Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  When I attacked her, I did not fight fair. I don’t remember much of what I did—just reaching directly for her throat and slamming her on the side of the head, to break the lock she had on Tristan’s gaze. She was so focused on the spell, she didn’t see me coming, so I knocked her over and then I just began to beat the hell out of her on the ground. I won’t describe it because it wasn’t pretty.

  I heard a din behind me as I was punching her—obviously people were upset about this freak attack taking place in Their Majesties’ presence (by somebody dressed as a witch, no less).

  The moment Gráinne was down for the count, the cocoon engulfing Tristan broke apart and vanished. But instead of seeming freed from it, he collapsed as if his bones were liquid, and he landed in a heap on the green-carpeted ground beside his mantle, his arms and legs splayed out at unnatural angles, as if he literally were a ragdoll. His face was contorted, not as if he were in pain but more as if he were fatally confused about his state of being. And his breathing was the worst of all—a rasping sound as loud as real speech, as if he were being both scorched and suffocated from within.

  I screamed, “Tristan!” and let go of Gráinne to throw myself toward him, but two guards were immediately on me. Each at one shoulder, they hoisted me so my feet dangled an inch off the ground. I kicked at both of them. They lowered my feet to the ground, and one of them twisted my arm painfully behind my back and held it there.

  Pandemonium was breaking out. Their Royal Majesties were being hustled out of the building with their bodyguards, the royal court fast on their tail.

  “’Tis a witch! A true witch!” hollered one of my captors.

  “She is not a witch!” called Richard Burbage from some distance off, forgetting I was also not a she. He was mingling with the toffs, bathing in their flattery. “She is one of the players. I will vouch—” And then his jaw dropped open. “The woman behind her on the ground there,” he said, growing pale. “She—” And then realizing it would be a death sentence to call out his favorite Irishwoman as a witch, he said, uncertainly, “She upset the lad you’re holding there, it’s naught to do with the court. I’d set both of them free out on the highway and think no more about it.”

  And then he vanished backstage, gesturing the remaining players to follow after. They did. People were streaming from the tent. Most of the court was already gone.

  But not everyone.

  “Lady Emilia, I beseech you!” I shouted, trying not to move because I didn’t want the guard to dislocate my shoulder. “You have a witch in your employ who just tried to kill my brother, will you do nothing to help us?”

  Lady Emilia, elegant as ever, calmly contemplated the two crumpled forms on the ground. Gráinne was cursing, spitting out blood, trying gingerly to sit up. Tristan remained unmoving except for his chest, which heaved with raspy breaths.

  “Release the lad,” Emilia said to the guards crisply. They looked at each other and back at her, but my arm remained held most uncomfortably behind my back. “This woman”—with a dismissive wave toward Gráinne—“wormed her way into the tent with me on false pretenses, and the lad was doing all of us a favor by attacking her, for she’s a common thief and surely would have taken money from some nobleman’s purse. But because of the boy’s timely action, she had no chance to attempt such a crime, so there is no reason to arrest her. Remove her from the palace grounds.”

  “She’s a witch!” I shouted. “His Majesty—”

  “She is not a witch,” Emilia interrupted curtly. “I will not condemn her, but she is none of mine. Remove her. Release the lad, I want a word with him.”

  The pressure on my arm vanished. I shook it out, glaring at the one who’d held me. They both ignored me, heading toward Gráinne. Very roughly, they hauled her up from the ground, and as she protested furiously, they dragged her from the tent.

  We were alone now, except for a handful of servants rolling up the Turkish rugs and beginning to take the benches off the risers. Emilia moved in very close to me, smelling of lavender, and said sotto voce, “I know Gráinne to be a witch. Of course. She presented herself to me as the one who’d tricked Master Tilney into changing the play, and requested if she might attend me as a servant to enjoy the success of her endeavors. The uniqueness of the situation inclined me to say yes. But I had no idea she schemed of such action under His Majesty’s very nose.”

