STAGS 2, page 9
Scene ix
Act Three was taking shape nicely, and Ty was killing it as the ageing queen, desperate to look fit for her birthday hunt. She strode about the stage, calling on the gods to make her beautiful so she could land the Earl of Greenwich.
Now, Diana, from thy huntress moon,
Lend me thy beauty for one night,
Bring me a gown the colour of the greenwood,
Bring me arrows keen enough to pierce the hearts of men,
Bring me a net, wrought of gilt, fit to catch dreams,
And a hound with eyes of fire and a thirst for blood,
So I may capture my prey, my love.
But it occurred to me as we rehearsed that it wasn’t Queen Cynthia and the Earl of Greenwich who were the real love story of this play. It was the humble servant Canis and his adored master Greenwich – they were the emotional heart of the drama. The queen and the earl, apart from a bit of courtly compliment-swapping in Act One, spent any stage-time they shared fighting like cat and, well, dog. I wondered then whether Ben Jonson preferred the company of men to women. But then I remembered what Abbot Ridley had said about his patroness and friend Esmé Stuart. Those two sounded tight. I felt pretty sure there was something romantic going on there.
Meanwhile, I was surer than sure that there was something romantic going on in the present day. Nel was definitely getting seriously into Abbot Ridley, and Abbot Ridley definitely had more chemistry with Nel than he had with Ty, which worked well for the drama – with Nel as the servant boy, whom he didn’t want anything from, and with whom he didn’t have to pretend, there was a genuine friendship, a connection. Observing the Abbot closely, which I did at every rehearsal, I didn’t think he had any inappropriate feelings for her. But she certainly had a thumping great crush on him.
Watching Nel fall for Abbot Ridley, and Ty fall for Louis, only served to remind me how crap my own love life was. Shafeen hadn’t exactly said we were broken up, but it certainly felt like it, especially with Cass sniffing round him. I would have loved to talk to him about everything that was going on with The Isle of Dogs, but he just didn’t seem approachable at the moment. I’d actually gone to his room one night, hoping to make peace. It occurred to me, as it never had before, that maybe I should knock – we’d lost that closeness that allowed me to just barge in. But as I’d leaned close to the door, knuckles raised, I’d heard laughter from within. Shafeen and … Cass. I’d turned and gone straight back down the stairs, cold as stone. There was no reason Shafeen shouldn’t have a friend round, and they had some science subjects in common. There was no reason to suppose they were laughing about me. But I supposed it anyway.
I lived for history lessons, as they were about the only time I saw Shafeen. We sat on the adjacent desks we’d picked at the start of the year, too proud to move, trying not to look at each other. The not-exactly-cheerful story of Elizabeth I approaching the end of her life was the backdrop to these encounters.
Friar Camden stood at the blackboard, her silver hair in sharp contrast, telling the end of the tale. ‘She’d seen off Mary, Queen of Scots,’ said the Friar. ‘She’d seen off Philip II of Spain and the Spanish Armada. She’d seen off every count and prince and king who’d petitioned for her hand. But there was another enemy that was slowly besting her. Father Time.’ She turned and wrote Tempus Fugit on the board, the chalk as white as her hair. ‘A bit of garden-centre-sundial wisdom for you there,’ she said. ‘Time Flies. And Elizabeth was helping it along, ironically, in her efforts to keep herself young. She used toxic lead paint on her face, corrosive vermilion to add red to her cheeks and deadly belladonna to make her eyes shine. She was unknowingly slowly poisoning herself in the name of beauty. And it was in this state, in her old age and her failing health, that she had to face the most hurtful betrayal of all. The betrayal of the Earl of Essex.’
I woke up at this point.
‘This is how the romance of the century came to an end,’ said the Friar drily. ‘There was a rebellion in Ireland and Elizabeth sent Essex to utterly destroy the rebels. Instead, Essex negotiated with their leader and Elizabeth saw this as a treasonous betrayal and demanded his return to court. Essex rode through the night to Elizabeth, arriving early in the morning. He burst into her bedchamber and caught the queen in a state of undress, without her wig or make-up.’ Friar Camden waved her chalk at us. ‘Imagine her humiliation – to be seen without any artifice by the man she loved – with her thinning grey hair, smallpox scars, every wrinkle on display. She’d always wanted to appear as Gloriana, the ageless queen with immortal youth and fabulous beauty. With his morning visit, Essex had ripped that veil away. Things could never again be as they were; he could never unsee what he had seen. It was the end of them.
