[still told by Cheiron]

'Kings, demigods, gentlemen, and Erik,' declaimed Jack, striding onstage wearing Arthur's helmet as the nearest thing to a crown we had with us, 'we present The Tragedy Of Absalom, Prince Of Israel. Act 1, Scene 1: King David's palace in Jerusalem...

'O Samuel, why didst thou anoint us king?

Alas, that royal plural! For I have

More wives, more sons, more woes than other men,

And yet the two were dearest me are gone.

But five years past, my Amnon, oldest son,

Had, feigning sickness, raped my daughter Tamar,

Then hated her and cast her from his sight.

Some two years on, her brother Absalom

Slew Amnon, and is fled into Geshur,

To leave me, three years long, to long for him.

I have forgot my grief at Amnon's loss;

I mourn the living son, and not the dead.

Yet I must dry my grief with dust of work,

Or weep for subjects' problems, not mine own.

Good day, good widow!'

For Arthur had just come 'onstage' (the middle of the clearing where we had stopped for lunch represented Jerusalem, while the patch of bracken and bushes before the woodland started again represented all other locations in the story) with a towel wrapped around his head to mimic the veil and headscarf worn by some Eastern women. 'Widow, aye, indeed!' he replied, raising his voice to compensate for the towel muffling his words:

'Widowed of husband, sons, and earthly hope!

My sons have brawled, and one hath slain the other,

And now my clan cry, "Hang the murderer!"

Thus would they quench my last bright coal that burns,

Cut off my husband's name with his descendants,

And leave me none to care when I grow old.'

'Fear not; thy son shall live; we pardon him,' pronounced Jack, very solemnly.

'In this your majesty doth wrong himself

By pardoning my son and not his own!

As water spilt doth mingle with the dust,

So all must die and turn again to clay.

Yet God, who quickens life within the mud,

Restores the banished sinner to His grace,

And will you not restore your Absalom?'

'Thou art a prophet!' exclaimed Jack, laughing; 'Tell me one thing more:/ Was it not Joab set thee on this game?'

'My liege, your wisdom is as angels' sight:

T'was Joab bade me play a widow's part

That you might spare me for my widow's weeds

That have no mercy on yourself, your son,

Or all of us who long for his return.'

With this, Arthur ducked behind a bush to get rid of his towel and return as Joab, when Jack called:

'Come, Joab! Upon more consideration,

We do reverse our word of banishment.

Bring Absalom unto Jerusalem,

But bid him dwell within his own estate;

He may not speak to me, nor see my face.'

'To show this mercy does my lord much grace,' replied Arthur, bowing.

The audience, however, was still confused. 'So does that mean the widow was really Joab in disguise?' asked Andrew.

'No!' said Jack. 'I asked you first if you wanted to play her as well as Mephibosheth, remember? She's just some woman Joab asked to pretend to be a widow whose son is a murderer, so that David will see the right thing to do if he thinks he's doing it for someone else instead of for himself.'

'Are all plays this full of lies and deception?' snorted Malvolio. 'I'm surprised the King forgave the woman for lying to him like that.'

'Well, some rulers aren't easy to confront directly,' I explained. 'Quite often, if people needed to challenge King David about something he'd done wrong, they'd tell him a story of something that was a bit like what he'd done, and ask for his judgment. If that helped him see things more clearly, how could it be wrong?'

'It's still lying,' said Malvolio.

The next scene opened with Absalom, frustrated that his father was still refusing to have direct contact with him and that Joab wouldn't help him any further, setting fire to Joab's farm just to get his attention, and opened with David embracing Absalom with the words: 'Thou mad young firebrand ruffian of a prince,/ Thou art right welcome to Jerusalem!'

There was a pause, and then Malvolio said, 'Does that mean that Absalom has been pardoned? Even after he's compounded his original offence by committing arson as well as murder? So that, in effect, he's rewarded for an act of vandalism?'

'That's right!' said Erik cheerfully. 'If I annoy Joab long enough by setting fire to his fields, sooner or later he's bound to plead with my father on my behalf, just to keep some of his crops intact!'

'And it makes me realise how desperate my son was to see me,' added Jack. 'It was bad enough for him in exile, but to be living in Jerusalem, maybe within half a mile of me, but not allowed to meet me, must have been a far worse torment, and the fire was burning in his heart long before it torched Joab's barley.'

'Well, if you had any sense, you'd see that he hasn't improved and send him back to Geshur,' said Malvolio. 'And I don't think it's helpful to show criminal actions being rewarded, because it sets a bad example.'

'Don't talk to me like that when I'm King,' said Jack. 'And anyway, wait until you've seen the full story.'

So, all afternoon, the play unwound from a sketch into a full-length drama, as Absalom schemed to usurp the throne, and David and his court and his army (all of which consisted of Arthur) fled from him.

'Andrew, do you want to be Shimei son of Gera?' asked Jack.

'I thought I was Mephibosheth son of Jonathan?'

