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hero.”
    Perhaps that was for the better. If Romeo was not a spy sent by Claudius, but was indeed lamenting a love lost to the grave, Hamlet did not envy the man. If love could wreak such misery as had been written on the poor fool’s face, then Hamlet would do well to avoid it.
    As they made their way onto the wide lawn before the castle gates, Hamlet wondered if the Italians had already left. It had been rude of him not to at least send someone ahead at dawn. He hadn’t had the foresight, in the pounding aftermath of his inebriation. But there, just beyond the guard’s post, two cloaked figures waited. They caught sight of him at almost the same moment he’d noticed them, and they started toward him.
    A guard stepped into their path at once, and Hamlet called ahead, quickening his pace, “No, no. Let them through, by order of Prince Hamlet.”
    “ Un principe ?” Romeo spat on the ground. “Is this a trick? I’ve come to fight you, and you choose here? So a guard can stick a sword into my back after I stick mine into your belly?”
    “Horatio, this is Romeo,” Hamlet responded in the travelers’ language, which both he and Horatio had studied at university. Hamlet searched his vague memory of the night before. “And his friend here is a friar.”
    “Friar Laurence,” the holy man said, his eyes still on the guard at his post. “I beg of you, your highness, forgive my companion’s impertinence. His thoughts are much confused, shrouded as they are in sorrow.”
    Romeo shot the friar a glance, as though he objected to the apology.
    “Don’t worry,” Hamlet said, managing a cheerful smile. “I didn’t come here to fight you. Or punish you for your impudence, though it has been noted. I seem to remember that the two of you were on a quest?”
    “I am,” Romeo answered, nodding past Hamlet to the figure of Horatio behind him, silently demanding an explanation.
    “Romeo, Laurence, this is my closest friend and advisor, Horatio.” Hamlet tilted his head, studying the paleness of Romeo’s face, the deep circles beneath his dark eyes. He suspected it was more than just fatigue from travel that weakened the Italian…more than just sorrow for his lost love. “For example, he just now advised me not to duel you, for fear that I would not win. Looking at you, I think you got the better end of his advice, wouldn’t you say?”
    A muscle in Romeo’s cheek twitched, but he did not flare to angry threats, as Hamlet had supposed he might. Instead he pushed down the cowl of his cloak. The sunlight set deep amber in his short black hair, and it seemed unusual for a body so frail looking to be crowned with such color. “I am ill. It is not a plague, do not fear for yourself. I was poisoned, and I am long in recovering.”
    “Poisoned?” Hamlet filed this strange coincidence with the others. “Who poisoned you?”
    It might have been too personal a question, for the young man made a face like someone biting into a particularly bitter fruit. “I did.”
    “Excuse me?” Hamlet was certain he had not heard correctly. Young noblemen—and Romeo’s impudent bearing and fine sword testified to his nobility—rarely took up poisoning themselves as a sport. If Romeo had willingly drunk poison, he’d been mad, or truly despondent.
    The young man was looking less like Claudius’s spy by the minute.
    “I poisoned myself,” Romeo admitted through clenched teeth.
    With a glance at Horatio, Hamlet smiled at the two Italians. “Gentlemen. I welcome you to Elsinore. I believe we have much to talk about.”

Chapter Three
    “I do not like this,” Laurence remarked for the third time as they treaded across a checkerboard floor.
    “This way, this way,” the prince called over his shoulder as he cut a swath through the courtiers who assembled there.
    Romeo kept his eyes straight ahead, ignoring the groans of disgust he and Laurence left in their wake. The courtiers were all finely dressed and heavily perfumed, and the