2
Gillian hadn’t slept and she was feeling reckless
She didn’t really care what she did or said. The only thing she wanted was to be with him again but she knew he’d gone. She knew he’d been taken away. Perhaps somewhere inside herself she wanted to keep control of her emotions and not let anyone know what she was feeling, but the whole world seemed like a great joke, some kind of torture. Life really was not worth living without him
She ate breakfast mechanically. Got her books. Walked up to The Quad without knowing what the weather was like. She was numb outside and in. During English she sat next to Angela who prodded her and told her stories about the strange man she’d seen again when she was out running. “I swear it’s this bloke,” Angela had said, tapping the black and white portrait at the front of the play they were reading. “Shakeswhatever.”
“So?”
“Oh, very nice.”
Ah, the torture of English. Romeo and Juliet, of course. Gillian had hummed, counted and stared at the cracks in the walls, anything not to have to concentrate on the words and names: his name. Why was life like this? When you didn’t want to see or hear anything about something it was all around you. Sometimes everything moved so slowly it seemed as though nothing was going to happen, but other times it all changed and moved so quickly, almost too quickly
The sea, she thought. I am like an ocean, always changing, always the same. I am an Ocean planet, pulled this way and that by forces beyond my control. When I fly too near the sun I boil under clouds like Venus. I erupt. As I float away from the nearest star I freeze over, but there is life in my depths. Fossils. Reminders that there was once life here.
These thoughts calmed her
Gillian pictured herself adrift on a vast ocean, somewhere in the middle of nowhere with nothing to see but water and sky. It was late afternoon and the sea was a deep, milky blue and there she was in the middle of it, a drop but also part of the whole. It was warm there, bobbing on the waves, sinking in the troughs. Perhaps she had fallen from the sky, or off the back of the boat. She had no fear of the sea creatures and no fear of death. She was part of the world, all right for the moment, bobbing like a cork or a dinghy
She would lie on her back and look up at the sky. The clouds looked like breaking waves might from the seabed. She thought about the wonder of the earth: of the atmosphere, of weather, of oxygen and life. She was lying in liquid, which only managed to stay stuck to the rock because of the speed at which the rock was turning. The rock was small, in the scheme of things, one of many rocks swirling around a giant ball of fire, but that ball of fire was also rather small. There were many balls of fire, most bigger than hers, swirling around a dark centre like water going down a plughole. And there were many of these starry whirlpools spinning at different points in the vast universe, itself expanding into nothing, creating itself, starting and ending
The universe didn’t care if she lived or died but he did, wherever he was, and she could still feel the burn of his kiss on her lips, the thrill of his touch in the palms of her hands and the searing brand of her love burnt into her heart
She could see him and feel him but she knew he wasn’t there – here – and, snapping her eyes open and walking out of the class as though hypnotised, she knew she had to find him
She would do anything to find him and be with him. Nothing else was important: nothing else in the world
We must only be together.
If he has gone, I will go where he has gone.
“Gillian?”
Gil looked up and saw Kizzie in the reflection in the window. In another mood, on another day, she might have noticed that Kizzie was not her usual self. She might have noticed she looked drawn and sad. But Gillian, after a quick nod of the head, continued folding clothes
“What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“For what?”
Gillian looked up to think of an answer but she couldn’t really put into words what she wanted to say. “I don’t know. To see him. I’m going, that’s all I know.”
“But where?” Kizzie closed the dorm door and came around to lean against the desk in front of the window, right in front of Gillian
“I don’t know. Don’t try and stop me, Kiz, I’m not in the mood.”
“How can you find him if you don’t know where he is?”
I’ll follow my heart, Gillian wanted to say. That made sense in her head but there was no way she could say it out loud. “I’m just gonna look.”
“You don’t think he’s in the school?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
Gillian looked at Kizzie properly for the first time. There was something about her which was different. “I don’t know. A feeling. Why?”
“Because you’re right,” Kizzie answered. Kizzie couldn’t look Gillian in the eye. Kizzie had taken off one of her special rings and was tracing a shape in the dust on the desk. Without thinking she had made a heart
“How do you know?”
Kizzie blew out a long lungful of air. “Oh, Gil. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Kiz? What’s going on?”
“I’ve done something.”
Gillian straightened up. “What?”
“I made him come here.”
Gillian took a moment to process the information. “You? How?”
“I wrote it all down.”
Gillian cocked her head. “You made him come here? Romeo?”
Kizzie nodded. “Yep.”
“Kizzie, what the hell’s going on?”
Kizzie backed away to her bed and sat down. She talked as she looked down at her hands. “I made him come here. You told me the story about him, about meeting him on holiday. I wanted to make you happy. You know I have Library activity. They let me in the Eleusinian Room. Well –” she smiled at Gillian sadly and shrugged – “looks like I have The Power.” Then, quietly, “Or. I did.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kizzie?”
