No Great Magic

by Fritz Leiber

  Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jeannie Howse and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

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  +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | | This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, | | December 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any | | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication | | was renewed. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

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  NOGREAT MAGIC

  by FRITZ LEIBER

  ILLUSTRATEDBY NODEL

  The troupers of the Big Time lack no art to sway a crowd-- or to change all history!

  I

  To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead: Blow on a dead man's embers And a live flame will start. --Graves

  I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressingroom and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in histhreadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet butstaring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror andexperimentally working his features a little, as actors will, andkneading the stubble on his fat chin.

  I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? MaxwellAnderson's _Elizabeth the Queen_ or Shakespeare's _Macbeth_? It says_Macbeth_ on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready forElizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig."

  He tried out a few eyebrow rears--right, left, both together--thenturned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does whena gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling,what sayest thou?"

  Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimeswonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundredand three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteenhundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fatpart in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal andinspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobodyelse in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham,please.)

  I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question.

  He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot,certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare thatalways sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. Atfirst that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me--asort of peeping-tom schoolteacher--but I've grown used to it over themonths and even palsy-feeling.

  He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybodyin the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time gettinginto character, never parting her lips except for that purpose--or tobite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation.

  "Aye, 'tiz _Macbeth_ tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to hisfrowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest."And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis."

  I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with MissNefer? She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top ofher nose for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautifuljob, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery insteadof putty. But it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness ofGlamis."

  * * * * *

  Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would--I thought,_his timing's off tonight_--and then he harrumphed and said, "Why,Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue tothe play--a prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owledhis eyes. "'Tis an experiment in the new theater."

  I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had themon half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use QueenElizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up _Macbeth_, which isall about witchcraft and directed at King James."

  He growled a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it yourpeewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?"

  I said softly, "Siddy, you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing roomfor a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, withoutlearning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & Aexisting on your sweet charity, and don't think I don't appreciate it,but--"

  "A-_and_-A, thou sayest?" he frowned. "Methinks the gladsome newforswearers of sack and ale call themselves AA."

  "Agoraphobe and Amnesiac," I told him. "But look, Siddy, I was goingto sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak aprologue to _Macbeth_ is as much an anachronism as if you put her onthe gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne overits schnozzle."

  "Ha!" he cried as if he'd caught me out. "And saying there's a newElizabeth, wouldn't that be the bravest advertisement ever for theEmpire?--perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogatorDrake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship _The Golden Hind_? Tillyfally, lady!"

  He went on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings willnever mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchfulrocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull ofanachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling thehour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him andgave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go to, doll."

  "Czechoslovakia, Siddy?"

  "Bohemia, then, what skills it? Leave me now, sweet poppet. Go thyways. I have matters of import to ponder. There's more to running arepertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness."

  * * * * *

  Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in hissolemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underagerefugee from Skid Row than Sid's newest recruit, assistant stagemanager and hardest-worked juvenile--though for once he'd rememberedto shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack ifMiss Nefer wasn't, or, if she were going to double the roles,shouldn't I help her with the change? She's a slow dresser and theElizabeth costumes are pretty realistically stayed. And she would havetrouble getting off that nose, I was sure. But then I saw that Siddywas already slapping on the alboline to keep the grease paint fromgetting into his pores.

  _Greta, you ask too many questions_, I told myself. _You get everybodyriled up and you rack your own poor ricketty little mind_; and I hiedmyself off to the costumery to settle my nerves.

  The costumery, which occupies the back end of the dressing room, isexactly the right place to settle the nerves and warm the fancies ofany child, including an unraveled adult who's saving what's left ofher sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are theregular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangledand brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in theborders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest yourcheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the otherplays we favor; Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_, Shaw's _Back to Methuselah_ andHilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's _Children of Methuselah_, theCapek brothers' _Insect People_, O'Neill's _The Fountain_, Flecker's_Hassan_, _Camino Real_, _Children of the Moon_, _The Beggar's Opera_,_Mary of Sco
tland_, _Berkeley Square_, _The Road to Rome_.

