| |
––––––––
NOW, I WAS WILLING to admit that Three Years Gone was an excellent play according to the criteria of being entertaining and well-written. Even deep in the throes of withdrawal from the wireweed addiction, even heart-broken, even in the midst of total disbelief that someone had written a play about my father, I could admire the poet’s command of versification and character.
Just.
I sat there, staring up at Jack Lindsary, whose career had been made by a play spilling out all the shameful details of my father’s reputed treason and return home in ignominy. He had written it as a melodrama, a tragicomedy indeed: the audience had been half in laughter, half in tears at any given moment.
I had promised myself, sitting there in stunned silence with the ducal party at the theatre in Fillering Pool, that if ever I met the author, I would punch him in the face for the slander to my dead father. And for listening to Lark, whom I was almost certain had commissioned the play from him and furnished details that could only have come from me.
My father wasn’t dead, we were well on the way to restoring his name in legal terms, and I was supposed to be pretending to be someone other than Jack Greenwing’s son.
He’s Lark’s pet playwright, I told myself. Artos might well be an informer too. You’re in enemy territory—
Mr. Dart sank his boot-heel into my toes as hard as he could. I jerked and flushed and muttered an apology to no one in particular.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack Lindsary said, waving his hand so that a wash of expensive perfume gusted my way. I sneezed, once, delicately, and saw Artos take note; he frowned suspiciously.
Had Lark furnished her minions with my description? Recurrent sneezing would be the most obvious point to anyone who had met me in the last three years.
“I often do overwhelm people on first meeting,” the playwright went on, grandly. “But yes, yes, it is I, Jack Lindsary, author of Three Years Gone—and a sequel soon to be performed!”
Linda squealed and even Artos looked excited. “Oh!” Linda said, still gripping Mistress May’s arm in a death grip but gazing up into the playwright’s eyes. “Oh! Do tell us more!”
Jack Lindsary struck a pose, hands on his hips, hair tossed back, a brilliant and obviously practiced smile on his lips. “Well, you understand it is all still very much in the works,” he said, as if confidingly but in a loud voice. “There will be announcements made in this week’s New Salon—you will see the major lines of inspiration—but in general, I think I can tell you, that the tragicomic story of the Greenwings continues!”
“No!” gasped Linda.
“But yes!” cried Jack Lindsary. “The son of Mad Jack Greenwing, the traitor of Loe, has a history almost as convoluted as that of his father.” His voice dropped into deep portentousness. “There may even be a dragon slain.”
Everyone looked appropriately impressed by that, even Mr. Dart, whose foot was hard against mine. I was staring agape at the playwright, stunned into speechlessness. He went on, talking of inherited bravado and madness, a tragedy for the son fit for such a father, hinting that he had inside information, laughing with satisfaction at the eagerness and enthusiasm with which his audience listened to his words.
I managed to tear my eyes off him and look around the room. Everyone within hearing distance was listening, leaning towards us—towards him—engaged and attentive. Here were half a hundred people who would go to his new play, I thought dismally, would laugh and cry and come back to this public house and debate the actions of the characters and the words of the playwright over the weeks and months to come.
And if it had not been a play about my family, about me (me!), I would probably have gladly joined them.
I sat there with my blood roaring in my ears. My hands were clenched around my goblet, grateful it was pewter, teeth gritted against an urge greater than I’d ever felt to respond, to speak back, to attack.
I couldn’t attack. I couldn’t respond, because I dared not respond in my own proper person and I was utterly certain I would be unable to keep my temper and my secrets if I tried to speak more neutrally. Even Mr. Dart seemed unable to come up with a question, an objection, that did not sound overly partial. I could see him frowning a little as Jack Lindsary waxed poetic, arms waving, about the incredible success of the first play and the sure response to this second, which in his oh-so-humble opinion was even better.
“It’ll be performed over the Twelve Nights,” he said finally. “The first performance will be the evening of the prince’s marriage-ball.”
“A, uh, tragedy is appropriate?” Mr. Dart said skeptically.
The playwright gave him a once-over then smiled, apparently deciding Mr. Dart’s clothing showed him of sufficient wealth and standing to talk to. “You’re a stranger here, I take it? Thinking of coming to Tara for a second degree?”
Mr. Dart inclined his head.
“You’ve come from Stoneybridge, unless I miss my mark.”
Mr. Dart inclined his head again.
“Then I fully understand,” he proclaimed. “For one, this is a tragicomedy, not a tragedy simpliciter—you will see, as I am sure you shall, that the audience will be laughing through their tears to the very end.”
Wonderful. Simply wonderful.
“For another, my glorious lady, my dear patron, is the one to have commissioned the play, and I think she knows best what she wants!”
Lark.
I stared at the playwright wittering on about his splendid patron for a few minutes of braggadocio and trivialities, mind whirring with realizations. Undoubtedly I had made a lifelong enemy of Lark by refusing to die when she stopped giving me the wireweed, then compounded that crime by daring to disagree with her final paper. I had already suspected she was behind the writing of Three Years Gone, given certain details that I had only ever told her in confidence, before we fell out with each other.
