Читать книгу Three Wonder Plays - Lady Gregory - Страница 6

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Scene: The Same. Princess and Nurse.

Nurse: Cheer up now, my honey bird, and don't be fretting.

Princess: It is not easy to quit fretting, and the terrible story you are after telling me of all that is before and all that is behind me.

Nurse: They had no right at all to go make you aware of it. The Queen has too much talk. An unlucky stepmother she is to you!

Princess: It is well for me she is here. It is well I am told the truth, where the whole of you were treating me like a child without sense, so giddy I was and contrary, and petted and humoured by the whole of you. What memory would there be left of me and my little life gone by, but of a headstrong, unruly child with no thought but for myself.

Nurse: No, but the best in the world, you are; there is no one seeing you pass by but would love you.

Princess: That is not so. I was wild and taking my own way, mocking and humbugging.

Nurse: I never will give in that there is no way to save you from that Dragon that is foretold to be your destruction. I would give the four divisions of the world, and Ireland along with them, if I could see you pelting your ball in at the window the same as an hour ago!

Princess: Maybe you will, so long as it will hurt nobody.

Nurse: Ah, sure it's no wonder there to be the tracks of tears upon your face, and that great terror before you.

Princess: I will wipe them away! I will not give in to danger or to dragons! No one will see a dark face on me. I am a king's daughter of Ireland, I did not come out of a herd's hut like Deirdre that went sighing and lamenting till she was put to death, the world being sick and tired of her complaints, and her finger at her eye dripping tears!

Nurse: That's right, now. You had always great courage.

Princess: There is like a change within me. You never will hear a cross word from me again. I would wish to be pleasant and peaceable until such time …

(Puts handkerchief to eyes and goes.)

Dall Glic: (Coming in.) The King is greatly put out with all he went through, and the way the passion rose in him a while ago.

Nurse: That he may be twenty times worse before he is better! Showing such fury towards the innocent child the way he did!

Dall Glic: The Queen has brought him to the grass plot for to give him his exercise, walking his seven steps east and west.

Nurse: Hasn't she great power over him to make him to that much?

Dall Glic: I tell you I am in dread of her myself. Some plan she has for making my two eyes equal. I vexed her someway, and she got queer and humpy, and put a lip on herself, and said she would take me in hand. I declare I never will have a minute's ease thinking of it.

Nurse: The King should have done his seven steps, for I hear her coming.

(Dall Glic goes to recess of window.)

Queen: (Coming in.) Did you, Nurse, ever at any time turn and dress a dinner?

Nurse: (Very stiff.) Indeed I never did. Any house I ever was in there was a good kitchen and well attended, the Lord be praised!

Queen: Ah, but just to be kind and to oblige the King.

Nurse: Troth, the same King will wait long till he'll see any dish I will ready for him! I am not one that was reared between the flags and the oven in the corner of the one room! To be a nurse to King's children is my trade, and not to go stirring mashes, for hens or for humans!

Queen: I heard a crafty woman lay down one time there was no way to hold a man, only by food and flattery.

Nurse: Sure any mother of children walking the road could tell you that much.

Queen: I went maybe too far urging him not to lessen so much food the way he did. I only thought to befriend him. But now he is someway upset and nothing will rightly smooth him but to be thinking upon his next meal; and what it will be I don't know, unless the berries of the bush.

Dall Glic: (Leaning out of the window.) Here! Hi! Come this way!

Queen: Who are you calling to?

Dall Glic: It is someone with the appearance of a cook.

Queen: Are you saying it is a cook? That now will put the King in great humour!

(Manus appears at the window.)

Nurse: (Looking at him.) I wouldn't hardly think he'd suit. He has a sort of innocent look. I wouldn't say him to be a country lad. I don't know is he fitted to go readying meals for a royal family, and the King so wrathful if they do not please him as he is. And as to the Princess Nu! There to be the size of a hayseed of fat overhead on her broth, she'd fall in a dead faint.

Manus: I'll go on so.

Queen: No, no. Bring him in till I'll take a look at him!

Manus: (Coming inside.) I am a lad in search of a master.

Manus: (Inside.) I am a lad in search of a master.

Queen: And I myself that am wanting a cook.

Manus: I got word of that and I going the road.

Queen: You would seem to be but a young lad.

Manus: I am not very far in age to-day. But I'll be a day older to-morrow.

Queen: In what country were you born and reared?

Manus: I came from over, and I am coming hither.

Queen: What wages now would you be asking?

Manus: Nothing at all unless what you think I will have earned at the time I will be leaving your service.

