Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  Suddenly, there was a noise in the forest, a strange noise that stilled the birds and hushed the waiting throng. It was a slow, mysterious music, accompanied by solemn drumbeats, like the beating of the forest’s heart. A soft breeze began to blow and the air was filled with the scents of spring. The music grew louder and the trees trembled; then the sunbeams seemed to part like golden curtains, making way for a tall, smiling youth in marvellous yellow robes, and bearing a torch. It was Hymen himself, the God of Marriage, who had come to bless the day. Gently, he led by the hand two shining Princesses to complete the fourfold forest wedding, and so bring the promised marvels about!

  Amazed and joyful, the Duke recognized in the two Princesses, his daughter and his niece: Oliver, his poor shepherdess Aliena in the Princess Celia, and Orlando, his true love in the one-time Ganymede. “If there be truth in sight,” he breathed, “you are my Rosalind!”

  “If sight and shape be true,” sighed Phebe, no less amazed, but not so joyful to see her Ganymede lost for ever in the fair Rosalind, “why then, my love adieu!” She sighed again, and, turning to the ever-loving Silvius as the better bargain and most true, promised, “I will not eat my word, now thou art mine,” and Silvius nearly died of joy!

  Then Rosalind united all the lovers’ hands, and they knelt for the god to bless their marriages, while the little pages sang:

  “High wedlock then be honoured.

  Honour, high honour and renown,

  To Hymen, god of every town!”

  All promises had been kept; but the forest was not yet done with its wonders. The last was still to come. Even as the god departed, and a multitude of joyful explanations broke out, there came a gentleman, flushed with haste and stuffed with news from Duke Frederick’s court. That wicked man had taken it into his mad head to set out with a mighty force to seize his brother and put him to death! But no sooner had he come within the charmed circle of the forest than he, like Oliver, had been changed and converted . . . not by means of serpent and lioness, but by an old religious man. So powerful had been the words of this venerable person, that the storms that had raged within the unhappy Duke were calmed. He had dismissed his forces, relinquished his crown to his wronged brother, and desired no more than a life of contemplation in the Forest of Arden!

  So now all wrongs were righted, and banishment was at an end. The restored Duke turned to his faithful followers and promised: “Every of this happy number that have endured shrewd days and nights with us, shall share the good of our returned fortune!”

  At this, there was loud rejoicing, and many a cap was flung into the air. Although in their forest days the courtiers had learned to find, as the wise Duke had once told them, “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything,” there was no doubt that soft beds were to be preferred to hard turf, and a sound roof to a leaking sky. The melancholy Jacques alone was of another mind. He, in his time, had seen everything under the tired old sun; and looked only for something new. He chose to remain in the forest, and seek out the company of the changed Duke Frederick: there being more to amuse him in a bad man made good, than in a good man made merely better.

  “Stay, Jacques, stay,” begged the Duke; but he would not. With a smile and a bow he departed, leaving dancing and merriment behind; and the two little pages singing their hearts out:

  “And therefore take the present time,

  With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino;

  For love is crowned with the prime

  In spring time, the only pretty ring time,

  When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

  Sweet lovers love the spring.”

  Cymbeline

  Long ago, when Rome still ruled the world, there was a king of Britain whose name was Cymbeline. He was a man consumed with anger. Misfortune had struck him again and again with the mindless venom of a post striking a blind man. His two sons had been stolen away in infancy by a man he’d wronged, never to be seen again. Then his Queen had died in childbirth, leaving him with a daughter as his only heir.

  He’d taken another wife, a clever, handsome, widowed lady who’d brought him a full-grown son of her own: Prince Cloten was his name; and it was the King’s fondest hope that Imogen, his daughter, should marry this prince. But Imogen, scorning her father’s wishes, had married young Posthumus, who, though a thousand times the better man, was not the prince’s equal in birth.

  The King flew into a violent rage. He banished Posthumus, shut up his daughter, and set the Queen, dragon-like, to guard her close; and so matters stood, upon a certain morning in the springtime of the year, as the brocaded Queen, her fair prisoner, and the banished Posthumus, walked together in the high-walled palace garden, between the flowers and green.