  “You should have called her out for it!” I said impatiently, gesturing to Tristan. “Will you help me—”

  “Listen,” she said in a rebuking whisper. “’Tis my sworn duty to protect the court from magic. ’Tis the sole reason I kept my head when I admitted to witchery.”

  “And yet you helped Gráinne to poison the Macbeth script.”

  “There must be no witchcraft performed in Whitehall Palace on my watch, so my position is that this was not witchcraft, and Gráinne is not a witch. If she is known as one, she will burn for it, but so will I.”

  “My brother is hurt because you let her enter with you,” I said furiously. “Make it up to me by healing him. Now.”

  Emilia followed my gesture to where Tristan lay moaning on the ground. Some of the servants were peeking around the risers and the royal dais to see who it was. “I have it in hand,” Emilia said loudly, and they all stopped looking. Or at least, they became better at pretending not to look. Emilia considered Tristan. His face was nearly purple from the effort of breathing. I’d fucked this up. I hadn’t protected him. My throat clenched.

  “He is dying,” Emilia said softly.

  “So heal him!” I hissed ferociously. “For God’s sake, surely for once magic can be used for something good!”

  “He is dying from a spell that cannot be undone,” said Emilia. “That is the power of that particular spell. If he dies from Gráinne’s spell, he will vanish in every Strand.”

  I panicked. “Don’t let that happen!”

  She shushed me like a schoolmarm. My hands were out in front of me, fingers splayed, shaking, pleading.

  “You’re a powerful witch, do something. Do something.” I started sobbing uncontrollably. “Are you literally powerless to do anything to help him?”

  “I can remove his pain,” she said, still perusing him.

  Not grasping her meaning, I said, “Well, then do that! Obviously! Do it now!”

  She gestured impatiently for me to shut up, her gaze still on Tristan. I clamped my lips closed and took one large step back to demonstrate compliance. Emilia held her hands over Tristan as if she were warming them at a fire. Her lips moved in a soft murmur. Her eyes closed. She leaned closer in toward him, her hands approaching but not touching his body. After one especially loud rasp, his breathing began to calm, soften, slow. After about two minutes, he was breathing normally again. I sighed with relief and relaxed—every muscle in my body had been tense as a guy rope.

  The red in Tristan’s face diminished with the pain of his breathing. He looked normal now, eyes half-open, as if he were contentedly drunk. For about three breaths, I thought he’d be fine. But then the gentling effect continued. Each breath was longer but shallower, like he was forgetting how to breathe but didn’t care. His face grew paler. The breaths grew further apart and more enervated. The thought lines on his forehead softened. This all happened so gradually, over about ten minutes, that I didn’t realize he had stopped breathing completely, until Emilia said, “He’s gone.”

  I felt a roar erupting from me, but she gestured me to quiet so harshly that somehow I stopped myself from shouting. Her eyes darted to the side and I understood she was telling me not to draw attention. I stared at her, horrified, eyes watering, breath staggered. “Why?” I managed to whine.

  With an expression of sympathy, Emilia took a step toward me and reached for my hand. I slapped her away and knelt beside my brother’s body, sobbing soundlessly. He was already cool and horribly still. I grabbed his head, tried to roll him onto his back for CPR, but his body was still limp and I couldn’t lever any part of him into
position. Gagging on my sobs, I began dragging his limbs like deadweights, trying to make him look normal. The green carpeting Tilney had laid down everywhere was as sticky as felt and the friction made it even harder to move him. I had to turn away to vomit twice. By this point most of my witch makeup had rubbed off, either on Tristan’s clothes or on my own costume. Finally I’d arranged him squarely enough on his back that CPR might work. I moved up to his head, cupped one hand under his neck and one on his forehead, and leaned down to give him mouth-to-mouth. When I felt his cold limp lips, I burst into sobs that this time I could not quiet. I pulled away, draped myself over him, and screamed with grief. Emilia didn’t shush me. She must have ordered the servants out of the hall.

