The final part of this quartet, the “autumn” play, is perhaps my favorite, and was created for the original performer, Kyle McReddie, as a way to push his limits as an actor, and honor the time we’d spent together all through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were the princiapal members of one another’s “pods.” Written in the last days of the last month of the official lockdown era of San Francisco (which started before everyone else and went on longer than anyone else) this meditation on life and death was very much me coming to terms with everything I’d lost in 2019 and 2020, including my long term partnership, and the home we’d shared, as well as the theater community I’d spent more than a decade building. Since by this point everyone was vaccinated, we actually had over forty people attend this performance live, in the theatre, while it was live-streamed on the internet, and from what had always been my “favorite seat” in the theater, I watched the show with my former partner by my side, and many of our friends around us, everyone masked still, but you could feel the beaming as got to, once again, share in the special but fleeting magic that is live theatre.
THE DEATH AND LIFE OF WILLIAM BORN ADELIN
by Stuart Eugene Bousel
(Nighttime. The English Channel. A lone rock, the top tip of a submerged reef, on which Adelin sits, under a clear night sky in the late autumn. Moonless, but filled with stars and the water is calm, not exactly smooth as glass, but smooth enough that it seems he sits in the middle of space, suspended in the universe, like an insect in amber or a flower in a crystal ball. His robe is simple, open, over a tunic and leggings. His feet are bare and he wears no jewelry but a single, gold circlet around his head. It’s a crown, but it could also be a halo. In spite of being surrounded by water, he is bone dry. He speaks to the audience, casually, in a friendly manner. He has an abundance of time.)
ADELIN
On the day this rock I sit upon tore the bottom out of the boat that bore us all in it, I was seventeen years old, married, and the crown prince of England.
I was not alone. Some three hundred souls who were a who’s who of the English and French royal courts went into the channel with me. At least a dozen of them were related to me. At least four times that considered me their friend, and I considered at least half of those mine. All of them were, on the surface at least, loyal to me and the crown I was once destined to bear upon my head. But below the surface, as soon we all were, it was every man, woman, and child out for themselves. It was every soul seeking to breath just a little longer, and wishing they’d learned how to swim. And had my half-sister, Matilda, not called for me, as the waves dragged her down just like all the rest, I’m not sure that I would have been any better than that sad wreck of fools, for I had been rescued and I would have been safe. But since I went back for her, and since it was because of that choice that I too drown that day, I come off better then all the rest, and in History’s Eye I look a martyr in a sea of never-would-be heroes and villains, all lost in the prologue to a time that can glamorously be thought of as The Anarchy, but which at worst we
who have had the luxury of sitting it out from the sidelines can see, quite clearly, was merely chaos. And not even chaos with a capital “c”. Just the everyday kind that we usually dub “life.”
My name was… is… William, born Adelin, named for my grandfather, William the Conquerer who once crossed this channel the English think of as theirs, to make both sides of the water, his. Crossed, and conquered. And now we’re all living up to that bar, with lessening success at it. My father was the late King Henry, first of his name by the by, and I was also brother to the Empress Matilda, us both children of a Matilda. At sixteen I became husband to yet another Matilda. We never had a chance to have children. So I am, myself, father to nobody, but the era which of confusion, loss, and discovery which followed, burst from my death the way Pegasus is said to have been born from the severed neck of Medusa. An interesting birth for a legend, to be sure. To be born from a myth only to become one yourself seems to me a great triumph against oblivion. Sadly, the most interesting thing about me, is that I died. My Pegasus Envy rusheth over. But then, what makes most things interesting, is that they die. And nearly everything dies. Or becomes a constellation. Look up and see Pegasus for an illustration.
Here. We shall do it together.
(He looks up.)
