The Ostraka Plays: Volume Four - A LITTLE WINTER LOVE

THE OSTRAKA PLAYS, VOLUME FOUR

A LITTLE WINTER LOVE

By

FRANCIS HAGAN

Published by Francis Hagan at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Francis Hagan

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A LITTLE WINTER LOVE

By

FRANCIS HAGAN

Dramatis Personae

The Players

Inigo Jones

Becky

Mort

Groan

Krake

Shank

Spindle

The Defenders of the House

Marchioness Honora DeBurgh

Reverend Griffith

Marjory Griffith

Robinson the Comedian

The Parliamentarians

Major Harrison

Major Carrack

Corporal Allyson

The Abraham-men

Abraham

Baldachin

Hatch

Crib

Various Bedlamites, Looters, etcetera.

SCENE I

The Ruin of Basing House, 14th October, 1645.

Smoke; the debris of siege and battle; timber and masonry in disarray; a great flag draped over a skeletal flame. It is charred and torn, holding little of the colours of King and Country.

Characters drift through these Ruins in outlandish costumes as if in daze; figures from a Hieronymous Bosch canvas; allegorical and tawdry; buffoons without a travelling cart.

One, in the buckled shoes of a Major Domo and cloaked in a high ruff which gives him a vulturine appearance stops by a blasted corpse. He gazes at it lost in thought. The others remain apart, melancholic and solitary.

Mort (Poking the corpse with a long stick.) . . . He’s dead.

Becky (Dressed in Court Elegance and with fragments of mirrors attached.) - God bless you, Mort, I’ve seen roast beef less charred than that and you have to poke ‘im to see if he’s dead . . .

Groan (Almost naked and covered in tattoos of musical notation.) Leave ‘im alone. He’s ruminating.

Becky I’ll say he is! Look at old Mort ruminating. He hovers over that cadaver like the proud necromancers of Alexandria, eh? Bless his dedication, I say. Such wit to state the bleedin’ obvious, thank you very much.

Groan Becky, you don’t need to –

Becky What? I don’t need to bleedin’ what, eh?

Groan Just leave him alone. That’s all.

(A pause.)

Mort I mention his state, Becky, my lovely girl, not as an observation. Never that. I, like you, have eyes. I mention it as a requiem. I pronounce, you see. His death. I say ‘he’s dead’ not to inform you of the fact.

Becky Then why for Christ’s sake –

Mort Because no one else will. Imagine living a life and then leaving it with no one left to mark your passing, my dear Becky. No one to comment upon you. This thing – this black rag – loved once. Wrote poetry. Wept even –

Becky Now you’re getting maudlin’, Mort – oh, I like that – ‘Maudlin’ Mort’ – it has a ring, don’t you think, Groan, eh?

Groan Oh shut up, Becky. Leave us alone.

Becky Jesus piss on you, Groan, is that all you can say, eh? ‘Leave us alone’ – what so we can weep bitter tears and fall into our own sorrow, eh? How bleedin’ replete of you, I say.

Groan It’s not – I didn’t mean – Becky, you’ve been like a big sister to me, you ‘ave, but it’s an awful hard love to burden you it is sometimes –

Becky Awww, young Groan ‘ere is all a wheedlin’ –

Mort (Leaving the corpse and sitting down amid the rubble.) The blood on him has yet to dry, my dear Becky. He stands there bereft and all splashed in a vulgar baptism. Give him the good grace of God to feel that stain dry. There will be time for our usual bickering later, no doubt.

Krake (A lean women in tight black wrappings like a shroud.) Mort is right, Becky. Leave young Groan alone.

Shank (Similarly dressed.) I echo my sister, of course.

Spindle (Again, ditto.) And I also. You fester among us like a sore, Becky.

Becky (Laughing in disbelief.) Listen to the three sisters! What a chorus – Krake, Shank and Spindle! The crones of reason in this piss-full ruin! And you, Mort, you imagine all this will settle away like dust, eh? That the blood on young Groan here will dry and fade as if it never even existed? A pox on that – a pox on you all! We stand on the black heath of an absolute wrack, we do – and there is no return from this, I tell you. None! What – do you all think in the red haze of your fancies that we will carry on? That we will hoist aloft our moth-eaten Curtain and play again the idle Masques of his fevered brain –

Mort Becky, we have always played and always will.

Becky On the stages gilded with decadence and coin, yes! But now? Now what, Mort? Will we play here in these ruins? Is that the future you see, eh? No longer the halls and the guildhouses of the rich, the fat burghers, the over-stuffed ladies in lace, but here, Mort? In this ruin, this blasted space hung now with corpses and the empty scaffolds of death? Look, shall this rag stand in now for our old Curtain as we caper here in cheap tatters like broken dolls, eh?

