The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (2 page)

I rubbed my face some more. I noted her words “this performance.” Which implied the faerie had produced other strange productions of
Hamlet
. Somehow I knew I was about to become involved in something I didn’t really want to know about. I was beginning to feel the hangover coming on, and I wasn’t even done with being drunk yet.

“Talk to me like I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “Trust me, it won’t be hard.”

Morgana went over to the stairs at the edge of the proscenium and stepped down into the audience. A spotlight over the stage moved to follow her. No doubt operated by another poor fey, equally in her thrall as I was. She walked up the aisle to me, explaining things as she went and clearing up nothing.

“You are aware, of course, of the passion the faerie have for theatre,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. After all, who doesn’t know
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
was largely based on a real event? Although Shakespeare, crowd pleaser that he was, did take out the parts about murder and bestiality. I guess he was content to leave that to the Jacobeans.

“I’m also aware of the passion the faerie have for chaos and tricks,” I added, nodding at the body, which was still twitching every now and then. And I didn’t have to point out I knew the faerie had a long history of wreaking havoc with stage productions of all kinds for their amusement. It was their own form of theatre.

“We live in chaos,” Morgana said, drawing close now, “and we feed on trickery.” She stopped beside me in the aisle and I could smell her perfume. It smelled of dead things in the ocean. It was the most beautiful scent in the world to me at that moment. I had to steady myself on the seat in front of me.

“But this is not of our making,” Morgana went on. “And we are not amused by it at all.”

I took a deep breath and forced myself upright again, which was harder than it sounds. It was even harder to stop myself from reaching out to her, for just a touch of that beautiful, ivory skin. I managed a shrug instead. “So someone or something switched the fake blade with a real one. What difference does one dead fey make? There’s plenty more where he came from.” I didn’t point out that whoever had killed the fey had probably done him a favour. There was no use in stating the obvious.

Morgana smiled that wicked smile of hers at me. Those lips. . . .

“We would not have invited you to this performance if it were only one dead fey,” she said. “But it is not only one dead fey.”

She snapped her fingers and the house lights came up. Now I saw why the audience was so silent. They were all dead in their seats. Some had stab wounds like Polonius, others were charred corpses. A couple had split-open skulls and I could see inside their heads. They were mostly fey, but I saw the faerie Peaseblossom among their number. I remembered him pouring me one ale after another when I was a prisoner of Morgana’s in that pub in the Irish countryside, both of us laughing as I drank away the memories of the outside world. Now his skin was an odd colour that suggested poison, and the foam that surrounded his mouth backed it up. He wore a dress that would have looked Elizabethan if I hadn’t been around for the actual time period. It was stage garb. The other dead all wore similar outfits: period costume of the kind you see in plays but that never really existed in the actual time. They all stared sightlessly at the stage and continued to pay us no mind.

I shook my head again. I had to stop going to the theatre. Nothing good ever came of it.

“Something has been killing my subjects,” Morgana said. “Anytime we put on a production of
Hamlet
. Always a seeming accident.” She waved her hand to take in the audience. “But this is too great an accident, even for the faerie.”

I considered the corpses, as I’ve done so many times before. They didn’t tell me anything. They usually don’t unless I raise them from the dead.

“So your plays are haunted,” I said. “Or maybe you’ve got a demon problem. Or some other infestation. What does this have to do with me?”

“We need an exorcism, of course,” Morgana said. “Or whatever it is that you mortal types do to rid yourselves of such problems. It’s not really the sort of thing with which we have experience. But now that you have become one of my loyal subjects. . .” She smiled that wicked smile of hers.

Now it was my turn to smile.

“I don’t think so,” I said, although it hurt like hell to say the words. The enchantment wanted me to do anything I could to help her.

Morgana looked bemused, and Puck spat at me, although he grinned even wider. I half expected the dead to turn their heads to look at me, but they stayed dead. The dead are rather predictable that way. Most times.

“You don’t think so?” Morgana asked, arching an eyebrow.

“I have no interest in helping you,” I said. “Not while I’m under your spell, anyway. Lift it and maybe then we’ll talk.”

Morgana chuckled, which I wasn’t expecting. It’s never a good sign when the faerie queen laughs at you. Or, I suppose, whenever any queen laughs at you for that matter.

“I thought you might say that,” she said. “So I have prepared an incentive to move you to action.”

As if on cue, a young woman walked out of the wings and onto the stage. She wore a white dress that looked as if it had been made from spider’s silk. She sang as she walked.

