Secret Lament (2 page)

I stifled a grin at the thought of Ned putting hands on any woman, then stared in astonishment as I saw him flash a smile at the girl. Anyone would have thought he genuinely admired her.

Of course Mazzanti paid the price for offending the spirit. No sooner had delicate, demure Julia started once more on her song, than the spirit struck up from a high beam with a Scotch song so
bawdy it would have embarrassed a married man. The actresses in the company sniggered, Mrs Keregan looked grimly triumphant, and only young Richard, who is barely sixteen, blushed.

In the aftermath, while Mazzanti was shouting and Mr Keregan trying to calm him, and the spirit crooning happily in the rafters, the rest of us retired to the costume boxes and fanned ourselves
against the overwhelming heat.

“Someone ought to see to that man, they should,” Mrs Keregan said darkly. “Beer, Charlie boy?”

I took it eagerly.

“I hope the spirit isn’t offended,” young Richard said anxiously, staring at the cobwebs in the corner.

Athalia preened her red hair to an even greater pitch of curled perfection. “I’ll sort him out,” she said in warlike tones and pranced off across the stage.

The afternoon sun was slanting across me; I shifted the box backwards into the shade. Outside, in the bright yard, bare-chested workmen hauled huge timbers about and shouted instructions to the
apprentices darting here and there. And one dark face appeared at the window, peering in with a leer. An unshaven face, scarred on one cheek and surrounded by dirty tousled hair.

He met my gaze. Instinctively, I pulled back. He grinned and was off.

He was following me, had been for nearly three months now, along with two or three other fellows. Back in March, I tangled with some ruffians in one of the chares down by the Keyside, and they
had been after me ever since. They trailed me down the wide daylight streets, grinned at me if I thought of venturing into an alley, embarrassed me by coming up and addressing me by name when I was
talking to respectable gentlemen and ladies. I had even seen them lounging outside my lodgings.

They were trying to frighten me, of course, revenging themselves for the defeat I had inflicted on them and their leader. They were succeeding. And I suspected that they would not stop at
frightening but would sooner or later press on to give me a beating. I would have felt safer if my great friend Hugh Demsey had been in town to lend me a little practical help, but he was in
Houghton-le-Spring, teaching the country ladies and gentlemen to dance, and I didn’t expect him back for another week or two, until Race Week itself.

At the front of the stage, Athalia was cooing over John Mazzanti’s shoulder.

“She’s after him,” her mother said with a sigh.

I was startled. “But he’s married.” Signora Mazzanti, who is also English, lingers in her lodgings, annoying the neighbours by practising her scales. She is a much better
singer than her daughter – very good indeed, I’m told.

Mrs Keregan rolled her eyes. “Marriage? Why should Athalia want that? It’s money she’s after.”

I kept quiet. I had one hundred guineas hidden beneath my mattress, the proceeds from selling a chamber organ which I had won in a raffle despite the fact that I had not bought a ticket; there
were two people who might have bought me a ticket without telling me, and I didn’t much like the idea of being beholden to either of them. Athalia would think one hundred guineas amply worth
her attention, although, if the rumours were right, Mazzanti had a great deal more. He certainly dressed like a wealthy man.

He allowed himself to be cosseted out of his bad temper and called for us to begin again. I sent young Richard to whisper a polite request to the spirit not to annoy Mazzanti further; the boy
looked dubious but went off willingly enough.

As I got up to play, I saw Julia Mazzanti turn. Her golden hair glittered in the bright sunlight, the twin yellow ribbons danced and gleamed. She gave me the sweetest of looks, winning and
winsome.

I stared stonily back and glimpsed something else. A trace of anger? Or even desperation? Abruptly she looked very young, almost lost.

She turned her shoulder and began her song once more.

An hour or so later, as the company was rehearsing some dialogue and Mazzanti was busy offending everyone even further, a man slipped in beside me. I was dozing at the back of the stage and
started in alarm, thinking the newcomer was one of the ruffians. But it was Matthew Proctor, the wandering psalm teacher, a slight, reserved man with a soft voice and a hesitant manner. In his
mid-thirties, perhaps eight or so years older than myself. He slid down on to the wicker costume basket with a nervous nod of greeting, clutching his bassoon case to his chest.

