A sprawling undercroft lurked beneath the Archibald Dellecher Theatre and all of its tributary hallways and anterooms. Usually only the technical crew ventured into that low-ceilinged, dimly lit warren, to unearth old props and furniture long ago deemed irrelevant and doomed to eternal storage. I hadn’t planned to go there, hadn’t even thought of it until I was halfway to the FAB, desperate at first just to get the hell away from the Castle. But as I crept down two or three shadowy corridors crowded with theatrical refuse, I realized my own accidental brilliance. Nobody could ever find anything in the undercroft, even if they knew exactly what they were looking for. Before long I stumbled into a cobwebbed corner where a bank of lockers (probably ripped out of the crossover sometime in the eighties) leaned tiredly against the wall. Rust leaked from their gills like old dried blood and crept across their gaping, sharp-edged doors. It was as good a place as any.
I shoved a battered trestle table out of my way, then waded through the rubbish piled up in my path. The first locker had a padlock hanging on the door, the catch spotted with rust like a bad tooth. I removed it, pulled hard on the handle, and swore as loudly as I dared when the door sprang open and cracked against my shin. The locker was empty except for a chipped mug bearing a faded Dellecher coat of arms, a black ring of coffee clinging to the bottom. I reached into my pocket to find the scrap of fabric I’d plucked from the fireplace. I squinted at it in the dim light, and that ominous red stain glared back. I wasn’t even sure it was blood, but my own paranoia dragged me back to the day of Richard’s memorial service, when I’d found Filippa alone by the fireplace. I thrust the thought away with alarm. There were no locks on the library doors, so it might have been any one of us. The air in the undercroft felt frigid. Any one of us might have done what? Suddenly nauseous and impatient to get the thing out of sight, I bent down and stuffed it into the mug. If anyone else found it there, they’d just think it a rag—stained with paint or dye or some other innocuous thing. For all I knew, it was. I chastised myself for being excitable. Alexander was right about that much: if we didn’t keep our wits about us, everything would come undone. I slammed the door, then hesitated. I didn’t know the lock’s combination. I didn’t want to return to it, ever, but just in case, I left it dangling, open.
I shoved the trestle table back in front of the lockers, hoping that maybe nobody else would bother moving it, that nobody would even know I’d been there. I stepped back and stood staring at the small wheel of the lock, the tiny gap between the shackle and case. How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.
SCENE 5
I got lost on my way out of the basement and was late for combat call. James, Camilo, and three second-years were already there.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I lost track of the time.”
“Where’ve you been?” James asked, with a strange deadpan expression. I was burning to ask him the same question, but not in front of other people.
Camilo interjected. “Let’s talk later. We’ve got a lot to get through and not a whole lot of time to do it. Did you two work this over the weekend?”
I glanced at James, who said, “Yes,” before I could answer. We’d only run through the blocking twice, because he’d been out of the Castle most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday.
“Then let’s get started,” Camilo said. “Shall we go from Edgar’s challenge?”
The set for Lear had been outlined on the floor in blue spike tape. It was a curious design, the proscenium stage stretching into a catwalk that ran down the center aisle of the audience. We called it the Bridge; the elevation was marked at four feet.
I took my place upstage, my rapier hanging on my left hip. James and the rest of them were already in place—he at the top of the Bridge, the soldiers on stage left, Camilo and the herald on stage right. Meredith should have been there, too, but there was no sense summoning her when all she did was watch.
Me: “What’s he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?”
James: “Himself. What say’st thou to him?”
I glared at him, fists clenched against the churning of my stomach. There was no need to impress anyone with emotions for a fight call, but I was already on edge.
Me: “Draw thy sword,
That, if my speech offend a noble heart,
Thy arm may do thee justice. Here is mine.”
I drew my sword, and James raised his eyebrows, faintly amused. I crossed downstage to the top of the Bridge.
Me: “Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,
Thy valor and thy heart, thou art a traitor,
False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father,
Conspirant ’gainst this high illustrious prince, And from th’ extremest upward of thy head
To the descent and dust below thy foot,
A most toad-spotted traitor.”
Somewhere in the middle of my speech, James’s wry amusement faded from his face and was replaced with a cold, ugly look. When it was his turn to speak I watched him closely, uncertain whether he was acting only, or if he and I both were gnashing secrets between our teeth.
James: “What safe and nicely I might well delay
By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.
Back do I toss those treasons to thy head!”
He may as well have spat at me.
James: “With the hell-hated lie o’erwhelm thy heart, Which, for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise, This sword of mine shall give them instant way
Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak!”
We raised our weapons, bowed to each other without breaking eye contact. He attacked first; my block was sloppy and his blade slid along mine to the hilt with an angry hiss. I threw him off and clumsily recovered my balance. Another blow, another block. I parried, struck at his left shoulder. The foils clattered together, their blunt edges colliding with the rattle and snap of a snare drum.
“Easy,” Camilo said. “Easy, now.”
We danced a rapid grapevine down a narrow aisle between two long lines of tape. That was the choreography: I beat him to the end of the Bridge, where he would fall, one hand on his stomach, blood blossoming beneath his fingers. (How this would happen, we had yet to be informed by the costume crew.) We fought with our bodies parallel, swords flashing between us. He staggered, lost his footing, but when I raised my arm to deliver the killing stroke, his fingers curled more tightly around the hilt of his sword. The pommel and guard cracked across my face, white-hot stars burst through my field of vision, and pain hit me like a battering ram. Camilo and one of the soldiers shouted at the same time. The rapier slipped loose from my fingers and crashed down beside me as I fell backward onto my elbows, blood gushing from my nose like someone had turned on a faucet.