Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  The sleeping boy was smiling; he was in a happier time. Brutus sighed, and gazed into the crowding shadows that shifted, like uneasy thoughts, in the quiet tent. Smoke from the taper weaved up into the air, where it hovered curiously, as if it had met with an invisible obstruction. As he watched, it seemed to grow pale and form itself into the shape of a robe.

  Drops of sweat gathered on Brutus’s brow as, little by little, the robe became inhabited, and flowers of blood began to blossom amid the folds.

  “Ha! Who comes here?” he whispered, as if to deny the fearful evidence of his senses.

  “Thy evil spirit, Brutus,” answered the apparition, fixing him with a pallid stare. It was Caesar, torn and bloody in his murder gown, even as Brutus had seen him when he’d stabbed him to death.

  “Why com’st thou?”

  “To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.”

  “Well; then I shall see thee again?”

  “Ay, at Philippi,” came the solemn answer; and, with a gesture of farewell, the ghost of murdered Caesar faded and dissolved into the air.

  The plains of Philippi swarmed with armed men, thick as bees.

  “Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?” asked Octavius eagerly, his thin blood suddenly heated to a youthful rashness as a little group of horsemen, their breastplates glittering, came rapidly towards them, under the scarlet banner of war.

  Antony, the seasoned soldier, smiled contemptuously, and shook his head.

  “No, Caesar,” he said, as Brutus and Cassius and their officers drew near, “the generals would have some words.”

  Presently they were face to face: the mighty enemies whose quarrel had divided the world. They stared at one another, silently noting the change that had been wrought by time and struggle; how much older and harsher they all looked, like men of rough-hewn stone! Their meeting was brief and bitter. Antony savagely denounced the murderers of Caesar, and they flung back his words with angry scorn.

  “A peevish schoolboy,” jeered Cassius, “join’d with a masker and a reveller!”

  “Old Cassius still!” mocked Antony, yet with an unwilling affection for the man of passion who, in some ways, was more his fellow than was the bloodless youth by his side.

  “Come, Antony,” cried Octavius, wearied of insults and impatient for deeds, “away!” And so they parted, returning to their waiting legions, to make ready for the coming battle that for many would be their last.

  “Messala,” called Cassius, while Brutus was conferring apart with another of his officers.

  Messala came to his side. Cassius smiled; but there was no pleasure in it. It was the saddened smile of a man suddenly tired of the fury of life. “This is my birthday,” he confided; and, as Messala shook him by the hand, he charged him to bear witness that he had been compelled, against his better judgement, to risk all on the outcome of a single battle. He had strong forebodings of disaster.

  “Believe not so,” urged Messala; and Cassius, for a brief while, put on a cheerful face; but when he spoke with Brutus, it was of what should be done if the battle was lost, and how they should end their lives.

  There was a grave solemnity between the friends as they spoke together. “This same day,” said Brutus quietly, “must end that work the Ides of March begun, and whether we shall meet again I know not. Therefore our everlasting farewell take.” He held out his hand, and Cassius took it firmly in his own. “For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; if not, why then this parting was well made.”

  “For ever, and for ever, farewell, Brutus,” said Cassius, with a long and steady look. “If we do meet again, we’ll smile indeed; if not, ’tis true this parting was well made.”

  Then they turned, and, with a last wave of the hand in a last farewell, rode away, each to his own command.

  The bright morning grew still, as if, for a moment, all Nature was holding its breath. Then, with a sudden scream of trumpets and a roaring of drums, the legions began to move. As they did so, a vast cloud of dust rose up from the plain, and the earth shook under the tread of the opposing armies, like the mighty heart-beat of the world.

  Now more clouds, tossed with pennants and pricked with sharp glints of steel, began to roll and billow down from the hills until, with a thunderous uproar, all met together like rushing waters, tumbling down, one upon another.

  All day long the battle raged, with ever-changing fortunes, now inclining this way, now that, until the very sun was steeped in blood, and sank, dying, below the hills.