‘Following the debacle in Ireland and the humiliating episode in her chamber, Elizabeth banished Essex from court and took away his rights to trade in sweet wine, effectively ruining him. Essex raised an army against her in revenge, leaving Elizabeth no choice but to condemn him to death. He was executed at the Tower of London. The queen never recovered from his loss, wished him back alive and by her side every day, and died herself two years later. Time, and the earl, had done for her at last.’
It was pretty depressing, the death of love. Without warning, Henry haunted my thoughts again. He and I had barely begun, we’d shared nothing but a kiss, but I was still trying to come to terms with his death. And I hadn’t even loved him, had I? It was certainly not the same as what I felt for Shafeen. Was it possible to love two people in two different ways? I was conscious of Shafeen at the next desk, his long fingers clutching his pencil as they did when he was interested. I tried to remember the last time he’d held my hand.
Time might have been Elizabeth’s enemy, but I felt it was my friend. At Justitium, I’d have three days at a pretty empty school to work things out with Shafeen. I knew he wasn’t going back to India because it wasn’t worth it for three days, and I wasn’t going to Manchester because Dad was away filming. I hoped against hope that we could maybe use the time to get our shit together.
Scene x
On Sunday evening I was pretty jittery.
If the last few weeks were anything to go by, I’d be receiving Act Four of The Isle of Dogs that night. And this time I was going to be ready.
At Sunday Commons I could hardly eat – we always had Sunday Commons in the Great Hall, not the Refectory, and it being winter, the stained-glass windows were black with darkness and the room lit with a thousand candles. Above our heads, in the halflands of light between the candles and the vaulted roof, dozens of pairs of stags’ antlers were mounted on the walls. In an effect I’d seen a year ago at Longcross, the candles threw multiple shadows; a forest of antlers crowding in upon us like the dense tree cover of a blackthorn wood. All I could think about was that at last I was going to find out what went on in the forest of Underwood in The Isle of Dogs.
I knew from all those drama lessons with Abbot Ridley that Elizabethan plays had five acts. So in Act Four, presumably, the drama would really ramp up. I didn’t know much about plays, but I did know about film. In Act Four of a screenplay there is usually a challenge that seems impossible to return from – often a death. Think Obi-Wan switching off his lightsabre in A New Hope. Han Solo being bagged and tagged in Carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back. Or Quint getting munched by Jaws, in, well … Jaws. Act Four was when things usually got very, very bad for the secondary hero.
I glanced at Shafeen, all the way down the other end of the room near High Table, looking serious and slightly magical in his chapel cape. But I couldn’t think about the Shafeen thing tonight. The anticipation was killing me.
When I got back to my room I set myself up to catch the mysterious messenger. This time I didn’t sit at the desk, as crossing the room always cost me valuable response time. I moved my desk chair right next to the door and sat facing it. I didn’t get myself a book, and definitely not my phone. I didn’t want any distractions. I needed to watch and listen. I just looked at that Tudor oak, all the knots and notches and marks, a door that was as old as The Isle of Dogs. Lightfoot had been built in 1550 – it was weird to think that my door was here when the play was first performed.
I sat there for what felt like hours, listening to the usual evening chatter of people in the passageway, doors opening and closing, toilets flushing in the bathrooms, and bathwater being run and let out (no showers at STAGS. The school cared more about tradition than the planet). And above it all, marking time, the chapel bell, chiming the quarters and the hour. Eventually everything but the bell fell silent, and my eyes started to droop. Until a sound snapped me awake.
Footsteps.
Light and quick, coming down the passageway. Carefully, silently, I eased myself off the chair and reached my hand towards the door handle, my fingers hovering above it, poised to turn.
The person outside seemed to be making no effort to be quiet. The pages were stuffed unceremoniously and noisily under my door, and for a split second I wondered why the messenger was being so careless, before I grabbed the handle and turned it, yanking at the door. Then I realised why.
