Page 64 of Play of Shadows

Teo opened his mouth to contradict her, then closed it again of his own volition, no doubt remembering the sensation of her blade against his throat.

‘Fuck it,’ Beretto said, puffing out his chest and spreading his arms wide. ‘I’ll be your Lady Ajelaine tonight.’ He cocked his hip and wagged a finger at me. ‘Just you watch where you put your hands during our kissing scene. And put somepassioninto it for once!’

Beretto’s ribald suggestion elicited some nervous chortling, butlaughter didn’t change the dilemma we were facing.

‘Beretto, pretty as you are, I think it better if I play the Lady Ajelaine,’ Ornella said, pushing her way to the front. Her chin was high and she ignored the dubious stares from her younger castmates. ‘It was not so long ago that women had to fight to play our parts. We faced beatings and worse for taking the female roles away from young men flaunting make-up and skirts. I’ll not now relinquish this ground my sisters battled and bled to take.’

‘Ornella. . .’ Shoville began, but she ignored him and came to me.

‘I’m not as pretty as Roslyn,’ she said to me. ‘When the kiss comes, you’ll have to imagine me as I was in my younger days.’

I took her hand and bowed over it. ‘I will do no such thing, my Lady. I will see you exactly as you are, here and now, and I will be as grateful for that kiss as if it had come from the lips of Ajelaine herself.’

She gave me a crinkled smile. ‘Fine words from such an untried youth. Is it Damelas who flirts with me, or Archduke Corbier?’

‘I don’t care who’s flirting,’ Shoville interrupted, an angry red flush staining his cheeks.

Seeing the anguish fused with ire on the director’s face brought a sudden flash of intuition to me.He’s in love with Ornella,I thought.Yet I’ve never seen anything happen between them– is the poor fool even aware himself?

Catching my stare, Shoville’s cheeks flushed even darker and he turned his glare on Lady Shariza. ‘Kindly inform his Grace that no actor of my company will play the role of Ajelaine,’ he declared. ‘I am the Directore Principale of the Operato Belleza, Commander of the Knights of the Curtain’– he stabbed a finger in the direction of the window– ‘and not one of these brave women will I toss to those wolves out there. Do you hear me?Not one!’

Shariza left her spot against the wall and stepped silently towards Shoville, a sleek black cat stalking a wary mouse. I let go of Ornella’s hand, prepared to intervene, though I had no idea how I might stop the Black Amaranth. That’s when I caught the sly look in her eyes and the ever-so-slight upward curve of her lip.

She’s known all along it would come to this. She’s just been waiting for the rest of us to arrive at this exact moment. . .

‘“Let fall a dozen towers,”’ she said, her accent suddenly a near-perfect match to Roslyn’s interpretation of Ajelaine. ‘“Bring forth a hundred armies and still I will remain in this place awaiting his return. Though the heavens rage with thunder above me and the ground crumbles beneath my feet, still will he find his Ajelaine standing firm, unmoved, her love not a cloudy dream to gaze upon beneath a summer sky, but the hard rock of devotion that neither bends nor breaks, no matter that the ocean rages against it until the last grain of sand in time’s hourglass is spent.”’

Shoville, wide-eyed, gestured for one of the stagehands to bring him the script. He riffled through the pages, then glanced through the lines. ‘You know it? All of it? All of Lady Ajelaine’s part?’

‘“What matter such sentimentalities to any but a wishful child? You speak of love as if t’were a shield, but though arrows may not puncture love’s devotions, still do they pierce flesh, and need no fine words to do so.”’

‘Hey, that’s the lieutenant’s line,’ Teo said. ‘You learnedmypart, too?’ He sounded genuinely concerned that he might lose yet another role to a fledgling actor.

‘I know your lines as well as I know Ajelaine’s,’ she replied, ‘as I do Pierzi’s and Corbier’s and the second crone who brings the soup in the third act.’

‘You memorised theentirescript?’ Shoville asked, still glancingat his pages in disbelief.

‘I’m a spy, Lord Director. This is hardly the first time I’ve had to become someone else at short notice.’ She turned to Ornella and held out her hand. ‘Forgive me, warrior, but this battle is to be mine.’

Ornella reached out and gripped her forearm, greeting her as two soldiers might. ‘I am too old for vanity,’ she replied, ‘but speak the role true, young lady. Play what games you must for your duke, but do not embarrass this company, else it’s me you’ll answer to.’

The fierce pride in those words spread through the cast and crew, putting steel in our spines. The Knights of the Curtain would not give an inch more ground to those who had silenced Roslyn, and not even the sight of her still-swaying corpse would bend them now.

This is exactly what Duke Monsegino wanted,I realised then.It’s just as he wrote in his note: the show must go on.

As everyone began to shuffle out of the rehearsal hall, I noticed Rhyleis was carefully wrapping up her pen and ink before closing her book.

The Troubadour rose to her feet and stretched languidly before locking eyes with Lady Shariza. ‘Dashini,’ she said, pouring an alehouse’s-worth of scorn into that single word.

‘Bardatti,’ Shariza replied.

And that, apparently, was all they had to say to one another.

Rhyleis left with the theatre’s four musicians in tow, following her like a squad of infantry into battle. I wondered if they were accepting her leadership because she was a true Bardatti Troubadour, or because they didn’t know what else to do.

Shariza took my hand, the intimacy of the gesture at odds with the press of people brushing past us. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said, when at last we were alone.

‘What way?’

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