  At last it was over, and a thankful darkness overspread the field, turning those who had died in triumph and those who had fallen in defeat, all alike into quiet black shapes. A single torch, like a flaring moth, wandered hither and thither, sometimes hovering to illumine upturned faces, like pale streaked flowers; then it moved on, with a little group of men wearily following after.

  “Come, poor remains of friends,” sighed Brutus, “rest on this rock.”

  They halted, and, with heavy looks and aching hearts, sank down, some sitting with dazed head falling forward onto huddled knees, some leaning back against the rock and staring up at the cold stars. Brutus alone remained standing, sword in hand, as if to kill a ghost.

  All was lost. Antony and Octavius had won the day. Cassius was dead. Rather than be taken by the enemy, he had killed himself with the very weapon that had stabbed Caesar.

  “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet,” Brutus had wept when he’d looked down on the still face of his friend, whose eager fire was out, “thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords in our own proper entrails.”

  Softly Brutus called to one of the pitiful few who seemed to cling about the rock like the sea-torn remnants of a wreck. The man came and Brutus whispered an urgent request. The man stared at him in dread. He shook his head and shrank away.

  “What ill request did Brutus make of thee?” asked one of his companions.

  “To kill him . . .”

  Now Brutus summoned another, and made the same terrible request. But the man would not; and the third he asked, answered:

  “That’s not an office for a friend, my lord.”

  Suddenly there was heard a distant trumpet and a sound of shouting. Hastily, the friends arose . . . all save one who had been fast asleep: a fellow by the name of Strato, a thick-necked, sturdy fellow with an honest, albeit sleepy face.

  Urgently, they begged Brutus to fly. He promised that he would; and, as his friends left him, he laid a hand on Strato’s arm and asked him to stay behind. Strato, as slow to leave a friend in need as he was to save himself, stayed by Brutus’s side.

  “Thy life,” said Brutus, to this last companion, “hath had some smatch of honour in it. Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, while I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?”

  Strato, dull of wit but stout of heart, did not like the office; but he knew there was no other way. He was not a thinker, as Brutus was; but, like Brutus, he counted honour above mere life.

  “Give me your hand first,” he demanded; and, as Brutus clasped his hand, he took the sword and held it firmly. “Fare you well, my lord,” he murmured, and turned away his face.

  “Farewell, good Strato,” whispered Brutus; and, with a last sad look about him, sighed: “Caesar, now be still. I killed not thee with half so good a will!”

  Then, with one swift movement, he ran upon the sword; and, as the sharp steel entered him, his life rushed gladly out.

  Gently, Strato withdrew the sword and laid it by his master’s side. Then he arranged the body so that it should lie decently; and stood beside it to tell the world that Brutus had died as he had lived, with courage and with honour.

  He was still there, the solitary sentinel, when the victors, their triumphant faces glowing in torchlight as they searched the battlefield for the chief of their enemies, at last came upon Brutus, dead.

  “I held the sword,” Strato told them proudly, “and he did run on it.”

  Ma
rk Antony nodded. He understood such a death, even if he did not understand such a life.

  “This was the noblest Roman of them all,” he said, gazing down with respect upon the calm, proud face of his enemy, the man who had committed the worst of deeds for the best of reasons. “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’ ”

  Even as he said it, he glanced sideways at the cold, precise young man, who stood beside him; and slightly shook his head.

  “According to his virtue let us use him,” said Octavius, impatient to have done with wasteful generosity to the dead, “and let’s away, to part the glories of this happy day.”

  Then together they left the field . . .

  Antony and Cleopatra

  Three men ruled the world: Octavius Caesar, Lepidus, and Mark Antony. Two were in Rome, where they belonged; the third, to his shame, was in Egypt, where he lay, gasping and wallowing like a huge fish in the luxurious net of the harlot Queen.

  “Look, where they come!” In the gaudy hall of Cleopatra’s palace in Alexandria, two Roman soldiers scowled angrily as Antony and Cleopatra appeared. It broke their hearts to see their master, the foremost soldier of the world, with the black-haired gipsy on his arm, and followed by all the squeaking eunuchs and tinsel girls of her court, waving their painted fans.

