Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (13 page)

 
          
Horatio
addressed the apparition, in the familiar terms of wonder and dread, until a
remarkably lifelike cock crow sounded offstage and the Ghost seemed to fade
away. Horatio and the others felt that it was the image of Denmark’s dead king,
and agreed to tell Prince Hamlet of what they had seen. A blink-off of the
lights and then they shone blue again, and Hamlet was there, with Horatio and
Marcellus.

 
          
“Hamlet’s
ahead of time with his suit of sables,” muttered Pitt; and indeed, Hamlet wore
black doublet and hose, with a mantle of the same color. The three talked about
how cold it was, how it was midnight. Hamlet spoke of his father’s successor,
King Claudius, just then happy among drinking companions. And the Ghost entered
again.

 
          
The
suit of mail was not dull now. By some trick of lighting, and a clever one, it
glowed like starlit ice.

 
          
“Look,
my lord, it comes!” exclaimed Horatio, and Hamlet recognized the Ghost as his
dead father. It beckoned him sweepingly and moved away. When Horatio and
Marcellus tried to keep Hamlet from following, he fairly roared his threat—“By
heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!”
—then fairly
raced after the Ghost.
Horatio commented, rather darkly: “He waxes
desperate with imagination,” and after he and Marcellus had spoken briefly to
each other, the two of them moved after Hamlet.

 
          
The
stage blacked out for a moment, and when the lights came up, there was a change
in the scenery. A dark wall had been put into place upstage and the Ghost stood
upon it, still glittering in its mail. Hamlet gestured to it from below, and
spoke: “Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.”

 
          
“Mark
me,” intoned the Ghost richly, and Thunstone felt sure that this was the same
actor who had appeared before the curtain to introduce the scenes. If so, he
must have hurried into his chain mail. Hamlet replied, and was addressed again,
until the Ghost told him, “I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term
to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fire, till the foul
crimes done to my days of nature are burnt and purged away.” And followed with
the tale of how his brother Claudius had poisoned him, had assumed the crown of
Denmark and had married the widowed queen.

 
          
All
this was familiar to Thunstone and his companions, and was impressively
performed. The Ghost departed. Hamlet met Horatio and Marcellus and swore them
to silence on the hilt of his drawn sword. “Swear!”
came
the voice of the Ghost from below, both musical and chilling. And Hamlet:

 
          
“The
time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

           
That ever I was bom to set it
right!”

 
          
The
curtain came down, the house lights came up, and the applause was tumultuous.

 
          
“That
was done very well,” breathed Sharon. “It froze me to my fingertips.”

 
          
“Grizel
Fian is doing herself proud,” said Pitt. He looked across the aisle. “Chief
Manco, Father Bundren, how do you like the show so far?”

 
          
“Interesting,”
said Manco. “Some things remind me of stories we Cherokees tell each other.”

 
          
“I’m
always sorry about those sinister priests in
Henry the Sixth
, ”
added Father Bundren,
but he smiled to say it. “One bad priest can hurt the work of twenty good ones,
which is why there must be far more than twenty good priests to one bad one.”

 
          
Yet
again the houselights went down and the prolocutor paced into view behind the
footlights, wrapped in his Dracula cape.

 
          
“There’s
naught but witches do inhabit here,” he proclaimed ringingly, “and therefore
’tis high time that I were hence.” And off* he strode again.

 
          
“That’s
from
Comedy of Errors
this time,”
said Pitt, “and since we’re to have something from
Macbeth
it should be appropriate.”

           
The curtain rose on a dreary,
brush-tufted scene, with yet again blue light on it. Three female figures stood
together, three strikingly shapely young women in tattered garments, exhibiting
slim bare legs, rounded bare shoulders. Their hair flowed and tossed. One was a
honey-hued blonde, one a brunette with thick sooty locks, one with red hair
that tumbled and gleamed in the blueness. Thunder snarled; bright lights winked
on and off for lightning.

 
          
“Where
shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?” asked the
blonde.

 
          
The
others answered, speaking of a battle to be lost and won and a fated meeting
with Macbeth.

 
          
“Fair
is foul and foul is fair,” they chanted together, “hover through the fog and
filthy air.”

 
          
They
continued, boasting of killing swine, of sinking a ship bound for
Aleppo
. A drum sounded, and Macbeth and Banquo
entered. Banquo spoke of the witches, “So withered and so wild in their
attire,” though the three were young and pretty enough to be cheerleaders.

 
          
“All
hail, Macbeth!” cried the blonde. “Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!”

 
          
“All
hail, Macbeth!” spoke up the brunette. “Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!”

 
          
And
the red-haired one: “All hail, Macbeth! That shall be king hereafter!”

 
          
Macbeth
and Banquo declared their mystifications, and the witches vanished.

