Feast and Famine

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “They’re spies,” someone else shouted, and not an actor present failed to recognise the benefits of a careful rehearsal.

  “Damn right they’re spies,” the engineer agreed. “We’re allowed to hang spies, an’ we find them. King’s law says that.”

  Richard Burbage began to say something but for once nobody was listening to him. They just plucked him from his fellows and dragged him towards one of the warehouses on the east side of the square. Another engineer was already lowering a rope from the loading crane that projected from an upper window. Iseld was screaming at them now, beating her way through the crowd like a possessed thing. It was a nightmare by moonlight; the careful professional movements of the engineers; the silent, resigned Burbage; the dreadful expression of anticipation spread across the crowd. There was a chant building of, “Hang him! Hang him!” It seemed not to come from individual throats but from the whole fabric of the mob.

  Someone’s shoulder struck Iseld, and turned her partway about, and because of that she saw Tomas Vender twenty yards from the excitement, arms folded, watching. The moon touched him, but found nothing that could be interpreted. He was a closed book.

  They had Burbage beneath the crane now, arms bound and pinioned by two strong men. He stared into the crowd like an emperor, defying them all. Only when the noose fell about his neck did he flinch, and then his eyes sought out his comrades. They were watching him with the undivided attention that befitted the last audience of the renowned Richard Burbage. He found Iseld next, and he could not smile or pass it off as something humorous. I’m sorry, his eyes seemed to say, before he readied himself for his final performance.

  In the second before they hoisted the rope all his glory came back to him, and the crowd drew away a pace with the instinctive fear of regicides. The engineers were republicans at heart, though, and they hauled on the rope with a will.

  Nobody saw the blade that severed it and brought Burbage crashing to his knees, inexplicably alive, but everyone was ready for Lansdowne when he stepped from within the warehouse. It was an entrance any actor would have been proud of. The crowd was grave-silent.

  The veteran, the war hero, haggard and worn as any of the players’ costumes, stared at them with no ready expression. The sword in his hand did not glitter in the light. It was a real sword with no need to pretend.

  “What is this?” spake Lansdowne.

  “They’re traitors!” one of the engineers spoke up, rebuilding his ruptured courage. “Spies. We’re to hang them.”

  Lansdowne stared at him and the man could not hold his gaze. Others took up the chant, though: “Spies!” “Traitors!” “Hang the lot of them!” and Lansdowne regarded them all impassively, blankly. He can’t do it, Iseld thought. It was a fine attempt, but he can’t do it.

  “They’re here to stop work in the factory,” another engineer shouted out. “They’re here to sabotage the war effort,” and that was what made Lansdowne angry. No one had ever seen him angry before.

  “The war effort?” he demanded, and his voice sliced the air like a knife that killed any words that came against it. “You can tell me of the war effort? You mercenary tinkers who stay at home and sell to the Emperor even as you host the King’s scientists? Do you want me to tell you about the war, tinker?” He was not looking at any of them. There was a madness taking hold of him bone by bone.

  The closest engineer reached out to grab Lansdowne, sword or no sword, and simply throw him out of the way. In doing so he caught the veteran’s eyes. He saw something there, some battlefield vignette, that stopped him cold.

  “The war is a sham!” and Lansdowne’s words were surely heard even by the cold scientists in the new wing. “I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a hundred men drop dead at once from poisons like you’re brewing in that factory. I’ve seen whole villages slaughtered on misunderstood orders, or orders understood too well. There are no laws there. Nobles and commoners, officers and men, friend and enemy, the war does not discriminate. I have seen the war.” No one could look at his face now. Cold and empty fire blazed from it and scorched the eyes, light reflected from exploding shells and burning buildings. “I’ve lost more in the war than you can guess, and you all know that there is no love for the King here, nor for any Emperor. Why should there be? Were it not for the gold those scientists bring, nobody would have started this. All of you know.” He was shaking now, and there was a single tear winking on his face. “So, for God’s sake, hang the poor actors if you hate them that much, but don’t pretend that it’s for justice, or for the war, or for loyalty to anyone outside Passendean.” Another sea-change passed across his face and made from it something almost gentle. “That’s all they are,” he said. “They’re actors. They cannot show you anything that is not there inside you. If you kill them, what does it say about yourselves?”

