Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  The old shepherd felt a hand upon his shoulder. The second stranger was trying to comfort him. But it was no use. Bitterly the father stared at his daughter. “O cursed wretch!” he groaned. “Thou knew’st this was the Prince. Undone, undone!” and he stumbled back to his cottage to mourn over the ruins of the day.

  Camillo gazed sadly at the Prince and his shepherdess. The wildness of Polixenes’ rage had brought to mind the madness that had struck down Leontes, long ago . . .

  The young Prince was striding back and forth, swearing he’d give up his kingdom and all the treasures of the world rather than be parted from his shepherdess, and nothing Camillo could say would alter his resolve. He had a vessel prepared. He would sail away with his Perdita, to the ends of the earth, if need be.

  Camillo sighed. “If you will not change your purpose,” he said, “make for Sicilia.” The Prince halted in his pacing and looked at the old councillor with interest. Much encouraged, Camillo went on: “Present yourself and your fair princess (for so I see she must be) ’fore Leontes.” The Prince frowned. What reason should he give for his visit? He should say, advised Camillo, that he brought greetings from his father, Polixenes; for Camillo had heard that Leontes longed to be reconciled with his friend. “Methinks I see,” Camillo murmured, “Leontes opening his free arms, and weeping his welcomes forth . . .”

  To Camillo’s relief, the lovers saw the good sense of his advice. Suddenly he became aware they were not alone. The red-bearded pedlar from the feast was standing by, and observing them with his pin-bright eyes. Camillo beckoned to him. The fellow approached. He was visibly shaking with fright, as if he had more on his conscience than he had on his back. “Fear not, man,” said Camillo, kindly; “here’s no harm intended to thee.”

  “I am a poor fellow, sir,” protested the pedlar piteously; but when he was offered gold to exchange his rags for the young gentleman’s fine clothes, his eyes glittered with greed. In moments, it was done: the pedlar became the Prince, and the Prince became the pedlar.

  Camillo smiled. Not even the Prince’s father would have recognized his son. Bidding farewell to the translated pedlar, the three departed, the lovers to their ship, and Camillo to the court.

  Once alone, Camillo breathed deeply. There was more to his plan than he’d revealed. He would tell the King of the lovers’ flight. He and Polixenes would follow the pair to Sicilia; and there, Camillo devoutly hoped, with the help of Leontes, father would be reconciled with son, and friend with friend. And, what was more, he, Camillo, would be home again.

  Autolycus, the pedlar, scratched his head. He’d overheard enough to discover that the Prince was meaning to run away with his shepherdess. He frowned, and wondered how best he might profit by his knowledge. As he stood outside the shepherd’s cottage, wondering where his best interests lay, with the King or with the Prince, the cottage door opened and out came the old shepherd and his son. The son was carrying a chest, and the old man, a bundle.

  “There is no other way but to tell the King she’s a changeling, and none of your flesh and blood,” the son was saying; and the old man was nodding. “I will tell the King all,” he said, “every word, yea, and his son’s pranks too! Let us to the King!” He tapped the bundle he was carrying and said, very knowingly, “There is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard!”

  Autolycus’ heart beat fast. Here was something for the Prince! He pulled off his red beard and hastened after the old shepherd and his son.

  “How now, rustics,” he greeted them, “wither are you bound?”

  “To th’ palace, an it like your worship,” answered the old shepherd, taking the stranger to be a great gentleman, by his courtly attire.

  Sternly Autolycus demanded to know what was in the chest and the bundle.

  “Sir,” answered the shepherd, “there lies such secrets in this fardel and box which none must know but the King.”

  Autolycus shook his head. The King was not in his palace. He had gone aboard a new vessel in the harbour to take the sea air. However, as they seemed to be an honest pair, and he liked the look of them, he would conduct them to the ship and himself present them to the King.

  The simple souls were delighted. They even offered him money for his pains! “Walk before toward the sea-side,” he bade them; and there was a skip in his step as he shepherded the foolish shepherds away from the palace and towards the Prince. He had once served the Prince, and if the secrets proved of value, he might serve the Prince again!

