The audience was ready to be entertained, and when the back curtains finally parted and a single actor took the stage, they erupted in cheers that must have gladdened his heart.
Alberich sat back on his bench, arms folded under his cloak, and prepared to see just what it was that had “corrupted” two Trainees.
First came the declamation of the Prologue. The plot, what there was of it, concerned a highborn child, stolen from his cradle and sold to slavers, subsequently bought or rescued (the prologue was rather unclear on the subject) by a troupe of poor but noble actors, and raised by them to adulthood. All of this was laid out in a spirited fashion by that single actor before any of the real action took place.
Alberich had to admit that the fellow knew what he was doing; he had the right mix of flamboyance and humor to keep the audience’s attention. He finished his piece, gave an elaborate bow, and retired to great applause.
Then the curtains parted on “A Sylvan Glade,” represented by two rather sad little trees in pots, and a painted backdrop, against which marched the troupe, portraying the actors on their way from one town to the next. The real action opened immediately with the Unknown Heir and his adoptive family being attacked by bandits, and the Heir proceeding to single-handedly, acrobatically, drive the bandits off. But not before the bandits had managed to mortally wound the Heir’s adoptive father—though how they got a knife blade through the four or five layers of costume he was wearing was beyond Alberich’s comprehension. This worthy managed an amazingly long set-piece while dying in his “son’s” arms. He explained the young man’s circumstances, presumed highborn heritage, and handed over the medallion the child had inexplicably still been wearing (even though it was solid gold) when taken from the hands of his kidnappers. It was an astonishing monologue, especially from the lips of someone stabbed through the heart quite some time ago.
None of this evidently stretched the credulity of most of the audience.
With tears and histrionics, the Heir proclaimed that he would regain his rightful place, and wreak revenge for his father’s death.
Riotous applause called up many bows from the actors before the action resumed.
The rest of the play consisted of one improbable fight scene after another, taking advantage of the acrobatic abilities of—Alberich guessed—roughly four of the actors in question. And there was no doubt in his mind before the first act was over that this was, indeed, where the two miscreants had gotten their misguided ideas, and given the wild applause that these bizarre fights managed to garner, he was a lot less surprised that the boys had become enamored of the idea of fighting like that.
As the Heir and his Best Friend—both in love with the same girl, of course—battled their way through throngs of evil henchmen attempting to keep them from claiming the Heir’s rightful place as the Duke of Dorking, Alberich had to admire their stamina, if not their style. In the conclusion to the first act, the Heir plummeted off the top of a “cliff” to flatten half a dozen evildoers, then engaged four at once, sword-to-sword, and after being disarmed, defeated his enemies with a bucket. In the second act, the Heir and the Friend, ambushed in a Peasant Hovel, made the most creative use of a ladder, a table, and a stool that Alberich had ever seen. In fact, what they most closely resembled was not a pair of fighters at all, but a pair of ferrets trying not to be caught. In the third act, the Best Friend met the end that Alberich had expected from the first, after yet another acrobatic exhibition, dying in the arms of the Heir and bravely commending the Heir and the Girl to one another, with the Heir vowing revenge once again—
:You know,: Kantor commented, :I’d steer clear of that man. People trying to kill him seem to keep missing and hitting his friends instead.:
But it was in the fourth act that something entirely unexpected happened, and it had nothing to do with the script.
Now, Alberich had noticed something a bit odd just before the play began. In the front benches, just off to one side, was a group of young men in clothing far finer than anyone else here was wearing. When the action started, he quite expected them to begin jeering and catcalling, but to his surprise, they did nothing of the sort. In fact, they were quiet and attentive to a degree all out of keeping with the quality of the drama unfolding. And it wasn’t as if they weren’t used to better fare, either; he recognized two of them from having seen them moving in the fringes of Selenay’s Court.
Now, that was odd. So odd, in fact, that he felt a tingle of warning and kept his eye on them all during the play.
Then came the fourth act, and the “Grand Climax and Exhibition of Sword-play with Astonishing Feats of Strength and Skill, Never Before Seen on Any Stage” which was laid in the Grand Hall of the Duke of Dorking’s Castle. The Heir’s enemies held both the Heir’s real parents and his True Love captive and were engaging in a spot of gloating.
And the Heir swung in over the heads of the front of the audience on a rope.
Alberich had to give them credit; it was a spectacular entrance. Not a very bright one for a real fighter, since while the Heir was swinging about on a rope he was an easy target for anyone with a knife, crossbow, spear or lance, all of which were in evidence among his enemies—but it was a spectacular entrance. The Heir let go the rope, did a triple somersault in the air, hit the stage, and came up fighting.
No mistaking that move, which was one the boys had tried (in vain) to copy. The actor might be a phony fighter, but he was a superb athlete and tumbler.
There was more of the same wildly unrealistic combat and Alberich noted in passing that the actor who had been playing the Best Friend was now, with the assistance of a beard, playing the Chief Villain. And then—
—then came the break with everything Alberich had expected.
If he hadn’t been watching so closely—and watching the audience, in particular, his lot of young nobles—he might have thought it an accident.
But in the middle of the duel with the Chief Villain, a prop-sword went clattering across the stage, right under the lead actor’s feet. He apparently stepped on it, because the next thing that happened was that his right foot shot out from under him, he staggered and tried to catch his balance, and then he went blundering right over the edge of the stage and down onto the audience in the first row—landing atop the same young highborn that Alberich had noticed—to the gasps and shrieks of the crowd.
But all was not as it seemed.
The thing was, someone as good a tumbler as that actor was shouldn’t have gone off the edge of the stage at all. What was more, he hadn’t stepped on or tripped over the sword—
No, as Alberich saw, just before he surged to his feet along with the rest of the audience, the actor had actually kicked it off to the side before making that spectacular “fall.”
Furthermore, the young men he’d landed among had been tensed and ready to catch him.
If he’d really fallen by accident, they’d have scattered instinctively away from his path, not gathered under him, broken his fall, and set him down.