Act IV

 

 

The garrison.

 

Viola’s drunken kinsman still holds riotous sway. Little now has changed save that Don John sits at the inebriated knight’s elbow, whispering poison into an already overflowing ear.

 

Enter VIOLA and FESTE with JACQUES, bound.

 

 

SIR TOBY BELCH stared blearily at the newcomers. “What’s this? Have you brought your grandfather to work? Or has he chosen his dotage in which to trail the pike? We have enough stout fellows here have lost their teeth to fist and boot. No need for one who’s lost ’em to nature!”

“Sir, this ancient is from the wreck of the Spanish ship,” Viola announced, smoothing her false moustache a little as Toby’s gaze fell on her.

“Is’t so?” the bloated sot slurred.

“He is a very tedious old fellow,” Don John confirmed, no doubt wondering where the rest of his former comrades were. “I well recall being confined upon the ship with him. For every word another man said, he had nine, and none to the purpose. Tell him the sun is high and he’d speak for twenty minutes on the Delphic Oracle.”

“Not another to invite to my table, then?” Toby mused.

“Not unless you’d wish all mirth and good cheer driven from it,” John confirmed. “He is a miserable ass.”

“Still, he may know something of his friends—” Viola started, but Toby broke in.

“What else need we know since we have this sterling man of conscience with us?” He threw a meaty arm about Don John’s slender shoulders, and Viola guessed the Aragonese had been flattering her kinsman assiduously since she had been gone. Then inspiration plainly struck the drunkard, for he gave a windy laugh and said, “Throw him in with that villain Pedro. If he’s so intolerably dull, then let him practise his tedium on Prince Spaniard!”

Feste cocked an eye at Viola and she nodded. At least the two hapless prisoners would have some company.

Her sergeant was no sooner out of the door than a familiar and unwelcome darkness flooded into the hall and the Scot manifested himself, woven together from the shadows in the corners. Viola stepped back, but the Scot ignored her, practically elbowing her out of the way to stand before Sir Toby.

“What have you done with your prisoner, the Spaniard?” boomed the hollow voice.

Sir Toby waited for a servant to fill his mug, then drained it, obviously needing further fortification to deal with the apparition. “He moulders in the cells still, as befits a canting knave, or so this fellow names him.”

“If he is such a knave, why is he not hung?” the Scot demanded.

“Wise counsel,” Don John agreed. “Others before have thought they had him safe, but he is a very magician at escaping chains and bars, and at cutting the throats of his captors when he’s free. His word means nothing.”

“Hrm, well.” Toby made an expansive gesture, almost slapping John in the face. “Some officious officer made sure word of his taking went post-haste to my cousin the Duke, so there’s nothing for it but to wait his command.”

Viola nodded to herself. It had been her thought, and her name upon the note.

“And how long before Orsino leaves off his music and his poetry to answer?” the dark warlord growled.

A new voice broke in, so that the Scot whirled round, reaching for his dagger hilt.

“He did not spare the time for a note or a couplet, nor even to instruct a scribe to pen a sonnet in reply.” And Orsino himself was striding into the hall, a clutter of courtiers and hangers-on spilling into the room after him. “What news would move me more than to hear the prince of Aragon is in our hands?”

“My lord.” Toby rose to his feet, swaying perilously. “This honest fellow beside me’s one Don John of Aragon, the younger son, who’s come to warn us of his brother’s perfidy. He recommends we deal with his sibling sternly, or we’ll regret it.”

“A strange matter,” Orsino said, eyeing John narrowly. “For popular report has it that Pedro’s a man of honour, though no such words are said about John.”

“Alas, how I am maligned!” John declared theatrically. “See how my brother’s words go before me to poison the world against his poor sibling? Pedro’s tongue is a very viper, sir.”