  Imogen and Posthumus had eyes only for each other; while the Queen, a diligent pupil of Cornelius, the royal physician, fixed her gaze upon the earth, as if she would unravel the sleepy mysteries of the clustering herbs. She heaved a sigh over the plight of the unlucky lovers, and shook her head. “No,” she murmured, casting a glance towards a tuft of hemlock that grew beside the wall, “be assured you shall not find me, daughter, after the slander of most stepmothers, evil-eyed unto you.” Earnestly she advised Posthumus, for his own safety, to leave the country without delay; and promised that in his absence, she would do all within her power to soften the King’s heart.

  She begged them to be brief in their farewells, and, with a gentle smile, left them to make their adieus in private. “I’ll fetch a turn about the garden,” she said, and rustled away.

  Posthumus gazed after the honey-sweet lady, much moved by her compassion; but Imogen was not deceived. She knew that beneath the Queen’s flowery smiles there lurked a serpent, thick with poison, and that the Queen hated her and desired only her death. But she was prepared to endure her stepmother’s enmity and her father’s anger so long as she had the love of her husband, and the hope of seeing him again.

  “Look here, love,” said she, taking a ring from her finger, “this diamond was my mother’s. Take it, heart, but keep it till you woo another wife, when Imogen is dead.”

  “How, how? another?” cried he, and swore by all he held holy that he would die before he took another wife. “For my sake wear this,” he begged her, and gave her a golden bracelet: “it is a manacle of love, I’ll place it upon this fairest prisoner!”

  Tenderly they exchanged their love-tokens; but before they could embrace, there came a violent interruption! The King appeared, in a sudden blaze of fury.

  “Thou basest thing!” he shouted, confronting the wretch who had dared to marry his daughter. “Away! Thou’rt poison to my blood!” Hastily, Posthumus departed, and the King turned bitterly upon the weeping Imogen. “O disloyal thing, that should’st repair my youth, thou heap’st a year’s age on me!”

  The lords who attended the King looked on with mingled feelings. Those who had daughters, felt for the father; the others trembled for the Princess. But Imogen, far from shrinking before the King’s anger, seemed to draw strength from it. She answered him calmly and with dignity; and when he cursed her for taking a beggar for her husband instead of a prince, she became almost as angry as he. Proudly she told him that her Posthumus was as far above the Queen’s son as was an eagle above the ugly scavenging kite.

  She spoke the truth; none could deny it; but Prince Cloten, in spite of his shortcomings as a man, was still a prince.

  “O thou vile one!” raged the King, as his daughter continued to defy him; and God knew how it all would have ended had not the Queen herself appeared, and poured her soothing oil upon the sorely troubled waters.

  Her power over the King was truly wonderful. He lowered the clenched hand that had been raised to strike his disobedient child, and, contenting himself with a last angry curse, departed, followed by his lords.

  The Queen and Imogen were alone. “You must give way,” began the Queen, when a servant approached. It was Pisanio, Posthumus’s faithful attenda
nt.

  “What news?” demanded the Queen. The news was that Prince Cloten had drawn his sword upon Posthumus, whom he regarded as his unworthy rival in love.

  The Queen frowned. “No harm, I trust, is done?” None. The combatants had been parted before royal blood was shed. The Prince had gone off to change his shirt, which stank more from fright than valour.

  “Why came you from your master?” asked Imogen; and Pisanio told her that Posthumus had commanded him to remain behind and faithfully serve his wife.

  Imogen sighed and smiled, while the Queen stared at Pisanio, and her eyes were sharp as needles . . .

  Posthumus, with Imogen’s love blazing from the diamond on his finger, and her image burning in his heart, sailed away into exile, and Pisanio watched him go. (“I would have broke my eye-strings, cracked them,” whispered Imogen, picturing the dwindling vessel in her mind’s eye, “till he had melted from the smallness of a gnat, to air.”)

