Page 68 of Play of Shadows

Shariza in her turn, gazing into my eyes, said, ‘This must be our last meeting, then. . .’

Corbier’s desperate, tragic longing overwhelmed my will to resist and I found myself tugging my shirt over my head and casting it aside. I kicked off my boots, then removed my sword belt– and even here, a world away in Ajelaine’s chamber, I could hear the sudden gasps from the audience. That far-off part of me who remembered who I was, whatthiswas, wondered how far Shariza would let it continue.

Stop, I told Corbier,this cannot happen. Not here, not now.

The reply I heard inside my head was filled with such sorrow it brought tears to my own eyes.You don’t understand,he told me.It didn’t happen. It couldn’t.

What? Why—?

The answer was like a chilled knife passing between my ribs, for from within Ajelaine’s bedchamber in the past, I heard the creak of a doorknob turning.

Because he is already here.

Chapter 33

The Prince

I had to fight to keep my awareness in my own world so that I could cue my fellow actors, that we might together bring to life the heart-wrenching truth of what had happened to Corbier and Ajelaine. In the past, I bore witness to the unfolding of that unbearable tragedy.

‘What is it?’ Shariza murmured from the bed, so quietly only I could hear.

‘Hark! Whose footsteps approach your door?’ I replied in my stage voice, sending a palpable wave of surprise and anxiety through the audience.

In Corbier’s world, the door swung open to reveal not one but three figures standing in the hallway without. I leaped from the bed, scrambling to grab the discarded scabbard and draw Corbier’s sword. Shariza rose too, and grabbed at my arm to restrain me.

She called out her best guess as to what I was seeing. ‘The prince has come. . . Oh Corbier, flee this place– let not this chamber become your coffin!’

I pulled away from her, as Corbier did in the past, and brandishing a similar weapon in both eras, we both demanded of the intruder, ‘Why do you bring the two of them here, Pierzi, youcoward?’

In the wings, Teo and Beretto, dressed as guards, prepared to enter the room alongside Abastrini, misunderstanding my stupidly vague instruction.

Fool! How are they to play the right parts if you don’t give them the proper cues?

Waving my sword in what I devoutly hoped was a heroic manner, I ran to the edge of the stage, keeping my point in the way so none of the three could enter. ‘Let the children go!’ I shouted. ‘Remove the blindfolds about their eyes and send them back to their beds where little boys may find hope in dreams. You and I will go to the courtyard, that one of us may make our own bed upon the cold, hard ground and the other will at last rise from the nightmare that has ever been Pierzi and Corbier!’

Distantly I heard the muffled chaos backstage as Shoville struggled to fulfil the scene Corbier was setting for us all– but the boys were not yet seven and there was no one in the company who could—

‘Are they notmysons?’ Abastrini demanded as he entered stage right, unwittingly repeating the very words Pierzi was speaking in the past. He kept one hand outstretched, out of view of the audience, as if holding someone there. ‘Is not their place beside their father?’

A moment later he ushered in Zina and Tolsi, hastily torn strips of cloth tied around their eyes. With Zina’s hair bound back, she looked as much a boy as Tolsi.

‘My doves!’ Shariza shouted, racing to them, but Abastrini, guessing that Pierzi would not have allowed that, drew his own sword and held her at bay.

Kill him!Corbier urged.Kill this pig here, as I could not then!

No, I resisted.You want the tale told, then tell it to me as it happened, not some pathetic revenge fantasy.

In the half-world of Ajelaine’s bedchamber, Pierzi pulled thecrying boys into the centre of the room.

‘Why do you drag them about like mules?’ I demanded of Abastrini, echoing Corbier’s words to Pierzi. ‘Do you not care that you terrify your own children?’

Abastrini’s eyes narrowed for just a moment as the implications of my words awakened his actor’s instincts:a true player must know the human heart and all its winding ways. In that moment, Abastrini set aside the vain, pompous preener he’d been for so long, and I finally understood what it looked like when an actor worthy of the name took the stage.

‘You call themmychildren,’ he bellowed, his words an eerie mirror of those Pierzi was screaming at Ajelaine, ‘just as I have done these past seven years, never questioning, never doubting.’ He turned the two youngsters away from the audience, towards Shariza. ‘Tell me, was I a fool?’

He’s magnificent,I thought, brought almost to tears by the clash of raw fury and heartache in Abastrini’s words.

But too soon I was pulled back to Corbier’s world, where Pierzi was grabbing at the children’s blindfolds. With my left hand out of sight of the audience, I tried to signal to Abastrini, hoping against hope he’d understand what to do.

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