by Wray Delaney
I keep my hat pulled down, my walk awkward, and, too shy to look anyone in the face, I follow Crumb. The place stinks of cruelty, of animals confined in small spaces, of dirt and sweat. I stand in the middle of the circular pit where the only stage prop is the post to which the poor bears will be chained and I look up at the three tiers of empty seats that in a matter of hours will be packed with a braying mob.
Ben Shakeshaft is so delighted to see Crumb that he enters the amphitheatre as if he owns it. I am fortunate in that he hardly seems to notice me.
‘Come to your senses?’ he says to Crumb. ‘I knew you would. Now, my old friend, did you see the crowd?’
‘I am not a blind bear,’ says Crumb. ‘Of course I saw the crowd. And I smelled it.’
‘Then you saw coins on legs, for that is what they be. Walking silver, all destined for our pockets. Who . . .’ he turns to me, ‘is this lubberwort?’
‘A replacement for Gally – to play the duke. Master Sydney Dale, an actor from the country, new to London. He says he is good with animals.’ Crumb repeats the words. ‘Good with animals.’
‘Is he now?’ says Master Shakeshaft. ‘And where, my lad have you acted before?’
He does not look too closely at me.
I mention the Curtain.
‘Only a small role,’ I say.
‘Is this the best you could find? he says to Crumb. ‘He is all elbows and toes, an awkward saddle goose . . . no, Crumb, no.’
‘Does it matter?’ asks Crumb. ‘No one is here to watch the play, only to see the beast being killed.’
‘But I have a reputation as a great writer of plays and magnificent events and – that reminds me – where is the speech I asked for?’
Crumb hands it to him. ‘This is good, Crumb. Almost of the same calibre as my writing.’ He looks at me again and I think he has recognised me but then I see that another kind of maggot is worming its way into his brain. A thought has come to him as I hoped it might.
‘Good with animals . . .’ he mutters, and taking Crumb’s arm, moves him out of my hearing.
I wait, holding my breath, my hand upon my dagger.
I hear Crumb say, ‘It is no use you mumbling, Ben, I cannot hear a word you are saying. Speak louder – there is too much noise and I am going deaf.’
‘I cannot persuade anyone to go into the beast’s cage to administer the potion.’
‘Well, I am certainly not going in there,’ says Crumb.
‘No, but that lad looks idiot enough,’ says Master Shakeshaft in a stage whisper loud enough for me to hear, ‘just tell him it is a harmless beast, that he has no need to worry. All he has to do is put this potion on its lips and it will wake the beast up.’
He turns to look at me and smiles. I act the shy imbecile, eager to please.
He comes towards me, clearing his throat.
‘You are not frightened of animals, are you, lad?’
‘No, master,’ I say and do my best to look as innocent as a newborn lamb who has yet to hear he is bound for the slaughterhouse.
Master Shakeshaft takes me by my sleeve and we set off, followed, three paces behind, by Crumb. We walk past lines of cages where the mastiffs are kept and into the Paris Gardens. Here are the cages that house the bears. Their pitiful faces stare out; their dark, terrified eyes glimmer. Still I play my part. One wrong step and all will be lost.
Randa is in the only cage with a sail cloth thrown over it. The place is seething with fine gentlemen and ladies eager to hand over their coins and have a peek at this living demon. In charge of the mercenaries is a brick wall of a man.
‘I think it be dead,’ he says to Master Shakeshaft. ‘I cannot be sure, but it does not move.’
‘Get these people out of here,’ hisses Master Shakeshaft. ‘They will have a chance to see the beast in the bear pit like everyone else.’
When the crowd has left he bends down and lifts the corner of the cloth. ‘Where is it?’ he says. I can hardly stand still and, taking my movements as a sign that I am frightened, he grabs me and looks around him. ‘If there is anything amiss in there, you come and tell me. Do not go blurting it aloud – do you hear me?’
I nod and he gives me the potion.
The brick wall of a guard, his sword drawn, opens the cage. I hesitate, though all of me is with her before he has even turned the key.
‘Go on, lad,’ says Master Shakeshaft.
