Act of Will - Hardcover

Hartley, A.J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765321246 ISBN 13: 9780765321244

Publisher: Tor Books, 2009

Synopsis

Act of Will is a boisterous fantasy adventure that introduces us to Will Hawthorne, a medieval actor and playwright who flees the authorities only to find himself inextricably bound to a group of high-minded adventurers on a deadly mission. Will travels with them to a distant land where they are charged with the investigation and defeat of a ruthless army of mystical horsemen, who appear out of the mist leaving death and devastation in their wake.

In the course of Will’s uneasy alliance with his new protectors, he has to get his pragmatic mind to accept selfless heroism (which he thinks is absurd) and magic (which he doesn’t believe in). Will must eventually decide where his loyalties really lie and how much he is prepared to do--and believe--to stand up for them.

About this title

About the Author

British-born writer A.J. HARTLEY, author of the New York Times bestselling The Mask of Atreus and On the Fifth Day, is the Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As well as being a novelist and academic, he is a screenwriter, theatre director, and dramaturge. He is married, with a son, and lives in Charlotte.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

[ SCENE I ]
Show Business

The day started quietly, which, as it turned out, was not so much ironic as completely misleading. I had risen late after a long night memorizing speeches by the dodgy light of a cheap tallow candle. Mrs. Pugh—the miserable and vindictive woman who had been paid by the theatre to “look after†me since my parents died, which basically amounted to keeping me alive till my apprenticeship was done—had woken me at eleven o’clock, then forced me to eat what looked suspiciously like a bowl of fried porridge. Why anyone would do anything with porridge, let alone fry it, is a serious bloody mystery to me.

It was my eighteenth birthday, which meant that my theatre apprenticeship was officially over: now the company would either take me on as a full member, or they would cut me loose. Either way, this would be my last day in a dress. Thank God.

I’m not sure why the Empire doesn’t allow women on-stage. It’s pretty stupid when you stop to think about it. But everyone is used to it and it keeps the likes of me in steady work, so I’m not complaining. Admittedly, most of the parts I got as a woman were comprised of simpering love poetry and vacant smiles, but once in a while I got to do a good death scene, or double as a nameless soldier in a battle, or something. That was pretty fun, and it got me out of those bloody corsets for ten minutes or so.

But none of it equaled the time I got to play a prince. I had three long speeches and a fight scene and, best of all, I got to write some of my own lines. (All actors think they’re poets. Most of them aren’t.) I got a standing ovation at the end of each performance. Not all the boy actors graduate to men’s roles, but I was the best we had at the moment, so I figured there’d still be a job for me when I hung up my skirt for the last time. Probably. Not everyone in the company appreciated my talents, of course, least of all the really stupid ones, who—needless to say—had a lot of sway in the company. If they didn’t take me in as an actor, I’d probably be able to make a living writing for them, but it wouldn’t be much of a living, so I was a bit apprehensive about what they’d tell me after the show.

That was when it would happen. After the stage had been swept and the taproom closed, before they got everyone back out to rehearse the next day’s show, they’d meet and vote and call me into the green room for their verdict. Then I’d be an actor, a writer, or both, or I’d be homeless with no source of income till I could cobble a play together and sell it.

I should say that being an eighteen-year-old in Cresdon means that you’ve been a man for at least half a decade already, even if you’ve made your living in a dress. I can’t compare it to other places, and I’m sure there are kids my age whose comfort and happiness are still carefully engineered by other people, but unless you’re gentry where I live, you pretty much have to claw your way into manhood, and there’s plenty who don’t make it. Kids starve, or they get beaten to death by their so-called benefactors, or they get sold into slavery. I’m not trying to shock you or convince you that I’m some kind of hero for making it this long; but I don’t want you thinking you’re going to get a tale about some blue-eyed tyke with a heart of gold in a world where good triumphs over evil. You’re not, I’m not, and in my experience it never does.

Just so we’re clear.

Anyway. I lived less than half a mile from the theatre, but one of those impromptu markets which Cresdon’s residents seem so fond of had spontaneously appeared right outside the goldsmith’s on Aqueduct Street. I was soon up to my armpits in goats and cheese and bales of smelly wool imported by the equally smelly herders from the Ashran Plains, north of the city. By the time I reached the backstage entrance of the Eagle Theatre, I could already hear the bugles finishing up, which meant they were halfway through what passed for a musical introduction: a florid-faced idiot called Rufus Ramsbottom and an instrument (in the loosest possible sense of the word) which he claimed was an Andastrian bagpipe but which sounded like three cats and a chicken tied together in a sack. Not that anyone took any notice. This was strictly background noise to make the paying public feel that something was starting, thus encouraging them to focus on the crucial business of buying one last pint and fighting each other for seats.

