Chapter Two
Theatre Royal
Captain Jack Absolute marched forward, his eyes reflecting the
flames of a hundred candles.
“There will be light enough; there will, as Sir Lucius says, ‘be
very pretty small-sword light, though it won’t do for a long shot.’” He raised
an imaginary pistol, “fired” it with a loud vocal “boom,” then added, “Confound
his long shots!”
This last, delivered in an exaggerated Irish brogue, conjured a huge
roar of laughter from the pit and a smattering of applause from the galleries.
The bold Captain had a way with him!
Or was that just the actor playing him?
In the pit, the real Jack Absolute had suffered more than enough. He
rose and squeezed through the tiny gap between knees and the backs of benches,
trying to obscure as little of the stage as possible, though his kindly efforts
were rewarded with cries of, “Sit down, sirrah,” and “Unmannerly dog! Woodward
is speaking!” From above, the actors glared down at him before continuing the
scene.
The evening had been a nightmare.
Only one week back in London, his legs still moving as if the deck of the East
India Company sloop and fifty fathoms of water were beneath him, he had been
forced to sit and watch this parody of his past. Jack had learned of his new
notoriety when, on his first day back, he’d taken a chair from the City to
Covent Garden and the chairmen, on discovering his identity from the banker
who’d handed Jack in, had called out to all they passed that they had the
“real” Jack Absolute inside. A crowd had followed, calling out his name.
Thereafter, every clerk, innkeeper and trader he’d been introduced to had
inevitably said, “You’re not that Jack Absolute, are you?” And when, in a fury,
he’d tracked his old friend Sheridan down, the rogue had barely blinked at his
misappropriation of Jack’s name and history.
“But you was gone seven years, Jack. We all thought you was dead.
You was lucky, actually. I beat poor Ollie Goldsmith—God bless his memory!—to
the name by a hair. He would have used it in She Stoops to Conquer.
Then you’d have been that st-st-stuttering booby Marlow, rather than the
dashing, handsome Captain of my Rivals.”
Dashing? Handsome? The ever-popular Mr. Woodward, who personated
Jack, was sixty if he was a day, and no amount of face paint and kindly,
low-level candlelight could conceal the wrinkles. As for the play itself, Jack
had to concede that Sheridan had a sharp memory and sharper eye. Jack’s
youthful escapade had been captured in almost every detail. His onstage father,
Sir Anthony Absolute—at least the playwright had had the minor decency to alter
his name from James—was a perfect study of the tyranny, humor, and incipient
insanity of the original. The object of desire, Lydia Languish, was modeled on
just such a mix of beauty and romantic imbecility. However, Jack knew he
needn’t stay till the epilogue. This story would resolve in universal
reconciliation and joy. Unlike the original. Perhaps that was what galled Jack
the most, propelled him now from the auditorium; that Sheridan had usurped his
youthful folly for a romantic comedy, when the reality was more of a farce and,
in the end, almost a tragedy. The then nineteen-year-old Jack had not ended up
with the lady—as his stage incarnation undoubtedly would this night—indeed, he
had nearly died in his attempt to carry her off. And, having failed, he had
begun the first of his many extended exiles from England.
Fortunately, he had good reason not to remain and witness further
banality—for another exile would commence tonight. A coach stayed for him at
his inn, as a boat stayed for the tide in Portsmouth. After seven years away,
he had been in the realm for as many days, long enough to deal with the affairs
that now took him hence again, with a line of credit from Coutts Bank to
transform the sugar plantation on Nevis in the Antilles, which his recent
skill, acumen, and simple bloody-mindedness in India had won him. He just had
two matters to attend to first. Two people to see. A man and a woman.
He gained the side aisle and advanced to the stairs. The first of
those people had a box. All that was required was a brief, courteous refusal of
that man’s offer, followed by a visit backstage for an equally swift, if
potentially more passionate, farewell.
Could it have been only one week? In that short time, had one of the
most powerful men in the realm sought a favor and one of its most desired
ladies sought to seduce him? And now, in the space of five minutes, was he to
refuse them both? He could not wait to return to the sea. Life was so much
simpler aboard a ship.
