A Midsummer Eve's Nightmare

by Fletcher Crow, Donna

  Dirk looked at the broken window. “What happened here? Neighbor kids been playing baseball?”

  Erin sighed. “Dirk, make yourself useful. There’s a broom and dustpan behind the kitchen door. Then you can find some cardboard and close up that hole.”

  “Right.” Dirk grinned and headed for the kitchen as ordered. “And then we’ll order in some pizza and stuff ourselves.”

  “Food, ooooh!” Elizabeth groaned.

  Richard looked at Tori who had completed her ministrations to the cat. “Will you be all right here tonight?”

  “Of course. We’re fine. Really. Don’t worry. I don’t have wardrobe call tonight. Dirk and I can take care of Erin. I told you, she’s just a little unstrung from everything that’s happened. You two go have a good time.”

  Elizabeth didn’t argue, but she reminded her sister to lock the door and windows and close the curtains as soon as it got dark. And a short time later the mound of angel hair pasta covered in a delicate sauce of Italian tomatoes and fresh herbs was more than enough to take her mind off the earlier alarms. Then, as they crossed the flower-banked courtyard to the theatre, a joyful Renaissance dance tune floated over the wall. Elizabeth couldn’t resist. With her arm still through Richard’s she put the alarms of the afternoon firmly behind her and entered Shakespeare’s world doing a tiny skip-step.

  Henry V

  “In Cases of defense ‘tis best to weigh

  The enemy more mighty than he seems.”

  - Dauphin

  Chapter 8

  AFTER STROLLING LEISURELY, STILL arm-in-arm, around the old English dancers and musicians, and tonight, happily accepting the wares of the tart-seller, Richard and Elizabeth took their seats. “This should be good,” Richard said. “The histories are my favorite Shakespeare.”

  Elizabeth nodded and squeezed his arm. “Me too. I’m such a sucker for spectacle. All the banner waving and trumpet blaring.”

  Richard wrinkled his forehead. “Well, yes, but I like them because they are history— factual. I read that Ashland is the only festival in the country that does the entire canon of Chronicle histories in rotation, uncut.”

  Elizabeth sighed and grinned at Richard. She knew everyone said marriages weren’t made in heaven, but surely theirs was an exception. Where else in all the world could there be a man that so entirely suited her? And she had been right about coming here for their honeymoon. In spite of the interruptions, this was one of the most romantic spots on earth. Especially for two English teachers who often felt more at home in Shakespeare’s world than in their own. When the flag went up and the trumpet sounded Elizabeth applauded with as much enthusiasm as anyone who had walked across London Bridge to the south bank of the Thames to stand in the pit of the Fortune Theatre almost 400 years ago.

  A young page walked downstage displaying a placard that read:

  The Chronicle History

  Of

  King Henry V

  With his battell fought

  At Agincourt in France

  By

  Will Shakespeare

  Will be played by the lord Chamberlain’s men

  This day

  In the day of grace 1600

  Again the trumpets sounded. Elizabeth’s eyes misted with her love of history, love of the English language, love of the man beside her. “Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?” the chorus asked.

  And Elizabeth’s heart answered, yes. She was ready to see the unfolding tale of one of her favorite heroes, the man Shakespeare held to be the ideal king—human, hearty and heroic— with a love of his people, the law, and God.

  The Church urged Henry to war. His nobles urged Henry to war. And then the Dauphin insulted Henry with a gift of tennis balls. Now all the youth of England were on fire. Until at the French court the Dauphin warned his father the king, “In cases of defense ‘tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.”

  Elizabeth jerked upright. The beautiful bubble of a dream she had been floating in burst. What about the enemy they must defend Erin, and by association, Tori, against? In spite of Sally’s death were she and Richard still thinking of the enemy as no more than an annoying prankster who was scaring an overly emotional young woman and proving a nuisance to their honeymoon? Would they be best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seemed?

  “In fierce tempest is he coming, in thunder and in earthquake, like a jove,” the Duke of Exeter warned the French court, and Elizabeth shuddered.