“He is dead and gone, lady. He is dead and gone. At his head a grass-green turf. At his heels a stone.”

I recognized the song. Also from
Hamlet
. The character was Ophelia. I recognized who was playing her as well. Amelia. My daughter. She was no longer a babe, like the first and last time I’d seen her. Now she was in her late teens. She had aged unnaturally fast in the court of the faerie queen, but I still recognized her. I saw the combination of features in her face. Mine and Penelope’s. Her dead mother’s. Just one in the list of so many people I hadn’t been able to save over the ages, but the one at the top of the list. Amelia’s skin bore the grey pallor of death, as it had when Morgana stole her from Penelope’s dead womb long turned to dust and birthed her. Amelia was still dead, like Penelope, yet somehow still living and aging.

“Oh yes, our daughter is older now,” Morgana said, as if she’d just remembered.

“She is not your daughter,” I said.

“Isn’t she?” Morgana said. “I seem to recall bearing her.”

“You took her,” I said. The words were like ash in my mouth. “You took her from Penelope.” And me.

Morgana shrugged, like the distinction was lost on her. Maybe it was. The faerie had always had peculiar ideas about children and ownership.

“She was entertaining at first, as a child,” Morgana said as I stared at Amelia wandering aimlessly about on the stage. I tried to imagine her as a child but couldn’t. I had seen none of that time. Morgana had stolen Amelia’s childhood from me just as she had stolen Amelia herself. I didn’t know I could feel even emptier inside until that moment. “But I grew weary of her endless questions and so hurried things along a little,” Morgana added.

“What is the meaning of this?” I said. I wanted to run to Amelia, to take her into my arms and spirit her away. But I knew it would not be so easy to take her from the faerie queen and her court. Especially as long as I wore that ring.

“Amelia is going to appear in our performances of
Hamlet
from now on,” Morgana said. “She is going to play the part of Ophelia.” Morgana put a hand to her lips, like she was trying to suppress more laughter, or maybe something else. Who knew what. “I certainly hope nothing happens to her.”

“We must be patient,” Amelia said, moving to one of the stage wings now. She didn’t look at me. “But I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground.”

I recognized the passage. The madness scene after she has learned of the death of her father. I waited for her to look at me, but instead she looked at the corpse of Polonius on the stage.

“Poor Ophelia,” Morgana said. “Such a tragic fate for one so young.”

I would have killed Morgana then if I had been able. Or, failing that, I would have warned her of the wrath I was capable of. But she knew all that. And she knew I couldn’t do such things when I was under her spell, even if I had grace. Just like she knew I would agree to anything to save Amelia from another death.

Amelia wandered off the stage, back into the wings, without looking at me. So I turned my attention to Morgana again.

“What do I get in return for helping you?” I asked.

Morgana leaned in and kissed my left cheek. “I will give you visitation rights to your daughter,” she breathed into my ear. She kissed my right cheek. “And you will have my gratitude,” she breathed into my other ear.

I felt myself nodding, even though I wanted more than that. I wanted my daughter back. I wanted ownership of my soul back. But I couldn’t resist Morgana. Damn that enchantment!

Morgana stepped away from me, and the new distance between us physically hurt inside.

“We will call you for our next performance,” she said. “So ready yourself.”

“I’m ready now,” I said and stepped out into the aisle. To my credit, I was only swaying a little. The events of the night had rapidly sobered me up. Well, somewhat sobered me up.

Morgana looked me up and down. “You are far from ready,” she said. She turned and walked away from me. “I can’t believe I once took you into my bed.”

“It was more than once,” I muttered, but I shouldn’t have said anything. The thought of those nights made me fall back into my seat again.

“Enjoy your memories,” Morgana called over her shoulder. “They are all you will ever have of me now.” She went back down the aisle toward the stage. The house lights went out, and the spotlight flickered and spun wildly about the theatre for a moment. When it settled back on the stage, I could see that Morgana was gone, as were Puck and all the corpses in the audience. They’d disappeared back into the glamour.

The body of Polonius still lay on the stage, though. And then Amelia stepped into the spotlight from the wings.

“Good night,” she said, looking around at the empty seats. “Good night.”

“Amelia!” I cried. “Wait!” I ran down the aisle to her, but it was too late. The spotlight flickered once more and then she was gone too, just like the others. And why not? She belonged to them, after all, not to me. Before she vanished I saw she was marked by the same black ring on her finger that I wore on mine. Black bone. Like the kind that all the fey wore. The bone that bound us to Morgana.