  He found refuge in Rome, in the house of Philario, a friend of his father’s, where the fame of his banishment for marrying King Cymbeline’s daughter had gone before him. Wine and good company greeted him; but Posthumus had left better behind. He could think and talk only of his Imogen, who, in grace, beauty, wisdom and virtue excelled all other women in the world.

  His listeners smiled indulgently; but one, a sleek-faced Italian gentleman by the name of Iachimo, saw fit to question such extravagant claims. “If she went before others I have seen,” said he, with a cool, appraising glance at the boastful young man’s finger, “as that diamond of yours outlustres many I have beheld, I could not but believe she excelled many; but I have not seen the most precious diamond that is, nor you the lady.”

  Posthumus frowned. To doubt that his wife was the best of women seemed, to him, to put her on a level with the worst. Passionately he insisted on her absolute perfection; but Iachimo, to whom all women were no more than flowers, to be plucked and worn for a day or two, then cast aside, was unconvinced. The lady’s love, he was sure, might be stolen as easily as her husband’s ring. “You may wear her in title yours,” he said, with a mocking smile; “but you know strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds.”

  Posthumus clenched his fists. Philario tried to intervene. He could see that both gentlemen, perhaps inflamed with wine, were becoming angry. But before he could prevent it, a wager had been proposed.

  “I will lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring,” cried Iachimo, “that, commend me to the court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring from thence that honour of hers, which you imagine so reserved!”

  “Let there be convenants drawn between us!” shouted Posthumus, enraged by the smooth Italian. “My mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking!” He banged his fist on the table so violently that the wine jumped out of the glasses, like a shower of blood. “I dare you to this match: here’s my ring!”

  In vain Philario protested that the wager was monstrous; but the gentlemen had shaken hands, and the harm was done. Next day, Iachimo sailed for Britain.

  “Now, master doctor, have you brought those drugs?” demanded the Queen, her eyes fixed upon the little inlaid box that old Cornelius, the royal physician, was clutching in his thin white fingers.

  They were alone together in the Queen’s apartment, and the air seemed heavy with the scent of secrecy. The physician hesitated for a moment, then offered the box to the Queen. She took it eagerly. “I beseech your Grace,” inquired Cornelius, humbly, “wherefore you have commanded of me these most poisonous compounds?”

  The Queen looked up from the box in surprise. “I do wonder, doctor, thou ask’st me such a question. Have I not been thy pupil long?” she gently reminded him. Now that she had learned all he had to teach her, she wished to advance further, by her own efforts. She wanted the poisons to administer them to such lowly creatures as cats and dogs, so that she might discover their effects, and even find a cure. All was for the sake of beneficial knowledge.

  But Cornelius shook his head. He doubted the wisdom of such a course. The Queen shrugged her shoulders and dismissed her old master’s objections—“How now, Pisanio?” she exclaimed, as Post-humus’s servant entered the apartment; then, turning back to Cornelius, she commanded, “Doctor, for this time your service is ended, take your own way.”

  Cornelius bowed and withdrew. He was deeply troubled. “I do not like her,” he whispered to himself. “She doth think she has strange lingering poisons. I do know her spirit, and will not trust one of her malice with a drug of such damned nature.” Instead of poison, he had given her a drug that would only stupefy the senses and give the appearance of death. It would not kill.

  Cornelius nodded his long thin head. The pupil had been clever; but the master had been wise.

  In her apartment, the Queen was urging Pisanio to persuade his mistress to forget her Posthumus and marry Prince Cloten. Earnestly she promised him all manner of honours and advantages if he should succeed; and in her eagerness to convince him, she leaned so far forward in her chair that the physician’s box slipped from her lap and fell to the floor.

  Pisanio knelt and picked it up. “Take it for thy labour,” she said, as he offered it to her. “It is a thing I made, which hath the King five times redeemed from death. I do not know what is more cordial. Nay, I prithee take it,” she insisted, as Pisanio seemed unwilling to accept her gift.

  When Pisanio had departed with the box, the Queen smiled. She did not trust him. He was too faithful to his master. But she had given him that which would rid her of him for ever, and, she hoped, of his mistress Imogen, who stood between her son and the crown.

