Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  DTAP: 309 CE, compound between Piazza and Sophiana

  STRAND: 5 (interrupted)

  Note: As I noted in interim DEDE reports, Strand 2 (Jan 24–27), Strand 3 (Feb 2–5), and Strand 4 (Feb 8–11) were all successes, but Livia absolutely insisted on using magic. Erzsébet believes the number of Strands has been increasing as a result of this—some magical algorithm I don’t quite grasp—and so the most urgent thing on this Strand is to insist Livia not use magic to protect the wagon.

  Erzsébet Sent me at 14:23 on February 14.

  Almost everything was identical to the previous Strands. Erzsébet moved my arrival a few yards to the north, so that I did not arrive in the pool—kudos on such precision, I didn’t know that was possible. I still attracted the attention of the slave Rufus, and therefore of Livia and her retinue. As before, Livia saw the glamour, believed me to be associated with Quintus, demanded answers; I told her enough to win her trust and get her on board. As before, the girls wanted to look like me when they were “old,” and I got them running around the palaestra before spending the day in classes with them. As before, the wagon was days later than expected. Quince was no doubt spending those days getting buddy-buddy with the Carthaginian mosaicist Hanno Gisgon, so that when the “accident” happened, his actions would not seem suspicious.

  The only significant alteration from the first Strand was that this time, when I impressed upon Livia that we should not rely on magic to prevent the “accident,” she finally agreed. But she declared that she would work with me on a practical way to deter Quintus. Multiple attempts to convince her that I should do it entirely on my own failed.

  The plan “we” came up with was sound enough, although I did not like that it still depended mostly on her for its success. The premise was to separate Quintus from the rest of the travel party—in particular, from the wagon carrying the mosaic—as the wagon crossed the bridge.

  Both men knew Livia. The convenient convergence of her age/gender (which made her “helpless”) with her status (which gave her authority) made it unthinkable for either of them to disregard her requests for attention or assistance. Therefore, we agreed, Livia would detain Quince on the far side of the river until the wagon was safely across the bridge. (Quince in particular would have to behave well toward Livia, as he depended on her to be Homed.)

  Livia positioned herself on the far bank, so that the travel party would encounter her just before reaching the bridge. I awaited on the near side with both horses—not hiding, but not easily seen because of the verdant growth along the riverbank. As before, the stoic herd of sheep had just crossed the bridge as we neared it. They passed by me and the horses, incurious.

  Livia performed her role beautifully. Drooping as if with fatigue or heat, she leaned on the post marking the start of the deck of the bridge. When the travelers drew near, Hanno Gisgon hailed her and inquired what had brought her to this strange resting place.

  “My horse is lame.” She sighed. “I have instructed my slave to stand with it in the river, over on the far bank, to see if the cool water will soothe its tendon. But it cannot carry me home. I will ride my slave’s horse home, and the slave must walk my horse back.”

  “Ride with us, mistress,” said Hanno at once. “We can make room for you, can’t we, Marcus?” he asked his wagon driver. “And then your woman can ride her own horse back and lead the injured one. You can ride next to Marcus in the wagon, it’s comfortable.”

  “Riding in a storage cart is too inelegant for the lady,” said Quince. “It is not worthy of her breeding. Please ride my horse, mistress, and I will sit in the wagon.”

  I had anticipated that Quince would “offer” to ride in the wagon, to seek a way to damage the mosaic while traveling beside it. Livia stayed on the script I’d given her: “Thank you, but your horse is large and looks headstrong, and I am not at all confident that I would be able to keep it under control. I shall ride pillion behind you.”

  Quince’s smile was forced. “If it does not seem untoward, I would be honored to assist your return home, mistress,” he said, because that’s what you have to say when the local patrician’s daughter says she wants to ride behind you.

  “Excellent, please dismount and help me up,” she said, and then very casually gestured to the wagon. “Hanno, do not wait for us, it’s a long journey uphill and you should make headway, the day will be hot. We will catch up to you.”

  “Your father would have words with me—and worse than words—if I left you alone on a horse with a strange man he has never met,” said Hanno, smiling. “We shall wait and go together.”

