Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “We did believe no less,” said the Duke; and Isabella was led away, all her fire and fury spent. Angelo stared after her. ‘Who would believe thee, Isabel!’ he shouted triumphantly, inside his head.

  “Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?” the Duke was asking Friar Peter.

  “I know him for a man divine and holy,” answered the friar, and explained that Friar Lodowick was confined to his bed with a strange fever, and so was unable to be present.

  The Duke smiled at Angelo, and Angelo smiled at the Duke. They were both familiar with those strange fevers that so conveniently laid a man low.

  But now there was something more. Friar Peter was saying that he had come on behalf of this mysterious Lodowick, who knew the falseness of Isabella’s claim. He knew that she had never submitted her body to Angelo’s lust, and there was a witness whose testimony would prove it!

  “Good friar, let’s hear it,” said the Duke. He turned to Angelo. “Come, cousin Angelo,” he said most affably, “in this I’ll be impartial: be you judge of your own cause.”

  Angelo was bewildered. A witness? He did not know what to make of it. Friar Peter was beckoning. The crowd stirred, made way—

  “Is this the witness, friar?” asked the Duke.

  A woman had stepped forward. She was heavily veiled, and all in black. She stood quite still in the bright sunshine, her shadow stretching towards Angelo, like a spilled finger of ink. He looked at her searchingly, but could make out nothing. His bewilderment increased; at the same time, he could not suppress a gnawing fear, as if he had a secret enemy who was moving round him, stealthily, in the shadows . . .

  “Let her show her face,” ordered the Duke.

  “Pardon, my lord,” she answered, in a low voice, “I will not show my face until my husband bid me.”

  “What, are you married?”

  “No, my lord.”

  She answered in riddles. She was neither married, maid, nor widow; yet she claimed, “I have known my husband, yet my husband knows not that he ever knew me.”

  “This is no witness for Lord Angelo,” said the Duke impatiently.

  “Now I come to’t, my lord,” she said. “She that accuses him of fornication in self-same manner doth accuse my husband, and charges him, my lord, with such a time when I’ll depose I had him in mine arms with all th’effect of love!”

  Her husband? She was mad! What she said was impossible! “Let’s see thy face!” muttered Angelo.

  “My husband bids me,” she said quietly, “now I will unmask.”

  She threw back her veil. Angelo was amazed. The lovely face that was revealed was not unknown to him. He felt a pang of guilt. It was the lady Mariana who, long ago, he had loved, and even promised marriage to—

  “This is that face, thou cruel Angelo,” she sighed, “which once thou swor’st was worth the looking on . . .” She paused, and then, holding out her arms in a gesture of helpless love, she said, “This is the body that took away the match from Isabel and did supply thee at thy garden-house, in her imagined person.”

  Fiercely Angelo denied it. He swore to the Duke that he had never spoken with, seen nor heard from the woman for five years . . . “Upon my faith and honour!”

  “Noble prince!” cried Mariana, kneeling before the Duke, “but Tuesday night last gone, in’s garden-house, he knew me as a wife!”

  There was a plot against him! He was sure of it. The feeling of a secret enemy lurking in darkness grew stronger, an enemy who, for some mysterious reason, had conspired with the two women to bring him down. But the plot had failed!

  “Think’st thou thy oaths,” said the Duke sternly to the kneeling Mariana, “were testimonies against his worth and credit?”

  Once more his reputation had saved him! But who was his enemy?

  “There is another friar that set them on,” said the Duke; and at once Angelo knew. It was the shadowy, elusive Friar Lodowick! “Let him be sent for.”

  At once the provost was ordered to fetch the friar from his all-too-convenient sick-bed. No sooner had he gone, than the Duke addressed Angelo: “Do with your injuries as seems you best; I for a while will leave you.”

  With that, he turned and strode abruptly back to his coach. He’d spoken in a loud, clear voice; and it was plain to Angelo that he’d wanted all the world to hear that his faith was unshaken and his trust was firm enough to leave everything in his deputy’s hands. Angelo rejoiced—

  “But stir not you till you have well determined upon these slanderers,” commanded the Duke; and, with a swirl of his long furred coat, vanished inside the coach with the suddenness of a conjuror. Then the coach drove rapidly away.

