CHAPTER 23: London Interlude

It was the scent that woke Tory, first, waves of light, sweet, spicy aromas washing over her. And then the tickling, soft and tentative as a butterfly wing on her exposed arm, her cheek. She opened sticky eyes and blinked at what looked like an entire hillside of wildflowers strewn over her in the musty little bed above the dry goods shop, daisies and lilacs and tiny blue-bells, lillies of the valley and delicate forget-me-nots, a sea of pale colors and velvety petals and sweet scent.

"It’s Maytime, Rusty!" Jack perched on the edge of the bed, already dressed, lettingthe last of the flowers sift through his fingers over her, grinning like a boy. As beautiful as any flower.

"Now I know how a rabbit feels, popping out of his hole!" Tory grinned. She scrambled to sit up and a waterfall of tiny white hawthorn blossoms rained out of her hair.

"Only mind the May dew," Jack cautioned. "It’s said to cure freckles — and that would be a shame." He leaned forward and gently kissed the faded V of rusty freckles just below her throat, the relic of her year at sea in open-collared shirts. Then he kissed her cheek.
    
Are we celebrating something?" Tory asked, tucking the stem of a white marguerite into his dark, disordered hair as he sat up again.

"Only the season." He smiled. "And our impending journey."
    
Alphonse and Kit had arranged to assume the lease taken on the Heathpoole Playhouse by the unfortunate would-be lessee. Two nights ago had been their final farewell performance at Charton-on-Crewe and yesterday, Jack had paid off all the players with a promise of a summer engagement at Heathpoole to begin on the first of July to anyone who wished to accept. Richard Gabriel had been offered a summer engagement with a major provincial company north of London that Jack had encouraged him to accept. George Plumleigh had accepted a similar situation, and Mr. Ingram, the stage manager, had been snapped up by one of the London summer theatres. But Tory supposed the rest would return to Heathpoole in six weeks’ time — the time Kit judged it would take to make the place presentable, as it had been some sort of fish market before. Today, they were starting out for Heathpoole with Alphonse and Thomas Ashbrook and Mr. Amos to manage the property coach. Jack had offered Kit the position and salary of stage manager if he would come with them to Heathpoole, and he was also bringing Jenny to serve as interim wardrobe-keeper.

"The others are going to Heathpoole," said Jack. "I’m taking you to London."

"London?" Tory echoed, astonished. "Why?"

"Because it’s Maytime," Jack grinned, catching up her hands in his. "Because I haven’t been up to London in ten years. Because we’ve a long summer of hard work ahead of us which may very well ruin us." He drew her hands to his mouth and kissed them. "Because I adore you so."
   

Tory beamed back at him. Just when she thought she had lost him to the cares of his new position, her Jack came back to her.

 

After five years in Boston, Tory thought she knew what a city was. But the proud, stern, stately buildings of Boston, glaring down in condemnation at the unworthy folk who dared to bustle along at their feet, were nothing like the riot of London. Tall, gaunt buildings were jammed so close together and at such perilous angles, they seemed to loom out over the narrow streets, so festooned with precarious timbered overhangs and shop signs and railings and balustrades, one could scarcely see up to the sky. In the broader boulevards through which the coach had brought them into the heart of the city, the elegant townhouses and grand, colonnaded public buildings on either side were overwhelmed by the spectacle in the streets, the thronging up and down of every sort of coach and carriage and wagon and donkey-cart, jostling with dustmen and water carts and road-sweepers. Street vendors crying their wares maneuvered their way around fashionable shoppers and agitated clerks and gentlemen of business and armies of scruffy laborers off about the endless construction that seemed to be going on in every other street, and gangs of ragged urchins skittering about like moths. 

Jack secured them inexpensive lodgings in a small, unfashionable hotel in a tiny street hard by the fruit and vegetable market of Covent Garden. It was only a cartwheel or two away from both of London’s famous winter patent playhouses, the Theatres Royal Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

They had scarcely set down their things before Jack hustled her out again to have a look at them. At Old Drury, where Jack had made his ill-fated London debut as Romeo so many years ago, they gazed up for a silent moment at the elegant formal facade of the place that consumed the width of the entire block. The theatre was another block in length, easily four to six times the size of anywhere Tory had ever performed, and she stole an awed glance at Jack, that he had ever dared to set foot upon the stage in such a place. What must it have felt like to fail, here? But Jack said nothing and they circled back to the Covent Garden playhouse, perched on the edge of the market square, to drink in its four enormous Greek columns and soaring portico. Only then did Jack break his silent reverie.

"These are theatres, Rusty."

But Tory was distracted by the boisterous theatre of life that was sprawling through the busy streets. At mid-morning, the hotels and restaurants had already plundered the marketplace for the day’s best produce bargains and swarms of costermongers were filling up their own barrows with the leavings. But all the streets in the neighborhood were like one, huge, continuous market. There were broad-shouldered milk-maids yoked to their pails, chair-menders with bundles of rushes over their shoulders, organ-grinders and musicians, boys carrying baskets of radishes for a ha’penny a bunch, girls selling brilliantly colored spring tulips, sturdy women selling fresh May gooseberries by the gallon and breadmen wheeling their basket-carts. The smell of hot meat pies and spicy gingerbread mingled with the stink of donkeys and rotting vegetation and human musk. The noise was thunderous.

It was like the slaves’ market Sunday in the islands grown to stupendous proportions. Some of the vendors were Africans and Tory also noticed an Asian-looking fellow selling carpet slippers and a Turk in a turban wielding a pot of steaming coffee. As they made their way down narrow alleys and wider thoroughfares, Tory clung to Jack’s elbow to guide her while her head revolved like a child’s top, her eyes goggling at everything. When she remembered to glance up again at Jack, she saw his expression was alert, thoughtful, unfathomable.

"Is it the way you remembered?" she asked him.

He nodded slowly. "Only more so. There’s so much more of everything. Hellfire, I’d forgotten how big a place it is. How busy, how dirty, how desperate. How full of life."

Tory wondered what he must be thinking behind those opaque brown eyes. How could he not regret the years lost, the runaway tumblers’ boy turned provincial player sold into a brutal seafaring life that took him so far away from everything he loved, everything he was? There was so much he had missed. Then his eyes reconnected with hers, boring into the heart of her thoughts.

"I would not change a single minute of my life, Rusty. As long as I could be sure of finding you."

He slipped his arm around her for a moment, holding her close, a tiny island of security in a great roiling, riotous sea of human activity. Then he smiled, gazing all round again.

"I was a boy the last time I was here," he said. "I didn’t know anything."

"And now?" Tory prompted, as they started off again.

"Well . . . at least I’m no longer a boy."

Ambling into the neighborhood of St. Martin’s Lane, they were drawn by a youth beating on a drum strapped to his chest and an older fellow playing on the pan-pipes to what looked like a tall Punch and Judy booth with Fantasina written in script at the top. But the puppets who capered out were Harlequin and Columbina on strings, as buoyantly insouciant as if they owned the whole of London. Farther down the road was a fellow selling clockwork toys and a diorama box purporting to show the coronation of George IV.

"Win the lady a fairing, sir!" cried another youth in the road. He pushed a cart clattering with different sized glass bottles, open and standing upright. A row of small wooden rings were secured to one of the handles. "Toss a ring round a bottle and win what’s inside," he chanted. "Three pitches for a penny. Show off your skill and win a valuable prize for your lady."

"Perhaps the lady would like to try her own luck." Jack grinned.

Tory paid for her three rings and took aim from the end of the cart handles. Two of her rings skittered off bottle necks that were too wide to accommodate them, but the third managed to snag the lip of a green bottle in the last row.

"The lady wins a prize!" chirped the lad, snatching up the green bottle and pouring its contents into his hand. It was a plain, thin band, pink enough to suggest copper rather than gold.

"A valuable prize, well worth the penny it cost," Jack teased as the fellow trundled off with his cart. "It likely was a penny, once."

"I don’t care," Tory declared. "It may be only a fairing to you, but I think it’s good luck. I’ve never won anything before."

But when it proved a bit too large for any of her fingers, she looked so disappointed that Jack bought a dark green ribbon from a passing vendor so she could hang her prize round her neck. She didn’t want to lose her luck.

They bought hot pies and beer and crossed the wide avenue called the Strand and wandered down to eat by the docks overlooking the broad, glistening River Thames. Tory was delighted at the sight of so many working ships sailing right into the heart of the city, at the brickwork stairs leading down to the riverside wharves at the end of every street. She had never seen such a bustling port city with no ocean nearby. The waterfront district was the rougher part of the city, with its grog shops and taverns, paid-off sailors and burly stevedores, lazy-looking tarts, pickpockets and beggars, but it was familiar territory to her. She had always loved the waterfront, with its promise of escape and freedom, although now, on Jack’s arm, she had nothing she wanted to escape from.

Starting up the road for the Strand, again, they were just about to pass a dingy rag and bottle shop when Jack stopped, transfixed, before the grime-encrusted squares of its mullioned window. Hung up on a peg in the window, above a messy profusion of ink wells, blunted cutlery, second-hand books, damaged tinware and the odd used beaver hat, was some species of bulky cloak or overcoat. All Tory could make out of the design were the wide, deeply cuffed sleeves and a swirl of material that might have been a hood or a cape at the shoulders.

"It’s an old redingote in the Garrick style," Jack explained, gazing up at it as if bewitched. "Not strictly the fashion any more, but when I was a boy, they were quite the rage."

"Named for Garrick, the actor?" Tory had heard endless tales of Garrick in the Green Room.

Jack nodded and the crooked corner of his mouth quirked into a half-smile. "It’s silly, I suppose."

Tory glanced at him, again. As critical as he was about every detail of stage dress, Jack never paid the slightest attention to what he wore offstage, as long as it was relatively clean and tidy. He was still wearing the same plain, sober, charcoal grey frock coat and stirrup trousers he’d bought with his first wages in Kelsingham, which he kept for all public occasions. But she saw a flicker of something in his expression, now.

"You must have a closer look," she said, drawing him to the sagging shop door.

Before he could argue with her, she threw open the door herself and hauled him in by the elbow. The stench of mold and old dust and varieties of rot she didn’t care to identify hung like fog in the close air inside. There was a rodent-like rustling in the dim shadows at the back of the shop, but there was light enough from the window for them to inspect the redingote. Jack took it off its peg and fingered the double capelet and the wide collar that could be buckled up high round the neck. There were buckles and straps and drawstrings stitched all over the thing, to cinch it up here or expand it there, as needed. Despite the musty smell, Tory encouraged Jack to shrug it on over his own clothes. It fell to halfway down his legs, but when he folded back the wide cuffs, fastened up the front and cinched in the back, it looked rather dashing. Rakish, even, when he turned up one half of the collar that stood as high as his cheek, and grinned at her. Even in this dim light, the warm, dark, oxblood shade of red looked wonderful with his eyes. Then there was more rustling behind them, and the head rat materialized out of the gloom.

