The Planet on the Table (14 page)

“Nothing.”

With an audible snap the stage was flooded in white and yellow light, and nearly the entire cast paraded on. Velasquo moved away from me and drifted off through the colorful throng. The Cardinal led his retinue on, and I performed my function as Duke by calling, in a clear falsetto, for order amongst the revellers. One of the Cardinal’s men proposed a masque, to be held two days hence, and I gave the idea my ducal approval. At the other side of the stage Sanguinetto voiced caustic, railing asides, which were making the audience laugh; in my peripheral vision I could see their mouths opening, faint in the wash of light from the stage. The Cardinal lost several lines by speaking too soon. I had no idea what he had said, and wondered if I had been cued. It was always at this point, in the first crowd scene, that confusions were most likely to occur…

Caropia entered in a white gown, holding a cross at her breast. By the obsequious gestures of the others it was clear she was revered by all. Even Sanguinetto was silent, I went to her and she held out the cross; I kissed it. Velasquo did the same, and the Cardinal bowed deeply. She went to him and they began a quick exchange that the rest of us were supposed to ignore. I remembered my blocking, voiced in Bloomsman’s dry tones—“Mime dialogue with Velasquo, far stage left.”

Velasquo grabbed my arm and pulled me there. I mouthed words and he stared at my forehead. His mustard-brown eyes were nearly crossed in their intensity. Again I had the over powering sensation of
presque vu
which told me I
almost
knew
him. He mouthed words and as my memory supplied his high, rasplike voice, the sensation of recognition grew to something like panic. Abruptly he turned and began his exit, yet he looked back at me, as if in response to my inner turmoil; his head swiveled almost completely over his right shoulder. At once I knew him.

I stepped back. He squinted slightly, surprised by the move. I turned and crossed the stage, unable to face him, and halted only when I was alone in the narrow corridor between the wings and the prop room.

He was the Hieronrnno, I was certain of it. Was he?

Hieronomo is the hero of Thomas Kyd’s
The Spanish Tragedie
, the first and most influential of English revenge dramas. In it Hieronomo’s son is killed by noblemen of the Spanish court. Hieronomo feigns insanity to facilitate his revenge, but despair pushes the imitation into reality, and by the time he completes his vengeance he is mad.

Someone playing this role had apparently experienced a similar breakdown: the previous December, in a performance at the Kean Theatre, the actor playing Hieronomo’s foe, the old Duke. had actually died, killed by a knife with a loose button-tip. By the time this was discovered, the Hieronomo had disappeared.

In the months following he had appeared six more times, perhaps ten, depending on how many rumors you believed; each time with a different face, and a different name, but the same deadly blade. In
Women Beware Women
, and
Antonio’s Revenge
, and in three different
Hamlets
, the end had been disrupted by the villain’s death. It was said that once he had stayed to finish
Hamlet
, and had taken a round of applause before slipping away. Others reported that another Claudius had been killed at his prayers, in act four, providing a surprise ending; I knew that one to be true; I had known the actor. The rest was hearsay and rumor. spreading at differing speeds through the strange community, so that undoubtedly each of us had heard a different selection of stories, whispered to us in dressing room or lavatory.

I was sure Velasquo was he. I scoffed at the notion, aware of the power the new legend had gained among those who played in these dramas. But once the suspicion had appeared, it was impossible to expel—it was more certainty than suspicion, yet I resisted it. It was as likely as not that he was just another actor, doing an excellent job. In such company, how could I tell otherwise? How could I tell anything in this theater? I knew each player only as his part. It was impossible to know anything for sure—or if not, it would have to be cleverly learned.

Someone tapped my arm and I jumped. It was one of the prompters. “You’re on,” he said. I hurried to the stage, afraid I would have to ask him where we were, but the sight of Caropia. standing alone by the bed in the inner chamber, brought the scene to me. It was late in the act. I composed myself and walked on.