Of course, stars also die. By the time I died a good number of the ones we could see were already on their last legs and by the time I find myself speaking to you there’s been more than a handful which have joined them. One or two have even vanished all together. Well, not completely. If you look you can see a space where they were and it is somehow darker than the rest. The thing is, we see the light of the dead star long after its source has been extinguished: the legacy lingers on, more than lingers, really. It practically infects. Invades. Pushing itself into the present to make a bid for the future, much like a drowning man- or woman, or child- making one last grasp, or two, why not?- for a bit of driftwood, even when it is obvious that wood won’t be drifting much longer either. Nothing likes to think of itself not being here tomorrow and why should stars be any different? Coming from where they do, looking at us, we must seem like a real possible hand-hold at the top of the pit they’re sliding into and standing where we are, looking up at them, so it seems the same, and that’s why we name them, put our names on them, call them Perseus and Cassiopeia and Andromeda and what-have-you. Pegasus. All so we can feel like there’s something out there which is both knowable and permanent. And yet, it’s the ones that fall we wish upon. Of course, those aren’t actually stars. But it’s it nice to think they were, isn’t it? To wish upon those that fall that somehow we may yet rise up and fly away.
I know what you’re thinking: he knows an awful lot about astronomy for someone who died in the twelfth century. The early twelfth century I might add. Well, We Who Came Before You were generally speaking far more aware of how the universe worked than you tend to imagine us. And We Who Can’t Seem to Pass Into Eternity Just Yet have the benefit of learning a thing or two over time, past our mortal time. It’s the consolation we get for not dying, completely, when everything else dies, entirely. Which it does. Eventually. I hope.
Oh, do not be sad about that: it’s a good thing. It’s a blessing, really. Death lends meaning. It is the finiteness of things which endows them with gravitas and causes us to reflect. So without Death there would be no weight to anything, and without weight, we’d never feel the need to reflect and reflection is important. Reflection is the reason we rest on our journey, our journey which, like everything else, is also doomed to end, but then to start again, though perhaps not with us as the center of it. Or looking like we do. Or like we did. Perhaps, for instance, once we were a shining star, and now we are a bit of darkness that is just a tiny bit darker than the rest. Is one more handsome than the other? Certainly. But that’s not the point. The point is: the individual thing- be it prince, or half-sister, flying horse or star- is not eternal, the cycle of creation and negation and creation is the only thing that is eternal, the only thing that doesn’t die, but if there aren’t interruptions within that cycle, if there aren’t moments when, perched over temporarily calm seas, we aren’t met with our own image and asked to hold its gaze, then the individual cycles have no significance, they are merely wheels turning within wheels, the gears of some clock made for beings untroubled by the limits of existence because they are unaware of them and thus can’t be bothered to think of much beyond themselves let alone Beyond Everything. It is in the Pause of those wheels that each of us forms a cog of that God makes Themself known to us and we makes Ourselves known to God. Death is God’s finger holding the minute hand of Time. So is Birth. And on nights like this, when the channel grows calm even though we’re sitting on the cusp of winter, I rise from the deep to sit on this rock and listen to the Pause. And if you happen to be passing, be it in coracle or skiff, longboat, rowboat, tugboat or aircraft carrier, you may see me. But you also may not. But you will feel me. And you will stop and think for a moment “What does it all mean?” and that is the Divine saying “Hello.” Or just me. But then, I see you, regardless of if you see me. I see all of you. And I hear, too. Even when you don’t hear me. The view from this rock is… exceptional. But then, it had better be. I died on it. And I was a Prince, you know.
(He smiles. A moment. He looks up at the stars, and begins to sing.)
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Upon the sea
Wish upon a star
Adelin Adelin Adelin
First so near
Then so far.
(Another moment.)
They called me Adelin because at the time, there were so many Williams wandering about they nearly outnumbered the Matildas. And there were so many, many Matildas. As I said, my grandfather had been the first William, and my uncle the second, both heads crowned, though one because he took it from someone named Harold- during a time of far too many Harolds- and the other because he had it dropped upon him when the Conquerer finally laid down his arms and went to God. Welcomed, no doubt. One thing we can all agree about my Grandfather is that he made his mark. Do you know that it’s because William conquered Angleland, please note the way I said that, bringing with him the French language to mix into the Anglo-Saxon for the next five hundred years, that modern English language exists? Is is because of William the Conquerer that we have William Shakespeare, and William Wordsworth, and William Carlos Williams, so believe you me, God threw open the gates to Heaven when he died and laid out the good china, no doubt. Sadly, my uncle, William the Second, didn’t live for much too long after his father, which is how my father, his younger brother, became king. But even then, he still called me Adelin. Like my mother, who was also named Matilda, did. And my sister, also named Matilda. And my half-sister, named… well… you get the idea. My wife, named Matilda by the by, called me “Billy.”
