“But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs,” wailed Mistress Overdone, the owner of a famous bawdy-house, “be pulled down?”
“To the ground, mistress,” confirmed Pompey, her strong-smelling assistant.
Tears dribbled down the lady’s seasoned cheeks. “What shall become of me?” she wept; but before Pompey could tell her, another victim of the Duke’s strict deputy appeared in the street.
It was a young man by the name of Claudio. Grey as death itself, he was being escorted to prison by grim officers of the law. Mistress Overdone and Pompey were about to lose their livelihoods; he was about to lose his life.
Lord Angelo had condemned him to death. His crime was unlawful love; and the evidence was plain for all to see. Behind him walked his companion in sin: a young unmarried woman by the name of Julietta. She was almost fainting under the double burden of public shame and Claudio’s swelling child within.
“Why, how now, Claudio!” called out Lucio, an elegant young propper-up of door-posts and a cheerful ruiner of young women. “Whence comes this restraint? What’s thy offence? Is’t murder?”
Claudio shook his head, and gazed mournfully back at the wretched Julietta. Lord Angelo had invoked the old neglected law that punished unmarried love with death.
Lucio listened with sympathy and concern. “Send after the Duke,” he advised, “and appeal to him.”
“I have done so, but he’s not to be found,” said Claudio; and then, most piteously, begged a favour. He had a sister, by name of Isabella, who was about to become a nun. “Acquaint her with the danger of my state,” he pleaded; “implore her, in my voice, that she make friends to the strict deputy. I have great hope in that; she hath prosperous art when she will play with reason and discourse, and well she can persuade.”
“I pray she may!” said Lucio with all his heart. “I’ll to her!” he called out as his friend was led away. Claudio waved, and his eyes shone with hope.
The monastery bell was ringing. Wearily Friar Peter rose from his supper and, taking a lantern, went to answer the summons. Outside the gate, a heavily muffled figure awaited him. He raised his lantern. Sharp eyes glittered warily; then, seeing there was none else by, the stranger revealed himself. The friar took a pace back. His visitor was the Duke!
Hastily, the friar opened the gate and the Duke, raising a finger to his lips, slipped inside like a thief. Discreetly the friar lowered his lantern and glanced beyond the Duke for some female companion of the night.
The Duke, catching the look and guessing its meaning, frowned angrily. “No,” he muttered. “Holy father, throw away that thought, believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom.” The purpose of his visit was quite different.
For too many years he had been a duke of books and libraries, quite removed from the world. But now he had awoken to the corruption into which his city had fallen. His decrees were mocked, his laws neglected. “Liberty plucks Justice by the nose,” he said bitterly, “the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum!” It was for this reason that he had set up the strict Lord Angelo in his place, to bring the law back into respect.
Mildly, the friar suggested that this was something the Duke might have done for himself; but the Duke shook his head. If he were to become suddenly severe after so many years of neglect, it would seem like mad tyranny, and he would lose the love of his people. It was wiser for another to do it . . .
The friar shrugged his shoulders, but kept his opinion to himself, and listened as the Duke revealed his plan. Far from abandoning his city, he intended to return in disguise, and secretly observe the actions of his deputy. “Lord Angelo is precise,” he murmured thoughtfully, “stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses that his blood flows, or that his appetite is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see, if power change purpose, what our seemers be.”
He begged Friar Peter to furnish him with the hooded gown of a holy order and to instruct him how a priest should conduct himself.
Even as the Duke was at the gate of one religious house, Lucio was at the gate of another: the Convent of St Clare. Somewhere within its stern grey walls was Claudio’s last hope: his sister Isabella. Lucio peered through the close ironwork and dimly observed two nuns walking together across a quiet green.
“Hail virgin!” he called. The nuns halted. Briefly they conferred; then one came towards him, shadowy and demure. “Bring me to the sight of Isabella.”
“I am that Isabella,” the nun replied.
Lucio stared. He had expected something drab and shrivelled, like fruit withered on the bough; but the nun was young and beautiful, and the severity of her black set her off like a pearl in velvet, a pearl of great price.
The loose and amorous chatter that was Lucio’s stock-in-trade with young women quite forsook him; he could scarcely bring himself to name Claudio’s crime.
“Someone with child by him?” she whispered, when she understood. “My cousin Juliet?”
Lucio nodded.
“O, let him marry her!”
Sadly Lucio shook his head. He explained the Duke’s absence and his strict deputy who had condemned Claudio to death. “All hope is gone,” he concluded, “unless you have the grace by your fair prayer to soften Angelo. Assay the power you have.”
“My power?” sighed Isabella. “Alas, I doubt.”
“Our doubts are traitors,” urged Lucio, “and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo . . .”
Isabella bowed her head. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“But speedily!”
“I will about it straight,” she promised. “Commend me to my brother; soon at night I’ll send him certain word of my success!”