  It was another of de Venezi’s numbers games. The crowd seemed to be holding its breath. Iseld certainly was. Did Lansdowne carry the vote, or would the crowd close on him and hang him too? The odds were so fine as to be unguessable.

  She remembered glancing at Tomas Vender, and realised that most of the others must have done so too, at some point. He was looking at Lansdowne and Burbage and the engineers with a slight but genuine smile on his face, and that, too, could have gone either way. If Lansdowne had accused him of anything, or mentioned him by name, then things would surely have gone worse than they did. As it was, he strode to the crowd and it parted before him like magic, until he was standing by the veteran and the bound actor.

  “Quite right,” he said. “Enough of this nonsense.” He took in the engineers. “I’m surprised at you, allowing something like this to happen. You’re supposed to keep the peace.” There was absolutely no sincerity in his voice, but the words alone, from Tomas Vender, were enough. “You’ve all got homes to go to,” he told the crowd, businesslike as always. “I suggest you find them.” And they did.

  “You will of course be travelling on quite soon,” he said to Burbage, as de Venezi darted forth and cut the actor’s bonds with a little knife that nobody knew he had.

  “One more show,” Burbage replied, which might have surprised Vender, and certainly surprised de Venezi.

  “Be sure there is no treason in it then,” said Vender, with a weary smile. “I enjoyed your Simion, by the way, and now I must bid you goodnight.”

  When he had gone, Iseld ran up to Burbage, and he took her in his arms immediately. Nothing makes one appreciate something so much as nearly losing it. He caught at Lansdowne’s arm as well, just as the veteran was leaving.

  “I must thank you,” he said, and when Lansdowne turned he looked the man right in the eyes, even though they still blazed with the fires of war.

  “Don’t thank me,” Lansdowne said, but Burbage shook his head quickly.

  “Free tickets,” he got out, “To our final show in Passendean,” and Lansdowne, who had been expecting to refuse far more, could not say no to something as trivial as free tickets.

  After he had gone, the fire that had animated him leaking out with every halting step, de Venezi plucked at Burbage’s arm.

  “What show?” he demanded. “What are you talking about.”

  “Get me my writer, and I’ll give you a show,” Burbage vowed.

  *

  For the next three days Burbage and the writer fought. They spent hours refusing to speak to one another. They swore and threatened each other with hellfire and bloody damnation. They shouted rhymed couplets at each other. In this way a script was born. Iseld went back to work and found herself the centre of a strangely conflicting scrutiny from her colleagues. On the one hand they were sure she was living in sin with an actor, which she was. On the other hand, the actor was the renowned Richard Burbage, whose life had been saved by Tomas Vender. That was another thing entirely. Vender was by now the hero of the hour and Lansdowne merely a supporting player. In the end, with some reluctance, Iseld found herself admiring her employer, if only for his effortless
handling of the people of Passendean.

  Nobody had any inkling what the new play was. Even the actors were only given their parts and not the whole script. The only certainty was, now that Tomas Vender was a patron of the arts, everyone would be there to see it.

  “There are worse lives,” Burbage said to her later. The words came from nowhere in particular at the tail end of a silence they had been enjoying. He was half into his costume for the new play, sitting outside the wagon and taking in the sun, which had decided to bring an advance showing of summer to Passendean. Iseld frowned at him, and spent a moment working out whose life he was talking about.

  “Yours?”

  “Ours.” Burbage stretched and did up his braces. “There’s the travelling of course. You see all kinds of places.”

  “More than I can guess at. I remember.”

  Burbage darted a quick look at her. “You’d like it.”