Again, his protestations sounded patently false to Viola, and to her relief she saw Orsino plainly unconvinced. “I have determined already what his fate shall be,” the Duke announced. “Even if nobility of spirit did not move me, necessity of state must. Illyria has not profited from our part in this war, which drags on season to season and ravages one nation after another. Our farmers and our artisans take up the sword in both hands and, like as not, return with only one, nor not at all. Our harvests go ungathered. Our women are made widows, our children orphans. Some small family feud of the Medicis over who is lawful heir to Tuscany has become a maelstrom that draws every crown of Europe to the fray. I think back on the blandishments and entreaties that moved me to enter Illyria in the lists, and I regret I let them move me.”

“Duke Orsino,” the Scot grated, “this is unmanly talk. Where is your soldier’s courage?”

“Aye,” Toby added, a man ever bold when no enemy was to be found. “If you find this war so ill-fitting that it rubs, then march and march until you mould it to your shape.”

“You speak of war as if it were a shoe,” Orsino addressed him. “And I fear who I’d have to trample to make it suit. I have word from the front. In a clash of ships off Salento, my-brother-in-law has been taken by these same Aragonese. It is my duty and my pleasure both to offer them their prince for his safe return.”

Viola’s gasp was lost in the general murmur. She felt a rush of emotions: a return of the fear she had felt when her brother sailed for the fighting, and a fierce pride in her husband who, in all this mob of sots and villains and monsters, would do the right thing.

Orsino went on, “Who knows if such a gesture may not bring about a more lasting understanding between us and the enemy? I am brought word of a union between Francesco’s son and Ferdinand’s daughter; can hate between brothers be stronger than such love? And I, for one, am full sick of this war.”

“War is the only true game of princes,” the Scot insisted. “Shall you be the runt of all the lords of Europe, womanly cowering from the fray? Have you no thought of how your countrymen shall be mocked, your borders threatened? In life there is but one path to advancement, and that’s to seize it like the raptor.”

Orsino stared at him levelly. “And if it is thorned, what then? I have seen hawks dead in briars when what they grasped could not be let go. You came to me and offered me your strength when this war came, and even now your witches fly o’er the battlefields of distant lands and blight the soldiers of the enemy and the souls of our own. And though you came with protestations of the rightness of our cause, I start to think you are not the noble eagle you claim, but the raven, that would have the whole world a charnel field so it could feed.”

“Good Duke,” John broke in. “Think not that my brother will keep any word he gives you. Free him, and he shall cut the throat of your kinsman the moment he sets foot on Aragonese soil. If you will make your amends with your foe, then you see before you the son of Aragon whose auspices can bring that about, if only my brother is not free to spite me.”

Orsino turned a cold eye on him. “That Sir Toby has taken you as a drinking companion I shall not undo, for that is punishment and penalty enough, but do not think I cannot hear the serpent in your words, Don John. Now, have rooms prepared and well-cleaned so that they are, if not fit for a duke, then at least a Christian. I must compose some words for Don Pedro to take homewards with him.”

 

 

AFTER ORSINO HAD retired, Don John found he could no longer even feign joy in Sir Toby’s sodden company. For once, just once, he had been on the cusp of ridding the world of his brother and finding his way to the throne of Aragon, that dream which fortune had constantly dangled before him, yet never dropped in his lap.

He left the table, slipping out past the prodigious bulge of Sir Toby’s gut, and stalked off into the garrison, seeking to be alone with his dark thoughts.

To be Don Pedro’s brother was to live a blighted life. What chance had he ever had, growing up in the shadow of a man so universally admired, so crammed with good qualities? How could poor John aspire to honour or nobility or goodness of any sort, when his elder sibling held such a monopoly? John had nothing but the company of villains and the ability to tell them what they wanted to hear.

And it seemed this Orsino was proof against his mendacity. Popular repute had him as a clothes-horse, ruled by his mannish wife and given to verse and dreaming. That was not the man Don John had just seen, alas. Apparently Illyria was in better hands than he had thought. Which left that much less room for John’s plots to prosper in.

