The Blooding of Jack Absolute (14 page)

He raised his hands to applaud. But just as he did so, someone threw something from the right-hand box where, up to now, only
shapes had moved in the shadows. A piece of orange peel hit the kneeling youth in the forehead. He jerked back, his mouth
opening and closing. Someone laughed, then someone else and, very distinctly, Jack heard one word emerge from the box.

‘Now.’

Lady Jane, in a harsh whisper, said, ‘A claque, John. It seems your enemies have found you.’

Jack had been around enough with his mother to recognize the term. Theatre, like cricket, drew partisan support and one player
succeeding meant less acclaim for another. There were two other new playwrights on that night’s bill aside from the more established
Lady Jane. One of those novitiate’s patrons – for as in cricket, nobles sponsored their favourites – had organized a claque
to ruin Burgoyne’s debut. The peel chucker opposite, no doubt.

One of the youths on stage – an especially pimply-faced, unkempt fellow – had obviously taken the thrown peel as a
signal. ‘I’ve paid a florin for this,’ he shouted, ‘And it’s not worth a farthing.’ One of his hands was thrust out toward
the audience in appeal, the other was engaged in trying to reach under the dress of the actress who, frozen by the interruption,
now thawed to slap the hand away.

A few in the audience concurred, hooting their derision, while several others yelled, ‘Sit down, ye dog!’

Burgoyne, who’d risen, looked as if he were about to climb up and intervene. Yet it was Jack, with the alacrity of youth,
who beat him to it. Perhaps it was that a friend of his mother’s was being gravely insulted; perhaps the ale working within
him; or perhaps the feeling that it was his Clothilde under threat by the groping drunk. Whatever it was, Jack was on the
stage in a moment.

‘Hello, cocky,’ he said, advancing to the youth and seizing his arm, ‘fancy a spin?’ He grabbed, pulled the fellow tight to
him. He was slighter than Jack, for all the peacock puffery of his clothes.

‘Unhand me, sir,’ cried the youth, trying to slip from the hold. ‘What the Devil are you about?’

‘This,’ said Jack. Dipping the fellow towards the musicians, he said, ‘Strike me up a jig.’ Though startled, they did, Jack
taking the man’s feet entirely off the stage and three-stepping him over to the wings. Burgoyne meantime had begun to clap
in rhythm, as did Jane, and soon almost the entire audience had joined in, drowning out the appeal of the second youth who
yet attempted to disrupt the play. Out of sight, against the wall of the theatre, Jack still held the squirming bravo in his
grip. ‘Now you …’ he whispered. ‘Behave!’ And on the word he tapped him with some force, forehead to nose. Not enough to break,
just enough to bring water to the eyes. He released him and turned back to the stage where the other was now waving at the
clapping audience, trying to command silence. When it wouldn’t come, and Jack approached, he hung his head and darted to the
opposite wings.

The clapping changed at the song’s end into pure applause,
the players took up their positions to recommence and Jack slipped down the side of the stage and retook his place on the
bench, several backslaps accompanying his journey.

‘A hero, your Jack,’ said Burgoyne to Lady Jane, seizing Jack’s hand and pumping it, ‘and every inch his father’s son.’ Turning,
he said, ‘I am in your debt, lad, and will consider myself under obligation until I can repay it.’

‘T’was, nothing, sir. I … I was enjoying your piece, is all, and …’

‘Well, you have gained a friend by it. And, I fear, an enemy.’ Burgoyne nodded at the box opposite. ‘I wonder who the leader
of their claque is. If only he’d emerge from the damn shado … oh. Oh, of course. Well, it seems my noble Lord’s dislike of
my politics now extends to my plays.’

Jack turned now to see of whom he was speaking. The man in the shadows of the box had indeed leaned forward but he wasn’t
looking at Burgoyne, he was looking at Jack. And as he met Lord Melbury’s gaze, for the second time in a day, he saw His Lordship
mouth, quite distinctly, three words:

‘You. Are. Dead.’

If his mother was surprised when he bolted at the very climax of her play, in the moment before the applause, she did not
have time to show it. A squeeze of her shoulder, on the word, ‘Excellent,’ the barest touch of Burgoyne’s hand and he was
gone. In the crowds beginning to disgorge from the Assembly Rooms there was the shelter of the herd. For it was now obvious
– Lord Melbury was having him followed. Those eyes he’d felt on his back all night, the warning from Harris; men had been
hired to dog him down some Soho alley, to thrash him … or worse. His Lordship’s mouthed words could not have been clearer.

