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Authors: Alan Gordon

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BOOK: Thirteenth Night
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“Stalemate.”

He chuckled softly, his eyes fixed on mine. “Stalemate? My dear fellow, we don't even have enough pieces to begin the game. Until then, I wish you the joy of the season, and I will devote a portion of my prayers to your brother's safe arrival. Good day, Signor Octavius.”

I bowed and left.

Traversing the muddied square, I sorted through the muddle of my thoughts. Neither Isaac nor Claudius seemed likely to be the Duke's murderer, since their livelihoods depended on his existence. Unless he had decided to change them for some new managers, in which case they may very well have wanted to be rid of him. A theory worth investigating, especially since I had yet to find any hard evidence to support my suspicions, although my chat with Hector convinced me that the fall was neither accident nor suicide. I suddenly was very curious about the minuscule error Isaac was correcting. Perhaps a surreptitious visit to his ledgers after hours could be arranged.

One more thing. Although Claudius lacked sufficient height to be Malvolio, the Jew did not.

S
IX

Let Paradise be set up in a somewhat lofty place.

STAGE DIRECTION FROM
JEU D' ADAM,
A TWELFTH-CENTURY PLAY

 

The next morning, I presented myself humbly at the gates of the Duke's villa. After too long a time, Malachi came from upon high to speak with me, taking particular satisfaction in telling me that a humble merchant such as myself could not possibly have anything of interest to the grandness within, and would I be so kind as to not try his patience anymore.

Kind or no, my nose was once again in intimate contact with a closed gate. Apart from the retreating rear of Malachi, I could espy no activity within the house. Well, where one door closes, another may open. I skulked to the back of the premises and waited patiently. Sure enough, a woman emerged from the servant's gate, carrying a large basket. A cook, I guessed, on her way to the market. No better source of gossip in my experience than a cook in a great house unless it's a nun in a large abbey. I trailed her from a distance as she made her way first to the square.

The market was in full bustle. The stalls were filled with handicrafts, made by farmers at a time when it was too cold to farm. Vendors hawked roasted nuts, wheels of cheese, ingenious wooden toys, family heirlooms, and Turkish rugs. I saw the woman pick carefully through tables of nuts and dried fruit, then followed her through the southeastern gate to the docks.

A fishing boat had come in, and its crew was rolling barrels of salted fish onto the docks. She singled out the sailing master, who pulled at his cap respectfully when he saw her. He signaled to one of the crew, who staggered out with an armful of sturgeon. She sniffed at it approvingly, and it was added to her basket.

She was heavily laden now, and I saw my opportunity. I fell into step alongside of her.

“Madam, I find myself with some time on my hands,” I said. “And I could think of no better use to put time or hands than to offer them to your service.”

She dimpled. “That would be a kindness, sir. It's cold enough for these fish to keep until I come home, but there's still the weight and the hill and the wind and the ice and all.”

I shouldered the basket and we began to walk.

“Truly a feast you are preparing. How big is your family?”

She laughed. “Oh, this is too fine a meal for my children. They'll have to content themselves with some scraps of salt herring later. I am a cook in the Duke's house, and there'll be eighteen to dinner tonight.”

“Ah, I had the pleasure of dining there many years ago. It was a fine table. The cook's name escapes me, but the dessert lingers in my memory, an orange custard, delicately spiced, that tantalized the eye, seduced the nose, and enslaved the mouth. I've never had its equal. Say you're the warden of the recipe, and I'll marry you on the spot. Look, here's the church now, Mistress Cook.”

She laughed merrily. “And what should I tell my husband and children then? Nay, the sorceress of the hearth then was a woman named Katrina, and that recipe was passed to her daughter, who is the inheritor of her position as well. The recipe is kept within her bosom to be handed on to her own daughter someday.”

“Then I shall wait for her daughter to come of age. How fares the young Duke? Will he partake of your basket tonight?”

“Alas, the poor boy still ails. He's on the mend, I'm happy to say, but he can only keep down broth and a bit of gruel.”

“What afflicts the lad?”