  “If it be love indeed, tell me how much?” demanded Cleopatra, as if she was inquiring into some grave matter on which the fate of the world depended; and he, poor fool, answered with a wave of his lordly arm, “There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned!” and the gods alone knew how long they would have gone on with their bedroom chatter had not a servant come to tell them that ambassadors had arrived from Rome.

  Antony brushed the news aside. What was Rome to him? But Cleopatra shook her head. “Nay, hear them,” she urged; and with a mocking smile, suggested that they might be bringing word from Fulvia, his scolding wife, or even from young Caesar whose slightest command must be obeyed.

  “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall!” roared the old lion, stung by Cleopatra’s taunts. “Here is my space!” and, to the applause of the idle court, clasped her in his arms and kissed her full upon the lips. “Come, my Queen!” he cried; and away went the shameless, laughing pair, in search of fresh distractions from the harsh, but necessary business of life.

  Sadly, the watching Romans shook their heads . . .

  There was a soothsayer in the palace, a magical old man who could tell fortunes. Eagerly, Charmian and Iras, the Queen’s best-loved attendants, squabbled like a pair of sparrows over who should be first. Charmian won. “Good sir,” she begged, holding out her palm like a child for sweets, “give me good fortune!”

  The old man, seated on a cushion and wrapped in a blue robe embroidered with moons and stars, frowned as if his dignity had been offended. “I make not,” said he, “but foresee.”

  “Pray then, forsee me one!” commanded Charmian, as imperiously as the Queen herself; and while the soothsayer bent his ancient head over her childish hand, she demanded, “Let me be married to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty—”

  But the soothsayer shook his head. “You shall outlive the lady whom you serve,” was all he would tell her; and he let go of her hand almost in haste.

  Now it was Iras’s turn. “Tell her but a worky-day fortune!” urged Charmian, not wanting to be out-fortuned by her friend. But Iras fared no better than she. “Your fortunes are alike,” said the soothsayer quietly; and, though they plagued him with eager questions, he would say no more.

  Antony was with the ambassadors. He had left Cleopatra’s side abruptly. Angrily she’d guessed that a Roman thought had struck him. He was frowning heavily. The news from Rome was bad. Rebellion everywhere. Pompey, the ambitious son of Pompey the Great, had raised the flag of war; and Fulvia, Antony’s meddlesome wife, had joined with factions against Caesar. The only crumb of comfort was that she had died . . .

  He dismissed the ambassadors and began to pace to and fro. Everything demanded that he should return to Rome; everything except his heart. “I must from this enchanting Queen break off,” he muttered. “Ten thousand harms my idleness doth hatch.” He called for Enobarbus, his lieutenant and friend. Enobarbus was the only man to whom he could open his heart; he was a Roman, without a Roman thought in his head.

  “What’s your pleasure, sir?” inquired Enobarbus, appearing with his usual worldly smile.

  “I must be gone.”

  Enobarbus’s narrow, crinkled eyes grew round with surprise. “Why then we kill all our women!” he protested. “Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment.”

  This was no less than the truth. Her moods and passions were as wild and tempestuous as the sea itself. “Would I have never seen her!” sighed Antony.

  “O, sir,” said Enobarbus gravely, “you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work.”

  Antony bowed his head. As always, Enobarbus spoke the truth. But nonetheless, he must return to Rome . . .

  “Where is he?” Cleopatra was searching for her lover. “See where he is!” she commanded her minister, Alexas. “If you find him sad, say I am dancing; if in mirth, report that I am sudden sick: quick, and return!”

  When Alexas had gone, Charmian reproached her royal mistress for being so contrary. Cleopatra stared at the girl in astonishment. “What should I do, I do not?”

  “In each thing give him way, cross him in nothing,” counselled the girl.

  Cleopatra laughed. “Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him!”

  “Tempt him not so too far,” began Charmian; when Antony himself entered the apartment. Poor gentleman! he was smiling—

  “I am sick and sullen!” cried the Queen instantly, and clung to Charmian for support. “Help me away!”

