Fanuilh by Daniel Hood (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📗

"Agreed. We'll to the theater. The players practice their performances in the morning, and sup just at noon. If we're quick, we'll catch him before his afternoon's work. Attend me."

Liam dropped one of Marcius's silver coins on the table and they hurried out of the White Grape.

A dullness clung to the theater, like a midnight lover in the morning. The golden orb looked gaudy and the doors had a desolate air, as if the building had been abandoned. They opened, however, and Liam and Coeccias went into the lobby, which felt cold and unused. Though there was a broom in one corner, and the plank floors had obviously just been swept clean, Liam imagined they would feel dusty, or perhaps moldy, if he knelt and touched them.

He did not.

In the theater itself a number of actors sat or stood around the pit, eating their meals and talking in low voices. A few candles flickered weakly in the windowless building, and despite the voices and people, it was gloomy.

The man who had greeted Coeccias at the door the night before detached himself from a whispered conversation and came to stand before them, dressed now in a commoner's smock instead of his colorful motley. He executed a grand, mocking bow.

"Your servant, milord Aedile. Have you come to close us out?"

Coeccias frowned, ignoring the actor's bantering tone. "Nay, player. I'd have words with one of your company. Where is Lons?"

The actor widened his eyes in girlish admiration, and spoke with ironic reverence. "Lons? Our great hero? Lons the Magnificent? I fear me his lordship is not here, milord Aedile, but if you stay a moment, I'm sure he'll grace us."

"When?"

"Soon." The actor dropped his joking. "He's gone to sup elsewhere, and'll be back soon. You may await him here." With another grand bow, he twisted away and clapped his hands loudly, calling for the beginning of the afternoon's rehearsal.

Coeccias frowned sourly at the actor's back.

"I'll not be sad to pack him off to the heath."

"Who is he?" Liam asked, watching the actor marshall his company on the stage.

"Kansallus. He pens their sorry scripts, gives them their readings. Owns a share of the theater as well, if rumor's to be credited. A very rogue, but with some excellent parts: wit, voice, good sense. He never fusses when I close him out."

There was a small tinge of admiration in the Aedile's voice.

"If you like him so much, why do you shut up his theater?"

"The Duke'd have it so. He doesn't take with the stage, and especially so when they allow women on it. So, a few days after Uris-tide, it's off to the country with them."

Coeccias sighed ruefully, and they fell silent, watching the actors rehearse. It was a pastoral comedy complete with shepherdesses and faeries, in which Knave Fitch played a large role as a drunken farmer. Even with little practice, the clown brought humor to the part, and both men in the lobby chuckled.

Hearing them, Kansallus backed out to the lobby, stopping beside them but leaving his eyes on the stage.

"It pleases your' he asked, trying and failing to mask bis eagerness.

"Truth, it's a goodly thing."

"Yes, very much. It's funny."

Kansallus drank in the praise, bobbing his head happily at the stage, as if. to encourage the actors.

"But why," Liam asked during a pause while the scene shifted, "don't you have that girl play the lead shepherdess'? The one who played the princess last night'? She'd be spectacular."

"That one," Kansallus said, rolling his eyes. "It'd be worth my life and my jewels at once to suggest it. She only plays tragedy, look you, tragedy only. She esteems herself a great actress a lofty actress. No low comedy for her. Mug? Wink? Trip and pratfall? Never! Her feet would rot off before she'd play comedy!"

"A shrew, eh'?" Coeccias asked with a wicked grin. "Pity. She's a fair leg."

Liam nodded in agreement.

"Oh, in faith, I cannot deny it. A fair leg, and a fair ankle, bosom and face to keep the leg company. Enjoy what you see on the stage, good sirs, because you'll never see more of Rora anywhere else, least of all warming your bed."

"Rora'?" Liam thought he would have done well to find Kansallus long before, when he was searching for someone who knew Southwark and would tell what he knew.

"Rora," the actor confirmed. "No one's bauble is Rora, to be dandled and played with and warmed on a winter's night. Pure? enough to hunt the unicorn, our Rora, and too good for comedy—No! No! No! Fitch, you mutton-headed, wool-pated, poxy, dripping ... " He ran forward, shouting, to the stage, where Knave Fitch was standing with an elaborately innocent face while the rest of the cast collapsed in hysterics around him.

"It is no error of mine, Master Playwright, if my fellow actors cannot restrain their ... " His voice, rippling with rolled r's, drifted to them from the stage, but the door behind them opened suddenly, and they both turned.

Framed in a wash of gray light from the door, Rora entered, and Liam thought his heart might have stopped. Even bundled in a warm cloak she was stunning, the fullness of her red lips and the perfect beauty of her white complexion etched in the gray light. It turned her hair to dusty gold, and Liam fleetingly compared her to Lady Necquer, dismissing the latter in an instant. She stopped when she saw them. Over her shoulder, Lons loomed curiously.

"Good day, Aedile Coeccias," she said in a rich, musical voice. Her eyes rested on Liam, however, smiling a little mysteriously and arching an eyebrow, clearly aware of her affect on him.

Maybe if I bring my jaw up from my knees, he thought ashamedly, and looked at Coeccias, who cleared his throat.

"Ah, y'are the actor Lons?"

The handsome man, not expecting to be addressed, did not reply at once.

"Aye."

"We'd have words with you, if you can spare a moment." "But I've a practice—"

"Kansallus will not mind," Coeccias interrupted firmly, crossing his arms on