Cards of Identity (41 page)

TURN
:
Peace be with you, poor dead! About this hour your shrouds come, and after that is only a quick axe-fall ’tween you and redemption. I am almost minded to come with you there, carrying my chopped head gently.

COUNT
:
Three’s enough to go to trial together without heads: add a fourth and the symmetry’s too square for judgement.

DUKE
:
By God, despite it’s yet upon my shoulders, I feel the carriage of my head like a bird-in-hand!

PRINCE
:
Momentarily I feel affrighted: then stalk up reason and wisdom to remind me that I am a goose.

DUKE
:
Ay, with Christmas all but upon you.

COUNT
:
Gently, gently!

HERM
:
Dead souls, how hast thou stirred

Thy master Satan on this murky night?

Aloft, the noble duke doth pace and pace;

A train of sleepy courtiers at his heels,

Two ghosts supporting at his funny bones.

CATRI
:
Hast thou invoked black Hades to thy part?

Hast charmed stone gargoyles into whited flesh?

Around this place is come a swarm of owls

Bassoonly hooting of remorse to come.

COUNT
:
Nay, we’ve done nothing.

If ghosts and owls sooth are abroad tonight

They’re flit from crannies in a guilty skull.

HERM
:
Add not your number to the ghostly crew.

Two ghosts may ring a brainpan till it crack,

But if three more attend, then fear departs,

And haunted man, yielding to numbers,

Declares the world’s all ghosts, and quakes no more.

COUNT
(
aside
):
What admirable sense is here! This friar

Seems to advise me to a change in plan.

Doubtless some holy hand has seized his tongue

And twists its saying to my better fate.

I’ll trust this absent hand and press for more.

Thou say’st, good father, that the dismal night

Has ghosts enough enow. How then

May three more souls disport and still affright?

HERM
:
There’s witchery.

CATRI
:
Ay: witchery flies by daylight when weary ghosts retire.

COUNT
:
You would have us witches, then?

HERM
:
We said nought.

COUNT
:
Who are ye? I doubt you are the friars ye seem.

HERM
:
Would we might doubt you are dead prisoners.

DUKE
:
We’d give thee room for doubt had we but the means of witchery.

HERM
:
Hush thy loud voice, amiable dead! Here! Take this.

PRINCE
:
Ha, ha, ha! ’Tis a brisk game!

CATRI
:
Oh, Madam, thou art a sorry packer!

TURN
(
without
):
Ho, what’s the clangour?

HERM
:
Nought but five flows of tears,

Changed straight to ice by sorrow and remorse

And raining down like steel. I fear, should

We remain, our hearts will so complain

They’ll shrill like brass.

CATRI
:
Enough, enough. Let’s go

Before we wake the dead.

DUKE
:
We are already much alerted.

COUNT
:
Hide quickly these coarse tools of liberty!

DUKE
:
Douse out the candle;

We’ll work i’ the spring moon.

COUNT
:
I’m all agog to fret these rusted bars. Do you snore, piteously, good brother, and mute the file’s moan.

PRINCE
(
snoring
):
Thus?

DUKE
:
Ay, master will be proud of thee if thou canst snore like a file. I’ll drum my heels and dim the hammer-blows.

TURN
(
without
):
Absolution hast left ye rowdy, meseems.

COUNT
:
Shall skeletons not rattle?

TURN
(
without
):
Why so hasty for thy last dance?

DUKE
:
We would practise, that we may turn our toes well and please the Duke.

COUNT
(
aside
):
Morning will see us prancing at his door, Forbidding, neighing females of the heath.

PRINCE
:
Let us confide all to the good turnkey that he, too, may enjoy the jest.

DUKE
:
Nay, for he is an ancient man and too much laughter might split his sides.

PRINCE
:
True, true.

DUKE
:
And take you heed, when we emerge past him in witches’ form, ask him not to delight in the metamorphosis.

PRINCE
:
Nay, that were to affright him, and fear is a great killer of jests. Ah, how wise I am grown! But I’ll not be puffed-up.

DUKE
:
Well said! There’s no end to wisdom, and doubtless further lessons await us.

PRINCE
:
I pray so. It is excellent comical.

CAPT
:
They’re still here – off, off, traitors, mummies! (
Brushes his
elbows
.) I’ll walk without you. Strike ’em away! (
Attendants strike
at his elbows with staffs and daggers
.) Here’s morning come to my assistance. Oh angel dawn, self-murderer of ghosts!

1
ST
ATT
:
Are they gone, my lord, these weird identities?

CAPT
:
Yea, they’ve fled suddenly to China, where night’s descending to welcome them. I – poor, besieged fort – am granted respite. Sit, gentlemen.

Thus rises morning on a shattered sea

Whereon a storm of night hath played foul havoc:

And beaten sailor on his swinging feet,

The tempest’s memory athwart his eyes,

Incredulous regards the softened miles

And round horizon of a wavy wheel

To which he’s axis. Alas!