A ticket collector tried to halt his progress upstairs, but a coin
gained him passage. There was an officer at the box door, wearing the uniform
that Jack himself had once worn—ensign of the 16th Light Dragoons, the smartest
regiment in the Cavalry. But the young man recognized Jack, and his Commander
had obviously left word that he was to be shown in promptly.
Jack would have preferred a moment to ready himself. To refuse the
man inside was no light thing. But the heavy brocade curtain was immediately
slid back. Hearty applause seemed to greet his entrance, though, in truth, it
was paying farewell to his stage incarnation’s exit Stage Left and the end of
Act Four. The Theatre Royal immediately filled with the cries of hawkers
selling refreshments, while the orchestra struck up an air for the entr’acte,
an Italian acrobat team called the Zucchini Brothers, just now making their
entrance, Stage Right.
“Faith! There’s the finest piece of stage trickery I’ve seen all
night. Jack Absolute’s coattails are still visible in the wings…and here the
man stands in my box!”
“General.”
Out of long habit Jack nearly saluted but remembered in the nick
that he was no longer in the regiment and was there to refuse that honor again.
So the arm gesture transformed into a rather awkward half-bow, which the
General would not have failed to miss. John Burgoyne missed nothing.
“Cognac?” A glass was tendered, accepted, gulped. The liquor was
even finer than Sheridan’s.
Burgoyne had absorbed the years far more kindly than the actor Mr.
Woodward. Though his hair was as white as the snow on the ground outside, it
was a drift, not a scattering. Black sideburns emerged from its banks like
curled highlights for the strong, straight jaw; while equally dark, full
eyebrows sheltered and set off the deep-set, gray eyes. Eyes that showed the
intelligence of a man recently appointed to one of the highest commands in the
army, who could also pen a play, Maid of the Oaks, which
had enjoyed even more success than Sheridan’s Rivals.
Those eyes sparkled now with the joy of the joke, which he was all too eager to
share with a figure Jack could barely make out in the corner of the box.
“This is the fellow of whom I was
telling you,” Burgoyne spoke to the shadows there, “whose history has been so
diverting us tonight. My dear, allow me to present the real Jack Absolute.
Jack, Miss Louisa Reardon.”
The shadow shifted, a face came into the light, and Jack took a
moment—for it was worth the study. Eyes the color and pattern of eastern jade,
a delicate nose surmounting an “O” of a mouth, gold and russet-red hair falling
in waves, framing skin that, wanting any touch of make-up, wanted nothing. The
voice, deep in timbre yet light in delivery, was as velvet as the skin.
“This the heroic Captain? The ardent lover?”
Jack bowed over the hand offered, his lips brushing it before he
spoke. “I am sorry to disappoint, madam. A captain no longer, heroic or
otherwise. And as for the ardent lover…well, surely, that is not for me to
say?”
“But have the ladies of London been given the opportunity to
discover it for themselves?”
It was said matter-of-factly, with a lack of flirtation that made it
all the more beguiling. And there was something intriguing in the accent, a
memory. While he sought it out, Jack replied, “Perhaps fortunately for
everyone, that sort of exploration requires time, which is not available.”
“A pity. I am certain there are…some ladies who would find the true
Jack Absolute more compelling than his onstage counterpart.”
“Compelling codswallop! Younger and more handsome is what you would
say, is it not?” A smile had come to Burgoyne’s face as he witnessed the
exchange. “I tell you, Jack, here have I been at my most gallant and charming
all evening, and the most I have got in return is genteel civility. Yet the
moment you walk in—”
“It was mere observation, General,” said Louisa Reardon, laughing.
“With so many gallant officers abroad in the service of their King, the Captain
would have made a welcome addition to the society of the town. And,” she leaned
forward, tapping her fan into her hand, “I have only behaved with such reserve
toward you, because we are nearly alone in this box…” She gestured to a rotund
maid who sat in the far corner, soundly snoring, “…and I was concerned that if
I admitted merely one of your addresses I should not be able to resist any of
them.”