But to learn that her vindictiveness went yet farther, that she had commissioned a sequel about me, that she would take any of the things I had achieved in the past six months and give them to a hack to turn them into a popular play—
To hate me so much that she would choose to have the premiere of said play at her own wedding to someone else—
I sat there frozen, so angry I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, could barely comprehend what anyone was saying. Jack Lindsary finally stopped speaking about his writing process and lauded his company of actors for their tireless work in getting the play together so quickly.
“So quickly?” Linda asked curiously.
“Ah yes, you see, many of these events have just happened.”
Mr. Dart cleared his throat. “Don’t you think it’s a bit, ah, dangerous to write a play about someone living? He might not like it.”
The playwright smiled down at him. “Not like it? My dear sir, this gives him fame!”
I recalled abruptly that Lark’s final paper at Morrowlea, the one I had so thoroughly demolished on the grounds of its being unworthy of a Morrowlea student that the faculty had given me the distinction of coming First in our year, had been a philippic directed against the gods to the effect that Major Jack Greenwing did not deserve inclusion in the House of Fame.
I had not argued that he did, just that her arguments were false and her rhetoric flawed, but she had obviously decided my punishment was to be even more thoroughly humiliated and vilified by half the continent.
“But still, are you certain you have all the correct details?”
“My patron has all the details,” the playwright said simply, waving his hands to brush off such niceties. “Are you a natural philosopher, sir?”
“An historian.”
“Well then, you are in the business of ascertaining facts. I am in the business of entertaining, of making popular, of speaking to the people with what they want to hear. And what they want to hear, my dear historian, is the most salacious gossip wrapped up in splendid blank verse.”
Even I blinked at that bald statement.
Jullanar Maebh covered her mouth to hide her expression.
Mr. Dart said, slowly, “That’s very honest of you, Mr. Lindsary.”
Mr. Lindsary beamed at him. “I do prefer my writing to come out of the truth, but I am not bound by it. Think of it this way: Jack Greenwing was a traitor and deserved what he got. His son—”
“Need hardly be a traitor.”
“No, no, but his life was shaped by his father. You can see it in his actions, in his involvement with wicked cults and wild magic. Trust me when—”
“Wait a moment! Wicked cults?”
The playwright laughed as ears pricked up around the room. “Ah, ah, you’ll have to wait until my play comes out! I can’t go round telling all the secrets before-hand, can I? Look in this week’s New Salon for hints, that’s all I’ll say.”
Linda groaned. “No, no, please! You can’t leave us there!”
He laughed again and actually patted her on the head. “Now then, my dear, you must leave me to my art. Just think! In a fortnight you’ll know whether The Runner Run is better than Three Years Gone, as I suspect it is, for yourself!”
With that he flounced off to take congratulations and refuse eager questions from half the undergraduates in the room.
We sat in silence until he left, then Mr. Dart stirred. He drank down his mulled wine, made a face as if it had gone cold, and looked at me. “Well, shall we? I’m not sure anything can top hearing Jack Lindsary talk about his new play!”
“I know,” Linda said dreamily, letting go (finally) of Mistress May’s arm so she could twirl her hair in her fingers instead. “I think he’s so ... charismatic ...”
“Indeed,” Mr. Dart said, and stood up. I stood up mechanically next to him, as mechanically bowed to the table after he thanked them for their hospitality that evening, and as mechanically followed him back towards the Red Lion. When he gave me a hot baked potato from a street vendor I stared at the vegetable in my hands unseeingly.
“Eat it,” he said softly, “you’ll thank me for it later.”
It was heavy in my stomach. I kept close behind him as he picked his way through the filthy streets, shying away from huddled lumps of beggars in doorways, the mangy dogs that seemed to have emerged out of the night gloom while we’d been in the university district. I ate half the potato, burning my tongue, tasting nothing, and finally dropped the rest for a dog that darted out of a shadow to follow us.
“I,” I said numbly at one point.
Mr. Dart had finished his own potato and took me by the elbow with his good hand to steer me around a pile of refuse. “I know,” he said softly. “Be quiet a little longer, till we get to the inn.”
The rushing blank wind inside me was starting to pulse by the time we reached the courtyard of the Red Lion. It seemed to grow stronger with each pulse, each ebb only serving to show how very angry I was. Mr. Dart tugged me gently through the dilapidated halls to our revolting suite and sat me down, still dressed for outdoors, on the imperial-style couch. He prodded the coals in the fireplace with a poker until they glowed, then added kindling.
His valet, Mr. Cartwright, came in from the other door. Mr. Dart spoke to him softly for a minute; I was staring at the growing flames and did not hear what he said. After a moment the valet left out the main door, closing it firmly behind him. Mr. Dart unbuttoned his cape but did not remove it—the room was damp and chill—and sat down with a huff and a puff of dust in the chair opposite me.
“All right,” he said. “Cartwright’s gone to check no one’s listening and get us some food and wine. We should be safe to talk now. I think—” He sighed. “You did very well not saying anything. Your expression could have been taken as star-struck.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered, and the dam broke.
Mr. Dart, bless him, just listened.