STAGS 2, page 18
‘And what is the message?’ asked Nel.
‘I think I’m starting to guess,’ I said with a strange feeling of foreboding, ‘but let’s find out. Let’s let Ben tell us.’
In the final scene, following her dead-of-night conversation with the Grand Stag in the Underwood, Queen Cynthia did a 180. She was happy again, and queenly, and strode about the palace giving orders to Canis, who was back in her employ.
Queen Cynthia
Recall my lord Lupo and his whelp the fox.
Canis
Shall I give the order to slaughter the dogs?
Queen Cynthia
No, by no means. Take this purse of gold and purchase more. Have my lords and nobles bring them from every shire. And Canis?
(He turns)
Bring me my bow. A-hunting I shall go.
That was the last line of the actual play. ‘A-hunting I shall go.’
After that, Poetaster (me) spoke an Epilogue, standing with his head in a noose. Which, although not the weirdest thing in the play, was still plenty bizarre.
When we’d finished the whole thing there was a long, long silence.
I broke it. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess now we know.’ I didn’t need to explain. I meant we knew why Ben Jonson had been thrown in jail for writing this play, why not just his theatre but every theatre in London had been closed, and why every copy of the play had been burned.
Every copy except one.
‘Yep,’ said Shafeen. ‘That would do it. Witchcraft. The corruption of a verse from the Bible. And necromancy – raising the dead.’
‘Not just anyone doing it. But the queen herself. Ben was taking a shot at Elizabeth as a sorceress who uses black magic.’
‘Which is why,’ said Ty, ‘when he kept just one copy of the play, he wrote the last act in code. Because it was so dangerous.’
‘And now we’re supposed to perform it,’ boggled Nel. ‘In three weeks.’
‘But we can’t now,’ I said. ‘Can we?’
‘You must,’ said Shafeen. ‘How can you not? This is your chance to be part of history.’
I looked at him disbelievingly. ‘You know what? This is just like the X-Files movie.’
‘How,’ said Shafeen wearily, ‘is this like the X-Files movie?’
‘Mulder and Scully, you know, two agents investigating the paranormal? Mulder believes in aliens, Scully doesn’t, and then they swap over?’ He folded his arms and listened, used to me by now. ‘You were the one actively encouraging me to do this play, and to buddy up with the de Warlencourts. Then you were all like, no, no, this is too weird. As soon as you knew about the hunting, you were all, pull back, you can’t do it, the hoofprints of the Order of the Stag are all over it. Now you think there’s this big historical significance and you think we should get stuck in again. Make up your mind.’
‘But, Greer,’ he said, taking my hands, eyes shining, ‘could you really stop now?’
With Shafeen’s hands warm over mine, I didn’t even bother to reply.
The answer was in my eyes.
Scene vi
Dog tired, we codebreakers all slept pretty late.
When we eventually got down to breakfast, the twins were already there. Breakfast was in the Morning Room, with its long windows looking out onto grounds bathed in winter sunshine. Cass, grey-faced, was nursing a cup of black coffee and staring into space. Louis, head down, was shovelling up a full English. I’d gone into breakfast ready to blurt out what was in Act Five, but with one look at them I remembered where they’d been that morning.
‘Did you talk to the police and the coroner?’
‘Yes,’ said Louis. ‘We’ve asked for the report into Henry’s death, but that will take a little while, probably till after we’ve gone back to school. But it doesn’t matter anyway,’ he said with a beatific smile. ‘Turns out Henry was cremated after the inquest, and interred in the family bone house. That’s why we didn’t see the old chap when we opened the tomb. He was a pile of snuff.’
There was something pretty uncomfortable about the way Louis talked about his dead cousin. It was a nasty combo of creepiness and downright disrespect. He seemed to relish the thought of Henry’s ashes as much as he relished the Cumberland sausage he popped into his mouth.
‘Ah,’ said Shafeen. ‘I suppose that explains it.’ He bent to Cass’s ear as he passed her to take his seat. ‘I’m really very sorry,’ he said quietly, and my heart sort of blossomed – he was showing Louis how the gentleman thing was done. Cass continued to stare ahead, saying nothing.