  In spite of the battle alarums sounding onstage and the flourishing of banners that Elizabeth loved so much, she made herself focus on the real-life battle she had tried to shut out. What had she missed because she had failed to concentrate on the problem? Had there been someone at the window, and Richard, not taking it seriously enough, simply jumped to the easy conclusion that Erin had seen a cat? What about Erin’s tyrannical father? Could he have connections with the mob? Were they all in way over their heads? No. That seemed far more fanciful than any plot Shakespeare could have devised. Instead of conjecture, concentrate on what you know, she told herself. What about the vitamin tablets? What had they overlooked there?

  As so often happened, her subconscious mind had a suggestion prepared for her. She only had to ask the question for the answer to come to the surface. She leaned over to Richard who was as glued to the action on the stage as she had been earlier. “Richard,” she nudged his arm to get his attention. He leaned his ear toward her. “That potassium chloride. Erin needed it to prevent heart attack-like symptoms. Could too much of it cause a heart attack in someone without her deficiency?”

  “I don’t know. We should find out,” he whispered. “There’s a health food store in town. They might know.” He turned back to the stage.

  Elizabeth’s mind continued working on the problem. Had they been misled? Erin had self-centeredly assumed she was the victim, and they had gone along with her assumption. Was Sally the intended victim all along, and Erin just a handy source for the murder weapon? But surely not. There was no need for such elaborate contrivance. As Richard just said, there was a health food store on Main Street. Potassium chloride was sold over the counter. Besides, there was no indication that Sally had been overdosed. But then, would a natural substance like potassium chloride have shown up in a routine autopsy?

  The stirring cry, “God for Harry! England! And Saint George!” brought her back to the stage.

  But she couldn’t settle to complete concentration on the play. When the Irish captain said, “The town is beseeched, the trumpet calls us to the breach; we talk and do nothing; ‘tis shame for us all, ‘tis shame to stand still,’” she felt the trumpet blast was her call to arms. As much as she longed to withdraw and be quiet with Richard, Erin needed their help—it would be a shame to stand still. She must take up the challenge and try to sort it out.

  With that determination her mind settled and she was free to return her attention to the scene before her. “That island of England breeds very valiant creatures,” the French lord declared.

  And then came one of her favorite scenes in the play—in all of Shakespeare, really—as King Henry, disguised in a rough cloak, visited his troops on the eve of the battle, bringing “a little touch of Harry in the night.”

  “Methinks the king is but a man as I am,” he told the simple men around their campfire, and the talk continued—talk of duty, honor, loyalty—until alone in front of his tent, Harry prayed for his men, “O God of battles! Steel my soldiers’ hearts. Possess them not with fear. . .”

  Elizabeth thought her heart could be no fuller. Then she glanced at Richard’s beloved, rugged profile, and she caught her breath. He was mouthing with the actor Henry’s early morning address to his troops:

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. . .

  And gentlemen in England now a-bed

  Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not there
<
br />   And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks

  That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

  Her heart swelled even greater in gratitude for her husband, while onstage the English victory and the marriage of Henry of England and Catherine of France were celebrated with all due pomp and ceremony through “the full course of their glory.”

  When the applause ended Elizabeth turned to her husband. “Richard, we have to do something.”

  “Yes, I know.” He took her hand that rested so lightly on his arm.

  “We have to call the doctor. And the police. And we have to learn lots more about Sally. And we have to—”

  Richard put a finger to her lips. “Hush, love. We have to go to bed.”

  That wasn’t what she meant, but she didn’t argue.

  Chapter 9

  ELIZABETH AWOKE EARLY THE next morning. Sun streamed through the lace curtains covering the bay window of their room. She stretched and gave a contented sigh. “Oh, what a beautiful day.”

  Richard, with damp hair smelling of herbal shampoo, came in from the bathroom and presented her with a daisy. “A beautiful day, indeed. Know what today is?” He leaned across the bed and kissed her.