  I collected myself and moved back to his chest, measured up from the bottom of his sternum, and began CPR, even though I knew it was useless. When things are horrible and you know you can’t fix them, it still feels important to try. The trying is a form of fixing yourself.

  I don’t know how long Emilia left me alone with Tristan’s body—maybe just ten minutes—but when I finally looked up it felt like hours later. Emilia was standing about ten strides away from me, her back to me. At her feet lay a new corpse, curled on its side facing toward us, naked. A man. Who the fuck had she killed now? Tilney? I rose shakily to my feet and slowly walked in her direction.

  As I approached I realized it wasn’t a corpse. The man was very still, but his torso was moving as he breathed. He was a large man, with coloring like Tristan’s. Because it was Tristan.

  What?

  I flinched backward in shock, pivoted, and saw that Tristan still lay dead on the ground behind me. I turned back to Emilia and there was Tristan, alive but unconscious, at her feet.

  “What?” I said faintly.

  “His cloak,” Emilia said. I was confused, then understood. I went back to the corpse and apologetically picked up the black wool mantle lying beside it. I brought it to Emilia and, at her gesture, laid it over Tristan. It was definitely Tristan. He had a different haircut than his dead doppelgänger, but otherwise it was precisely the same man. I tucked the wool around him to make it snug.

  “Explain this,” I said shakily. “Please. I don’t understand.”

  She reached for my hand again, and this time I let her take it. “Had I done nothing,” she said quietly, “he would have died from Gráinne’s spell. It would have been horrifically painful and he would have vanished across every Strand. But I killed him before her spell did. So all that happened was I killed him. He was dead on this Strand and only this Strand.”

  “Okay, so who is this?” I demanded, shaking my free hand frantically at the curled figure before us.

  “This is your brother,” she said calmly. “I found him on another Strand and Summoned him here. But I could not do that until your brother on this Strand was dead, until all sense was gone from him and all that was left was an object. Then it was safe to bring him from another Strand. It was exhausting”—I only noticed when she said this, that she looked exhausted.—“but once he was no longer living here, it was a possibility.”

  I stared stupidly at both forms of my brother. The Tristan at our feet was more wakeful than when I’d first approached, his breath deeper and clearer.

  “But,” I said, trying to banish my brain cloud, “isn’t it terrible for everyone in the other Strand that he is gone from there?”

  She shook her head. “He was about to die in that Strand, so in a sense I’ve saved him twice.”

  “How was he about to die?”

  “Gráinne was about to murder him in the Globe Theatre. I found him and Summoned him before she could begin the spell.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly and stupidly.

  “He is not exactly the same man,” said Emilia. “That Strand is very similar to this one, but not identical. There may be some confusion.”

  Tristan made a sound and we both looked down. His eyes were open, and he stared up at us, confounded. His eyes focused on my face and he blinked rapidly. “Robin?” he whispered.

  “Hey, big guy,” I said.

  He shook his head, sat up. The cloak tumbled off his upper torso and he glanced down, realized he was naked. “Where am I?” he asked, and his voice was exactly Tristan’s voice, which was fantastic. A nervous breathy laugh escaped me.

  “This is the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace,” said Emilia.

  “Why am I not at the Globe?” he asked, staring at her. “I was just at the Globe. Watching Macbeth. I thought . . .” He looked at me. “Robin, this is crazy, but one of the witches reminded me of you. And now you’re here? What’s on your face?”

  I almost passed out. Some other me on some other Strand had attempted this same DEDE. She had just lost her brother too.

  “I have brought you to a different Strand,” Emilia said. “You will remain in the Strand for the rest of your life. Robin, give us a moment.”

  I threw myself on Tristan and hugged him hard. He closed one arm around me tentatively, patted me once. “She’ll explain it,” I said. “I am so glad to see you.” I stepped away, and Emilia kneeled beside him.

