Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  With heavy tread, the two armies began to move against each other, at first slowly and then with increasing speed, until, with tremendous clanking and loud shouts, they met. Gaunt-eyed men fought gaunt-eyed men, struggling to and fro over the harmless land. It was a world more to die in than to live in, as crops were destroyed, cottages shattered, and men and horses screamed where birds had sung. Soon the field was a graveyard: some had died bravely, some in flight, but it made no difference as they lay, making poppies with their blood.

  The French were defeated and among the prisoners were King Lear and Cordelia, who, though she might have escaped, would not leave her father’s side. Edmund’s men had captured them.

  “Take them away,” said Edmund curtly. He did not hate them, but they were in his way; and he was never so foolish as to put pity before gain.

  “Come, let’s away to prison,” said King Lear, with his arm proudly about his daughter’s shoulders, “we two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage . . .” What he had lost in freedom, he had gained in love.

  When the old man and his child had been led away, Edmund sent a captain after them, to kill them both.

  No sooner had the officer gone, than the Duke of Albany, with Goneril and Regan, came to greet Edmund and praise him for the courage he had shown in the battle. The sisters were extravagant in their admiration; but the Duke was somewhat cooler. As Edmund swelled in importance under the glowing looks of the ladies, the Duke said coldly: “I hold you but as a subject of this war, not as a brother.”

  Angrily Edmund began to assert himself, when the Duke raised his hand. “Edmund,” he said, “I arrest thee on capital treason; and—” (here he pointed to his wife) “this gilded serpent.”

  He said nothing of the letter. The time for that would come; and soon. Even he, mild Albany, had reached his limit of enduring creatures so devilish: the evil young Earl, the vile Regan, and, worst of all, the monster who was his wife.

  Loudly Edmund was demanding that any man who dared to call him a traitor should come forward and prove the charge in single combat; any man, even the Duke himself. Goneril was smiling, and Albany knew that she longed for him to take up the challenge, for Edmund, fiercely confident Edmund, would have killed him in moments. Nonetheless, he was resolved.

  Suddenly he saw that Regan was distressed. Her face was white and crumpled with pain. “She is not well,” he said abruptly, “convey her to my tent.” When the trembling Duchess had been helped away, he called a herald. “Let the trumpet sound!” he commanded. Edmund looked at him almost pityingly, and Goneril’s smile broadened. If no man came forward at the trumpet’s third blast, then he himself would have to fight. Already the wicked pair saw him dead. Even so, thought Albany, as the trumpet sounded, it would be better than living in their world.

  Then, at the third blast, a man in armour appeared. The stranger had kept his word. He wore a helmet with the visor down. Who was he? He would say no more than that he was of noble birth, and equal with the man he challenged.

  Edmund was no coward, and, though he would sooner have killed the Duke, he accepted the unknown challenger. The trumpet sounded again, and all stood back as the two men drew their swords and began to fight. Albany saw his wife’s eyes glitter as she watched her lover and prayed for him. He saw her lips part with joy as Edmund seemed to have the upper hand; then he saw her grow pale with fear, and her hand fly to her mouth to stifle a cry of dismay, as Edmund fell. He had been pierced through the side by the stranger’s sword! Savagely she cried out that the contest had been unjust, that Edmund had been tricked.

  “Shut your mouth, dame!” commanded her husband; and he held up the letter! She stared at it, her face grey with dread. She tried to seize the letter. He thrust her away. “No tearing, lady,” he warned. “I perceive you know it.”

  “Ask me not what I know!” she shouted; and rushed frantically away.

  Edmund was dying. He lay where he had fallen and his conqueror knelt beside him. He had confessed to his crimes, and now wanted only to know whose hand had killed him. Edgar took off his helmet. Edmund gazed up at the brother he had betrayed, and sighed: “The wheel is come full circle . . .”

  Then, for Edmund’s life was ebbing fast, Edgar told him of their father and of how he had guided and supported the blind old man and had brought him to some sort of peace before he had died. The old Earl of Gloucester was dead. But he had not died in despair. At the very last he had learned who his guide had been. Joy had transfigured his ruined face. His heart had leaped—and then, said Edgar gently, “burst smilingly.”

  Edmund nodded; his brother’s words had moved him deeply, perhaps, even, to do some good before it was too late. But suddenly there was a cry of, “Help, help! O help!” and a man came running, his face fearful and with a bloody knife in his hand! Goneril had killed herself; and Regan also lay dead. She had been poisoned by her sister for love of Edmund, if ever it could have been love that had inhabited that pitiless heart. The monsters had destroyed each other.

  “I was contracted to them both; all three now marry in an instant,” murmured Edmund, without regret. Then he remembered the good he had wished to do and, with his dying breath, begged that a messenger should go to the prison and save Cordelia and the King. He sent his sword with the messenger, so that the man should be believed.

  But it was too late. There came a cry, a dreadful, desolate cry, that seemed to fill the world with its ancient misery. “Howl, howl, howl, howl!” wailed King Lear, as he stumbled over the rough ground with Cordelia, dead in his arms. He stopped and stared at those who watched him, with grief and horror in their eyes.