“The doctors don't know. Something in his gut, and it's a wonder we didn't all get it, for that's usually the case. And his father dying, well, that was a blow to all of us, but especially to him. To fall so ill and lose him practically at the same moment, well, it's no wonder that he nearly followed him to the grave.”

“Were the two events so close? I hadn't heard that.”

“Certainly, it was the same night. We had a large group of people for the dinner, the main families of the town, and all of a sudden Mark gives a scream and falls, clutching his stomach. It was right after the third toast, a merry one by Sir Toby, and some thought maybe it was just too much wine for a boy his age, and he had been gorging himself on nuts and sweetmeats before. He always liked to come down to the kitchen when we were preparing large dinners, to watch how we did things and to snatch whatever his nimble fingers could. Yet there he was at the table, moaning and heaving like a drunk man until he collapsed on poor Sir Andrew. Mercy, I thought the knight would make a second when the boy did that, he turned so pale. They took the boy to his room, and the Duchess and his nurse were up all night with him.”

“And then they heard about the Duke. The shock must have been considerable.”

“Oh, the boy worshiped his father, as boys do at that age. And there was the grieving, and now all the fuss over who's to be the regent. Why they just don't make it his mother is beyond me. She has a better head then all of them, foreigner or no. Everyone's coming to visit him, which is nice, but some of them are trying to insinuate themselves into his good graces, if you take my meaning. Using a sick child like that just to be regent for a few years.”

“But he's improving.”

“Yes, by Our Savior, he is. With luck, he'll be well enough for the play, though Count Sebastian is standing in for him now.”

“Ah, a Christmas play. What are they doing?”

“It's
The Harrowing of Hell
this year, and he was to be the Savior. He was so excited, it was the first year his father was to let him play the part. And now neither old Duke nor new may be there. Such a pity.” She chattered on, telling me of Silvio's gout, Anna's latest pregnancy, and such other servants' matters until I could have probably walked in and identified the entire staff. Finally, we reached the villa.

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Well, sir. Here we are, and the walk was a quick one, thanks to you. Nothing like the conversation of a gentleman to pass the time. Blessings upon you, sir.”

“And you,” I replied. “And on your house and your feast.”

She dimpled again and went in.

The Harrowing of Hell.
An odd choice. The town was not large enough to do a full cycle during the season, so they always put together one for the last day. I wondered which version they'd be using. Not much of a play, more like a quick debate between Jesus and the Devil, which He wins, naturally, then the righteous Jews parade about and thank Him for saving them.

I came back down the road into the square to find a number of laborers erecting some small platforms on and about the steps of the new cathedral. The market stalls were being pushed back to the western side of the square to make room for the upcoming festivities, though the vending continued uninterrupted. As I drew closer, I recognized some of the scenery in progress. The Cross and the Sepulcher were easy enough to figure out. Two poles with a rope dangling loosely between them were at the highest step. I assumed that would eventually be Paradise. The most elaborate setting was for the gates of Hell, a crude head of Satan with his jaws open wide enough for a man to walk through without stooping. Red damask curtains concealed the interior. To the right of that were a pair of thrones, one painted white, the other a deep red.

A man was turning a windlass that lifted a small, frightened boy into the air. He kept flipping over, which did nothing to assuage his fear.

“No, no, no,” scolded an imperious man who seemed to be in charge. “That won't do. The Angel of the Lord must be upright when flying. What can we do?”

“How about we weight his feet?” suggested the man at the windlass.

“Excellent,” cried the man directing, and a pair of large stones were lashed to the unfortunate child's shoes. He turned upright, the rope now digging painfully into his armpits. He looked unhappily at the man in charge and took a deep breath.

“All harken to me now,” he whined, barely audible.

“No, no, no,” shouted the man. “You are supposed to be an Angel of the Lord, coming from up high to deliver a message of hope. Don't whimper, proclaim it, boy.”

“But it hurts,” whined the boy.

“You'll stay up there until I decide to let you down, and that will be when you give the speech to my satisfaction.”

