Love's Labour's Won, Part Five
Jun. 24th, 2013 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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lareinenoire and angevin2 reminded me last month that I'd never actually finished this thing. I don't have any good excuse, except to note that faux-Elizabethan court entertainments, even very bad ones, are incredibly hard to write, and I now have renewed respect for anyone who managed to write a good one.
Prior installments are here, just in case you're not in the habit of remembering the plot of other people's WIPs for two and a half years.
Act V: The Right Promethean Fire
Rosaline feared that all of the work of the last few days had been undone, but it soon appeared that the queen was angrier at her own ladies than she was at Ferdinand and his men. Though she was a kind and generous woman, she was unaccustomed to disobedience from her courtiers, and in particular, she expected her three favorite companions to confide in her.
She looked deeply and genuinely hurt. The three favorite companions looked at one another, and all spoke at once in their eagerness to perjure themselves. Having no better ideas, they adopted Longaville’s story: they had met with the men, in all innocence and without any interest in renewing their former loves, to rehearse an entertainment for Her Majesty’s birthday. (What this lacked in originality, it made up in plausibility, since the queen’s birthday actually was only a few days away.) One must needs have gentlemen to assist at such an entertainment, or there could be no dancing afterward; and the King of Navarre’s men were the only gentlemen available, always excepting Boyet, who could hardly partner all of them.
“I ... I am flattered,” said the queen. “Forgive my anger; ‘twas unworthy of me. It is only ...”
None of the ladies asked “Only what?” but it was becoming apparent to Rosaline that her lady’s feelings toward King Ferdinand were, at the very least, complicated – but that pride would not let her speak about the matter, unless perhaps Ferdinand were to speak first.
“Have we your permission to continue our rehearsals?” Maria ventured to ask at last.
“Rehearsals,” said the queen absently. “Oh, aye. Do as you will.”
* * *
“The title of our pageant,” Berowne announced proudly, “shall be The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo.”
Katharine frowned. “Of Pallas and Apollo?”
“They could be married by now,” Berowne insisted. “Are they not immortal? And has it not been more than a thousand years since the last of the pagan poets lived to chronicle their deeds?”
“Was not Pallas sworn to virginity?” asked Maria.
“Just so. In that, as in her wit and wisdom, she betokens your lady; and who better than Apollo, the god of music and learning, to signify our king? And the argument shall be how Pallas was persuaded to renounce her virginity and wed him. ‘Twill be one of those pageants that give sound advice, under the guise of flattery.”
“The advice, in this instance, being that the king should marry his half-sister?” asked Rosaline.
“I did not say that the correspondence was exact in every point,” said Berowne.
“Who is to play Apollo and Pallas?” Rosaline asked, secretly hoping for the part of Pallas herself. She was not disappointed by Berowne’s answer.
“And Katharine,” said Dumaine, “must be Venus, and I’ll be limping Vulcan.”
“A great argument of cuckoldry!” said Katharine. “Who is to be Mars?”
“We’ll not have Mars in our pageant,” said Longaville firmly. “I’ve met the fellow, and I do not like him.”
“I had thought of Maria and Longaville as Juno and Jupiter,” said Berowne.
Neither party made any objection.
Berowne began distributing scrolls of paper. “Masters – and mistresses – here are your parts and your cues; I would have you con them by Wednesday night. I pray you, fail me not.”
* * *
The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo was about to begin, and Berowne realized the whole thing had been an enormous mistake. To his horror, Jaquenetta had invited her husband, his page Moth, and his friends Holofernes and Nathaniel to watch the show. Last year, they had presented a pageant of the Nine Worthies before Ferdinand’s court, with more enthusiasm than skill, and all of the young men had mocked them relentlessly. It had seemed very witty at the time, although Berowne no longer remembered why.
“I am sick,” Berowne announced. “I have chills, and a queasy stomach. I think I am catching smallpox again.”