  “Would I?” And this time it was her face shadowed with things he could not read. “You’ve been to all these places, Richard. You’ve seen all these things. What is it that you see in me?” She felt that she was tempting fate, but she was born amongst realists and had to know.

  “Eventually,” Burbage said slowly, “you see enough of everything.” After this cryptic remark he paused for a long while, slotting thoughts into place in his head. He was far better when given time to rehearse. “The one thing that really matters, in the end, is potential. A bright little spark burning away inside, in the depths of the caves or the sea, on the tops of lonely towers… even in the bowels of a factory.” He smiled at her without pretence. “I’ve seen the face that launched a thousand ships. I’ve even played opposite her. She was only a face, and faces are easy to come by. I’ve a hundred of my own. You’ve got more than faces, and you’re wasted minding shop for Thomas Vender. Think about it.”

  “Up in fifteen, Richard,” said Worthing, wandering past in stylised military uniform.

  Burbage nodded. “You watch the show,” he suggested. “It’ll be a good one,”

  *

  The market square was packed out wall to wall about the wagon stage. For the second time in a few days it resounded to the wash and rumble of a crowd’s single voice. The same great beast had assembled, not in rage but curiosity. They were anxious to know what they were to see, the great mystery play they had heard so much about and yet so little. Iseld sat near the stage and tried to look knowing, for all that she was near as ignorant as the rest. On stage, de Venezi and the writer finished setting the flats and scurried out of sight. There was a pause of perhaps seven heartbeats, in which only Iseld envisaged the panicked preparations backstage, and then de Venezi stepped out again and regarded his public.

  “The October Players proudly present,” he declared, “a new production entitled ‘The History of Michael Lansdowne, or, Fortunes of War’, with the renowned Richard Burbage in the title role.”

  The audience was silent. How could they be otherwise? Iseld tried to find Lansdowne amongst them but he was hidden by gaping heads. The crowd was on the point of discussing it, breaking it down and inventing explanations. Burbage took the stage, and they were silent.

  Lansdowne’s story started simply enough. The honest tradesman joins the army to see the world, coerced by the leers of Worthing’s recruiting sergeant, and then discovers the truth of the war when he reaches the front. Iseld, and almost everyone else, expected the play to dwell here, on the horrors and inhumanities, but Burbage never repeated himself. The play nodded briefly in their direction and then skipped on into uncharted territory. Here they saw Lansdowne, separated from his fellows, all alone in no man’s land, deserted by the human race. Here he discovers that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. Here the ghosts of the dead appear to him, and death itself (Sidney Lord Essex in a ton of make-up) spends an evening at his fire. Then there was the girl.

  It was only Felice, after all, in a shimmering gown, with a little glitter here and there to set off the lamps. It seemed, when she stepped onto stage, that the sun dimmed with envy. When Burbage’s Lansdowne looked up at her, Iseld knew how the sun felt. What she was, who she was, the play did not reveal. Each member of the audience went home with their own ideas to debate with their neighbours for months to come. What she was to Lansdowne was a saviour, a slumming angel whose very light could guide him from the blasted purgatory he was in, back to kinder lands.

  So the play progressed. He took her help, regained his regiment with nothing worse than a leg wound, was decorated and allowed to go home as history records. The audience settled themselves, sensing familiar ground, ready to pass off all that had gone before as a device. The problem was that Lansdowne did not go home. He went back into the war zone looking for his guardian for, whilst the war had shown him that life was meaningless, her very existence remained the one promise of meaning.

  The play ended there, without apology or explanations. The audience applauded nonetheless when the cast took their bows, shorn of their character and glamour. Only when the crowd began to leave did Iseld see Lansdowne. He was standing tall and staring at the stage and his face could have meant anything. It was a clay on which clumsy hands had attempted to mould a variety of expressions but given up halfway through each. Factory girls, who worked in the racket and the thunder of the machines, all learned to read lips eventually. Clear as day, Iseld saw Lansdowne form the words, “How did you know?”