I recognized him now. His name was Fabian, and he had been one of the Countess Olivia's men when I was last in Orsino. He had played a small part in the events leading to Malvolio's disgrace. I hoped it was small enough to escape notice. He was an impudent rascal when I first knew him, and now the rascal had metamorphosed into a tyrant.

The boy struggled through his speech, scrunching up his face as if he thought it might be written on the insides of his eyelids. He did it a few more times in the same faint monotone, but the last rendition either satisfied Fabian or forced him to concede defeat, for he turned to a young deacon who was standing nearby.

“The cue is, ‘As I shall now tell to thee,'” he instructed him. The deacon nodded at a shivering group of onlookers who proved to be the choir, for they launched immediately into a shaky rendition of
“Advenisti desirabilis.”
Fabian immediately cut them off. “Not that one, that's for later. That ‘welcome to hell' one, that's the one I mean. Good, that's it. Jesus, that's your cue to enter. Jesus?”

“Here, damn you,” muttered Sebastian, huddled inside his cloak. He walked to his position in a most ungodly fashion. “Christ, why did they have to put Christmas in the winter?”

“Now, now, Count. That's hardly the spirit we want. Your first speech, if you please.”

“Hard ways have I gone,” began Sebastian, scarcely more audible than the angel who preceded him. There were a number of spectators openly smirking at his appearance.

“And how do you like our little production so far, pilgrim?” came a voice at my elbow. I turned and marked the Bishop, his miter replaced by a simple cap, his eminence swathed in an elaborately trimmed fur coat.

“I find it somewhat appalling,” I replied. “Surely the Church does not endorse these sorry proceedings. How can you let these holy days be profaned by theatricals?”

“Nonsense. Just what we need. It brings them in, and if a little moral instruction slips in amidst the entertainment, so much the better. It's not as if they were doing
The Interlude of the Shepherdess.”

“It smacks of bread and circuses.”

“Of wafers and masses, more likely. Look you, see the high and the low mingle in common purpose. Think how grateful the lowly peasants are to be freezing their balls off in the same cold wind as a count or a duke, and to realize how little they suffer in comparison with the agonies of Our Savior on the Cross, which they see reenacted right in front of them. And then to assemble afterwards in a nice warm cathedral and give thanks that their lives are only slightly miserable and that Heaven awaits them.”

“Where's Adam and Eve?” yelled Fabian. “We need to measure Paradise.”

A young couple, giggling, ascended the steps and stood between the two poles. Fabian fussed with the rope until it was level with their chests. “This is the height,” he said to a man who marked it with chalk on each of the poles. “Remember, Paradise must reach the ground so only their heads are visible once they enter. Demons! Mouth of hell, if you please.”

“I know there are those in Rome and elsewhere who disapprove,” said the Bishop a little more quietly. “But there's no reason why we shouldn't usurp spectacle to our purposes. Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?”

“Because, unlike your choir, he can sing.”

He laughed. “Charity and patience, my cynical merchant. And you shouldn't be one to criticize. I've heard German music—those elevated drinking songs—and it is unfit to sing the praises of Our Lord. And you condemn actors. Remember Genesius and Pelagia were actors once, and now they're saints. Well, good pilgrim, although I'm forbidden to put my own genitals to use, that doesn't mean I want them to freeze off. I will see you later at the Elephant. I am giving the traditional blessing of the wine in there.”

“If there's wine to be blessed, I will honor the sacrament,” I promised, and he strolled away. An earthy fellow for a Bishop, I thought. Unusual, but I liked him the more for it.

Fabian was walking the demons through some clumsy pratfalls. “Now, remember, this is the holiest personage you have ever encountered, and it should send you into a complete panic. Astarot and Anaball on the right, Berith and Belyall on the left. Use your pitchforks, trip over them, try poking each other.” Belyall slipped for real on a patch of ice and nearly impaled Astarot. The onlookers roared. “That's good,” applauded Fabian. “Keep that in.” Belyall looked dubious as to whether he could repeat the move. Astarot looked dubious as to whether he wanted him to. Berith belched abruptly, some more spontaneous comedy. It was all very crude and pedestrian.

BOOK: Thirteenth Night
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