'You are, but he's not on until Act Five. Shimei comes from the same clan as Saul, so you didn't want me to be king in the first place, and when you hear that I'm fleeing from my own son, you come and rail against me.'

'Rail? You mean I'm supposed to build a fence?'

'No, you're supposed to give offence! You just shout insults and throw rubbish at me and stuff. How difficult can it be?'

'Oh! Yes, I'm good at railing!' said Andrew.

'Well, go on, then.'

Andrew wandered uncertainly onstage. 'Uh – you're not a very nice person and I don't want you to be king because you're going bald,' he mumbled.

'No, not like that! You've got to be so abusive that Abishai – that's Arthur – wants to chop your head off for daring to speak to me like that, and I have to stop him. Like this: "Thou whoreson dog, thou clod of women's monthly uncleanness, what art thou good for but to chase other men's wives and murder the husbands? Art thou a man, thou thing that art built upside-down with thy brains in thy codpiece and thy pate full of bollocks? And darest thou write psalms boasting of the cleanness of thy hands? If thou callst thyself a Jew, I would I were one of the goyim, that I kept swine and might pelt thee with pig-shit, for this sheep's dung is too kosher to come near thy foulness." That's how Shimei needs to talk.'

'So if you're Shimei, am I King David now?' asked Andrew.

'No, I'm David, I was just demonstrating – oh, forget it! Just go and sit down for now. In Act Five, when I'm coming back to Jerusalem, you come on as Shimei again and apologise to me – even you can manage that! – and I forgive you. And then you come on as Mephibosheth, on crutches, and I've already written Mephibosheth's lines out for you.'

David and his entourage crossed the Jordan to Manahaim, and Absalom on his mule (played by me, naturally) went to war against him. King David wanted to lead his army into battle himself (probably so that he could ensure that Absalom was taken alive), but let his soldiers persuade him to keep out of the way, as he was too valuable to risk. Instead, he divided his army into three sections, led by Joab, Joab's brother Abishai, and Ittai the Gittite (all played by Arthur), and ordered them to 'Be gentle with my boy, for love of me.'

So, after I had run under an oak tree as the Mule and left Erik dangling helplessly in it (he should have been caught by his long hair, but, as Erik didn't have much hair to spare, he was clinging onto a branch with both hands), I returned as the Soldier who refuses to kill Absalom when Joab commands it (leaving Arthur to stab Erik himself) and then became the Messenger sent to King David.

'What news?' called Jack.

'The best!' I said, uneasily (after all, King David could be unpredictable).

'Then – Absalom is safe?' asked Jack (possibly overdoing the tremulous voice just a touch).

'Safe, in the only way that traitors are:

Safe nevermore to strike. So may we say:

May all your foes be safe as Absalom!'

Jack buried his head in his hands. 'O Absalom, my son, my son, my son! Would Heaven I had died instead of thee!'

'My liege, you love your foes and hate your friends,' growled Arthur, coming on as a stern-faced Joab:

'Some twenty thousand Israelites lie dead,

More by the forest than by battle slain,

And all your sorrow is for Absalom!

I think t'would better please your majesty

If all of us were dead but Absalom!

It very well becomes our shepherd-king

To leave his flock and seek the lamb that strays,

But when that lamb is turned a ravening wolf,

Should we not guide the sheep that wolf pursued,

And lead them safely to Jerusalem?'

So the King and his entourage returned home. Andrew reappeared to be forgiven twice, first as Shimei ('Uh – I'm sorry I was rude to you, but I only said those things because my friend dared me to do it,') and then as Mephibosheth, struggling to hold onto his tent-pole 'crutches' with one hand while riffling through his notebook with the other to find the page with the script on it. Eventually he dropped both the crutches and the notebook, and was by now so much in character as the crippled Mephibosheth that he fell over. Jack knelt beside him to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and declaim from ground-level:

'Thy stumbles speak more love than gilded words.

I see the villain Ziba slandered thee,

Poor shattered fragment of my Jonathan,

For he desired to win thy property.

And yet, as Ziba much refreshed our army,

Wilt thou bestow some portion of thy fields

That he may learn from thee what mercy is?'

By this time, Andrew had managed to find the relevant page, and read out, '"Let Ziba keep my wealth; why should I care? To see my king is wealth beyond compare. Exeunt omnes." Aren't we going to end with a song or a dance?' he added, disappointed. 'Most of the plays I've seen do.'

'No, we're not!' said Jack indignantly. 'Show some respect, can't you? I'm in deep mourning for my favourite son, and just because I'm the most successful royal songwriter until Henry VIII doesn't mean I'm always in the mood to lead everyone in a rousing chorus of "The Lord Is My Shepherd"!'

'And, more to the point, he isn't really King David, and doesn't know any psalms, because he's spent his entire life in a pub, hearing nothing except indecent drinking songs,' added Malvolio.

[Author's note: the plot of this play is based on the 2nd Book of Samuel in the Bible, chapters 13 to 19, and some of the dialogue paraphrases what Biblical characters say. However, putting it into blank verse was my own idea.]