Burgoyne gave out a sharp bark of laughter. “Ah, Jack. You may now
guess how my poor wits have been addled in our exchanges of fire tonight. If I
did not know you was coming as reinforcement, I should have fled this field
long ago. And as to the time needed for ‘exploration,’ how does at least five
weeks at sea suit? For Miss Reardon is to sail with us on HMS Ariadne.
She returns to her family in New York.”
Ah! That was the memory, the accent. He would have liked to converse
more with her, for he had often found the women of the Colonies to have an
openness, a lack of guile that was most attractive. But the General had
returned to business. So, sighing, Jack did too.
“Sir, that news makes what I must say all the more regrettable.”
He watched the smile vanish from Burgoyne’s face and pressed on
before any other expression could replace it. They had been through much
together over the years and he hated to disappoint him.
“I am aware of the immense honor you do me, sir, in offering to
reappoint me to the Dragoons. And it is with a heavy heart that I must refuse
you.”
“What’s that? Refuse?” Burgoyne’s warmth had been replaced by a
dangerous coolness. “It would not be me you refused. It would be your King.
Your country.”
“I am aware that is how it could be perceived.”
Burgoyne snorted. “Could be? Will be! England is at war with damn’d
Rebels in a land you know better than almost any man in the realm. And you
would refuse to go to her aid? There’s no ‘could’ about it.”
Jack tried to keep the color from his voice, though he was aware it
had flushed his face. “With respect, sir, there are many here who also refuse.
Many, even, whose sympathies are with those Rebels.”
“Yes, and I well remember how often your own sympathies have sided
with so-called freedom’s cause. That Irish mother of yours, God bless the
memory of her beauty! But this is different, sir. You are an officer of the
Crown. Dammit, you are an officer of my own regiment.”
“Was, sir. I resigned my
commission eleven years ago, as you well know, since you struggled long to
dissuade me from doing so. And I have since been with the East India Company
and about my family’s business.”
“Family be damned! This is the King’s business. Have you forgotten
your oath?”
Burgoyne had stood to face Jack, his voice rising in volume as it
had deepened in tone. It could have carried across a parade ground. Many in the
surrounding boxes had left watching the leaping Italians to stare.
It was Louisa who calmed them. “Captain…Mr. Absolute. May an
American speak? One who does not side with these ‘damn’d rebels’?”
Both men nodded, giving ground slightly.
“The General has confided a little of how he intends to subdue these
traitors. Just as much as he thinks a simple girl can understand. But I was
raised in a family that has fought for the Crown for three decades. As we
speak, my father commands a Loyalist regiment in the field.”
“A damned fine one too!” Burgoyne growled. “And he pays for their
uniforms and powder out of his own pocket.”
Jack looked again at Miss Reardon. He had never found an attractive
woman less attractive for being rich.
“Thank you, General,” she said. She turned again to Jack.
“He tells me that His Majesty’s Native Subjects are the key to
winning the war.”
Jack smiled slightly. He was glad Até was not there. “If the General
is referring to the Six Nations of the Iroquois, they are not ‘subjects,’ Miss
Reardon. They have never been subject to the Crown. They are His Majesty’s
Native Allies.”
“The General also tells me that you know these…allies, better than
any man alive.”
“I would not say that, necessarily, Miss—”
“Don’t dissemble, Absolute.” Burgoyne had lowered his voice under
the lady’s influence but the anger had not left it. Turning to her, he said,
“The man lived as one of them for several years. He speaks their tongue as a
native. Under that silk shirt and embroidered jacket his chest is covered with
their skin paintings. You should see them!”
“Indeed. That would be most…educational.” She allowed the faintest
of smiles before she went on. “But do you agree with the General? Are they
essential to winning this war?”
“I have no idea of the Crown’s specific plans—”
“But speaking generally. Can the war be won without them?”
