Scene Thirty Four
The theater, as Ariel and Will close the door behind themselves. It is a huge fenced space, mostly open to the sky. Only the balconies and the stage area have partial roofs. The vast wooden balconies and a large, empty central area face a wide curtain. The moment the door closes, the whole building animates. Twinkles of light, and odd flashes of color run along the very tall wooden fencing, paint the aged wood of the balconies an eerie green, a glowing orange, a bitter yellow. Breezes, now cold, now hot, play with Will’s hair, with Ariel’s elaborate braids.
“This is the theater, then,” Ariel said. She spoke in hushed tones and pronounced theater like a foreigner saying a word of whose meaning she wasn’t quite sure.
“The theater, yes,” Will said. He looked around, remembering the last performance he’d seen there. Doctor Faustus. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, full of sound and fury, and the echo of great and dreadful happenings translated into awful words. Every part of the theater had then been crammed, the pit with apprentices and bawds cheering and heckling; the balconies with well to do burghers, a few lords, a sprinkling of ladies, peeling oranges and cracking nuts while watching the show.
Now it was empty, but full of lights and flashes. Magic? Or some weird effect of nature upon long-dried wood?
“What are we meant to do?” Will asked Ariel, as they stood by the door, in the walkway that led and up toward the stairs to the balconies, or downward, into the main, cheaper area of the theater.
Ariel shook her head, distracted. Her face was sharpened, becoming intent, her whole mouth and eyes, and features set in an expression like one who listens for distant sound. She looked like an angel waiting for the final trumpet of judgment.
The flashes of light ran madly around and around the balconies, like dervishes inebriated with life, and rolled in colored displays off the dry wood, and dazzled upon the very ground where Ariel and Will stood.
Little by little, as if by playing they had found a place to stand, the lights collected upon the stage curtains, running up and down on them with strange effect, tingeing the deep black, cheap wool, all the colors of the rainbow.
“I don’t know,” Ariel spoke, still very low, still as if out of a dream. “I think.... I think we’re supposed to watch and listen. But I do not know to what or why.”
“Well,” Will said. “Then let’s search seats, there, in yonder balcony.” Speaking thus, he led her to the rickety stairs that climbed to the even more rickety nearest balcony.
When he’d last been here, he’d stood downstairs, unable to afford the seating comfort of the balconies. Hazelnut shells, orange peels and the stray slop of beer from the balconies had landed on his head throughout the play, but he’d not cared.
What a play that had been -- what a thing -- to make men forget it was but a play. When the actors had pretended true damnation, aye, Will had seen it and tasted its effect upon his dazzled mind and his eager lips.
That was what he wanted, thus to dazzle.
He sighed, his sighing too loud, in this theater where no one laughed, no one applauded, no bawd displayed her wares, no patrons conversed.
The theater could get just this hushed, just this quiet when Kit Marlowe’s villain declaimed his villainy, or when his hero prepared for great death.
It had never silenced so absolutely for one of Will’s plays.
He followed Ariel’s nimble feet climbing the stairs, followed Ariel to the balcony that shook beneath their steps.
So absorbed was he in his professional fear, his professional jealousy, that he noticed nothing amiss, until Ariel shouted, “Look, look.”
He looked, following her extended, trembling arm and the long, thin finger pointed towards the stage.
In a blaze of noxious green light and flashes of darkness -- only explainable as such an absence of light that it absorbed what little light was present in the surroundings -- the curtain moved, opened stealthily.
Will felt a shiver run down his spine. Were they not alone here, then? Was this all, the weird lights, the open door and now the curtain opening, part of some trap? Was someone -- human or elven, created or immortal creature -- trying to entrap him and Ariel? Was someone trying to scare him? Intimidate him?
He half rose from his seat, determined to go backstage and see who operated the rope-and-pulley mechanism that opened the broad curtains.
But the sight of what filled the stage stopped him. The sight of what strutted upon the boards held him silent and robbed the strength from his knees, so that he dropped, half dazed, back onto his creaking seat.
The stage shone, as if backlit by a thousand candles. Not bright candles, such as might light a wedding or a family revel, but small, mournful, veiled candles, such as might veil a wake or a service for the dead.
This yellow, diffuse light highlighted patches of dark fog that formed shapes and clustered, center stage, slowly coalescing into something other, something human, like a group of people, sitting around.
Little by little a concentration of fog moved up and center stage, and little by little, like a piece of clay gaining shape under the hands of a master sculptor, it developed the features of a man: a very young man, dressed all in black. His pale blue eyes protruded just slightly from the thin angular face, and wisps of pale blond hair clung to the high forehead.
He looked around himself, as if not sure where he was, found Will and Ariel in the balcony, and stared up at them, with an intent gaze. “If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, but with good will, that is the true beginning of our end. Consider then we come but in despite.” Its voice was slow and halting, as if coming from a mouth not used to words. “We do not come as minding to contest you, our true intent is all for your delight. We are not here that you should here repent you. The actors are at hand and by their show you shall know all that you are like to know.”
Near him, another wisp of fog had taken the shape and the look of a man not so young, wearing a monk’s robe, his features likewise narrow and ascetic, his black eyes peering intensely from within his brown hood. “You come here to know where to find the wolf, and in which man he does repose. It should not be hard, for he’s inclined, as is the ravenous wolf, to bite when cornered, and fight without much prompting. Think you, you know him, if only you should think.”
By his side, another specter had formed, a very young man, almost a child, with russet hair that Will remembered. Will would swear this was the shade of hair of the little apprentice whose corpse he’d seen. A frisson ran down his back, as he listened to that dead mouth speak.
“He came upon me early morning, as I walked to my master’s, and stilled the heart that had yet years to live.”
“The man who let the wolf make this spoil,” another fog creature said -- this one a fresh-faced maiden, "is as evil as the wolf who harbors him.”
“That can I witness,” said the monk. “While yet we were both at Cambridge did he befriend me, and all the while he got from me my intent of going to Rheims and returning a missionary. I returned only to find that he had sold me to the gallows, and a fouler fact did never traitor in the land commit. For we were friends, and I trusted him well.”
Cambridge. Will frowned. Had Kit Marlowe not attended Cambridge? He thought of the play maker’s odd behavior. But where would Kit have come across the elven kingdom before?
“You?” Another fog shape said. “I, he did betray in the maturity of his years, when he made me talk of whom I wished would succeed our sovereign. And for those words, rash and quick, against his subtle mind I lost contest, and was hung in Tyburn square.”
Others crowded in, with accusations.
Will’s head swam in the confusion, like a traveler that has lost sight of shore and does not expect to regain it.
He wished the shades would speak plainly, plainly accuse their slayer.
Standing, his voice quavering, he put an end to the babel of accusations on the stage. “Stay, good spirits, tell me only: who is this man you so accuse?”
The monk detached himself from the rest, and pushed forward, in rash movement. “He is a traitor and a miscreant, too good to be so and too bad to live, since the more fair and crystal is the sky, the uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.”
The first ghost now pushed him out of the way, and said, “He is the muse’s darling, the poets envy, the actor’s patron saint.”
The apprentice pushed them both away and said, “He is descended from Merlin’s own race.”
And the maiden, last, shrilled, loud and clear, like a woman outraged. “His name is Christopher Marlowe.”