We all helped ourselves to a sort of buffet of breakfast-type foods underneath these big silver domes. We waited until Betty had been round with the tea and coffee, in equally big and silver pots, then told the twins about Act Five.
Louis was suitably enthusiastic, and seemed to buy the fact that we hadn’t wanted to wake them because of where they had to go this morning, but Cass barely seemed to react. Until we got to the bit about the village wise woman, and the dark bargain with the queen to bring back the Earl of Greenwich, and then she seemed to perk up. Something about the resurrection part seemed to interest her strangely.
Encouraged by this, I ventured, ‘I don’t know how you feel about this, in the light of … but I was thinking that we could maybe rehearse this morning.’ I looked at the clock – it said noon. ‘This afternoon in the Long Gallery, like you suggested, Cass? I mean, it might take your mind off …’ I tailed off.
‘Doesn’t matter to me, m’dear,’ said Louis, wiping his mouth and standing up. ‘I’m happy to do anything.’ As he passed her chair, he stunned us all by grabbing Ty and kissing her, joyfully, full on the lips. ‘We can rehearse all day if you like.’
And that’s exactly what we did.
It was not the easiest, blocking the scene in the Long Gallery, as it was hard to get the atmosphere of the crone’s house and the midnight forest with the winter sun pouring into that glorious gilded room. But there was something pretty cool about rehearsing that final, dangerous act for the first time in four hundred years.
Shafeen was going to be pretty busy – as the only one without a part, he was not only cast as the crone but was all set to fill in as the Grand Stag. The twins were occupied with their scenes at the beginning and the end of the act, and of course Ty and Nel were onstage pretty much all the way through. Even Henry was forgotten – but not for long.
When Ty got to the part where she had to say the Biblical incantation to raise the dead, I stopped her again. I laughed at myself. ‘Call it superstition,’ I said.
‘Why not now?’ asked Cass. She seemed keen to say the incantation, bordering on the insistent. ‘Let me see it?’ I showed her the page, pointing out the line with my forefinger.
‘Seems pretty harmless.’
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I mean, we’ll say it on the night, but no need to tempt fate, eh?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s a corruption of a Bible verse. I thought you lot were the Catholic posse?’
‘We are. But –’
‘Look,’ I said, conscious of everyone’s eyes on me. ‘It’s like the Scottish play. Isn’t that a thing, that you’re not meant to mention it in a theatre?’
‘That’s right,’ said Nel. ‘And if you do you’ve got to spit over your shoulder and go out of the dressing room and knock three times and all that.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It just feels like this play doesn’t need any more bad luck.’
‘I’ll just skip it,’ said Ty, ‘and carry on.’
Cass stamped her foot on the floor. ‘Well, I think you’re all being jolly silly. I don’t believe in superstition. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!’ She had real tears in her eyes.
We all went still with shock. Then Louis came right up to his twin and spoke more softly than I’d ever heard him. ‘Leave it alone, Cass. It’s not like it’s going to bring him back.’
Her tears spilled over and she ran, wrenching open the little Alice-in-Wonderland door in the wall, which Henry had taken me through last year, and bounding up the little staircase.
Shafeen made as if to follow her, but I stopped him. ‘No. I’ll go. You lot take a break.’ And I ran after Cass.
I had something very particular to ask her.
Up on the roof it was stunning, the acres of silvery, mismatched levels like some medieval platform game, and the sun setting beyond the park and sinking into Longwood like a red eye closing. The grounds of Longcross were perfect, bathed in the rose-gold light. I had vowed not to set foot outside since we were chased through Longwood by a pack of hounds, but this didn’t count. This was the way to see the gardens, and the woods, not at ground level with dogs snapping at your heels. Whatever Cass said, I was still convinced that had happened. We couldn’t have collectively imagined it, could we?