  She pushed herself upright against the lace-edged pillows. “Oh, Richard! It’s our anniversary.”

  “Right you are. We’ve been married exactly two months today.” And then his smile faded ever so slightly to reveal that vulnerability that was so endearing. “Any regrets?”

  She twined her arms around his neck. “Just that I didn’t give in to you sooner.”

  He started kissing her just behind her left ear. He was one kiss away from her lips when the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs bonged the hour. “Oh,” she pulled away. “I’ve got to get dressed. We’re supposed to meet Tori for a backstage tour.”

  In the end they postponed their appointment for an hour to allow time to partake of a full brunch featuring fresh Oregon blackberries, cinnamon coffee cake and cheesy scrambled eggs. So that with satisfied smiles and stomachs they entered the catacombs that stretched behind, between and beneath the indoor Bowmer Theatre and the outdoor Elizabethan stage. Just as Tori led them into the scenery construction area, one of the actors who was conducting a public tour concluded his spiel. “Our scenic carpenters are artists with wood, metal and Styrofoam. For our nine plays this season they used 15,000 board feet of lumber, 300 sheets of plywood, 400 yards of muslin, 150 gallons of paint—and endless supplies of glue, nails and staples to make it all hang together.”

  Tori grinned as the group moved on. “I didn’t know all that. You should have taken his tour.” She was showing them the variety of bushes and rocky caverns that would make up Prospero’s enchanted island in The Tempest when the first of the stage operations people arrived carrying the entire court of France from last night’s production in five pieces. These they placed next to the ramparts of Othello’s Cyprus, then turned to bear out the tall white pillars of a broad porticoed antebellum mansion. “They’re setting up for Twelfth Night,” Tori said. “This crew is incredible. They can strike the most elaborate set and transform it into something entirely different in two hours. And they do it every day for the whole season.”

  “So where were the flats that fell on Erin?” Elizabeth looked around her, trying to picture the accident. “Did it happen onstage here?”

  “Oh, no. We don’t use flats on the Elizabethan stage. At least not this season—I suppose they might sometimes. These were for An Enemy of the People in the Bowmer.”

  “Is she in that?”

  “No, I think she was just backstage watching the rehearsal. Apparently one of the electricians working on the catwalk dropped something and a whole pile went over. Sort of a dominoes thing, I guess.”

  Elizabeth watched the crew carrying the sets about. “But these things don’t look very heavy.”

  “Most of them aren’t. That’s why no one was hurt. It just spooked Erin.” Tori waved a hand at another stack of props all set to transform the world onstage. “It’s all sleight-of-hand and make-believe.”

  “Part of the magic,” Elizabeth said

  Tori nodded. “A dream in progress, some call it. Everyone around here is an absolute addict. Not just the actors and directors, but every carpenter, seamstress, props person—even the college kids who come here and do nothing but carry a banner in Henry all summer. Most of them have degrees in technical theatre or design, and they come from all over the country to work here. I can’t imagine anywhere you could get wider experience in just one summer.”

  Their guide moved them on to the sound engineer’s area where two technicians were testing the sound levels on various bird calls. Everything had to be reset after the mighty clash of armies at Agincourt last night. It was all fascinating, but Elizabeth’s mind was still back on Tori’s earlier comment. “Victoria, I know this probably isn’t the time or place, but we do need to talk. What you said about actors and all being absolute addicts. Gregg’s an actor. I mean, this is a fascinating world, but it is make-believe, like you said. And it can attract people that aren’t necessarily stable.” It was all too easy for Elizabeth to recall her own near-disaster in a similar fantasy setting. And she was the mature, levelheaded one.

  Tori’s frown was formidable, but Elizabeth soldiered on. “I mean, is this the world you want to live in for the rest of your life? Have you thought at all about the future? About a family?”

  Tori blinked at her behind her big, round glasses, bit her lip, then turned sharply. “This is one of our lighting consoles. We have a master electrician and five console operators—like Larry. We tease them about being part monkey.”