Jack sighed. This beauty was boxing him in. “If the war is to be
fought in the north, from Canada down, then…probably not. I am sure you are
aware of the wildernesses where any campaign will be conducted. Vast tracts of
forest with hardly a road fit for the name. My brothers—excuse me, the Iroquois
Nations—know that land, can forage, scout, and skirmish where marching
regiments cannot. And they provide the information necessary for those
regiments to bring all their force to bear when appropriate. No, Miss Reardon,
in truth, the war cannot be won without them.”
He forestalled her next point. “But I…I have no real influence with
these people. I have been gone eleven years and new leaders will have arisen
whom I do not know. I can speak the language, yes, and I know their ways. I am
indeed useful to the General. But I am not essential. And I have spent seven
years in India trying to rebuild the fortune my father lost on the turn of one
card. If I do not get to our new estates in Nevis in the West Indies, with the
profits I have labored long for, the Absolute fortunes may be lost again. And
many people will suffer, not just my family.”
He turned to Burgoyne. The anger had left the General’s face and it
now bore the look that Jack had feared more than any other—disappointment.
Nevertheless, he kept his voice steady. “And so, sir, I have, most reluctantly,
to refuse your gracious offer.”
“And if duty to your sovereign and your country cannot move you,
what of your loyalty to me?” His voice softened and he looked directly into
Jack’s eyes, though his words appeared to be for Louisa. “For it is not only
his native connections I need, Louisa. The man before you is the finest field
intelligence officer I have ever known. He could discover information in the
deserts of Araby, simply by talking to the camels. He has a way with codes and
ciphers that perplexes a mere horse-trooper such as I. And wars are won by
information more than by powder and shot. Absolute here can sniff it out
swifter than my hound can start a hare.” He paused and his hand reached out to
rest on Jack’s shoulder. “You know how I need you. Will you not come?”
This appeal, so gently spoken, was far harder to counter than any
cross word and Jack winced. He owed this man many times over; for his first
commission at the age of sixteen, for countless opportunities since. They had
fought together in Portugal and Spain. In 1762, in the mad attack at Valencia
de Alcantara, he had saved this man’s life—and among the Iroquois that meant he
owed a far greater debt than if his life had been saved by the General. In so
many ways, Burgoyne was the father that Jack had lost when Sir James Absolute
went mad because the card he’d turned over at the Pharo table had been a queen
and not a king.
Yet there was no choice. Possible ruin lay in a change of heart.
“I am so sorry. General. Miss Reardon. A safe voyage to you both, I
trust.”
He bowed, turned to go. Burgoyne’s
voice came, still more softly. “You have a night and a day to change your mind,
Mr. Absolute. But a word of advice, whether you accept my commission or no. Watch
your back. Or get that savage, your shadow, to watch it for you. I was so
certain you’d accept that I told everyone that you already had. And as you
pointed out, London is full of those…sympathetic to the Rebel cause.”
Jack frowned, then nodded, left the box, made his way down the
stairs and toward the street. Gaining it, he paused, looked up and down. Now
that Burgoyne had drawn attention to it, he realized his “back” had felt
strange for some days, as if someone was indeed eyeing it, him. He’d put it down
to the mobbed streets of London, so very different from India. Now, as he
studied the people swaying back and forth, the audience taking the air, hawkers
and whores selling their respective wares, he knew it would be impossible to
tell if anyone was interested in him as anything other than a customer.
In a doorway opposite, Até stood where he had all evening, startling
the passers-by. He hated the theater—unless they were playing Shakespeare; and
even then he was a purist. The happy endings appended to Lear
or, especially, Hamlet, infuriated him. And despite his
mission school education, Até still felt that by portraying Jack in a drama
they were somehow stealing his soul.
At the slight shake of Jack’s head, the Mohawk slipped back into the
darkness. Now he would wait for Jack to pass and follow him at a distance, to
see if his friend was being stalked. Such caution had saved their lives a score
of times.
Jack turned into an alley. It was the swiftest way to get backstage,
so he took it despite the fetid darkness. The second of his interviews awaited
him there.
Surely, he thought, it cannot be any harder than the first.
