Jack and Henry: A Shakespearean Chimera by Rachel Rodman continued...
Act 3
"Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail,
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A nut, a cherry-stone;
But she, more covetous, would have a chain."
-The Comedy of Errors
More Covetous
For months, Henry struggled to frame an emotional response to the dream. He went back and forth, from certainty, to doubt...to despair, then back to certainty.
His first inclination was to regard his father's murder as a fact. At the ghost's words, an awful rage would rise in him, and he would taste blood in his throat. With a terrible eagerness, he would contemplate the killing (killings?) that he himself must commit, as an answer (the only possible answer-a life for a life!) to the loss of his father. In those moments-if only he had known the murderer-he would have acted immediately.
And yet...uncertainty always succeeded rage. Henry knew that dreams could not always be trusted. Some were meaningless delusions. Others contained buried messages, which could be interpreted only by means of allegory. During his calmer periods, Henry thought it likely that the dream had been influenced (if not generated in its entirety) by his own feelings of guilt-the conviction, long buried, that he had damaged his father's health with worry during his profligate youth. Perhaps the father-like figure who appeared in the dream was not his father at all, but instead his own conscience.
There was, of course, a third possibility. As he considered it, Henry experienced a different sort of anger. Perhaps-he thought-the dream was a very deliberate lie, manufactured by an outside person, and sent in order to mislead him. Demons-higher demons, at least-could commit such mischief. It seemed, in fact, entirely the sort of trick that Jack might carry out, simply to interfere with his sanity. Particularly if he were feeling wounded, which seemed very likely, after Henry's long neglect of him.
To the old tavern, Henry made a reluctant visit, in order to investigate. Jack met him at the door, as energetically as he ever had. More energetically perhaps, as if to compensate for Henry's stiffness. "Hal! Hal!" he cried. On Henry's cheeks, he planted multiple wet kisses-first at his left, then at his right, then again at his left. He persisted at it, for several iterations, like an immense, eager dog, even as Henry shoved him away.
Henry's questions were rapid and direct. ("Is it you? Did you send it?") Jack, after some confusion (real or affected?), swore that he had not sent the dream. (And yet what, thought Henry, could his promises actually mean?) The two of them talked over one cup of fortified wine, then another. Gradually (though still suspicious), Henry became calmer.
The conversation shifted. Somewhat abruptly, Jack asserted he did not like Claudia. ("I don't trust her," he said.) Henry, knowing Jack, did not attach very much importance to this. Like so much that Jack said, it seemed to be expressed solely for the sake of appearing controversial. It was, in addition, delivered in such a florid, finger-snapping sort of way that it just made Henry laugh. A lot. As Jack postured, Henry clutched his stomach and wiped his eyes. He felt, in the midst of it, a good deal better than he had in a long time.
"Watch her," Jack said, pursing his lips. He flicked his tail grandiloquently about his immense neck, as if it were a scarf. "Just watch her."
After this meeting, the old dream did not go away. Henry's nights were better, however. There were additional dreams-this time, he knew, at Jack's direct interference. They were filled with pleasant, drunken clowns, slumped against the flanks of their horses. Each raised a cup, in order to toast, "To King Henry!"
Claudia responded to Henry's dream very differently. In her youth, she had received training as a spiritualist, and she knew how to speak to the dead. In the Danish court, she had learned several hybrid incantations, part holy and part profane, which might serve to initiate contact. "I just need something of your father's," she explained to Henry. Henry obligingly provided her with an old set of clothes. "No!" she protested, annoyed, "A part of his body."
It was their first fight. Henry objected strenuously ("No! No! No!") to her suggestion that the king be disinterred and dissected. It would, he argued, be as serious a violation ("A violation!") as any murder might have been. "But it's just a body," she kept repeating. Finally, they stormed away from one another. Afterwards, Henry didn't feel entirely safe. At the gravesite, he assigned a permanent guard, so that he might protect his father...ostensibly from common robbers, but mostly from his wife.
For the next several weeks, Claudia remained determined to hold a séance. Grumblingly, she combed through the king's old rooms, resigned to make do with smaller artifacts. In obscure corners, which the cleaning staff would have missed, she searched for clippings of hair or nails, or wads of a handkerchief, which might contain mucous or blood. "What an unnaturally tidy king," she sighed, when she came up with nothing.
Henry was increasingly repelled by Claudia's determination...and a little frightened. He no longer wanted to discuss the matter. At night, when he woke from the dream, he tried to hide it from her. "It was nothing," he insisted, in a way that Claudia found insultingly unconvincing. If she pushed the question ("Let me help you..."), he pretended to go back to sleep.
One night, after several such rebuffs, she stopped imploring. In the morning, rather coldly, she informed him, "I'm going to consult my sister."
Polonia was Claudia's twin. Externally, she was almost a precise copy. She differed only in the possession of a cluster of freckles, distributed in the pit of her elbow. Henry found this resemblance unnerving. When Polonia first arrived on the boat from Denmark, he experienced a sinking insecurity...and a deep annoyance. He knew that, for the duration of her visit, he would have to remain on constant guard, to be certain that he always knew which sister was which, and that he did not behave with one as he ought properly to behave with the other.
Polonia was a more accomplished spiritualist. (For most of her youth, she had devoted herself to private study, intending never to marry.) Now, with Claudia, she attempted to puzzle out a new way to contact Henry's father. It was a difficult task. Because of the restrictions that Henry had placed upon them, they were forced to employ dust particles, with no advance means of ascertaining the person (or lower creature) to which the particles had once belonged. As a result, they committed many hilarious errors. At their séances, they communed unintentionally with many of the family's dead servants (including a side-splitting jester) and with a series of old pets. They prefaced each contact with a lugubrious, "Is that you, O King?" The tenor of this question-so at odds with the much humbler creature that actually appeared before them-began to strike the sisters as deeply funny. They laughed a little, then a bit more. At the end of most sessions-no king summoned-they rolled together on the floor, guffawing.
Sometimes, from a distance, Henry overheard their laughter. A part of him wished to take deep offense, on behalf of his dead father. A more generous part of him simply missed seeing Claudia happy.
Whenever he approached, however, the sisters hastily closed their books, and scrubbed away the outlines of their séance circle. Lowering their heads, they fell obstinately silent.
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