Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays: "Baal", "Drums in the Night", "In the Jungle of Ci (World Classics) (32 page)

A thing, willed over to me. You are

Mine alone. Subscribed to me, unasked for

But never free except by my consent.

ANNE:

You send me forth but bind me to you?

EDWARD:

Aye.

ANNE:

Heaven is my witness that I love thee only.

My arms, I thought, could stretch to hold thee

Across this isle. The time to fear is

When they tire.

Do you bind me to you yet send me forth?

EDWARD:

Has no man any news of Gaveston?

ANNE:

He who bids me go but will not let me go

From him shall all men go and yet not let him go.

May his end elude him flayed and wandering.

If he should need a human hand

May the skin be hanging from it, leprous.

And if he would escape from them, to die

May they hold him and not let him go.

EDWARD:

Has no man any news of Gaveston?

ANNE:

If thou waitest for thy friend Gaveston

King Edward, then put an end to hope.

In the bog I saw a man in Irish weeds

And heard them say that he was for the knacker’s yard.

SPENCER:

O bloody perjury!

EDWARD
kneeling
:

By earth the common mother of us all

By heaven and the movement of the stars

By this hard, sere hand

By all the steel that’s in this isle

By the last oaths of a weary breast

By all England’s glory – by my teeth:

I will have your misbegotten bodies

And change them so your mothers will

Not know you. I will have your white

Headless trunks.

ANNE:

Now I see he has become the slave

Body and soul, of this devil Gaveston.

Exit with Young Edward
.

Enter a soldier
.

SOLDIER:

The barons answer:

We have Boroughbridge, the battle’s done.

If without bloodshed you would have

Relief and help England says to you:

Forget Gaveston, now not in dispute —

EDWARD:

Now not in this world.

SOLDIER:

And foreswear his memory and you’ll

Have peace.

EDWARD:

Good. Tell the barons:

Since you have Boroughbridge and I, therefore

Can fight no further battles, and since

My friend Gaveston’s no longer of this world

I take your offer; and let there be peace

Between you and me. Come about midday

To the quarry of Killingworth, where I

As you demand, will foreswear

His memory. And come you without arms.

For they would our kingly eye

Offend.

Exit soldier
.

EDWARD
rousing his soldiers
:

Up, you sluggards! Lie in the quarry

Like the dead. Edward Softhand’s

Expecting guests. And when they come

Leap at their throats.

Five in the morning
.

Gaveston, James, the other soldier
.

GAVESTON:

Where the devil are we going?

Here’s the quarry once again.

We’re going in a circle.

Why do you look at me so cold?

Fifty silver shillings!

Five hundred!

I will not die.

Throws himself on the ground
.

JAMES:

Well, so you have shouted. Now we go on.

Enter two soldiers
.

SHOUT
: Saint George and England!

FIRST
: What see’st thou yonder?

SECOND
: Fire.

FIRST
: That’s Boroughbridge. What hearest thou?

SECOND
: Clanging bells.

FIRST
: Those are the bell-ropes of Bristol, they are tolling because the King of England and his barons are to conclude a peace.

SECOND
: Why so sudden?

FIRST
: So England won’t be hacked to bits – they say.

JAMES
: Now it seems that once again you are to get off cheap, sir. What time is it?

OTHER SOLDIER
: About five o’clock.

Eleven in the morning
.

Edward, Spencer, Baldock
.

SPENCER:

The peers of England come unarmed

From the hills.

EDWARD:

The sentries are posted?

SPENCER:

Aye.

EDWARD:

Have they ropes?

SPENCER:

Aye.

EDWARD:

Are the troops drawn up, to fall upon

The headless army?

SPENCER:

Aye.

Enter Archbishop, Lancaster, peers
.

BALDOCK:

My lord, your peers.

EDWARD:

Bind them with ropes.

PEERS
shouting
:

Treason! We are in an ambush! Your sworn oath!

EDWARD:

It is fine weather for breaking oaths.

ARCHBISHOP:

You had sworn.

EDWARD:

Drums!

The drums drown the shouting of the peers who are led away bound
.

SPENCER:

Mortimer’s missing.

EDWARD:

Then fetch him.

Have you crossbows, slings, catapults?

Bring me the maps!

Scour the land with steel. Comb it through!

Say, before you strangle him, to each man in the scrub:

England’s king is changed into a tiger

In the wood at Killingworth.

Go!

Great battle
.

Twelve noon
.

Gaveston, James, the other soldier
.

JAMES
: Shovel, boy. The battle grows. Thy friend shall win.

GAVESTON
: What’s this hole for?

JAMES
: The time has come to find shelter for our skins. And so we must carry out our orders. Shovel, good sir. Should you still want to relieve yourself you can do it here.

GAVESTON
: Now it’s moving more toward Bristol. When the wind blows you can hear the Welshman’s horses. Have you ever read the Trojan war? Much
blood will be shed for my mother’s son too. Ned must often ask where his friend is.

JAMES
: Hardly, sir. Everyone at Killing worth will tell him not to wait for you any longer. Shovel, good sir. The rumour goes that your worthy Irish corpse has been seen in the knacker’s yard at Killingworth. If one dare believe a rumour you have lost your head, sir.

