Mistress to the Crown. Isolde Martyn

      ‘God’s Blood,’ I muttered in an alley voice. ‘I feel like one of them jars too broad for a pantry shelf.’

      ‘An’ I’m a barrel. Move, you lardcakes! ‘Elen should be in the middle.’

      The ‘lardcakes’ obeyed. Cassandra, a youth in a long black wig, deftly swung around Hecuba, and we performed an intricate, perilous reversal so that I ended up midway next to Prince Hector’s wife and son.

      ‘Have to get it right, dearie,’ Hecuba whispered. ‘You bein’ the last to leave.’ He straightened his false bosom and then nudged me: ‘Did Paris feel you up?’

      ‘Aye, ‘e did.’

      The others laughed. ‘Oooh, lucky you.’

      ‘Tell me,’ I whispered. ‘‘Ow’s the player who was to be ‘elen? Is ‘is ankle mending?’

      ‘He ain’t done nothing to his ankle, luv. His lordship didn’t want ‘im to do it no more.’

      Aha, I was beginning to suspect as much.

      ‘So wot’s your name, precious?’ asked Hector’s wife, but before I could answer, the edifice shook as the attendants grabbed hold.

      ‘‘Ere we go, ladies,’ chortled Hecuba, as the doors opened. ‘Wave graciously. We’re royalty, remember.’

      The damnable barbican wobbled perilously as it was pushed forwards. Would the timber brackets break, spew us out across the flagstone plain of Troy in a tangle of gauze and wigs? The courtiers were laughing.

      ‘Oh, I adore playing a queen to a queen,’ Hecuba gushed, waving airily towards the heart of the dais. ‘Ready to blub, Mistress Hector? Got your onion, darlin’?’

      With nothing to do save pose like a princess at a tournament, I began to enjoy myself. Although Hector and Achilles’ wooden swords could not strike sparks, there was sufficient force in their combat to have the courtiers cheering. When Hector received the death blow, he pierced the bag hidden beneath his waist, and enacted copious spluttering and staggering as the blood oozed between his fingers.

      The onion smell was strong but I wasn’t prepared for the horrific scream right next to me. A shrieking Mistress Hector and son scrambled down to do a ‘woe is me’ over the corpse.

      ’employed for ‘is screeches,’ Hecuba informed me.

      Then came the death of Achilles. He grabbed an arrow to his heel and died with a great deal of twitching. Finally, the Wooden Horse rumbled in. I was disappointed. It was just scaffolding with a painted great horse head sticking out on a pole. Its body was made up of warriors, each holding a curved, dun-coloured shield to resemble a horse’s flanks.

      ‘Doom, doom!’ Cassandra, who had already climbed down, rushed at the horse waving his arms like a housewife chasing the pigeons from a pea crop. He was carried off in the mêlée as the Greek soldiers sprang down and some thirty men waged battle.

      When the swords and verse came to a standstill, Hecuba descended to wring his huge hands over dead Paris. I tried to look bereft as ‘she’ was led away sobbing. Once all the corpses were dragged into the shadows, the fields of Troy lay deserted and I realised with a jolt that I was the only player left on the battlements

      Oh, for more onions. Broken hearted, I held my wrist to my eyes so I could glance back at Talwood. He was firmly signalling me to stay in place.

      What in Heaven …? Ah, phew, the narrator stepped back into the candlelight and King Menelaus strode up to the wall of Troy. The cascade of poetry stopped abruptly. Menelaus held out his hand, waiting for me to return with him to Sparta.

      Devilment crept into me. Poor Helen. Had Menelaus been a William Shore? I gravely shook my head at his highness of Sparta and flapped my fingers like ass’s ears. The court began to chuckle and then shriek with laughter as the player became really angry.

      His overlord, King Agamemnon, joined him. He also held out his hand to me. Still I refused and then suddenly there was a scraping of chair, a movement across the high table, followed by applause. A third king! Tall and magnificent, King Edward halted before the gates of Troy, looked up at me and held out his hand.

      By the Saints, I’d never intended this. How I managed that narrow ladder behind the edifice with my heart trying to escape my body, I’ll never know.

      England’s king was a huge haze of gold and sable. I inclined my head to him like Princess Helen should, and he graciously led me forward to make a player’s curtsey to the court, then keeping firm hold of my hand, he grinned down at me like a lion viewing dinner.

      ‘I knew you’d come to me eventually,’ he said.

Mistress