***
The necessity for this encounter was Sheridan’s fault. When Jack
had learned of his fame and, in a rage, sought the Irishman out at King’s
Coffee House, the playwright had placated him, initially with three pints of
porter—a nectar Jack had not tasted in seven years—then persuaded him to come
to the theater, where The Rivals was
in rehearsal for its remounting.
“There’s someone I would like you
to meet,” he’d said, taking Jack’s arm.
That someone was Elizabeth Farren.
Dressed as Lucy, the mischievous maid of the play, she was the epitome of all
Jack had missed in his years away, the embodiment of many a youthful passion.
Though small in height, she was perfectly formed—“A pocket Venus,” Sheridan
commented in a whisper, as they watched her rehearse. She was dressed and
made-up as she would appear that night, breasts thrust up and forward, dusted
in a light vermilion powder, speckled with gold. A lace attempted to hold in
the front of the bodice, artfully half undone. It made a man instantly desirous
of completing the task.
It certainly made Jack feel so. No matter that it was all artifice,
that Lizzie merely feigned the wide-eyed country maid. Jack fell.
And later, as they were introduced in the cramped wing
dressing-room, it seemed that Lizzie did too.
When the blushing actress had returned to her acting, Jack, somewhat
flustered also, had told his friend that it must be the introductions that
lured her—for the Irishman had told her that Jack had once written for the
stage, rather than any quality he possessed. This had set Sheridan on a roar.
“P’shaw, Jack! I despise modesty in a man as much as vanity. Have
you looked in a mirror lately? Here. Here!” He pulled Jack round to face the
cracked glass before which lay the potions and creams of transformation. “Four
months on a sunlit sea, the winds buffeting your face? You glow, sir! Look at
any winter-pale Londoner, lord or baker, for comparison. And if you were always
a dark-skinned Cornishman, your years in India have turned you into a positive
native! You could pass as the brother of that Iroquois who follows you around.”
Jack grinned. He often had.
“And that smile. Those blue eyes
that seem all the bluer in their dark setting. And if your nose is slightly
larger than is perfect for proportion and your hell-black hair somewhat longer
than the fashion and lacking in style,” he flicked his own trained locks, “what
of it? I doubt there is a woman in the realm who could resist you. And you
wonder that poor Lizzie fell? Sure now, if she had not been called to the
stage, she’d have had you on the spot, whether I’d been there or no!”
Sheridan had led Jack to a tavern with a slap and a guffaw, and
their friendship was further restored amidst more pots of ale. By the end of an
evening Jack barely remembered the next morning, he had forgiven his friend
everything; indeed, he had a memory of begging the Irishman to write him into a
sequel. And Sheridan had confessed that by pursuing Lizzie Farren, Jack would
be doing him a favor. He was now the manager at Drury Lane as well as its
premier playwright, and John Rich, manager at Covent Garden, was trying to lure
Lizzie away. Nothing would distract her so much as a love affair—at least until
she signed her new contract.
Distracting it may have been. Fulfilling it was not. Between her
hours in the theater and Jack’s chasing of money about the town, they could
snatch only moments from his fast-diminishing store of time. It heightened
their passion. But it left no opportunity to take them from that height.
And that is
where it should be left, Jack had decided in a more
sensible hour.
Yet pausing now between the piles of refuse in the court behind the
theater, he took another good pull at his flask of Sheridan’s cognac, his heart
as dark as his surroundings because of that sensible decision. The Isis stayed for a tide in Portsmouth and then it would be gone
to the West Indies. He had to be on it. But he had grown fond of Lizzie, her
youth, her ardor, even her actorly ways. He was flattered by her attentions,
but he was no longer the Cornish Romeo of his youth, to steal a moment’s
satisfaction from a pretty girl and then be gone with the dawn.
Such was his resolution as he
walked into the wings at Drury Lane. Yet it did not stop him pausing before a
mirror near which the two Italian acrobats were conducting a furious, sotto
voce argument, their gestures indicating that something had gone horribly wrong
onstage. He flicked at his black hair, disheveled by the wind and falling snow
outside.