"'Tis a fine gentleman’s garment, that there is," wheezed the  stubble-cheeked proprietor, as gloom-encrusted as the rest of his shop. "Had it off me own dear uncle what passed on. Scarcely ever worn. Kept it for Sundays and funerals, he did."

Rip-roaring funerals, Tory supposed, from the cloak’s worn elbows and fraying hems and missing buttons.

"Then I’m sure you can’t bear to part with such an heirloom." Jack grinned, shrugging out of it, again.    

"Why, there is a great deal of sentimental value attached to it, at that, guv’nor, a very great deal . . . "

"I’ll give you a crown for your sentiment," Tory interrupted.

"Ah, Miss, I could never live with meself did I let it go for less than . . . fifteen shillings."

"I can buy new for that, and less worn with sentiment. Eight shillings."

"Twelve."

He settled for ten and six when Tory turned for the door. And in a subtle movement he could not perceive in the shadows, Tory reached through a hidden fold of her skirts for the little purse strapped round her waist and dug out two crowns and sixpence. Then she led Jack out into the streaky May sunlight with their prize. They were scarcely out the door before Jack began to protest, but Tory cut him off.

"Let me do this one thing for you without an argument," she told him. "I’ve never had the means to buy you a gift, before. Don’t deny me the pleasure of making you happy."

Jack closed his mouth with an effort, stopped and looked down again at the redingote thrown over his arm. It looked more threadbare in the daylight, but the color was richer.

"This is the most frivolous extravagance I’ve ever heard of," he said, at last. "Alphonse will go berserk." Then he glanced up at her and grinned. "Thank you, compañera."

Jack wore it out that evening when he took Tory to the theatre. They chose gallery seats for a shilling apiece at Covent Garden, where Tory saw a very short, slight, ill-looking fellow with ferocious black eyes and a voice that swelled and then fell away like a capricious tide in the role of Shylock. It was the great and notorious Kean, making a farewell appearance before his upcoming engagement in Paris. Shylock was not a long part, but the poor fellow could scarcely get through it, dropping words here and there or stringing lines too rapidly together to get to the great speeches, which he still delivered with some fire. The two-thirds-full house was divided over this; there was some muttering from the pit, but the general feeling was of generous indulgence. Even in his decline, Edmund Kean was a national treasure.

"They forgive his sins and indiscretions," Jack whispered, "and there are a great many of them, because once he was the magnificent Kean. And every now and again, onstage, for a moment or two — he is again."

"What a shame he is so ill and old," Tory murmured.

Jack gazed at the stage for a long, reflective moment. "He’s not yet forty," he said, at last. "Less than ten years older than me."

Perhaps it was this wistful encounter with mortality, or the after-piece they saw about a family inheritance, or the platoons of beggar children who jostled with prostitutes and flower girls to accost the emerging playgoers outside the theatre that night. But Tory found herself wondering about something Jenny had asked her, once, if Jack minded not producing any children. Now that he was back home where he belonged, did he wonder what sort of legacy he would leave behind? Did he want to secure his place in the world by planting a child? Would he ever even mention it to her, if he did?

As they bought a small feast of bread and cheese and apples and ale to carry back up to their tiny room, Tory began to wonder what a child of Jack’s would be like. He would be long-limbed, like his father, dark-eyed and playful and full of laughter. He’d be an excellent, acrobat, Jack would see to that, and smart and generous and kind, bred to the stage, but well-educated for anything else he might wish to pursue . . .

But then Tory realized she was describing Jack, himself. The Jack she already had.

"You’re very quiet," Jack broke gently into her thoughts as he handed her a slice of cheese on a torn crust of bread.

With Jack, she knew, the best plan was to plunge ahead.

"We haven’t spoken of this in a long time," she said, simply. "Do you never think of having a child?"

Now it was his turn to grow quiet. He regarded her for one long, serious moment, then slowly shook his head.

"No. I never do. With our gypsy life . . . " and he shook his head again. "Although, I must admit, I have sometimes been charmed by the fantasy of a little Victoria toddling about in her petticoats."

Tory was surprised. "I was thinking of a boy."

"Boys are a lot of trouble," said Jack. "Noisy, arrogant, always getting into scrapes."

"But girls break their mothers’ hearts. They grow up and marry and go away."

"Boys break their mothers’ hearts," Jack replied softly. But then he smiled. "Besides, babies are not found under every bush . . . "

"You were!"

"But this baby . . . our baby . . . would have to be born. You would have to deliver her. And I couldn’t bear it, Rusty. I could never risk losing you." He reached out  to caress her cheek. "I need you more than I could ever need any child. The world is already full of children who need a loving home, but there is only one of you."

Tory caught Jack’s hand, pressed her mouth gently into his palm and let the image of Little Jack skip away. She knew she ought to feel regret, the way women made for mothering must feel, the way Jenny must feel about her own estranged child. But she couldn't find that urgency for motherhood in her heart, that conviction that her life would never be complete without a child. And what sort of a mother could she hope to be without it?

"I never want you to be disappointed, hombre," she whispered to Jack.  "I know how much you love children."

"Clowning for children in public and being a suitable father are entirely different things," he replied. "I could never replace you, mi vida. I can’t lose you."

Top: Drury Lane (detail), Louise Rayner, ca 1860
Above right: Old Covent Garden Market, George Scharf, 1825
Above left: Vintage redingote
Above: Edmund Kean, by George Clint, 1820

CHAPTER 22: In Bondage

 

“Do come out with me tonight, Kennett,” urged Kit, lounging in the shadows outside the ladies’ dressing room. “There are so many men far more agreeable than Mr. Crowder in this neighborhood."

“I have had quite enough of men for the moment,” Jenny muttered. On the last two Saturdays since her benefit night, Mr. Budge had appeared like clockwork to claim her salary for Mr. Crowder. Jack, cool as ice, had handed over precisely two crowns to the odious little man each time, while that clever Mr. Belair diverted her true salary into a fund marked “sundries” in the books. “Present company always excepted, of course, dear.”

“But it is our last play night in Thornhampton and there is the most delicious little riverside grog shop I’ve discovered. Would you not rather carry away some happy memories from this place?”

“I shall be very happy to be gone.”

“Yes, but in the meantime, I can’t bear to think of you all alone in that drab little room of yours with nothing whatever to cheer you.” He dropped his voice and leaned closer as Ashbrook emerged out of the wings and trotted past them up the stairs. “You are a woman in full bloom, my dear. Why not have your revenge on Crowder in the most pleasant way?”

Jenny could not help smiling at Kit’s exaggerated leer. How could she explain to him how little pleasure there was for her in the arms of anonymous men now that she was forced to contemplate again the full ruin of her life? She had thought to escape Crowder’s control, but she saw now she was only a puppet dancing to his tune. Her amorous encounters were as empty as every other part of this life that could never be her own. But she would not inflict her malaise on Kit, who still preferred his pleasures immediate and uncomplicated.

“Run away, my darling,” she smiled. “You have never needed me to enjoy yourself in the end.”

“In the end, perhaps not. But who shall hear my witty comments beforehand? With whom shall I share all the lurid details of my conquest? It’s your company I crave,” pouted Kit.

“I have been poor company, of late.“ Jenny sighed.

“Then at least lend me your presence. With you on my arm, I might at least fend off these females who dog my every step since I have begun playing Captain Starhawke.”

“Poor Kit, too attractive for your own good.” Jenny laughed. “Have they been trying to convert you?”

Kit assumed a shocked expression. “Heavens, Kennett, what are you suggesting?”

“It must break their hearts,” she teased. She could not resist putting out her hand to gently stroke back a careless strand of his pale cornsilk hair and in that moment, his dark blue eyes locked urgently onto hers.

“I cannot bear to see you lonely, Jenny,” he told her, all sarcasm gone. “You do know that if it were at all within my power to bring you . . . any sort of pleasure or comfort   . . .”

She drew one finger down to cross his beautiful lips.

“I know,” she whispered. “You are a very sweet, very generous man to say it."

"You deserve so much," said Kit. "If I were made differently —"

"Surely, darling, no one has ever had cause to complain of how you are made." Jenny smiled. "I shall not be the first! Anyway, it is your friendship I treasure above all else. Besides, it would be a kind of incest, would it not? I feel like you are the only family I have in the world. And I cherish you for it.”

Kit sighed and slouched away from the wall, his eyes still wistful but his mouth beginning to quirk back into a feline grin.

“Then I shall speak to you like your old Auntie Kit. Don’t shut yourself away. Soon enough, your Mr. Crowder will grow weary of this foolish game and hie himself back up to Grimtown, or wherever it is he hails from —”

“Leeds.”

“Exactly. And then, Kennett, the mice shall play.”



The Fairweather Company removed itself from Thornhampton to reopen on May Eve in the sail-making town of Charton-on-Crewe on the coach road near the Dorset border. The playhouse was an old converted sail loft with a row of gloomy cubicles behind the stage to serve for manager’s office, dressing rooms and wardrobe and the rickety loft above for the paint room and carpentry shop.

Jack opened on a Tuesday with Pizarro, to show what they were made of, followed by Prospero And Ariel. They hadn’t the means to get up a full production of The Tempest, but by cutting out the clowns and most of the masque, but for a pretty little ballet by Miss Bishop, to focus on Prospero and Ariel and their revenge against the usurper Duke, and the romance of the lovers, Jack was able to turn it into a serviceable after-piece. Thursday next, he brought out The Lure Of The Indies and one of Richard’s most popular farces, concluding the first week on Saturday with Plumleigh as Richard III and the feminine farce, In Society.

They drew very respectable houses and later that night, Jack was wondering how to slip a few extra shillings into everyone’s pay without Alphonse noticing. Then he looked up and saw the face of Budge, the solicitor, gazing down at him like a recurring nightmare.

“Right on time for your weekly pound of flesh, I see, Mr. Budge,” Jack observed.

Beside him, Alphonse made a notation in the books and nudged two crowns toward him. “I should think your master incurs far more expense sending you to follow us all round the countryside than he shall ever wring out Mrs. Kennett’s wages.”

 “My client is a very wealthy and determined man, Mr. Dance,” sniffed Budge. “Expense is not his object.”