I like Adelin. It sounds like a flower, doesn’t it? Like a flower that grows in the early spring, watered by the melting snow, as white as a bone, or the caps of waves, and opening to reveal inside a blue so pure it can only be matched by the mid-day sky and then, just a moment later… the flower is gone. Wilted. A Pause and nothing more. Just a vague space where once there had been an Adelin. And then you can’t remember where, exactly, and so you fill it with something else. Something sturdier. Or prolific. Perennial.
It’s a good name for a boy, isn’t it? Or a girl. Or any child. But it’s hard to imagine for a man, or a woman, really. It sounds affectionate, and thus like something you outgrow. For me it had been meant as a temporary name, always. It was my familiar address, as they say. The one I would have given up when I was crowned king, the one only to be known by to an ever dwindling cabinet of close companions- my mother, my sister, my half-sister, my wife- until one day, when I died too and it would be gone forever, buried, as I would be, under the soubriquet inherited from my grandfather who, as the Conquerer, had counted on at least a few more Williams to reap the rewards he’d sewn. But alas, I was a spring flower. And though there are spring flowers which bloom short and perfect again and again, I was of the variety that doesn’t return. I only made it to the beginning once, which is what makes my story a sad one. But also one that is remembered. Well, or at least one that had impact. After all, so many things wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t died, if I hadn’t gone under the very same waves my grandfather sailed through unhindered and the story of how one boy’s death plunged a whole kingdom into disarray is a good story, isn’t it?
Well, that, and the part where I went back for her. My half-sister. The Other Matilda. When she was drowning. Right before I was. People love that part. They love the part where I went back for her, and they love the part where we both died. Honestly, it’s true. If I’d successfully rescued her I doubt it would have turned into much of a legend because no doubt I would have turned into not much of a king. Just one more William, all trying to equal the first. But it’s because we died, the Other Matilda and I, that it seems heavy with meaning, don’t you see? My story. Think of it like this: everyone loves the story of Orpheus, yes? Well, everyone with a soul. We love the idea of someone risking everything to find us no matter how lost we become. But just as he lost Eurydice, I lost my half-sister Matilda. And just as eventually he lost himself too, so too did I lose myself. And the sadness of that is something we can all connect with, isn’t it? “Boy does something for love and it doesn’t work out.” Reminds you of someone you know, doesn’t it? Or someone you are. “Boy does something for love, pulls it off, becomes king, and dies quietly after a lifetime of small triumphs and petty evils.” Well, that probably also reminds you of somebody or yourself but the musical adaptation is probably not going to going to make for much a slam dunk at the Tony Awards is it? Still, there’s a danger in loving a story we always hope will turn out differently, even though we know it won’t and we secretly wish it wouldn’t. Loving such a story may lead us to make decisions from which there is no return. It may lead us to think, well, if nothing else, they’ll place me amongst the stars after. But what if they do? Those die too. And eventually, even though we see them long after they are gone, they will wink out. To Something, probably God but it’s always good to caveat, to Something, Everything is as brief as an Adelin in the frost. So what’s the point? What’s the point of trying, Orpheus? Unfortunately, we can’t ask him. I suppose we could ask his friends but… nobody can seem to remember their names.
(A moment.)
Honestly, the strangest part is that I died surrounded by others. I died in the arms of someone I loved.
But I’m the only ghost here. I’m the only one.
(He indicates the reef he sits on.)