“I don’t know. I thought he was here.” She looked at the door. “Maybe they’ve written him away, I don’t know. I only know they found out. Firmin and the Magistrate. Sam and Leana. They’ve changed things. Sam wrote it. Somehow they found out. I didn’t think they would.”
“Kizzie what were you thinking?”
“I didn’t do it to hurt anyone! I didn’t think it would work!”
“But they told you they wanted to promote you, didn’t they?”
“I wrote it way before all of that. Ages ago. One day. One stupid day, and I don’t even know why. It was stupid. I’m stupid!”
“Incredible.”
“At least you met him,” Kizzie tried, quietly
Gillian stared at her in silence. “I’m going.”
“Wait, Gil.”
“I’m done with you. Stay out of my life!”
“But there’s something. I’ve been thinking. There’s something we can do.”
Gillian stopped, folded her arms and stared again at the other girl. “What?”
“Alain.”
“What?”
“Alain Verne.”
“He’s dead.”
“He survived. I’ve seen him this morning.”
Gillian was about to remonstrate when she thought, get to the crux of this. “What about him?”
“He can help us. You.” Kizzie stood up. “He can help him, too – Romeo.”
“What? Kizzie? What are you thinking? No more riddles!”
“Look, I’m in trouble, all right? I know that. They’ve spoken to me – whatever power I had – which I didn’t even know I had, all right? – has gone. They’ve taken that away from me. I have School Service until I die, basically, and can’t go home until, like, next Christmas, but that’s fine. That’s like – whatever. I deserve it, or whatever. Maybe. I don’t know. But what hurts it me is what you’re feeling. I never wanted this, Gil. I just wanted to make
you happy, you know. We were studying Romeo and Juliet, you were talking about that guy, I had just got together with Zak, everything was great. I just wanted everything to be great for you too. I didn’t want any of this.”
“But what’s this all got to do with Alain Verne?”
Another long sigh came from Kizzie. “He said he’ll help you.”
Gillian re-crossed her arms. “Help me how?”
“Help you know what happened to Romeo. Make sure he’s all right. Maybe even get a message to him.”
“Why?”
“Because he likes you, Gil. He feels sorry for you, you know. Plus, he can. I can’t now, so he’s the only one who can do it.”
Gillian thought about this. “You spoke to him?”
“Just now. I had to. They made me go there and apologise for nearly killing him.”
“I don’t get why he wants to help me?”
“I told you. Because he likes you. He doesn’t want to see you sad.”
“And that’s it? He’s going to do it just to be nice?”
“Yes!” Kizzie folded back the duvet and straightened her pillowcase. “And, like, he said, you know, that maybe you would think about going out with him?”
“What?”
“No – Gillian, no! Come back.” Kizzie got between the other girl and the door. “Stop!”
“Let me out!”
“He didn’t say you had to go out with him, just that you’d think about it.”
“Move, Kizzie!”
“Gillian, he likes you!” Kizzie searched out Gillian’s eyes. “Think about it. This could work for you. This is the most sensible thing!”
“It’s disgusting!”
“You never want to see him again, then – your husband – is that it?”
Gillian stood back. “What?”
“Because that’s what’s going to happen if you pass this up.”
“I can’t.”
“Just think about it.” Kizzie took her chance and led Gillian by the shoulders towards her own bed. “Sit down. Let’s just talk about this calmly.”
“This is terrible.”
“This is a chance, though. Your best chance.”
“Has he really gone?”
Kizzie knew she meant Romeo. “He has.”
“Where?”
“They didn’t say. Perhaps back to the island? Italy? Home? I don’t know.”
Gillian brightened. “I could go there!”
“They said they’d banished him.” Kizzie sighed. “Something tells me he’s not going to be that easy to find.”
“Where did you bring him from?”
“I don’t know. I only mentioned that he looked like the boy from the island. I don’t know if he was the real boy or someone else. I have no idea. I just wrote what I wrote. I wasn’t thinking. It was a bit of fun.” Her voice trailed off at the end of the sentence
“And Alain?” Gillian choked a little on the name. “Can he help me find him?”
“He said he’d help you know if he was all right,” Kizzie explained. “That’s as far as he would go when I talked to him. But you can talk to him. You can ask him to do what you want.”
“But I have to be – what? – his girlfriend?”
Kizzie nodded quickly and half-closed her eyes. She was up on tiptoes. “More or less.”
