After two nights of not being able to write anything I have gone wild and written a truckload, or what feels like one anyway. I'm glad you liked the first chapter. When you get to the last part just how AU this story is should probably be remembered. And I'm also going to have to give massive credit to Shakespeare for the snippets of text I've nicked from Macbeth here.
"A play?" Daisy looked both astonished and delighted by the very concept, "A play! Which part do you think I'll get to be?"
Miss O'Brien cast a mildly sarcastic eye over the excited child.
"Third dormouse," she concluded flatly.
"Dormouse?" came Mrs Patmore's voice from the far side of the kitchen, "I heard they were doing Macbeth not Wind in the flaming Willows! Though," she turned to Daisy, "She's probably right: don't go getting your hopes up about having something to do on the stage or anything. Old Hughsie's already gone and bagged the best for herself part by all accounts."
"Well," Anna felt obliged to correct her on that point, at least, "She's certainly ended up in that part. I doubt whether she actually wanted to."
Though she knew the futility of doing so, she cast a very pointed look in Miss O'Brien's direction. The lady's maid genuinely seemed not to notice, and only remarked:
"It was worth it just to see the looks on their faces, you have though none of 'em had ever heard an original idea before. I didn't have you down for an actress, Mrs P?" she addressed this latter remark to the cook, "Why do you even care if Hughsie gets to be her usual self, only on stage?"
Mrs Patmore took up the meat clever.
"I don't," she chopped at the joints on the board with particular venom, "I'll only thank you to remember that she's not the only one in this house to be feared."
At that moment, Anna could quite see her point. But Miss O'Brien grinned a little at the table before getting up from where she rested against the dresser.
"I'm going outside for a fag," she told them, "Bye bye, Dormouse."
Rather than looking frightened as she usually did, Daisy visibly glowered at the maid's retreating back. Anna pushed back a smile.
"You'd think Mrs Hughes would just tell them all to beggar off, wouldn't you?" Daisy remarked after a few moments of peeling potatoes in silence.
"I'll thank you to mind your language," Mrs Patmore told her, gesticulating a little too vehemently with her knife, "Just because Thomas gets away with talk like that, doesn't mean you can. And anyway, Mrs Hughes would never say that to 'er Ladyship. It probably hasn't even crossed her mind. And if it has she wouldn't dare to, because she'll know that if she did, they couldn't make the rest of us join in either. She has to set one of her precious examples. Yon lass, Gwen for example."
The kitchen seemed to swivel towards where Gwen was perched at the table with her typewriter.
"What are you up to?" Anna asked, peering over her shoulder.
Gwen had been so quiet up till then that she had scarcely been noticed.
"Her Ladyship asked me to type some copies of the script out, or Lady Sybil did anyway," she told them.
"How many?" Anna asked, observing the positive mountain of paper beside her.
Gwen's reply sounded suspiciously like "as many as possible". Mrs Patmore shook her head in something akin to disgust.
"I hope they're giving you the paper and ink," she remarked.
Gwen answered distractedly that they were; resuming typing with ferocious speed. The cook, Anna thought, was taking being beaten to the part by Mrs Hughes rather hard.
"Auditions are tomorrow after breakfast, Lady Mary said," she announced, loudly enough for Mrs Patmore to hear her, before leaving to change her cap for dinner.
…...
At first Elsie had thought that putting a play on was lunacy. She had since come to revise her definition of the term. It was lunacy, she now realised, that not only had she been roped into the lead female part in said play, there was also very little chance of her being able to get out of it and she was being obliged to watch the others audition with the other ladies instead of getting her actual work done. As everyone seemed to be taking it for granted that she would play Lady Macbeth, she had been "invited" to watch. But, to be fair, the morning had not been without it's merits. Watching Mrs Patmore, Miss O'Brien and Daisy audition as a trio for the parts of the three murderers had certainly been one of them. She did not want to be uncharitable to Daisy, but she thought they might have stood more of a chance going for the three witches.
However, she almost fell off her chair when Charles Carson was admitted to the space that had been cleared in front of the table where she, Lady Grantham, Lady Violet, Mrs Crawley, Lady Mary and Lady Edith sat. And judging by the look on her face, so did Lady Grantham.
"Carson?" Elsie detected a hint of a splutter in her Ladyship's voice.
Her obvious surprise did not seem to help matters as far as Charles was concerned.
"Yes, my Lady?" he asked, rather tentatively, probably forgetting that he wasn't strictly present in his role as butler, and wondering if her Ladyship needed any more tea.
"Which role are you auditioning for, Mr Carson?" Mrs Crawley asked him kindly.
Charles shuffled a little, looking almost abashed.
"Macbeth, ma'am," he replied.
Of all the ridiculous, endearing but ridiculous, things he'd ever done- and Elsie, over the years, had been party to some the extremes- this had to come out pretty high. Mrs Crawley had evidently been struck dumb too by the situation before her. Only crisp tones from the other side of Lady Grantham saved them.
"Go on, Carson," Lady Violet encouraged him, supremely unconcerned by the attitudes of her colleagues.
From where she sat beside her, Elsie saw Lady Mary flash a small smile of encouragement at Charles, before he opened up the book and began to read.
" 'Is this a dagger I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still...' "
Was it just her, or did the lines have quite a pleasant hum to them when he spoke? Not that she was anywhere near recovered from the surprise of seeing him arrive for an audition, but he had a good voice. She had always thought as much.
" '...I see thee still, And on thy blade gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes."
He was certainly giving it some expression, she thought rather fondly. His expression was quite nicely animated. The ladies were impressively silent; Lady Edith was all but goggling at him.
"I go, and it is done: the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell."
When he was finished, there was a tremendous pause around the room.