He found a room far from the revelry to skulk in, and leant back against the wall, tilting his head to touch the cold, rough stones. He had not wanted to get on that doomed vessel to go speak to the Wizard-Duke of Milan. He would far rather have gnawed away at the foundations back home while his brother risked his life to the sea and the sorcerer. Don Pedro had insisted on leading the embassy to Prospero in person, as a mark of its import. The fairies, it seemed, were to stay their hands, but the armies lined up against Aragon and its allies—Illyria included—were fielding an impressive strength of magicians, astrologers and worse, not to mention the Scot and his cursed witches. If Prospero would commit Milan to the war on Aragon’s side, even just to counter all their curses and spells, the entire course of the war would be changed. Everyone in Europe knew there was none to match him.

So they had gathered together all those who might sway the ageing wizard to their cause: the entreaties of a prince, the words of a philosopher, the remedies and spells of a woman physician. And John, because Pedro would not trust him to remain behind.

And if you had ever trusted me, brother, I might not be your enemy. But John was honest enough with himself to know that sentiment as sophistry. He was not a man to be satisfied with life in another’s shadow.

As he slouched there, discontent and brooding, he heard a faint murmur, conveyed to him more through the stone than through his ears. He had burrowed deep into the back rooms of the garrison to find his solitude, and all the servants were out slaking the thirsts of their master and his cup-fellows. So who was this, growling to himself somewhere deeper in the building?

He crept out and followed the sound, piecing the words together until he recognised the voice of the Scot, which gave him pause. That grisly relic was hardly a creature to inspire much trust. But John was curious; he hunched closer, straining his ears to hear what the bloody-handed old monster was saying to himself in the quiet of a dark store-room.

“He is not the man,” the grave voice grated out. “Orsino is a child, a weakling. There will be other armies to help, others who will keep on the war.”

And then a new voice spoke—a woman’s, redolent with haughty majesty and cold, cold anger. John could not listen to it without a shiver, and at the same time he felt a terrible attraction. He knew it was the evil in that voice, calling out to the evil in himself. In that moment all his illusions about how hard done by he was fell away. He knew himself to be no more than a villain, and this voice’s slave.

“Did I gift you with life everlasting, proof against all the blades and arrows of men, so that you could tell me can’t?” demanded the unseen woman. “Did I bind my witches to you so that you could shrug and spread your hands and make excuses?”

“Orsino has no love of war. I cannot make a warrior out of a poet.” The Scot sighed, a surprisingly human sound of frustration. “If I push, it will be Denmark over again, all death without a purpose.”

“Sometimes death is its own purpose,” the woman stated darkly.

“And...” The Scot’s voice faltered. “I cannot see what has become of your servant. She is lost to me.”

There was a moment of silence, while John held his breath. Then the woman’s voice spoke again, more slowly. “Also to me, and that is no small matter. But that is a question for my world. Yours is a world of swords and fire, and you fail me in it. If Pedro is returned to Aragon you shall know my fullest displeasure. If Illyria withdraws from the war also. Do your job, once-King of Scotland, for I would see all Europe in flames. I would have their thrones cast down, their churches burned, their glorious light of reason drowned in blood. We will bring back our time, Macbeth; a time of blood and rage, fear and murder. That is the purpose I saved you for; that is my will which you must carry out. Or you will know my most extreme displeasure.”

Then the speaker was gone—John could not see, but he felt her absence unmistakably, as if it were a kind of heartbreak. She had terrified him in every word, but had thrilled him, too. The world was full of bad men like Parolles or Sir Toby, who would go through their lives slighting and insulting, bullying and cheating. Some few there were, though, who chose not merely wealth or power or advantage, but villainy. Such a man was he, and such men were claimed by the Scot’s mistress, Hecate.

So instead of backing away and returning to the vapid merriment of the main hall, he pressed on, until he came to a room so filled up with bitter darkness he could hardly see the armoured figure within it. There he was, though: the Scot, head bowed and brooding on the rebuke his mistress had given him.