“You cannot have smallpox twice,” said Rosaline decisively, “and I do not believe you are sick. You fear being mocked, as well you should, for you would deserve it.”
“You are positively the cruelest lady I have ever known. I do not understand why I love you.”
“And I do not understand why I love you, but so I do, and ten thousand mockers could not flout me out of it.”
* * *
O Juno, declaimed Longaville rather woodenly, I have been a fool e’er now
I have caused thee pain; do not even ask me how
I came to know it all was nothing worth.
But I do swear to thee, from this day forth
I’ll be the best of husbands, come what may;
I swear to thee, yea from this very day.
“He hath sworn on the same day twice,” remarked Moth. “If two affirmatives make a negative, as two negatives make an affirmative, I would not believe him if I were Juno.”
“‘Tis not possible for two affirmatives to make a negative,” Holofernes the schoolmaster explained, “for though that which is ‘not not’ is so, that which is ‘so so’ is not ‘not’.”
“And yet, that which is so-so is not good,” replied Moth, “and so, if I were Juno, I would not believe his word was good.”
“Hush,” said Jaquenetta, “the lady speaks.”
“O monstrous ignorance,” said Sir Nathaniel, “that is no lady but the goddess Juno, the queen of heaven.”
“By all that I have heard of her, sir, she was indeed no lady,” said Moth.
Jupiter, my dearest, how glad I find me
That I have willed to put the past behind me.
The lover and beloved are not tied to one love,
And so nought can our mutual affection move.
I fear no more betrayal, what e’er may occur
With Eris, Leto, or Demeter,
Electra, Danaë, or Gaia,
Pyrrha, Niobe, or Maia,
Eurymedousa or Alcmene,
Io, Europa, or Semele...
In the audience, Holofernes and Nathaniel were loudly correcting Maria’s pronunciation of most of these names.
If I e’er was jealous, I forsake that sin
And seek to please my consort and my kin.
What’s past is gone; the married state is sweet.
Lucas, who had been cast as a messenger, unexpectedly burst onto the stage. “My lord, Apollo doth thy grace now greet.”
Berowne hastily grabbed Dumaine’s cane and hooked Lucas back into the wings. “Not yet, you fool!”
“But I thought ‘The married state is sweet’ was my cue.”
“Not the first one, idiot! You go on when Venus says it to Vulcan.”
“Where is Vulcan?”
“Trying to walk on with his beloved Venus,” said Dumaine, “but missing a crucial prop. So to speak.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Berowne returned the cane, and Dumaine went to meet Katharine on stage.
Venus! I had not thought to here thee meet.
Know this: the noble heart doth all forgive.
What e’er has been, with thee I would still live.
Love is the flame that in my forge doth fire;
Love is the chain I hammer from desire;
And gods, as men, with solemn faith it binds.
It occurred to Berowne that he should have made this speech longer, since Dumaine was the only one of them who could actually act.
Vulcan, I see thy beauty in thy mind;
And now I do repent all I have done wrong
If I could change the past, I would do so ere long;
For I see now that Mars his charms are faint,
I would be true to thee as is a saint.
“Pardon, error!” said Armado. “How should the goddess Venus apprehend, or cognize, aught of sainthood, when she flourished ere there were saints on this terrene sphere, which the vulgar multitude do call the world?”
“She is immortal, sir,” explained Moth, “and in any case, ‘tis merely an allusion.”
“Aye,” added Constable Dull, who had been hired to guard the door, “the illusion holds in the sex-change.”
No lameness doth thy heart or mind impair,
In all thy gift of art, I find thee fair.
O, all is joy; the married state is sweet.
“My lord,” announced Lucas, in the right place this time, “Apollo doth thy grace now greet.”
Berowne walked on stage with Rosaline, gulped heavily, and began his speech.
Pallas, courteous lady, from whose rich mind
Springeth all wit, let me invention find
To praise thine every part with golden lyre –
“Wherefore ‘golden lyre’?” asked Armado. “Is it not the proverb, or adage, or saw, in your country to say that liars have tongues of silver?”