  Old Escalus had been busy. He’d been asking if anyone knew of this Friar Lodowick. Lucio knew him, and knew him well. “ ’Tis a meddling friar,” he was saying contemptuously, “a very scurvy fellow . . . honest in nothing but in his clothes, and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the Duke.”

  Angelo nodded. So this was his mysterious enemy: a wretched plotting friar who bore a grudge . . .

  “Come on, mistress, here’s a gentlewoman denies all that you have said.”

  Old Escalus was still interfering. He’d called back Isabella and confronted her with Mariana. She did not answer; instead, both women were staring at Angelo, and one of them seemed to be smiling. He could not understand it—

  “My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of,” said Lucio suddenly, “here with the provost.”

  At last, Friar Lodowick! Tall and profoundly hooded, he walked beside the provost, still fastening the cord of his gown as if he had indeed been snatched untimely from his bed.

  “Come, sir, did you set these women on to slander Lord Angelo?” demanded Escalus as the friar stood before him. “They have confessed you did.”

  “ ’Tis false,” answered the friar, in gruff, contemptuous tones. “Where is the Duke? ’Tis he should hear me speak.”

  “The Duke’s in us; and we will hear you speak,” said Escalus.

  “Is the Duke gone? Then is your cause gone too: the Duke’s unjust—”

  “Why, thou unreverend and unhallowed friar!” cried Escalus angrily. “Is’t not enough thou hast suborned these women to accuse this worthy man, but in foul mouth, to glance from him to th’Duke himself, to tax him with injustice? Take him hence,” he commanded the provost; “to th’rack with him! What? Unjust?”

  “Be not so hot!” The friar held up a warning hand, and with such authority that the provost, who had moved to seize him, fell back. He was no subject of the Duke, he said, but an onlooker in Vienna, where he had seen “corruption boil and bubble till it o’errun the stew!”

  “Slander to th’state!” shouted Escalus, outraged. “Away with him to prison!”

  Again, the provost put out a timid, uncertain hand. “Stay, sir, stay a while!” commanded the strange friar; and the provost obeyed.

  “What, resists he?” cried Angelo, fearing that his enemy would escape. “Help him, Lucio!”

  Eagerly, Lucio came forward. At one stroke he might ruin the friar, whom he disliked, and ingratiate himself with the Duke’s deputy. “Come, sir, come, sir, come, sir!” he cried, struggling with the holy fellow. “Foh, sir! Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal, you must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! Will’t not off?” and with a violent effort, he dragged off the friar’s hood.

  There was silence. The Duke stood revealed.

  “Thou art the first knave that e’er mad’st a duke,” he said to Lucio; and then, “Sneak not away, sir,” as that gentleman showed every sign of modestly seeking to escape the honour that had so horribly befallen him. Lucio halted, a frozen man.

  The Duke turned to Angelo, who stood like a man already dead. The Duke knew all. The darkest corners of his soul were pitilessly exposed. He could utter no more than, “Death is all the grace I beg.”

  The Duke made no answer. Instead, he s
ummoned Mariana. “Say, wast thou e’er contracted to this woman?” he asked.

  “I was, my lord,” whispered Angelo, not daring to look at the woman by his side, for fear of meeting with her scorn and loathing.

  “Go, take her hence and marry her instantly!” commanded the Duke; and, to his wonderment, the ruined Angelo felt Mariana take his hand gently in her own.

  “Come hither, Isabel,” said the Duke, offering his hand with a warm and tender smile. She came, and humbly knelt before him. “Your friar is now your prince,” he said, gallantly raising her up: “not changing heart with habit, I am still attorneyed to your service.”

  Then, in sorrowful tones, he spoke of the death of her brother, which he had been unable to prevent.