He thought he had been stealthy, but the helmed head whipped up, and abruptly the Scot strode forwards and grasped him by the collar, lifting him to his toes. A knife-blade was cold against his throat, and he was sure he felt the metal of it throb with a rhythm like a pulse, independent of his own.

“You have eavesdropped on a secret communion,” the Scot intoned. “I will have some blood of Aragon this day, even if it is not the prince’s.”

“Hold, do you not know me?” John got out hastily.

“I know you for a canting fool of a younger brother.”

“Then know me as one who has a very deep interest in Don Pedro not returning to the throne of Aragon. Know me not as your foe, nor as one of Sir Toby’s lackwit sots, but as a kinsman, a fellow admirer of your illustrious mistress.”

He found himself lowered slightly, enough that the grip was not half-choking him.

“Speak,” the Scot said.

“You are a man of great power, of magical protection,” John whispered to him. “Why do you chafe under Orsino’s commands?”

The Scot rumbled, deep in his armoured chest. “He is my host, and I am here at his invitation, for all he regrets it now.”

“What matter such things to you?” John exclaimed.

Abruptly the Scot shoved him up against the wall. John stared at him, blood freezing in his veins.

“I first started on this path because I slew my guest,” said the ancient king. “Yes, he was my king and my friend, and had shown me great favour, but my chiefest sin was that he was my guest, and I his host. Since then I have had children killed, cast down kingdoms, brought in the tide of war, that leaves starvation and ruin its only inheritors. I am so far in blood... but never yet have I been the guest who turned against his host.” There was a faint tremor in the warlord’s voice, an echo of a mortal man’s fear. “So long as that one sin escapes me, perhaps the Devil shall not perfect his claim to me.”

John stared into the dim, grey face within the helm and felt wonder and pity—and with pity, a little scorn, that even this monstrous creature should so lie to itself.

“But Orsino still frets over the wording of his orders,” John pointed out. “Like any poet, he will word them and re-word them for a seven-night. Or at least for tonight. What if you were to slip into the dungeon and make an end to Pedro yourself?”

The Scot made a gravely, thoughtful sound, then shook his head. “It is only half a plan,” he decided. “For Orsino will know full well what has happened. He will sue for peace all the sooner, for he never had the true love of war that befits a ruler. And he will cast me off—and my mistress—for the dishonour brought upon his house. But there is a remedy for that, O future lord of Aragon.”

Don John flinched a little under that deathless gaze, but he bore up to it. “Go on, then, give your physic.”

“Let not Don Pedro be found a corpse within his cell,” the Scot pronounced. “Instead let him bear out the truth of your warnings: that he has slipped between the bars and gained his freedom. And what shall he do with that freedom but to take revenge against the chiefest of his captors?”

“I thought you were reluctant to harm your host.”

“I? I speak nothing of what I shall do. I shall have taken your brother from his cell and found some lonely heath on which to make an end of him. I raise no hand against Orsino. But you...”

Don John felt something pressed into his hand: the grip of the same cold knife which had been pressed against his skin. Through the skin that wrapped its hilt, he felt that faint, terrible pulse.

“This blade was given to me by my dark mistress,” the Scot told him reverently. “With this knife and one fell stroke I ended the life of my king and traded mortal judgment and reward for life eternal. The age is past when such dark deals were made, but you may yet win for yourself the throne of Aragon. Take up this knife and end Orsino’s life. Be you the host-slayer, as I slew my guest. Leave by the body such signs of Aragon that, when they find he’s vanished, none may doubt ’twas Pedro did the deed. So shall we whip to war the weary hosts of Illyria and Aragon. So shall you have your coronation. So shall I have my mistress’s favour once again.”

 

 

A street in Apollonia.

 

Hard against the garrison wall, the view is cluttered with barrels and crates. The muddy ground crunches with shards of broken glass, the broken corpses of Sir Toby’s constant fare. The scent is of a midden. Here is cast all the wreckage of a drunkard’s days and nights.