"Carson," her Ladyship finally spoke, her voice faltering a little, "Have you ever done that before?"
For some reason, Charles' face coloured violently.
"No, my Lady," he muttered.
Elsie wondered that Lady Grantham should look so unnerved. Perhaps she wasn't the only one who felt the effect of Charles' powerful voice.
"Very good, Carson," Lady Violet looked toward the butler with approval, "We shall certainly give your great consideration."
Charles inclined his head towards the ladies as he left the room. Elsie watched his retreating form in something akin to wonderment, at just about everything that was happening to her today.
…...
"How many more to go, Mrs Hughes?" Lady Grantham called as Elsie peered round the door to admit the next applicant, "Who's the next one auditioning for?"
Elsie had to admit that she was truly surprised- though she ought to have known better- when she saw who was waiting in the corridor, not least because of their odd mode of dress.
"Not many," she replied, "It's another witch. It's..."
"Hello, Mama!"
Lady Sybil floated into the room behind Elsie, beaming rather triumphantly at her surprised relatives.
"Sybil! What on earth are you doing?" her mother exclaimed.
Taking up a rather dramatic stance in the centre of the make shift stage, Sybil appeared supremely unconcerned by her mother's perturbation.
"I should have thought that was obvious."
Elsie saw the corners of Mrs Crawley's mouth twitch, and had to beat back a smile herself.
"Why are you dressed like that?" Lady Violet eyed the outfit her granddaughter had assembled for herself suspiciously, as if she expected something to leap out from it.
It was true, Lady Sybil's attire seemed to have taken a turn for the Gothic today. She had blackened her face a little- with what Elsie didn't like to think-, let her hair fall wildly about her shoulders and had borrowed what looked very like mourning clothes made to fit someone of Mrs Patmore's build.
"I'm being 'in character'," she replied, with a pleasant disdainful twang in her voice.
"Sybil," her mother scolded, "You can't be in the play, darling, you said you would help me design the stage and set it up!"
"I can do that as well, mother, don't fuss," Sybil told her hastily, tired of all of these objections, "May I begin?"
"Were any of the rest of you planning to desert me?" her Ladyship asked the room at large, ignoring her youngest daughter and sounding mildly hysterical.
There was the briefest pause; then Mrs Crawley raised a tentative hand.
"Cousin Isobel!" Lady Violet's mock horror seemed to amuse her more than any of the rest of them, all waiting for Mrs Crawley to explain herself.
"I was wondering if I might play Lady Macbeth's gentlewoman. I was thinking of asking Dr Clarkson to play the doctor, I'm sure he'd love to."
…...
"So let me get this straight," Robert addressed an exhausted Cora, who was lying flat out on her bed, "You have cast our two head servants as a married couple in a play where they plot against and overthrow the king, in a very violent fashion I might add. Not only that, but you want me to play the king. Do you not think that this might not provoke unwanted mutiny among the servants?" he asked casually.
Cora raised an eyebrow at him.
"What? I'm sure mutiny is not in dear, sweet Carson's vocabulary?"
"It's not him I'm thinking of," Robert replied ruefully, "Did you see the look on Mrs Hughes' face? Did you even ask her if she wanted to play Lady Macbeth?"
"She's perfect for the part," Cora insisted wearily. Clearly, she hadn't asked, then, "That accent of hers. And I must admit, I'm frightened of her on occasions."
Not frightened enough, obviously, Robert considered saying.
"I've been thinking about her accent," he told her instead, "Will it not seem odd when she's cursing away in a broad Scottish accent and everyone else is reading lines in voices straight from the local countryside, or London society?"
"Not as odd as if we had Lady Macbeth cursing away in a voice straight from the local countryside," Cora assured him, "The lines sounded almost comical when dear O'Brien read them."
"What's she going to be?" Robert asked curiously, "You'd have thought that cursing and plotting was right up her street."
Cora looked moderately put out.
"Head witch," she informed him, "By an almost unanimous vote."
…..
Elsie shut the door of Charles' pantry soundly. Hearing the sound, he looked up from his desk. She turned to face him with her back against the door, peripherally listening to ensure that she had been right in thinking that everyone else had gone to bed.
"What the bloody hell did you think you were doing, Charles?" she asked, "Don't you think that us playing a married couple might give the game away a little bit?"
She wasn't angry, but over-wrought. And because he knew her so well, he understood as much.
"I thought you might say that," he admitted, looking dejected, "And I'm sorry, I truly wasn't going to, but Lady Violet asked me yesterday evening if I was going to audition and she seemed so hopeful; I didn't like to say no."
She almost rolled her eyes at him but stopped herself. One of the things that she did recognise in him after all these years was his dedication to the family and his wish to see them as happy as possible, even in silly details like this. Sometimes, though, he went a little too far.
"Well make sure you do say no when they find us out," she instructed him, "And ask you, "By the way, Carson, have you and Mrs Hughes been having an affair for the past God knows how many years?"
By now she was almost joking, and certainly smiling at the expression on his face as he watched her rant and rave.
"They won't find out," he told her flatly, returning his gaze to the paper on his desk, "Not because of a play at any rate. Just because we play a married couple, doesn't make us married, you know."
"I know, but it might set tongues wagging," she told him.
"Let them wag," he told her, sounding a little bored by the idea.
Crossing to stand behind him, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Don't you have enough work to do without taking on this ridiculous scheme?" she asked him seriously, "I know I certainly have."
He tilted his head sideways to look at her.
"I don't think I shall look at it as work," he told her, after a moments consideration, "I might even enjoy being terrorised by you a few more times a day."
She laughed and kissed him on the head.
"I shall hold you to that, you know," she informed him, "I'll make some tea."
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