Tom groaned. “The sword…”
“No words, no words. Hush.”
The old man felt around until he found the abandoned blade. Unperturbed by the sight that so unhinged his son, Gloucester stood up. Though blind, his mind reeled from the emanations pulsating out from the creature. All he had to do was to charge toward their source.
Leyh’r sat, numb with shock.
His daughters dead? Goneril and Regan? Oh gods! His burden, the Blood of Albion, had brought them to their premature deaths, as it had his wife Merwin.
He watched, resigned, as the great terrible mass writhed above him, shaking off its slumber as a deep resonant rumble filled the earth.
Blinking away the rain, Leyh’r saw Gloucester pick up the ceremonial blade, with the ritual parchment still skewered to it, and charge at Goemagot as fearlessly as the Earl once charged the foes of Albion.
But no champion could stand for Leyh’r now. The last of the Blood of Albion resided but in him. Only Leyh’r could succeed. He struggled to his feet and staggered between the blind old knight and his foe, reciting the ritual incantation even as Gloucester made his thrust.
The blade pierced Leyh’r’s heart as Gloucester drove on into Goemagot and the creature cried out. The seismic reverberation of the hideous sound burst Gloucester’s heart, killing him instantly.
Impaled upon Goemagot’s corrupt flesh by the blade and its skewered parchment, Leyh’r continued with a wanton determination to pronounce those syllables that would yet banish Goemagot as the Blood of Albion pulsed ever more weakly from his body. Even as his heart beat its last he knew that his true heart, Coeur de Leyh’r, lived free from the curse of that self-same blood and if this was the price then he would willingly pay it to keep her safe.
As the last syllable of the ritual passed Leyh’r’s lips, lightning lashed down from the sky, striking the pommel protruding from his chest. In one furious moment of reaction, sword, text, blood, incantation and lightning combined in an alchemical superflux, as if Nature itself struck out in abhorrence of the thing.
Leyh’r’s lifeless body ignited, sticking like burning phosphor to the Old One’s degenerate bulk, tearing a terrible scream from whatever obscene orifice the thing used for a mouth. Attempting to recoil from the pain, it contracted like a slug from salt, until the last of the primordial giant slithered back into its barrow beneath the Earth, although its screams haunted Albion’s dreams for days after.
X
Poor Tom awoke in the remains of the stone circle. He didn’t know whether the abomination was dead, sleeping or merely licking its wounds, but overcome with revulsion for the place, he picked his way across the Fell. Several days later, bruised, bleeding and grimed in filth, he staggered down off the moor.
Living among Troynovant’s back alleys and middens he scratched a meagre existence, lost in the endless liturgical babble with which he sought to ward himself. Whomsoever he met, he warned against the Foul Fiend and no discouragement by rod or stocks dissuaded him from his ministry.
One day, drawn out by the sounds of celebration, he pushed though the crowds to see jugglers, acrobats and dumb shows. Heartened for the first time in a long while, he approached a gentlewoman.
“What festival is this?”
The woman scowled at him irritably. “Surely every fool knows that?”
Tom smiled blankly at her.
“Tis the coronation of Queen Cordelia, of course. Her as was exiled to Gallia by the old King, but with him gone, and her sisters dead she’s the rightful heir, so she is returned to be crowned Queen this very day. Her mother, Queen Merwin, would be so proud, gods rest her spirit.”
Tom’s smile vanished as a stark realisation chilled him to the soul.
Cordelia didn’t know. Upon her coronation, the priests would induct her into the true purpose of her sovereignty, condemning herself and any future children to the very fate from which Leyh’r sought so desperately to spare her.
He pushed urgently to the front of the crowd lining the procession route as Cordelia passed by, waving happily to the crowds.
He cried out in warning, “Beware the Foul Fiend! Beware the Foul Fiend!”
But his voice was drowned out by the chorus of joyous cheers and she was gone.
Later, when the bells rang out in honour of the newly crowned Queen, a shadow of despondency fell over him. Consumed by a rising anxiety he rocked back and forth with increasing agitation.