  There was a ghostly queen in the royal palace of Sicilia. She walked the shadowy passages, she stirred among the hangings on the walls. Sometimes she gazed out of mirrors; sometimes she fled into silvery nothingness, out of the corner of an eye. Leontes, bowed down with years and sorrows, saw his lost wife everywhere, and nowhere. Even after sixteen grieving years, she still haunted his waking hours and visited his dreams. Vainly his courtiers begged him to marry again and beget an heir; but always the Lady Paulina reminded him of the words of Apollo: “The King shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.”

  “Will you swear,” she demanded, “never to marry, but by my free leave?”

  “My true Paulina,” he promised, “we shall not marry till thou bid’st us.”

  “That shall be when your first queen’s again in breath; never till then.”

  A servant entered. He had strange news. “One that gives out himself Prince Florizel, son of Polixenes, with his princess (she the fairest I have yet beheld),” he informed the King, “desires access to your high presence.”

  “His princess, you say, with him?” asked Leontes, surprised by the suddenness and lack of ceremony of the Prince’s arrival.

  “Ay; the most peerless piece of earth, I think, that e’er the sun shone bright on!”

  “O Hermione!” cried Paulina, and indignantly rebuked the servant for daring to suggest that the newcomer was fairer than the lost Queen.

  “Go,” Leontes bade the servant. “Bring them to our embracement.”

  While they waited, Paulina took the opportunity to remind Leontes that he, too, might have had a son of just Florizel’s age—“Prithee, no more,” begged the King. “They are come!”

  Leontes’ eyes filled with tears. The Prince was the very image of the youth Polixenes had been, and the sight of him renewed all Leontes’ grief for what he had lost. “Most dearly welcome!” he cried. “And your fair princess—goddess! Welcome hither, as is the spring to th’ earth!” He shook his head, and wondered that Florizel should have exposed so rare and wondrous a princess to the dangers of the sea.

  “Good my lord,” explained Florizel, with a smile, “she came from Libya,” and added that she was the daughter of the King of that land, whose royal father had shed many tears on parting with his treasure.

  Leontes never doubted it; she had a truly royal air; but even as he held out his arms in love and greeting to the pair, a lord came in and approached with a grave and troubled air.

  “Please you, great sir,” said this gentleman, “Bohemia greets you from himself, by me; desires you to attach his son, who has (his dignity and duty both cast off) fled from his father, from his hopes, and with a shepherd’s daughter!”

  “Where’s Bohemia? speak!’

  Polixenes and Camillo were in Sicilia. The lord informed the astonished King. They had seized the humble father and brother of the shepherdess and were threatening the unlucky wretches with instant death—

  “O my poor father!” cried the shepherdess. “The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have our contract celebrated!”

  Her voice was sweet, but her accent was as rustic as the fields where she tended her sheep!

  Leontes frowned. “Is this the daughter of a King?”

  “She is, when once she is my wife!” cried Florizel defiantly; and Leontes had to turn away to hide a smile. The young Prince’s wit and ardour were hard to resist. “That ‘once’, I see, by your good father’s speed, will come on very slowly,” he said,
and reproached the young man for disobeying his father.

  But Florizel was unrepentant. He reminded Leontes of his own youth, and begged him plead their cause. “At your request,” he assured the King, “my father will grant precious things as trifles!”

  “Would he do so,” smiled Leontes, “I’d beg your precious mistress, which he counts but a trifle!”

  “Sir,” murmured Paulina warningly, “your eye hath too much youth in’t. Not a month before your Queen died, she was more worth such gazes than what you look on now.”

  Leontes shook his head. “I thought of her, even in these looks I made,” he said sadly; then, bidding the lovers follow him, he set out to meet with Polixenes and plead their cause.

  All the bells of Sicilia were ringing! The two Kings had met and something wonderful had happened! But what? “Beseech you, sir,” begged Autolycus, plucking a hurrying courtier by the sleeve, “were you present at this relation?”