Her slim face was a shadowed mask of contemplation, and in the weak blue light she was nothing but modulations of grey. We stood frozen for long moments, until white light splashed across center stage. Then Caropia looked up. “Who’s there?” she asked. “Your brother Pallio,” I said, in a lower voice than I had used before, and then we rushed at each other and crashed together, to embrace and kiss with abandon. She bit at me, and I pulled my head back and laughed directly at the audience, aware of their collective gasp, which marked the pleasure of suspicions confirmed.

We desisted and I told Caropia, with suitable contempt, how Velasquo had come to me to confide that he suspected foul play in our father’s death. At this her mouth set in its sharp downward curve. “You play the fool,” she said. “he
is
one. Make your Sanguinetto kill him, as you had him kill our odious father…” I explained that this was impractical, since clearly someone at the court already knew what had happened. We had to dissemble and find that person out, before we could deal with Velasquo. Caropia shrugged; it was my problem, I was to solve it as I would. I reminded her that I had had the old Duke killed at her instigation—she alone had feared his discovery of our incest—but the reminder was a mistake. In harsh and dangerous tunes she asked me not to mention the matter again. I agreed, but begged her to help me find the informer, and as she walked offstage she replied that she would if it pleased her. Out of the audience’s sight she turned and the faintest trace of a smile lifted her mouth. She nodded at me with approval. But I still had a short soliloquy:

“Damned bitch!” I said, “I’d kill you too did I not lust for you.” Then I looked to the audience.

“I love her as a man holds a wolf by the ears,” I said, and launched myself with vigor into the soliloquy of the villain, the stage-Machiavel: glorying in my crimes, gleefully listing my subterfuges, basking in my own cleverness, wittily seducing the audience to my side. “To lie upon my sister I have laid my father under earth—grave crimes,” I informed them, and their laughter was an approval of sorts. I voiced the final couplet as a close confidence:

The theater blacked out and I made my way to the staccato roll of applause. The first act was over.

I sat down on a stool just offstage and watched the second act begin. Caropia stood before the bed. She was dressed in red, a muted crimson with gold thread in it. In the sharp white-yellow light it seemed the same color as her hair, and her mouth.

Sanguinetto entered from above. He stepped down soundlessly, choosing the stairs to the right. His black doublet complemented black hair and beard; his face was powder-white. He greeted her and told her of the arrival of the seer. “Does he read dreams?” she asked, and looked pleased when Sanguinetto answered that he did.

Sanguinetto reached the stage and crossed in front of Caropia. When he came between her and the audience it was like an eclipse; the light shifted to blue, and when she reappeared it seemed she was dressed in grey. Offstage in the wings opposite me, Velasquo leaned against a wall and watched.

With contemptuous amusement, Sanguinetto was blackmailing her. His references were vague to me; apparently he referred to something I had missed in the first act. Something that Caropia had done or was doing, had been discovered by Sanguinetto. Now he was using the information as a lever to extract sexual favors. “Thy painted visage will be naught but candied flesh,” he told her, “if you lie not with me.” He circled her briskly and balked her attempts to turn her back on him. She tried to forestall him by denying his accusation, but he ran his hand over her hair and mocked her; and slowly, bitterly, she acquiesced.

As they moved back to the bed, continuing the macabre dance of thrust and parry, I marveled at their skill, at the absolute verisimilitude of their every movement and intonation. This was acting of the highest order; it was impossible for me to imagine them as anyone but Caropia and Sanguinetto.

Velasquo watched the scene without expression.

With Sunguinetto’s hand at her throat. Caropia sank back on the bed. The lights dimmed with her descent and the theater was black before Sanguinetto joined her.

I sat in the dark, and considered tests.

*   *   *

I was startled to attention by my cue lines. The next scene had already begun. I strode on stage and spoke to the audience:

“O excellent! By that he’ll conquer Rome!”

The audience roared. I had no idea what I had referred to, having forgotten the cue. I retreated to the left staircase, in my confusion aware only of my blocking.