I suppose there was only room for one. It’s not a very big rock. Above the surface, at least. It’s rather something formidable about six feet down but… well, you all know, you’ve all seen TITANIC. There was one person who survived the whole thing and he made it to this very spot and clung to it till the rescue arrived. Though they say there was another survivor. The captain, no less, of The White Ship. But apparently when he realized I’d been lost he was so afraid of my father’s wrath that he went ahead and rolled back into the sea. And I suppose that’s why I have no company. Not even Matilda. Not even one of the Matildas. Who knew, when we consider how plentiful they were, that Heaven couldn’t spare even one? Though it’s rather unlikely they all went to Heaven. Mother, certainly, and my wife- who became a nun- and my dear half-sister if my prayers are worth anything, but the Main Matilda… well. She wasn’t a terrible person. She was rather a good little girl, I think. But you don’t get to be called Queen, let alone Empress, by staying a good little girl. Though it’s hard to say for sure. It all happened quite some time ago. I think. Timelines are not something I manage well anymore. One can’t, when one exists only in The Pause. But I’m sure she found a way to get her name remembered over the rest. Knowing her. And that can’t have come cheap. Mine cost my life. Hers must have cost her soul. Or at the very least, her peace.
(He looks down to the water, and sings.)
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Sing to the waves
As you sit upon the sea
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Won’t you come to me?
Won’t you come to me?
(A moment. There is no sound but the gentle lap of the waves.)
It’s been a moment and then some since I saw the Sun. Or the Moon. I miss blue. I miss being warm. And I miss clouds. There is a quality to clouds which I have always loved, and loved in the way that breaks a heart open, cuts into it with precision and acuteness unequaled by all but the most beautiful of flowers and the most pure of songs. It is the moment of experiencing perfection, of time and space and luck and intention all coming together for that exact moment and given shape by the drifting, shimmering substance that seems so solid and yet, when revealed in truth, has no more matter to it than the wind created by a butterfly flapping its wings and the drops of dew on a rose petal five seconds before the sun rises. And yet that power of that moment. The solidness clouds can seem to have. How, graced by the endowment that your eye, wandering, or rather searching, tracing over the lines and curves of God’s presence in the unknowable universe, find within it a picture, a face, a smile… and you no longer feel alone. Or mortal. And you breathe so easy. You breathe knowing you have all the time in the world to Get It Right. And then it shifts and changes, as clouds always do, and you feel yourself pass into the shadow as the next one drifts over you, and the next and the next and the next. And you grow smaller, with each one. Or taller, sometimes. It can be very character defining. But either way, you’re not the same anymore and you never will be again. You become some new same. And the clouds, indifferent, keep drifting by. A reminder that there’s always more to come, but not always more that you want. And that just because you were, doesn’t mean you will be. It doesn’t even mean that you are.
(A moment. He lazily dangles a foot into the water.)
There were all these things I had not done.
There were all these sins I had not made peace with.
There were all these blessings I had not yet taken advantage of.
It hurts to think about and yet, as I watch from here, watch all of them, and all of you, I think: It must be so hard to have to change, again and again and again. But the truth is, it’s harder to be stuck, by far. Relish your opportunities to change. To grow. To be hurt. To heal. To grow again. It is to exist, to do all this. It is to survive, to endure it all. It is to live, in those moments, however rare they may be, when you can stand for a second and breathe and know… you made it as far as you did. You made it so far.
There were all these things I did.
There were all these things I had made peace with.
There were all these blessings and I was so lucky.
(He sings, dangling his foot in the water.)
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Sing to the stars
As you sit upon the sea
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Won’t you come to me?
Won’t you come to me?
(He suddenly gasps, and yanks his foot from the water, then immediately he’s perched on his knees and plunging a hand into the waves as if searching for whatever it was that nipped him. He finds it. He sits back on his heels, bringing the offending creature with him. It is a small, feisty, crab.)
Well, well, well. Aren’t you a brave little thing? Lucky for you, I’m not starving and never will be again, though between us and the barnacles, I do love a good bisque. Wouldn’t that be a terrible way to end, though? Bested and basted? I’m sure you don’t deserve it. But then, who ever does? Not really how the world really works, is it?