  I went backstage to see if any of the costumes had been left behind so we could dress him. There was nothing. I’d have to change into my street clothes and offer him my witch robe until we could hunt something else up. I was shaking all over, the confusion and adrenaline rush pushing aside any kind of big-picture thoughts. Tristan was dead! Tristan was alive! I’m pretty sure Shakespeare wrote a speech about those emotions at war with each other, but I couldn’t remember it. Also Ned was gone. But the play was safe from magic. But Ned was gone. I had to push that away for now. I was dizzy with . . . everything. All of it. Just all of it.

  I changed into my clothes and carried my witch cloak back to where Emilia still sat beside Tristan. Tristan looked spooked, which is not something I could ever have believed before I saw it. She had pivoted him to face away from the corpse, but he must have caught a glimpse and understood what he was seeing. I thought he was keeping his shit together pretty well.

  Emilia looked up at me. “Are you ready to be Homed?” she asked me. “I will Send your brother to arrive shortly after you.”

  “Wait, what about the UDET thing?” I said. She gave me a blank expression. I looked at Tristan. “The thing Rebecca wrote the white paper about, that when you’re Homed, you have to have been gone for the same amount of time that you were away for, like if you spent a week in 1606 you have to come back a week later in our time—”

  “That’s only if you’re being Homed,” said Emilia gently. “He isn’t from this Strand so I’m not Homing him. I am Sending him someplace he’s never been before. I want him to arrive there a day after you, so that you can prepare the way for him. Explain to others who precisely it is who’s coming there and why.”

  I looked at Tristan. “You must want to know what I’m doing here,” I said.

  “Time enough for that once you are both in the future,” Emilia said with gentle firmness. “Stand away from your brother, and I will Home you.”

  I began to write this, as you know, as soon as I was up from the ODEC.

  He should arrive tomorrow.

  Post by Melisande Stokes on her personal GRIMNIR channel

  It was a weird morning. We were all at East House together, but all we could do, until Tristan arrived, was hover in limbo. As individuals and also as a group, hovering in limbo isn’t a thing we know how to do. Robin was a mess, which is understandable. So was Rebecca, which is even more understandable; I was the only one getting her man back.

  Of course I was thrilled and relieved. But also nervous. This wasn’t precisely our Tristan Lyons. He’d been snatched from obliteration in another Strand of the multiverse, and that Strand had its own Melisande Stokes, with whom he’d worked closely for the past five years. As closely as I’d worked with “my” Tristan? In other words, not to put too fine a point on it . . . I don’t have to put too fine a point on it, the question here is obvio
us.

  I had left his clothes neatly folded on a stool by the ODEC. I don’t know why I did that—he’s military, he can fold a shirt with the precision that Robin folds origami. Mostly it just gave me something to do for two minutes. Robin was resting in Erzsébet’s room, and Erzsébet was reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in case Gráinne had decided to infect a different Shakespeare play; Mortimer was at Frank’s computer; Rebecca was restlessly dividing her time between her bookkeeping desk and reorganizing the pantry shelves. I was researching both the Sicilian estate (now that it was famous enough to be researchable) and Berkowski’s eclipse photograph, which is still something that happened, because the Royal Observatory is still built where it originally was.

  Rebecca noticed the noises downstairs first and alerted the rest of us, so I called up to Robin. By the time we heard footsteps on the stairs, we were all clustered around the door to the basement, holding our collective breath.

  Other than his haircut, the man who emerged into the hallway looked exactly like our Tristan. He glanced around at all of us with mild confusion, a very Tristanesque why are you all standing around when there’s work to be done look.

  “Hey,” he said.

  We all nodded silently.

  “Stop that,” he said. “I’m here. I’m me. We’re over it.” He looked specifically at me. “Hey, Stokes,” he said, in exactly the tone I needed to hear, and tousled my hair. To avoid bursting into tears, I fake-punched his arm. He looked pleased, clapped an arm around my shoulders, and gave me a quick squeeze—the biggest public display of affection he’s ever engaged in.