“Then what is his object?” Jenny had just come in on Kit’s arm. Her complexion paled in dismay to find Budge there, but her tone was furious.

“Even you ought to have guessed that by now, Mrs. Crowder,” the solicitor replied, turning to face her as he tucked the two silver coins into his purse. “He wants you home in Crowder House where you belong.”

“Crowder House has never been my home,” said Jenny.

“Nevertheless. You are his wife and you owe your husband the duties of a wife.”

“I owe him nothing!”

“Tut, Madame,” and Budge shook his head and held up a hand. “It is none of my affair, the intimacies of your marriage. But I will tell you this. My client will not indulge your whimsy forever. There is only so much disgrace he will endure.”

“Then let him divorce me. I shall not contest it.”

“Divorce is such an ugly thing. Mr. Crowder shall not inflict it upon his son, and if you had any natural maternal feelings —”

“That’s quite enough out of you, Budge,” Jack exclaimed, charging around the desk to close on the solicitor. “You have no legal right to harry my people. Run home to your keeper and tell him to use a muzzle next time he sends a dog to fetch for him.”

“Do not imagine we don’t know how you’ve been cheating us,” Budge rounded on Jack, even as he was prudent enough to fall back toward the door. “And don’t you imagine,” he flung, in turn, at Jenny, “that these gallants will continue to protect you when your upkeep becomes far more trouble than you are worth.” And he shouldered past Kit and out the door.



“How can I be rid of him?” Jenny groaned. She and Tory sat in the coffee room of the coaching inn in Charton-on-Crewe. Jack had taken rooms for all the single ladies upstairs, for security, and he and Tory were lodging cheaply in a room over the dry goods shop next door.

“I’d march into Smithfield Market with a yoke round my neck to be sold at auction, just to be free of him,” Jenny declared.

Tory’s head bobbed up, but she held her tongue. She had been sold at auction for a slave, once, and the humiliation and helplessness still burned within her. But she dared not confide that to Jenny.

“There must be something less dramatic you can do,” she said instead. “Are there no other legal means to effect a separation?”

“There are ways, of course, but they must be initiated by the husband or by mutual consent,” Jenny replied. “And Mr. Crowder appears to have no intention of letting me go.”

“But can you do nothing to separate from him? Even after he beat you?” Tory had lowered her voice, although at midday, there was scarcely any other custom in the place. “That must be grounds for some sort of legal intervention.”

“It is,” Jenny agreed. “In theory. But, Tory, the poor woman must be half dead or else the husband must be caught in the act to support the charge. Otherwise . . . ” she broke off and gazed down into her glass.

“Otherwise, what?”

Jenny sighed and raised her eyes again. “Husbands beat their wives every day. It’s the natural order of things. Without immediate and convincing proof, it’s a very difficult charge for a woman to get taken seriously. Especially if the law decides that her actions warrant a beating.”

Tory did not trust herself to reply. Back in the islands, they had convinced themselves that England was the most enlightened place for them to flee to because no one owned slaves there.

“He might divorce me, if he chose, but he won’t,” Jenny continued, miserably. “He could afford it, he’s well-connected enough to secure one and my infidelities would give him a legal claim against me. But the scandal would be prohibitive. And any lesser separation will be just as humiliating to him. Even if it’s all my fault, it would reflect poorly on him, that this powerful personage could not keep his wife in order. A runaway wife is an embarrassment. He’s paid for a wife and he will have her under lock and key, where a wife belongs.”

Tory glanced around as if she might find a word of encouragement to draw out of the air and noticed Mr. Ashbrook just coming in the door. He was not in his painter’s smock, for once, but wore a slightly rumpled tan-colored jacket over loose brown trousers, like a rustic. And Tory felt a pang of longing for the comfort of simple male clothing. How could she lecture Jenny about freedom when she had submitted herself to stays?

Ashbrook saw them and hesitated, but Tory waved him over.
    
Mr. Dance said I might find you here,” he told them, hovering near their table. “But I shall fly away if I’m intruding.”

“We were only considering my future life of bondage,” said Jenny, with an acerbic twist to her smile as she lifted her glass again. “We are ripe for a change of subject, Mr. Ashbrook.”

“Yes, I saw that Budge fellow lurking about the place last night,” Ashbrook agreed, drawing up a chair. He carried a piece of parchment rolled up like a scroll which he laid across his lap when he sat. “But you mustn’t let a person so insignificant upset you, Mrs. Kennett.”

“Mr. Crowder has threatened to drag her back to Leeds,” Tory told him. “That is what’s upsetting.”

Ashbrook gazed thoughtfully at Jenny for a moment through his little spectacles. “Perhaps he cares a great deal for you, to go through all this trouble,” he suggested, at last, “and has no other means of expressing it.”

Jenny cast him a sidelong glance.
    
“It is clear you’ve never been married, Mr. Ashbrook.”

“But I very nearly was!” Ashbrook grinned. “To look at the relic I’ve become, you may not think that once upon a time, I was a dapper young fellow with prospects. I owned my own little shop and had a most fashionable little fiancee to go with it. A license was nearly procured.”

“What happened?” asked Tory.

“I took it into my head to throw off Commerce for Art. I could not help myself. I sold my shop and promptly lost my fiancee, whose affections were more attached to the shop than to myself.”

“You were better rid of her if she cared so little for you,” said Tory. She was secretly delighted to hear of someone who had dared to defy civilization and live according to his own rules, at whatever cost.

“I suppose so, Mrs. Lightfoot,” Ashbrook replied cheerfully. “And yet I grieved for her loss a good long while, as any foolish puppy might do. But a wife is a luxury one can ill afford without an income, or so I have learned. Since then, I have had only Art to console me. Which . . . er, leads me to my business.”

He lifted the scroll from his lap and pointed one end tentatively at Jenny.

“What is this, Mr. Ashbrook?” Jenny asked.

“I’m afraid I overheard Mr. Bell complain of how drab your room was, since the plunderings of your husband. I thought perhaps a little something to cheer it up?”

Jenny took the paper and unrolled it flat on the table. It was a painting done in lavish and provocative shades of purple and gold and deep green. Craning her neck to see, Tory thought at first it was a color sketch of the grotto scene Ashbrook had painted for Prospero And Ariel. But then she saw the swirling cave-like shape was alive with fanciful creatures and stars and flowers. It had an eerie sense of depth, like a tunnel in the world one might fall through. And human figures in long, gossamer gowns, plucking musical instruments or playing with children or cats floated like spirits all around the image.

It took Jenny a long time to raise her eyes from the painting and look again at the painter.

“What is this place?” she asked softly.

“It’s a place for dreaming.” Ashbrook smiled.

“I am too old for dreams,” Jenny murmured, her eyes falling again to the painting. As odd a thing as it was, there was something hypnotic about it.

“One cannot live without dreams, Mrs. Kennett.”

She glanced at him again. “It is too fine a thing for me to accept as a gift  . . . ” she began.

“Oh, nonsense, we are not children gamboling in the dew!” Ashbrook laughed. “I made it for you and it shall never be at home anywhere else. If you’ll have it. But, if not . . . ”

He reached over to retrieve it, but Jenny snatched it away.

“Mr. Ashbrook, you have convinced me,” she grinned. “I shall give it pride of place among my things, which, granted, are not so numerous at the moment. And I shall thank you every day for your kindness.”
    
Ashbrook beamed back at her, relieved. 

“Perhaps you will learn to dream again,” he suggested.

But Jenny’s expression wilted a little and Tory leaned earnestly toward her across the table.

“There must be a law to protect a woman from a cruel husband,” she reasoned. “Even in Leeds.”

“He owns Leeds, and everyone in it,” Jenny sighed, gazing down into the painting again. “He is one of the most important textile manufacturers in the town. He employs hundreds of people and sits on every board there is. He owns the law.”

“He doesn’t own us,” said Tory.

Jack did not believe they would be able to eke out an entire month in Charton-on-Crewe. The modest River Crewe was not so bustling as the River Thorne to Bristol, and while the theatre did well enough on market days, they were about played out among the local people. He’d had to begin scheduling bens almost immediately and already, some of their audiences were trading sailcloth for admissions. Rather a boon for Ashbrook and the scenery shop, but it showed poorly in the account books.

He knew he must decide what to do, next, but all the choices looked equally bleak. A few scant weeks among the livestock traders of Yeovil, and who knew what sort of storehouse or stock-pen to serve as a playhouse? But this tiny office where he and Alphonse must constantly bump elbows at their work, the cramped, inconvenient dressing rooms on either side and that long, high, narrow cavern masquerading as a playhouse out front were as rustic a theatrical arrangement as he ever hoped to encounter again. A summer idled away decamping from spa town to race week like common boothers, somehow finding wages for his players and feed for his draught horses, was the sort of prospect that made him crave a quiet, simple life of piracy.

The only sensible choice, it seemed, was to disband. Pay his people off however he could and then scramble to find places for Tory and Alphonse and himself in some other summer company. As if the last half-year had never happened and they were newly arrived in England to begin all over again. Of course, it was Maytime, now, the start of the fair season; the country around Charton-on-Crewe was as green and blooming as a fairy dell, like one of Ashbrook’s enchanted paintings. But Jack shook such romance out of his head. Summer would end soon enough and he had pledged to build a life for Tory, not drag her around in endless vagabonding. But running a company was an expensive business, even a small enterprise like theirs with so few members and no permanent tailor, carpenter, wardrobe-keeper or musicians. And the deprivations of Charles Crowder had not helped matters. On the other hand, he could not think of leaving Jenny unemployed and vulnerable to her madman husband. But how on earth were they to proceed?

Jack dropped his face into his hands, elbows propped up on the desk before him, and groaned. Alphonse blinked up from his books.

“I wish I could tell you it looks better from where I sit,” he said.

There was a smart rap on the door and Kit Bell poked his head in.

“Here you both are. You’re missing a lovely day outside.”

Jack groaned again into his hands.

“Have you any plans for the summer, Mr. Bell?” Alphonse asked.

Kit frowned as he entered the room. “As bad off as that, are we? Well, I expect I’ll idle away my days playing handsome young dullards in the North Midlands or some other wasteland.” He shrugged off the prospect. “But, you know, I’ve just heard the saddest story in a tavern.”

“That’s the only kind one ever hears in a tavern,” Jack sighed, peeking up over his fingertips.