 
          
The
stagelights blinked off briefly, and came on again. A huge pot had been fetched
onstage. It stood on what seemed to be a writhing tangle of red and blue flames.
Macbeth and Banquo were gone, but the three witches paced around the great
pot—going counterclockwise, widdershins, Thunstone noted, the traditional
direction of a witch circle. Their bare arms wove in and out as they seemed to
cast things in. The blond witch chanted, “Round about the cauldron go; in the
poisoned entrails throw.” Together they sang, “Double, double, toil and
trouble; fire bum and cauldron bubble.”

 
          
Pacing,
the brunette witch took up the catalog of the repellant formula. Again the
chorus of “Double, double,” and the red-haired one went on with the naming of
highly unappetizing items. Finally, the brunette: “Cool it with a baboon’s
blood,
then
the charm is firm and good.”

 
          
A
blinding flash of lightning, and Hecate had appeared, as though out of the
floor. She was singularly fearsome, with three masks glowering to front and
right and left, a headdress of snakes that stirred, a robe of wet-looking green
and black, and six white arms that moved in singularly lifelike fashion.

 
          
“O!
well
done! I commend your pains, and every one shall
share i’ the gains.”

 
          
That
was the voice of Grizel Fian, Thunstone knew at once. The witches again moved
widdershins around the cauldron, intoning a song of “black spirits.” Then, said
the brunette: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

 
          
It
was Macbeth who came, to accost the witches. Thunder pealed again, and a head
in a helmet hovered into sight above the steaming cauldron. Rowley Thome’s
head,
and no visible body. “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!”
Thome mouthed. “Beware Macduff, beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.”

 
          
With
that, the head was gone. Stage effects were impressive here, thought Thunstone.
Another apparition sprang into view above the cauldron, a child or a dwarf
streaming with redness as with blood. “Be bloody and resolute,” it harangued
Macbeth, and vanished in turn. In its place rose another dwarfed figure,
wearing a crown and holding aloft a leafy branch of a tree. It uttered its
prophecy: “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until great Bimam wood to high
Dunsinane hall shall come against him.” Winding up its speech, it, too
vanished, and the entering procession of kings, with Banquo’s ghost escorting
them, seemed fairly anticlimactic. The curtain went down, but the houselights
stayed dim. Someone entered before the curtain. This time it was Grizel Fian,
her hideous Hecate makeup discarded. She wore the low-cut silver gown of the
Duchess of Gloucester in the first scene presented. She spoke, rhythmically:

 
          
“.
. . These our actors,

           
As I foretold you, were all spirits,
and

           
Are melted into air, into thin air;

           
And, like the baseless fabric of
this vision,

           
The cloud-capped towers, the
gorgeous palaces,

           
The solemn temples, the great globe
itself,

           
Yes, all which it inherit, shall
dissolve,

           
And like the insubstantial pageant
faded,

           
Leave not a rack behind. . . .”

 
          
She
bowed, and walked away out of sight.

 
          
“ What
did you think?” Pitt asked Thunstone.

 
          
“Well
done, especially some of the stage effects,” Thunstone replied.

 
          
“What
were they trying to prove?” Pitt prodded.

 
          
“That
will take some finding out.”

 
          
Father
Bundren and Manco met them in the aisle, and the whole group went out together,

 
          
“Did
you enjoy it?” Pitt asked Manco.

 
          
“I
recognized some elements that struck me as subtle, not to say sneaky,” said the
medicine man. “I said a prayer for strength to my gods. Father Bundren crossed
himself twice, which I took to mean that he was saying his own prayers.”

 
          
“You
were right, Chief,” said Father Bundren. “It seemed to me that, out of three
excerpts from Shakespeare, we were watching what amounted to witch ceremonies.
Some of the classicists of my faith say that to be present at such things
without making a protest amounts to joining in with them. That’s why I
prayed ”

 
          
“Something
of the same thought occurred to me independently,” said Thunstone. “Professor
Pitt, will you be so kind as to take the Countess and my two friends back to
the
Inn
? I’ll say goodnight to all of you right
here.”

 
          
“Where
will you be going?” asked Sharon quickly.

 
          
“Into the cemetery yonder, to begin with.”

 
          
“Wagh
,
”
said Manco. “Let me come along.”

 
          
But
Thunstone shook his head vigorously. “No, let me play the lone hand. I know
what I’m doing. You and Father Bundren see the Countess to her door, will you
please? Make sure it’s all right for her to be in her room.”

 
          
“We’ll
be glad to,” Father Bundren assured him. Thunstone looked down into Sharon’s
face. “I’ll call at your door as soon as I get back,” he promised.

           
“As soon as you get back,” she
repeated. “I’ll wait up.”

           
“I’ll get back,” he said. “Depend
on that.”

           
Goodnights were said. Sharon pressed
Thunstone’s hand and followed the others to where Pitt’s car was parked.
Thunstone stood among departing members of the audience and watched as the car
backed around and went rolling away.