My door was locked.
Frantically I scrabbled in my desk drawer for my own key, but of course it was no good. By the time I was out in the passageway the messenger was long gone.
Cursing myself, I went back into my room and picked up the manuscript pages from the floor. I re-locked the door, leaving the key in the lock, kicking myself again as I fitted the heavy iron key into the oversized keyhole, because if I’d just dropped to my knees as soon as I’d realised the door was locked and looked through it, I probably would’ve seen who had delivered the pages. It was an uncomfortable feeling that someone had a key to my room, but at least if my key was in the lock, they couldn’t gain entry.
I sat at my desk, and even though it was nearly midnight, I began to read the familiar, spidery black hand of Ben Jonson. And what I read sent me straight to Nel’s room, midnight or no midnight.
Scene xi
I had to knock quite a few times before Nel answered.
Clearly I’d woken her up, because she opened the door looking unusually rumpled, her hair everywhere, her eyes half closed. But they snapped wide when she saw me. ‘Act Four?’ she asked.
I nodded grimly.
She grabbed my arm at once and pulled me into her room. She got back into bed and I got in next to her. It was proper winter now and pretty cold in Lightfoot. She clicked on the bedside light and we huddled together under the covers, over the ancient pages on our humped knees. I could’ve let her read it, but I hadn’t the patience. I was gasping to tell the story. ‘Get this,’ I said. I was whispering, because even Medievals were not supposed to be in each other’s rooms after lights out. ‘So. Act Four. The Earl of Greenwich is furious at the queen for teasing him about this big event coming up, thinking she’s getting married to another. Of course, he has no idea he is the guest of honour at the queen’s birthday hunt, where she’s going to ask him to marry her. So he bribes her servant, Canis –’
‘That’s me!’ exclaimed Nel.
‘– that’s you, to get him into the Palace of Placentia early in the morning. He bursts into the queen’s bedroom just as she’s getting out of bed. She’s totally naked, they’ve just opened the shutters, and he can see her in all her reality, every line and wrinkle.’
‘Jeez,’ said Nel. ‘Poor Ty. D’you think she has to strip off?’
‘Wait. Then, the queen gets into this blind rage and screams at him to leave her presence. She calls for the guards to sling him out.’
‘So that’s it then – she finishes with him?’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no. When he’s gone she has this big speech to the audience – you know, like Hamlet does …’
‘A soliloquy,’ Nel supplied.
‘That’s right, a soliloquy, about how she is two women – the woman in the bedchamber and the great queen with her make-up and jewels and gowns and crowns. He must never see the woman again. But as a queen she still wants him for a husband.’
‘Okaaaaay. But I guess the hunt’s called off at least?’
‘No. She’s furiously angry and needs to vent, so she puts on all her finery that she’s had made – the magnificent green hunting suit, remember? – and rides out anyway.’
‘And what happens to the Earl of Greenwich?’
‘Well, he’s busy storming off through the palace, but Lupo and Volpone stop him. They’ve overheard the queen’s big speech and they are afraid that she’ll take him back. They have to get rid of him once and for all, so they’re more determined then ever that he has to die.’
‘So what do they do?’
‘They tell him about the hunt that will take place that evening, and say there is a way that he could beg forgiveness of the queen. They tell him that she was planning to wed him, and that there’s a good chance she would take him back.’
‘They clearly have a plan, because that’s the opposite of what they want.’
‘Oh, they’ve got a plan all right. They tell the earl to disguise himself as a peasant, a peasant called Robert Horne. They tell him to go down to the Underwood at sunset and find the Great Oak, where he will meet some friends.’
‘Uh-oh.’
