Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  “Leaving me alone to guard the whole wing,” said Andrew, frowning.

  “That space will suffice to secure him,” said Ned, gesturing to the Little Revels door, as if the idea had just come to him now. So he wanted to lock Tilney in a closet. I couldn’t see a downside to that.

  “That’ll work,” said Andrew. He turned to grope for the camouflaged handle.

  “I am the Master of the Revels—” began Tilney.

  “Are you now?” said Andrew. “Well, that’s a lovely coincidence. We call this the Little Revels because it’s overflowing with your tawdry treasures that Her Majesty has pilfered. You’ll be right at home. All right, men, heave him in.”

  Tilney’s boots seemed glued to the inlaid wood floor panels. “You will not put me in that closet,” he said.

  “Oh, but I will,” corrected Andrew, moving away from the door to make room.

  “I have been cozened by this knave, this nothing of a man, and if you assist him in his deplorable behavior, you shall be flogged for disrespect and then dismissed from your post.”

  This did not have the intended effect on Andrew North. “If I’m to be dismissed regardless,” he said, philosophically upbeat, “then it profits me nothing to improve my behavior now.”

  “The worse your behavior, the worse your consequences,” warned Tilney.

  “Nothing worse than losing my livelihood,” said North. “I, who was a soldier for Her Majesty in Ireland, and nothing to come of it to support me in old age? I’ll make some sport at the expense of him who’s cost me my position. ’Course, Mr. Shakespeare will look out for me now, won’t you, Mr. Shakespeare? As I’ve no other means of earning, and it’s on account of my coming to your brother’s aid.”

  “You are a cleverer rogue than I credited you for,” said Will.

  North tapped his temple. “It is extempore, from my mother wit,” he said, quoting Shakespeare.

  “Go on, then, Andrew,” said Ned eagerly. “Shove him in.”

  “I will not go in there, and when your captain arrives,” said Tilney, “he will hear the truth of this, and it will go very badly for both of you.”

  “In,” said Ned in a conspiring tone, and Andrew nodded. The other guard tugged Tilney toward the closet.

  “I have the King’s ear,” Tilney hissed, straining against him. “I have control of Mr. Shakespeare’s fate.”

  Andrew chuckled. “You can’t even keep control over your own ostrich feathers,” he said, and gestured into the closet. “They all end up here! And now you’ll join them for a bit. Don’t worry,” he went on, as Tilney protested. “It’s just for a bit.” He shoved Tilney into the closet and closed the door hard.

  A moment of silence.

  “Well now, shall we have a song?” Andrew asked me, as if none of that had just happened.

  “Later, Andrew,” said Ned. “We must get back to the Banqueting House, but we are much obliged for your assistance.”

  “Always an honor,” said Andrew, bowing to Will.

  Will held up the script with a questioning expression.

  “I know the place to take it,” said Ned, receiving it from his brother. “Go back to the hall and I’ll be there anon.”

  “Don’t miss your entrance,” said Will.

  “Brother, we’ve half the play before we’re back onstage.”

  “’Tis a short play,” said Will.

  Ned nodded and jogged back in the direction he’d arrived from. The halberd returned to its owner, the two guards exchanged salutes with Andrew, turned on their heels away from each other, and began to march in opposite directions, one following after Ned and the other taking the direct route Will and I had come from.

  As Ned reached the stairs, he barked in alarm and pulled up short with the staccato intensity of Wile E. Coyote trying not to plummet to the earth. He pivoted and began to sprint back toward us. “Run!” he shouted. “Go!”

  We turned to obey.

  “No-no-no, wait!” he shouted. We turned back. Cursing loudly, he chucked the furled manuscript hard in our direction as if it were a javelin. It reached only halfway up the gallery.