“Young fellow was having a pint in the tap room of the coaching inn,” Kit continued. “He was off to the coast to supervise the remains of a deceased parent. It seems the old gentleman had bankrupt himself and his family a few years back in some foolish enterprise. And now that he was solvent again and ready to reclaim the venture in triumph . . .  “ Kit shook his head. “His heart gave out. Died on the spot.”

“What sort of venture?” asked Alphonse.
    
A playhouse.”

Jack’s face rose up out of his hands. Kit acknowledged his interest with a pregnant nod.

“Where?”

“Heathpoole. Godforsaken crag of a place on the Dorset coast. Not as grand a place as Portsmouth or Plymouth, as seaports go, but popular in the timber and smuggling trades since ancient times.”

“I know Heathpoole.” Jack nodded. “What sort of a playhouse?”

“Purpose-built, so I am told. Five or six years old, perhaps more. Standing empty much of that time after the builder defaulted.”

“Who holds the lease?”

“The town fathers. I’ve heard they hold mariners’ auctions there, from time to time. But the gentleman who built it took out a new lease on the place for the season this summer. He was just down seeing to the details, when . . . ” Kit shrugged.

Jack frowned. “What made the poor fellow think his luck would change this time around, I wonder?”

“The expense of building was all done with. And of course, now there is Heathpoole Wells.”

“What’s that?”

“Some Dorchester squire discovered a hot springs in the rolling heath above the town. Built himself a second country home and now, an entire resort. A great many people of fashion come down for the waters; they cannot all crowd into Brighton.”

Jack glanced at Alphonse, whose shrug was noncommittal, but certainly not a rebuke.

“Kit, you are a genius,” said Jack. “I should like to know a great deal more about this place. Can you and Alphonse be ready to go down to Heathpoole by the next coach?”

“Me?” Kit sounded genuinely astonished.

“Hellfire, lad, you were practically born in a booth. You know what’s required of a proper theatre. Alphonse knows what meagre sort of terms we can afford to make.”    
    
“Well . . . I’ll go straightaway,” said Kit, eyes shining at the prospect of this unexpected adventure. “Mr. Belair?”

“In front of the theatre in an hour, Mr. Bell.” Alphonse nodded. And Kit hurried out.

“Get me a playhouse, Alphonse,” Jack urged, as his friend closed up his books. “And I’ll make the season pay. I promise.”

“You had better,” Alphonse agreed.

 

Top: Wifeselling, French print of an English caricature, 1820
Above: Sea Queen (detail), James Aschbacher © 2023

CHAPTER 21: Lawful Matrimony

 

"You are a married woman, Tory. You know the law."

"Ah. Well, of course, the law . . . " Tory cast a dismayed glance at Jack, hoping Jenny would not see. She had brought Jenny back to the inn after Mrs. Swan and Miss Bishop had taken in poor Violet; Tory was damned if she would let them spend one more night under the roof of that braying harpy, Mrs. Hopworth.

"Legally, of course, a husband owns everything that belongs to his wife," Jack filled in quickly, for Tory’s benefit. "But . . . "

"Surely not!" Tory interrupted, appalled. "Not her personal things. Not income she’s earned by her own labor —"

"All her income. All of her money and possessions. Any inheritance of property or fortune she may have from her family or any previous marriage. Any sou she can lay claim to by sweat or stealth, all belongs to him," said Jenny bitterly. With a swift glance at Tory, then at Jack, she added, "Although not every husband chooses to enforce it."

Tory knew she ought to hold her tongue before her ignorance of marital matters became even more apparent.

"Even so, he can’t run riot through the houses of innocent people," Jack pointed out. "We have no legal means of recovering your things, Jenny, but we can have him up on charges of disturbing the peace."

But Jenny shook her head.

"No. I want nothing at all to do with him. Besides, charges mean nothing to him. He can buy his way out of charges."

"But if he’s such a wealthy and important man, what does he want with your few coins?" Tory wondered. "It makes no sense."

"He wants to wound me," Jenny replied quietly. "And to let me know he’s found me."

"No harm is going to come to you, Jenny,"  said Jack. "I can promise you that."

Jenny gazed up at him again with a fleeting, almost sardonic smile. "Noble words, indeed, General Rolla. And I appreciate your concern, Jack, I honestly do. But whatever it is Mr. Crowder wants, he’ll have. There’s nothing to be done about it."

Tory sat up straighter. "There’s always something to be done."

Jack scheduled a benefit night for Jenny for the following week to revive her depleted finances. She chose her parts and Jack had the bills printed up right away. Kit and Alphonse saw to their distribution all over town and talked the program up with tireless enthusiasm in the taproom of the Old Harry, where they both had lodgings. Jack campaigned among the transient mariners in every riverside grog shop, and everyone from Trot to Richard Gabriel had canvassed the rest of the neighborhood.

Jack also paid for Jenny’s lodging on account at the Tudor Inn, where a large staff was employed to keep out unwanted intruders. She had very little to bring over from Mrs. Hopworth’s to her tiny back room — some underthings, a shawl, two plain frocks. Her best frocks, her bonnet, her prettiest scent-bottles and adornments and what little in the way of novels, pamphlets and playing cards she had kept for her own amusement had all been carried off by her husband as his due property.

"How can he simply strip her of all she has and the law not call it theft?" Tory demanded of Jack that night, in bed, after they had seen Jenny safely settled in.
    
"When a woman allies herself to a husband in marriage, he becomes liable for her and all her property, so he is granted authority over her and all her property."

"Authority?" echoed Tory. "You mean she becomes his property. Like a slave."

Jack sighed and flopped over in the bed. It had been another long day at the theatre and he felt disadvantaged in this conversation, being white, male and English.

"Most marriage contracts are entered into by consent," he said. "If the parties disagree —"

"Then the wife is helpless," Tory concluded. "Whatever possesses women to marry?"
    
Jack glanced back over his shoulder at her. He could see her silhouette in the dark, still sitting up beside him, aggravating herself.

"So she might bed her husband in peace?" he suggested.

"A woman needn’t marry for that," she replied tartly, but she did not take the hint and lie down. "In the meantime, she has no protection if her husband takes it into his head to plunder everything she owns. Hellfire, pirates plunder out of desperation, to live, and they’re reviled as outlaws and hanged."

Jack sighed again. "We can’t discuss centuries of English law if you’re going to demand justice and sense."

For all her recent troubles, Jenny shone like an impudent idol on the night of her ben. Her playing was bright and spirited and her colleagues responded with their own best efforts. The house, nearly three-quarters of capacity at the start, filled up entirely for the nautical after-piece after nine o’clock, when the remaining seats were let at half-price.

The final heady ovation eventually dissipated into jovial laughter and jesting in the street as the audience spilled out of the Brewhouse. The players inside changed out of their dresses and went off about their own affairs. But Tory brought Jenny upstairs into the office, where Jack and Alphonse were already seeing to the books; Jack wanted Jenny to have her share of the profits without delay. And while it might have been mere afterglow from her exertions of the evening, Tory thought she saw new color bloom in Jenny’s face when she saw the little piles of coin Alphonse was neatening up on the desk before him, at his customary place across from Jack.

"We’ve taken in upwards of fifty pounds!" Jack beamed at her. "Remind me to put you on for more of Mrs. Fairweather’s grander parts, in future."

"I’m not made for tragedy, Jack, I’m happy with my bawds," Jenny laughed.

"You may play what you like after tonight, Madame," said Jack. "Alphonse has only to subtract the house expenses, and . . . "

A  purposeful tread on the stair silenced them all and in the next instant a stranger pushed his way in at the door. He was tall and solid and well-dressed, with flinty eyes and a sleek brown topcoat. Tory moved on instinct to Jenny’s side as Jack leaped up from the desk.

"The theatre is closed, sir," Jack exclaimed, striding forward to block the stranger’s approach. "This is a private office."

"I am here on private business," sneered the other. He brandished the golden ram’s head of his cane toward Alphonse and the coins on the desk. "Your profits, there. I have come for my share."

"You have no business in this office," Jack repeated, standing his ground, forcing the stranger to halt, as well.

"I say I have." The man nodded over his shoulder as a smaller gentleman in sober, fastidious dress, clutching a ledger book, glided in behind him. "My name is Charles Crowder and this is my solicitor, Budge." He turned again to face Jack. "It grieves me to confess that that baggage over there is my wife. As I am given to understand any profits from tonight’s entertainment are designated for her benefit, I am here to receive them."

"She is quite capable of receiving them herself," said Tory, outraged.

"But not legally authorized to do so, Miss," spoke up Mr. Budge. "if her husband wishes to intercede."

Jenny had paled again, but the tremor of her lip looked to Tory more like anger than fear. She took a step toward the intruder and he cast his narrow gaze at her for the first time.

"What do you want here, Mr. Crowder?" Jenny challenged him, her voice low.

"Only what is due me, Mrs. Crowder," he sneered again. In the brief space of time it took them to eye each other, Tory thought the air between them would freeze with mutual contempt. How could they have ever been married? In what snarling fury had they ever conceived a son?

"You may call yourself what you like," Crowder continued, "but I am still yoked to you in lawful matrimony and for that indignity, I demand my rightful compensation." He turned to stare expectantly at their profits.

"You may be within your legal rights, Mr. Crowder, but you are misinformed about the business of a theatre," Jack injected crisply. "We must deduct expenses before Mrs. Kennett can receive her share."

"Expenses?" growled Crowder, his eyes wary, but he stayed where he was as Jack moved back to the desk and his papers.

"House expenses," said Jack. "Door-keeper, charwomen and ticket-takers’ salaries. Lamp oil and candle costs. The printing for the bills."

At each example Jack ticked off, Alphonse calmly separated another few coins from his tidy piles.

"Rental of the building due the lessor after each performance," Jack continued. Alphonse separated another stack of coin.

"Insurance," Alphonse chimed in, his pen busy, "against fire and hazard."

"And of course, the compensation fund for the players too ill to perform," added Jack.

"Ah," agreed Alphonse, sliding away a few more coins.
    
Crowder frowned at them. "My solicitor shall require an accounting."    

Alphonse lifted his face, a mask of perfect innocence, and held up the page on which he was writing. Mr. Budge glanced uneasily at Crowder, than waved a dismissive hand in the air.

"And don’t forget the winch on the paint-frame."

They all turned to see Thomas Ashbrook leaning in the doorway. He must have heard the commotion from upstairs. His arms were folded across the chest of his smock and while he was not a particularly tall man, he was substantial enough to fill the little doorway. But he could not have looked more placid as he gazed into the room.

"Not stuck again, is it?" Jack responded, with sympathetic concern.

"Worse. The teeth are entirely gone with the lowering of it tonight. We’ll need a new one before we can open up again."