 

The garrison wall is high and smooth and windowless. Everything stands in its shadow.

 

Enter BENEDICK, PAROLLES and GANYMEDE.

 

 

THEY HAD BEEN more circumspect in their intelligence gathering since the incident with the Scot. Some dark hours in Apollonia had furnished them with more than enough rumour to know exactly how the land lay, though, and to drive them here to the very doorstep of the enemy.

“On a ship out at anchor is held the lion’s share of the crew,” Ganymede confirmed to Benedick. “But your lord is imprisoned within these walls, and also poor Jacques.”

“Oh, by all means let’s shed our blood for his few remaining years,” Parolles said bitterly. “Would that he were here already. He could build us such a siege tower of his words, we could reach yon high opening and creep in.”

“If all your wit leads to nothing but gall, be silent,” Benedick told him.

Parolles lapsed into scowling. He was feeling hard done by, having been unable to shake his two companions. It was not so much the treasure that moved him now—not after witnessing just what manner of man held it. Instead, he was thinking of the myriad opportunities a port town offered to a fellow like him, not least escape back to France.

“They say the governor of this place is a drunkard,” Ganymede noted, “and those men we’ve seen about the town were lax and slovenly; the servants will ever ape the master.”

“The men on the gate looked keen enough,” Parolles put in. “And don’t think I would mistake Orsino’s badge. If not he himself, some personage of note has come to call, and so you’re out of luck. There’s no slipping past the villains who have the watch now.”

“Then what do you recommend? Abandon our comrade and the Spanish prince?” Ganymede demanded.

“Youth, I have seen more battles, kissed more women and stormed more cities than you’ve had sucks on your mother’s teat,” Parolles told the young forester. “There is no man bolder in the charge than I, but yet none reaches my age in a soldier’s trade without learning wisdom. A prince is captive? Let his people ransom him. A philosopher? Let him use his solitude to hone his wits. We are but three, with one sword. We have no way to break into the garrison and, if by chance we might, the men within would make sure we’d have no way to leave it. At best we’d add to their store of captives, and at worst we put them to the trouble of digging three graves. And if we are taken up, whilst Sir Benedick here will likely bring a profitable sum to he who holds him, they will find a bumpkin of Arden not worth the cost of feeding. There’s none will pay for the return of some raw stripling rustic. And as for me, whilst every maid in France will weep a bitter tear, I fear my credit is spent with those whose purses might have provided for my release.”

“We could attempt disguise,” Benedick considered.

“Oh, disguise!” Parolles exploded. “‘Why, yes, good day to you, my fierce Illyrians. We are three travelling Russians desirous of an audience with your lord the Duke. Perhaps you have heard of the custom in our land, where those who donate spare prisoners to wandering Muscovites with unconvincing accents are guaranteed good luck for a year and a day? Especially royal Spaniards, oddly specific as our custom is!’ What manner of fool would be taken in by such a story?” He caught their stares and spat. “Pah! There’s no comparison! I was merely feigning compliance until I had you where I... Damn the pair of you, and your old man and your prince. I’ll have none of you!”

“Then go,” Benedick told him flatly. “Seek out what fortune remains to you amongst the dregs of this town and carry always the knowledge that you abandoned your comrades.”

But it would hardly be the first time for that, and so Parolles took his chance and strolled away towards the alley mouth. He had a little coin in his purse and the town would be full of sots and sailors he could cozen for more. He had a hundred stories of deeds he had never done and places he had never been. They would be enough to hook him food and beer and perhaps a woman or two.

So involved was he in his petty plans, he almost ran into Helena.

His heart sank as he saw her, standing in his way as always. Her fine clothes were sea-drowned and briar-torn, her feet bare and filthy and her hair snarled. And she was beautiful, of course. Hers was a beauty that cared nothing for fashion, and that no ocean could wash from her.

