Free A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult) by Dot Hutchison Page B

that struggles to survive when I heard Jack’s shout. I left the book, left the blanket, because I’d never heard such a sound from him, and raced to the alcove as fast as I could run.
    Claudius was there before I was. He was the one who called the ambulance, the one who held Gertrude when the noise brought her from the house, the one who ordered us to keep Dane away when he would have come to look as well.
    “What could make a man kill his own brother?” I whisper, the thoughts too dark for the bright day.
    “Why did Cain kill Abel?”
    “He was jealous,” I answer automatically, words before comprehension. My eyes widen as I realize the meaning. “He was jealous …”
    “Been here a long time, Miss Ophelia. I remember those boys at school. Never a thing the elder had the younger didn’t want, never a privilege or an honor earned by the elder that the younger didn’t expect a share in. Back when the Fourth was losing to the sickness, when he went to choose between his boys to succeed him, how quick the younger came running back, when the elder had been here working for the school all along.”
    “He’s already submitted for the position,” I tell him quietly. “The Board is doing the final interviews this week and next.”
    “That’s one way of it,” he agrees, his tone so mild I know to turn the idea over again to look for what I’m missing.
    I think of the way Claudius tried to sit at the head of the table, the way he greeted mourners at the funeral as if welcoming them to his home, the way his hand— “Gertrude.”
    “Beautiful woman. Both boys courted her here at school.”
    “But she chose Hamlet.”
    “Which is when the younger one left, off to make a fortune in dealings he never did speak of. Off to Europe and Asia to wager other men’s money in businesses I would rather not understand. Only back when summoned for family occasions, and never a letter in between.” Jack scowls down at his tools. “Never seen a man run so far from a good family.”
    “A prestigious position and a beautiful wife,” I murmur. “I suppose men have killed for less. But a brother …” I flinch at the touch of cool metal on my other hand and realize I’m clutching Dane’s class ring, like I’m trying to protect any piece of him from this terrible conversation. “You know Claudius better than I do.”
    “I don’t suppose anyone could know that man. His words don’t give much of himself.”
    True enough. “Will there be proof?”
    Jack shakes his head and indicates the syringe. “That’s as much as we’ll find, I’d wager, and that’s careless enough to make me wonder, unless he just couldn’t get far enough away and still be close enough to hear the discovery.”
    “You’d think he’d want to be far away when the discovery was made.”
    “But then who would comfort Mrs. Danemark from the terrible sight? Who would be seen doing his best to rescue both her husband and her son?”
    “Hamlet was strong. How could Claudius have injected the poison without there being a fight of some sort? Some kind of cry?”
    “Poison to sleep, poison to die. One’s much like another, and the Headmaster was sleeping very heavy that day.”
    I stare at the syringe, at the remnants of the cloudy liquid that smear the inside of the glass. “Jack … what do I do?”
    “What do you think you should do?”
    It’s the question my mother would have asked. Father would give me a lecture on rules and regulations, on duty, but Mama would just turn the question back so there’s no easy answer. Mama thought easy answers were the worst kind of self-deception, of foolishness.
    Mama thought Father was the biggest kind of fool.
    I take a deep breath, the carvings on the ring band pressing into my skin. “There’s no proof.”
    “None whatsoever.”
    “Dane and Gertrude would be hurt if I accused without proof.”
    “Undoubtedly.”
    “There’s Father.”
    He doesn’t even say anything to that; doesn’t have to.