He pushes me in and the guard locks the cage.
The sail cloth makes the cage dark and it takes time for my eyes to adjust. When they do I see Randa is lying on her side, her wings wrapped about her. I go to her and she does not move and I feel I am standing at an abyss of loneliness for I am certain she is dead.
Kneeling beside her, I whisper her name. She does not answer. Her eyes are closed and I say it again.
‘Oh, Randa, forgive me for being such a fool. Would that I could turn the hands back on every clock – I would never have left you. I should have stayed, my love.’
Still she does not move.
‘All right in there?’ calls Ben Shakeshaft and I think, if she is dead I will kill him. I will kill him, I care not for the consequences.
‘Just getting used to the light, master,’ I say.
‘Beau . . .’ she says my name so softly that I am not sure I hear her. ‘Is it you? I am dreaming. I dream, dream of my father, I dream that he has become a kindly man . . .’
‘You are not dreaming,’ I say and stroke her feathers and kiss her. She unfolds her wings and I lift her into my arms. She is so weak. ‘I have a potion to wake you.’
I kiss her again.
‘This is potion enough,’ she says.
‘Are you sure everything is all right in there, Master Dale?’ shouts Ben Shakeshaft.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The creature is moving.’
‘Good lad. Now give her the potion.’
‘I just have to get close enough.’
I help her to sit. She looks at me and smiles.
‘Tell me I am awake,’ she says.
I stroke her feathers and I know she is dying.
THE SORCERESS
CI
I dream I see my daughter. She stands on the riverbed, silver sunlight dances on the pewter surface of the water. The ferries criss-crossing the Thames pass as clouds above her. Here, with the pike and the eel, with the trout and the salmon, lies her realm, these watery weeds her fields.
She speaks, her words float towards me in hundreds of tiny bubbles. They rise towards the light and are gone. Only one word do I hear.
Randa.
The sorceress wakes and she knows that her mortal heart beats too fast. Her ancient soul knows that if it fails her she will be leaving her shadow behind.
Quiet, my troubled mind, it was but a dream, be still. It is but the stirring of dead leaves rustled by the spring breeze, come to remind me of things long gone. Let the wind blow, blow it all away.
And she is surprised that she cannot milk as much comfort from that thought as she should. All of her is heavy, as if for the first time she knows the age of her bones. And everything and all and nothing weighs her down.
There by the long passage that leads out to the sunlight, she sees him, the confirmation of all that she dreads, the harbinger of bad news. The fox, her fox, her kin, stands watching her, his blue eyes shining, a curl of flame on his breath. He is here to fetch her and she follows him.
Under the canopy of her emerald-bejewelled oak, in its soft, dappled shade, she sees a woman dressed for church, cloaked in pious thoughts. She holds a basket. The sight of her worries the sorceress for she knows well the way men and women act when they find themselves lost in this, her forest. They are rightly terrified. But not this woman. Not she.
‘Who are you?’ asks the sorceress. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘Do you not recognise me, Sycorax?’
She says her name. How dare she say her name.
‘Of course,’ says the sorceress. ‘I know who
you are. You are the Widow Bott. Do you think that your wifely clothes will protect you, that the cross you have round your neck will save you? Go away before I kill you.’
The Widow Bott does not move.
‘You do not know me,’ she says, ‘and I begin to wonder if you ever knew me. I may wear these clothes, but my spirit is still wild. I come alone, I hide behind no Lord, no cross. I be here to tell you a secret that I have kept from you. Now I should give it back. You can have the leadenness of it and then you can decide what you will do.’
‘Go away, old widow, you are rambling. You have nothing to tell me that I do not already know. Not of the past, not of the present, not of the future.’
‘Of trees and earth, of rivers and sky, your knowledge be deep but of mortals and their hearts your knowledge be shallow.’
‘Be careful, old widow, for you tread too near me.’
‘Then I be not close enough.’
‘Beware,’ the sorceress says. ‘I warn you.’
‘My name be Mistress Finglas now. I be married to the alchemist Thomas Finglas.’
‘What is that to me?’