The connective spokes lie bobbing all about,

Ruptured and wreck’d, reminders of the night;

A chest, a jutting spar, a dawdling corpse,

A cage of singing birds the coxswain loved,

A beam of Orient teak, a small child’s hand –

All these stream by, confute the morning’s peace,

Carry the night into the day’s brain pan.

So you, my courtiers, like a score of wrecks,

Surround the haggard ship that floats in me.

Ay, yes, but float we do, and there’s the thought

Will properly exclude regret’s sad drift

And give us, as we weep, the heart to sleep.

SERV
:
Three witches to see you, my lord.

CAPT
:
Now, here’s naughty mischief! Do I dine ghosts to break fast
with witches? Pray them wait for noon: say I’m closeted in stately business.

SERV
:
They flat refuse to wait, my lord.

Pent up with message like a bitch with whelps,

Delivery, they scream, is now, now, now!

CAPT
:
Show them in.

The way of Satan is not to dispatch,

But to prolong; ’til prolongation

Itself itself dispatches. Ah, ah!

Crones, are ye real and actual?

COUNT
:
Indeed, my lord, we are, composed of pinched, torn flesh too quickly horrible for description.

CAPT
:
No cauldron, brazier, frogs’ legs?

COUNT
:
Nay, to carry your fate already was to overburden us.

DUKE
:
True, its dismal weight has given us the staggers.

CAPT
:
Speak, trio of horrors!

PRINCE
(
aside
):
Poor soul: he’s all haggard in earnest, and we here to torment him in play! We are cruel boys that hurt our teacher.

COUNT
:
With goats and arabesques we three had framed

A sunny holiday with Egypt friends.

Scarce seated by the Nile with gipsy Nicks

The whole stream quaked, and turbulent rain

Deluged our hair, rinsed forth our greasy joy:

While through the torrent and black atmosphere,

Hordes of winged rats, vultures, and nimble stoats

(Bound round with gizzards of decaying whales)

Flew rushing northward in a spate of glee.

We asked: Sisters in Satan, what emergency

Doth so propel you from your native sands?

They, cackling and dribbling with a maniac spite,

Answered, they’d nest in Brittany come night.

We asking why, they chorused that a sea

Of depthless blood was washing to this place;

That by the fall of night a carnage heap

Would be their perch for song until their teeth

Had glutted every morsel under claw.

Picardy’s up, they howled, and so’s Burgoyne,

Normandy, Cognac, lily-stxewn Lorraine,

Feeble Artois has waked his sleepy sword,

And the fourth Henry on his London throne

Has heard such tumult that he’s spit poor Dick

And turned his pack in fleets across to France.

All say some villain has usurped the world,

Smashed the whole globe to dance among its shards,

They hint of one they’ll slaughter through and through;

We gravely do expect that it is you.

CAPT
:
May I not fly: are not legs for flying?

DUKE
:
Fly and be damned! Evade the natural sword

And hellish gnomes will speak the ghastly word.

CAPT
:
Then come, sweet death!

COUNT
:
Patience, he is on the threshold; a little minute, you’ll hear him knock.

CAPT
:
Bid him hurry, that I may die aloof from ghosts.

PRINCE
(
aside
):
I’ll play no more: we’ve hazed him unto death,

Shown we’re good pupils at his sad expense.

No more’s needed: to prolong were spite.

I’ll straight reveal myself.

Good Captain Jack, wipe off thy monstrous sweat,

Fear nothing; nothing’s here, and nothing looms.

Thy loving pupil, Prince of Antioch,

Doffs now his witchery and embraces you!

CAPT
:
Oh, helpless, awful combination!

Under the horrid witch, more horrid ghost

Of dungeon dead! Identity

Hard heaped upon identity! ’Neath each, another.

Remorseless spirit, spurn that ghastly smile

And let me flee!

PRINCE:
Captain, my captain; halt; take conference! My partners in this game are fell behind.

CAPT:
Leave me to hell, scurvy hag, ghost, prince, and whatsoever else you be!

PRINCE:
See, master, I rend my disguise, reveal plain Antioch! Here, touch my doublet and, under straggled hair, fur cap of maintenance. Look, my square rubies!

CAPT:
Antioch’s doublet, Antioch’s rubies and, over all, Antioch’s callow voice. (
Rises
.)
How dared you, pupil, witch thy teacher thus?

PRINCE:
That our play might be match for thy play; two plays coincident and instructive.

CAPT
(
aside
):
’Tis past incredible that a creature may so persist in innocence. Let’s screw him yet a notch farther. (
To
Prince
.)
Thou’st played admirably, chicken; master is proud of thee and ready to send thee to Sorbonne. Where’s thy two confederates?

PRINCE:
Scouring the brush for thee, nearby.

CAPT:
Then quickly, we’ll on to the next lesson – the very last. Hand me thy witchery, take my ducal robes.

PRINCE:
Ha, ha! Gladly.

CAPT:
Now, off to our respective businesses; play thou a fleeing Asiatic mariner in a French duke’s disguise, forgetting thou art in reality a Syrian prince that feigns to be a witch.

PRINCE:
I am much diverted.

CAPT:
I, too; and, praise God, may so be also my enemies!