Master of the Revels Page 7

  “Gráinne can’t be made to understand any such thing,” he replied. He unlocked the Jeep. “Okay, all clear, hop in. We’re going to my place tonight. Keep ’em guessing.”

  “If they’re waiting for us to leave East House, it really doesn’t matter where we go,” I said. “They’re already tailing us. The skin is broken on your temple. I have antibiotic cream at home and I bet you don’t. Let’s go to my place.”

  Tristan grunted, but when we reached Mass Ave, he turned right rather than left. “There,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the rearview mirror. “They’re on us.”

  I don’t know if it’s DODO, or some other federal agency, or the Fuggers, but it’s the new normal. They followed us out to my duplex in Arlington Heights, pulling over to park a discreet block away, already knowing which building we would head to. The Fuggers had let us know they wouldn’t do anything, but it’s an unnerving way to have to live.

  I unlocked the door and we went in. As I was fumbling in the medicine cabinet for the antibiotic cream, Tristan prowled the front rooms, glaring out the window.

  “You know what they could do,” he said, as I emerged holding up the tube. “They could buy out the owner of the other half of the duplex, and then you’re vulnerable.”

  “They could lob a grenade down the chimney,” I said. “But they won’t.”

  “Buying the other half of the duplex is subtler,” he said. “Which means more dangerous. We should move.”

  “We?” I said archly. Archly, to hide a brief thrill at the idea of this.

  “We both need to move. If we move in together, that’s one less set of variables to control. It’s a tactical decision.”

  “Well, aren’t you Mr. Romantic,” I said.

  “Obviously neither of us can move out openly—you know, furniture and stuff—without being noticed, nor can we go looking at property without drawing attention. So we have to abandon everything we have and get somebody else to go house-hunting for us.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this. I’m flattered.”

  He sat on the couch and beckoned me to join him. I did so, setting the cream on the coffee table. He put one strong hand on my knee. It felt proprietary, but I liked it.

  “This is not about us,” he said, gesturing from himself to me. “It’s about . . .” Now a gesture to suggest the whole world. “It’s about us.”

  “You’re polyamorous now?”

  “Stokes,” he said impatiently. “There’s a house one street over from Frank and Rebecca’s, the yard backs up to theirs. Rebecca is making some inquiries. We can expand the East House Trust holdings—”

  “Neither of us can afford a house in that part of—”

  “The trust has seven million—”

  “Which we need,” I said. “We can’t expect East House Trust to buy us a love nest.”

  “Mel, knock it off.”

  “What?” I said with a small smile, needing a change of tone. “It’s a love nest!”

  “If we join forces it will be easier to secure the perimeter,” he insisted, straight-faced.

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” I said. I slid my hand down the inside of his collar and gently touched his bruised shoulder. In a sultry voice, I whispered, “If you show me your dog tags, I’ll show you mine.”

  He cracked a smile. “Stokes,” he whispered, and pushed me back on the couch.

  LETTER FROM

  GRÁINNE to CARA SAMUELS

  County Dublin, Vernal Equinox 1606

  Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, my friend!

  After writing my last paragraphs here in Eire, I had my sister Send me to Albion, that I might secure a certain potent spell for future witches. I arrived in the backyard of my witch-friend Rose, and wasn’t she delighted to see me, as by her reckoning ’tis been at least three years since I had left, and hadn’t I been in a mess of a state on account of surviving an episode of Diachronic Shear that was the fault of Tristan Lyons!

  She dressed me in the very togs I left behind when first she Sent me into the future: a roomy linen smock with the lowest neckline possible, knitted wool stockings to the knee, and a canvas kirtle over all, with lace to show off my bosom. And of course, as she plaited my hair, we fell at once to ale and gossip. And hadn’t she much to tell me, but hadn’t I far more to tell her! But I needn’t be recording my part of the discourse. As for Rose: ’tis three bairns she has now, and no more interest in her husband, nor any man, than ever she did, but pleasantly resigned she is to her position. For above all else, Rose is one for merriment, and she doesn’t mind the having of this husband, as he is no more inclined to women than she to men, and so they make merry all the night long with their sundry lovers and nobody minds one bit, plus they’ve dutifully put out a brood to cover their real inclinations.