  “Nothing but bonfires!” cried the courtier in high excitement. “The oracle is fulfilled; the King’s daughter is found!”

  Another gentleman of the court joined them, then another, and another, and they all fell to gossiping and chattering at once of the marvels they had seen. It was like an old tale! The shepherd had opened his bundle and there, for all the world to see, was the proof that the infant he’d found on the sea-shore was the lost princess! Everything was there: the mantle of Hermione and her jewel, and letters from Antigonus—

  “What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?” asked one. “Like an old tale still,” came the reply: “he was torn to pieces with a bear!”

  There was a moment’s silence out of respect for the memory of old Antigonus, then it was back to the joyful scene. Then one remembered how the Princess had wept when she learned of her mother’s death, and a sadness fell upon all as the memory of the lost Queen, like a faint, forgotten perfume, filled the air . . .

  “Are they returned to the court?” inquired one of the gentlemen. No, he was told, they had all gone to see the newly-finished statue of Queen Hermione that Lady Paulina had been keeping in a house some distance away. It was rumoured to be so exact a likeness that one might speak to it and expect an answer. “I thought she had some great matter there in hand,” observed another gentleman, “for she hath privately, twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house. Shall we thither?”

  “Let’s along,” they all agreed, and hastened away, leaving Autolycus alone.

  Gloomily he regarded his shadow, which was all hunched and dejected, like a crow at a feast that had been picked clean. If only the Prince and Princess hadn’t been so wretchedly sea-sick for all the voyage and kept to their beds, the great discovery might have been made on board the ship, and he, Autolycus, might have got some benefit from it. But now he had nothing. He scowled. “Here come those I have done good to against my will,” he muttered, as the old shepherd and his son approached.

  They had prospered horribly: the Kings had made them gentlemen. But Autolycus was never the man to hold another’s good fortune against him. “I humbly beseech you, sir,” he cried, flinging himself, for a second time, at the feet of the shepherd’s son, “to pardon me all the faults I have committed to your worship, and to give me your good report to the Prince, my master!”

  “Prithee, son, do,” advised the old shepherd solemnly, “for we must be gentle, now we are gentlemen.”

  His son pondered. “Wilt thou amend thy life?” he demanded of the prostrated Autolycus.

  “Ay, an it like your good worship!”

  “Give me thy hand,” said the son. “I will swear to the Prince thou art as honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.”

  He raised Autolycus to his feet; and then, as recollection stirred, he clapped his hand to his pocket to make sure all was well within it. He laughed. “Hark! the kings and the princes, our kindred, are going to see the Queen’s picture. Come, follow us; we’ll be thy good masters!” Then off they went, the two new-made gentlemen with their new-made man.

  Paulina’s house was filled with kings and lords and ladies. They had crowded in to behold the wonder that Paulina had been so long in preparing. Already they had seen much to admire, but nothing yet to marvel at. “O Paulina,” murmured Leontes, “your gallery we have passed through, but we saw not that which my daughter came to look upon, the statue of her mother.”

  Gently Paulina answered him: “As she lived peerless, so her dead likeness, I do well believe, excels whatever yet you looked upon, or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it lonely, apart.”

  She beckoned, and led her royal guests into a smaller room, that was furnished like a chapel. She approached a heavy velvet curtain, and stretched out her hand. For a moment she paused. She stared at Leontes in a manner that made his heart falter. “Here it is,” she said. “Behold, and say ’tis well!” She drew back the curtain.

  Leontes cried aloud, and tears filled his eyes. Raised upon a dais, in royal robes and royal in her gentle beauty, stood Hermione herself!

  “I like your silence,” said Paulina proudly, for the room was breathless before this marvel of the sculptor’s art. “Comes it not something near?”

  “Her natural posture,” whispered Leontes; and his heart ached as he gazed at the semblance of his lost Queen. He sighed, and shook his head. Wonderful as the statue was, it was not quite the Hermione he remembered. “But yet, Paulina,” he sighed, “Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing so aged as this seems.”

  “O, not by much!” protested Polixenes, gallantly; and Paulina explained, “So much the more our carver’s excellence, which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her as she lived now!”