  “A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have saved her . . .” And then, looking down on the dead face, said proudly: “I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.”

  Then he seemed to forget his terrible burden, for he peered at Albany, at Edgar, and then at Kent, who had followed him through his darkest days, and now stood helpless at journey’s end. He shook his head, and looked again.

  “Who are you? Mine eyes are not o’ the best: I’ll tell you straight.” He frowned. “Are you not Kent?” He nodded. “You are welcome hither,” he said, as he saw, in the banished Earl, the faithful servant whose love and care had watched over him.

  Then he sank to the ground, as if the small weight he carried in his arms was a world in heaviness. “And my poor fool is hanged!” he sighed, no longer knowing which child was which, Cordelia or his Fool, for both were dead. “Thou’lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never! I pray you, undo this button,” he begged, as all his power and all his royal greatness dwindled down to this one last little need. “Thank you, sir . . .” Then his eyes brightened as he fancied, for a moment, that Cordelia still lived. “Look there, look there!” he cried; and then no more.

  “Look up, my Lord!” cried Edgar.

  “Vex not his ghost,” said Kent. “O let him pass. He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.”

  King Lear was dead.

  The Tempest

  Far, far away, upon the shore of a strange island that was forever wrapped in mists that the sun changed into moving curtains of gold, there sat an ageing man and his young, lovely daughter. They were staring out to sea. About the man’s shoulders was a blue cloak, embroidered all over with silver, and beside him on the sands lay a carved staff and a book as thick and richly bound as a Bible. Sometimes his hand rested on the book, and sometimes upon his daughter’s arm, as if to comfort her. His face was calm; hers was pale and frightened.

  They were watching a ship that was about to be smashed into pieces. A tempest had seized it, an uncanny fury of the elements that seemed to enclose it in a swirling black bubble. As it heaved and tossed, its masts scribbled frantic messages against the blotchy sky, and its rigging all fell down like a madman’s hair. Tiny figures, black as fleas, and with patched white faces, clung where they could; and shrieks and screams, small as the squealing of mice, dri
fted to the watchers on the shore. Then it was over. Fire, liquid as blazing ink, ran along the yards. The timbers snarled and cracked, the ship split, and was lost. The tempest subsided, the dark bubble dispersed, and the sea was calm.

  “Be collected,” comforted the father, his arm about his daughter’s trembling shoulders: “no more amazement: tell your piteous heart there’s no harm done.”

  He spoke the truth. He himself, Prospero the enchanter, had raised the storm and, as he promised his daughter Miranda, not a soul had been lost. He had, by his strange power, brought them all safe to the island.

  He stood up, and, frowning, began to pace to and fro, making little yellow tempests in the sand, which his long, heavy cloak smoothed away, so that he seemed to have walked, invisibly, on air. Silently Miranda watched . . .

  Presently he halted. He smiled at her inquiring looks and then, putting off his cloak, that mysteriously glittering garment into which had been woven, by his own deep skill, all his magical powers, he seated himself beside her. At last the time had come for him to tell her how they had come to this strange isle, what they had been before, and why he had raised the tempest that had wrecked the ship.

  “Canst thou remember a time before we came?” he asked, but more as master to pupil than father to child. She faltered upon some dim recollection of shadowy serving women. He brushed it aside, and then began to tell her a tale of such grim happenings that his eyes burned with anger at the memory of them, even though they had taken place far away and long ago.

  She had indeed had serving women, and many of them, for she was the only child of a Duke. He, Prospero, her humble, solitary father, had once been a rich and mighty prince; the Duke of Milan, no less. But he had been such a ruler that the outward show of greatness and the exercise of princely power had mattered less to him than the kingdom of the mind. “My library,” he confided to Miranda, “was dukedom large enough . . .” So, to free himself for the study that he loved, he had given over the tediousness of government to one he had trusted with all his heart: his brother Antonio.

  But alas! he had been more wise in books than in hearts, and as he uttered his brother’s name, his brow darkened and Miranda grew frightened as, for the first time, the chill of human wickedness touched her bright world.

  Antonio, not content with the use of power, wanted the reality and the semblance of it, too. In exchange for the promise of the dukedom, he conspired with the King of Naples, sworn enemy of Milan; and, one night, he opened the city’s gates and let the enemy in. Milan fell, and Duke Prospero was overthrown.

  “Wherefore did they not that hour destroy us?” asked Miranda, for her father’s brother seemed limitless in his evil.

  Prospero shook his head. He and his infant daughter had not been spared out of pity, but because Antonio had feared the consequence of public crime. Instead, he had cast them adrift, in a rotting craft, with neither mast nor sail, and trusted in the blind elements to do his murders secretly. And so it would have happened, had not a kindly Neapolitan, by name of Gonzalo, furnished them with food and drink, with clothing and with those precious volumes from Prospero’s library from which the enchanter had learned his power.

  Long, long they had drifted, the father and his crying child, until at last they had come to this uncanny isle, where, for twelve years now, they had lived together with none but each other for human company.

  “And now, I pray you, sir,” murmured Miranda, her mind heavy with bewilderment, “your reason for raising this sea-storm?”

