Rogue's Gallery by Robert Barnard

bent.’ There was a few seconds’ silence.
    â€˜Balance … Successful swordsmanship depends on balance. Administer this and the … the patient will have the gait of a newborn calf for twenty-four hours thereafter.’
    â€˜And how is it administered?’
    â€˜For maximum effect, in the ear while sleeping.’
    I laughed out loud at that. Perfect! There were problems, of course, but I thought that with O’Ratio one of the big cheeses in the Royal Guard I could surely get one of the men who guarded Laertes while he slept – and someone would, Claudius would see to that – to do the necessary for a bag of kroner. Hammy was in fact my main problem.
    â€˜From now on,’ I told him, ‘we are inseparable. I send out for food to town. You drink nothing but wine from my own store.’
    â€˜But I don’t like your wine. You have rotten, English taste. I prefer my own wines.’
    â€˜They could be already poisoned. In Claudius’s court you are worth killing, while I am not. When it comes to the fight I shall hold goblets of both wine and water, and you will drink nothing else. There will be bottles of wine and jugs of water set out for the contestants. Don’t touch them.’
    â€˜You’ll have to remind me.’
    â€˜Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ I said disgustedly. ‘Whose life is this I’m protecting?’
    Anyway, that showed me there could not be a moment’s relaxation in my vigilance. We had a disgusting pork chop meal sent up from the Kongelig Dansk Hotel in town, and then I locked the bedroom door and we settled down to get what sleep we could. Heaven knows what rumours started going round the court. My only concern was whether O’Ratio would manage to get the destabiliser administered into Laertes’s ear. One thing was in our favour: it would be just like Laertes to sleep soundly, so hideously confident as he always was.
    The great hall next day was stripped for action. All furniture had been moved to the walls, and the great central area was bare. Claudius was no doubt used to masterminding such affairs of honour from his army days. At the far end of the hall were two thrones, and on the table in front of them bottles, a carafe and goblets. The King and Queen were already seated when Hamlet and I arrived. When the King saw I was carrying a bottle and a glass a shadow passed over his face. Hammy cast a glance at the two épées laid out at either end of the long table.
    â€˜Your Majesty, I demand fresh swords.’
    â€˜Fresh swords?’ All injured innocence.
    â€˜Swords I can trust. I demand that we choose swords from those borne by the royal guards.’
    He gestured in the direction of the assembled picked troop. The king hummed and hahed. Then he gave way. He knew the abilities as swordsmen of his stepson and his first minister’s son, and he trusted to the latter’s superiority.
    â€˜Very well. When Laertes arrives – ah, here he is.’
    But the words almost died in his throat. Weaving his way like a drunken porter Laertes came into the hall, lurching from left to right, stumbling, and finally weaving his way erratically up to the thrones.
    â€˜Your Majesty, I demand a postponement! I have been poisoned! You see the result. Please God it does not prove fatal.’
    â€˜Hah!’ said Hamlet, with an expression of stage disgust. ‘The man’s feigning. He’s an arrant coward. The court yesterday saw whose the offence was – a rank insult to the blood royal. I demand satisfaction now, at the place and time Your Majesty appointed.’
    Now the King really was in a quandary. He knew that his behaviour at the play the day before had sent waves of suspicion rippling through the court. To be seen to favour his first minister’s son – the upstart grandson of Jens Amundsen, a backstreet fishmonger – over his stepson would set tongues wagging furiously. At this