  He had a letter in his hand. He came towards her. “My dearest Queen,” he started to say; but she would not let him continue. Her quick eye had divined that he’d come to tell her that he was returning to Rome. “What, says the married woman you may go?” she demanded bitterly, and pointed to the letter. He pleaded to be heard. She shook her head. “Bid farewell and go; when you sued staying, then was the time for words; no going then; eternity was in our lips and eyes . . .”

  At last she let him speak. He told her of the perilous state of the world that demanded his presence in Rome; and then, hoping to please her, he told her that Fulvia, his wife, was dead.

  She stared at him. “Though age from folly could not give me freedom, it does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?”

  Eagerly, he showed her the letter; but instead of the joy he’d hoped for, she turned on him in a fury! She was outraged by his lack of grief! “Now I see, I see, in Fulvia’s death, how mine received shall be!”

  She’d gone too far! Charmian saw it. Antony was frowning. “You’ll heat my blood: no more,” he warned her. “I’ll leave you, lady.”

  At once, Cleopatra’s tempest subsided. She smiled sadly, and shook her head. “Courteous lord, one word: sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it; sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it; that you know well. Something it is I would—” She paused and sighed: “O my oblivion is a very Antony, and I am all forgotten.”

  Antony’s frowns fled, like snow before the melting sun; and Charmian marvelled to see how easily her royal mistress extended her sovereignty over the great Roman’s heart.

  There was anger in Rome, and fear. The Roman world was threatened. Every hour, it seemed, brought in news of fresh uprisings. Octavius Caesar strode furiously back and forth across his wide marble floor, on which was depicted, like a private garden, the world. At one moment, his thin foot was upon Sicily, then Athens, then Lydia, while his billowing gown swept the seas between. Puffing and panting in his wake, and childishly trying not to tread on the lines, sweated
fat old Lepidus, the third and feeblest of the three world rulers. “ ’Tis pity of him,” he urged, striving to find excuses for the absent Antony.

  Octavius glanced at his partner with contempt. “Let his shames quickly drive him to Rome,” he said, his foot poised above Egypt. Then he brought it down, grinding it heavily, as if to crush something unclean . . .

  Cleopatra yawned. “Give me to drink mandragora,” she commanded.

  “Why, madam?” asked Charmian.

  “That I might sleep out this great gap of time my Antony is away.” She sighed and smiled. “Did I, Charmian, ever love Caesar so?” she wondered, dreamily remembering the mighty Julius Caesar, who had been her lover, long ago.

  “O! that brave Caesar!” sighed Charmian.

  “Say the brave Antony!”

  “The valiant Caesar!”

  “By Isis,” cried Cleopatra, raising a clenched fist, “I will give thee bloody teeth!”

  “By your most gracious pardon,” pleaded Charmian, skipping back, “I sing but after you.”

  “My salad days,” said Cleopatra, with a careless wave of her hand, “when I was green in judgement.” She called for ink and paper. Her Antony must have another letter. Every day since he had gone, her messengers had sped after him, swift as Cupid’s arrows.

  Antony was in Rome. He had brought Enobarbus with him. They were in the house of Lepidus, who had provided a great feast to celebrate the meeting of Antony and Caesar, in the firm belief that nothing is so conducive to good fellowship as good food and wine. But he was wrong. No sooner had the two men met than they were at each other’s throats. It was the worldly Enobarbus alone who helped himself to Lepidus’s feast, looking up from time to time with dry amusement as angry words, sharp as Lepidus’s fruit-knives, flew across the table.

  “It cannot be we shall remain in friendship,” said Octavius at length, “our conditions so differing in their acts. If I knew what hoop would hold us—”

  “Give me leave, Caesar,” suddenly interposed Agrippa, one of Caesar’s men. Everyone looked at him, inquiringly. Agrippa reached out and took hold of a peach. Carefully he studied it. Caesar had a sister, the fair and lovely Octavia, he observed thoughtfully; and now that Mark Antony was a widower—