"That will come very dear.” Alphonse sighed, shaking his head, as he swept aside several more coins.

"You see the complications, Mr. Crowder." Jack sighed, in his turn. "As much pleasure as it would give me to turn over our entire profit to Mrs. Kennett, the grim realities of theatrical management reduce her share to . . . "

"Seventeen pounds, six shillings, two-pence," Alphonse announced, scribbling a final notation on his paper. He scooped up the appropriate coins and handed them to Jack, who carried them over to Crowder.

"Your earnings, sir," said Jack soberly.

Crowder glared at him for one moment, then made an impatient gesture to Budge, who had to scramble forward to receive this bounty.

"I hope you are satisfied?" Jack added.

"Extremely." Crowder glowered again at Jenny, then turned on his heel. He was temporarily halted again by Mr. Ashbrook, who moved out of the doorway with a polite nod and no particular haste, and in the next moment, both Crowder and his solicitor could be heard marching down the stairs. Ashbrook continued to stand just outside the door, watching their descent, and when they all heard the street door wheeze open and shut, he nodded to Jack.

"How much is left after legitimate expenses?" Jack asked Alphonse, tersely.

"About fifteen pounds."

"Give Jenny twenty," Jack sighed, raking back his hair. "Write whatever you need to in the books, we’ll find the difference somewhere."

Alphonse did not choose this moment to dispute Jack’s business skills, but quietly counted out the money.

"Jack, you needn’t . . . " Jenny began.

"Take it," Tory and Jack said, together.

"I feel a fraud," Jenny murmured as a smile blossomed in her odd eyes, "when the performance of the evening has just taken place in this room."

She turned to thank Mr. Ashbrook, but the scene-painter had already disappeared back up into his rafters.

 

Top: C. E. Brock, illustration from Pride and Prejudice, 1895 edition
Above: Regency solicitor, Michel Martin Drolling 1819.

CHAPTER 20: Ruin! Tribulation!

It was weary work, rallying the Natives of Peru to fight the Spanish conquerors. Not that Tory was unaccustomed to battling the Spanish, but aboard the Blesséd Providence they had never compounded the work with all these fancy speeches. She found Pizarro a silly piece of work, which Jack did not dispute, but it had been a huge success when England was battling Napoleon, and the spectacle filled the house.

Tory had not much acting to trouble her. Jack had to deliver the most impassioned verse as the heroic Peruvian general, Rolla, under a light application of burnt cork. She had mostly to embody all that the Natives were fighting to protect — hearth, home, purity. And to keep herself from laughing at how easily her own ancestors might have made these speeches about the conquering English. But Jack’s gamble paid off. At the end of the performance, Plumleigh, who had gone on for Pizarro, came out to announce a second performance for the following week.

Later, after the interlude and the songs and the after-piece, when she had excavated through the layers of gilt and paint to become herself, again, Tory trotted upstairs to Jack's office. She smiled when she noticed the three ancient juggling pins left to him from his father roped together and hung up on the wall beside his desk. Beneath it, she saw one of Mr. Ashbrook’s odd paintings pinned on the wall, a sort of seascape in blues and greens, with the stars floating under water and the sea creatures — if such they were — dancing in the sky. But only Mr. Ingram was there, sitting at Jack's desk, the box with the night's proceeds at one hand while he pored over notes and charts for their next performance.

He directed Tory downstairs again and into the wings, where she found Jack kneeling in a litter of sawdust with Alphonse beside him attempting to adjust some piece of stage machinery. Jack was back in his street clothes, but he and Alphonse had both cast aside their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves to fuss with some recalcitrant tackle for raising and lowering scenes, a project that appeared to require a hand saw, a hammer, several wedge-shaped blocks of wood, and the presence of Trot, the call-boy, standing nearby to try the ropes. The company could not afford a full-time carpenter, of course, but Jack and Alphonse had done all their stage-building in the islands.

"Ah, the heroine of the Americas!" Jack hailed her when he saw her. "I knew you would be a sensation."

"Very nicely played, Mrs. Lightfoot," Trot put in.

"All I had to do was keep out of the way," Tory noted. "As I suspect I ought to do now." 

Jack smiled apologetically and held up his hands befouled with sawdust and grime from the stage floor. "Aye, we’ve some business to finish up here before I can get away," he agreed. "Can you find your way back with the others?"

And so she crossed the rear of the backstage to the ladies’ dressing room again, just as Jenny emerged.

"May I escort you back to the dressmaker’s?" Tory called as she came up beside her. "The hero of Peru has matters of state to attend to."

"You had best keep an eye on him, now all of Thornhampton has seen him in Rolla’s tunic," Jenny declared.

Tory laughed. "You are on your way home, are you not?"

"I’m meeting Kit later; there’s nothing quite so cheering as a taproom full of dazzled admirers on a play night. But first I must see Owen safely tucked in for the night," she added, nodding back toward the dressing room. "It takes that child forever to change her dresses."

Tory had often wondered at the incongruous match of Jenny and Violet, but it was clear Jenny was very fond of the girl.

"It’s very kind of you to wait for her," Tory said.

"Well, Swan and I must look after the young ones, especially now that Aunt Hat is gone," Jenny shrugged. "In a way, I suppose Violet is the daughter I shall never have. There is so much foolishness poured into the heads of young girls. I hope by my example, at least, to teach the poor thing to behave with some sense in the world, although I must confess with Owen, it’s an uphill battle."

At that moment, Mr. Ashbrook emerged from the wings on his way to the stairs at the end of the little corridor where they were standing. He wore a paint-splattered old countryman’s smock that hung almost to his knees. A splotch of bright blue stiffened the end of one lock of the dark straw-colored hair that he shook back from his spectacles as he passed them, but he smiled, oblivious to his unkempt looks.

"Ladies," he nodded to them, tipping an imaginary hat.

"Still hard at work, Mr. Ashbrook?" Tory sallied. The man haunted the upper regions of the theatre like a bat, living in the paint-room and working at all hours of the night and day.

"Just beginning, I’m afraid, Mrs. Lightfoot. I had to come down tonight to see how my scenes were received."

"They were a triumph," said Jenny. "Your Temple of the Sun had the locals utterly bedazzled. Ought you not to be out enjoying yourself tonight?"    

Ashbrook paused and gave her a curious look. "But I enjoy my work, Mrs. Kennett. It is a great privilege to be allowed to continue at it. I mustn’t waste a single moment." And with another smile, he excused himself and hurried up the stairs.

"What an odd fellow," said Jenny, gazing up after him. "Has he no other life but this?"

"I don’t believe he has the means," Tory confided. "Anyway, I like him. Always a friendly word for everyone and absolutely sure of what he wants to do in life." Indeed, she envied that about him.

"However strange it may be," mused Jenny. "Must he wear those spectacles all the time? They give him such an owlish look."

"I don’t think he can see much without ‘em."

"Ah. That would explain a lot about his work." Jenny glanced again at Tory with a sparkle in her mismatched eyes. "And how is your own little opus coming along, my dear?"

"Oh, it does well enough," Tory replied carelessly. In truth, she was almost embarrassed to admit how much she enjoyed writing The Lure Of The Indies. How fun it was to write dialogue for Matty he had never had the wit to say to her, in fact. To orchestrate a romance far more delectable than anything that could have ever possibly happened between them in life. An idyllic romance that could only end in the young hero’s tragic death — that was the only destiny for perfection. Real love, thorny, perverse, hilarious, exhausting and enduring real love, the kind she shared with Jack, was far less suited to the drama. But much more entertaining in life. Love was going through every kind of hell together, that’s what Jack had told her, once. But she was not yet gifted enough to get that down on the page.

"Shall Captain Lightfoot have them swooning in their seats?"  asked Jenny.

"Captain Starhawke," Tory corrected her. "And, yes, Kit will need an army of link-boys to protect him from his adoring public."

"Mmm, he’ll enjoy that. Oh, here you are, Owen! Mrs. Hopworth will be fast asleep by now, we’ll have to rouse that sour maid of hers."

The three of them set out from the Brewhouse and down the street of brightly lit taverns and chop houses that were always busy at this hour on play nights. They rounded the corner and headed for the Tudor Inn, at the end of the next street, and the dressmaker’s, half a block beyond, where Jenny and Violet were lodging. But Tory did not stop at the inn; there was some sort of commotion further down the street and Tory hurried along with her friends to see what the matter was. A watchman was attempting to send some curious neighbors back to their beds; they all fell silent and stared as the three women strode past them and into the house.

Mrs. Hopworth, the dressmaker, was complaining to her maid in the little parlor off her shop, inside, but she bounded up when they came in, twisting the hem of her apron in both hands.

"There you are, at last!" she cried. "And all the trouble we’ve had this night on your account! The late Mr. Hopworth always advised me never to let to theatrical people. 'You never know where you are with ‘em, do ye,' said he. 'Never know what will come of it.' "

"What’s happened, Mrs. Hopworth?" asked Jenny.

"Ruin! Tribulation is what’s happened, Miss. Missus, I should say. That’s what he said."

"Who?"

"Gentleman, why, I should hardly call him such, pounding on my door after dark while you was away at your precious theatre. 'Where is Mrs. Kennett’s room,' cries he. 'She ain’t at home,' says I. 'Her room!' shouts he, fairly sweeping me out of his way as he thunders up the stairs, and all my nice things all a-tumble . . . "

But Jenny was already racing up the stairs herself, and Tory followed, dragging along an astonished Violet. The door stood open to their little room and the chaos inside. The wardrobe doors were thrown open and drawers had been pulled out of the bureau and tumbled on the floor or the beds. Bits of clothing and paste jewelry were strewn about, the little pots and jars on the vanity had been overturned, and the beds were disrupted, their linens torn away and one of the mattresses yanked sideways on its frame.

Violet let out a little cry, then dashed into the room, clutching up a discarded chemise, a stocking and a little string of cheap beads that broke in her hands. But Jenny stood rooted where she was.

"All my pretty things!" wailed Violet, flitting from wardrobe to vanity. "All spoilt!" It looked as if things had been thrown about by a willful child.

"A burglar wouldn’t do this," said Tory. "He would simply take it all. And he wouldn’t knock first and ask the landlady to let him in." She shook her head. "Is anything actually missing?"

"I’ll wager something is." Jenny’s voice was scarcely a whisper. Her face had paled, but her keen eyes were full of fire as she marched to the skewed bed.

"Who’s going to pay damages for all this trouble?" cried Mrs. Hopworth, thumping up the stairs behind them.