  They were now in the vast semi-dark space backstage of the Bowmer. Tori swung an arm upward to the open area above the Angus Bowmer stage, as high again as the proscenium arch, where an entire set could be flown between scenes. All around and crisscrossing it was a black iron catwalk from which protruded heavy iron rails and swinging bars supporting a jungle of lights. “The technicians spend almost as much time swinging upside down from those bars or leaning at 90 degree angles over the railings changing bulbs or adjusting a focus as they do at the consoles or in the follow spot booth.”

  Elizabeth nodded. She got the message loud and clear. It didn’t take a lecture of that length to tell her that her question had hit a sore spot with her sister. But it would have to wait. For the moment she concentrated on the jungle gym world high overhead and the opportunities it presented for mayhem. If someone had meant to drop something on Erin the possibilities seemed limitless. She wondered how much one of those lighting cans hanging from various steel beams weighed. And anyone could hide in the darkness up there. Anyone with a head for heights, that is.

  “Now, I’ve saved the best for last,” Tori broke in on her reverie. She led them through the green room, the actor’s prep area which is called the green room in every theatre in the world, no matter what color it is. Here, however, it was painted an appropriate light green. Paperback books, empty soda cans and an abandoned knitting bag littered tables and chairs. Tori led on down some stairs and opened the door on a huge, brightly lit room. Long cutting tables filled the center, sewing machines lined one wall, shelves and cupboards filled another, and costumes of every description bulged from lead pipe racks everywhere.

  Tori explained how the cutters took the designer’s drawing and transformed it into a pattern, then cut the fabric, and supervised the fitting and shaping of the costume as it became a final work of art through the finishing stages with first hands and seamstresses. “I’m just a seamstress since it’s my first year, but I’d love to work all the way up to designer.”

  Elizabeth longed to ask if Tori was sure about making a long-range commitment to the theatre, but she knew the query wouldn’t be welcomed. So she just listened as the lecture continued. “This season we built costumes for 257 characters. Here, let me show you Prospero’s cape.” She led into the wardrobe where several of the
running crew were checking costumes for rips or stains. The cape she held out to them was stunning: metallic gold and copper weave, over-painted in a black, red and green swirling pattern. Then the paint was embossed with metallic embroidery threat. “I worked on this for three days—about 18 hours a day.” With a final look of pride she hung the glittering masterpiece back on its rack.

  Next was the hairdressers’ and wigmakers’ department where the theatre’s stock of 200 wigs were maintained and special effects created for each character. “Every actor does his own makeup—it’s supposed to be an important part of getting into character. Some do their own beards and mustaches, too, but this department does the rest of it.”

  And finally the armory. “We order our swords, halbreds and battle-axes from Spain. But do our own ‘metalworking’ for shields, armor, crowns and such here.”

  Richard picked up a massive gold crown. “It’s so light.”

  “That’s mouage, a molding plastic. With metallic paint and antiquing it looks more like metal under the lights than real metal—and it’s pounds lighter for the actors. Lots fewer headaches that way.” Full plate armor, chain mail, leather armor—indeed, enough to equip a small army was arranged at one end of the room.

  “Oh, I said this was last. I forgot about props.” Tori led to another area immediately behind the Elizabethan stage where a long-haired young woman in jeans and a cotton blouse was carefully arranging a handful of letters on a table strewn with goblets, fans and assorted items that looked as if they would have done very well at a garage sale.

  “Hi, Hilary,” Tori greeted the woman, then turned back to her tourees. “Our props crew is amazing. They can make absolutely anything out of a box of ping pong balls, Styrofoam cups, a few feet of wooden doweling and some chicken wire. I think they must be the most creative people in the whole company.”

  Elizabeth turned to Hilary who was checking every item on the table against a list on her clipboard. “Do you do props for all the plays?”

  “There are seven in our crew. We work together making everything, but once the plays are in production we have specific assignments. Mine is to arrange props for every performance of Twelfth Night and Othello.”