Queen: That is very right and fair. I hope you will not be asking too much help. The last cook had a whole fleet of scullions that were no use but to chatter and consume.

Manus: I am asking no help at all but the help of the ten I bring with me.

(Holds up fingers.)

Queen: That will be a great saving in the house! Can I depend upon you now not to be turning to your own use the King's ale and his wine?

Manus: If you take me to be a thief I will go upon my road. It was no easier for me to come than to go out again.

Queen: (Holding him.) No, now, don't be so proud and thinking so much of yourself. If I give you trial here I would wish you to be ready to turn your hand to this and that, and not be saying it is or is not your business.

Manus: My business is to do as the King wishes.

Queen: That's right. That is the way the servants were in the palace of the King of Alban.

Manus: That's the way I was myself in the King's house of Sorcha.

Queen: Are you saying it is from that place you are come? Sure that should be a great household! The King of Sorcha, they were telling me, has seven castles on land and seven on the sea, and provision for a year and a day in every one of them.

Manus: That might be. I never was in more than one of them at the one time.

Queen: Anyone that has been in that place would surely be fitting here. Keep him, Nurse! Don't let him make away from us till I will go call the King!

(Goes out.)

Nurse: Sure it was I myself that fostered the young King of Sorcha and reared him in my lap! What way is he at all? My lovely child! Give me news of him!

Manus: I will do that. …

Nurse: To hear of him would delight me!

Manus: It is I that can tell you. …

Nurse: It is himself should be a grand king!

Manus: Listen till you hear! …

Nurse: His father was good and his mother was good, and it's likely, himself will be the best of all!

Manus: Be quiet now and hearken! …

Nurse: I remember well the first day I saw him in the cradle, two and a score of years back! Oh, it is glad, and very glad, I'll be to get word of him!

Manus: He is come to sensible years. …

Nurse: A golden cradle it was and it standing on four golden balls the very round of the sun!

Manus: He is out of his cradle now. (Shakes her shoulder.) Let you hearken! He is in need of your help.

Nurse: He'll get it, he'll get it. I doted down on that child! The best to laugh and to roar!

Manus: (Putting hand on her mouth.) Will you be silent, you hag of a nurse? Can't you see that I myself am Manus, the new King of Sorcha?

Nurse: (Starting back.) Do you say that? And how's every bit of you? Sure I'd know you in any place. Stand back till I'll get the full of my eyes of you! Like the father you are, and you need never be sorry to be that! Well, I said to myself and you looking in at the window, I would not believe but there's some drop of king's blood in that lad!

Manus: That was not what you said to me!

Nurse: And wasn't the journey long on you from Sorcha, that is at the rising of the sun? Is it your foot-soldiers and your bullies you brought with you, or did you come with your hound and your deer-hound and with your horn?

Manus: There was no one knew of my journey. I came bare alone. I threw a shell in the sea and made a boat of it, and took the track of the wild duck across the mountains of the waves.

Nurse: And where in the world wide did you get that dress of a cook?

Manus: It was at a tailor's place near Oughtmana. There was no one in the house but the mother. I left my own clothes in her charge and my purse of gold; I brought nothing but my own blue sword. (Throws open blouse and shows it.) She gave me this suit, where a cook from this house had thrown it down in payment for a drink of milk. I have no mind any person should know I am a king. I am letting on to be a cook.

Nurse: I would sooner you to come as a champion seeking battle, or a horseman that had gone astray, or so far as a poet making praises or curses according to his treatment on the road. It would be a bad day I would see your father's son taken for a kitchen boy.

Manus: I was through the world last night in a dream. It was dreamed to me that the King's daughter in this house is in a great danger.

Nurse: So she is, at the end of a twelvemonth.

Manus: My warning was for this day. Seeing her under trouble in my dream, my heart was hot to come to her help. I am here to save her, to meet every troublesome thing that will come at her.

Nurse: Oh, my heavy blessing on you doing that!

Manus: I was not willing to come as a king, that she would feel tied and bound to live for if I live, or to die with if I should die. I am come as a poor unknown man, that may slip away after the fight, to my own kingdom or across the borders of the world, and no thanks given him and no more about him, but a memory of the shadow of a cook!

Nurse: I would not think that to be right, and you the last of your race. It is best for you to tell the King.

Manus: I lay my orders on you to tell no one at all.

Nurse: Give me leave but to whisper it to the Princess Nu. It's ye would be the finest two the world ever saw. You will not find her equal in all Ireland!

Manus: I lay it as crosses and as spells on you to say no word to her or to any other that will make known my race or my name. Give me now your oath.