  Andrew North, even hammered, was agile on his feet. I ran for the script, but he ran with me and beat me by two strides. As he reached it, it shuddered suddenly. Then it rose several feet off the floor. Ned was still racing toward us, and I didn’t have to look up to know it was Gráinne on his heels. Andrew, as if there were nothing at all weird about a levitating manuscript, pounced on it with preening glee and handed it off to me triumphantly. “There you are, lad,” he crowed. “Try to hold on to it this time.” Without glancing back at Ned or Gráinne, I pivoted and ran like hell to Will, past Will, to the intersection of the gallery walks, down the second gallery, down the stone spiral steps, through the topiary, to the postern door of the Banqueting House.

  “Well met, witch,” said one of the guards, grinning.

  “A woman’s after me,” I gasped.

  “You players,” said the other guard, snickering. “Always messing with some skirt. Get in, then, we’ll protect you.”

  I dashed inside and collapsed onto the backstage bench, breathing heavily, staring at the promptbook.

  It had happened so fast. Had I done right, to leave Will and Ned behind? Gráinne wanted the promptbook above all, but after that, she wanted me. (She would also want Tristan once she realized he was here.) The book and I were secure for now—at least I hoped so. My prep for this had included fuck all about how things roll in a DTAP in which you have a homicidal witch on your ass who can work magic literally anywhere. She couldn’t hurt Will because that risked Diachronic Shear. But Ned might be vulnerable. Dammit, I should have done this differently, but I couldn’t think how. At least if she was chasing Ned around the royal wing of Whitehall, she wasn’t in the Banqueting House, which meant if Tristan was in there, he was safe for now. For now.

  The other actors were huddling at the curtain, waiting to go on for the banquet scene. Onstage, Macbeth was hiring murderers to off Banquo and Fleance. (Did I mention that Tilney had costumed Banquo and Fleance to resemble King James?)

  A few moments later, Will came in through the postern door. He was composed. I sat upright on the bench and gestured to get his attention. He stepped toward me without urgency and sat beside me on the bench. “Ned?” I whispered.

  “Outside,” Will whispered back. “At work.”

  “Gráinne?”

  “She was . . . called away,” he said.

  I stood up. “I’m going to try to get in the other entrance so I can scout the audience from behind for my brother.”

  “You are doing no such thing,” he said, taking my wrist and pulling me back to the bench. “Ned’s already on it.”

  “Excellent. So I’ll go destroy the script,” I said, standing up again.

  “Indeed you won’t,” he said, snatching the script from my loose grip. “You’ll miss your entrance.”

  “We’ve fully two scenes—”

  “’Tis the first performance of my play, which is put on for the King’s pleasure. I will not risk marring it with your truancy.” He folded his arms across his chest, the scroll now tucked against his torso. I began to protest, but he said, with a simple firmness I knew I couldn’t shake, “There’s an end to it. Help my play succeed, then I’ll help you succeed.”

  “What happened with Gráinne—Grace?” I asked.

  “She seemed about to pursue you, then suddenly she stopped and walked back the way she’d come. But she had a look of fury on her face. I wager the Lady Emilia is behind it. She has surely forbidden Grace to do any magic on the palace grounds, and it’s worth it to Grace to obey. But she is feral to be glad to follow orders.”

  We sat in silence for part of the banquet scene, but I grew agitated and rose again, stepping toward the door. Ned entered just as I reached for the bolt.

  “The guards up won’t let me in,” Ned whispered. “I wasn’t on the guest list, and my costume made them suspicious. But I looked i
n over their shoulders. There is a tall man in the shadows, house right, but I couldn’t see him well enough to name him. Where’s the promptbook?”

  “Will’s got it,” I whispered.

  “We must go throw it in the river,” said Ned. He moved toward his brother, but Will waved him away.

  “No time,” said Will. Actors were exiting from the banquet scene. “’Tis just the scene where Lennox flees to England, and we’re back on.”

  Knight hissed at us all to stop talking.

  “What do we do with the book while we’re onstage?” demanded Ned irritably.

  “Bring it with us,” I said. “I’ve an idea.”