  Prospero’s eyes gleamed with triumph. The vessel had contained his enemies. Now they were all ashore and within his grasp. “Here cease more questions,” he commanded. “Thou art inclined to sleep . . .” He laid a hand on her head. She smiled and sighed, and closed her eyes; and, in a moment, was asleep. Gently Prospero smoothed her golden hair and brushed away the sand that might have troubled her face.

  He stood up and put on his cloak once more. He looked up at the sky, then to the sea, then to the island’s haunted woods. “Come away, servant, come,” he called softly. “I am ready now. Approach, my Ariel, come.”

  There was a thin noise, as of wind across lute strings, and with a flash and a whirl and a quick unwinding of air, Prospero’s servant appeared.

  An odd servant: a slight, weird, dancing, darting servant, very bright to look at, never still save for trembling dragonfly moments, forever trying on faces, as if at the tailor’s . . .

  “All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail!” cried Ariel, with a thousand courtly bows, all performed in the twinkling of an eye.

  “Hast thou, spirit,” asked the enchanter, “performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?”

  “To every article,” promised the spirit, with another bright parcel of bows; and told, with eager and child-like delight, of the frantic terror aboard the ship, of how the passengers had flung themselves, shrieking, into the sea, and Ferdinand, the King of Naples’ son, had cried out: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!”

  Prospero smiled and Ariel, encouraged by such a mark of approval, went on to tell how all had been brought ashore, miraculously fresh and dry, as if the tempest had never been. They had been dispersed in groups about the island, none knowing of any other’s having survived. Even the vessel itself had been restored in every particular and now lay in a harbour with the sailors safely under hatches and locked fast in a dreamless sleep. “The King’s son have I landed by himself,” said Ariel, with a queer, sideways smile . . .

  Prospero nodded, and then proposed still more work for his servant; between now and nightfall, much needed to be done. But Ariel scowled.

  “How now, moody?” demanded Prospero, angered by the spirit’s peevish looks. “What is’t thou canst demand?”

  “My liberty.”

  But Ariel’s service still had two days more to run; and Prospero, frowning at the spirit’s presumption, so that Ariel shrank before him, reminded his servant of how that servitude had first begun. Had Ariel forgotten how things were when Prospero and Miranda had first come to the isle?

  Ariel had not; nonetheless, despite wild shakings of the head and imploring looks, Prospero reminded the spirit that the isle had been filled, not with airy music, but with desolate howls and moans that proceeded from deep in a cleft in a pine tree. There Ariel had been imprisoned by Sycorax, a foul witch, for refusing to obey her worst commands. Sycorax had died, leaving her misshapen son, Caliban, to rule the isle, and Ariel in hopeless wailing misery.

  From this misery Prospero had freed the spirit, and, in return, had demanded twelve years of absolute obedience.

  “If thou more murmur’st,” threatened Prospero, “I will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails . . .”

  At once the frightened spirit was all willingness to obey and do anything to please the great enchanter.

  “Do so,” said Prospero; “and after two days I will discharge thee.”

  “That’s my noble master! What shall I do? Say what; what shall I do?”

  Prospero smiled at his servant’s anxiety and then bade Ariel take on the shape of a sea-nymph, and to be visible to none but himself. Once more there was a noise as of wind across lute strings, and Ariel was gone.

  The enchanter gazed after his servant with a deep fondness. Not for more worlds than Ariel could have given him would he have punished that wayward spirit. He bent down and awakened his still sleeping daughter.

  “Come on,” he proposed, as she rubbed her eyes and smiled at him; “we’ll visit Caliban, my slave.”

  “ ’Tis a villain, sir,” protested Miranda. Prospero shook his head. Even villains had their uses, and Caliban’s was to fetch wood and do all manner of menial toil.

  “Caliban!” he called, as they approached a dwelling made of rough stones and rock. “Thou earth, thou! speak!”

  “There’s wood enough within,” came a voice as thick and harsh as tangled briers; but before Prospero could command again, a fragile sea-nymph, with Ariel’s eager
eyes, and Ariel’s bows and dartings, whirled to his side, hovered, took softly breathed instruction, and sped away upon a mysterious errand. Then Prospero turned back to his other servant on the isle. “Thou poisonous slave!” he shouted. “Come forth!” and Caliban, unable to defy his great master any longer, came cursing out of his hovel.

  A slow, heavy, lumbering creature, all scowls and bristles, with his ugly nakedness scarcely covered by skins as rough and hairy as his own; a creature of darkness, like the foul witch who had borne him, and of curses, like the devil who had fathered him.

  “This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,” he snarled, but crouching low before the enchanter whom he feared even more than he hated. For Prospero had the power to fill him from top to toe with a thousand aches and dazzling pains that made him roar out in the night.

  But it had not always been so, Caliban remembered. When Prospero had first come to the isle he had soothed and comforted Caliban, and taught him many marvellous things, so that Caliban had shown him all the secrets and wonders of the isle. It was then that Prospero had turned against him and had seized the island for himself . . .

  “Thou most lying slave!” cried Prospero, pale with anger. His kindness to the misshapen creature that crouched, hatefully, at his feet, had only ceased when that creature, filled with lust, had sought to violate Miranda.