"Are you all right?"
A woman in strange garb had sat down beside her.
"If there is anything you would like to talk about… No?"
Anne continued weeping, and the woman was silent for a while.
"If you would like me to go away… Or I could just sit with you for a bit?"
Anne nodded.
"Perhaps you would like to go somewhere quieter? There is a balcony…"
Anne nodded again, and the woman helped her up and led her on to a quiet balcony.
"There. That's better, is it not?"
"Yes."
The woman smiled radiantly, as though ecstatic to hear Anne speak.
"Now, my dear. Do you want to tell me your name?"
"Anne."
"My name is Paulina."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Of course."
"This may sound foolish, but what I is /I this place? How did I get here?"
"It is a feast in honour of Twelfth Night. The hosts are two Counts and Countesses from Illyria, but they have made their jester Lord of Misrule, and so he is in charge of the celebrations. As for how you got here, I do not know. I do not even know how I got here."
"And yet you are not afraid? How long have you been here?"
Paulina's brow creased. "So long that the phrase 'so long' does not have much meaning for me. Perhaps I have been here forever, or perhaps 'forever' has no meaning here. 'Time' is that man over there, the one with the black cloak. I'm not sure if it's anything else."
"Am I dead?"
"You don't look it. And yet I am sure that my husband died once, but he is still here, breathing and talking and laughing. I try not to think of it, as I am afraid he will disappear."
"I have a husband…" Anne did not mean to speak out loud. She was trying to remember where she came from, what had happened, and to link it to what was happening now. One or other of them must surely be a dream.
"Shall we try to find him?"
"No! I mean… he hates me."
Paulina nodded sympathetically. "Men can be bastards, can't they? But it's all right. Lots of people here hate some of the other guests, but it mostly seems to be arranged so that they don't bump into one another."
"But why do you even think he is here?"
"Oh, they usually are," said Paulina vaguely. "I wouldn't worry about it. Shall we go and get a drink?"
As they walked through the crowds, Anne picked up snatches of conversation.
"I never use murderers any more. If you want a job doing well, do it yourself…"
"Oh come on – the middle of the wood on Midsummer Night? You were asking for trouble."
"…typical fucking Capulet."
"More sack!"
The drinks were arranged on a long table: enormous tankards of ale, bottles of wine, horns full of mead. At the far end, two thin, pale women with strange eyes like those of a cat and… Anne did a double take, but she was right – they had wings like dragonflies – seemed to be squeezing nectar out of flowers.
There was also a table piled high with every kind of food, and being regularly replenished by a steady stream of servants. Among them Anne thought she recognised - surely not! John Morton, the Bishop of Ely, bringing fresh supplies of strangely unseasonable strawberries.
Anne found a cup of spiced wine and gulped it gratefully. She was thirsty, and also thought she could cope better if slightly in her cups. She began to eavesdrop again.
A tall man with an impressive beard, and robes covered in strange symbols was sitting at a table with three old hags. They seemed to be discussing some kind of unpleasant recipe:
"Personally I find toe of toad works better than toe of frog. You get a smoother consistency and quicker effect."
"Not so strong though, and besides, it doesn't rhyme."
"It alliterates, and there is assonance." Another bearded man walked up to them.
"Excuse me?" The newcomer spoke with a lilting Welsh accent
"Oh, you university educated wizards with your…"
"I said EXCUSE ME!" The conversation around them lulled for a moment as everyone turned to stare at him.
"Yes?" Said the robed man. "Can I help you at all?"
"I am come from a distant land to discuss the magical arts with other Initiated Ones."
"You're a wizard, are you?" Asked a hag, with little sign of interest.
"Oh yes," said the Welshman grandly. "At my birth the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes."
"How fascinating," said the robed man. "However, this is a private conversation, so if you don't mind…"
"I said AT MY BIRTH THE FRONT OF HEAVEN WAS FULL OF FIERY SHAPES!" He gestured grandly, and accidentally knocked off his pointy hat in the process. One of the hags suppressed a giggle.