‘Yes,’ I said grimly. ‘Greenwich dresses in humble clothes and styles himself as Robert Horne. He goes down to the Great Oak, and is a bit surprised to find a whole bunch of Catholic rebels meeting there. The hunting horn sounds, and the hounds are released. The queen – well, of course, her blood is up, she’s in a rage and she is well up for it. She literally has the best time of her life, never realising that her big birthday treat is to hunt the peasants who have defied her. Her dogs bear down on the Earl of Greenwich, who is not as fast as the other peasants. They corner him in the roots of the Great Oak.’ Suddenly it was all real. In that ancient room, in that circle of storytelling light with Nel, I could see it all like a film. The twilit woods, and hundreds upon thousands of hounds being released from their kennels on the Isle of Dogs, streaking through the trees, baying across the marshes just as Ty had said. Nel wasn’t looking at the pages now but at me, eyes wide once more, but with fear. It was the opposite of a mum telling her kid a fairy tale – this was a horror story. Too late I remembered how much she hated dogs. ‘Then –’
‘No!’
‘Yes. The dogs tear him to pieces. And every other Catholic rebel too.’
‘He dies? The Earl of Greenwich dies?’
I could see that she was thinking of Abbot Ridley, not the Earl of Greenwich. She looked genuinely upset.
I nodded. ‘And then Canis is gutted. Not literally – I mean upset. The earl is the only one who ever showed him kindness, so he sits with the body.’ I thought that, weirdly, this might cheer her up a bit – she had a really nice scene with the Abbot. But although she perked up a little, her shoulders still drooped.
‘God,’ she said, ‘it’s so sad.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, it is. But it’s also a bit familiar, no?’
‘How so?’
‘Where have you heard this story before? Think.’ I was turning into mrs_de_warlencourt, but I didn’t care. I wanted Nel to make the leap herself. ‘Dude sees older chick getting dressed. Chick furious. Dude punished with death.’ I couldn’t believe she couldn’t see it.
‘Actaeon and Artemis?’ said Nel the classicist.
That stopped me in my tracks. Now I was the dumb one. ‘God, yes, of course. I hadn’t even thought of that. Actaeon saw Artemis naked, and she turned him into a stag and had him ripped to pieces. But I was thinking of Elizabeth and Essex. We just learned about it, remember? Friar Camden said that Essex burst in on Elizabeth before she was dressed, and saw her for the first time not as a queen, but as a crumbling old lady. It was the beginning of the end for Essex. When Friar Camden told us that story, I never even thought of Actaeon.’ I jabbed the last page of Act Four with my finger, forgetting, momentarily, just how precious the manuscript was. ‘And now the story turns up in The Isle of Dogs. It’s almost the same.’
‘Greer,’ she said patiently, ‘it is the same. Actaeon is the Earl of Essex who is the Earl of Greenwich. Artemis is Queen Elizabeth who is Queen Cynthia. All these connections. It’s … spooky.’
‘Very spooky,’ I agreed. ‘But I still don’t get why the play was supposed to be so very dangerous. Risky for Ben, yes, but not dangerous.’
Nel turned on me, incredulous. ‘You don’t think it’s dangerous? The depiction of Elizabeth and Essex and the Cecils as bloodthirsty, gold-hungry dogs? You don’t think it’s at all edgy, showing Elizabeth’s favourite, the Earl of Essex, getting ripped apart by hounds? That’s political dynamite.’
‘I s’pose,’ I conceded. I couldn’t admit I was a little, well, disappointed that there wasn’t something more juicy in the text. ‘I mean, it’s close to the bone, but not dangerous. Why burn every copy of the play? Why shut the theatres?’
‘Because it’s treason.’
‘But the queen herself isn’t doing anything wrong in the play. I mean, she doesn’t know she’s hunting people. She’s been tricked by the father-and-son dream team.’ Then I remembered what the Abbot had said. ‘Ridley talked about demonic practices and black magic. The full house of Elizabethan sins, he said. There’s nothing like that in here.’
‘OK. Maybe that comes in Act Five. Would that fit into your story-arc formula?’
‘Well …’ I thought for a second. ‘In films, Act Five is usually the big kick-off, especially in action movies. Like in Black Panther when they have that humongous battle with CGI rhinos that belong to that guy from Get Out.’
Nel said incredulously, ‘You think there are going to be rhinos?’
‘No, not that exactly. What I’m saying is, there’s got to be a Big Finish. When we get Act Five, which should be next Sunday, we might find out, at last, what made the play so damned dangerous.’