  Also, she told me a tidy bit of gossip: a witch in the royal court had been found out and confessed to witchcraft! Spared her life, she was, and even spared her feckin’ position, for she has struck a right loathsome bargain with the King she may keep as she was, in Queen Anne’s entourage, in exchange for telling Their Majesties at once if any kind of witchcraft dare show itself near Their Royal Selves. A treacherous bitch it makes her, sure, but ’tis a useful tidbit to add to my fomenting plans.

  So all of that was grand, and we sat near her cookfire with her youngest on her lap as I shared with her my determination to prevent magic from being snuffed out in 1851.

  I confess some disappointment that Rose was not instantly of my mind on this most urgent matter.

  “But be it not a dilemma, Gracie?” she said, bouncing the wee one on her knee. “If you use technology to undo technology, then at a certain point you have right fucked yourself, haven’t you? That is, at some fell moment, you will have undone technology enough that it is no longer able to continue to undo technology. And then shan’t the world be stuck in some middling mess? In which technology is but half born and magic is yet half dead?”

  Sure, this was something I had contemplated, but hearing another speak it was sobering. Not to the point of putting me off, of course. “I am mindful of all things,” I said, but her frown remained a wee bit puckered. “In any case, will you help me, by clothing me if I should come to you, and Homing me when I am finished here?”

  “Well, of course,” she said. “For you’re my own dear Gracie, and I would never be unhelpful to such a friend.”

  “And may I further know,” I said, “that you’ll refuse to aid my enemies?”

  Unsettled she looked then and said, with sideways glance, “’Tis Tristan you’re referring to?” And when I said, “True enough,” she winced a bit before replying, “’Tis a bit dear to ask, no? I will help you and not hinder you, but I think I must continue as I was before and help with dispassion all comers from the future.”

  “Why is that, now?” I demanded with scorn and some alarm.

  Her bright eyes remained aloof, as if meeting my gaze was unbearable. “Several be the reasons,” she said. The little one began to fuss, and she hoisted him to her breast to give suck as she spoke. “I’ve not the head for scheming that you have, Grace. I’m just in this for the sport, not for a mission. That suits me and I will keep to my course.” A pause, as she fussed over the baby more than he required, giving me to believe she was avoiding saying something. And wasn’t I right about that! “I had an encounter last fall, accidentally meddling with some parliamentary-like events at the request of kin. A week later, your banker-friend, with the jaunty plumed hat and yellow beard—”

  “Ay, Athanasius Fugger, isn’t it?” I said. For as yourself will know, my friend Cara, sure the Fugger banking family has, throughout many centuries, kept an eye on pretty much all the important doings of their world.

  “That’s the one—he came out here in a fine carriage and had a chat with me and the husband in the roadway, to the tune of ‘we don’t wish to experience the level of disquiet that you will cause us if you ever again act on behalf of a cause—yours or anyo
ne else’s. Don’t do it, or we shall make life difficult for the husband.’ And so it is, Gracie.”

  Well, wasn’t I riotous with irritation at her then! We had at it for a bit, we did. But she would not be moved. I cannot be confident in her now, for if she abets my foes, how is she a friend? ’Tis a devilish smug little bitch she’s being about the husband, whose family jewels she doesn’t even fancy!

  But that is moot for now. Let me stay to the point here, that you may be moved by how things progress in my great work.

  I left Rose and headed south down into the city, then crossed along all the little pocked and muddy lanes and ditches that I know so well from my years there as a spy to the O’Malley, queen of the best of Ireland. The bustle and stench and noise ’twas comfortably familiar. And so came I to the Thames and crossed it in a wherry, using a penny Rose had given me for the purpose, as I was loath to cross the filthy, crowded bridge and to be dripped upon by the severed heads of heroes who bravely challenged the government of that rotten sceptred isle. I was let off bankside at Southwark, so that I might go at once to the Globe Theatre and seek out my friend Dick Burbage. ’Twas Dick who would first play the role of Macbeth, and so I’d hoped he might be of help in my tinkering with the script. For determined I am, to be tinkering with that script and to be setting that most malignant of all charms where all witches of the future shall have easy knowledge of it.

