he said at last. “Let’s see how you get on during the rehearsals.”
“Thank you, thir. You won’t regret it,” she said, beaming at him.
“Next!” Sparkler called. He watched impatiently as the High Tollin’s guards shuffled up. Sparkler repressed a groan. This was getting out of hand. It was true he’d been given the Great Hall to stage the performance, but in return, the High Tollin seemed to want everyone he knew personally to be in it. Sparkler resolved to be firm.
“Right. Which part would you like to audition for?” he asked.
“What’s in a name?” the thin guard bellowed suddenly. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!”
“That’s a line by Juliet,” Sparkler said, searching his script. He had never seen the guards so nervous before. The thin one had taken a position with his eyes screwed shut, his arms outstretched and his red face tilted up to an imaginary audience.
“It is the east! And Juliet is the sun!” he roared.
“That bit’s from Romeo, I think,” Sparkler said, wincing. The guard seemed to be lost in a world of his own. His companion looked on with tears in his eyes, shaking his head in silent wonder.
“Arise, fair sun!” the thin guard shouted, drawing his new sword. Sparkler gaped as he waved it around his head. “And kill the envious moon!”
“Some confusion there, I’m afraid,” Sparkler said in the pause for breath. The guard opened his mouth for another line.
“Thank you! I’ve heard enough!” Sparkler said loudly. His tone seemed to reach the guard and he opened his eyes, beaming shyly.
“Was it all right, sah? I’ve been practising with Daryl here. He says I’ve got ever such good volume.”
“Well, yes,” Sparkler replied. “I can’t argue with volume. Volume, in fact, is the one thing no one could deny about your performance. However…”
“I wouldn’t mind a small part, sah,” the fat guard put in suddenly. Sparkler supposed this was Daryl, though he’d never heard his name before. He sighed to himself. It was the High Tollin’s Great Hall, after all. It was the only place he could find with a balcony.
“All right,” he said wearily. “You can both be in Romeo’s gang of Montagues and in the crowd scenes.” Daryl nodded to his thinner friend.
“I told you we’d get it, ’Erbert,” he said proudly.
“Next!” Sparkler called once again.
Finding Romeo was the real problem, of course. In the play, he was meant to be young and handsome. There were young and handsome Tollins, but the news that Beryl was to play Juliet had made them vanish faster than frost in summer.
To his frustration, Sparkler was left with just one Tollin lad, by the name of Pilford, who worked in the bakery. He was short and thin and his hair was too long, in Sparkler’s opinion.
“So you want to be Romeo, do you?” Sparkler said doubtfully.
“Don’t mind,” Pilford replied with a shrug. Sparkler peered behind him, but there was no one. Pilford was the queue.
“Have you prepared any lines for today?” Sparkler asked. Pilford nodded. “Right then. In your own time, let’s hear them.”
Pilford looked around him. The High Tollin’s guards were nearby, listening while pretending to read a script. Some Tillets were watching him, including one with enormous front teeth. He shrugged again.
“Right. It’s the bit at the end where everyone gets killed. My mum cried when I did it.”
“When you’re ready,” Sparkler said.
“Romeo thinks Juliet is dead, though she isn’t,” Pilford went on.
“Yes, I’ve read the scene,” Sparkler replied. “Wrote it, I mean. Er… in your own time.”
“And he kills ’imself and then she wakes up! My mum was blubbering fit to burst when she ’eard me do that bit.”
“Are we going to experience this treat today, do you think?” Sparkler asked.
“So Juliet finds her love all dead and curled up and that, so she stabs ’erself! It was brilliant, that bit. I’d have put a swordfight in the background, just for added interest, you know, but it was pretty good anyway. My mum enjoyed all the ‘thees’ and ‘thys’ instead of just saying ‘you’ and ‘yours’ – she said it made it proper old-fashioned-sounding and ever so romantic. I think you have a fan there, sir.”
Sparkler opened his mouth to send him away, but Pilford threw out an arm and began. His voice became larger somehow, so that it filled the space.
“O, my love, my wife! Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered; beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death’s pale flag is not advanced there…”
There was silence in the Great Hall. The guards stood with their mouths open, though that was not unusual when they were off-duty. Beryl’s eyes glittered with tears.
“I think we have a Romeo,” Sparkler said softly. Pilford’s shoulders slumped.
“Sorry to hear that, sir. I was looking forward to having a go at him.”
“No, Pilford. I mean you’re it. That was good.”
“Really, sir?” Pilford beamed at him. “Mum will be ever so pleased.”
That summer was one of the hottest in Tollin memory and the Common basked in the warm days. Small human children ran about with big dogs, while some big children ran about with small dogs. The long grass was a tapestry of butterflies, with colours of red and gold and sometimes a bit of yellow, even. Dragonflies buzzed on Darvell’s Pond, chasing their own bright reflections on the water while Tollins on the bank shouted things like, “More angle on the turns, Flaming Death! You have four wings, so use them! Flaming Nuisance, more like!”
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