Tory saw Jenny crouch down by her bed, lift the corner of the mattress and slide her hand underneath. She felt all around, then stood and tugged the mattress onto the floor. But she found nothing in the slatted frame underneath or in the tangle of bedding on the floor.

"My earnings," she sighed, as Tory came up beside her. "They were never so much, a few coins I managed to hoard away as we moved from town to town. But they were mine."

Tory put her arm around her. "It’s all right, we’ll look after you. Is anything else gone?"

"The little velvet reticule I kept them in. It is worth precisely nothing, but it belonged to my mother. It’s all I have left of her."

"We’ll find the man who did it," Tory declared. "Mrs. Hopworth will describe him to the constable and we’ll —"

"I know who did it," said Jenny.

"Someone owes me compensation for all the uproar my household has been put through," Mrs. Hopworth exclaimed, at the doorway. "Theatre people! I should have known!"

"Theatre people were all at the theatre, tonight," Tory retorted. "None of us did this to your household, Mrs. Hopworth. It’s in your best interest to help us find out who did. What exactly can you tell us about him?"

"I can tell you the name he gave. Oh, yes, give a name, didn’t he? Nice as you please." She nodded at Jenny. "She knows. A Mr. Crowder, wasn’t it? Said he was your husband."

Tory spun around again toward Jenny. "He can’t get away with this!" she exploded.

"Of course he can" Jenny sighed. She had sunk down to perch on the edge of the wooden bed frame, looking limp, as if all the air had been let out of her.

"He can’t simply steal your things!"

"But they’re his things, too. I’m his wife. He owns whatever is mine." Jenny glanced up again at Tory, her expression utterly defeated. "He owns me."

Top: John Philip Kemble as Rolla in Pizarro, Sir Thomas Lawrence 1800
Above: Temple of Sun, from the play Pizarro. Illustrated London News 1856

CHAPTER 19: Radical Arts

But what Jack found instead was a harmless-looking fellow in unfashionably loose-fitting jacket and trousers that had seen much wear. He looked about Jack’s age and was of average height and build with untidy but not very long hair the color of hay bales, brown streaked with dark blond. There was more than a little of the vagabond about the fellow, but his clear grey eyes were direct behind gold wire spectacles. He carried a large, flat portfolio under his arm.

"Mr. Dance? I am Thomas Ashbrook. I’ve come about your advertisement for a painter."

Jack hefted the little file of papers, notes and calculations he now carried about with him everywhere onto the desk, to give his thundering heartbeat a moment to calm down. "You’re very alert, Mr. Ashbrook. The advertisement only just came out."

"A person in my circumstances cannot afford to be tardy."

Jack and motioned his visitor to the opposite chair. "I’m glad to hear it. We need some new scenery rather quickly. You’ve painted scenes before?"

"I am a professional artist," said Ashbrook. "With your permission . . ?"

Jack nodded and the fellow hopped up to spread his portfolio open on the desk. Sifting through the loose sheets of heavyweight paper inside, Jack found a few naturalistic landscapes done in washes with moody, suggestive colors, several tidy little studies of everyday objects and some sketchy portraits with wildly intense eyes or odd expressions on the faces. But most interesting were some finished pieces tucked away in the back. Jack could not make out what they were meant to represent, grottoes or clouds or some other fantastical realm. There was no conventional sense of perspective or proportion, both crucial to scene-painting, nor any sense of reality — flowers were as big as dogs, fish swam in the sky, people floated in the air among the stars. But the colors were rich and luscious and the quirky figures and animals lovingly rendered. As odd as they were, they were strangely haunting, like the memory of a dream.

"This is beautiful work." Jack smiled.

"Do you think so?" Mr. Ashbrook looked surprised.

"I’ve never seen anything like ‘em."

"You would, if the art academies were torn to the ground and artists were allowed to follow their own instincts," said Ashbrook. "Education is death to the artist. A school can only teach you how to paint exactly like someone else. But I believe any artistic endeavor should be a way to express oneself."

"This is certainly very expressive work," Jack agreed.
    
"Because I have had no formal training. I have only lately come to painting and have taught myself what little I know. I am inspired by the divine Blake, whose fantastical work captures not what the eye sees, but what the soul understands. I am ever hoping to soak up some tiny dewdrop of his overflowing genius in the study of his work, but beyond that, I must paint from my own heart and from that alone."

Jack glanced up into Mr. Ashbrook’s eager face. "And you say you make your living by your art?"

Ashbrook’s rapt expression gave way on the instant to a grin of cheerful candor. "I make no living whatsoever, Mr. Dance. And so you find me here."

"But you call yourself a professional artist."

"Painting is my only profession now, but it’s far from steady. My ideas on art are too radical to please a patron. I have been a journeyman portrait painter, but more often than not, the face I labor with such good intentions to capture on the canvas is rarely the one the sitter envisions. And I cannot abide the tedium of realistic landscapes that might actually have some commercial value. Why must a painted tree look like a real tree, or a duck a real duck? Nature has already perfected the tree and the duck, how could I possibly improve upon them? Should it not be the goal of art to imagine something beyond Nature, to interpret Nature in terms of art? Nature is, but human beings are blessed with imaginations to see beyond what is merely real. The artist ought to create what can only be imagined."

Jack gazed at his visitor in complete fascination. In another moment, he would talk himself out of employment.

"I am very much afraid," Jack spoke at last, "that in the scene-painting trade, you will be required to paint a tree that looks like a tree."

There was another flash of that disarmingly frank grin even as Ashbrook dropped his eyes.

"Forgive me ranting at you, Mr. Dance. I ought to have held my tongue."

"I appreciate honesty, Mr. Ashbrook. But tell me, have you any experience at all painting scenery?"
    
“I was second apprentice to the scene-painter at the Bristol Theatre for a season. I do know my way round the paint room."

Jack glanced again at the paintings on his desk. The little studies were quite good, Ashbrook could do realistic work if he had to. And Jack knew he could not afford to pick and choose.

"I can’t pay you very much," he confessed.

Ashbrook’s face brightened. "Even very little is a great deal more than nothing, which I am earning at present," he beamed. "I would be more than content with room and board. It would not be the first time I’ve slept in the paint room."

Jack smiled. "I believe I can find you some sort of salary."

"He had better work for nothing," Alphonse sighed when Jack told him of the interview, later. "I do not know how we shall bear the expense of another salary."

"There is nothing resembling a Temple of the Sun among the Fairweather’s scenes and you can’t do Pizarro without one," Jack reasoned. "Pay him out of my salary, if you must. I feel a fraud taking the manager’s share, in any case, at least until I’ve shown I can actually manage something."

"You are making a very poor start," sniffed Alphonse. "A wise man keeps what he earns."

"I’ll keep enough to get by, but Ashbrook must be employed. I’m not suggesting you forfeit your salary. Your abolitionists shall have their fair share."

Alphonse sighed again, gazing down at his ever-present account books. Jack put down his papers, regarding him.

"You have never spoken much about the time you were away," Jack noted. "Were you able to . . . accomplish anything?"

"Mr. Jepson is a very gracious host," Alphonse replied. "And a keen observer. He had a new cargo of sugar in from the Indies bound upriver to Birmingham, an abolitionist stronghold, and he arranged for me to serve as supercargo on the voyage."

"On a ship?" said Jack. Alphonse was a notoriously poor sailor.

"That is the usual means of river travel, yes."

"I admire your devotion to your cause."

"My devotion to the abolitionist cause remains unswerving. But I confess I did not think much of their methods."

"Methods?" echoed Jack. "They wish to abolish slavery and so do you. Where could you disagree?"

"As I say, it was a question of method." Alphonse shook his head. "I had a letter from Mr. Jepson, extolling the success of a plantation whose laborers are wage-earners, not slaves, such as his, with which I attended an abolitionist meeting in a public assembly room. Very well attended. There are a great many grim factories in Birmingham and I supposed the people must feel a kind of kinship with the plight of laboring slaves in the islands. But it was not . . . " He paused, considering. "It was not a place for high-minded discussion. It was rather like a theatrical performance. The public were interested in . . . sensation. The more lurid the accounts of depravity against the slaves, the better the audience enjoyed it."

"Still," Jack suggested, "if they sign their petitions or elect their members out of sentiment instead of, well, high-mindedness, does it not amount to the same thing in the end? Good works done for the wrong reason are still good works done."

Alphonse frowned at him.

"How eager would you be to strip off your shirt so the world may gasp over your scars?" he asked. Jack slowly shook his head. "Yet, my own deformity is not so easily hidden. The abolitionist leaders in Birmingham wanted me to display myself to the public as the poor, stunted Negro. The helpless cripple. As if it were slavery itself and not some accident of Nature that made me thus. Nor was it enough for them that my poor mother died of hard labor in the fields. They wanted her raped and brutalized by her oppressors into the bargain." Alphonse’s eyes narrowed. "It is not pity I seek, but justice. And that can only come when people of my complexion are perceived as people. Not savages. Not children. Not victims. Ordinary people with the same rights as ordinary people everywhere — to live free, to earn a living, to be responsible for themselves. I do the cause no good displaying myself as an object of sensation, when what's needed is a way to express the humanity we all have in common. I must find a better forum to influence public opinion."

"But you have one. Here. What better way to reach the public than from the stage?"

Alphonse frowned again. "You wish me to preach abolition in the Brewhouse? That will put a rapid end to our profits."

"There are all sorts of ways to influence the public," said Jack. "At an abolitionist meeting, however well-attended, you are preaching to the converted. But everyone comes to the theatre. Sow an idea, however radical, into their entertainment and who knows what might take root? People do not change their minds overnight. But a thing, a viewpoint, an idea repeated often enough is more likely to be viewed as normal, sooner or later, than one people feel has been forced upon them suddenly, against their will."
    
"You think we should mesmerise the public?"

Jack grinned. "That is what the theatre does. When it is done well. The more often the common humanity of African characters is presented onstage, the more outraged the public will be over slavery, and abolition will come sooner."

"A pretty enough speech," sighed Alphonse. "And how do you propose to effect this miracle?"

"I won’t. You will. I’ll put you in a production of Othello."

Alphonse gaped at him. "And who’s to be my Desdemona, Mrs. Tom Thumb? Besides, I hardly think a jealousy-maddened Negro who murders an innocent white woman will add luster to our cause."

"It is a classic," Jack protested. "There is some wonderful poetry —"

"I am not a player," Alphonse declared. "If I take up Shakespeare and you take up the account books, we shall all be ruined."

True enough, thought Jack. And yet, Shakespeare had never failed him before. Somewhere in all of Shakespeare there must be something they could use to aid the cause of freedom.