“He had needs be a golden liar,” explained the queen, “because gold is heavier than silver, and like most men, he lies in weighty matters.”
Armado nodded earnestly and made a note in the little book in which he was collecting French phrases.
Berowne glared at the audience. If not interrupted by some base squire,
I’ll sing to thee of th’ right Promethean fire
That sparks in lovers’ eyes when they find bliss.
But first, I beg of thee a loving kiss.
Rosaline had very nearly been overcome with giggles at the line he had improvised, but she managed to deliver her reply soberly enough.
Apollo, though thy wit doth well commend thee,
Know I am sworn for aye a maid to be,
And ne’er wed husband, be he ne’er so wise;
This single state to me is paradise.
Alack! replied Berowne, what paradise can lack increase!
Do not the flowers multiply, and bees?
This part had seemed better when he had written it. Ignoring the fact that Jaquenetta and Moth were openly snickering, he pressed on with Apollo’s argument in praise of marriage, which went on for some twenty lines and did not actually improve with length. He and Rosaline had a song after that, with Lucas accompanying them on his lute; luckily, it was an old familiar tune and they made no mistakes, although feigning that Apollo had just written it seemed particularly absurd.
Then – somehow – Pallas gave in, and he and Rosaline had a dance with Juno and Jupiter, and the three pairs of blissfully married gods tripped off to downy beds of clouds atop Mount Olympus. The actors playing them tripped off, too – falling all over one another in their eagerness to get away. Berowne ripped the laurel wreath from his head, threw his bow and arrow across their makeshift tiring-room, and collapsed in a corner.
Rosaline found him there, and produced a flask of aqua-vitae from somewhere under Pallas’s helmet. This confirmed Berowne’s impression that his lady was, in fact, a goddess of wisdom. He drank deep.
“Thy king and my queen liked it well,” said Rosaline. “Didst hear them applaud?”
“I heard nothing except Moth and Armado and Holofernes,” said Berowne. “I suppose last year, they must have heard nothing but us.” He cast his mind back to that evening, and was more than ever convinced that he and his friends had endured nothing more tonight than what they deserved. “Your lady was kind to them when we were not,” he said at last. “I pray she may be kind to us.”
“I think she will be,” said Rosaline. “She says that she would speak with you, when you are ready.”
Berowne groaned, took another swallow of aqua-vitae, and got to his feet.
* * *
“I enjoyed the pageant greatly,” said the queen. “‘Twas very full of ... er ... invention. So many of these court entertainments are all alike, and this one certainly was not.”
Berowne bowed. “Madam, I am honored.”
She turned to Longaville and Dumaine, who had accompanied him. “Well acted, both of you. You discharged your parts as though you were the very gods themselves.”
They stammered their thanks.
“So much grace for my men,” said King Ferdinand, “and so little for me?”
Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine looked at one another, startled.
“You have begged none,” said the queen. “Nor offered none.”
“I beg it now,” said Ferdinand, and abruptly went down on his knees.
“Do not kneel to me; you are a king, and my brother-monarch.”
“I kneel as a penitent. Call me Jupiter, if you will. This pageant has taught me to hope that wrongs may be forgiven if freely confessed.”
It was obvious that Ferdinand had more to say, and that the queen – who had been looking quite as astonished as any of them – was willing to hear it. Longaville, the first to recover his presence of mind, drew the others away.
* * *
“‘Tis well?” Berowne asked Moth, who had been spying on the king and queen through a knot-hole.
“Very well, sir,” said Moth, “they’ve had a babe already.”
“What?” Berowne shoved Moth aside.
“I mistook, sir; ‘tis only Doña de Armado’s babe. The queen is very fond of him. Your king seems to be fond of him too.”
Sure enough, the queen was sitting with Jaquenetta’s child on her lap, and the king was leaning over her to chuck the infant on the chin. It was a tableau such as Berowne had sometimes seen in pictures of the Holy Family. Come to think of it, the baby in those pictures had been of doubtful parentage too.