Not that the world is terrible, but life rather is, don’t you think? Well, maybe not for a crab. But for a human, by the by, it is such constant pain, you see. And I knew that, even in my little bit of time. And I knew that, even as a Prince. I knew that happiness was fleeting, just moments, really, between sorrows, between defeats, between the earth burning and the sea drying up and the sky falling. Joy is even rarer: the seconds before the sinking of the ship. The breaths before drowning. And nothing matters. Well, not true. Everything matters, which means most of it is sort of equitably important and thus not terribly significant. But there are Some Things. Namely those which we can do for one another, while we still have it within us to do them, be it due to our position, or our power, or our proximity. When a hand reaches out for aid, it is the reaching back that resonates for the ages, like Orpheus reaching for Eurydice. The reaching back, or the failure to do so. That is what matters. So of course I went back. In a world of darkness, given the chance to be a light, would not you have done the same? Would you not like to believe that of yourself? I know I like believing that of you. I like believing that, even now, waiving your little claw at me, you’re not trying to ward me off but rather to salutate. You probably think I need help. Or a friend. Both are true. But maybe you’re also just asking me to put you down. That’s the trouble with a reaching out, isn’t it? So much room for misinterpretation. But claws reaching across to one another, for good or ill, is all we really have, isn’t it? And so Eurydice reaches for Orpheus. All right, all right. I’ll put you back. If you see her down there, tell her I don’t regret anything. And that I’m lonely. And that I hope she’s well.
(He gently puts the crab back into the water, watching it till it vanishes.)
We know there is something but We don’t know what it is. Something that was here but now it’s gone and for most of the world it never was. But like everything that ever was, it’s left a place in the darkness that must be filled and We are still learning to fill it. I use the “Royal We” here to include all of us, but also because I am, as I said, royalty. And We are attempting to do Our Part and fill the hole at the center of the universe. But it’s so much bigger than us. It’s like a crown too big for our head. An ocean too deep for our feet to touch bottom. And so we become tangled. And so we drown. But when I was drowning, I wasn’t thinking, “Oh. Well. This is probably going to start a war.” Mostly what I was thinking was “I found her. I found her and her arms are so warm in this cold, cold sea.”
Everything dies. Matilda died. My half-sister, and my full sister too, eventually. Our mother. Our father. My wife. Cousin Steven and young Eustace. All the Henries, all the Eleanors, and all the Henries and Eleanors, Matildas and Richards and Johns and Joans they left behind them. All the Williams. All those Londoners with their terrible hats. Even the Pope. Even you. Even me. Even David. Yes, David, King of Scotland. Though he certainly did live for quite a long time. There’s always one. But eventually everyone who survived me is ashes now. It’s… informative. And comforting. May I, too, one day arrive.
(He settles back into place.)
But for now, I sit on the rock that tore the bottom out of the boat whose shipwreck was my assassination by God. You may have noticed but I do not, contrary to popular beliefs about the undead, glow with an unearthly pallor. I am, rather, a darker part of the darkness, the shadow of the night, a void empty not only of stars, but the possibility of them ever being, or having ever been. And yet if you look, closely, if you peer and peer and peer, you can see something at the center where my heart once was. Something bright and perfect and eternal that, though it has folded in on itself, continues to shimmer from within, like a dormant seed waiting for the spring, sleeping, knowing it will come again. Knowing not with certainty but Hope. The kind that can only exist in the young and which, when you die young, is the one thing you leave the world with, and leave with the world. I died so young, and so hopeful. It was so sad, but please do not be. You and I are both stars. Even dead, our light has thousands of years yet to burn and when at last it goes out and becomes just a hole in the darkness that will just be the beginning of what’s to come. Because something will. Something will come and fill the hole we leave.
Look up. See for yourself. Pegasus bursting forth from the severed neck of Medusa.
(A moment. He curls his knees up under his chin, and lays his head upon them. He sings to himself.)
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Flower of the sea
Crowned like a star
Adelin Adelin Adelin
Now so near
Still so far.
(A long moment. He smiles. He fades into the darkness. The waves lap at the rock. The stars above turn
and the play is done.)
EXIT Theatre, December 16, 2021, on Streamyard as part of the EXIT Presents Web Series. Directed by Nick Trengove. Technical Direction by Richard Livingston. Lighting Design by Curtis Overacre. Photography by Doug Despres. Cast: Kyle McReddie (Adelin). Christina Augello (Hostess).