(She snatches up the great rag of the Flag and swirls it about her as though framing a stage. For one glorious moment, it flutters in the space, voluminous and regal, and then slowly begins to collapse in on itself.)

- Behold, the Masque of Death, the Carnival of the End of Times, the Last Play in the Ruin of Merrie England, what glorious sights shall we see, what marvels will abound –

(The ruined Flag collapses into a pathetic heap and then revealed behind it is a bruised and shivering old man. He is wrapped in a blanket which does little to hide his nakedness. A large book is clasped in his trembling hands.)

Mort - Master Jones?!

Groan - I didn’t think – I mean, we thought you were –

Inigo (Stepping forward, his eyes on Becky.) Many were, young Groan, as God is my witness. Many were.

Krake . . . Did they . . ?

Inigo I will tell you this. Six priests they hacked apart in the chapel, Krake, murdered in cold blood, the rosary beads still in their hands. Our Mister Robinson of old Drury Lane fame was shot down by that villain Major Harrison as he tried to escape out of a window. What happened to me is not worth the retelling.

Spindle The comedian dead . . ?

Inigo He played to a hundred a night with nothing but his wit to guide him on that stage . . . But that is not the least of it, my friends . . . I have seen this evening . . . Well, let that pass, shall we . . . Let that pass . . .

Mort And us, Master Jones? What of us now? This great House has fallen and we remain its waifs now, do we not?

Inigo (Clasping the book to his chest.) I still have it, Mort! I flitted through the falling rooms and cracking towers and plunged deep into the Library even as its books broke out in flames about me. I reached in among a hundred pillars of fire and found it - it was untouched as if the Good Lord himself preserved it for me – and with all my strength, I plucked it free even as Aristotle was consumed on my left and Shakespeare, old Will, fell away on my right. This alone escaped the fires, my friends. The book is ours and do you all know what that means? Groan? Shank? Old Mort?

Mort We play on.

Inigo We play on! This book saves us!

Becky (Deadly quiet.) You are all mad. Every poor sinning soul here. Mad. You want to put on the Masque still? England falls and we play on, is that? How many died this evening to the muskets and pikes of those Roundhead bastards, eh? How many Royalists fell in the doorways of this House run through without a jot of mercy, I ask? How many women stripped and made to crawl past the lobsters of Cromwell? And you, Master Jones, saved a single book so that we can play on . . . That is not the sound of fires in the distance, it is the Lord mocking our conceit, I wager . . .

(A pause.)

Inigo . . . I am Inigo Jones, Architect and Designer to the King, I conjure up impossible worlds in stone and spectacle, I lay foundations in the earth and breed possibilities in the mind, Ben Jonson lay at my right hand and Will himself urged me gently on, and though all the world itself in its great joint were to crack and fall apart about me, I would remain always Inigo Jones and pick up what was left to fashion again . . . We have the book and what lies in this book, my friends?

Mort (Rising up.) Dreams, Master Jones.

Inigo Not just dreams, Mort.

Groan The Ark of Dreams, Master Jones.

Inigo The great Ark of Dreams indeed, Groan.

Krake We have rehearsed so much of it already, eh, sisters?

Shank She is right, as the Lord is our witness.

Spindle My sisters are never wrong. It would be a cankered shame to waste all those days of rehearsals, eh, Master Jones?

Inigo We play on, do we not?

(The company nod as one except Becky who remains apart.)

Mort We play on, as always . . .

(The company exits back in the ruins leaving Inigo Jones and Becky alone. She picks up an edge of the flag and plays with it.)

Inigo . . . Can you imagine a better stage, Becky? Where better to play than the ruins of this great House? The more this world of England and our King falls from us must we not dance harder as if all were well, I ask? As if all were well . . .

Becky . . . So much blood underfoot . . .

Inigo I need you. Above all the others, I need you.

Becky Me? Now you are touched by God’s fever, Master Jones –

Inigo You alone centre me. You. Not them. It is you I turn to in my doubt and my despair. You I hold to. No other, Becky. Know that.

Becky No, I am just another of your pets.

Inigo Never that. Never . . . It was a good idea. The flag. Inspired. We will use it, of course. How can we not? I saw you twirl this flag and saw genius rise out of despair. Gold from dross. You have that in you. Only you, Becky. Not the others.

Becky Mort, he –

Inigo Not Mort, bless him. I need you.

Becky (She gazes upon the flag and then slowly begins to wind it up about her like a shawl.) . . . What are we?

(Inigo Jones looks on in approval, hugging the Ark of Dreams close to him.)

Scene II

The remnants of a study room; distant fires glow behind the shapes of broken walls and wrecked window panes. A large table in