  I still couldn’t see that shadowed corner where Maybe-Tristan stood. The Hell music started up again, and we witches made our third and final entrance, again backlit. The audience loved to hate us. On the previous Strand, when we’d premiered at the Globe, they’d had fun booing us. But it was much more intense now, because the audience was performing for His Majesty as much as we were, and boy, did they want His Majesty to know how much they hated witches. (I kinda felt bad for Lady Emilia, but she’d made her own bed so she would have to lie in it.) There were catcalls and hisses, and if it wasn’t for the King’s presence, I wager someone would have chucked something at us.

  We again moved in unison in an exaggerated lurch from side to side, until we hovered over the cauldron. Ned brandished the promptbook above his head as if it were part of the magic spell we were casting. Will and I held half-filled sausage casings behind our backs.

  Ned stepped forward and opened the book, intoning to the audience as if reading directly from the script: “Round about the cauldron go; / In the poisoned entrails throw.” (Will and I tossed the limp sausages into the cauldron, which several women in the audience found delightfully grotesque.) He finished his opening speech, and then the three of us circled the cauldron.

  “Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

  I heard a scuffle that I intuitively knew was Gráinne. I risked glancing in that direction of the audience and saw Lady Emilia literally holding her in place on the bench.

  Will was supposed to go on for a bit about a fenny snake, eye of newt, toe of frog and all that, but I stopped, straightened, and held my arms up. “Sisters mine!” I cried. “Is not this the most marvelous of verses?”

  They both gave me wtf looks.

  I grabbed the book from Ned. “Shall we not share these words with all our fellow witches and sorcerers?” I gestured to the audience.

  They were both mortified that I had just called King James’s court, including the King himself, witches. For a heartbeat there was shocked silence . . . followed then by a ripple of nervous laughter. Including from Their Royal Selves.

  “Come now, brethren,” I cried. “Say it with us!” I signaled Ned and Will. They joined me downstage, with uncertain we just work here expressions.

  “Double, double, toil and trouble,” I said.

  “. . . toil and trouble,” they chorused. I made a welcoming gesture to the audience.

  An uncomfortable murmur from the crowd.

  “Sisters, alas, they cannot hear us through the filthy air,” I said. “We must try again.” And, with my fellow witches: “Double, double, toil and trouble!”

  Everyone in the audience was studying His Majesty. Waiting to see his response to this. He himself seemed to be waiting. He glanced pointedly at Lady Emilia, and the rest of the audience followed his glance. She looked unhappy, but not as unhappy as the redhead sitting next to her: Gráinne was flushed, lips pursed, almost shaking with rage. Emilia yanked Gráinne’s wrist like a trainer restraining a Rottweiler. She gave His Majesty a serene nothing to see here smile. She literally batted her lashes—and yanked Gráinne’s wrist again.

  Queen Anne, reassured by Emilia’s smile, emitted a champagne-bubble giggle. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” she said in Emilia’s direction, with her uninflected, cheery Danish accent.

  “Double, double, toil and trouble,” Emilia responded graciously, but her eyes were nearly watering.

  “If the witch says it and nothing magical happens, that proves it isn’t real magic,” Anne said, beaming, to her husband. Both coaxing and chastising, she repeated directly at him: “Double, double, toil and trouble.”

  “Double, double, toil and trrrouble,” he repeated with a magnificent Scottish brogue. And then to us onstage, nodding, with a circular hand wave of royal approval: “Double, double, toil and trrrouble.”

  I held out my arms again and signaled the house to say it with us—and they did.

  The three of us called out, “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

  “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” yelled hundreds of people.

  “Again!” I cackled.

  “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

  “Once more! Three times to wind up the charm!”

  “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” hooted the audience.

  I gestured to Will to continue with his fenny snake bit. This too became a call-and-response. As was my “spell”: “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf.”

  In short, we did the whole damn witches scene three times in a row, with the audience repeating every line with us. They were beside themselves with self-congratulation. Except for Gráinne, who looked like a cornered cougar. Emilia kept her hand clasped hard against Gráinne’s wrist the whole scene. But everyone else was having a grand day out. When Burbage entered as the tormented King Macbeth, he had to hold before starting his lines, because the three witches got a standing ovation.