“Well enough, I suppose,” said Berowne, yielding the knot-hole to Maria. “I had rather they talked of love than babies.”
“‘Tis all one; you cannot have one without the other,” said Katharine happily. (This, Berowne thought, was a sure sign that Katharine had not spent the last year in a hospital knee-deep in foundlings.)
“Why is Jaquenetta still there?” demanded Longaville. “Has she not discretion enough to leave them in private?”
“Hush,” said Rosaline, “‘tis plain to see that she stayed to fulfill her duty as chaperone. And I think it serves the queen right, too.”
“Do they need a chaperone?” asked Dumaine.
Maria turned away from the knot-hole. She was smiling broadly. “Yes,” she said. “I should say they do!”
* * *
The Queen of France and the King of Navarre were wed a month later, as soon as treaties could be drawn up with the terms for uniting the two kingdoms, and as soon as the rites could be celebrated with proper pomp and ceremony. This was especially important since three of the queen’s ladies were to be married to the king’s closest companions at the same time.
The entertainment at the wedding was strictly professional in nature. A troupe of Spanish actors performed Lope de Vega’s latest play, which was very well received, and French boys sang chansons with voices like angels. For all that, Rosaline could not help thinking that something was lacking – something which had, after all, been present in The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo, and in the pageant of the Nine Worthies that Holofernes had produced the year before.
“It is life, I suppose,” said Berowne when she told him. “It will come in good time. It comes to us all, even choirboys.”
They watched the king and queen and Maria and Longaville dance, graceful as butterflies; and they watched Katharine rise and take Dumaine by the arm. He looked a little baffled about how to manage his crutch, but he followed her onto the dance floor, as best he could.
“Shall we dance, my lord?”
“As you will, my lady.”
As she took her husband by the hand for the first time, she noticed that he was humming a tune that was not the one the French musicians were playing.
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail...
lareinenoire and angevin2 reminded me last month that I'd never actually finished this thing. I don't have any good excuse, except to note that faux-Elizabethan court entertainments, even very bad ones, are incredibly hard to write, and I now have renewed respect for anyone who managed to write a good one.Prior installments are here, just in case you're not in the habit of remembering the plot of other people's WIPs for two and a half years.
Act V: The Right Promethean Fire
Rosaline feared that all of the work of the last few days had been undone, but it soon appeared that the queen was angrier at her own ladies than she was at Ferdinand and his men. Though she was a kind and generous woman, she was unaccustomed to disobedience from her courtiers, and in particular, she expected her three favorite companions to confide in her.
She looked deeply and genuinely hurt. The three favorite companions looked at one another, and all spoke at once in their eagerness to perjure themselves. Having no better ideas, they adopted Longaville’s story: they had met with the men, in all innocence and without any interest in renewing their former loves, to rehearse an entertainment for Her Majesty’s birthday. (What this lacked in originality, it made up in plausibility, since the queen’s birthday actually was only a few days away.) One must needs have gentlemen to assist at such an entertainment, or there could be no dancing afterward; and the King of Navarre’s men were the only gentlemen available, always excepting Boyet, who could hardly partner all of them.
“I ... I am flattered,” said the queen. “Forgive my anger; ‘twas unworthy of me. It is only ...”
None of the ladies asked “Only what?” but it was becoming apparent to Rosaline that her lady’s feelings toward King Ferdinand were, at the very least, complicated – but that pride would not let her speak about the matter, unless perhaps Ferdinand were to speak first.
“Have we your permission to continue our rehearsals?” Maria ventured to ask at last.
“Rehearsals,” said the queen absently. “Oh, aye. Do as you will.”
* * *
“The title of our pageant,” Berowne announced proudly, “shall be The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo.”
Katharine frowned. “Of Pallas and Apollo?”