Just as I thought of Cass, I saw her, hunched on the roof at the front of the house, exactly where Henry and I had sat last year. She could have been Henry, with her barley-blonde hair ruffling in the bitter wind, and her shirtsleeves and waistcoat.
I sat down beside her.
‘Was he right?’
She turned to me, eyes and the tip of her nose red.
‘Was Louis right? Did you think The Isle of Dogs could bring Henry back?’
‘I know it can.’ She spoke in the present tense, with absolute conviction in her voice.
‘So you don’t believe in superstition, but you do believe in necromancy?’ I sighed. ‘I think, Cass … I don’t know you very well, but I think you have to let him go.’
‘What makes you think that?’ she said harshly. ‘How could you possibly know?’
I sighed. ‘Because I think I need to let him go too.’ I thought of Shafeen, and of what had nearly happened between us the night before. It was time to draw a line.
‘You?’ She turned to me.
‘Yes.’
She looked back over the park, and the lawn where Henry and I had seen the midnight vixen last year, frozen in her tracks by the sound of our voices. ‘I knew you loved him.’
I didn’t know if I’d call it that, even to myself, but at that moment it didn’t seem right to contradict her. She’d just found out that her beloved cousin had ended up in a jar, and if I was having a hard time dealing with it, that could be nothing compared to what she was feeling.
‘He’s gone,’ I said gently. ‘And nothing’s going to bring him back. Not keeping his room like a shrine. Not a police report. And certainly not a 400-year-old play.’
She sniffed and scrubbed the back of her hand over her eyes and nose. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’
It was the second time I’d felt sorry for a de Warlencourt on this roof. I put my arms around her shoulders. She was shivering like a whippet. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s getting late. We should dress for dinner.’
She half smiled. ‘I say,’ she said. ‘You’re getting the hang of this Medieval life.’
I smiled back. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’
Back in the room I hadn’t slept in, I packed my stuff, as we were planning an early getaway in the morning to be back for Monday-morning lessons. I had no intention of returning to Longcross ever again. ‘With any luck,’ I said to Jeffrey as I left Lowther to put my case in Shafeen’s room, ‘this really is goodbye.’
He looked at me in that knowing, glassy way he had, and said nothing.
Scene vii
Dinner, once again in the Queen’s Dining Room under the queen’s eye, had an odd atmosphere right from the off.
We were all super-smart once again. I was wearing a teal dress, the colour of peacock feathers, which I’d found laid out on my bed, complete with accessories. Ty was in a bronzey orange and Nel, the pastel queen, was in baby blue. Cass, red eyed, drank heavily from the start. Like the boys, she was wearing white tie. I used to hear this and think that guys were wearing just a white tie and nothing else, but from my Medieval experience of last year I knew that white tie meant a white dress shirt, white bow tie, black trousers and black tail coat. She looked fantastic, and slightly dangerous.
Louis, looking almost identical to her, except he had his blond hair parted on the other side, like a mirror image, was at his most charming. Tonight, by some unspoken arrangement, he sat at the head of the table, and Cass right down at the foot, where he’d been the night before. Louis was firmly the king in waiting, the knowledge that Henry was a little pile of grey ashes giving him the certainty that he would inherit the earth in approximately four weeks.
For the first few courses no one talked about the play. Two nameless, interchangeable footmen revolved around us in the half-dark, putting down full plates, clearing empty ones and filling glasses in a seamless, fluid dance. We all politely chit-chatted about Christmas and what we were doing (de Warlencourts: Longcross then skiing; everyone else: normal family stuff) and our exams, and what we Medievals were hoping to do next year, etc. But as the night grew later and the candles burned lower, inevitably we began to talk about the play.
‘I can’t believe he got away with it,’ said Nel as Betty cleared the plates and one of the anonymous footmen (so if you follow the rules of Galaxy Quest, they’d be the first to die in a gun fight) came round and refilled the glasses. ‘Ben Jonson, I mean. He insulted William and Robert Cecil, the father–son team who were running the country, calling them Catholic-hunting dogs. He insulted the Earl of Essex, the queen’s favourite. I mean, the earl is the nicest person in the play, but he’s still pretty shallow and gold-digging. And Ben even throws shade at the queen, saying she took part in a death-hunt (even though she was, technically, an innocent party) and was a sorceress who raised the dead.’