"Hear me, or by Chesu I will do such things that…"
"Dadogi!" A young woman appeared, and led him off by the arm, berating him in Welsh.
Paulina and Anne turned to one another. Both were smiling. The wine was definitely doing its job. An officious looking fellow in black with a large and very shiny chain around his neck refilled her cup unsmilingly.
The two of them moved away from the drinks table because they were in the way, in the process almost tripping over two men who were sitting on the floor deep in conversation.
"Pray pardon," said Anne.
"Oh, it's quite all right," said the younger man, and then continued talking to his friend.
"…So then he married my mother! Would you believe it? A month after the funeral and he married her. Are you sure I'm not boring you?"
"God no," said the older man. "I can't get enough of these sad stories of the death of kings."
Then Anne caught a glimpse of the African man again, and a thought struck her.
"Paulina, is there someone called Tamora here?"
A passer-by with a strong Scottish accent said, "Tamora and Tamora and Tamora and Tamora," then giggled, hiccupped and fell over. A tall woman in dark highland dress rolled her eyes at Paulina and Anne.
"Sorry about that. Can't take him anywhere."
"PRAY SILENCE!"
Everyone turned to look at the five people on the dais. Four of them were richly clothed – a tall, dark woman, a golden haired girl and a golden haired boy who looked alike save for their different clothes, and brown-haired man. The fifth was dressed in a fool's motley, but over it he wore a richly jewelled cloak.
"That's the one I told you about," whispered Paulina. "Feste, the Lord of Misrule."
Anne felt immediately drawn to him, though he was not particularly handsome. He was middle aged, with a badly receding hairline, though the growth at the back was luxuriant enough. His beard and moustache were tiny, and very neatly trimmed.
"Friends," he said. "It is almost midnight, and our feast is drawing to a close."
"Shame, shame!" Cried an enormously fat man.
"I would like to speak a word." It was the man who had been talking to the hags, and the crowd parted for him as he made his way to the dais.
"My Lord Prospero. Of course," said Feste, and sat down between the tall dark woman and the golden-haired boy.
"Once, there was a writer," said Prospero, without further introduction. "Not a particularly good writer, at first. But he practised, and he prayed to every god he could name and several he couldn't, and before he was old, he learnt not as lesser poets do, to master language, but to ride it as a mermaid rides the ocean and trust it to carry him to places beyond mortal imagination. When he died, he went to heaven and feasted at God's own table.
All gifts come from God, of course, so I don't suppose that He Himself can have admired the writer as such, but it seems that a few of the lesser angels had been in the habit of attending his plays either disguised as mortals or perched invisibly on the side of the stage, where they got a good view. And on his arrival in heaven, they got together and persuaded God to offer to grant the writer any boon he desired.
God agreed, and the writer went off for a bit of a think. In the end, what he said was this:
"My Lord, thou hast given me every thing I desire, and I know thou wilt vouchsafe the same to all men, so I am not afraid for those I loved on earth. (Though in truth I wish I had been here when Kit Marlowe arrived, for it would have pleased me much to see the look upon his face.) My one sadness is this. That the men and women and those that were neither who populated my plays and who kept me company throughout the darkest times of my life, are not here with me. That though they have helped me, and, I dare to venture, many others, to understand what it is to be human, they have never felt it themselves. Lord, I ask that they be bodied forth to share this joy."
Well, God appeared to dither a bit, though what with omniscience and all that I'm sure it was just for show. And then he said this:
"My child, it is not written in the book of truth that they should come here, and therefore it cannot be so. However, I shall make them their own place, which is neither heaven nor earth, hell nor purgatory, and thou shalt be free to come and go between here and there."
And so it was.
And that is why we are here this day."
There was a silence: an awed silence on behalf of some, a confused one on behalf of most. Then the fat man started applauding enthusiastically, and everyone else joined in.