“They could be married by now,” Berowne insisted. “Are they not immortal? And has it not been more than a thousand years since the last of the pagan poets lived to chronicle their deeds?”
“Was not Pallas sworn to virginity?” asked Maria.
“Just so. In that, as in her wit and wisdom, she betokens your lady; and who better than Apollo, the god of music and learning, to signify our king? And the argument shall be how Pallas was persuaded to renounce her virginity and wed him. ‘Twill be one of those pageants that give sound advice, under the guise of flattery.”
“The advice, in this instance, being that the king should marry his half-sister?” asked Rosaline.
“I did not say that the correspondence was exact in every point,” said Berowne.
“Who is to play Apollo and Pallas?” Rosaline asked, secretly hoping for the part of Pallas herself. She was not disappointed by Berowne’s answer.
“And Katharine,” said Dumaine, “must be Venus, and I’ll be limping Vulcan.”
“A great argument of cuckoldry!” said Katharine. “Who is to be Mars?”
“We’ll not have Mars in our pageant,” said Longaville firmly. “I’ve met the fellow, and I do not like him.”
“I had thought of Maria and Longaville as Juno and Jupiter,” said Berowne.
Neither party made any objection.
Berowne began distributing scrolls of paper. “Masters – and mistresses – here are your parts and your cues; I would have you con them by Wednesday night. I pray you, fail me not.”
* * *
The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo was about to begin, and Berowne realized the whole thing had been an enormous mistake. To his horror, Jaquenetta had invited her husband, his page Moth, and his friends Holofernes and Nathaniel to watch the show. Last year, they had presented a pageant of the Nine Worthies before Ferdinand’s court, with more enthusiasm than skill, and all of the young men had mocked them relentlessly. It had seemed very witty at the time, although Berowne no longer remembered why.
“I am sick,” Berowne announced. “I have chills, and a queasy stomach. I think I am catching smallpox again.”
“You cannot have smallpox twice,” said Rosaline decisively, “and I do not believe you are sick. You fear being mocked, as well you should, for you would deserve it.”
“You are positively the cruelest lady I have ever known. I do not understand why I love you.”
“And I do not understand why I love you, but so I do, and ten thousand mockers could not flout me out of it.”
* * *
O Juno, declaimed Longaville rather woodenly, I have been a fool e’er now
I have caused thee pain; do not even ask me how
I came to know it all was nothing worth.
But I do swear to thee, from this day forth
I’ll be the best of husbands, come what may;
I swear to thee, yea from this very day.
“He hath sworn on the same day twice,” remarked Moth. “If two affirmatives make a negative, as two negatives make an affirmative, I would not believe him if I were Juno.”
“‘Tis not possible for two affirmatives to make a negative,” Holofernes the schoolmaster explained, “for though that which is ‘not not’ is so, that which is ‘so so’ is not ‘not’.”
“And yet, that which is so-so is not good,” replied Moth, “and so, if I were Juno, I would not believe his word was good.”
“Hush,” said Jaquenetta, “the lady speaks.”
“O monstrous ignorance,” said Sir Nathaniel, “that is no lady but the goddess Juno, the queen of heaven.”
“By all that I have heard of her, sir, she was indeed no lady,” said Moth.
Jupiter, my dearest, how glad I find me
That I have willed to put the past behind me.
The lover and beloved are not tied to one love,
And so nought can our mutual affection move.
I fear no more betrayal, what e’er may occur
With Eris, Leto, or Demeter,
Electra, Danaë, or Gaia,
Pyrrha, Niobe, or Maia,
Eurymedousa or Alcmene,
Io, Europa, or Semele...
In the audience, Holofernes and Nathaniel were loudly correcting Maria’s pronunciation of most of these names.
If I e’er was jealous, I forsake that sin
And seek to please my consort and my kin.
What’s past is gone; the married state is sweet.
Lucas, who had been cast as a messenger, unexpectedly burst onto the stage. “My lord, Apollo doth thy grace now greet.”
