. The Queen stands between the window and her stool, peering at her handiwork.
“Yes,” Gertrude murmurs. “Yes, I think your skill has finally surpassed your mother’s, God rest her soul.”
Ophelia’s cheeks heat again, in pleasure rather than embarrassment.
“She would be proud to see you,” the Queen continues, and Ophelia’s smile broadens at the gentle pressure on her shoulder, though she keeps her head bent over her work. “You are growing into a fine woman, my dear.”
“Thank you, lady,” Ophelia whispers.
“Your mother and I were great friends, you know.” The hand on her shoulder is withdrawn, and the shadow retreats. Queen Gertrude crosses the room, deep in thought. “We had…plans, for you, when you were born.”
Ophelia bites her lower lip hard enough to make it ache. These are words she has heard before, and never breathed to any soul. For the Queen has never said anything further than ‘plans’.
“How old are you now, child?”
“This month I will be fifteen, my lady.”
“Fourteen.” The Queen sounds so thoughtful that Ophelia sneaks a glance upward at her. She is rubbing the fingers on one hand together and staring at a wall. “Not yet, then. A little longer.”
“My lady?”
Gertrude turns around with a snap, and smiles at her. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with yet, my dear,” she says. “Finish that cuff, and then you may leave.”
As she hurries from the Queen’s chambers, Ophelia passes the king. She curtsies quickly, and he chuckles.
“The young are always hurrying,” he says. “Go, child, go.” And then, with a shrewdness that makes her flush: “My son is in the back field. Take care that you do not wander too far.”
The field riots with tall grasses and late summer blooms, and Ophelia puts her hands out to brush over their tops as she runs through it. She laughs, and draws in a deep breath scented with sun-warmed growing things and flowers. The sky is so high here, and nothing presses down. Hamlet’s horse crops at the ground not far from where she stops, but there is no sign of the Prince, no sign that anyone else is out enjoying the fall sun.
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