“Proctor,” I said in surprise. “I thought you were spending Race Week in Carlisle.”

“Yes. No,” he said. “Very well, thank you.”

He was staring at Julia Mazzanti in patent adoration. Heaven help us, did she have all the men trailing in her wake? Even young Richard was offering shy homage, darting here and there to bring
her lemonade, or her shawl, or a sweetmeat. They were much the same age of course, and I had seen them chattering together in odd moments – Julia artlessly innocent, Richard innocently
adoring. He longed to act upon the stage himself and I had overheard Julia offering sage advice, which Richard would do well to ignore.

But it was Ned Reynolds’s behaviour that startled me most. What the devil did he mean by solicitously handing Julia into her chair like that, or leaning over to murmur something that made
her laugh? Proctor certainly didn’t like it much. He leant close to me, without taking his reverential gaze from Julia.

“Who’s that fellow?”

“Ned Reynolds. One of the company.”

“He’s too encroaching.”

I could have told Proctor he didn’t need to worry about Ned Reynolds as a competitor for Julia’s affections. Whatever pose he might strike in public, Ned wouldn’t even glance
at the girl – any girl – in private. But such things are obviously never to be talked of, given the penalty the law demands.

Proctor’s thoughts had already moved on. “She is going to London, you know.”

“Julia? Is she?”

“To play Lucy Locket.”

Yes, I thought, Julia would look very well as the virginal heroine of
The Beggar’s Opera
. A pity she couldn’t sing.

“I may go there myself,” Proctor whispered. “To see her acclaimed at Covent Garden would be magnificent.”

I said nothing. Proctor was clearly enamoured of the girl – he was unworldly enough to think of her as an angel come down to earth. That was no doubt a part she could play very well too.
Providing she didn’t have to sing. Or act.

She could not remember her words. She was rehearsing a love scene with Ned and stuttered over a commonplace: “Tonight, but – but – ” I saw a flash of annoyance in
Ned’s eyes. That was much more like the man I knew. No one is more dedicated to his profession; it is a point of honour with him to do the best he is capable of. Which is considerable.

“The book!” young Richard said eagerly and snatched the playbook from Athalia Keregan’s hands.

Before he could hurry to Julia’s side, Proctor leapt up and seized the book from him, shyly presenting it to the lady himself. But Julia was already turning away, receiving the correct
lines from her father. Proctor stood ignored at her side.

I have never seen a man so disconsolate. Proctor looked so woebegone that I leant forward to say something consoling. But the spirit leapt in first, sliding up the wicker work of the costume box
and gleaming on a broken piece of cane. “She’s not worth it,” he said, in his broad accent. “There’s not a woman in the world worth crying over.”

Proctor gasped and leapt away.

I stared at him as he stood trembling on the edge of the stage. This was nervous behaviour even for the unworldly Proctor. Mr Keregan took his arm kindly. “Proctor, my dear fellow. Come
and say good day to my wife – she’ll be delighted to see you again.”

He bore Proctor off and the spirit hung on the edge of the basket. “Not my day,” it said, philosophically. “Anything wrong with me, Patterson, you reckon?”

“Not in the least. It’s the heat, I daresay. Everyone gets tetchy when it’s so hot.” I glanced towards the window again. Yes, the fellow was still there, grinning in at
me.

We should have given up then, before tempers frayed still further. But we played on, sweating and drinking ale by the tankard-full, getting hotter and more irritable by the minute. The sun
slanted in through the windows, dazzlingly bright and fiendishly hot; even the spirit retreated to the coolest corner of the barn-like warehouse.

Mazzanti grew, if anything, more annoying, snapping at Ned for talking privately to Julia, complaining loudly when Proctor, clearly still upset, played a hatful of wrong notes. Young Richard
grew very quiet, looking from Julia’s face to Ned’s with real unease; did he believe Ned was really attracted to the girl? Athalia muttered over the attention Julia was getting; her
mother breathed yet more heavily. My violin was suffering so badly in the heat that I could hardly play a line in tune and Mazzanti made sure I knew it. I toyed with the idea of knocking him down
with one well-aimed blow.

And the ruffian still grinned in through the window.