May as well
leave her with a good memory, he
thought, smoothing the thick locks. He remembered how well actresses loved
their final scene. Grinning, he stuck his tongue out at his reflection.
Lizzie awaited him in the same dressing-room where they’d met. She
was alone, and through the half-open drape that gave onto Stage Right, he could
see the other actors taking their positions. The orchestra struck up. Act Five,
the conclusion of the play, was about to begin.
“Leave? Tonight?” The back of the hand went to the brow, the lower
lip trembled, and water came to the kohl-lined eyes.
“Oh, Jack, my Jack, say it isn’t true!”
It was a damned fine performance.
She wanted this scene and he was still playwright enough to give it to her. But
the scene would require a touch of jealousy on his part, to show her how much
he cared. Glancing around, he spotted the prop he needed, a necklace of rubies
that lay on a velvet glove. They had to be paste, yet they were exquisitely
done.
“Will you miss me that much, Elizabeth, when you have admirers who
send you such gifts? Do you play The Rivals
then, for real?”
“Oh, him!” She ran her fingers down the links. “He is a mere boy!
And…that is not all he gave me, look…” She rolled up her sleeve. Her wrist was
colored with bruises. “He is a brute. When I told him I could not see him
again, that I loved another, he…” She stifled a sob, more genuine this time,
and rubbed her wrist.
Jack felt a tug of real anger, now rapidly displaced by a sudden
thought. “You did not tell him my name?”
“I…may have mentioned it.”
Excellent! All he needed was some incensed lover stalking him
through London on his last night. Was that the regard he’d felt upon his back?
All the more reason to be gone—and swiftly. He would have to gabble his lines.
“Elizabeth, this is farewell. Adieu, my dearest. I will carry you in
my heart to the Indies.”
It was far from his best. But as he swept up from his bow, he saw
that Lizzie had stepped near. Very near.
“Nay, sir,” she said, “you do not intend to leave me without a
kiss?”
“But are you not on soon?”
She turned her head. They listened to the dialogue. “Oh no. It is
the Faulkland and Julia scene. It goes on and on and on. Especially the way
Mistress Bulkley drags out her lines.”
She mimed a yawn, turned back, smiled. “So kiss me, Jack Absolute.
Kiss me for the very last time.”
So he did. Pulled her tight and kissed her as if the kiss could last
forever. The scent of her, some French fragrance rising from her warm body.
That lace, half-undone, at her uplifted breasts. Her hand caught between the
velvet of her dress and his tight, black breeches.
She pressed her fingers into him and, in a voice suddenly more
Deptford than Drury Lane, said, “Ooh, Jack!”
Planned exits and good intentions. Gone in a moment. He pushed her
back, or she pulled him, the table behind swept clear of its potions and
bottles, glass breaking, creams leaking, powder rising through the air. She was
lifting her dress, parting her undergarments. He fumbled at the buttons of his
breeches, heard two rip.
“Jack!” she sighed. “Here. Let me help. Here. Oh…oh!
Yes. Yes! There!”
Four months at sea. Seven years away from England.
Apparently he was still a Cornish Romeo after all.
She was as ready as he. The whalebone of her stays beneath the dress
bent under his pressure, then snapped like bullet shot, a splinter thrusting
into his hip. Jack scarcely noticed—for he was inside her.
There was brief, delightful
resistance and then he was moving slowly deeper. She shuddered, squeezed him
tighter to her, making it hard to force his head down. But he persevered. His teeth
fastened on the lace of her bodice and he jerked free the tormenting half-knot.
“God,” he cried, “I’ve been wanting to do that all week.”
“And I’ve been wanting you to do it.” She giggled and, as his head
rose, bit his ear.
Tongue and teeth, fingers rubbing, lifting, rolling. Her breasts
were as beautiful as their promise. He bent to kiss them, to tease them with
his tongue, then his mouth found hers and she bit him again, his lip; they
tasted his blood together. Her head banged into the mirror, she groaned, but
not in pain. A part of him was aware of the noise they were making, of the
voices onstage grown suddenly louder. And he didn’t care. He saw his face in
the mirror, his hair disheveled again…something else he didn’t care about.
