Рон Гуларт: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

Judith Cutler is the author of two acclaimed series of crime novels set in Birmingham, England. One stars amateur sleuth Sophie Rivers, the other Inspector Kate Power (who lives up to her name). A third protagonist will soon join these two successful Cutler creations; watch for painter and decorator turned amateur detective Caffy Tyler. Ms. Cutler’s most recent novel, Scar Tissue , was published by Allison & Busby in 2004.

If only Hamlet had been tried for Polonius’s death the truth would have come out.

Why was it my destiny ever to be involved? God knows it was not my choice, at any point. I was unprepared for any of it. I had always been content with my lot, a serving woman, waiting on Her Majesty. I would mend her clothes, dress her hair, and sleep on my pallet across the door to her apartment to keep her safe and preserve her reputation. There were times, of course, when I heard the measured gait of His Majesty approaching, and knew to make myself scarce. Those times came less and less often once His Majesty’s younger brother Claudius returned, when it seemed to me the whole court spent its time carousing. After our seemly, plain suppers, the rich food and Rhenish disagreed with His Majesty, and he came hardly ever to Her Majesty’s chamber. I thought at first it was she who went to his, she came reeling back to her boudoir so late, but I have since had cause to change my mind.

To my astonishment, the celebrations changed the Lord Chamberlain. I’d always thought of him as a prosy old fool, given to smutty jokes in the presence of us underlings, as if bestowing largesse. Imagine my amazement when he went further than occasionally fondling my bum or squeezing my breasts — much further. I found myself having to fight him off in the dark corners on the turns of stairs. When I complained to the queen that this man old enough to be my father had tried to ravish me, she blushed and with downcast eyes admitted that he was so taken with me he wished to make me his mistress.

Down in Jutland we don’t become mistresses. We marry or we stay maids. And so I told Her Majesty.

She raised an eyebrow. “But his children? They are both — difficult, Maria.”

I nodded. I could hardly do otherwise. Lacking a mother so long, they had become unruly, wayward. He, the older by some years, was inclined to give himself airs, as if he were the head of the house. He’d been sent to Paris, to acquire a little polish and less learning, as his father was wont to say. He was certainly a hothead who would brook no opposition, and I was glad he spent so much time abroad. His sister missed him grievously, and used to pen long, effusive letters in response to his, as if he were her absent betrothed. Then she found other objects for her unruly affections. For a week she swooned for the English ambassador, and when he was recalled a few weeks later, wept over his miniature painted by Master Hilliard. Then it was for the captain of the guard she sighed, then a player from a group of itinerant actors. I said it was because she was young, with too much time on her hands. My advice was that she should fill her hours with plain sewing and visiting the sick, but her father spoilt her yet. Goodness knows whom she would next turn her lovelorn eyes upon. The more trouble for him, said I.

“It seems to me that even if it’s a bedding on the wrong side of the blanket, madam, I’ll offend his children. In a small place like this, everyone knows everyone else’s business.” There was much of her business I rather more than suspected — recently concerning the lord Claudius. “Mistress or wife,” I continued, “I won’t please them. And if I can’t be his wife, you must make him keep those pickers and stealers to himself. I’ll not tolerate the tedious old fool’s antics any longer.”

“It’s not to be a love match then,” the queen sighed, as gusty with emotion as young Ophelia. At her time of life, too. Thank goodness she was past the age to worry whether paddling palms with the king’s brother would have dire consequences. Or perhaps — just in case — that was why every so often she’d lure the king back to her boudoir, so he could have no doubts over any love child. “But it would be sensible, Maria — it’s better to be a rich widow than a poor spinster.”

So wed we did, but without the pomp I’d have liked. A very hole-in-corner affair it was, with the pastor mumbling away to himself and my new lord giving a homily as long as any preacher could wish. Then, for all the premarital fumblings, my maidenhead was as intact at the end of our wedding night as at the beginning. Of course, he was not a young man, and there was wine aplenty: However much it provokes the desire, they say, it always takes away the performance. But not the need for the pisspot under the bed. Was there ever such a man for a weak bladder? Faugh! And such stinking breath, too.

What I certainly did not expect was my instant despatch to my lord’s country estate. There were affairs he wished me to oversee, he told me, going into much precise and tedious detail. Indeed I judiciously applied my spur to my steed, all the while pretending I was trying hard to control it and attend to his instructions.

Lord Chamberlain the old man might be, and almost running the country, but he had no more idea of how to run a farm than the crown prince would have of swimming the Skagerrack. It must have taken me six or eight weeks to instill some basic principles of domestic economy into the housekeeper, while my new stepson would have been better employed, despite his French silks and clever words, learning to run the farm.

One day all the church bells tolled, one by one, in every hamlet and village in the district. Were we at war? Giving strict instructions that all our treasures were to be sealed and buried deep in the cellar, I summoned my horse and rode home.

To find chaos.

The King, the good old King Hamlet, had died. There was so much grieving and despair it took me a few hours to discover that he had died, not as befitted a great man like him, heroically on the battlefield, but stung by a bee in his orchard where he was having a nap in the sun. I wept with the others. But there must be a new king. With great gusto I set the staff about spring-cleaning young Hamlet’s room. It might have been fit for a prince before: Now it was fit for the king he was about to become. Flushed with my endeavours, it took me a few hours to realise that no one else talked of expecting him any moment. No one spoke of his coronation. They spoke of something else. It wasn’t one rat I smelt, more a whole cellar full, as I cornered my lord that night.

“The queen to remarry!” I squeaked. “Whom, my lord?”

“The new king,” he said, trying to avoid my eye.

“The queen can’t marry Lord Hamlet! Even the worst heathen wouldn’t suggest that!”

“Go to, go to. The queen marries my lord Claudius—”

“How can he be king? When the old king’s son lives? And is,” I added, “a good man, very like his father — kind to the poor, never giving himself airs.”

“A young man,” my apology for a husband muttered. “Inexperienced.”

“A man of near thirty! And a student at Wittenberg, no less. What he doesn’t know about kingship he’ll soon learn. As for that Claudius,” I continued, “the man’s a rider, a lecher, a libertine, the owner of no one good quality—”

“A king. Our king. And not inclined to favour fishwives,” my lord said tartly.