The Eagle sat at the end of a dim alley which, like all the others in the city at this time of year, was hot, muddy, and rank with the odors of wandering livestock and abandoned refuse. It was a typical Cresdon theatre: round (near enough), with a raised thrust stage, a pair of stage entrances, a balcony, a discovery space, and a trapdoor to the cellar-age. The house held close to three thousand, packing eight hundred standing into the pit and seating the rest in three galleries, one on top of the other. The best view of the stage was from up top and would cost you three standard silver pieces, but you could get a good deal if you were prepared to stand down front. Some of the local aristos would pay six or seven silvers to actually sit on the stage and show off their fancy new duds, something all the actors hated with a passion. They never kept still and you were lucky if they did no more than yawn and wave to their friends. Sometimes they gave you acting notes or stopped the show to argue a plot point. Rich people always think they know best.

I got into my dress and blond wig as quickly as I could, and took a last glance over the script. We were doing a pompous tragedy called Reynath’s Revenge, whose entire last act was a series of preposterously engineered assassinations. It wasn’t just the end that was stupid. The whole play was rubbish. We’d just put it back into the repertory because a new one by the same author had opened a week or so ago over at the Blue Lion. The only audience who bothered showing up to ours had probably seen it a dozen times. It had been crap every time, but they kept coming back.

My dress was too tight around the throat because it had been made for Bob Evans, who had had the frame of a plucked chicken till he was about sixteen, when he had doubled in all possible dimensions, bursting every seam in every dress they put him in. By sheer surging hormonal bulk, combined with the timely death of old Silas Woods from the wheezing sickness, Bob attained what the kid actors all dreamed of: he had started playing men’s roles.

I poured myself a small beer, lit a pipe, and joined the pre-show card game in the green room. I say “pre,†but it would go on through the show, pausing only when too many of us were onstage to continue.

By the end of the second scene, the game was going badly. For me, I mean. It was going swimmingly for everyone else. I sipped my stale beer and tried to figure out how much I had lost so far.

Like most Cresdon theatres, the Eagle did double duty as a tavern and was famed for its taproom, which served beer throughout the show. When there was nothing going on onstage, cards, dice, and darts were the rule. All of these humble pastimes could be turned to advantage by a perceptive and audacious actor-cum-gambler, storyteller, and performer: namely, me. William Hawthorne, known as Will the Sharp or Quick Bill to the patrons of the Eagle Theatre and Tavern, at your ser vice. Care to place a bet, sir, madam?

Except that it was only me who used the epithets of Quick Bill or Will the Sharp, and if your ears were good enough, you would be more likely to hear those worthy patrons announce me as Bill the Cheat, Lying Will, That Kid Who Tried to Rip Me Off, etc. etc. In fact, Bill the Incompetent might be nearer the mark, as a quick tally of today’s winnings suggested.

See, the taproom was, generally speaking, fairly easy pickings. Most of the people who came to play were either regulars (who you knew to avoid) or incompetents who couldn’t fork their cash over to you fast enough. But I wasn’t in the taproom now; I was in the green room. Normally I played conservatively here, but today I was nervous, perhaps a little too anxious to show how little I cared whether they gave me a job or not in a couple of hours. The combination had made me reckless.

The problem with the green-room games was that they were populated solely by theatre people, mainly actors. Here, the usual bluffs, prevarications, convenient fictions, and barefaced cheating would afford you little, because everyone there knew them of old. Rufus Ramsbottom, for example, was a lousy actor who could barely deliver a line without fumbling or dropping something, and he wasn’t a particularly good cardplayer, but he knew a cheat when he saw one, and he was looking at one right now. He had mean little eyes and a fat pink face, producing the look of a rather slow but pathologically malevolent pig. Those eyes held mine, and he wasn’t giving me an inch.

“Come on, Hawthorne,†he said. “I have to go on.â€

“I doubt they’d miss you,†I sa...

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0765321246
• ISBN 13: 9780765321244
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336