Lord Angelo, proud and eager in his fine robes and heavy gold chain of office, strode into the hall of Justice with his fellow judge, old Lord Escalus, hobbling to keep up with him. Escalus had been pleading for the life of Claudio, even suggesting that Angelo himself might once have been tempted even as Claudio had been tempted—
“ ’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,” said Angelo, “another thing to fall. Sir, he must die.” He summoned the provost of the prison and ordered execution to be carried out on Claudio by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.
“Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all,” murmured the old gentleman, under his breath, as they mounted the steps to the high seat of Justice, “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall . . .”
Sternly Lord Angelo looked down on the shuffling crowd of hollow-eyed sinners who thronged the court, some seeking justice, most seeking to escape it. He settled back in his seat and, fingering his chain, prepared to weigh the evidence brought before him, find out the truth and pronounce on life or death.
Unluckily, it was not so easy. The very first cause concerned an action brought by one Elbow, a half-witted constable, against Pompey, a brothel-keeper, for something or other that had been done, or not done, to Elbow’s wife. With mounting impatience, Angelo listened as the wretched Elbow stuttered and stammered and wandered from the point, dragging in—God knew how!—two stewed prunes, a threepenny dish that wasn’t china, and somebody’s father who had died at Hallowmas. At length, he could endure it no longer. Angrily, he rose to his feet. “This will last out a night in Russia when nights are longest there! I’ll take my leave,” he said to Escalus, “and leave you to the hearing of the cause, hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all!”
Clutching his robe about him, like a man crossing a filthy street, he swept from the hall and retired to his apartment. To his surprise, the provost of the prison was awaiting him. “Now what’s the matter, provost?” he demanded irritably.
The provost looked uncomfortable. “Is it your will that Claudio shall die tomorrow?”
“Did I not tell thee yea?” said Angelo. “Why dost thou ask again?”
“Lest I might be too rash,” said the provost: “I have seen, when after execution, judgement h
ath repented o’er his doom.”
“Do your office, or give up your place,” came the stern reply.
The provost bowed his head. He was about to withdraw, when a servant entered. There was a young woman desiring to see Lord Angelo. It was the condemned man’s sister who had come from her convent to plead for her brother’s life.
Angelo shrugged his shoulders. “Well, let her be admitted,” he said; and bade the provost stay awhile.
The door opened and Isabella entered. She was accompanied by Lucio. For a moment, she remained in the doorway, timid and demure. Lucio gave her a little push. Shrewdly he observed that both the stern deputy and the provost seemed taken aback by Isabella’s beauty. Plainly her looks would get her further than her words . . .
“Y’are welcome,” said Angelo, courteously; “what’s your will?”
“I am a woeful suitor to your honour,” answered Isabella, “please but your honour hear me.”
“Well, what’s your suit?”
Her suit was her brother’s life. Gently she pleaded for him, and Lucio listened in despair. Her words were so soft and feeble that they would not have stirred a feather, let alone the stony-hearted deputy. Angelo shook his head. The law must take its course—
“O just but severe law: I had a brother then,” whispered Isabella, bowing her head in submission. “Heaven keep your honour.”
She began to withdraw. “Give’t not o’er so! You are too cold,” whispered Lucio, losing all patience with this girl who seemed to value her own modesty above her brother’s life. “If you should need a pin, you could not with more tame a tongue desire it!”
Her pale cheeks flushed; the reproach had struck home. She turned again to Angelo. “Must he needs die?” she asked, and this time her voice was firmer.
“Maiden, no remedy.”
“Yes: I do think that you might pardon him—”
“I will not do’t.”
“But can you if you would?”
“Look what I will not, that I cannot do.”
“But might you do’t—?”
“He’s sentenced, ’tis too late.”
“Too late?” she cried, and fiercely denounced the deputy for his unyielding coldness and lack of mercy. Lucio listened, lost in admiration for her spirit, and, for the first time, understood why her brother had hoped for so much from her powers.
“Pray you be gone,” muttered Angelo when she paused for breath; but she swept him aside. “How would you be,” she demanded, “if He, which is the top of judgement, should but judge you as you are? O think on that—”
“Be you content, fair maid, it is the law, not I, condemn your brother. Be satisfied. Your brother dies tomorrow. Be content.”
But Isabella was far from content. “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant!”
“That’s well said!” whispered Lucio, delightedly. Now the demure young girl had become a passionate woman.
“Man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority,” she cried, pointing an accusing finger at the deputy in his fine robes and gold chain, “most ignorant of what he’s most assured, like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as makes the angels weep!” Then, in softer tones she urged: “Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know that’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess a natural guiltiness, such as is his—”
Lord Angelo had risen to his feet. Lucio could see that he was deeply agitated. His fists were tightly clenched, and he almost pleaded, “Fare you well.” He turned to go—
“Gentle my lord!” Isabella had fallen to her knees. “Turn back!”
Helplessly he turned. “I will bethink me. Come again tomorrow.”
“At what hour tomorrow shall I attend your lordship?”
“At any time ’fore noon.”
“Save your honour!” breathed Isabella thankfully; and Lucio drew her away. She had done enough. The icy Angelo had begun to melt; but whether it was the warmth of her words or the heat of her passion that had turned him to water was hard to say . . .
