Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

There was stunned silence around the stage as everyone wondered if there might be more — whether this was to be a tactical nuclear strike — or the full-blown strategic version that would take out the whole of Soonhope. Thankfully, the colour in Miss Beattie’s cheeks normalised from a deep purple to its more usual pink. Nevertheless, Angus continued to stare at a spot on the end of one of his shoes for a full ten seconds before finally mumbling, “Yes, Miss. Sorry, Miss.”

Miss Beattie gave a final sigh of indignation and said, “That’s all right, Mr Jud.” She looked around and clapped her hands.

“Now everyone — let’s get this lot cleared up. It’s nearly four o’clock.”

But something that Miss Beattie had said stuck in Jack’s mind and as he and Tommy put away the props, his curiosity overcame his fear of re-lighting the blue touch paper.

“Sorry, Miss — did you say a million words? I mean written by one man — Shakespeare?”

“Yes, Jack, I think that’s about right.”

“But that sounds like an awful lot for one man to write…”

“It is. There are lots of theories — most of them rubbish — that he did not actually write his material, but that others did. Shakespeare lived during the ‘English Renaissance’ — it was a boom time for plays and playwrights and art and artists generally. More than fifty candidates have been suggested as the ‘real’ Shakespeare — people like Christopher Marlowe.”

“Who?”

Miss Beattie was overseeing the flow of props back into the store cupboard, giving orders as she worked. “No, Tommy, put the swords into the sword trolley properly , or they’ll get damaged.” She looked back at Jack. “Sorry, Jack — what was that?”

“Marlowe — was he like Shakespeare, then?”

“He influenced Shakespeare, but he died in 1593 before Shakespeare’s career had really got going. He was only twenty-nine… it was murder. He was a spy.”

“A writer and a spy?”

“Yes, maybe even a double agent. I know it sounds odd, but there were quite a few writers who were at the time — not Shakespeare, though. They often studied at Oxford or Cambridge; the universities were hotbeds of radicalism.”

“What do you mean by radicalism?”

She sighed. “You’re insatiable, Jack.” She turned to lock the store cupboard and then looked at him sympathetically. “Look — we don’t really have time to go into the whole of sixteenth-century politics right now… but next lesson maybe we’ll do it in more detail.” She thought to herself for a minute. “Tell you what, come over here…” She scurried over to a pile of bags at the side of the stage and pulled out a large book.

“There you go, that should get you started.” She handed the tome over to Jack. It was entitled, simply, Elizabeth I . On the front cover was the famous Armada Portrait of the auburn-headed queen in an elaborately decorated dress covered in jewels with one hand draped over a globe and pointing to Virginia in the Americas, England’s first colony in the New World. Behind the queen, the Spanish Armada could be seen, sailing to its doom.

“Knowing you, Jack, you should be able to finish that off in a couple of hours. It’s all there. And it’s not just about Shakespeare and Marlowe you know. This was a period of deep religious conflict — between Catholics and Protestants — a struggle for the very soul of man. And this religious conflict was intertwined with the political struggles between states. Spain was the global superpower and England was a backwater by comparison. But when England defeated the Spanish Armada, that all started to change. Otherwise, we might be living in a Catholic country today and speaking Spanish — and so might most of the world. We would probably be having tapas for school dinners.” Miss Beattie stopped. “There I go again… prattling away…” She tapped the book. “Anyway, I’ll leave it with you.”

Jack leafed through the first few pages.

“Who’s that?” He pointed to a picture of a confident young man in what he took to be flashy Elizabethan clothes.

“That’s him — Marlowe,” said Miss Beattie, “Only portrait ever made of him — he was just twenty-one and dressed up to the nines.”

“What does that mean?” Jack pointed to some Latin words beneath the picture.

Miss Beattie laughed. “‘What feeds me destroys me.’ Just about sums Marlowe up. How shall I put it — he liked to live life on the edge.”

Jack didn’t really understand what she meant but he was already leafing through the rest of the book. There were pictures of ships: great Spanish galleons stuffed with treasure from the New World; terrifying fire ships let loose by the English on the anchored Spanish fleet off Calais; The Revenge demasted in the Azores, where, in a fit of macho bravado, Sir Richard Grenville took on twelve great Spanish galleons single-handed, only to die. There were extraordinarily beautiful new buildings, soaring edifices of glass and stone — a far cry from the brutal castles of the Middle Ages. Then there were the people: kings and queens, princes, players and poets… One chapter was called ‘The English Renaissance’ — and it seemed to live up to its billing. As Jack leafed through the volume, he noticed a small frame at the bottom of one of the pages. The caption read, ‘Elizabethan Troupe’. It was a colour plate of a group of actors in various costumes. There was one dressed as a court jester and next to him, in stark contrast, another dressed as a priest or, more likely, a monk. There was a third who looked slightly more important — a country gentleman with a fine cloak and a neat, pointed beard.

“Head in a book again?” Angus leaned over Jack’s shoulder.

It looked like nearly everyone else had gone. “Do you want to get something at Gino’s?”

Jack snapped the book shut.

“Why not?” He stuffed it in his bag.

“Well, stop reading that rubbish and let’s go.”

Jack sat pillion on Angus’s motorbike. He was nervous. Usually trips on the back of Angus’s bike did not go well. Angus was seventeen now and had passed his bike test. His old 125cc Husqvarna two-stroke had been left in one of the sheep sheds at his place up at Rachan and he had taken to riding one of the farm’s more powerful four-stroke Yamaha 250Fs. When he could afford the petrol, he took the bike to school — avoiding the one-hour journey on the bus that picked its way painfully round the hamlets of the upper Soonhope valley.

Angus turned back the throttle and the engine wailed; he dropped the clutch and they set off. Thankfully, Angus omitted the wheelie he usually performed just to frighten Jack. Soon they reached the bridge over the river, which was quite low from a dry spring. The big Presbyterian church at the head of the High Street loomed ahead of them and Jack remembered what Miss Beattie had been saying about the ‘struggle for the soul of man’. Even in Soonhope, with fewer than two thousand inhabitants, he knew of at least five churches, all of different denominations. It occurred to Jack that he hadn’t actually been inside any of them, and he wasn’t sure how many of the local population had either.

The High Street was busy but Angus managed to squeeze the bike right in front of Gino’s and, as they went in, the welcoming smell of warm coffee and ice cream wafted over them. Gino was manning the espresso machine while Francesca, his daughter, polished glasses grumpily. Gino was as jolly as ever.

“What can I get you, lads?”

“Hi, Gino.” Angus looked up at the endless menu of drinks and snacks pinned to a board above the counter. But he already knew what he wanted. “I’ll have the double Gino-chino, extra shot, full fat, with caramel and extra cream… and don’t forget the cherry.” He looked over at Francesca and winked provocatively, adding in a deep voice, “Shaken, not stirred.”