Berowne hastily grabbed Dumaine’s cane and hooked Lucas back into the wings. “Not yet, you fool!”
“But I thought ‘The married state is sweet’ was my cue.”
“Not the first one, idiot! You go on when Venus says it to Vulcan.”
“Where is Vulcan?”
“Trying to walk on with his beloved Venus,” said Dumaine, “but missing a crucial prop. So to speak.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Berowne returned the cane, and Dumaine went to meet Katharine on stage.
Venus! I had not thought to here thee meet.
Know this: the noble heart doth all forgive.
What e’er has been, with thee I would still live.
Love is the flame that in my forge doth fire;
Love is the chain I hammer from desire;
And gods, as men, with solemn faith it binds.
It occurred to Berowne that he should have made this speech longer, since Dumaine was the only one of them who could actually act.
Vulcan, I see thy beauty in thy mind;
And now I do repent all I have done wrong
If I could change the past, I would do so ere long;
For I see now that Mars his charms are faint,
I would be true to thee as is a saint.
“Pardon, error!” said Armado. “How should the goddess Venus apprehend, or cognize, aught of sainthood, when she flourished ere there were saints on this terrene sphere, which the vulgar multitude do call the world?”
“She is immortal, sir,” explained Moth, “and in any case, ‘tis merely an allusion.”
“Aye,” added Constable Dull, who had been hired to guard the door, “the illusion holds in the sex-change.”
No lameness doth thy heart or mind impair,
In all thy gift of art, I find thee fair.
O, all is joy; the married state is sweet.
“My lord,” announced Lucas, in the right place this time, “Apollo doth thy grace now greet.”
Berowne walked on stage with Rosaline, gulped heavily, and began his speech.
Pallas, courteous lady, from whose rich mind
Springeth all wit, let me invention find
To praise thine every part with golden lyre –
“Wherefore ‘golden lyre’?” asked Armado. “Is it not the proverb, or adage, or saw, in your country to say that liars have tongues of silver?”
“He had needs be a golden liar,” explained the queen, “because gold is heavier than silver, and like most men, he lies in weighty matters.”
Armado nodded earnestly and made a note in the little book in which he was collecting French phrases.
Berowne glared at the audience. If not interrupted by some base squire,
I’ll sing to thee of th’ right Promethean fire
That sparks in lovers’ eyes when they find bliss.
But first, I beg of thee a loving kiss.
Rosaline had very nearly been overcome with giggles at the line he had improvised, but she managed to deliver her reply soberly enough.
Apollo, though thy wit doth well commend thee,
Know I am sworn for aye a maid to be,
And ne’er wed husband, be he ne’er so wise;
This single state to me is paradise.
Alack! replied Berowne, what paradise can lack increase!
Do not the flowers multiply, and bees?
This part had seemed better when he had written it. Ignoring the fact that Jaquenetta and Moth were openly snickering, he pressed on with Apollo’s argument in praise of marriage, which went on for some twenty lines and did not actually improve with length. He and Rosaline had a song after that, with Lucas accompanying them on his lute; luckily, it was an old familiar tune and they made no mistakes, although feigning that Apollo had just written it seemed particularly absurd.
Then – somehow – Pallas gave in, and he and Rosaline had a dance with Juno and Jupiter, and the three pairs of blissfully married gods tripped off to downy beds of clouds atop Mount Olympus. The actors playing them tripped off, too – falling all over one another in their eagerness to get away. Berowne ripped the laurel wreath from his head, threw his bow and arrow across their makeshift tiring-room, and collapsed in a corner.
Rosaline found him there, and produced a flask of aqua-vitae from somewhere under Pallas’s helmet. This confirmed Berowne’s impression that his lady was, in fact, a goddess of wisdom. He drank deep.
“Thy king and my queen liked it well,” said Rosaline. “Didst hear them applaud?”