"The Tempest," he said suddenly. Alphonse blinked up at him. "Prospero and Ariel, the master magician and the sprite he enslaves through magic. The story is all about freedom, Alphonse. Prospero pledges to free Ariel if he serves him well, and in the end, he does. It’s the emotional climax of the play."

"But how does this enhance our cause?"

"Consider the symbolic value if Ariel is black."

"Meaning me?"

Jack nodded. "He may look exotic, yet his desire for freedom is absolutely human. And he earns it through his service."

"A human wrongly enslaved should not have to provide service to earn his freedom," said Alphonse.

"He should not," Jack agreed. "But might it not better serve the cause of freedom and common humanity to present an allegory of a white man honoring his pledge to a black man?"

Alphonse must be considering it very carefully, since he did not immediately reject the idea.

"Prospero has most of the speeches," Jack pressed on. "Ariel’s part is a great deal of mime, at which you excel, and when he does have lines, consider the impact of your refined speech. And if I go on for Prospero, we can throw in a lot of tumbling and acrobatics, which the public loves. They'll be converts to your cause before they even realize they've been preached to. How could they not?"

Alphonse gazed at him for another long minute. "Well," he said at last. "Let us find out." 

Top: Winds of Change,  © James Aschbacher

Above right: Abolitionist Pamphlet, 1832

Above left: Prospero and Ariel, Robert Smirke, 1821

CHAPTER 18: The Fairweather Circuit

"Charton-on-Crewe is the last official stop on our circuit," Kit Bell was explaining to Jack. "Due south along the coach road. The wool-spinning and sail-making industries can support a theatrical season of about a month."

"And after that?"

Kit shrugged. "Fairweather is a dear fellow," he observed, delicately tugging each cuff of his powder blue morning coat into place as he perched on the edge of the manager’s desk. "But a trifle whimsical in matters of organization. He placed considerable faith in the tempo of the moment, the intuition of his dear lady, and, of course, the continuing benevolence of Fortune."

"That arrant whore." Jack sighed.

Kit nodded. "At the end of our winter season, he might secure us a couple of weeks at Yeovil during the spring livestock market or find us an unoccupied hall in some other crossroads town. But most often, we troop like gypsies to whatever spa towns do not already have a company of players in residence. A dwindling number, as it happens. Playhouses in the provinces are leased far in advance for the summer."
   
"Because the London patent houses close down." Jack nodded; that was when all the professionals hied themselves off to provincial engagements.

"Exactly," said Kit. "But Fairweather preferred to keep his engagements open-ended. By the time he was ready to move on, the next likely places were already booked up."

"So there is no Fairweather summer circuit?" Jack frowned.

"On one or two fortunate occasions, he found us four or six weeks in a theatre whose prior lease had been voided. His usual centerpiece was a month of ‘sensations’ at Kelsingham in high summer, leaving the serious drama to the patent houses in Bath and Bristol."   

Alphonse looked up from his account books on the opposite side of the broad desk from Jack. His eloquent shrug told Jack all he needed to know about Alphonse's opinion of another season in Kelsingham so soon.

"Surely, they've seen all of our tricks in Kelsingham," said Jack. "Such as they are." He shook his head. "I can’t believe it was sheer short-sightedness that kept Fairweather from obtaining his own summer playhouse."

"Indeed, it was not," said Kit, with a nod to Alphonse’s book. "As Mr. Belair can tell you. Even when he did manage to fill the house, Fairweather had a family to maintain. And he looked after his players. We were always paid, whether or not there were any profits. That’s why so many of us stayed with him."

Jack wondered if he would ever be able to command such loyalty. Not unless he, too, could somehow manage to pay his players regular wages out of nothing in the coffers, a chancy prospect from the way Alphonse was glowering over the books. Yet, he required more than loyalty; he needed to make a decent living, for all of them. Fairweather had generously left him all of the company’s props and painted scenery and all the dresses except those belonging to his own family. And the coach to transport them in, along with the horses, to be groomed and fed. The lease on the Brewhouse Theatre was good for four more weeks. The only missing ingredient was profit.

"Kit, I’d be obliged if you’d pop round to the Harry and the inn and round up our people. Say I’d like to see ‘em here at the theatre in an hour."

"Tendering your resignation so soon?" Kit grinned, sliding up off the desk. "And here I had five pounds riding on your sticking it out at least a fortnight."

“T'would serve you right if I did quit, since this was your crack-brained idea in the first place."

"It was Gabriel’s crack-brained idea," Kit corrected him. "I only won the case with my brilliant argument."

"Well, you’ll win your five pounds, in any event. Let’s hope it’s not the last profit anybody earns in this venture."

"What we need is a sensation or two to see us through the rest of the season here in Thornhampton," Jack declared, an hour later, to the company members draped across the pit benches in the Brewhouse Theatre. "Something unexpected. At Mr. Bell’s suggestion, I’d like to get up a production of Pizarro. Let me know what parts you can give so I can cast as soon as possible."

"Won’t Pizarro be expensive?" asked Mrs. Swan.

"We can make do with what breastplates and tunics we’ve on hand for the soldiers and Natives, with a few alterations. Aunt Hat recommended a local seamstress to work on them. We’ll need new scenery, yes, but a spectacle should draw more riverside traffic than the classics to make the venture pay."

There was a tentative buzz of enthusiasm.
   
“I would appreciate any other suggestions," Jack prompted.

"What about an entirely new piece?" Harding called out. "Shakespeare and Sheridan were well enough in their day, but everyone turns out to see a novelty."

"Yes, every company gives those pieces," Violet chimed in. "But people like new things best."

From the end of her row, Tory swallowed a grin and glanced back to see how Jack would take this philistine outburst.

"I’m afraid we’ve no budget to spare for a playwright," he said diplomatically.

"But we have one in our midst, already," Jane Kennett declared. "Oh, come, you can’t all have forgotten the thrilling romance of Captain Lightfoot?"

She was suddenly beaming at Tory and everyone else was looking at her, too.

"What a piece that would make upon the stage," Jenny went on. "Fever, romance, pirates."

"Might draw a house or two at that, in a riverside town like Thornhampton," Plumleigh agreed.

"But that was only . . . " a lie, Tory wanted to say, " . . .  a silly story."

"But that is the very definition of drama, my dear," said Plumleigh. "You’ve only to get it up into a piece."

"Yes, do!" cried Violet.

"But . . . I’ve never written anything," Tory protested.

"Oh, pooh." Jenny smiled, "I’ve seen you scribbling in that book of yours. That one you used to keep hidden away at the pastry-cook’s."

Tory’s expression froze. She dared not even look at Jack, for fear her own guilt would crackle over to him like a bolt of St. Elmo's fire. Jenny had seen her logbook! How many of their secrets did she know?

"Don’t be embarrassed, dear," Jenny reassured her. "We all have our private peccadilloes. Yours might be of some use, at the moment."

Tory knew she must say something before it occurred to the others to grow any more curious about her logbook.

"I shall . . . try to oblige," someone said, with a show of assumed confidence. Tory was horrified to realize it had been her.


Arriving early at the Brewhouse two mornings later, Jack was surprised when Mr. Ingram, the stage manager, told him a person was waiting for him. A vision of brass buttons and wrist manacles swam before his eyes; the urge to bolt, to grab Tory and flee for their lives, flooded his every sense, but he fought it down and charged upstairs to confront his fate. 

Top: Vintage Summer Theatre poster

Above: Strolling Players, Reginald Birch 1897

CHAPTER 17: A Nominal Leader

In Thornhampton, a prosperous trading center known for cider-brewing and the manufacture of all sorts of woolen goods, the company was able to set up in a proper theatre again. True, it was a converted brewhouse, but it boasted boxes, pit, gallery, Green Room and all the appropriate stage machinery. There was a printer nearby in the High Street for the bills and plenty of custom from the traffic on the river Thorne that wound out of town for the Bristol Channel.

But several weeks on the road had not agreed with Charlotte Fairweather. The season at the Brewhouse Theatre was scarcely under way before Mr. Fairweather began to reassign his parts to the other gentlemen players to spend more time with his ailing wife. He relied most often upon Jack, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespearean verse fit him for so many of Mr. Fairweather’s roles.


Jack had spent the morning at the Brewhouse, helping Mr. Ingram block out the stage business for the next evening's farce. He met Tory for dinner at the Old Harry tavern in the next street, but upon their return, they found the inn where the Fairweathers were staying all in an uproar. Charlotte Fairweather was several hours  into her labor and having no easy time of it. Aunt Hat had all the household women assisting the midwife, and Miles Fairweather had been shut out of the sickroom to fret in the back parlor.
    
It’s never been easy on her, this life, poor woman," he confessed, when Jack found him there. "She’s a young woman, still, for all the time we’ve been together and for all the cares I’ve heaped upon her."

"She has a very strong character," Jack tried to reassure him.

"Oh, aye, sir. Regular heart of oak, hasn’t she? Took me on and my poor motherless Stephen after I lost my first wife, the Dear Lord keep her, and has presented me with my little Eliza into the bargain, since. And never a word of complaint, never a word."

Jack couldn't think how to comfort him, confronted with the situation he himself had always feared above all others: that Tory might one day be brought to a childbed she might not survive. That he would lose her.

"The women will do all they can for her," was all he could think of to say.

Tory had scarcely shrugged out of her plaid cloak, but she left it for Jack to carry upstairs when she saw a harried chambermaid hauling a pan of soiled water out of the lying-in room. Tory would have sooner swum into the jaws of a shark than face another scene of childbirth, but an extra pair of hands was always useful in an emergency, and she made her way inside.

It was nearly twelve hours later when she finally emerged again, into the gloomy dark of the corridor. Stewed in her own sweat, every muscle cramped with fatigue and anxiety, she scarcely felt the carpet beneath her feet nor saw in what direction she stumbled. Her right hand still smarted from where poor Charlotte had twisted it in her own, digging her nails into Tory’s flesh in the agony of her ceaseless pushing, her screams thundering still in Tory’s brain. Screaming and blood, a scene she remembered all too vividly, could never, ever forget. By all the gods, the child was finally born and the mother survived. But Tory could not help but remember the mother who had not.

She got as far as the back parlor, dimly aware of other, more robust females hailing Miles Fairweather and ushering him past her into his wife, at last. Then the last of Tory’s strength evaporated. She sank, exhausted, onto a low banquette by a narrow window, shuddering as if she herself had endured the trauma of birth. It was not yet grey dawn outside and by the low candlelight, she could see her own image in the glass, her dark hair unkempt, her eyes hollow. Like her mother’s face, the last time she had ever seen her. Then the face in the glass crumbled.    