“Tom’s a-cold,” he whimpered. “Poor Tom’s a-cold.”
Exeunt
John Reppion
Act One: Two Noble Kinsmen
Bankside, London. March, 1616.
“My dear friend, I do not see why it is you torture yourself so. Cardenio is a fine work, though I say it myself. I am proud of what we have done together. The King’s Men will make an outstanding job of it under your guidance.”
William Shakespeare bent to clap a reassuring hand on the shoulder of the figure hunched at the desk.
“More than that, it is precisely what the people want. Comedy, tragedy, these are the things you have a gift for.”
Fletcher, the fingers of one hand entwined in his dishevelled locks, glanced up sullenly at his companion.
“So say you, a man who has never been content merely to give the audience what they want.”
William stood, raising his hands in a gesture of defeat, then traversed the small, ill-lit room.
“You cannot force an idea. There is time yet to let the notion form. To develop, to germinate, over years if necessary. You are but thirty-five.”
John Fletcher threw himself back into an upright sitting position with exasperation, his chair creaking in protest at the maltreatment.
“Thank you, o ancient magus for your words of wisdom. What fortune is mine in having such an owlish mentor? Help yourself to another cup of sack, won’t you.”
William was already pouring out two measures of the sickly sweet sherry wine, a smirk upon his lips. He handed one cup to his friend then drank deeply from his own. John stared down at the liquid, black and viscous in the flickering candlelight.
“The Tempest is your master-work, William. I believe it absolutely, and you have said as much yourself. Is it the ache in your bones and the white in your beard that made it so? Must I wait until I am so old and bent and ugly as you to achieve such?”
Spluttering laughter broke forth from the pair and, his sulking thus interrupted, Fletcher knocked back his syrupy wine in one draught.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” John, staggering slightly, retrieved the sack and sloshingly re-filled his cup. “Yet Prospero is more than that. He is the author of his own tale. His art is artifice; his witchcraft is stagecraft. You are he, and he is you.”
“In some sense,” Shakespeare conceded with a contemplative swig of his drink. His mind drifted back to a half-forgotten fever-dream of his early career when the plague had struck down players and audience alike at The Rose Theatre. He had been ill himself and his memories of the time were a strange confusion of real and unreal horrors. His disquieting reminiscences were cut short by his friend.
“Yet, even as our dramatis personae suffer, we know why it is we make it so. We pluck at the heartstrings because we – the playwrights, the sorcerers, the Gods of the stage-world – know how to elicit a response. We know the bitter-sweetness of longing, the sting of loss, the gnawing of revenge, the ecstasy of love. Raw emotion becomes music upon the page and in the mouths and on the faces of the players. What though, if we were as indifferent, as uncaring, as the author of the world outside that window?”
Fletcher’s index finger stabbed towards an un-curtained, diamond-paned portal. Outside the sky was a starless void, a mere piece of black cloth – a backdrop – suspended there in likeness of night.
“Everything we do is simplification. Our skill is in bringing order out of chaos. People want to see their lives and experiences rendered thus, made sense of, but it is a l
ie! If we could only turn our hand to the truth, just imagine the impact it would have.”
Feeling unsteady on his feet, Shakespeare sat. The chair seemed to groan beneath him as if it had not anticipated such a burden, an unwelcome reminder that he was not the man he once was.
The ache in his bones, so comedically alluded to by his companion, was genuine. He felt it more acutely now, the veneer of youthfulness the drink provided unexpectedly stripped away.
“Our conversation runs in circles, my friend. Have a care lest in a moment you are returned to your desk, head in your hands, telling me you cannot explain yourself any better than you already have. I say to you once again that I am very proud of the work we have done together, but cannot conceive of this idea you hint at. This grand tragedy. This idea, the substance of which eludes even you, its originator.”
John Fletcher opened his mouth to interrupt but William held up a hand, forestalling him.