The scent of their lovemaking mingled with spilled creams and French
fragrance. She was moaning, a single note, and he joined her in counterpoint,
somehow a fifth below. Their notes rose, as did the volume from the stage; but
that was another world, beyond them now. Inseparable, their voices entwined,
along with every other part of them, and when they could not be any closer,
they reached their height as one. She turned her head aside then, with a
diminishing sigh of ecstasy. Jack opened his eyes, looked again into the cracked
mirror, saw again a contorted face…and realized, suddenly, that this time it
was not his own.
Banastre Tarleton clutched a long, hot-house rose in one hand, which
was slowly drooping toward the floor. His expression was of greeting, tempered
with shock, rapidly escalating to fury, mirroring Jack’s anger, surprised in
such an intimate act. But the expression of the man who held the dressing-room
curtain aside for Tarleton was quite different. Indeed, the face of the Count
von Schlaben displayed nothing but the purest joy.
The tableau held for a moment. Then Jack was up, taking a step
toward the intruders, his eyes locking with Tarleton’s, his hands busy at the
fastenings of his breeches. Behind him, Lizzie hopped off the table, began
smoothing and adjusting.
The shock on the younger man’s face had now been entirely displaced
by rage. Lifting the rose, he slashed it, like a cavalry saber, across Jack’s
face. Thorns raked him, the bloom snapped off, and the thick stem was drawn
back for a straight thrust toward his eye. To prevent this Jack stepped forward
and grasped Tarleton by the lapels of his jacket. Their faces were almost
touching.
“Enough,” Jack said. “Calm yourself, sir.”
The words had the opposite effect. Tarleton went berserk.
“Dog!” he yelled, grabbing Jack’s
hands, bending his knees, thrusting up. Jack’s feet lifted and he was rushed
backward. Bracing himself to collide with Lizzie, or the dressing-table, he
encountered neither. A drape was brushed aside; there was a sudden, intense
brightness and a vast space opening behind his propelled body. A woman
screamed, there were shouts, and Jack, sailing backward, instinctively dropped
into a move that he’d rarely practiced since his youthful wrestling with the
village lads in Zennor, let his weight drop down and backward, and, as Tarleton
fell toward him, brought his legs up. When his back reached the floor, he
planted his feet in his assailant’s chest and used the man’s rush to launch him
over his head.
There was a huge crash. Jack felt
the reverberations shudder through the wooden floor beneath him. There were
further gasps, some shouts of “Shame!” one of “Bravo!” and then a face loomed
above him. It was painted, eyes shadowed and highlighted, cheekbones sculpted
in powder.
“What do you do here, sir?” hissed the actor.
Jack turned his head and looked out at a host of upturned faces. And
the audience of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, looked back.
In an instant he was on his feet. His first thought was of his
opponent, but the fall had winded Tarleton, who was now struggling to rise,
Stage Left. Meanwhile, making her entrance, was Lizzie. She rushed across to
him with well–supported cries of, “Jack! Oh Jack!” A pace behind her was the
Count von Schlaben.
There was a silent moment, time slowing. Lizzie came into his arms.
The two other actors retired upstage to stare. His head turned again to the
auditorium. The audience had settled back, to enjoy this fresh subplot and all
these new actors. Jack felt his hand rise slowly to his face. There was blood there,
from the rose’s thorns and Lizzie’s bites. An inner voice spoke. Sheridan,
it said, somewhat bitterly, I know you will write this.
Then noise returned along with time’s normal pace. Von Schlaben
helped the winded Tarleton to his feet.
The youth croaked, “You cur! You will give me satisfaction.”
It was spoken in barely a whisper. From the footman’s gallery,
someone yelled, “Speak up!”
Jack whispered to Lizzie, who was now staring frozenly into the
auditorium, “Come. Let us leave.”
He managed to turn her. They even took a step. Then Tarleton’s hand
closed on his arm.
