Ophelia by Lisa Klein Read Free Book Online

grass. Many who seemed true were false. The fever of ambition drove men and women alike to seek advancement, even by deceit and betrayal. They swiftly rose on Fortune's turning wheel, and then as swiftly fell to their rum. One of Gertrude's ladies lost her position when she was found to be with child by the king's chief minister. She fled to a cousin's house in the country, disgraced, while the minister kept his post and was deemed a generous man for acknowledging his son. Even I could see that the lady was very unjustly treated.
    Favor was like a rose, glorious in bloom but fleeting, and hiding the thorn below its flower. The wicked often found favor, not the virtuous and humble. Elnora might be an exception, but Cristiana proved the rule, as did her suitors Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These men had been dismissed with disgrace from the army of the Norwegian king Fortinbras for some unknown betrayal. Now employed by King Hamlet, they flaunted their rich clothes and gay manners, the fruits of their treason. They were alike as twins in their desire for favor with the king and with the ladies. Wooed by both men, Cristiana favored Rosencrantz, I think, but each was greeted with the same coy laugh and the same broad view of her bosom straining beneath its artfully loosened bodice.
    I wondered how much Cristiana knew of the passions of love. All about me I watched amours unfold as in the bawdy French tales I read with Gertrude. In the great hall ladies and gentlemen drank until their talk grew ribald. Passing a darkened stairway, I might stumble upon lovers grasping hands, touching lips, or more. I begged their pardon, but they only laughed at my embarrassment. Loudly, Elnora lamented the decline of honor in men and virtue in women.
    "There is too much singing and dancing, such lightness as loosens the restraints of virtue," she complained, her white curls quivering. "When I was young we held to the courtly ways, but nowadays the world is running all to rum."
    I understood why Gertrude called Elnora a puritan. Though I doubted much that lovers' behavior had changed so much in forty years, I did not contradict Elnora.
    "Be moderate in your desires, Ophelia. Bridle your tongue, and lock up your chaste treasure," Elnora warned. She peered at me as if searching for faults. "I trust you will give no one cause to gossip about you. You are an honorable girl."
    Despite Elnora's praise, I felt more cautious than virtuous. I spoke little, not because I found silence to be a superior virtue, but because I satisfied my curiosity by listening, observing, and reading. Sometimes I wished I had been born a man, so I could have been a scholar. At least Gertrude approved my habit of studying and allowed me to read whatever I wished. Once I had devoured the vast Herball , I hungered for more than the knowledge of common things that grew beneath me. I read about the distant countries of the Indies and fantastic creatures discovered by voyagers on land and in the sea. Laertes was now studying in France, and I pored over maps of Europe, marking the cities described in the letters he sometimes wrote to me. My envious fingers traced the routes my brother and Hamlet traveled in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
    I longed for distant and unknown places, but even more I longed to know about love. I kept certain books hidden in my locked trunk, reading them late at night by the flame of a candle. In secret I devoured The Art of Love, for all the moralists condemned it as a dangerous book. I imagined visiting the wicked country of Italy, where the men are taught to overcome virgins and the women know many freedoms. Reading the poet Ovid, I learned that no one can resist love, for water wears the sharpest stone smooth, and even the hardest ground at last crumbles before the plow.
    From the books I read, my knowledge of love was vast, but my experience of it was naught. I pondered this paradox as I lay at night upon my narrow, solitary bed. When would I