  He turned sternly to Angelo the murderer, and pronounced: “An Angelo for Claudio, death for death; haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; like doth quit like, and measure still for measure. We do condemn thee to the very block where Claudio stooped to death—”

  “O, my most gracious lord, I hope you will not mock me with a husband?” cried Mariana in terror.

  “It is your husband mocked you with a husband,” answered the Duke. “For his possessions, although by confiscation they are ours, we do instate and widow you with all, to buy you a better husband.”

  “O my dear lord, I crave no other, nor no better man!”

  But the Duke was not to be moved: justice must be done. A death for a death: Angelo must die.

  In desperation, Mariana turned to Isabella to help her save her Angelo—

  “Against all sense you do importune her!” cried the Duke, amazed. “Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact, her brother’s ghost his paved bed would break and take her hence in horror!”

  But Mariana was past all reason in her terror for Angelo’s life. “Isabel!” she pleaded, clutching Isabella’s gown, “Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me, hold up your hands, say nothing; I’ll speak all! They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad: so may my husband! Oh Isabel! Will you not lend a knee?”

  “He dies for Claudio’s death,” said the Duke.

  Isabella looked down, and saw the wild, despairing love in Mariana’s eyes. She remembered how her brother had once clutched her gown and begged for a mercy she had refused. Must she refuse again? She knelt before the Duke. “Most bounteous sir,” she pleaded, “look, if it please you, on this man condemned as if my brother lived. I partly think a due sincerity governed his deeds till he did look on me. Since it is so, let him not die . . .”

  The Duke shook his head. He turned to the provost and demanded to know why Claudio had been beheaded at so unusual an hour?

  “It was commanded so,” said the provost, and then confessed that there was another prisoner who was to have been executed, but him he had spared. His name was Barnardine—

  “I would thou hadst done so by Claudio,” said the Duke. “Go fetch him hither. Let me look upon him.”

  Lord Escalus approached the wretched Angelo. Sadly, he shook his head. “I am sorry one so learned and so wise as you, Lord Angelo,” he murmured, “should slip so grossly . . .”

  “I am sorry that such sorrow I procure,” said Angelo, for the old gentleman’s distress moved him deeply. “I crave death more willingly than mercy. ’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.”

  He felt Mariana’s hand tighten upon his in sudden fear; and his eyes filled with tears as he thought of what he had lost . . .

  The provost had returned, and with him was Barnardine and another prisoner, whose head was muffled, as if for execution. The Duke looked at Barnardine. By light of day, he appeared even fouler than in the dark of the prison. His eyes were horribly screwed up against the painful sun, and every curse and sinful thought seemed to have left its blotchy mark upon his villainous face.

  “Sirrah,” said the Duke sternly, “thou art said to have a stubborn soul that apprehends no further than this world, and squar’st thy life accordingly. Thou’rt condemned—” He paused and smiled. He could not find it in his heart to condemn the squinting, still-drunken Barnardine, who, even in the darkness of his cell, clung to life so sturdily: “but, for those earthly faults, I quit them all, and pray thee take this mercy to provide for better times to come. Friar, advise him—”

  Whether or not Barnardine understood that he had been pardoned, was hard to say. He hiccuped, spat, and suffered himself to be led away. The Duke looked curiously at the muffled prisoner who remained.

  “This is another prisoner that I saved,” said the provost, “who should have died when Claudio lost his head, as like almost to Claudio as himself.” He took off the muffling. Isabella cried out. It was Claudio who stood before her!

  Brother and sister gazed at one another. They had parted in bitterness; but since then they had endured much. Now there was nothing but joy and forgiveness in their eyes.

  “If he be like your brother,” said the Duke softly to Isabella, “for his sake is he pardoned, and for your lovely sake give me your hand, and say you will be mine, he is my brother too.”

  She made no answer; and the Duke, dreading that she would choose the cool cloister instead of the warmth of his heart, turned away. He spoke to Angelo: “Well, Angelo, your evil quits you quite.”

  Angelo nodded. He, too, was unable to speak. Claudio was alive! He, Angelo, had murdered in thought alone. It was as if all his evil had been a wicked dream. He had been given a second chance.

