CHAPTER 2: Fairweather

 “Well, done, well done, indeed!" cried a genial fellow of middle years, bundled up in a greatcoat and slightly shopworn beaver hat. 

The iron juggling hoops were so cold, Tory could scarcely grasp them, but the gentleman disengaged from his lady and tossed a coin into Jack’s upturned straw hat.

"Thank’ee, sir," Tory mumbled in gratitude, remembering not to curtsy like a girl but to make a leg—Jack had shown her how—like the youth she appeared to be.

“Always delighted to honor a fellow artist," the gentleman smiled back as he took up his lady’s arm.

"Aye, Fairweather, you was always generous to the poor pomping folk," his companion agreed, giving his arm a weary, affectionate pat. Her face was pale, despite an ample figure swaddled in mufflers and shawls.

"Put me in mind of my own youth, don’t they?" the gentleman chuckled as they moved off. "Splendid fellows, the lot of 'em . . . "

Tory glanced into the hat. They could no longer afford even the meanest beds, let alone the rooms they had hoped to hire for proper recitations. They had found an unlatched barn to sleep in last night, on the road here to Southampton, the three of them burrowing into the straw of a drafty hayloft, pressed together for warmth around Jack, whose body radiated heat like a forge in even the coldest weather. This morning, they’d had to beg scraps of bread and bacon from a kindly cottager’s wife, which was particularly mortifying to Alphonse. He had always paid his own way in the world since he’d bought himself out of slavery in the islands so many years ago.

She stowed the last hoop in their satchel of props. Alphonse was juggling gourds for a couple of fellows in fisherman’s rig. A post-chaise rattled up to the inn across the street and Tory saw steam rising off the horses in the cold. Then her eye fell again on the gentleman in the greatcoat, hovering over his fragile-looking lady, who had lowered herself to a roadside bench only a few paces away.

"Not another spell, my dear?"

"Ah, Fairweather, it simply won’t do," she sighed. "I can scarcely get about, now. What state shall I be in by Christmas? Seven months along and as big as a house. It simply won’t do for Viola."

"We’ll let out your costumes. Pray, do not distress yourself."

"Fairweather, you are a fool." This said with not the slightest rebuke. "But how are we to explain a Cesario in the family way?"
    
Viola. Cesario. Twelfth Night. Tory and Jack had played bits of it in the Leewards, once they'd taken up the buskers life ashore.    

"Then we’ll give another play, my dear."

"But His Lordship has bespoken Twelfth Night."

"Why, then we’ll pick up another actress . . . "

"Actresses who can give Viola are not to be found under every bush, Fairweather. Especially now, with the season under way."

"We have an entire company of actresses, Mrs. F. I daresay one of ‘em can give an account of Viola."

"But can they do Cesario? Oh, they’re good girls, but they’re chits and matrons, the lot of ‘em . . . "

"I beg your pardon." Tory stood beside them, respectfully ducking her head. "May I be of some assistance?"

"Why . . .  most obliging of you, my good lad," said Mr. Fairweather. "But we have only to cross to the inn, there, and all’s well."

"With your permission," said Tory, offering her arm to the lady. "But I believe I may offer you, ah, another kind of service." She plunged ahead, before she could lose her nerve,

    "It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing
    And speak to him in many sorts of music
    That will allow me very worth his service."

"What, is the boy addled?" murmured Mrs. Fairweather.

"Well, lad, and so you know a bit of the Bard," Mr. Fairweather nodded. "Very commendable, I daresay. But surely you must realize that Viola is a role for a woman."

"I know it, sir." And Tory fished out the long rope of her braided hair from under her shirt, tugged at the ribbon and shook loose the long rusty-dark coils across her shoulders. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Jack, too, was staring at her.

"Forgive me," she hurried on, "I am Victoria Lightfoot and my profession at the moment is as you see, although in happier days, we have been players. We had hoped to find an engagement in a theatrical company, but we are newly arrived in England and it’s late for the season. But when you mentioned Viola . . . well, I thought if I could deceive you in life, might not an audience believe that Cesario could deceive Olivia?"

"I see you know the play, er, Miss Lightfoot," Fairweather began, cautiously. "But I have engaged my company already. And you speak of 'we'," He cast a sidelong glance at Jack and Alphonse. "Pray, what beyond Viola have you to offer me?"

"We can juggle and tumble in the interlude," Tory ventured, her mind racing; normally, she left the bargaining to Jack. "We can play the pantomime, Harlequin, Columbine and Punch."

"Punch?" echoed Fairweather, glancing at Alphonse. "Do you mean Clown? I have lost my usual Clown to Mrs. Baker's Kent circuit."