‘I don’t think he did get away with it,’ I said. ‘Abbot Ridley said he was thrown in jail.’
‘And they closed the theatres. Not just the one the play was in, but all the theatres. He pretty much got them all shut down.’
‘That happened to Shakespeare too,’ said Ty. ‘With Macbeth. They were worried that Shakespeare got the witches’ spells from, well, real witches, and that they were real spells and would make bad shit happen. That’s why the play is considered so unlucky, even to this day. That’s why they do all that crazy stuff we were discussing earlier.’
She looked at Cass quickly, uncomfortably, remembering that this discussion had led to Cass storming off. ‘I mean,’ she tailed off, ‘I’m not saying that actually happened.’
‘It did,’ said Cass. ‘That’s exactly what happened.’
‘What, with Macbeth?’
‘No. Well, maybe. I don’t know about that. But it certainly happened with The Isle of Dogs. That’s why they shut the thing down.’ We all fell silent, listening. ‘Not the slander, or even the treason. The necromancy. The raising of the dead.’ The candles flickered in a sudden draught, lending even more of a ghost-story vibe to her speech. ‘They found that the play was making weird stuff happen.’
‘Like what?’ asked Nel, interested.
‘When it was performed in London, people would go home and find their lost loved ones alive. A woman who had died two days before came back to life when her husband got home and spoke to him. A mother whose stillborn child started to move in its cot. A grandmother laid out for burial, who woke up not understanding why there were coins on her eyes. Everyone thought it was witchcraft, but it was the play.’
‘Crap,’ said Louis. ‘Back then they didn’t understand things like comas. That’s why there are scratches inside coffins. People would wake up buried.’
Cass pointed at Louis with a white finger. ‘You know nothing about it, Louis.’
He sat back in his chair and took a drink of his wine, fully in control of the situation. ‘Then why don’t you educate me?’
‘Ben Jonson was acquainted with this fellow called Dr Dee, who was all mixed up in the occult. Years later, he – Jonson, I mean – wrote a play called The Alchemist, and everyone thought the main character was based on Dee. Apparently Jonson got his wise woman’s incantation for The Isle of Dogs from Dee, who knew all about the Witch of Endor. His wise woman is based on the Witch of Endor.’
‘Who the hell,’ said Louis, spitting the words, ‘was the Witch of Endor?’
‘She,’ said Cass, her eyes glittering, ‘is the only witch in the Bible. A necromancer. She spoke an incantation to raise the dead. They are the words in the play, the words you lot wouldn’t let Ty speak.’
‘If you think –’ began Louis.
But I cut across him. ‘How come you know so much about the play?’ I asked. So far as I knew, the first time Cass had heard about The Isle of Dogs was when I’d brought it to that first drama class at STAGS. ‘I thought —’
‘What a load of old shit,’ interrupted Louis in his turn. ‘If you’re going to go on about this – witches and spells and all that bollocks – I’m going to bed.’ And he got up from the table so suddenly that the cutlery in front of him jumped. We all jumped too.
Cass stood up, a lot more slowly and a lot less steadily. The two twins were facing each other across the table, their clothes, and their opposite-parted hair, made them look like reflections of each other. No – not a reflection – Cass looked much the worse for wear by this point. She looked like the dodgy painting of Ben Barnes in Dorian Gray.
‘It’s happened before,’ she said, in a suddenly sober, low voice – a voice that sounded exactly like Louis’s, as if he’d thrown it across the room like a ventriloquist. It was chilling. I looked from one to the other. ‘You don’t know,’ she warned. ‘You’ve no idea.’
Louis threw down his napkin, a gesture I’ve only ever seen in movies, and strode down the table past her to the door. She clutched at his sleeve to stop him. ‘I tell you,’ she protested, louder now. ‘It’s happened before.’