‘Your daughter was Thomas Finglas’s lover.’
The sorceress laughs. ‘What story are you telling me? What lies are you weaving on your loom? Go away.’
‘Long ago, a little girl of five summers was brought to my cottage by a creature, half-monkey, half-human. The little girl, though, was beautiful. The creature told me his name, it was Papio, and he was from the Land of the Beasts where the child’s father was king. He said it be too dangerous to keep her there and that she must not be discovered. I asked who should she be hidden from and he said from her mother, who wanted nothing for her daughter but her death. He handed me a purse of gold coins and with sadness he left. I called her Bess. Her name – as you know well – was Aurelia. I could not keep the girl and I took her to live with an elderly couple who had longed for children. They loved her dearly. She had, they said, a way with stories and talked of the Land of the Beasts. They asked me if what she said be true and I told them no. When Bess was sixteen she went to work at the House of the Three Turrets.’
‘You lie,’ says the sorceress. ‘This is some story patched together to hurt me, your revenge for what I did to you. I do not believe a word you say. Go, leave me.’
But still she stands there and still she speaks.
‘After some few years, Bess was made nurse to the children. Then Master Finglas was sent here to find Francis Rodermere. Thomas and Bess became lovers and when she knew she was with child Bess came to me. She asked me if her babe be mortal or beast and I told her she be either or both or one and the same. And that was the last time I heard anything of her – until the day Randa found me.’
No, no, no. I hear my blood beating in my ears, I feel my arms lose their strength, the sea pulling away from my soul, the wave of regret near drowning me. And still she does not move.
‘It was she, your granddaughter, Randa, who freed Beau from your curse of beauty. It was not Randa, but he, taken by the spirit of a black wolf, who killed his father. And Herkain who freed him from the wolf’s spirit. Today the lovers will die in the bear pit in Southwark before a crowd longing to see blood spilt. Today perhaps your jealous heart will find peace.’
CII
One truth told, and the threads of her life are pulled apart, unravelled, revealed. Too late, too late. How could she have let her malice stitch such a thorny gown? Did love murder all other desires, rot the good in her? Only now she sees that it was her unbridled jealousy that made her destroy what she should have cherished.
She has wind and invisibility on her side; fury is her engine. And she is there.
I am in London. Look at them – so many people in the rat alleys of this city. I would tear walls apart, pull houses and churches down, let the river break its banks to find her. But where is she? I go downstream, letting the dragonfly ferries show me the way. I see a round building, flags flying. But it is empty, its doors closed, and the crowd snakes past towards a second, larger building. Here she must be for the noise rises from its circle, rises above the chimneys. The smoke of words is thick: kill the beast, the demon, the Devil. In the cages the mastiffs, red-eyed, wildly barking; the place stinks of humans, of the shit and fear of animals.
And then she sees him, the man they call Crumb, the man she sold her granddaughter to, and she is ashamed. Three silver coins to bring her here, to this Hell-mouth.
His thoughts are laid out for her to hear. He thinks he should be gone now, now before it is too late, before Ben discovers the truth. What truth she cannot see.
‘It was given the potion, was it not?’ says his companion who she knows to be Master Shakeshaft.
She waits and listens, searching their thoughts to find where Randa is, in which cage she is imprisoned.
‘Perhaps it takes time for the potion to work, Ben,’ says Crumb.
She sees that it hurts his head to talk, that his brains are swimming in stale alcohol.
‘Blood and bollocks . . .’ Crumb winces as Master Shakeshaft stamps his foot as would a spoiled child. ‘. . . what is Master Dale doing?’
‘He is with the beast, still trying to wake it,’ says Crumb.
‘I blame you, Crumb, for bringing that stupid lad, that halfcooked toad of a blithering idiot. I should never have let him in the cage.’
As much as it pains her to acknowledge it, she thinks this small, frantic man is not unlike her. He blames everyone, never himself. Never herself.
Crumb reminds him that only Master Sidney Dale was prepared to go into the cage. There it lies, a fish bone of guilt – he fears that Ben will discover Master Dale’s true identity. The smell of this place makes him feel so green, he wishes he did not feel so rough. Now she sees who it is he is hiding. It is Beau, her beauty. The horror of her revenge comes back to her.
