Tory spun around, her wooden sword upraised, to see a dark shape lurching toward her from beneath a cluster of ladies' gowns along the opposite wall. In the dimness of the room, she could make out only a dark, grotesque gargoyle face, and she feinted out from beneath the creature's grasp, stumbling sideways through the far doorway into the backstage. Grasping both ends of her wooden sword in both hands, she thrust it up when the creature came at her again, arrested its momentum for an instant, then shoved it to one side with a burst of desperate strength. Whatever it was, it toppled heavily to the stage floor with a wounded howl, and she scrambled away, crushed by her stays and choking on her own hammering heartbeat, but finding her footing with a tumbler’s instinct, ready to fight or flee.
“Mrs. Lightfoot! Good heavens!” Mr. Fairweather and Mr. Ingram were galloping across the backstage toward her, with Aunt Hat huffing along behind them.
Tory tried to wave them back, even though her assailant had not moved again, sprawled face-down on the floor. She kept backing away until she felt Aunt Hat’s steadying hand at her waist.
“But . . . are you all right, my dear?” cried Fairweather, hovering anxiously between Tory and the creature on the floor. “What is it, what’s happened?”
Tory didn’t know what it was, only pointed as Mr. Ingram circled the inert body, prodded it by the shoulder and finally knelt beside it. Ingram hefted the creature over onto its back and Tory saw not a monster but the face of a man that had suffered some calamity. One eye was almost completely swollen shut within a puffy yellowing bruise that seemed to cover half his face. Aunt Hat gasped, as Fairweather leaned in for a closer look.
Tory glanced doubtfully at her cheap prop sword. "I don't believe I ever actually struck him . . . " she began.
"Not to worry, Mrs. Lightfoot," sighed Ingram, with a sniff and a frown as he straightened up again. "I'll wager he was much the worse for wear already by the time you encountered him." Glancing at Fairweather, he added, "As usual."
Tory blinked from one gentleman to the other. "You know him?"
Fairweather sighed as well. “It’s our Mr. Harding, isn't it?”
Jack cast a last rueful glance down at Sebastian’s breeches, porridge-colored nankeen masquerading as satin. Shakespearean costume in the provinces was still mired in the Garrick era, that had not changed in the ten years he’d been away. The Fairweathers were at least respectable enough to provide an outfit for Sebastian; players often had to find their own dress.
As George Plumleigh positioned himself to go on as Sir Toby Belch, Jack saw Tory nearby in her pink satin breeches. That Harding fellow was lurking deeper in the shadows, gazing at Tory’s stockinged legs, and Jack felt a surge of protective anger, followed by an urge to laugh at his own impotent indignation. But Harding felt Jack’s glance and shifted his own gaze to Plumleigh’s thick shanks, as if skittering about from one pair of legs to the next was some meaningless exercise his eyes performed on their own account. No wonder the fellow had got his face punched, if this was how he behaved.
The company was all abuzz with Henry Harding’s sudden and dramatic return. When ladies were present, he swore he’d been set upon by footpads who assaulted him and stole his money, so that he was obliged to walk from Bristol to Kelsingham. But upon his arrival, afraid to face Fairweather looking as he did, he attempted to bolster his courage with a pint or two, then crept unobserved into the playhouse hoping to sleep it off. Only to be confronted by God-knew-what sort of alcohol-induced demon in breeches and sword. It was a comic tale in which he cast himself as the sympathetic clown, but privately, Harding had told some of the gentleman players a different story about a delectable lady and a jealous husband.
“You’ve an admirer,” Jack whispered to Tory, moving closer to block the fellow’s view. “Mr. Harding likes the look of your legs.”
"My limbs, you mean? How uncivil of him to say so."
"I saw him looking. Had he said such a thing to your brother, I’d be obliged to call him out. I’m not much of a shot, you know."
"Then you’d best keep your mouth shut." She turned again toward the stage and Jack was staring at the back of her head.
"You’re not still angry about Bristol, are you, Rusty?"
"I’m not angry." Her hushed voice might have iced butter.
"I told you, we had a miserable time," Jack protested, leaning closer, his voice very low. "It was bitterly cold. Jepson was not expected back in his office until Christmas. Alphonse refused to waste money on a gig or a decent dinner so we walked all over the city and ate indifferently grilled cockles at a fishmonger’s stall and I was bilious in the coach all the way back. You missed nothing."
"I missed you," Tory whispered as Plumleigh lumbered past them onto the stage. Turning partway to face Jack again, she added, softer still, "I miss you."
It took every atom of Jack’s will not to take her in his arms right there. He could only gaze at her helplessly, their eyes holding each other when their arms could not. Then the call-boy hissed in the shadows and Tory marched on for Cesario’s first scene with Olivia. Watching her navigate the stage in those ridiculous breeches, Jack could not help but think of the first time he had ever seen her in boy's clothing, a ragged hoyden in ill-fitting sailor’s rig on the deck of a ship. It made him smile and ache all the more, his vision so clouding over with memory that he almost collided with Richard Gabriel coming offstage; Jack had to dance aside with a hasty "Sorry."
"Steady on, old man, it’s only a dress." Gabriel caught his elbow for the briefest instant. "You wouldn’t want to spoil that lovely outfit."
"Oh, aye, Richard, mock a fellow when he’s down . . . "
Richard Gabriel melted into the shadows, but his eyes followed Jack onstage. Not many people called him by his Christian name, but he didn’t mind it from Jack. Newcomers who joined an established company were often insufferably deferential or else so determined to prove themselves that they became quite obnoxious. Jack was neither. Nor was he jealous of his parts, taking whatever he was given with admirable grace. As if he had a separate life beyond the stage to sustain him, which was what Richard found so intriguing. That Jack, too, might have a secret life.
He was playing a scene with that lout, Harding, reduced to going on for Antonio in a plumed hat that hid his bruised face. The two men bore a superficial resemblance to each other: dark-haired, tall and well-made. Harding was an adequate dancer if you went in for the vulgar, hornpipes, clog dances and the like, but he was an indifferent actor, cheeky and obvious and always too sleek-looking for the part. He even bore his bruises with a kind of smug conceit. Jack was more roughly made and careless of his appearance — he had the look of someone who had spent a great deal of time out-of-doors — yet, even in that silly outfit, Jack commanded a kind of respect onstage that Harding, for all his preening, would never know.
Where had the fellow been keeping himself? And what of his close friendship with that odd exotic, Belair? Whenever Richard asked, in a polite, roundabout way, Jack would say only that he had been out of the country for awhile. But Richard had glimpsed the faded scars on Jack’s back, for all the trouble Jack took to keep them hidden. And Richard could not help but wonder who he was and what sort of life he had lived. For what reason had it pleased God to lead him into this company? Into Richard’s room?
Richard never saw Jack in the company of women, but for that sister he was so fond of, not even that artful Kennett woman who was always sniffing about. He bantered with the actresses, as any man must, but he never pursued them, offstage. Nor had Richard ever seen him accost any of the harlots who haunted the neighborhood on play nights. Yet, Jack must have appetites, like other men. Richard had been discreet thus far, no one knew better the punishments visited upon the unwary.
But only consider the rewards.
Above: Twelfth Night painting by William Hamilton, 1790
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