Exit, Pursued by a Bear

By Greer Gilman

Henry Stuart, heir to the British throne, is clever, handsome, a real hero. Unfortunately, he is also tone-deaf in his dealings with the Unseen World. Unbeknownst to him, his ambitious plans for a coming-of-age Faerie court masque have enraged his neighbor monarchs, Oberon and Titania. Seeking recompense, they assign the undead poet Kit Marlowe to bring them the heir.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Mar 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781618730961

Book preview

At Whitehall, St. Stephen’s Day, 1610

Halfway in the air, the moon stuck fast.

Boy, said the Surveyor, wearily.

But already a fellow in a satyr’s netherstocks had swarmed the scaffolding with five or seven of his rout, all twitching at the shrouds.

And now she toppled on her back, lay hicketing and heaving toward an exaltation endlessly denied.

Ben Jonson—mere Poet to these Roman pomps—snorted. I wrote her for a virgin; see, she labors.

Yet she travels not, squeaked a fairy, and was brutally suppressed.

The Surveyor was among them, jutting with his beard. "Asini! Will you overset the heavens? Back! He laid about him with his staff of office, like a dancing master’s, rapping at the satyrs’ shins. They disentangled; they descended. The moon is planetary, look you, she is ductile; but with gentilezza, with decorum, with a silken thread. The long hands were unbraiding, ordering the ropes. The great device came meekly to his pull. See now: the tackling passes through these rocchetti—so—"

That by cogging she may climb? said Ben. A whore’s trick.

It is Italian. The moon lay now in Signior Surveyor Jones’s hands, broader than an alderman’s bowl. A drum of parchment.

Ben, half unwilling, was fascinated: And the candles?

So: behind this wicket. But a lamp. Smirking, Inigo Jones unlatched. "See now: this vial of glass—Venetian—that will throw the beams; the back of silvering. I have made the schema for the Prince, in silverpoint. Will have it vellum-bound."

Is he a child to play with whirligigs?

But Inigo had done with words. He clapped his hands. Bis, bis.

The smaller consort of music now was gathered, tuning; solemnly, they bleated, scrawked and mewled. The dancing master took his herd of satyrs through their footings: an antick dance full of gesture and swift motion. Up and down, up and down, went Selene, bobbing like a milkmaid in a morris jig: swift now, but barely seemlier. The antimasquers mopped and mowed; their ape-leader raved and shrieked; the fiddles clicketed and caterwauled. Absurd. Ben boomed. My lady must beware, lest she scorch Endymion and cancel all his progeny. Thump, thump, scrawl, twitter, thump.

Ferrabosco leaned to him. No one marks thy wit, Ben. Nor will heed my music. Our best invention is a serving dish for Jones’s moon.

Pox rot it for a Suffolk cheese. A snort. The King at least will have no eyes for lantern-lerry. A thumb at the satyrs, sweating well now, shirtless: hairy-haunched, broad-chested, brown (with walnut juice, for want of Phoebus’ bold regard). They leapt, o’erleapt each other, clattering with their hooves. Their figures ended in collision and a heap.

And at the rapping of the Master Surveyor’s stick, a stillness. Feet, viols, voices, sackbuts, shawms: all silent. Servants bore away the branches in the room: so it was dusk. And vanishing behind a painted crag, a snub-nosed prentice of the Master’s took a rushlight.

One and two. And with a sweep of arms, a solemn music. Now: ascent. The Moon herself, as Peter Quince had dreamed, upsailing through the hall turned heavens, high and disposedly. Her light indwelt in her, cast living shadows on the wall: a greater faerie than was painted, sawn, or stitched.

O marvellous.

Mere awe. And then as if the wonder were a white stone cast into a pool, their stillness broke into a thousand waverings and ripples of delight.

The Master in his cockscomb of a velvet cap upswept a pointing finger—marginalia to the revelation. And look you, there is art.

Eclipsed, thought Ben. The spirits come when he does call for them. He bowed ironically. Signior, I stand as Joseph with the ox and ass: a cuckold to the light.

A pattering and stir, as if the wind would turn—but Monsignior Mountebank held sway, all eyes upon his scene: all obscure, as Ben had written and the carpenters had made: nothing . . . but a dark rock, with trees beyond it, and all wildness. Like Moses—if the patriarch were but a tetchy Welsh Cockney with Italian airs—the Surveyor struck the rock.

It parted with a creak and thunder, like a cart on cobblestones—and wonderments gushed forth. There the whole scene opened, and within was discovered the frontispiece of a bright and glorious palace,whose gates and walls were transparent.

Transfixed, they all—the tirewomen, tailors, broiderers, the singing boys, musicians, satyrs, sylvans, Faies, aye, Phosphorus himself, his fiery wings half tacked—stood murmuring.

Again the rumble and the groan.

Sphere after sphere, thought Ben: like Jack Donne diving through his mistress’s petticoats. Now gown; now smock; now anywhere. Perspective to the cleft.

Again, the great enchanter raised his staff. Struck once. The palace opened to his spell, discovering a nowhere, painted gorgeously. Here within, the fairies with their lights, immingled with the ladies of the court. A stride. Within, afar off in perspective, the knights masquers sitting in their several sieges. Another stride. At the further end of all— He’d reached

Reviews for Exit, Pursued by a Bear

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am really enjoying these little vignettes of "Ben Jonson foils crime so effectively no one knows he did it." Plus faeries. Like the first one, "Cry Murder! In a Small Voice," it's written in so dense a period style it's difficult to make out unless you have practice with it (and even then...) but it's intensely rewarding if you do.