Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(71)

“Do not let the duke receive that potion,” said Cobweb. “Now be gone, I have a guest coming.”

Drool and Snug exited.

“Oh, I need some air,” said Cobweb. She went to the back of the stage and held aside one of the tapestries, through which I stepped, then bowed as Tom Snout in his Oberon togs skipped through.

“Away, Puck,” said Snout as Oberon. “Come for me before dawn.”

I exited through the arras but peeked out. This would be the scene where the show would shift to the audience. I checked my two remaining daggers and nodded to Peter Quince, who had two short scripts from which he might read, as well as a third option I’d alerted all the players to, which was to run for the antechamber if it came to it.

“Oh, my dark lord,” said Cobweb. She moved to Snout and rubbed against him in a lascivious and seductive manner, accentuating their height difference, which, while ridiculous, was no more than that between Titania and Oberon. “Take me, use me, like the warrior tart that I am.” Cobweb looked past Snout to catch my eye and made a silly grin, proud of her improvisation. What she couldn’t see, and neither could the audience, was that much of the soot that we had used to blacken Tom Snout was now smeared on Cobweb’s face and all over the front of her once-white gown.

I laughed. Cobweb saw her hand, blackened, then looked down her front.

“But no.” She turned suddenly and went to the front of the stage, as actors do when changing their mind, so the audience may see the conflict in their visage. Or, in her case, the soot all over her. The audience burst into laughter, which energized Cobweb no little.

“First,” she said, “you must help free me from the bonds of that putrid dongwhistle Theseus.”

The players definitely had the attention of the royals now. Cobweb was doing smashingly improvising her lines with only the rough instructions we had come up with in the antechamber.

Snout moved up behind Cobweb and put his hands on her shoulders, leaving black prints wherever he touched.

“Anything, my warrior queen, if you will submit to my dread pleasures.”

“You know I am a prisoner here,” said Cobweb, “and even if I escape, there are scores of my soldiers who are hostages, for even as they walk free about the castle, they are allowed no weapons, and every one of my warriors is watched by one of Theseus’s guards.”

“A sad affair,” said Snout.

“I am to marry, three days hence, and you and Titania are invited to the wedding. When you come, I want you to bring a cohort of your goblin soldiers, and when I give the signal, they must kill Theseus’s guards and give arms to my warriors.”

Before Snout could reply, before the audience could react to the idea of goblins, which they thought something made up to frighten children, a ferocious female war cry filled the hall, echoing up into the vaulted rafters, as Hippolyta pulled a dagger from under her gown and drove its point under Theseus’s sternum. She continued to scream, even as she twisted the blade in his chest and his heart’s blood poured out over her hand. “Now!” she screamed. “Now! Now! Now!”

“Go, go, go,” said I to my cast. I shooed the players back toward the antechamber. Cobweb and Snout ran off the side of the stage after them.

In the hall the dark hoods were pulled back and goblins put blades to soldiers’ throats at every door, disarming but not killing the soldiers. The audience screamed and rose to run, but each of the six double doors was slammed shut and bolted. Above, in the balconies, soldiers had been disarmed and yanked away, presumably held at sword point on the floor, while the balconies filled with goblins bearing crossbows, which they trained on the crowd below. Several of Hippolyta’s warriors reached for the soldiers’ weapons but were beaten back by the swipe of a sword or the aim of a crossbow.

“Now! Now! Now!” screeched Hippolyta, but her Amazon warriors could not respond to her call, all of them held harmless by armed goblins.

Hippolyta pulled the dagger from Theseus’s chest and let him drop to the floor as she stood. She crouched and brandished the bloody dagger, ready for a fight. The audience members, including Hermia and Lysander, had moved away from her, leaving her alone with her dead duke. At the other side of the stage, Oberon was on his feet too, looking confused and furious. “Kill the guards!” he shouted, to no effect at all. He looked from balcony to balcony, and from each, a dozen crossbows were trained upon him.

I hopped on the stage and danced a jaunty jig to the edge, stage right, where Hippolyta waved her knife. At spirits, evidently.

“Everyone please take your seats,” said I. “We are not finished here. I know this is unsettling, and several of you have probably soiled yourself, but be of good cheer, I assure you no one will be harmed.”

“Yes they will,” said Hippolyta, shaking the dagger at some goblin archers. “They will all be harmed.”

I looked down on her, gave her my most beatific smile. “That knife is mine, love,” said I. “If you don’t mind.” I held out my hand.

She turned as if to attack me and a crossbow bolt thunked into her empty chair, then another one right next to it. I looked to the first balcony, where a goblin wearing two silver armlets stared down, his crossbow ready to be reloaded. Gritch.

Hippolyta twirled the dagger and held it out, as if I would come get it.

“No, love, you bring it here. And do wipe it off.” I gestured to my loincloth made from Helena’s gown. “I’m wearing white.”