  That was hella fun, of course—imagine upstaging Tom Hanks. But what mattered was that every publisher and printer in London had just heard—and recited—William Shakespeare’s lines. That was our insurance policy. Once we destroyed the manuscript, Gráinne’s spells would disappear from London.

  Now all I had to do was save Tristan. Find Tristan, then save him.

  So, we did our scene with Macbeth. He wants us to tell him the future, and we say a lot of stuff he misinterprets, and we summon some apparitions that make him paranoid and miserable. We sailed through that part, and after Ned’s final speech (“But why stands Macbeth thus amazed?” etc.), the musicians played our Hell music exit ditty and we danced our silly dance. This restored the audience’s initial sense of us as creepy but absurd, and so again the hall was filled with nervous laughter. We danced our way offstage, exultant and huzzahing with genuine delight.

  And there was Tilney, waiting for us.

  Text written by the slave Melia on a series of wax tablets

  (cont.)

  FOURTH-CENTURY SICILY

  I continued to unfurl my sexed-up Lord of the Rings. Along the way, I recited some of the story’s poems in the original Elvish, which I’d taught myself in seventh grade, because linguist nerd. Just as Frodo, still bare-chested and virile, was sailing for the Undying Lands, and I was contemplating what new epic I could adulterate for them, a servant arrived at the door with a small piece of papyrus. Julia took it and glanced at it. Her eyes widened as she handed the note to her sister.

  “Quintus wishes to speak to me alone,” Livia said, reading it.

  “I will come,” announced Julia.

  “No, you won’t,” announced Livia. “But Melia must, due to her fetter.”

  In the late-summer twilight, the air was rent by the plaintive mating calls of insects. We walked along the colonnade, the trees and grasses neatly contained in their planting boxes, fragrant in the dusk. Arturo Quince was looking thoughtfully into the pool. The fountain gurgled quietly.

  “You wish to speak with me,” said Livia to Quince’s back.

  He turned, smiling. Saw me and stopped smiling. Then very deliberately smiled again. Quince—as the teen quartet never let me forget—has sulking-rock-star looks. At DODO everyone wanted to be his buddy in the break room. I’m mentioning that because he had been relying on his hipness quotient during this DEDE and seemed confounded at what was d
eveloping with Livia. He had played his cards right: not only had he destroyed the original mural, but a gaggle of young women was salivating over him, and Hanno Gisgon was his art-bro BFF. Yet somehow, I (the drab antagonist) was the one scoring quality face time with Livia.

  And I was influencing her, to his detriment. I was no longer his convenient scapegoat but a threat to his narrative. I was pretty sure, even before he began to speak, that his goal was now to remove me from the scene, to attempt again to convince her to change the mural design. I was confident Hanno would not elect to design comets when he could be ogling Livia, so I was no longer worried about Quince’s influence here. I considered my DEDE accomplished. Ironically, Quince and I now both wanted the same thing from Livia: Sending me back to the twenty-first century.

  “Mistress,” he said, “I confess to having hidden even more from you than I previously admitted to. I’ve unmasked Melisande as the ruiner of the mosaic, but her wrongdoings back home are worse.”

  “You have not unmasked her as anything,” corrected Livia, with her firm pleasantness. “You have merely accused her. She has accused you of the same thing.”

  “Mistress, hear me. The mosaic looms large for you, but between us it is a paltry subject. Her sins at home are legion. I may not tell you what they are, of course, but I request you to Home her directly, so that she can be held accountable in her own time.”

  “I don’t care if she’s wronged others,” said Livia, “only if she has wronged me. And if she has wronged me, then she stays here forever. In fact, I think I’ll keep her here even if she’s innocent. I’ve grown fond of her and she is very entertaining.”

  “Mistress—” he tried again, but I interrupted him:

  “You are the embodiment of Athena’s wisdom, mistress,” I said with an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you for sparing me.”

  “It is not that I am sparing you,” Livia clarified.

  “But you are sparing me,” I said. “You’re sparing me from . . . I shudder to think of it.” I indeed shuddered, to make my point. “I’d sooner spend my days telling you stories of reluctant travelers than be one myself.”