The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [4]
When Vespucci began his return journey home, Lucy leaned forward, focused, as he knew she would. It was the portion that told of the coming of the whales: how they had accompanied the ill-fated ship all through the crossing of the Atlantic, and further, until they arrived at Greenwich and the city awoke, for the first time, to their song.
He edged towards her. Her hair was pulled back behind her ears, and her fingers were long, smudged with ink and with dirt under the nails as if she had been digging in Thames mud.
"How are the whales today?" he asked.
"Restless. I'm not sure why. Have you noticed the change in their song when you walked along the embankment?"
Leaning together against the balustrade, the crowd closing them in, it was like they had found themselves, momentarily, in a small, dark, comfortable alcove, a private space in which they were alone.
"You're the marine biologist," Orphan said. "I'm only a poet."
"Working with whales is like working with poets," Lucy said. She put away her pad and her pen. She had a small bag hanging over her shoulder. "They're unruly, obtuse, and self-important."
Orphan laughed. He took her hand in his. The skin of her palm always surprised him in its roughness; it was a hand used to hard work. Her eyes were dark and mesmerising, like lode-stars, and small, almost invisible laughter-lines gathered like a fine web at the corners. "I love you," Orphan said.
She smiled, and he kissed her.
On stage, Henry Irving abandoned the role of narrator as the final act began to unfold. Now, with all the considerable verve and power he was capable of, he played Shakespeare, the poet and playwright who rose to prominence in the court of the Lizard King and became the first of the Poet-Prime Ministers.
Both Orphan and Lucy watched as the Ancient Mariner shuffled onto the stage to deliver the story of his life to Lord Shakespeare: Orphan, who had a natural interest in books, observed it closely. It was a heavy, leather-bound folio, the spine facing the audience, with the title The Rime of the Ancient Mariner etched in gilt onto it.
"I pass," cried the Ancient Mariner (a young actor, Beerbohm Tree, whom Orphan vaguely recognised), "like night, from land to land, I have strange power of speech," (here he took a deep breath, and continued), "that morning that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: to him my tale I teach!" And he passed the heavy book to Shakespeare, who took it from him with a graceful nod, laid it on the table before him, and opened it–
There was the sound of an explosion, a deafening bang (and for Orphan, everything slowed, as)–
The book disintegrated in a cloud of dust–
Not dust, shrapnel (and Orphan, moving in jerky, dreamlike motions, grabbed hold of Lucy and let himself fall to the ground, his weight dragging her with him, his body first cushioning her fall and then covering her in a protective embrace)–
That tore into Shakespeare/Irving and cut his head away from his body and sent plumes of blood into the air.
The air filled with screams. The stage collapsed. It was, Orphan thought in his dazed, confused state on the floor of the theatre, holding on to the girl he loved, the definite end of the performance.
TWO
Lucy
And now we reach'd the orchard-plot;
And, as we climb'd the hill,
The