  Then he was gone, face still fought over by enemy feelings, as fast as his limp would let him. Iseld felt cold as December because, as far as Lansdowne was concerned, everything that had been played out on the gaudy little stage was true.

  She found Burbage climbing out of his costume and bearded him at once with, “What was all that about?” Her words lacked conviction. When he looked at her, it was briefly the alien stranger that had so frightened her before.

  “Simion,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “took it slightly better when we played for him.” Iseld stared at him. “The October Players go everywhere,” Burbage said, “And a legend in one town is a commonplace name in the next.” He was just Richard Burbage again, but that was more than enough. A wealth of sights and experience pranked his face into a smile. “Think about it.”

  *

  The next morning the players were gone from Passendean, and nobody could say precisely when or where they went. They left in their wake a legacy of three memorable productions, and a certain lessened regard for the scientists. The new wing was empty by June. Vender had performed his own numbers game with profit and loss and decided against them.

  There were two other absences in the wake of the players’ exit. Nobody was surprised when it was discovered that Lansdowne had gone. He had the final act of his own drama to write. The war hero of Passendean had left for the front. As for Iseld, those few who cared knew where she had gone, but all in all she made hardly a ripple on the surface of Passendean.

  When she returned much later, after Vender’s death and the end of the war, she was not recognised. She came with the company down Hopkin Street, wagon painted with the dust of the road, and not a soul who looked upon her knew her as one of Passendean’s daughters. Her face was new, worked out of shadowed and exotic woods, and in her eyes the blue and gold of peacocks strutted like salt-fire.

  * * *

  On the subject of the Xenos magazine, they had a yearly competition, and I came runner up on several occasions without quite managing to seize the laurel. For the 1997 competition I wrote this story, which remains one of my favourites. Every so often there’s a story that just falls naturally into place, and this was one of them, aided by a reading diet that had been extremely rich in Peter S. Beagle (to my mind one of the great masters of the use of the English language in genre). And I submitted it. And it won.

  And the issue announcing that victory and validation was the last Xenos ever printed, for the magazine went down with all hands, taking the laurels with it. Nonetheless, and lookin
g back over that long, barren interval, at least I came away with this story.

  As a footnote, I was deeply engaged with Reading University Drama Society around this time, and several of the characters are inspired by my fellow thespians, most particularly Burbage, based on the actor Alex Barclay, and di Venezi, based on Timothy Hewitt, both of whom have gone on to make a professional go at the business.

  Good Taste

  The instructions said not to eat for 24 hours beforehand, but, seriously? There are articles in the Geneva Convention about that sort of thing. I had a light breakfast, that was all. The appointment was for 11.30am and I read somewhere that bacon gets digested faster than most foods anyway. Or maybe I dreamt that.

  And if I had a Twix on the tube, well, I have blood sugar issues. A man of certain dimensions needs a bit of an energy boost when he’s out and about. I can’t think that I was setting back medical science a hundred years or anything, not just a few mouthfuls of chocolate.

  I hate travelling by tube. The way people look at you as if you’re some kind of freak. They judge you. We’re the last minority it’s safe to hate. Taking up two seats, they think, and they tut and put their self-righteous noses in the air. There was this woman with a kid who was really glowering at me all the way to Great Portland Street. Seriously, if I could have got up, I would, but there wasn’t the space. I’d have bounced her out of the window and her little brat too.

  It’s because of all you judgmental thin types that fat people aren’t jolly any more.

  It was a long damn way to the Harley Street clinic from the station, too. I’d have flagged a taxi, but last time the sod kept the meter running all the time it took me to get out – and didn’t offer a hand – and charged me for it. Being short on money was why I had volunteered to take part in this stupid medical experiment in the first place. Just half an hour of my time, they said, and no drugs or operations or anything, and the money! I was completely puffed by the time I got to the address, but £500 for a little quackery was hanging in front of me like a carrot. Maybe something more substantial than a carrot. Who the hell’s going anywhere with nothing more than a carrot to motivate them?