King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

the boy! Our cue is next! We need him!”
    I didn’t think this time either, I just jumped in again—and this time my brain nearly died of shock when it heard what I said.
    â€œI can do it,” I said. “I know the scene.”
    Theater people can move very fast sometimes. In that theater particularly, I guess they were used to people being able to jump into other people’s parts in an emergency. Before you could blink, the book-keeper whipped off the French soldier’s surcoat I was wearing, and the tireman pulled Roper’s jerkin off his back and onto mine. Thomas grabbed up Roper’s pages from somewhere and thrust them under my nose, for a quick frantic reminding look, and then fireworks were being set off onstage in a sequence of huge bangs, and clouds of smoke from a crude smoke machine being puffed out from a backstage bellows, for the battle effects, and Pistol grabbed my arm. And we were on.
    The first few lines of that scene belong just to Pistol and the French soldier, fortunately. It gave me a chance to get my bearings, before the dreaded cue.
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    â€œCome hither, boy; ask me this slave in French
    What is his name.”
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    I almost shouted my line, I was so nervous:
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    â€œÃ‰coutez: comment êtes-vous appelé?”
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    I forget the actor’s name, but he sounded marvelously French. “Monsieur le Fer,” he said.
    The next line was easy to remember. I said to Pistol:
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    â€œHe says his name is Master Fer.”
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    Pistol rolled his drunken eyes. “Master Fer! I’ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him—discuss the same in French unto him.”
    There was a ripple of laughter from the audience, and a drunken voice from the yard shouted, “Ferret him! Ferret him!” But my next line came into my head too.
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    â€œI do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.”
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    That got a real laugh, probably helped by the fact my voice went up into a squeak because I was so scared—and then suddenly I was all right, I was the Boy, I was acting, and we went sailing through the scene, loudmouthed Pistol and the terrified French prisoner and me. I picked up the cues, I remembered the French speeches—there were only two really—and the audience carried us along. The other two were really good actors, caricature-funny; the groundlings loved them.
    My only bad moment was my last speech, the Boy alone onstage after the other two have gone off; I did an awful lot of thribbling. But I was helped by the fact that I’d come way downstage, so that I was right on top of the groundlings: I fixed my eyes on one man near the front, with a round red face and two front teeth missing, and said everything right to him. It was a perfect eye contact; he was gaping at me, fascinated. And I did remember to say the last line, telling that the English camp was guarded only by boys—and that was the most important, because what happens then is that the French invade the camp and murder all the boys, and that makes King Henry truly furious.
    So it all went okay, and I slipped offstage as the Frenchsoldiers came running on the other side. I’m not sure the audience ever knew or cared that they’d been watching a different Boy from the last one they’d seen. A boy was a boy; what they cared about was the story.
    In the tiring-house I ran straight into Roper, and he threw his arms around me. He smelled terrible, because of having thrown up. I guess he knew that, since he let me go almost at once, but he stood there looking at me very seriously. He said, “I thought I was dead. Tha saved my life.”
    â€œAnd me only a little lass,” I said.
    Roper looked down at his feet. He said, rather muffled, “Tha saved me a beating too. Missing that cue—missing that scene—Master Burbage would have—”
    â€œCut off thine ears,” I said. “One by one, very slowly, inch by