  There was a visitor to the court of King Cymbeline, a gentleman from Rome. He came with a letter from Posthumus, commending him to the Princess Imogen. His name was Iachimo. Pisanio presented him to the lady. “You’re kindly welcome,” said she, and greeted him with a smile.

  Iachimo caught his breath. Posthumus’s claims for his wife had been no less than the truth. Of all women in the world, surely she was the loveliest! “If she be furnished with a mind so rare,” he breathed, “I have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend!”

  But Iachimo was not the man to admit defeat. It was not the ten thousand ducats that spurred him on, nor Posthumus’s diamond ring; but pride in his own ability. Imogen, though wonderful beyond compare, was still a woman, and therefore must yield to his superior mastery in love. He bade Pisanio attend to his servant; then, having rid himself of the lady’s protector, he set to work.

  “Continues well my lord?” asked Imogen, eager for news of Posthumus. “His health, beseech you?”

  “Well, madam,” he answered, but in such a way, and with such a look as to suggest that much had been unsaid.

  “Is he disposed to mirth?” pursued Imogen. “I hope he is.”

  “Exceeding pleasant,” returned Iachimo, with downcast eyes; “none a stranger there so merry and so gamesome. He is called the Briton reveller.”

  Imogen expressed surprise. Her Posthumus had always been inclined to sadness. Iachimo shook his head. “I never saw him sad,” he said; and then, as if it broke his heart to say so, he confided such a picture of Posthumus in exile as would have ruined any husband in the eyes of his wife. He talked of Posthumus’s mocking the constancy of women, of his consorting with all the drunken whores of Rome—“Be revenged!” he urged, as he saw the lady shrink in horror from the vile image of her husband that he had presented.

  “Revenged?” cried Imogen, in despair. “How should I be revenged?”

  Iachimo smiled triumphantly in his heart, and told her. She should take him, Iachimo, into her heart and her bed—

  Imogen stared at him. Her face was white; her eyes burned with anger and contempt. “Away!” she cried. “The King my father shall be made acquainted of thy assault! What ho, Pisanio!”

  Iachimo’s heart grew cold with dismay. He had overreached himself. This Imogen was a woman
outside his experience. Her heart was true; her love was unassailable.

  “Give me your pardon!” he begged; and before her servant could come, he exerted all his powers of persuasion to undo the harm he had done, not to Posthumus, but to himself. Most earnestly he assured her he had but been testing her loyalty to her husband, who was his dearest friend. Scarce pausing for breath, he set about elevating Posthumus from the depths of the infamy into which he had just plunged him, up to the skies! “He sits ’mongst men like a descended god!” he swore. “Be not angry, most mighty Princess, that I have adventured to try your taking of a false report. Pray, your pardon!”

  Imogen, though proof against flattery of herself, was not armoured against praise for her beloved; nor was she unmoved by the gentleman’s abject apologies. With all her heart, she forgave him: which gave Iachimo courage to beg a favour.

  “Pray what is’t?” she asked. Iachimo explained. He and his friends, among whom was Posthumus, had purchased some costly gifts for the Emperor in Rome. They were stowed away in a trunk, and he feared for their safety. “May it please you,” he ventured hesitantly, as if fearing a refusal, “to take them in protection?”

  Imogen smiled. “Willingly,” she said. “Since my lord hath interest in them, I will keep them in my bedchamber.”

  Iachimo was overwhelmed with gratitude. “I will make bold,” he said, “to send them to you for this night; I must aboard tomorrow.”

  It was midnight, and the taper beside Imogen’s bed burned steadily, casting a soft radiance over the sleeper and, here and there, catching the furnishings of the bedchamber with little winks of gold. All was silent, save for the sleeper’s gentle breathing; all was motionless, save for the rising and falling of her breast.

  In a corner of the room crouched the black Italian trunk, wrapped up in shadow and secured with a silver clasp. Presently the steady flame of the taper was troubled, as if by some invisible motion in the air. The golden cherubs on the ceiling stirred uneasily, and the silver clasp of the trunk seemed to move.