Gillian buried her head in her hands and groaned
“When you find out Romeo’s all right, you can dump him, I guess,” Kizzie said, resting a consoling hand on Gillian’s shoulder
3
Will Shakespeare was sitting alone on the back lawn beside the frozen fishpond
He was thinking about the images which had come to him in the night, images he didn’t know what to do with
Sometimes whole stories came to him, visions, which he could see and hear but couldn’t remember long enough to write down. That night the images had driven him from the warmth of his bed, outside to look at the few stars he could see in the sky. He felt unslept and dislocated, as though he might be hovering just above his own head, looking down at his growing bald spot – ah! Still too young for this! – and the black eye of the fishpond next to his hat
Little things please little minds, he thought, remembering Ovid, which he’d been browsing before bed. Ah, he’d always had these problems, ever since he was a child. He’d never slept well. Always made up stories. Always been able to imagine very vivid scenes from tiny actions in real life. Always been able to read people. Writing had always been his first language
Dawn sent up a pink flush, a cock crowed and Mr Shakespeare stood up on his rickety ankles and creaking knees and set off through the crinkly, jack-frosted dew back to the ruins of the monastery. Somewhere in there Bethsabe was warming herself beside Uric and he tried not to let the thought hurt him. He could never be in love with her. It could never happen. It must never happen
He ducked into his jagged-eye doorway and pushed aside the damp sacking. The small room he stepped into smelled of cheesy feet and soot and he nudged the figure under the mounds of old, moulding blankets until Romeo – for that was what the boy he’d found in the snow yesterday had said his name was – poked up his head and swore
“Eat something and come to my room to begin your lessons,” Will told him, not bothering to wait for a reply. Will was eager to teach: to actually teach someone something. “You’ve slept enough. If you want to stay here you must come to class. Idleness will do you no favours. We’ll breakfast after.”
Romeo arrived a few minutes later, white-faced and disorientated. Will had lit a fire and set out some books on the table before a wall. It was still dark out and two candles and the flames provided the only light in the room
“I will instruct you in the ancient art of arguing in utramque partem,” Will began
“Latin?” sighed Romeo. I’m in some terrible nightmare, he thought. When he’d awoken that morning he’d felt sure he’d be with Gillian again. But he was here. In some kind of grimly realistic, stinking past
Find out what’s happening. Find her.
“Today you will learn to apply inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria and pronuciatio. You will learn to speak on both sides of an argument. You will see that any event – anything that happens to any of us – can be viewed, and written, from different perspectives.”
Oh, I believe that, Romeo thought. Oh, how I believe that.
He concentrated on the lesson and enjoyed his work. He learned different tricks to create different effects. He might repeat something three times to make sure it worked, worked, worked. He might put two strange words together to say the work was enjoyably horrible. He might make all the words start or contain the same letter or sound to show that he’d studied several samples of variant styles to showcase what he wanted to demonstrate and was thus sated
But behind it all, Romeo was planning on what he would say when he saw Gillian again. He didn’t know where he was but he knew that if he had come here from wherever Gillian lived, there must be some way to get back there, or, at the worst, for her to get here. The fact that he was here meant there had to be some connection between the two places
All was a dream – or nightmare – and the only thing real was the love he felt for Gillian. That was the only thing he could feel with all his heart and soul and the only thing in this whole mad episode which he felt he had some control over. The reality of their love, that vivid feeling, was more real than the school had been, certainly more real than the flashes of his old life he sometimes remembered; more real than this stinking, cold place
Their love was his and Gillian’s – no one else’s. It was such a perfect love that it could never be something he’d invented. It was real. They were real. Love was real and this was a kind of test – a blackness, a vagueness which existed all around the warm sun that was at the heart of everything. This was a test, yes. He had been shown perfect love once and it was too perfect to be a lie. It was too wonderful. Too true
“You smile?”
“Put the book down.”
Romeo rubbed his eyes. He saw it was dark again, perhaps five or six in the afternoon. Twilight. He leaned back on the hard, wooden stool he used as a chair. Somewhere behind him his teacher was rummaging through a pile of books. “Why do you say your name is Romeo?” Will asked
“Because it is, sir.”
“Not your real name, though, is it?”
“I can’t remember my real name, sir.”
Will was holding a book to his chest. The boy had told him little or nothing as to how he had arrived, naked, at the school and Will had not pried. He knew the value of privacy and could tell that the boy had undergone some great mental upheaval. He thought perhaps he was a runaway – perhaps his whole family had been taken to heaven by the plague or religious zealots. One never knew; one only knew not to ask too many prying questions. “Who calls you Romeo?”
The boy stared at the large granite stones ahead of him. “My one true love,” he answered. His voice was a tone higher than usual, Will noticed. He was speaking from his heart
“Does she live?”
“Yes. I hope.”
“You know not?”
“For sure, no. The last I saw of her, yes. It’s more likely she believes me dead.”
Will guessed the young lovers had run into problems with the girl’s family. Perhaps the girl was married. “Her name?”
“Gillian.”
“Not Juliet?”
Romeo looked over his shoulder. “No. Why?”
“Since you’ve been so honest with me, I might as well be honest with you.” Will took out the volume he was holding and passed it to Romeo. “I’m trained as a schoolmaster and I shall instruct you to the best of my abilities but my great ambition is to write for the stage.” He watched the boy read the title
“The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke,” Romeo read
“It’s poetry,” Will explained. “A new version of an old story. Goes back as far as Xenophon of Ephesus. Old, old story. About lovers.”
Romeo raised an eyebrow. “Only that? About lovers?”
“You should read it.”
Cold Fire Page 10