More characters arrived and the scene became complex. Everyone was involved in the central event (which I had not yet deciphered), but many were making covert conversation, or uttering malicious asides. The Cardinal spoke, and suddenly I understood the import of the scene: he was asking Caropia to take holy orders, to become a nun. He persisted with an icy calm that I couldn’t interpret, and her refusals became increasingly strident. Sanguinetto, Hamond and Orcanes, Ferrando and Ursini, all publicly encouraged her while privately vilifying her. Only Velasquo actually meant his praise. I could see the dim white faces of the audience breaking into laughter, and I felt Caropia’s humiliation keenly. We could make her comic for the rest of the play, if we wanted to (I recalled once playing in a
Revenger’s Tragedy
in which the cast had nearly killed themselves with mirth). Finally my cue lines arrived and it was easy for me to feign Pallio’s anger:

“They that mock her soon will lie in heaps

Of rotting flesh, all broken open to

The sun and flies and maggots.

And their half-empty eye sockets will stare

At naught but Pallio, astonish’d still by his

Abrupt revenge…“

The scene continued, but the laughter was greatly diminished, Velasquo grasped me by the arm. “Brother, I must speak to you anon,” he said, staring at me curiously. I agreed, averting my gaze, and he slipped offstage behind me, leaving me with my heart knocking. He would have to be tested…

Now Caropia approached me, ostensibly to consult in private about the question of holy orders. She drew me out on the apron just above the audience, and in a voice tight with rage demanded that I kill Sanguinetto. I asked why, and she told me a near-truth, the best sort of lie; Sanguinetto was blackmailing her, demanding sexual favors in exchange for silence concerning
my
guilt in the old Duke’s death. I reacted with a lover’s anger, and as I railed against Sanguinetto she stroked my arm, the softness of her hands belying the absolute implacability of her intentions.

She left with a last velvet command, and I found myself alone—the rest had exited during our dialogue. Blue light surrounded me, as tangible as if the gel covering the bulb had poured down into the cone of light. I collected myself and tried to project an assured, amused control:

“The brother that I hate, and the sister

That I hate and love (for there’s

Two feelings closer to each other than

The minds of any pair of us) both press

Me now like halves of a garotte,

Yet I’ll slip out and let them gnash together:

I have a plot—yet soft—Velasquo—”

He entered. My back to him, and face to the audience, I let my features slacken into those of the Pallio he knew. There was laughter, and with a sudden leer I encouraged it, for it was directed at Velasquo. I turned and greeted him. He began by complaining that he had found no clue to the murderer’s identity. I informed him that I had some news that might help him, then answered his questions so foolishly that it took him some time to deduce that if Sanguinetto kept spiders, and was blackmailing Caropia, he must indeed be the villain we were searching for. I expressed amazement at his intelligence.

While the audience laughed at my duplicity, Velasquo’s face darkened, his jaw muscles bunched. The laughter died away completely before he spoke: “I’d have this be vengeance all will remember,” he said, in a voice so harsh that it enforced belief, made one wonder, with squeamish anticipation, what forms revenge might take… He spoke no more of it, however, which made me suspect he was omitting lines; he sent me on my way, then stalked aimlessly around the stage. Suddenly he slopped and laughed, first quietly, then in a sharp howl. In the midst of this nerve-shattering mirth the blackout snapped down and terminated both light and sound.

I was conscious of a plan that had formulated itself sometime during Velasquo’s ominous drunkard’s walk. I had a test, one that would leave me concealed; he would know he had been tested, of course—it was an unusual test that did not reveal that—but he would not know by whom.

In the prop room Ferrando and Ursini were running over an exchange of dialogue in double-time. A prompter at the rear entrance raised a hand; they filed on, allowing two brief bursts of yellow into the dark, grainy green of the room. I went to the prop table and casually scanned the small pile of stage-notes.

The top one was the one that would betray Pallio. I picked it up, and, holding it against me, went into the lavatory. Inside a stall I took a pencil stub from my vest pocket (my ribs were sticky with sweat), and flattened the vellum against the wall with my other hand. In a clumsy, rounded imitation of Bloomsman’s Italianate lettering, I listed all the plays I had ever heard connected with the Hieronomo: