It was a typical English night with its mischievous and sudden downpours coupled with chilly winds and fog as thick as broth. Lone pedestrians trudged along, muttering under their breath. They cursed the wind, they cursed the rain and they cursed the “bloody fog.”
But not her. She sat in her seat, sipping warm tea and wondering if she had made the right choice. She looked out of the window and felt sorry for the poor fools on the streets.
She was sitting in a seat she had paid an arm and a leg for, in the New Theatre in Westminster. She was there for the performance of Will Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” She had heard it from a friend (who had heard it from a friend) that this particular group were highly skilled and that their best performances were of this play.
She wasn’t exactly aquiver with anticipation. She had witnessed many a performance of it and each one outdid the next in both inaccuracies and bad acting.
Although, it was foolish to expect accuracy when the playwright himself altered the original story to suit his own ends… she just hoped that this would be worth the fortune she paid…
After sometime, the lights dimmed and everyone sat up, alert. The play was about to begin. She looked on sceptically, not expecting much. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, the British always said.
The play began with the Montagues and Capulets brawling on the streets. Then came the timely intervention by the Prince of Verona.
This was one of the things about the play that she disliked the most. It wasn’t true to the source material. The original story was nothing like what Will wrote.
For one thing, it wasn’t a street brawl. It was a war. Also, it wasn’t between the so-called ‘Montagues’ and ‘Capulets’ either. It was between the Romans, under the rule of the great (hilarious and ever-so-frustrating) King Romulus and the Sabine tribes united under the equally great (bossy and overprotective) Supreme-Commander-in-Chief Titus Tatius. The Lover and The Father, respectively.
She put all criticism aside and watched the play. The longer the play went on, the more she accepted (although grudgingly) that the actors were remarkably good.
As she watched, she began to remember. She remembered things she had forgotten. She remembered things that she had forgotten to remember and she remembered what she should have remembered to forget… and for a while, the prim and proper lady lost herself in her past.
She lost the alias she now used. She lost the carefully crafted back-story she wore about herself. She lost all the lies and the deception. It was almost as if, for an instant, the lady sitting in that chair had vanished.And in her place was the young, naïve, beautiful and innocent Sabine girl who made the terrible mistake of falling in love…
William Shakespeare renamed her Juliet but to herself, she will forever be Tatia. Tatia, daughter of Titus Tatius. Tatia who fell in love with the great King Romulus. Tatia who was loved by King Romulus. The only woman he ever loved and he the only man she ever loved even to this day.
She sighed bitterly. Thinking about the past always made her sigh. She would think of Romulus and all the wonderful memories they made…
The first time they met, it was at a feast. He was there, being his majestic (and irritating) self and she was introduced to him. She had hated him on sight!
On stage, two actors were acting out the ball scene. They were both beautiful people and they brought a quality to the characters that she had never witnessed on stage. And she should know. She’d been attending performances of Romeo and Juliet ever since the play was first written.
She watched as ‘Romeo’ sneaked into the Capulet courtyard and overheard ‘Juliet’ vowing love to him. She rolled her eyes… Oh Will…
The fact of the matter was that she had vowed no such thing. In fact, she had insisted on never loving him “even if he was the last man in the land.” Those were her own words that she wound up consuming willingly and with much gusto.
As she watched ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’ get married in secret, she remembered how Romulus found clever ways to escape his duties and come court her. He would follow her, disguised and send her love letters. (Of course she couldn’t read them, she didn’t know how. But that hardly mattered as he couldn’t write either.) He would send her flowers that were coloured every colour ever known. He would speak to her while she stood on at a window above. (At least Will got that bit right…)
She could almost smile when she remembered Romulus and his boyish and boisterous love for her. There was only so much that a woman could resist. Eventually, she gave way and they fell in love, so to speak.
She had nothing but fond (and secret) memories of what came after. Long walks, warm hands, kisses like rain, passionate lovemaking and golden moments of silence spent doing nothing but gazing into each other’s eyes…
On stage, things had taken a turn for the worse. Romeo had killed Tybalt and had gotten himself exiled. Though this had never really happened with Romulus, she supposed that it added to the overall dramatic effect… now Juliet was about to be married off to Count Paris.
At this point, she remembered Numa Pompilius; her ‘destined’ husband-to-be. She did not wish to marry him so she had done as Juliet had done. She asked for the help of another, though in her case, it was not a friar but a sorcerer. (Some called him a wise-man. He certainly looked the part…)
He had concluded that the best way to ensure that her love had a chance was for her to fake her death and escape. He also told her that he would see her and her lover happy and in love forever. Saying that, he told her of the elixir.
Tatia was young and naïve. She had no idea what she was getting into. She had no idea the burden she was about to shoulder… All she knew was the wise-man and his miraculous elixir that was to be the solution to all her problems.
Unlike what Will wrote in his play, the liquid ‘Juliet’ or Tatia drank was no poison. Quite the opposite, actually. It was a potion of life. Eternal life, no less. The wise-man called it the Elixir of the Dancing Water. He said it was from the lands to the south. Past the Nile and in the heart of the land of men black as obsidian. It was said to be the peak of alchemical achievement. According to the wise-man, it would grant the drinker immortality!
But there is a price, he had said. There always is, she had dismissed. He told her that the price for eternal life was death. After she took the elixir, she would die. She would remain so for 2 and 40 hours, he had said. (He used another unit of time which is now defunct.)
On stage, Juliet took the poison and fell into a deep sleep. Romeo rushed to her side (without reading his mail, the fool!) and after a long and depressing monologue, took his own life.
In that instant, the audience gasped and she remembered how her own tale ended. She took the elixir according to plan and died. She was in hiding at the time but Romulus knew where to find her. There she had lain until her time was up and she came back into the world of the living, reborn.
But alas, the world she came back to was not the world she had left behind. Everything had changed. One of the most prominent changes was the appearance of a dead body at her feet. She sat there, staring groggily at it before the truth sunk in.
She let out a blood-curdling and anguished scream! The dead body was none other than her beloved Romulus! He was dead! He was clutching a bloody dagger in one hand and had a deep wound on his abdomen. It was sickeningly obvious what had happened…
As she lay there, under the influence of the elixir, dead. She would have had no pulse, drawn no breath and to all the physicians in the world, she would have appeared lifeless. It was then that Romulus had found her. He would have thought her dead and decided that a life without her was no life… Stupid man! He had taken his life thinking she was dead!
She had desperately looked around for any more of the elixir but alas, it was all gone…
As Juliet said her final piece, there was not a dry eye in the house. Save one. Tatia had cried herself dry long ago. There were no more tears left. No elixir to help her beloved Romulus and no hope of her ever getting the chance to join him in the afterlife… All she had to look forward to was an eternity alone with possibly no hope of ever meeting him again.
The rest of her ‘natural life’ in Rome was a scam. She had pretended to be the obedient Sabine princess and had herself married to Pompilius. Their so-called marriage lasted for 13 years before she faked her death (this time it worked) and escaped. Thereafter she had been wandering through the world, untouched by time and her heart as broken as it was the day Romulus died.
How sweet and tragically romantic it would have been if they had both died together. Tatia and her beloved Romulus… United in life, united in love, united in death and together forever. But it was not to be. Instead of the supposedly tragic end of both loves dying for their love, one got to live forever. One got to live an incomplete half-life forever without the object of her undying love…
Such is life, she thought to herself as a single tear ran down her cheek to join the countless others she had shed in her past. So there was one tear left… she smiled sadly.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Another Place, Another Town, England – Another Time
It was a cold winter’s night as I sat in my workshop, writing. I had finished a few comedies and they were already being performed. I was set to write another one… But what next, I wondered to myself. Perhaps a love story? Or one about magic and storms?
Before I could make up my mind, there was a gentle knock on the door. I put down my quill and parchment before going over to receive whomever it was.
When I opened the door, I found a beautiful woman with the palest skin, darkest hair and wise eyes that suggested life lived longer than even I. Odd that, I thought to myself as I surveyed her.
“William Shakespeare?” she asked, her voice a soft melody like a minstrel’s song and her words lyrical and well-articulated.
“Yes. I am he.” I replied, wondering what it was that this beautiful woman wanted of me. “What can I do for you, lass?” I tried to be as polite as I could.
She looked at me with her amaranthine eyes, the colour of coals. Then she took a deep breath and spoke. “I have a tale for ye sir. Sir writes plays, correct?” She seemed both excited and ill at ease.
Her timing was utterly perfect. I had been sitting, waiting for the blessings of a muse when one came so willingly into my workshop. I would be a fool to let her go without hearing her tale. Perhaps it would be a tale worth of a great play. One never knows. “Please call me Will.” I smiled as I ushered her in. I offered her tea before setting her down. “What may I call ye, my lady?”
“At this age, I am known as Alice,” she said softly, as if she was about to divulge some gargantuan secret. She breathed in deeply. “But my real name…” she hesitated, letting her breathe out slowly. “…is Tatia.”