“Did you not hear me, sir? You have come between me and my love. And
you will suffer for it.”
This carried to the back of the pit. “Ooh,” went the audience.
Jack let Lizzie take a step before him. He turned, took Tarleton’s
hand, bent it back at the wrist.
“You have now touched me twice, sir. Do not make the mistake of
doing it a third time.”
“Ah,” sighed the house.
He pushed the younger man away.
“And your answer, sir? You have wronged my friend. He has demanded
satisfaction.”
This was softly spoken, yet still carried. Von Schlaben did not have
to speak loudly to be heard.
“Go on, fight him,” someone yelled from a box.
Another voice countered, “For shame, sir.”
Jack’s gaze moved over the enthralled faces below before settling on
the Count’s. “This gentleman had no prior claim to the lady’s affections. She
is free to choose and chose me. That is all. I will not fight for a boy’s
petulance.”
“That’s good,” someone cried,
“awfully good.” There was a patter of applause.
“Perhaps you do not understand, Captain. My young friend will have
redress for his injuries. As an officer of the King, are you not unable to
refuse him?”
Jack smiled. Dueling was illegal, yet soldiers found it hard to turn
down a challenge, the disgrace to their uniform. Some had been cashiered for
doing so.
“But I am not an officer, sir. I
resigned my commission eleven years ago.”
He had half-turned away. The absurdity of the situation was becoming
too clear to him. He needed to get away from this public arena.
He wasn’t halfway there before Tarleton spoke again.
“Then you put aside your courage when you put off your uniform. You,
sir, are a coward.”
The word sailed up into the flies of the Theatre Royal, hung there
like a backcloth waiting to drop for a change of scene. Two thousand pairs of
eyes fixed upon him as Jack turned back.
“Now that,” he said, “is a very different matter.”
“Ah,” was the sound released from two thousand mouths. Then there
was loud and universal applause. Stage managers appeared in the wings and took
this chance to rush onto the stage and sweep the nonprofessional actors off it.
They gathered. Lizzie was swooning, comforted by a dresser who had
appeared with a bottle of sal volatile for her to sniff. Von Schlaben had taken
charge of the formalities.
“My card, Captain Absolute. Do you have a friend with whom I can
arrange the affair?”
“I’d be happy to act for him.”
Jack turned to the voice, hearing the Irish lilt in it.
“Sheridan. Thought you wouldn’t miss this drama. Been taking notes?”
“Indeed, Jack. It is lodged in here.” The playwright tapped the side
of his head. “Wonderful line, by the way—‘Now that is a very different matter.’
Beautifully delivered. You missed your vocation.” He turned back to the Count.
“Sheridan is my name. I do not have a card. But I will be acting for the
Captain.”
“Will you all stop referring to me as ‘the Captain’? I’m no longer a
damned captain!”
Von Schlaben smiled at him. It was the second time Jack had seen him
do so and it remained a thoroughly unpleasant sight. “So, Mr. Sheridan,” he
said, “where and when?”
The two men moved away to discuss terms. Jack looked to Lizzie where
she seemed to be recovering under the attentions of her dresser. She raised a
“brave” face to him; then, looking across to his rival, seemed to swoon again.
Jack also looked to Tarleton. He was rubbing the wrist Jack had
twisted. It was his left wrist, which was disappointing, for he was obviously
right-handed—his sword straps hung on the left side. Just as well he’d left his
sword in the cloakroom, as audience members were encouraged to do; though Jack
knew he’d be seeing a sword in the man’s hand soon enough.
Jack began to curse himself—for not sending a note to Lizzie with
his farewells, for not already being on the road to Portsmouth, for being
tricked into this cursed fight. He suspected trickery from the triumph he’d
noted in the Count’s gray eyes. He hoped to discover the reason and soon. He
did not want to die in ignorance.
Sighing, he headed for the world. He needed more cognac and some
paper. He had a will to make. And it would take no time at all.
Sneak peek at The Blooding of Jack Absolute (Nov. 2013)
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