Nurse: (Kneeling.) I do, I do. But they will know you by your high looks.

Manus: Did you yourself know me a while ago?

Nurse: (Getting up.) Oh, they're coming! Oh, my poor child, what way will you that never handled a spit be able to make out a dinner for the King?

Manus: This silver whistle, that was her pipe of music, was given to me by a queen among the Sidhe that is my godmother. At the sound of it that will come through the air any earthly thing I wish for, at my command.

Nurse: Let it be a dinner so.

Manus: So it will come, on a green tablecloth carried by four swans as white as snow. The freshest of every meat, the oldest of every drink, nuts from the trees in Adam's Paradise!

(King, Queen, Princess, Dall Glic come in.

Princess sits on window sill.)

Queen: (To King.) Here now, my dear. Wasn't I telling you I would take all trouble from your mind, and that I would not be without finding a cook for you?

King: He came in a good hour. The want of a right dinner has downed kingdoms before this.

Queen: Travelling he is in search of service from the kings of the earth. His wages are in no way out of measure.

King: Is he a good hand at his trade?

Queen: Honest he is, I believe, and ready to give a hand here and there.

King: What way does he handle flesh, I'd wish to know? And all that comes up from the tide? Bream, now; that is a fish is very pleasant to me— stewed or fried with butter till the bones of it melt in your mouth. There is nothing in sea or strand but is the better of a quality cook—only oysters, that are best left alone, being as they are all gravy and fat.

Queen: I didn't question him yet about cookery.

King: It's seldom I met a woman with right respect for food, but for show and silly dishes and trash that would leave you in the finish as dwindled as a badger on St. Bridget's day.

Queen: If this youth of a young man was able to give satisfaction at the King of Sorcha's Court, I am sure that he will make a dinner to please yourself.

Manus: I will do more than that. I will dress a dinner that will please myself.

Princess: (Clapping hands.) Very well said!

King: Sound out now some good dishes such as you used to be giving in Sorcha, and the Queen will put them down in a line of writing, that I can be thinking about them till such time as you will have them readied.

Queen: There are sheeps' trotters below; you might know some tasty way to dress them.

Manus: I do surely. I'll put the trotters within a fowl, and the fowl within a goose, and the goose in a suckling pig, and the suckling pig in a fat lamb, and the lamb in a calf, and the calf in a Maderalla …

King: What now is a Maderalla?

Manus: He is a beast that saves the cook trouble, swallowing all those meats one after another—in Sorcha.

King: That should be a very pretty dish. Let you go make a start with it the way we will not be famished before nightfall. Bring him, Dall Glic, to the larder.

Dall Glic: I'm in dread it's as good for him to stop where he is.

King: What are you saying?

Dall Glic: Those lads of apprentices that left nothing in it only bare hooks.

Nurse: It is the Queen would give no leave for more provision to come in, saying there was no one to prepare it.

Manus: If that is so, I will be forced to lay my orders on the Hawk of the Grey Rock and the Brown Otter of the Stream to bring in meat at my bidding.

King: Hurry on so.

Queen: I myself will go and give you instructions what way to use the kitchen.

Manus: Not at all! What I do I'd as lief do in your own royal parlour! (Blows whistle; two dark-skinned men come in with vessels.) Give me here those pots and pans!

Queen: What now is about to take place?

Dall Glic: I not to be blind, I would say those to be very foreign-looking men.

King: It would seem as if the world was grown to be very queer.

Queen: So it is, and the mastery being given to a cook.

Manus: So it should be too! It is the King of Shades and Shadows would have rule over the world if it wasn't for the cooks!

King: There's some sense in that now.

(Strange men are moving and arranging baskets

and vessels.)

Manus: There was respect for cooks in the early days of the world. What way did the Sons of Tuireann get their death but going questing after a cooking spit at the bidding of Lugh of the Long Hand! And if a spit was worthy of the death of heroes, what should the man be worth that is skilled in turning it? What is the difference between man and beast? Beast and bird devour what they find and have no power to change it. But we are Druids of those mysteries, having magic and virtue to turn hard grain to tender cakes, and the very skin of a grunting pig to crackling causing quarrels among champions, and it singing upon the coals. A cook! If I am I am not without good generations before me! Who was the first old father of us, roasting and reddening the fruits of the earth from hard to soft, from bitter to kind, till they are fit for a lady's platter? What is it leaves us in the hard cold of Christmas but the robbery from earth of warmth for the kitchen fire of (takes off cap) the first and foremost of all master cooks—the Sun!