“I heard nothing except Moth and Armado and Holofernes,” said Berowne. “I suppose last year, they must have heard nothing but us.” He cast his mind back to that evening, and was more than ever convinced that he and his friends had endured nothing more tonight than what they deserved. “Your lady was kind to them when we were not,” he said at last. “I pray she may be kind to us.”
“I think she will be,” said Rosaline. “She says that she would speak with you, when you are ready.”
Berowne groaned, took another swallow of aqua-vitae, and got to his feet.
* * *
“I enjoyed the pageant greatly,” said the queen. “‘Twas very full of ... er ... invention. So many of these court entertainments are all alike, and this one certainly was not.”
Berowne bowed. “Madam, I am honored.”
She turned to Longaville and Dumaine, who had accompanied him. “Well acted, both of you. You discharged your parts as though you were the very gods themselves.”
They stammered their thanks.
“So much grace for my men,” said King Ferdinand, “and so little for me?”
Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine looked at one another, startled.
“You have begged none,” said the queen. “Nor offered none.”
“I beg it now,” said Ferdinand, and abruptly went down on his knees.
“Do not kneel to me; you are a king, and my brother-monarch.”
“I kneel as a penitent. Call me Jupiter, if you will. This pageant has taught me to hope that wrongs may be forgiven if freely confessed.”
It was obvious that Ferdinand had more to say, and that the queen – who had been looking quite as astonished as any of them – was willing to hear it. Longaville, the first to recover his presence of mind, drew the others away.
* * *
“‘Tis well?” Berowne asked Moth, who had been spying on the king and queen through a knot-hole.
“Very well, sir,” said Moth, “they’ve had a babe already.”
“What?” Berowne shoved Moth aside.
“I mistook, sir; ‘tis only Doña de Armado’s babe. The queen is very fond of him. Your king seems to be fond of him too.”
Sure enough, the queen was sitting with Jaquenetta’s child on her lap, and the king was leaning over her to chuck the infant on the chin. It was a tableau such as Berowne had sometimes seen in pictures of the Holy Family. Come to think of it, the baby in those pictures had been of doubtful parentage too.
“Well enough, I suppose,” said Berowne, yielding the knot-hole to Maria. “I had rather they talked of love than babies.”
“‘Tis all one; you cannot have one without the other,” said Katharine happily. (This, Berowne thought, was a sure sign that Katharine had not spent the last year in a hospital knee-deep in foundlings.)
“Why is Jaquenetta still there?” demanded Longaville. “Has she not discretion enough to leave them in private?”
“Hush,” said Rosaline, “‘tis plain to see that she stayed to fulfill her duty as chaperone. And I think it serves the queen right, too.”
“Do they need a chaperone?” asked Dumaine.
Maria turned away from the knot-hole. She was smiling broadly. “Yes,” she said. “I should say they do!”
* * *
The Queen of France and the King of Navarre were wed a month later, as soon as treaties could be drawn up with the terms for uniting the two kingdoms, and as soon as the rites could be celebrated with proper pomp and ceremony. This was especially important since three of the queen’s ladies were to be married to the king’s closest companions at the same time.
The entertainment at the wedding was strictly professional in nature. A troupe of Spanish actors performed Lope de Vega’s latest play, which was very well received, and French boys sang chansons with voices like angels. For all that, Rosaline could not help thinking that something was lacking – something which had, after all, been present in The Marriage of Pallas and Apollo, and in the pageant of the Nine Worthies that Holofernes had produced the year before.
“It is life, I suppose,” said Berowne when she told him. “It will come in good time. It comes to us all, even choirboys.”
They watched the king and queen and Maria and Longaville dance, graceful as butterflies; and they watched Katharine rise and take Dumaine by the arm. He looked a little baffled about how to manage his crutch, but he followed her onto the dance floor, as best he could.
“Shall we dance, my lord?”
“As you will, my lady.”
As she took her husband by the hand for the first time, she noticed that he was humming a tune that was not the one the French musicians were playing.
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail...