“There are truths in tales, truths in songs, truths in plays truer than any in the mundane world. Love was never so perfect, death never so tragic. We are liars? Is the weaver lying when she tells us the wool from a sheep’s arse is now a hat? Is the brewer a liar, passing off mere water as ale? You and I sir, are alchemists turning the lead of human drudgery into pure gold. You say what if we gave them reality? They have reality! They live in reality, out there, ankle deep in the shit and the piss where the people swarm like rats and the rats swarm like insects and disease.... disease...”
Shakespeare faltered. He passed a hand over his eyes, squeezed them shut wiping away a pair of tears.
Fletcher knelt suddenly before his senior and eagerly took him by the hand.
“Yes. You see. You see. I speak not of the unvarnished truth. Not mere reality. I speak of experience heightened and honed by our craft, by our words. Never was a true love so perfect, nor a real death so tragic as in one of our little entertainments? What of the love of a father? What of the death of a son? What of your own boy Hamnet, William?”
William, shocked, tried to pull his hand free but the younger man held it fast. Further tears came unbidden.
“You wrote of it, didn’t you? How the plague took your only boy from you in his eleventh year. You have said you did not but how could you, the great William Shakespeare, not? And how could you not, with your skill, sharpen it?”
“Enough!” Shakespeare rose to his feet abruptly, pulling free as he did so, thick sack wine splattering on the wooden floor like a gout of blood. “Why do you seek to torture me so?”
Hurriedly, he began snatching up his things from about the room. His cloak, his stick, his hat.
“William, please. I did not mean to wound you. This is what I have been trying to make you understand. Imagine a play wherein the truth of which you spoke, truth which has dealt you such pain, was revealed. Not fleetingly, how humanity usually views such, but methodically, un-flinchingly. Utterly.”
Shakespeare, his hand now on the door’s handle, turned and raised his stick in a threat to the other should he attempt to follow.
“The ultimate tragedy!” John continued, entreatingly. “Gods, if Gods there be, do not care for or about us. The Olympians do not play with us for sport. There is no reason, no order, there is only chaos. All the world’s a stage, and there is no script. No second act but death!”
William wrenched the door open and began a hasty descent of the creaking stairs. Fletcher did not follow but called after him.
“We are alchemists whose words turn leaden drudgery into gold! What could we make of that which every man knows but dare not face? William? William, wait! Please!”
The night outside was cold and wet. The sky just as blank and lifeless as it had seemed through Fletcher’s grimy window. William hurriedly fastened his cloak and set off at a pace along the narrow, busy street. He felt old. In his very marrow, his heart, his mind. Old and weary.
Why had he even returned to London this time? What hold did this filthy city have upon him that he could not be content to leave it behind once and for all? He should be in Stratford with Anne. She was alone in the house now, Judith married and gone only one month ago, and yet here he was.
Mud and shit sucked at the wrinkled leather of his boots as he stamped along. He did not need to think about where he was going, his feet knew the way. He walked on, lost in thought, oblivious to those he passed, many of whom recognised him and some of whom he should have recognised himself.
At the mention of Hamnet it had been as if a great sorrow sunk deep within had risen and burst to the surface of William’s being. Sorrow and guilt too, for he had not been with the boy at the end.
Had not seen nearly enough of him in his short life.
Tears were on his cheeks once more but they were almost indistinguishable from the sooty, spattering drizzle which fell over all.
No, that was not right. Though it had been John who had spoken Hamnet’s name, the boy’s spectre had already been summoned by William’s own thoughts and words.
How had John known though? Could the answer be that he was indeed a true friend? A man who knew William’s sadness and understood how he had suffered. He said he had not meant to wound him, and yet –
William squelched to a halt at a gateway off Borough High Street. He shoved the gate inward with a painful creak which felt like it emanated as much from himself as the straining hinges. Arranged around three sides of the yard beyond were the higgledy–piggledy buildings of The Tabard Inn – a hostelry which had been in business for more than three centuries. Despite the rain there were some whose merry-making had spilled out into the court, several taking advantage of the yards darker corners to satiate those urges and appetites drink so often provokes.