‘I will go and see it for myself. And you will come with me,’ says Master Shakeshaft. ‘After all it was your idea that the lump fish should give the beast its potion.’
‘Then you wake it,’ says Crumb, ‘and quickly. We will be castrated if the beast does not soon appear roaring wildly and hungry to attack.’
‘Roaring wildly? We – you – you, Crumb – bought a useless, sleepy animal.’
She leaves them in the stew of their disagreement.
Where are you, Randa? Cage after cage she passes, full of bears. Only one of these small prisons has a cloth thrown over it. And outside stand two mercenaries more drunk than sober.
‘What’s that?’ said one.
‘What’s what?’ said the other.
And by then she has the keys. She dips under the sail cloth and unlocks the cage. In the gloom, Beau is cradling Randa in his arms. Around her lie fallen feathers. She is neither beast nor yet woman, but a transformation has begun.
But did not she, the sorceress, who knows better than anyone the true shape of passion, did she not tell Randa that she would always be a beast?
The sorceress sees what she has failed to see before: Randa newborn, perfect, lifeless. Aurelia, not Thomas Finglas, never he, drops the feather of a bird, the wing of a bat, the hair of a cat into the crucible. The babe rises from the mercurial waters, half-beast, half-human, but alive.
If she had not been blinded by conceit, by pride, what wonders the sorceress could have taught her granddaughter. And now she understands. In the Land of the Beasts Randa had the power to break the spell of beauty. Only in the mortal world does Beau have the power to give her back her human form through the alchemy of love. But not here, not in this barbaric place.
Beau whispers to Randa; he kisses her. She opens her eyes, emerald green as the leaves of her trees.
‘Have you come to gloat?’ she says to the sorceress.
‘Who is there, my love?’ asks Beau. His face is wet with tears.
‘Can you not see her?’ she says.
‘Sycorax,’ says Beau. He neither flinches nor is surprised. ‘Is this what you wished
for,’ he whispers, ‘when you sold her for three pieces of silver?’
Behind them stands Death, waiting to take her. The sorceress gave life once to her mother; she cannot give the gift of life again.
She knows what she will do. She tears the hem from her petticoat, places it in Randa’s talon and watches her become invisible.
Master Shakeshaft and Master Crumb are outside, still at odds with one another.
‘As I said, it is best that you go in first, Crumb, as Master Dale knows you.’
‘But you, Ben, have the natural authority that I lack,’ says Crumb.
‘Oh, very well. But you are coming too.’ They enter the cage together, holding each other by the arms. ‘Good beast,’ calls Master Shakeshaft, ‘oh, kindly beast, where are you, gentle creature? Now is not the time for shyness.’
These blinded mice of men, their feeble eyes not yet adjusted to the gloom, cannot see Beau who with great care manoeuvres the invisible Randa onto his back.
When he is able to see him, Master Shakeshaft is confronted not by a beast, but by a ghost.
‘B-B-Beau Sorrel? Be you a phantom come to haunt me? It was not my fault you were eaten, not my fault . . . Crumb!’ he shouts. ‘Look, it is a ghost, it is Beau Sorrel!’
Beau moves to the open door of the cage.
‘Out of my way,’ he says. ‘If I am dead why bother with me?’
‘Crumb,’ says Master Shakeshaft, ‘did you see? Did you see the ghost?’
‘No, I saw Master Sidney Dale. I saw an actor, crushed.’
‘Are you sure? But what of the beast . . .’
‘I think,’ says Crumb, edging towards the cage door, ‘that the potion is working . . .’
I relish this moment. I have begun to reveal myself: fox of face, wing of bat, feather of peacock. Fire on my breath. This is the truth of me, this is how Herkain, the King of the Beasts knew me, loved me. And in this form I served our daughter to him on a platter, for how could one as glorious as I have given birth to a sprawling, puking infant?
The terror in the players’ faces delights her.
You foolish men, you are but lice in my feathers. You want the beast; you have the beast.