I spoke my line—“My ancestor killed you once, Ruthven. I can do the same today.” Then I poked at him with the sword.
Varduk smiled and interjected, “Rather a languid thrust, that, Mr. Connatt. Do you think it will seem serious from the viewpoint of our audience?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was afraid I might hurt you.”
“Fear nothing, Mr. Connatt. Take the speech and the swordplay again.”
I did so, but he laughed almost in scorn. “You still put no life into the thrust.” He spread his hands, as if to offer himself as a target. “Once more. Don’t be an old woman.”
Losing a bit of my temper, I made a genuine lunge. My right foot glided forward and my weight shifted to follow my point. But in mid-motion I knew myself for a danger-dealing fool, tried to recover, failed, and slipped.
I almost fell at full length—would have fallen had Varduk not been standing in my way. My sword-point, completely out of control, drove at the center of his breast—I felt it tear through cloth, through flesh—
A moment later his slender hands had caught my floundering body and pushed it back upon its feet. My sword, wedged in something, snatched its hilt from my hand. Sick and horrified, I saw it protruding from the midst of Varduk’s body. Behind me I heard the choked squeal of Martha Vining, and an oath from Jake Switz. I swayed, my vision seemed to swim in smoky liquid, and I suppose I was well on the way to an unmasculine swoon. But a light chuckle, in Varduk’s familiar manner, saved me from collapsing.
“That is exactly the way to do it, Mr. Connatt,” he said in a tone of well-bred applause.
He drew the steel free—I think that he had to wrench rather hard—and then stepped forward to extend the hilt.
“There’s blood on it,” I mumbled sickly.
“Oh, that?” he glanced down at the blade. “Just a deceit for the sake of realism. You arranged the false-blood device splendidly, Davidson.” He pushed the hilt into my slack grasp. “Look, the imitation gore is already evaporating.”
So it was, like dew on a hot stone. Already the blade shone bright and clean.
“Very good,” said Varduk. “Climax now. Miss Holgar, I think it is your line.”
She, too, had been horrified by the seeming catastrophe, but she came gamely up to the bit where Mary pleads for Swithin’s life, offering herself as the price. Half a dozen exchanges between Ruthven and Mary, thus:
“You give yourself up, then?”
“I do.”
“You renounce your former manners, hopes and wishes?”
“I do.”
“You will swear so, upon the book yonder?” (Here Ruthven points to a Bible, open on the garden-seat.)
“I do.” (Mary touches the Bible.)
“You submit to the powers I represent?”
“I know only the power to which I pray. ‘Our Father, which wert in heaven—’ ”
Sigrid, as I say, had done well up to now, but here she broke off. “It isn’t correct there,” she pointed out. “The prayer should read, ‘art in heaven.’ Perhaps the script was copied wrongly.”
“No,” said Martha Vining. “It’s ‘wert in heaven’ on mine.”
“And on mine,” I added.
Varduk had frowned a moment, as if perplexed, but he spoke decisively. “As a matter of fact, it’s in the original. Byron undoubtedly meant it to be so, to show Mary’s agitation.”
Sigrid had been reading ahead. “Farther down in the same prayer, it says almost the same thing—‘Thy will be done on earth as it was in heaven.’ It should be, ‘is in heaven.’ ”
I had found the same deviation in my own copy. “Byron hardly meant Mary’s agitation to extend so far,” I argued.
“Since when, Mr. Connatt,” inquired Varduk silkily, “did you become an authority on what Byron meant, here or elsewhere in his writings? You’re being, not only a critic, but a clairvoyant.”
I felt my cheeks glowing, and I met his heavy, mocking gaze as levelly as I could. “I don’t like sacrilegious mistakes,” I said, “and I don’t like being snubbed, sir.”
Davidson stepped to Varduk’s side. “You can’t talk to him like that, Connatt,” he warned me.
Davidson was a good four inches taller than I, and more muscular, but at the moment I welcomed the idea of fighting him. I moved a step forward.
“Mr. Davidson,” I said to him, “I don’t welcome dictation from you, not on anything I choose to do or say.”
Sigrid cried out in protest, and Varduk lifted up a hand. He smiled, too, in a dazzling manner.
“I think,” he said in sudden good humor, “that we are all tired and shaken. Perhaps it’s due to the unintentional realism of that incident with the sword—I saw several faces grow pale. Suppose we say that the rehearsals won’t include so dangerous-looking an attack hereafter; we’ll save the trick for the public performance itself. And we’ll stop work now; in any case, it’s supposed to be unlucky to speak the last line of a play in rehearsal. Shall we all go and get some rest?”
He turned to Sigrid and offered his arm. She took it, and they walked side by side out of the stage door and away. Martha Vining followed at their heels, while Davidson lingered to turn out the lights. Jake and I left together for our own boathouse loft. The moon was up, and I jumped when leaves shimmered in its light—I remembered Jake’s story about the amorphous lurkers in the thickets.
But nothing challenged us, and we went silently to bed, though I, at least, lay wakeful for hours.
VIII
Pursuivant Again
When finally I slept, it was to dream in strange, unrelated flashes. The clearest impression of all was that Sigrid and Judge Pursuivant came to lead me deep into the dark woods beyond the lodge. They