GAVESTON
: Whose is this grave?

James is silent
.

GAVESTON
: Shall I not see the King again, James?

JAMES
: The King of Heaven perhaps. The King of England, not.

SOLDIER
: Today many a man shall perish by a soldier’s hand.

JAMES
: What time is it?

SOLDIER
: About twelve o’clock.

Seven in the evening
.

Edward, Spencer, Baldock, the captured barons, among them Mortimer. Spencer counts the prisoners and notes down their names
.

EDWARD:

Now ’tis time. This is the hour

When the murder of my dearest friend

To whom, right well you knew, my soul was knit

The murder of Daniel Gaveston, shall be purged.

KENT:

Brother, all was done for you and England.

EDWARD
freeing him
:

So sir, you have spoken. Now be gone.

Exit Kent
.

EDWARD:

Now lusty lords, not only chance of war

But sometimes the justice of the cause can conquer.

Methinks you hang your heads but

We’ll advance them.

Recreants! Rebels! Accursed slaves!

Did you butcher him?

When we sent to ask by messenger

With seal and bond, also

By letter, that he come

And speak with us again.

Did you say yes? Say! Did you butcher him?

Behead him? Thou, Winchester, hast a great head.

Therefore thy head shall overlook the rest

As much as thou in rage outwent’st the rest.

ARCHBISHOP:

I look into your perjured face

And I have done, no words can penetrate.

For such as thee ’tis hard to trust the lips

Of one who speaks to save himself, spoke he the truth.

All proof hast thou blotted from the earth

And ours, thine, thy friend’s strands

So tangled all eternity shall not unravel them.

Tis but temporal that thou canst inflict.

EDWARD:

What know’st thou, Lancaster?

LANCASTER:

The worst is death, and better die

Than live with thee in such a world.

MORTIMER
aside
:

But with me

Who more than Edward their butcher is

They’d go down to the worms

In harmony.

EDWARD:

Away with them! Their heads!

LANCASTER:

Farewell time.

Two nights since when the slender moon arose

God was with us. And now

A little larger moon’s on high we’re undone.

Farewell, good Mortimer.

ARCHBISHOP:

Good Mortimer, farewell.

MORTIMER:

Who loves his country as we do

Dies with light heart.

England shall weep for us. England forgets not.

Archbishop, Lancaster, lords – except Mortimer – are led off
.

EDWARD:

Have they found a certain Mortimer

Who, when I summoned them to Killingworth

Quarry, most cunningly came not?

SPENCER:

Indeed, my lord. Here he is.

EDWARD:

Take away the others. This one would not forget.

Our Majesty has special plans for him.

Release him so the memory of this day

Of Killingworth fade not in England.

You Mortimers reckon

Dim-eyed, are at home in books

Like worms. But Edward is not found

In books, he reads not, reckons not

Knows naught, but is nature’s friend

And feeds himself on very different food.

You may go, Lord Mortimer. Go round and round

A wandering witness beneath the sun

How Edward Longshanks’ son avenged

His friend.

MORTIMER:

As to your friend Daniel Gaveston

He walked at five o’clock

When the King of England turned a tiger

Alive still in the wood at Killingworth.

Had you, when my friends began to speak

Not drowned their cries with drumming

Had not too little trust

Too harsh a passion, too hot a rage

Clouded your eye, he’d be living now

Your favourite, Gaveston.

Exit
.

EDWARD:

If Gaveston’s corpse is found, take care

To give it honourable burial. Yet seek it not.

He was like a man who walks away into the wood:

Behind him bushes close again, grass

Springs up again and he is swallowed in the

Undergrowth.

But we will this day’s sweat

Wash from our body, eat and rest

Till called to cleanse the realm of the last of fratricide

And war.

For I will not set foot again in London

Nor sleep save in a soldier’s hammock

Until this generation like a raindrop

In the sea, is lost in me.

Come, Spencer.

Three in the morning
.

Light wind
.

ANNE:

Since Edward of England hears not prayers

Or urgent cries and throws me on Coldheart Mortimer

I will put on my widow’s weeds.

Four times I let him spit upon my hair

But now, rather, do I stand bareheaded

Under heaven. For at the fifth time

The wind changes and heaven has another face

And changed is the breath upon my lips.

To London!

Mortimer has entered meanwhile
.

MORTIMER:

Yet not so, my lady.

London warms but watery soup for our kind.

ANNE:

Where is your army, Earl Mortimer?

MORTIMER:

My army lies

Dead between meadows and a quarry.

And a pitiless bog has swallowed many

A mother’s son. Where is your husband, lady?

ANNE:

With his dead Gaveston.

MORTIMER:

And France’s sister?

ANNE:

At the crossroads between London and Scotland.

He charged me to levy troops in Scotland

On the day of Killingworth.

MORTIMER:

He charged me

To wander as a living witness

To the day of Killingworth.

Seven heads he struck from the hydra; may he

Find seven times seven when he wakes.

Enmeshed in marches and encampments

He will never free himself from war

Or from dead Gaveston.

ANNE:

He abused his wife for all to see.

MORTIMER:

He misused his kingdom like a pimp.

ANNE:

He bound me in chains and packed me off.

MORTIMER:

He gutted the land like a bleeding hunk of game.