  There are also the costumes for all the special and varietyperformances we give of the plays: _Hamlet_ in modern dress, _JuliusCaesar_ set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, _The Taming of the Shrew_in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding adinosaur, _The Tempest_ set on another planet with a spaceship wreckto start it off _Karrumph!_--which means a half dozen spacesuits,featherweight but looking ever so practical, and the weirdest sort ofextraterrestrial-beast outfits for Ariel and Caliban and the othermonsters.

  Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep ofspace and time that you sometimes get frightened you'll be whirled upand spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at somethingvery real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you_really_ are--as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chainaround my neck (Siddy's first gift to me that I can remember) andchanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing myeyes and squeezing the holes in the token: "Columbus Circle, TimesSquare, Penn Station, Christopher Street...."

  * * * * *

  But you don't ever get _really_ frightened in the costumery. Notexactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingledand your tummy chilled from time to time--because you know it's allmake-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. Itgets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as _pleasant_ places andnot as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep youforever. It's always safe, always _just in the theatre, just on thestage_, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam ... and the bestsort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray rutsand curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one singlething before this last year in the dressing room and that can't everpush its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, exceptto stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until thefear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at _theaudience_ gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the twotimes I _did_ peek, and I have to come scuttling back.

  The costumery's good occupational therapy for me, too, as my prickedand calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up ordarned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there areso many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and theracks extend into the fourth dimension--not to mention the boxes ofprops and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books,including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes ofFurness's _Variorum Shakespeare_, which as Sid had guessed I'd beenboning up on. Oh, and I've sponged and pressed enough costumes, too,and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up andresewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials.

  In a less sloppily organized company I'd be called wardrobe mistress,I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests acrotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging aroundher neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm notthat old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybodyoutranks me, even Martin.

  Of course to somebody _outside_ show business, wardrobe mistress mightsuggest a yummy gal who spends her time dressing up as Nell Gwyn orAnitra or Mrs. Pinchwife or Cleopatra or even Eve (we got a legalcostume for it) and inspiring the boys. I've tried that once or twice.But Siddy frowns on it, and if Miss Nefer ever caught me at it I thinkshe'd whang me.

  And in a normaller company it would be the wardrobe room, too, butcostumery is my infantile name for it and the actors go along with mylittle whims.

  I don't mean to suggest our company is completely crackers. To get asclose to Broadway even as Central Park you got to have something. Butin spite of Sid's whip-cracking there is a comforting looseness aboutits efficiency--people trade around the parts they play without fuss,the bill may be changed a half hour before curtain without anybodygetting hysterics, nobody gets fired for eating garlic and breathingit in the leading lady's face. In short, we're a team. Which is funnywhen you come to think of it, as Sid and Miss Nefer and Bruce andMaudie are British (Miss Nefer with a touch of Eurasian blood, Iromance); Martin and Beau and me are American (at least I _think_ Iam) while the rest come from just everywhere.

  * * * * *

  Besides my costumery work, I fetch things and run inside errands andhelp the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room's verycoeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a whileMartin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about withdustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop withsuch silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to getthrough and duck back into the costumery to collect myself.

  Yes, the costumery's a great place to quiet your nerves or improveyour mind or even dream your life away. But this time I couldn't havebeen there eight minutes when Miss Nefer's Elizabeth-angry voice cameskirling, "Girl! Girl! Greta, where is my ruff with silver trim?" Ilaid my hands on it in a flash and loped it to her, because Old QueenLiz was known to slap even her Maids of Honor around a bit now andthen and Miss Nefer is a bear on getting into character--a real PaulMuni.

  She was all made up now, I was happy to note, at least as far as herface went--I hate to see that spooky eight-spoked faint tattoo on herforehead (I've sometimes wondered if she got it acting in India orEgypt maybe).

  Yes, she was already all made up. This time she'd been going extraheavy on the burrowing-into-character bit, I could tell right away,even if it was only for a hacked-out anachronistic prologue. Shesigned to me to help her dress without even looking at me, but as Igot busy I looked at _her_ eyes. They were so cold and sad and lonely(maybe because they were so far away from her eyebrows and temples andsmall tight mouth, and so shut away from each other by that ridge ofnose) that I got the creeps. Then she began to murmur and sigh, verysoftly at first, then loudly enough so I got the sense of it.