  “Well, you should at least cross over the river and wait in the shade,” she said with perfect offhandedness. “Think of the donkeys.”

  “It is really no problem,” said Hanno pleasantly, as Quince dismounted.

  Livia feigned incompetence at getting onto Quince’s horse—asking for cupped hands to use as a mounting block but then flailing as she attempted to get her tunic-skirt over the saddle horns, giving up, and nearly tumbling back to the ground to try again. Meanwhile, my role was to lure Hanno across the bridge. Livia was confident that if Hanno crossed the bridge, the wagoner would cross with him. So:

  “Mistress Livia!” I called out from the shadows below the bridge embankment. “Your horse is stuck in the shallows. I need help right away!”

  Hanno spurred his horse toward my voice. But as the wagoner was gathering his slack reins to urge the donkeys to follow, Quince did something we had not predicted: he grabbed Livia around the waist, pulling her down from her inept attempts to mount, and stood her on the roadside, and in a blink he was up on his horse, flying across the bridge. He veered frighteningly close to the donkeys, crowding them against the low parapet; the nearer one slapped its ears back and snapped at Quince’s horse. Marcus tried to quiet the donkey, but it brayed and snapped again. The other donkey kicked back with one hind leg and struck the shaft. The wagon shuddered.

  Quince’s pace was fast and he was quickly well past the donkeys—but he wheeled his mount around and now steered the horse directly back toward them, crying out in alarm as if he had lost control of it (in fact the opposite was true: he must have had excellent control of the horse to make it run at them). He was about to injure all three animals, the wagoner, and himself, in order to send the cart tumbling off the bridge and smashing below.

  I had to distract Quince enough to change his horse’s track. Hanno had crossed the river to try to help me, but confused by the way my voice echoed, he was now on the downriver side of the bridge in search of me, so he was out of the way. I released our horses and plunged into the river. It was a gentle, serpentine waterway, about twenty feet wide, but a non-swimmer could appear to be drowning in it. Splashing wildly, I hurled myself farther in and began shrieking. Then I twisted against the current to face upstream, so Quince couldn’t see my face. Livia immediately began to shriek too: “My slave! Save my woman! Somebody save her!”

  I’d only wanted to draw enough of Quince’s attention that his weight in the saddle would shift, causing his horse to change direction, to cease scaring the shit out of the donkeys. I accomplished that: in my peripheral vision I saw the horse veer away from the wagon.

  But then Quince jumped off the horse. The donkeys shook their heads with annoyance and brayed in protest, but nothing worse, as his horse hightailed it indignantly back toward the village, gleaming chestnut in the afternoon sunlight. Quince took a step toward the side of the bridge and raised his arms, about to dive. Dammit, I thought, I had not counted on his being valiant! I couldn’t let him see it was me—

  Now Quince was airborne. Livia shouted, “Come back tonight, slave!”

  And then, before Quince hit the water, she Homed me.

  I am sure she interceded magically, if it was necessary. But I don’t think it was. So I’m confident that the wagon—and the mosaic—was safe. But of course, confidence isn’t the same as certainty, so I will go back on this same Strand, to make sure
it all fell out right, before repeating the DEDE on the next Strand.

  I expect to be back within an hour or two.

  ENTRY IN PRIVATE DIARY OF

  Edmund Tilney

  ALBEMARLE HOUSE, 17 APRIL 1606

  Today I have received disheartening news from the Lady Emilia. My manuscript shall not find favour at court. It appears that Her Majesty Queen Anne, having found other means by which to humiliate Philip Herbert (newly Baron of Shurland) without any intrigue that touches my travel manuscript, has lost interest in my travel manuscript. As the King is greatly enamoured of the Baron, it follows then that the travel manuscript written by the Baron’s pet, and not my own, shall enjoy publication. Without the publication of my book, I stand no chance of advancement. Without advancement, my financial burdens (due to His Majesty’s reduction of my salary and budget) shall ruin me.