  But Perdita, who had never seen her mother in the bloom of her youth, was overcome with love and admiration. “Lady,” she wept, kneeling before the statue, “dear Queen, that ended when I but began, give me that hand of yours to kiss!”

  She reached up, but Paulina stopped her. “O patience! The statue is but newly fixed; the colour’s not dry!”

  She reached to close the curtain. “Let be, let be!” begged Leontes. He turned to Polixenes, “See, my lord, would you not deem it breathed? and that those veins did verily bear blood?”

  “Masterly done!” nodded Polixenes.

  “I’ll draw the curtain,” said Paulina anxiously; “my lord’s almost so far transported, that he’ll think anon it lives!”

  “Let’t alone!” Leontes pleaded. “Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.” He drew near and stood beside his daughter; and the statue, motionless, breathless, gazed down.

  Then Paulina spoke. “Either forbear, quit presently the chapel, or resolve you for more amazement. If you can behold it, I’ll make the statue move indeed, descend, and take you by the hand.”

  “What you can make her do,” whispered Leontes, “I am content to look on.”

  Paulina nodded. “It is required you do awake your faith. Then all stand still,” she commanded. “Music, awake her: strike!”

  She clapped her hands and unseen musicians began a solemn music. She turned to the statue. “ ’Tis time; descend; be stone no more!”

  The stone began to stir; her breast began to rise and fall. Slowly, slowly, Hermione descended from her dais, holding out her arms to her husband and her daughter.

  “Nay, present your hand,” Paulina urged the amazed and trembling Leontes. “When she was young, you woo’d her; now, in age, is she become the suitor?”

  “O, she’s warm!” wept Leontes, his arms about his marvellously restored wife. “If this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating!” The long dark winter of his life was over, and it was spring again.

  “If she pertain to life,” wondered Camillo, “let her speak too!”

  Paulina laughed at the doubter. “That she is living, were it but told you, should be hooted at like an old tale; but it appears she lives, though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.” She turned to Perdita. “Ple
ase you to interpose, fair madam, kneel, and pray your mother’s blessing. Turn, good lady,” she bade the Queen, “our Perdita is found!”

  At last Hermione spoke. “You gods, look down, and from your sacred vials pour your graces upon my daughter’s head!”

  It was ended; but how it all came about was yet to be told, by cradle and fireside, and wherever an ear was open to listen to the wonderful tale: how Paulina had kept Hermione hidden, and how Perdita had been found!

  “Go together, you precious winners all!” cried Paulina, weeping half with joy, and half with a sadness that lingered in her heart. “I, an old turtle, will wing me to some withered bough, and there my mate (that’s never to be found again) lament, till I am lost.”

  But Leontes had other thoughts. “Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,” he told her, “as I by thine a wife.” There was one he knew who had long admired her, and, he believed, she had looked not unkindly on him. “Come, Camillo,” he said, “and take her by the hand.”

  With a smile, Camillo obeyed his master, for this was a just command; and Paulina was not displeased. Then, as the lovers, old and young, left the chapel, Leontes reflected that there was justice in the match he had made: Antigonus had borne his child away, and Camillo had been the instrument of bringing her back.

  LEON GARFIELD (1921–1996) was born and raised in the seaside town of Brighton, England. His father owned a series of businesses, and the family’s fortunes fluctuated wildly. Garfield enrolled in art school, left to work in an office, and in 1940 was drafted into the army, serving in the medical corps. After the war, he returned to London and worked as a biochemical technician. In 1948 he married Vivian Alcock, an artist who would later become a successful writer of children’s books, and it was she who encouraged him to write his first novel, Jack Holborn, which was published in 1964. In all, Garfield would write some fifty books, including a continuation of Charles Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood and retellings of biblical and Shakespearian stories. Among his best-known books are Devil-in-the-Fog (1966, winner of The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize), Smith (1967, published in The New York Review Children’s Collection), The God Beneath the Sea (1970, winner of the Carnegie Medal), and John Diamond (1980, winner of the Whitbread Award).