Anne tried to make sense of it, and when she could not, tried to remember it all instead so she could make sense of it at her leisure.
Prospero stepped down, and Feste rose again.
"Thank you, my friend. And now I hear the chimes at midnight. It is time for our final rite. It is time to dance!"
The crowd parted to the sides of the room, leaving a large space in the middle. A young woman stepped up onto the dais, carrying what looked like two buckets. She was dressed more strangely than anyone, though very few were wearing normal clothes. She wore a sort of sleeveless shift that was shaped to fit her body, pale green in colour, and painted with strange flowers, like roses – real roses from the garden, not pictures of roses – but with many more petals. Anne thought it enchantingly beautiful.
"Number one," said the girl. "Marc Antony and Katherina."
A Roman soldier stepped into the space, and an angry-looking woman wearing a red dress was pushed in to join him. He offered his hand as though to dance, but she slapped his face. The musicians struck up a stately measure.
"Number two. Owen Glendower and King Lear."
The Welshman took the hand of a very elderly man crowned with flowers, and the two began solemnly to dance.
"Number three. Lysander and Helena."
"For God's sake not AGAIN!" A short, dark-haired woman shouted. "I protest. It isn't FAIR."
The girl on the dais smiled. "Don't worry, Hermia, it's a different Helena."
Lysander, and the 'different Helena' took their places behind Glendower and Lear. They were both accomplished dancers, performing the slow steps with agility and in perfect unison.
And so it went on. Couple by couple, old and young, rich and poor, men dancing sometimes with men, women with women, they joined the dance, circling the floor to a graceful bassadanza.
And then: "Number forty-five. Tamora and Lady Anne!"
Anne was gripped with panic. She didn't know the dance. She hadn't danced at all since her first husband had died!
"Go on then!" Paulina was nudging her forward.
Tamora was there, just like in the picture – as tall as a man, glossy black hair falling to her strong thighs – and scanning the room for her partner. Anne stepped shyly forward. Tamora brazenly looked her up and down, and with a delighted smile came towards her, holding out both her hands.
Confidence suddenly soaring, Anne went to her, and they began to dance. It was easy! Her mind didn't know the steps, but her legs did, and as the beat became faster, she had no trouble keeping up, but longed for it to be faster still. More and more couples joined behind them. Mostly she looked straight ahead, but she could always sense Tamora's body beside her, feel her strong hand holding hers, and sometimes sense those dark barbarian eyes lasciviously taking in her body. The sensation was delicious.
Faster and faster they went, until she realised that the beat had imperceptibly changed and rather than a courtly bassadanza, it was a merry farandol, like the villagers had danced when Anne was a little girl at Middleham. Then suddenly she wasn't moving any more, but standing with Tamora's arms wrapped around her as the others swirled around them.
Anne had never truly been kissed before. Edward occasionally waggled his tongue round in her mouth, Richard never bothered. She had had no other lovers. Tamora kissed as savagely as Richard fucked, but with passion rather than his horrible detachment. With Richard, Anne always felt she was being punished for having a body, with Tamora, she felt her body being adored to the point of devouring. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be consumed in bliss.
The music faded, and in the far distance there was a voice that died away even as it began. "Our revels now are ended…"
The strong arms that held her did not fade, but when she opened her eyes, Tamora was gone.
"Margaret!"
"Anne."
She firmly disentangled herself from the older woman's grasp. She did not allow her confused anger and sorrow to show in her voice:
"It was a trick, then?"
"Of a sort. Not in the way that you mean."
"But Tamora wasn't real?"
"If we are to believe Prospero, none of us are real."
It was almost dawn. The noise from the great hall had ceased, but somewhere a small group of men were singing drunken catches. Soon Richard would rise – he was ascetic in his habits and never slept late. And for the first time she would look upon his face without illusion.
"My life is over," she said, not meaning to speak out loud, but not caring that she did.
"Mine was over many years ago," said Margaret. "But still I live. Come."
They went to the window, and silently watched the sun rise.