  This grieves me, but what grieves me as well is that I suspect that writer be none else but Mr. William Shakespeare. The Herbert brothers are patrons of Mr. Shakespeare in other endeavours, although Philip be not half so cultured as his older brother, the Earl of Pembroke. And now Mr. Shakespeare has a work at hand shall cause mine own work to be diminished in comparison.

  Why must that man of Stratford (Stratford! Of all backwater places!) forever have success where I do not? ’Twas he who won the regard of the Lady Emilia, and in the end he did not even want her, he merely wanted the inspiration she provoked in him, not the fulfillment of it! ’Tis perverse. I would have been a proper paramour to her, had she chosen me.

  And now, because the Queen has found other ways to needle Philip Herbert, shall Shakespeare yet again outshine me? Must it be ever thus? Despite these dozen of years in which I have assiduously assisted his progress, championed his work to our superiors—he steps between me and my publication! I, who protected him and all his kind in ’92, when the aldermen and Lord Mayor would have banned all players and playhouses forever! William Shakespeare could not prevent such travesties. All the playing companies put together could not. ’Twas I alone, Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, who saved the London stage. And yet the London stage has no regard for me. It saves its sycophancy for William Shakespeare.

  I recognise it is a sort of privilege to vie against a man of such capacities as Mr. Shakespeare. And yet . . . I would I had some means to undermine him, for the satisfaction of seeing him shake, of hearing his tongue cry for help as a sick girl, to remind him that he is no more a man than I, or any other man who strives, and who is worthy, and yet comes to naught, but must spend his life toiling always in service to others.

  Having contemplated this for hours, at the expense of sleep, I have contrived a plan that yet may cause my standing to rise above his in time.

  Further, it may give me an opportunity to once again find favour in the eyes of Lady Emilia.

  First, this play Macbeth must become a favourite of the King’s. I shall see that His Majesty is entirely pleased with it, so that he shall be in equal measure displeased when he learns of its sins. The higher his esteem for it, the further it shall be dashed when he learns Shakespeare had intended treachery in writing it.

  After I have secured His Majesty’s good regard for having brought it to court, then shall I reveal to His Majesty that I have saved him and his court from the perdurable taint of witchcraft! Lady Emilia will back me in this, acknowledging that I sought out her sage advice and that she warned me that Shakespeare’s original words contained real magic. Then shall only Shakespeare himself be punished with all the zeal of His Majesty’s obsessive hatred of witch things.

  To make certain all of this happens, I must have it fall out that Macbeth be done first and expressly for His Majesty, not for the masses. The surprise and spectacle of it must astound him, as Inigo Jones’s spectacles outshine Ben Jonson’s overwrought verses in every masque. Thus shall I contrive that Macbeth’s maiden voyage be not at the Globe Theatre, but at Whitehall Palace, where I—and not the King’s Men—have absolute power over how things are put on the stage. There shall all the specialities of my offices and workshops be put to best use, that the spectacle shall weigh equal with the verse and playing of it. This too shall lift my reputation with the King.

  Shall I be successful in this enterprise? We must see. Queen Elizabeth would never receive a play at court until the masses had first judged it worthy, and so far the same is true of James and Anne, but I must endeavour, else shall my heart grow cankered with resentment.

  I am about it.

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  DOER: Robin Lyons

  THEATER: Jacobean London

  OPERATION: De-magic Macbeth

  DEDE: Macbeth performed with non-magic spells

  DTAP: 17–28 April 1606, Southwark/Clerkenwell areas of London

  STRAND: 1, New Plan (second half; see my earlier mid-DEDE report for first half of this Strand)

  I want to write this down quick so I can get a decent night’s sleep and then go back.

  I was Sent back to 1606 London on the same Strand I had been Homed from (if your memory needs jogging: I came back prematurely last time to avoid a potential Gráinne strike). The Shakespeare bros and I continued our surreptitious rehearsing of the original script. Tilney had at one point thought that Macbeth would premiere not at the Globe (the usual venue for debuts) but instead at the royal court. This would have been unprecedented, and a Really Big Deal. But for whatever reason, that didn’t pan out; he seemed pretty bitter about it.