When the young woman had gone, the provost looked inquiringly at Lord Angelo. But the deputy was lost in thought. Silently, the provost withdrew. From what he had heard, it was plain that the execution was to be delayed . . .
“What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault, or mine?” Angelo, alone in his bedchamber, paced to and fro. He was bewildered and frightened by what had happened to him. It was as if he had taken a poison that now raged in his blood, turning his grey thoughts red. He desired Isabella passionately, and she inhabited every dark corner of his mind. Night, when it came, brought him no peace, only hot dark fancies that tormented him further . . .
At last, it was morning. He rose and dressed himself with fanatical care. Then he went to his apartment.
“One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.”
His heart leaped violently as a servant brought him the news. She entered.
“How now, fair maid?”
“I come to know your pleasure,” she murmured, with an anxious smile.
His pleasure? “That you might know it would much better please me than to demand what ’tis!” breathed Angelo, desire almost suffocating him; but aloud he said: “Your brother cannot live,” and watched her eyes fill with tears.
“Even so. Heaven keep your honour.” She bowed her head and began to withdraw.
“Yet he may live a while,” said Angelo quickly, “—and it may be as long as you or I—yet he must die.”
She paused, frowning. “Which had you rather,” asked Angelo softly: “that the most just law now took your brother’s life, or to redeem him, give up your body to such sweet uncleanness as she that he hath stained?”
“I had rather give up my body than my soul!” answered Isabella instantly. “Better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die for ever!”
“Were you not then as cruel as the sentence you have slandered so?” accused Angelo. Isabella bit her lip; and Angelo, seizing his advantage, hastened to entrap her, skilfully proving that sin was virtue if its purpose was mercy, the very mercy she herself had pleaded for.
“I have no tongue but one,” she protested, confused by the skilful deputy’s arguments. “Gentle my lord, let me entreat you speak the former language.”
She had not understood him! With a quick motion, he took her hand in his, and, fixing his hot gaze upon her, muttered, “Plainly conceive, I love you!”
Amazed, Isabella stared at him. A flush of shame and anger spread across her cheeks. At last she understood the monstrous bargain! To save her brother’s life, she was to give herself to Angelo’s vile lust!
She snatched back her hand and, raising it, pointed a fierce accusing finger.
“I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for’t,” she cried. “Sign me a present pardon for my brother, or with an outstretched throat I’ll tell the world aloud what man thou art!”
“Who will believe thee, Isabel?” challenged Angelo, inflamed still further by Isabella’s fury. “Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite. Redeem thy brother by yielding up thy body to my will!” and he threatened that if she still denied him, her brother’s death would be most horribly prolonged by torture. “Answer me tomorrow,” he bade her, and abruptly left the room.
Isabella sank to her knees in despair. “To whom should I complain?” she wept. “Who would believe me?”
The Duke in darkness. The good Friar Peter had provided well. Profoundly hidden in the deep-hooded gown of a ghostly father, the Duke walked the dark streets of his city to learn how his people were faring under the rule of the strict deputy.
Presently he came to the prison, a huge gloomy place of neither night nor day, where Time slept in a never-ending nightmare; a place of locks and bolts and weeping stones, of weary curses, shouts and tears, and drunken snores. Here he learned of Claudio and his crime . . .
“A young man more fit to d
o another such offence,” sighed the kindly provost, “than die for this.”
“When must he die?”
“As I do think, tomorrow . . .”
The Duke nodded; then, drawing back from the prying light of the provost’s lantern, asked if he might be taken to Claudio, to confess him and prepare his soul for heaven. Willingly, the provost consented; and conducted his holy visitor along the echoing passages and down the stony steps to Claudio’s cell.
The prisoner, hearing footsteps approach, started up from his bed of straw. Isabella had succeeded! His pardon had come! But then, seeing the provost’s grave looks, and the hooded figure by his side, he returned to his bed of despair.
“So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?” the Duke asked gently.
“The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope,” came the forlorn reply.
“Be absolute for death: either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter,” counselled the Duke, drawing close to the bars; and, faithfully playing his part as holy comforter, he drew upon all his library wisdom to prepare the young man for the dread solemnity of death. “Reason thus with life,” he bade him: “if I do lose thee I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep . . . The best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok’st, yet grossly fear’st thy death, which is no more . . .”
The youth half-smiled and nodded, and by the time the Duke had finished, all his fears were laid to rest. Warmly, he clasped the holy father’s hands through the bars and thanked him for the comfort he had brought. Now he was ready to die.
“I’ll visit you again,” promised the Duke, well-pleased to have performed his office with such success. He was about to leave, when a woman’s voice called out. It was Isabella, come to visit her brother. Quickly the Duke whispered to the provost: “Bring me to hear them speak where I may be concealed.”
There was a cell opposite whose tenant had recently died. Here the provost concealed the friar, and, having conducted the young woman to her brother, joined him in the dark.
Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories Page 38
