London - Edward Rutherfurd [354]
No one had been in the Lords’ Room when the play began. The whole gallery above the back stage had been empty. But now, a single figure had entered it, seating himself right in the centre like a presiding judge, and then leaning over the balcony to get a better view – so that, seen from the pit, his face seemed to hang, a sort of strange, stage ghost, over the proceedings. And no wonder the audience had whispered and pointed.
For the face was black, like the Moor’s.
“It’s him. I’m sure of it.” Jane was the one who had gone out to inspect the black stranger from the gallery. “His eyes are blue,” she added.
There were seldom any intervals between acts. The second had already begun and Edmund was due to go on again very shortly. As he and Jane gazed at each other, they both remembered the conversation with the Moor only too well. Would he guess that he was the inspiration for the play, Edmund wondered? Of course he would.
“How does he look?” he asked nervously.
“I don’t know.” She considered. “He just stares.”
“What shall I do?” he asked.
“Take no notice of him,” she advised.
A minute later, Edmund was before the audience again.
Hard though he found it not to glance up at the black face over the back of the stage, he managed to focus on his lines, and played his part without mishap. The Blackamoor’s first great crime – a theft and rape – was unfolding. The audience was following the action expectantly and the actors seemed to be gaining confidence.
Why was it then, towards the end of the second act, that he began to feel uncomfortable? There was plenty of action. The Blackamoor’s character and deeds were horrifying. But as the minutes passed, the sensation grew: the play was getting flat.
The third act came. As the evil doings of the black pirate rose to new heights, so did his language. Yet now it seemed to Edmund that the ringing declarations he had so lovingly penned sounded bombastic, empty; and he realized that the audience too was beginning to grow restive. Here and there, he heard faint mutters of conversation: looking up at the gallery, he saw Rose whispering in Sterne’s ear. As the act neared its end, he started to search in his mind: something new had to happen by the start of the next act, at least. And with a feeling of cold panic he realized that there were two more acts to follow – and they were just the same. The play had no heart, no soul.
Jane was in the audience too, but if her concentration shifted from the stage, it was for a different reason.
How strange he looked. Time and again, as she watched from the gallery, she found her attention moving from the action of the play to the face behind it.
He never moved, even between the acts. He might have been carved upon the woodwork. His face hung there, expressionless as a mask. Like all Elizabethans, Jane was uncertain whether black people were human beings. Yet as she gazed at him, it seemed to her that there was something noble in that dark, unmoving face.
What was he thinking? There before him the actor, a made-up caricature of his condition, was exposing his villainy to the audience. Was he himself so terrible? She remembered everything about him from that day at the bear-pit: his snake-like body, the sense of danger about him, his dagger. As she stared at him now, she had no doubt that he could be dangerous. And yet, it seemed to her that his eyes were sad.
She should have gone back to the tiring house after the third act; but she stayed, watching him, instead. What was he thinking? And what was he going to do?
The fourth act: within minutes, Edmund knew he was in trouble. The black pirate’s villainies were mounting, but, now that the audience had got used to him, and seen through the trick