Now it was just me and the dead Polonius. I waited for the lights to flicker one more time and the darkness to take him, too, but that didn’t happen. I went over to him to see why he was different. He clutched a piece of parchment in his hand I hadn’t noticed before. In fact, I was sure it hadn’t been there before. I took it from his dead grasp and unfolded it.

It was a map—a street view like you find online, but hand-drawn in ink with great detail. The forced work of one of the fey, no doubt. It depicted a street with row houses. One of them that looked just like the others was circled with what I was certain was blood. A single word was written on the street outside the place.
Baal
.

I looked back at Polonius, but he was still dead. He’d make an interesting find for the stage crew the next day. He might even become a theatrical legend, like the ghosts who seemed to haunt every theatre that needed some sort of extra box office draw.

“Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen,” I said, but there was no one left to listen. So I went back up the aisle and through the empty lobby, out into the dark and rain outside.

Just when you think things can’t get worse, that’s when they get worse.

Baal was where the map said he would be. When I rang the doorbell, he answered the door with a cup of tea in his hand. The steam made arcane patterns in the air. Baal wore glasses and a cardigan that made him look like a retired professor instead of an angel. Maybe he had been a professor for a time. The angels all had to make a living ever since God had abandoned them to the mortal world.

“I thought you guys would have stopped answering the door by now,” I said. “Given what usually happens when I come knocking in the night.”

Baal studied me for a moment, then sipped his tea. “Would it have made a difference?” he asked. “Could I simply have fled out the back once you’d found me?”

“Probably not,” I said, which was a lie. I wasn’t exactly mortal, sure, but that didn’t mean I could be in two places at once. There’d been more than one angel who had slipped out the back door on me before. I didn’t like to advertise that fact though. It made them think I was soft.

“So,” he said, and blew the steam from his tea.

“Yes,” I said, keeping an eye on the symbols that danced in the air between us.

“I don’t suppose we could talk about this like civilized beings,” he said.

“That’s a laugh to call yourself civilized after what you did at Gomorrah,” I said.

“I was under orders,” Baal said, frowning.

“I’ve heard that one before,” I said.

“Very well,” he said, “why don’t you just tell me what I can give you to make you go away?”

“Not this time,” I said. “Not unless you know how to stop a play from killing people.”

Baal looked up and down the street, but it was empty of anyone who could save him.

“Which play?” he asked.

“How many plays are there that can kill people?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised,” Baal said. He turned and walked down the hallway of his home. “I imagine you’re going to come in one way or another,” he said over his shoulder.

I took that as an invitation and followed him. I made sure to close the door behind me and lock it. There were three locks. It was almost like he was expecting trouble. Well, one could never be too safe with people like me roaming the streets.

The walls of the hallway were lined with bookshelves that held every sort of book: mass-market paperbacks, encyclopedias and dictionaries, art books, travel guides. There wasn’t any order to them that I could tell. The living room Baal led me into was more of the same, only here the books were older tomes, bound in leather and other types of hide. I tried not to let my eyes linger on the titles. That way lay madness.

The couch was covered in stacks of newspapers and magazines, but two chairs were free. Baal motioned for me to sit in one so of course I sat in the other.

“Can I offer you a tea?” Baal asked. “Or perhaps a stronger drink?” He looked at me like he knew what I’d been up to after he’d lost me at Potsdamer Platz. Maybe he did know. The angels are a mysterious bunch. Even I don’t really understand how they work. Hell, they’re probably mysterious even to each other.

“I’m not here for a drink,” I reminded him, and he smiled. See what I mean?

He sat in the other chair and blew steam from his tea again. More arcane symbols danced in the air between us.

“What exactly are those?” I asked.

“They are not unlike the aroma of a tea, in their way,” Baal said.

“That is not like an answer, in its own way,” I said.

He smiled a little, but just a little. “It’s an ancient blend that took considerable effort to acquire,” he said. “In fact, it can no longer be found in this world. I could no more describe the symbols to you than I could describe the aroma to a man with no sense of smell. Are you sure I can’t interest you in a cup?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’ve learned my lesson about otherworldly drinks,” I said. Although it had taken a few times for the lesson to really sink in. I looked around at the books again. “You work in publishing or a library?” I asked.

“University professor,” he said. “Emeritus.”

I smiled a little too. At least I still had a gut sense about angels in some ways.

“So,” he said again.

“
Hamlet
,” I said, cutting to the chase. “It’s killing people.”