He remembered when she had been a petitioner at the French court; the awkward, strange-mannered girl who had hung on every word of Parolles’ rich friend Bertram. Then she had turned out to be some prodigy physician and cured the king, and tricked Bertram into marrying her because it was something she wanted. She had turned her lore of physic into magic for that same reason, because she was someone who saw the world in terms of what she wanted from it, and would not take no for an answer. That, Parolles decided, was the heart of what made her so unnerving. She was a woman who treated the world as a man ought.

He remembered bandying words with her, back before she had become the woman she was now. He had liked her then, for all she’d got the better of him. She had been someone he could cross wits with without his reputation hanging on every exchange. But then she had married and grown powerful, and then terrible. And he... he was the same fool he had always been, because when he tried to wrest what he wanted from the world, the world knocked him down and laughed at him. He felt as if she had grown up, and he remained a child.

“Let me by.” He tried a tone of command, but it shrank and shrivelled in the face of her stare.

“Why, brave Parolles,” she said, with a sly smile. “Surely you are not fleeing yet another battlefield?”

“Those two madmen have no use for one who speaks only sense,” he told her. “So, let me past.”

“The Turks say madness is the touch of God,” Helena remarked. “Let us go speak with our inspired comrades. You may find there’s method in them after all.”

Parolles took hold of his courage, what little he could scrape together. “I will not be a spear-carrier in their princely rescue. I have seen too many carrion fields. I know what happens to the common lot when great men clash.”

She put a hand to his chest. He felt a shock at the contact, a momentary yearning for a man he might have been—brave rather than boastful, steadfast rather than venal—who might have deserved that touch. Those bantering conversations came back to him then, with a piercing sense of sadness. Innocent days. Can I believe I ever had more innocent days?

“Must I press?” Helena asked him. “Must I make threats of what may befall your health, your fortunes and your manhood if you cross me...?”

“What spell have you cast on me?” he asked her hoarsely.

“Why, none, yet.”

“What spell have you cast, that lays open all my life to me? That casts its light into every corner of the man I am?”

Helena stepped back, her hand lifting from him. “Such enchantments are beyond my power. You are the only magician who can so ensorcel yourself.”

Parolles, liar and cheat and coward, felt sudden tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He waved Helena back, muttering some excuse, that he had not slept since the sea cast him forth, that he was weary, that there was a mote of dust beneath his lid that he could not dislodge.

By then, Benedick and Ganymede had made some cock-eyed plan and were coming out of the alley, stopping when they saw Helena.

“Lady,” the Spaniard said, with an elegant bow, “I’m glad to see you well and safe. You come just in time to see us off, for Ganymede and I have devised a brave rescue—”

“No,” Helena told him, not unpleasantly but firmly. “I have a rescue planned which shall make use of certain lore and powers I have of late acquired.” And here, for reasons nobody then understood, she produced Benedick’s silver flask and waved it at them. “With this, we shall gain access to the garrison without troubling the sentries at the gate.”

Ganymede and Benedick exchanged glances, and the youth shrugged.

“Does it involve disguising ourselves as Russians?”

Helena stared blankly at him, wrong-footed for the first time in Parolles’ acquaintance. “No...”

“Then it’s going to be better than our plan,” Ganymede decided, with an apologetic shrug to Benedick.

“Then it’s decided,” Helena stated. “You two shall travel with me into the garrison.” And then she turned her sweet, fearsome smile on Parolles. “And for you, a special role, one that you are most well suited for. I will need you to be loud and raucous, Parolles. I shall have you lie and boast and spin grand stories of your time in harness. No spear carrier this, but a trumpeter, loud and clear.”

Parolles took a deep breath, feeling his very nature balance on a knife edge. “The role suits me.”

“Aye, it does. And this I swear: what care I give for the life of the prince we must rescue, no less shall I devote to ensuring your own survival. Now, gather close, and I shall explain just how it shall fall out.”