  The audience gates to the Globe are all closed of a morning, that the players may rehearse unmolested within. No matter, as I know my way around, and I entered through the door to the tiring house, at the back of the stage. Here, I found most of the King’s Men with their backs to me, huddled together by the stage-right entrance about to proceed out onto the stage in a group. This being a mere pickup rehearsal, the props man wasn’t there and the lad who should be guarding the door was distracted playing dice with himself. So didn’t I slip across the tiring house and out the stage-left entrance, then hop down off the stage, into the yard, to watch the proceedings.

  Onstage, there was my handsome Dick Burbage, just on the corner near me, standing with almost-as-handsome John Lowin, while clever Robert Armin was centre stage, standing in the trap with only his chest and head visible. And just as I began to watch them did Armin toss Dick a skull from out the trap, and Dick stared at it in wonderment. I nearly cursed aloud, for the skull meant ’twas Hamlet, and Hamlet is the dullest fuck of a play I’ve ever seen. (Although in truth I do appreciate a good dose of vengeance.) Seems they were bringing it back for some court appearance and were rehearsing it to make sure they still knew the parts. Poxy Will Shakespeare, who wrote it, was lolling in the Lords’ Box above the stage, and even he looked bored off his tits. But then he always does, for he’s a strange fella.

  Sure as much as I hate the play, I do remember it well enough to recognise Ophelia’s funeral—she being Hamlet’s hysterical pansy of a girlfriend, who loses her sanity over matters that would hardly cause the average Irish lassie to shed a tear. She’d just drowned herself offstage, and now she was to be buried onstage. (Sure wouldn’t a good playwright let us see her drown!) So the whole company would soon be onstage, leaving Mr. William Shakespeare undisturbed. If I made my way up to him in the box above, I would charm him to use my verses instead of his own in the witches’ scenes of his new play, Macbeth. ’Tis simply done!

  I slipped back inside and up the steps to the Lords’ Box, that being where the richest patrons sit during a performance. And there was the man I sought, although he’s not a man I cared to know.

  Poxy William Shakespeare, by my lights, is as dull a fellow as his Prince of Denmark. He’s not one for the drink (much), or the ladies (much)—or the boys or the men (much)—that I can tell you. Nothing at all like a good man of the theatre ought to be. The few times we have crossed paths, ’twas a kind of distraction he had to his features, as if there were a better conversation going on nearly out of earshot, and he wished he were closer to it but was too polite to say so. ’Twas that very expression afflicting his face now, staring up to the painted ceiling of the stage, while down below, a bewigged lad playing Gertrude lamented over the open grave. Shakespeare held a black lead in his right hand and a scrap of parchment in his left with writing on it.

  “Good den, Monsieur le Plume,” I said softly. Shakespeare, although he’d no cause to expect me, looked not a whit surprised. Without his head moving at all, his eyes slid from the ceiling mural over to my face.

  “You’re Burbage’s Irish witch,” said he calmly. “None stopped you coming in?”

  “Hoping to have a private word with you, friendly in your ear.”

  “Do you now?” he asked, seeming not at all intrigued. A bit thick he is, other than he’s a little capable of dramatising. He turned attention to his parchment, began to write with the black lead.

  “’Tis to do with a play you’ve been writing.”

  He paused in his scribbles, and his lips closed to a smile. After a breath he said, “Is it to do with witches?”

  “If you say so.”

  He nodded. His eyes scanned the empty theatre galleries, as if he were mildly curious about the artwork painted thereupon. “There be many concerned about the witchcraft, but you are the first actual witch to be so.”

  “You must replace whatever nonsense you’ve written with words that I will give you,” said I, starting to weave a spell of suggestibility. “You needn’t ask me why. They’re just words of protection to keep the play from censure. I will tell them to you now and you’ll rewrite it tonight.”