  Instead, as per usual, the play premiered at the Globe, FINALLY. It felt like a lifetime waiting for it to be the day Robin Saves Tristan. We did it with William Shakespeare’s own nonsense lines instead of Gráinne’s spells. We performed before a full house of more than a thousand rapturously appreciative theatregoers, and I was stoked because that’s waaaaay too many people for Gráinne to magically manipulate.

  But there was a technical problem with the sound effects. As we were speaking the spells, the thunder machines started up and just kept going and going for a crazy long time. My theory is that Gráinne was in the audience making that happen, because she was so PO’d that we were saying Will’s lines instead of hers. So Gráinne’s spells were never heard by anyone—but neither were Shakespeare’s.

  Because the probably-Tristan person was attacked at the debut performance, I was on my toes. The second I finished my final scene, I changed out of costume and snuck back into the yard to scout for him. My DEDE reports have focused on events involving other people, but I’ve also been obsessively prepping for Tristan extraction. All my free time, every day, I spent memorizing literally every nook and cranny of that space—entrances, exits, stairways, blind turns. I’d practiced how to dart through the crowd of groundlings during performances while drawing as little attention to myself as possible. It’s been an exercise in mental geometry, determining the shortest route from any point A to any point B given Gráinne at any point C. I’m pretty good at that kind of thing and I had it all sorted out by the day we premiered. I was totally on my game.

  Tristan is notably taller than most early-modern Londoners, so I figured I’d have no trouble spotting him at the debut, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I raced out of the yard and ran the whole marshy route around the building. Nothing. Feeling anxious—they were well into the last act by now—I went back inside and up to the top gallery, to stand where Andrew North plants himself pre-show to sell fig tarts to the nobility. From here I had a good bird’s-eye view of the groundlings, but I still couldn’t find Tristan anywhere.

  So instead, I began to look for Gráinne, figuring I could tail her to wherever the encounter with Tristan was to happen. Just as Macduff came onstage bearing a grotesque replica of Macbeth’s head—i.e., moments from the end—I spotted a redheaded woman I thought might be Gráinne. Noting the woman’s position in the crowd, I ran down through the backstage area, slipped back into the yard, and placed myself a few strides behind this woman. The show ended. From my perspective it was a failure because the au
dience had not heard Will’s verses, but it was a big hit—the audience was clapping and whooping and whistling. Robert Armin began his usual jig as soon as the actors were all done bowing, but the redhead began to push through the crowd toward the exit, as did about fifteen percent of the audience. I followed behind, making sure to keep other people’s bodies between my face and the woman’s, in case she turned suddenly in my direction.

  Maintaining a distance of some ten feet, I tailed her out of the gate, and she headed north toward the Thames. Then I saw two things at once:

  I caught a glimpse of the woman’s face when she turned. It was definitely Gráinne. She looked irritated.

  The second thing I saw was a figure with Tristan’s height and build and hair color, who had also just exited the yard. He must have been in the shadows of one of the galleries. He was walking faster than Gráinne and passed by her.

  Gráinne saw him. She stiffened, tensed, and reached out to grab his arm. I pressed forward to stop her, my mind racing through five different unarmed attacks I’d learned from Mortimer and had been practicing with Ned.

  Just as my fingertips were about to brush against Gráinne’s sleeve, Gráinne’s hand closed hard around Tristan’s wrist. She yanked Tristan toward her. He pivoted toward her. In the microsecond before I touched her sleeve, I saw the man’s face. It wasn’t Tristan.

  I ducked away and ran in the other direction, then hid behind someone’s horse and watched as Gráinne apologized to the man and moved on toward the river.

  Short version: I tracked Gráinne all the way back to Rose’s, barely managing to remain out of her sight at all times—I was motivated, because once we were out of the city, Gráinne would have been able to murder me with magic without fear of being seen or interrupted.

  At Rose’s, Rose Sent Gráinne somewhere; I couldn’t get close enough to overhear anything. I waited a quarter hour and then approached. Rose greeted me cheerily, as always.