  “Look that you love your wife,” commanded the Duke; and it was a command that Angelo gladly obeyed.

  Amid all the rejoicing, there was one who, thankfully, believed he had been overlooked. With infinite caution, he began to tiptoe away—

  “You, sirrah!” Lucio halted. The Duke gazed at him sternly. “You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward, one all of luxury: wherein have I so deserved of you that you extol me thus?”

  “ ’Faith, my lord,” said Lucio uncomfortably, “I spoke it but according to the trick: if you will hang me for it, you may—but I had rather it would please you I might be whipped.”

  “Whipped first, sir, and hanged after,” said the Duke. “Proclaim it, provost, round about the city, if any woman wronged by this lewd fellow, as I have heard him swear himself there’s one whom he begot with child, let her appear, and he shall marry her!”

  “I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore. Your highness said, even now, I made you a duke: good my lord, do not recompense me in making me a cuckold!”

  “Slandering a prince deserves it,” said the Duke. Then he turned to those who were happy. “She, Claudio, that you have wronged, look you restore. Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo!”

  Now, at last, he dared to look to Isabella for her answer; and most wonderfully she had given it. It was the last unveiling. She had thrown back her hood and unbound her hair. It fell about her shoulders in a storm of gold.

  Isabella, like the Duke, had made the long and arduous journey from justice to mercy, to forgiveness, and thence to love. She had chosen the warmth of his heart.

  As You Like It

  It began upon a winter’s morning in an orchard in France. A cold sun was slanting down between the naked trees, and a cold wind was making them shiver and shake their skinny fists at an unnatural Nature that had stripped them of their clothing when most they had need of it. At the same time a poorly dressed young man was pacing back and forth, and likewise shaking his fists at an unnatural nature. Against all the obligations of blood, his eldest brother had cheated him out of his rights and left him to stink in the mire like a beast of the field!

  “His horses are bred better!” he cried out bitterly. “I will no longer endure it!”

  A withered old tree—or so, at first glance, it seemed—creaked into motion and laid a comforting branch upon the young man’s sleeve. It was an aged servant by the name of Adam, who, by his bent back and his pecked and wrinkled cheeks, might have been
that very Adam who had been booted out of Eden. Sadly, he shook his frosty head. The lad was right, and it was a bad business. If ever a lad had just cause for complaint, it was Orlando, the youngest son of good Sir Rowland de Boys. Even before the old gentleman had been cold in his grave, Oliver, the eldest son and the new master, had shoved Orlando from his rightful place at table, and lorded it over the estate alone. Truly, the world had fallen away from the goodly place it once had been . . .

  Suddenly, a shadow fell across the path. “Yonder comes my master, your brother!” warned the old man as Oliver, swaggering in furs and velvet, appeared among the trees. As quickly as he could, the old servant took himself off and watched, from a little distance, the meeting of the brothers: the one, a rich and costly gentleman, the other, a rough-hewn peasant in coarse woollen, with anger in his eyes like a half-smothered fire in straw, threatening a sudden blaze. Nor was it long in coming! Angry words passed between them, then Oliver shouted: “What, boy!” and raised his hand to strike his brother!

  “Sweet masters, be patient!” cried out Adam, rushing forward to prevent murder being done, for Orlando had seized his brother’s wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, and secured him with an elbow around his throat! And all in an instant! Already Oliver’s face was purple with choking, as he kicked and struggled like a dog in a sack. “For your father’s remembrance, be at accord!” pleaded Adam; but Orlando would not let his brother go until he had squeezed a promise out of him that his inheritance would be paid.

  “And what wilt thou do? Beg, when that is spent?” muttered Oliver savagely, rubbing his bruised throat and his bruised arm. “Leave me!” His eye fell upon the old servant. “Get you with him, you old dog!”

  “Is ‘old dog’ my reward?” protested Adam indignantly. “Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be with my old master! He would not have spoke such a word!” Then, seeing Orlando’s fists clench in anger at such treatment of a faithful servant, and fearing more violence, he tugged him away.