She felt the steady hand resting between her shoulders before she could bear to acknowledge it. When Jack lifted her shoulders and drew her into his embrace, she could not resist. He never told her to hush, never promised that everything would be all right, only held her and rocked her, giving her his strength when she had none left of her own.

"I . . . I’m sorry," she said at last.

"You were thinking of your mother," he whispered.

Tory nodded. "It was like that night. . . . ” Her breath came in a sudden spasm. "I lost her. I lost all of them."

"Oh, mi vida, mi corazon," Jack murmured, folding her close again. "You’ll never lose me, Rusty. I promised you once I would never, ever leave you and I never will. I’ll do my damnedest to make a life for us, here, I swear it."

Once the season at the Brewhouse Theatre resumed, Mr. Fairweather was so preoccupied with the slow recuperation of his wife and the demands of tiny Mary Sarah Fairweather, he scarcely had time to manage the company. He so often asked Jack if he would mind popping round to the printer’s to pick up the bills, or meet with some local organization to arrange a charity benefit, that Jack got into the habit of stopping in every morning on his way to the theatre to assist in the day’s business, glad to do whatever small favors he could to help the manager in his present difficulties.

He was more hungry to succeed now than he had ever been as a lad of nineteen. Since returning to England, he was almost tempted to believe Tory’s mystical notion that his foster parents were watching over him, somehow, and he wanted to succeed for their sake, to honor their memory. But above all, he yearned to provide security for Tory. He could never restore the freedom she’d had to leave behind in the islands, but he was determined to give her a life of some stability in this gypsy trade to make up for everything else she had lost.

He was chewing over these thoughts while shrugging back into his street clothes in the Green Room late one night. Their performance had been a benefit for the Thorneside Widows and Orphans Fund and he had sent Alphonse into the box office after the interlude to keep an eye on the receipts until they could be delivered to Mr. Fairweather for the reckoning. Alphonse had returned to the company shortly after Mrs. Fairweather's lying-in, with little to say on the subject of his Bristol adventure. Not that Jack had had a spare moment to converse with him in any case, in the pandemonium of these last couple of weeks.

The other players were still loitering about the Green Room in stages of disarray when Fairweather himself strode in amongst them.

"Excellent playing tonight, one and all," he hailed them. "Which makes my announcement all the more distressing." The room quieted on the instant and Fairweather, looking forlorn but nothing daunted, pressed on. "Mrs. Fairweather is in a lagging state. She lags behind in her recovery, she lags below expectation in the, er, how may I say it delicately? In the nourishment she must provide for the infant. In order to regain her health and vigor, she, that is, we must . . . well, the plain, bald fact of it is, ladies and gentlemen, we must leave the profession."

But for a startled cry from Flora Bishop like the piping of a small finch, this declaration was greeted with appalled silence.

"Even though the spring thaw is at last under way, it has been a cold winter and Mrs. F. craves heat and warmth. Some of her Greville cousins have made a home for themselves in Italy, where there is sunshine and inexpensive lodgings to be had. A great many English have removed themselves to Italy for their health, and very soon the Miles Fairweather family must number itself among them."

"How soon?" asked Jenny Kennett.

"There is a packet boat sailing up the Thorne for Bristol Channel in a week."

His audience found their tongues at last.

"A week!" "As soon as that?" "We’re to close without bens?" "But we’ve performances bespoken a fortnight from now!" "Aye, and into next month!"

But Jack remained silent. So this was his reward for daring to hope for a future, to be tossed aside in a week to begin all over again. Was this why he had brought Tory here? Was this why Alphonse had returned from his refuge in Bristol? Plumleigh, Gabriel, Mrs. Swan, they were popular in the provinces and would find new places soon enough. Any company would be glad to have Kit Bell. Jenny was not the most accomplished actress, but she knew her lines and her marks and was a lively presence onstage. But places in quality companies were scarce. If they were all to be turned out . . .

"Please do not imagine I am insensible to your plight," Miles Fairweather went on miserably. "I have had these same arguments with myself, but to no avail. The well-being of my poor wife must come first. If there were any other way —"

"No one could begrudge your concern for your dear lady," Kit spoke up. "Which, of course, you know we all share. But might it not be possible for the company to continue on without you?" There were a few tentative murmurings. Kit went on, "Of course, you and Mrs. Fairweather are irreplaceable upon the stage and in the hearts of your public. But in the circumstances —"

"Is the lease on the playhouse up to date?" Alphonse had come in, holding the box.

"It continues until mid-April, as long as the rent is paid every Saturday night," Fairweather replied.

"Then why can we not continue on until then?" Kit proposed. "At least fulfill our obligations in Thornhampton?"

"A sharing republic!" cried George Plumleigh. "Like my early strolling days. What jolly fun!"

"You have my blessing in such an enterprise, by all means," said Mr. Fairweather. "Only . . . why, a company of this size must have at least a nominal leader, to see to the timetables and suchlike."

"If we attempt to operate as a collective, we shall be at each others’ throats within the week," Jenny agreed. "We must name one person to manage us."

From a corner of his eye, Jack saw Harding conferring eagerly with his friend, Plumleigh. And because the fellow had so little skill in keeping his thoughts out of his face, Jack wondered if Harding might try to put himself forward for the position, and what a disaster that would be —

"In that case," came Richard Gabriel's voice, "I suggest Mr. Dance."

Sitting barefoot with one stocking still in his hand, Jack could only stare at him in utter horror.

"He is relatively new to our company, but he has ever behaved with utmost professionalism." Gabriel spoke the last word with precision, and a very slight nod to Jack.

"But have you any experience managing a troupe of players, Mr. Dance?" spoke up Mrs. Swan.

"He’s been all but managing ours ever since the child was born," Kit pointed out. "Is it not so, Mr. Fairweather?"

"Quite so. Mr. Dance has helped me quite admirably."

"But . . . I’ve been scarcely more than an assistant, a call-boy — meaning no disrespect, Trot," Jack injected. "Surely, one of the more senior players . . . Mr. Plumleigh?"

"Ye gads, man! Bills, account-books, hiring and firing, upkeep, publicity, these are not my concern," Plumleigh protested. "I am a player."

"We are all of us players, Plum," sniffed Harding.

"The fact is, nobody else cares to take on the headaches of management," Kit said, turning again to Jack.

"And I do?" Jack gaped.

"But you already know every part ever written. You’ll have more free time than the rest of us."

"Any other person in this room is more qualified than I am," said Jack. "Can we not open the discussion to other candidates?"

It looked again like Harding might put himself forward, and now Jack almost hoped he would. He could read the frown of concentration as Harding weighed his probable work load against the prestige of an actor-manager. But prestige lost out and Harding was as silent as the rest.

"There are no other candidates," said Kit. "Mr. Dance, we throw ourselves upon your mercy."

"Do say yes, Mr. Dance," Violet Owen piped up. "Or we shall all be out on the street."

Jack glanced over at Tory, whose dark eyes were shining at him, full of mischief. And something else. Pride? He could not allow her to starve if it was at all within his power to prevent it.

"I shall not . . .  abandon you, of course," he told them. "I’ll have a go at the job until our lease runs out —"

"Hear, hear!" enthused Plumleigh.
 
" — at which point you are more than welcome to vote me down. But under one condition. Since I haven’t the faintest clue what I’m doing, I shall need a partner. With your approval."

"Is it someone we know?" frowned Mrs. Swan.

"Quite well. It’s Mr. Belair."

Alphonse’s expression remained as cool as ever, but he nodded very slightly at Jack to signal his agreement. Odd, it was Tory who looked suddenly taken aback, but when Jack’s eyes swung back to her again, she was smiling.

"Mr. Belair is the very devil with finances," Jack explained. "I can scarcely manage the company’s interests without him to keep the treasury in order."

"I second the proposition," cried Plumleigh.

"And I," echoed Gabriel.

"Then we’re all agreed." Kit smiled.

Tory tried to hide her hurt that Jack named Alphonse as his partner and not her. She and Jack had fought side by side in the pirate trade, risked their lives together in the slave islands. But they were in civilized England, now, where men ran things and women were useless subordinates — even in the theatrical trade, which was far more broad-minded than most. Of course, Alphonse would make an excellent treasurer, she could not begrudge him that. And it was a great honor for Jack. She would not tarnish his triumph with her disappointment.

But it was not an especially triumphant Jack who crawled into their little bed that night upstairs at the Tudor Inn.

"I must be out of my mind, Rusty," he fretted. "I can’t manage a company."

"Of course you can, hombre."

"I’ve been off the circuits for ten years, and only two steps away from the hangman’s noose, besides. What will they do if their fine new manager is clapped in irons one day for a pirate?"

Tory repressed a shiver. It was the thing she feared most in the world, that Jack might yet be taken away from her. Her sex had always been her own best defense against any charge of piracy. But if evidence ever surfaced connecting Jack to the trade . . . well, piracy was a hanging offense. They could never regret their time in the trade; Tory had found freedom, Jack had reawakened to life. They had found each other. But those were dangerous ghosts to carry into the civilized world.

"That was another lifetime," Tory said now, to reassure herself. "Play a part and the part is what people will see, remember?"    
    
"But I’ve never played manager before," Jack sighed. "What was Richard thinking?"
    
That you're the best man for the job?" Tory suggested. "Despite all that hellfire and brimstone, Mr. Gabriel is very smart about the theater. These people need you, Jack. They have nowhere else to turn."

"They deserve better," Jack frowned. "I’ve never been much good to people who needed me."

"You’ve done me a great deal of good," she told him, propping her head up on her hand. "You taught me to tumble, to juggle, even to act, after a fashion. I could never have survived for this long blundering about on my own. You’ve had an excellent education in this trade, Jack, and these people respect you for it. You won’t disappoint them." She leaned over and kissed him softly. "You have never disappointed me."

"Not even now?"

For a thrilling instant, Tory thought he was addressing her exclusion from his partnership, then she realized that the "now" he referred to was here, in England.

"Especially now. In a few brief months I’ve gone from fugitive to wife of a theatrical manager."

"So it’s my prestige you love," Jack teased, stroking her hair.

"I respect your prestige,” she clarified, crawling astride him. "But I would rather make love to a pirate."

"So would I." He pulled her down onto his chest for another, longer kiss, arching his body under her slowly, but purposefully, until she broke off their kiss with a soft laugh.

"I see you’re about to do me a deal more good!”