Upon entering The Tabard, William was immediately accosted by a party of theatre-folk. He knew a few by sight, only one or two by name, yet felt no inclination to decline their insistent invitation. Indeed, he had more or less counted on as much. His cup was kept full, food ordered and eaten. Either they would pay for the pleasure of his company, or else he would be left with a hefty bill to settle. He did not much care which. Their inane, self-important jabbering was a welcome distraction from his earlier vexation and the renewed rawness of his sorrows. He laughed when they laughed, slapped their backs as they did his, until at last, in his cups, he stood upon the table and bellowed a toast.
“Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should, with joy, pleasance revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!”
A roar of approval. The meaning and origin of the speech lost on almost all present. William, wobbling on the table-top, laughed then coughed until his eyes watered.
“And now,” he cried “I must piss!”
A roar even louder and more exultant.
Out in the yard Shakespeare planted his feet firmly and sent forth a golden arc, frothing a puddle until upon its surface was a head worthy of an ale. Triumphant, he looked to the sky. The rain had ceased, the clouds dispersed, and the heavens were now filled with stars.
“Will.” The voice came from across the yard, little more than a whisper.
Adjusting his breeches, William peered into the shadows. A figure slowly melted into existence out of the darkness near the gateway. The man looked familiar, Shakespeare realised. He had passed him in the street on his way to The Tabard. He had been there among the drinkers in the tavern too. A young man with flowing locks, his cheeks bare, upper lip and chin adorned with but a teenager’s growth of hair. The face was one he knew of old.
“Marlowe?” William staggered forward, splashing through the still steaming puddle.
“You see me now then, old friend. I began to worry I was forgotten,” Kit Marlowe chuckled softly “Twenty-five summers have passed, after all.”
With the awed over-familiarity of drunkenness Shakespeare placed his hands upon Marlowe’s face and squeezed the flesh, felt the jaw and skull beneath. The young man only smiled and chuckled again.
&nbs
p; “Yes, dear Will, I am real.”
“How can this be?” the drunkard held tightly onto the squished yet amused face of the other, examining it through eyes too blurred to be believed. “You are dead.”
Kit took his friend’s hands in his own. “Indeed,” he grinned. “Come with me, and all shall be revealed.”
Act Two: When Shall We Three Meet Again?
Exham, London. April 1616.
The place was like no tavern either Michael Drayton or Benjamin Jonson had ever set foot in before.
Their journey had begun in Blackfriars and it had taken more than an hour of snaking through a labyrinth of filthy riverside back-streets to find their destination. Already each was beginning to wish they had not made the effort.
Shakespeare’s hand-drawn map, though it appeared crude at first glance, had proved incredibly complex. On it were marked thoroughfares which were not at all apparent to the everyday traveller. There had been more than a dozen occasions on their journey where Dreyton and Jonson felt sure they must have taken a wrong turn, yet once the supposed dead-end was approached some hitherto hidden way was revealed. Some of these passageways were barred by people, seemingly mere loiterers, who enquired casually where the pair thought they might be headed. When “Exham” was given in answer – the name of the mysterious district which neither man had ever heard of before but noted on Shakespeare’s map – the path, such as it may be, would be immediately cleared.
Neither Drayton nor Jonson were thin men and the way was on several occasions so narrow that they were forced to turn sideways, sliding their backs and their bellies along walls whose greasy surfaces bore evidence of others having done likewise. It was due to these manifold stresses, strains, and complexities of their journey that, despite the length of time they had already spent together, no opportunity to properly discuss the circumstances which had brought them there arose before they were finally seated in The Swine.
The tavern’s odour lived up to its name in every way; an acrid, gamey mixture of pig-pen and the slaughterhouse. Ale was ordered, the men taking their places in a dingy corner at the insistence of the large and imposing barkeep who recognised them instantly as “Shakespeare friends”. He was missing an eye, or at least could not open one –
Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu Page 29