  Now came an amused pursing of the lips, as if he could feel my spell about to tickle him. Not so much as a glance in my direction. “’Tis too late to change the text to suit anyone, excepting Master Tilney. Waste no magic on me, but save it for him. We had the reciting of the script yesterday at his office, so ’tis with him now, and I expect him to approve it any hour. ’Tis out of my hands.” Finally a glance at me. “Your magic will be wasted here.”

  Feck. I had clean forgot Edmund Tilney. He has held the office of Master of the Revels since before I breathed upon this earth. Never had I met the fellow yet, but his name was mentioned sneeringly by Burbage on occasion.

  Even if I went back to yesterday and conjured Shakespeare to change the lines, Tilney would be censoring them if they offended him in any way—such as, for being real witchcraft. This new ruler, King James, considers all magic to be both the work of Satan and a personal attack against his person and his crown. (He even wrote a book about it, but sure isn’t it all bollocks.) Queen Elizabeth did welcome nearly anything artistic, but not this new fella on the throne. And ’tis Tilney making sure the plays adjust their tone to suit the monarch.

  So I must bewitch Tilney to change the lines. That is how I may ensure that all future generations of witches will know this deadly spell (and some may perform it—without even meaning to!—as a happy corollary to my success in other ventures, as magic comes gradually back to life).

  Shakespeare had begun muttering to himself about immortal longings and writing with the black lead, as if he’d clean forgot I was there. So without taking leave of the fellow, I came down the stairs to the tiring house and let myself out of the building onto the marshy lane.

  And hie myself to Tilney’s offices, to work my magic there.

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  DOER: Tristan Lyons

  THEATER: Jacobean London

  OPERATION: De-magic Macbeth

  DEDE: Approach Shakespeare

  DTAP: London, 1606 (late April)

  Erzsébet Sent me from our only ODEC at 09:05 of Day 1991, Year 6 (by DODO’s official reckoning).

  Mel put in due diligence, but turns out there is not much personal data about William Shakespeare. She found where the Globe Theatre was sited and that at this time Shakespeare was renting rooms on Silver Street, in Cripplegate, near the northern bounds of London city.

  I arrived in the agricultural outbuilding belonging to the witch Rose. She had a full set of
clothes waiting for me, and she’d never discarded it, so it was still in the stable and available to me, although she complained about how it smelled after so long. (Witches have very sensitive noses, it smelled fine to me.) She didn’t refer to our encounter re: the Gunpowder Plot. In her era, that was half a year ago.

  I asked Rose a few leading questions about Gráinne. She told me she hadn’t taken the bait Gráinne offered and would remain neutral in any diachronical disagreements. She didn’t want to know details; she didn’t want to tell anyone what Sending and Homing she’d done for others—she had no interest in getting caught up in arguments or feuds. I cannot stress enough how fortunate we are that’s her position. (I hypothesize that the Fuggers had something to do with this, but she was evasive.) So don’t tell her anything, she says, but she was happy to remind me of the way to Cripplegate.

  The hamlets and farmyards en route had undergone some suburban encroachment since I first came here (five years by Rose’s calendar), although London’s population was still only about two hundred thousand.

  Once I was through the gates, the city noises grew intense. The smaller streets were short, changing name at most intersections. I’d forgotten how stinking and filthy London is at that time, although it’s better at the northern end of the city where I now was. Southwark, where I’d first met Gráinne and where the playhouses are, is the most assaulting on the senses, but it was harsh enough up here too that it’s good I had a walk to adjust. Shakespeare’s landlords, Christopher and Marie Mountjoy, made wigs and headdresses. I was looking for their workshop, on the northeast corner of Silver Street, near St. Olave’s Church.

  I found it. It was the ground floor of a half-timbered house, with two floors reached by outside stairs. Hanging over a wide door was a painted sign depicting a curly blond wig with jewels and lace embedded in it. The door was open, and there was a shop within, really just a counter one pace in from the door with all the notions and makings out of reach behind it. There were no customers. A middle-aged man and woman sat on stools at the threshold, a bench between them with a mound of lace on it; they were examining the patterns of the lace in the sunlight and talking quietly. The woman looked friendly, but the man had a pinched expression. Their dress—her kirtle and lace headdress, his doublet and coat—placed us in the same socioeconomic class, which eliminated the need for involved social posturing.