Mazzanti let us go at last, with a final contemptuous: “We will have to do better tomorrow. If you
could
all make sure you know your songs and your words…”

I pushed my violin into its case, slung it over my shoulder and strode off the stage. If I stayed a moment longer, I would say something unworthy of a respectable, god-fearing man. Or, worse, do
something. The thought of punching that sour face grew ever more attractive.

I barely got as far as the door before the fellow strode up. “Where the devil are you going, violino?”

Yes, someone was going to do away with him soon and if he picked at me again, that someone was going to be me.

“If you want me to play for you,” I snapped, “you could at least do me the courtesy of using my name!”

His lip curled. “Think a lot of yourself, I see.”

“I could say the same thing.”

I swung away, then stopped, heart racing. The dark-haired ruffian who had been staring through the window all afternoon – surely I had just seen him again. But there was too much of a
crowd. We were jostled by workmen; a man with half a tree trunk across his shoulders blocked my view…

Mazzanti was snapping at me again. Something whined, hissed between us, thumped on the door jamb. We stood for the briefest of moments in startled immobility. Then Mazzanti ducked back inside
the warehouse.

I ran the other way. After the man who had fired the shot.

The political situation is at the present time very complex.

[Letters from London,
Newcastle Courant
, 5 June 1736]

I glimpsed a figure behind one of the huge stacks of Baltic timber and dashed for it. The heat struck me as soon as I was out in the open, like the heat from a bread oven when
the door is opened. What chance did I have of catching the ruffian in this heat? And with the violin bouncing against my back too?

I reached the stack, swung round it, found the open gate of the yard. A cart rumbled past in the street outside. I grabbed for the side of the wagon. “Did you see a fellow
running?”

The carter grunted and jerked his whip. I tripped on the cobbles, staggered upright again and found a side street.

It was well-nigh deserted. No ruffian, no grinning filthy villain. Only a burly man halfway down it, wrapped in a heavy coat as if it was midwinter. He carried a bag over one shoulder and was
staring back down the street.

I stumbled to a halt, out of breath, gasped out my query again. “Did you see – a fellow – running?”

The man turned to me; he had a good strong face, sallow skinned. “I saw him,” he agreed with good-humour. He was a little out of breath himself. “I only wished he’d seen
me. Sent me flying against the wall.” He brushed dust from his coat. “You’ll not catch him now. He’s long gone.”

I went after him anyway. I was damned if I’d let ruffians intimidate me. But the hot air clogged up my throat and sent the sweat running down my back in rivulets; by the end of the street,
I knew I could go no further. In any case, as I looked right and left, I saw such a bustle and a hurry of people – women with chickens and children with hoops and men with heavy bags of tools
– devil take it, I’d never find the fellow.

The man in the coat came up behind me, stood contemplating the crowds. “What’s the villain done?”

“Shot at me,” I said shortly.

“At you?”

I turned to eye him – I didn’t like the incredulity in his voice, as if he didn’t think me worth shooting at. He gave me a benign stare. He was a good-looking man, very dark in
hair and eyes; the sallow skin branded him a foreigner although he had no accent and sounded entirely English. About a decade older than myself, thirty seven or so, I guessed and three or four
inches taller than me, and I am not short.

“Well, well,” he said. “Never believe a chaplain. I met one on the coach down from Edinburgh who said nothing ever happens here.”

“Scotch, was he?”

“Well-nigh incomprehensible.”

“Then how do you know what he said about this town?”

He grinned. “Touché! My dear sir, I invented the whole tale.” The frankness with which he admitted lying took my breath away. “You ask why. Of course you do. The last
two weeks of my life have been the dullest of my entire existence and here you have plunged me straight into excitement. I must thank you. Allow me to buy you wine – or would you prefer
beer?”

I was so thirsty I could have drunk the Tyne dry. And sitting in a crowded tavern with my back to a wall was probably a lot safer than walking the streets.

The fellow professed to know nothing of the town, having arrived barely an hour before, so I took him down on to the Key, to one of the sailors’ taverns, all rushes and wooden benches and
the stink of sweat and coal. But it served a surprisingly good beer and we took it out into the cool shadows of the keels waiting at the wharfs.