  "Cold, so cold," she said, still seeing things far away though herhands were working smoothly with mine. "Even a gallop hardly fires myblood. Never was such a Januarius, though there's no snow. Snow willnot come, or tears. Yet my brain burns with the thought of Mary'sdeath-warrant unsigned. There's my particular hell!--to doom,perchance, all future queens, or leave a hole for the Spaniard and thePope to creep like old worms back into the sweet apple of England.Philip's tall black crooked ships massing like sea-going fortressessouth-away--cragged castles set to march into the waves. Parma in theLowlands! And all the while my bright young idiot gentlemen spurtingout my treasure as if it were so much water, as if gold pieces were aglut of summer posies. Oh, alackanight!"

  And I thought, _Cry Iced!--that's sure going to be one tyrannosaur ofa prologue. And how you'll ever shift back to being Lady Mack beatsme. Greta, if this is what it takes to do just a bit part, you'dbetter give up your secret ambition of playing walk-ons some day whenyour nerves heal._

  * * * * *

  She was really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. Itwas as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in thepark outside and heard the President talking to himself about thechances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench withits back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, twofemales undignifiedly twisted together, at the moment getting her intothat crazy crouch-deep bodice that's like a big icecream cone, and yethere at the same time was Queen Elizabeth the First of England, threehundred and umpty-ump years dead, coming back to life in a CentralPark dressing room. It shook me.

  She looked so much the part, you see--even without the red wig yet,just powdered pale makeup going back to a quarter of an inch from herown short dark bang combed and netted back tight. The age too. MissNefer can't be a day over forty--well, forty-two at most--but now shelooked and talked and felt to my hands dressing her, well, at least adozen years older. I guess when Miss Nefer gets into character shedoes it with each molecule.

  That age point fas
cinated me so much that I risked asking her aquestion. Probably I was figuring that she couldn't do me much damagebecause of the positions we happened to be in at the moment. You see,I'd started to lace her up and to do it right I had my knee againstthe tail of her spine.

  "How old, I mean how young might your majesty be?" I asked her,innocently wonderingly like some dumb serving wench.

  For a wonder she didn't somehow swing around and clout me, but onlysettled into character a little more deeply.

  "Fifty-four winters," she replied dismally. "'Tiz Januarius of OurLord's year One Thousand and Five Hundred and Eighty and Seven. I sitcold in Greenwich, staring at the table where Mary's death warrantwaits only my sign manual. If I send her to the block, I open thedoors to future, less official regicides. But if I doom her not,Philip's armada will come inching up the Channel in a season, puffingsmoke and shot, and my English Catholics, thinking only of MaryRegina, will rise and i' the end the Spaniard will have all. Allhistory would alter. That must not be, even if I'm damned for it! Andyet ... and yet...."

  A bright blue fly came buzzing along (the dressing room has _some_insect life) and slowly circled her head rather close, but she didn'teven flicker her eyelids.

  "I sit cold in Greenwich, going mad. Each afternoon I ride, prayingfor some mischance, some prodigy, to wash from my mind away the bloodyquestion for some little space. It skills not what: a fire, a treea-failing, Davison or e'en Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, anassassin's ball clipping the cold twigs by my ear, a maid cryingrape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard atThames' mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors settingforth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-oftragedy to tear the heart--though that were somewhat much to hope forat this season and place, even if Southwark be close by."

  * * * * *

  The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked somuch like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal ofIreland or something--though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed insilver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silvertinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her lookedmost like a winter riding costume--and her face was such a pale frozenmask of Elizabeth's inward tortures, that I told myself, _Oh, I got totalk to Siddy again, he's made some big mistake, the lardy oldlackwit. Miss Nefer just can't be figuring on playing in Macbethtonight._

  As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask _her_ all about itdirect, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe berisking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice ofthat characterization, when who should come by calling the FifteenMinutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mindoff Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.

  His levied bottom half still looked like _The Lower Depths_. Martin isVillage Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. Butabove that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he wasstripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chesthair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of hisshoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But justthe same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan andhabitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indianthat I thought, _Hey Zeus!--he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'djust cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas._ And Iquick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could onlycome up with _The Fountain_.

  I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppyfins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backedthrough the curtain. I thought, _nobody can explain this but Siddy_,and I followed Martin.