“Is there a new production causing riots?” he asked. “Or perhaps a travelling show with a cast of demons and their minions?”

I winced at the mention of demons. I’d had one too many run-ins with their kind over the years. I shook my head. “I think it’s more like some sort of curse with the play itself,” I said. “People keep dying from accidents during productions.” I didn’t mention the faerie or Amelia. Or sweet, sweet Morgana. I didn’t want any of the angels to know about my deep, dark secrets. I’d never live it down.

“Perhaps it’s the
Macbeth
curse,” Baal said. “An old superstition among thespians.”

I knew what he was talking about, thanks to centuries of drinking until dawn in various pubs with actors and other characters of ill repute. Anytime something goes wrong in a production of
Macbeth
, actors always lay the blame on the mythical curse. Only it’s not mythical, as Baal and I knew.

It was all because of the Witches. Any respectable Shakespeare scholar will tell you the spell the witch characters use around their cauldron in
Macbeth
is a real one—Shakespeare stole it from the actual Witches. And yes, they deserve the capitalization. There are witches and then there are the Witches. They appreciated Will’s act of supernatural plagiarism so much that they gave him another spell gratis: the curse.

It’s normally a harmless enough thing. Some actor says the name “Macbeth” backstage in a production without thinking and starts the spell running. Soon props are falling apart and actors are breaking legs and candles are igniting curtains. You know, the sort of things that can also be caused by excessive drunkenness, which actors are also known for.

But the faerie show I’d seen had been
Hamlet
, not
Macbeth
.

“Not a bad guess,” I said, “but it’s the wrong play.”

“Not if someone was infected with the curse during a previous production of
Macbeth
,” Baal said. “Perhaps they brought it with them to this new play.”

The symbols from his tea had made it around the room and now circled his head. I continued to keep an eye on them.

“Curses can infect people?” I asked. That was a useful piece of information, although I wasn’t quite sure yet how it was useful.

Baal shrugged. “Magical curses are by their very nature unpredictable,” he said. “Sometimes the spell latches on to actors and follows them to other plays. It can even move from player to player. Usually the actors develop a bad reputation and stop getting work, and that’s the end of that. But not always.”

This is why it’s good to sometimes talk to angels rather than just kill them outright. Occasionally, they have something interesting to say. Occasionally.

“So what do you do to get rid of the curse?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing where a prescription can help.”

“No, in these cases an intervention is usually necessary,” Baal said.

“I’m guessing that means more than throwing salt over your shoulder or running out of the theatre and spinning in a circle three times,” I said, thinking about the usual antidotes. Actors loved their silly rituals, even though they rarely seemed to work. Sometimes I think it was the faerie who came up with them, having a little fun at the expense of mortals. They had a long history with the theatre, the faerie did.

“It would definitely require something more dramatic than that,” Baal said. “Sometimes it is best to fight witchcraft with things darker than witchcraft.”

He eyed the bookshelf beside us, but I held up a hand before he could reach for anything.

“We’re not going to even open any of those, let alone read the words in them,” I said.

I’d had enough of ancient tomes after one of them had killed the infamous playwright Christopher Marlowe, who had been one of my few friends when he’d been alive. Well, in all honesty, Marlowe was responsible for his own death. But he had a lot of help from a book, if you could even call it that. Most books were just books, but some weren’t. Some books were other things entirely.

Baal raised an eyebrow but left it alone.

“Have you tried talking to the Witches?” he asked.

I sighed. “I was hoping to avoid that,” I said. “That’s why I’m sitting here talking to you.”

“There are worse things in the world than the Witches,” he said.

“And there are a whole lot of better things in the world too,” I said, although I may have been overly optimistic about that.

“Perhaps you should seek out—,” Baal said, but I cut him off before he could finish.

“I’m not going to him for help again,” I said.

Baal nodded and paid attention to his tea again, and we shared a moment of silence while I thought things over. I ended the moment with another sigh. There was no getting around it. I was going to have to meet with the Witches. This night just kept getting better and better.

“Is there anything else?” Baal asked.

I gave him an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I need your grace,” I said.

He frowned at me. “I thought we had an arrangement,” he said.

“What can I say?” I said, shrugging. “I’m a fallen man.”

Now it was his turn to sigh. “I expected more of you,” he said.

“Everyone does,” I said.

“Give me a moment,” he said.

“Of course,” I said.

He finished the tea and put the cup down on the bookshelf. Then we stopped carrying on like civilized beings.

The arcane symbols from the tea’s steam didn’t do anything to help him. They were just that: symbols.