A novelty, that’s what Jack had said, something to crow about in the bills. "And consider this, sir," Tory hurried on. "Engage me for Viola and you get my, ah, brother, there, for Sebastian." She motioned Jack forward. "No need to disguise some other actor to play my twin. Think of the . . . the novelty, sir, siblings in life to play twins on the stage."

"Why, yes," mused Fairweather, as Jack joined them. "Mrs. Jordan was a success as Viola with her brother for Sebastian, back in the Nineties. Quite a sensation, wasn’t she? And, of course, Kemble and the divine Mrs. Siddons."

Tory had no idea who any of those people were. She wished Jack would say something and stop glaring at her.

"Sir, your sister tells us you are players."

"My . . .  sister . . .  speaks a great deal of nonsense," Jack muttered.

"Why . . .  so . . . you are not players? This is some sort of jest?"

Jack stared at Tory for one more beat.

"This is the air, that the glorious sun," he sighed, at last, turning to the Fairweathers, "And though ‘tis wonder that enwraps me thus, yet ‘tis not madness."

He cast a last brief, withering glance at Tory before turning again the the Fairweathers. "My name is Jack Dance and this is my partner, Alphonse Belair. And I must ask your pardon for my sister. We had no business to accost you in the street."

"Not at all, sir," replied Fairweather more warmly. "We may indeed be in a position to do each other a good turn. I represent the Fairweather Theatrical Company, Mr. Dance. This is Mrs. Fairweather and I am Miles Fairweather, proprietor, at your service."

Jack smiled. "Quite a providential name for a stroller."
    
“Ain’t it? So I thought when I chose it," beamed that gentleman. "But here is the long and short of it, sir. We travel to Bath to meet our company for our winter season. We have a generous patron who has requested Twelfth Night, but my poor wife finds herself in a rather, er, delicate condition . . . " He turned again to his wife. "But, my dear, here you are cold and tired on a public street. This is no place to conduct a proper interview. Mr. Dance, you and your sister and your . . . man, there, must dine with us at the inn in an hour. We shall see what arrangements can be made."

"Well played, Victoria!" Alphonse declared, clasping her hands, when the Fairweathers had gone. "Was she not splendid, Jack?"

But Jack only frowned into their satchel of props. Alphonse stared after him, then scooped up Jack’s hat to count up its meager contents, muttering to himself in the island French that had been his first tongue.

"What is it hombre?" Tory asked, moving closer, her voice low to contain her bewilderment. She had thought Jack would be pleased with her bold gamble. "Don’t you want this engagement?"

"I would be delighted with the engagement," he sighed, looking at her at last. "If not for the complication of incest."

"But . . . well, that’s of no account," Tory protested, once she grasped his meaning. "If we only behave as siblings in public, no one will care what we get up to in private. Surely, it’s not uncommon for a spinster sister to keep house for her bachelor brother?"

"Actors do not keep houses, they take lodgings. And lodgings are let according to gender, as you ought to have noticed by now."

"Oh, aye, that must account for all the chastity we hear so much about in the acting profession. There must be ways around it."

"Assignations are arranged, of course," Jack sighed again. "But in a company of players working and traveling together in such close quarters, someone is bound to notice if I’m bedding my sister."

The last of Tory’s triumph drained away. Why had she never thought of this? Hellfire, most nights since they’d left the Indies, she thought of nothing else. But now that she must weigh the prospect of regular meals and shelter from the cold against the pleasures of Jack’s body, so long deferred already, the choice was not so easy.

"We needn’t accept their offer . . . " she began.

"We shall accept if I must play Viola, myself!" Alphonse interrupted, materializing between them. "We must make some sacrifices to survive, but we have faced worse than this," he reminded them.

"I suppose it won’t be forever," Jack conceded, with a last, wistful glance at Tory. As they gathered up their things, he thought of another point. "It might be best to call yourself Mrs. Lightfoot. Most actresses go by 'Mrs.' for the sake of respectability. But you must say you’re a widow."

"I shall feel like one."

"If anyone asks, say you’ve been abroad in America with your late husband. That will account for the discrepancies in our names. And our accents. If anyone is ill-mannered enough to press you for further details, just lower your eyes. That ought to shame 'em into silence."

Jack paused to gaze at her, caressing her face with his eyes. His sigh was enormous.

"You were splendid," he told her gently. "It was a splendid idea. And Alphonse is right. First, we must establish ourselves. There will be time enough later for the truth."

The truth. It was typical of Tory's history to find herself a widow without ever having been a bride. Ironic to think of acting on the stage when she had played so many other roles to survive. Orphan. Runaway. Sailor. Revolutionary. And worse. Well, there was no reason to suppose her life would be any more conventional here in the civilized world than it ever had anywhere else.