Jack was not sure what to do. The only true refuge lay at his school or his home. His boarding house was not expecting him,
he and the other Mohocks having contrived a simultaneous two-night exeunt for a variety of reasons, medical, educational,
familial. He could return there early; but Mrs Porten’s door was hardly stout and the old retainers unequal to any tough of
Melbury’s. He could go home, sneaking in the back way again. But the sneaking irked, while his father’s company and accompanying
lectures held little appeal. Besides, there was the Initiation to consider, rites yet unfulfilled, rendezvous to keep. How
could he let down his friends?

Fuck Lord Melbury,
thought Jack, as he elbowed his way to
the entrance. He’d wager he knew the shadowy recesses of Soho better than most. Ever since his father had ordered him there
for French classes, Jack had delighted in exploring the maze of alleys and courts. He’d lose any pursuit within it and bide
till he could fulfil his mission.

Refuge was found in a hedge tavern, that lowest form of alehouse. There was one that delighted him in Meards Court, where
the top floors were a brothel, as indicated by the spread fan above the door, while in the warren of rooms below an illegal
still provided powerful spirits to any who craved them. Jack found a suitably dark corner and ordered only ale from a serving
wench who desired to offer him much, much more and continued to renew and expand her offers each time she fetched him another
tankard.

Politely refusing everything save beer, Jack bided the hour necessary for any pursuit to have been given up. True to his vow,
he was moderate in consumption, choosing only porter. Thus he was surprised when he stood up to stagger a little.
Must be the smoke,
Jack mused, as he pushed his way to the door through clouds of it. He was not a pipeman himself, the inhalation affecting
him in a disagreeable way liquor did not. He found the smoke also caused his eyes to misglance for as he moved through the
second room he was almost sure he saw again that fellow in the pink jacket who’d snored in the snug at the Shakespeare’s Head.
But as he stepped forward to verify, one of the Cats rose from a table and entwined him in her arms. By the time he’d disengaged
and gained the street, the figure had disappeared.

St Anne’s Court was but a short stumble along Wardour Street but Jack’s progress was slow down a thoroughfare crowded with
revellers, swaying from tavern to coffee house. Vendors competed, with both their shouts and the scents rising from their
barrows and trays, and Jack, suddenly realizing that he’d eaten little beyond the bowl of turtle soup, became instantly famished.
A hot pudding man offered one for one-and-sixpence but two for half-a-crown, and Jack took
the bargain. The first disappeared in an ecstasy of shovelling fingers, the second was wrapped in a broadside, the subject
of which Jack saw to be a highwayman’s execution the month before. Tucking it carefully into his satchel – the man had assured
him it was near all meat and would not leak – a much fortified Jack moved up the street, certain that no one could have followed
him from the hedge tavern, the crowds being too extensive.

His sanguinity lasted until the moment he turned into St Anne’s Court. Whereas on the main thoroughfare at least one in every
five householders had observed his civic duty and placed a lamp above his doorway, the denizens of this court had no such
scruples, their activities perhaps requiring less light. One lamp spluttered on its last oil at the Wardour Street end but
when Jack reached the dog-leg halfway down, even that paltry glow vanished and nothing at all shone in from Dean Street to
replace it. It was beyond mere night, for the shadows fell like curtains from the roofs almost conjoined above and mist rose
to meet them from such slick cobblestones as remained in place. Yet if light had been sucked away, noise had not. It was muted
here as befitted the dark, dank mantle laid upon it, but as in the rest of London, sounds never ceased. Something was scratching
in a doorway he’d just passed on his left, the regularity of the nails on wood making Jack believe it was an animal … until
a voice whispered, ‘Yes, yes, there!’ and another voice groaned. That drove him three steps on, further into the murk, halted
by a growl, a high-pitched squeal, a snap. Reaching out till he encountered a doorway, he leaned into its scant protection,
raised his stick before him. The crushing sound moved nearer, then went by him and, in the faint spill of light at the building’s
corner, he saw a small dog, a terrier, a broken-backed rat still squirming in its mouth. With a final twist and chomp, the
writhing ceased, the dog moved on and Jack suddenly felt the chill of the April night he’d previously ignored. Shivering,
he considered immediately following the animal and its prey back to
light and life. The Mohocks would understand; none would wish him to die in this dark passage. He even took a step away from
the doorway until a moment of recognition came. The door he sought was the one he’d taken shelter before.

‘Well, if it’s locked,’ Jack muttered, ‘there’s no more I can do.’ Half hoping, he stepped toward it, shoved none too hard.
The door gave and, when footsteps suddenly slapped on the cobbles down the alley, Jack stepped inside and pushed it to behind
him.

At first he thought the darkness within more complete than that without; but then he perceived light both beneath the doors
on either side of the entrance and through their unevenly joined slats, heard a slurred laugh, someone clapping slowly, a
whisper. When a floorboard creaked and a footstep approached, Jack quietly climbed to the first landing, just turning the
corner as the left door opened. ‘Nothing, I told you. No one,’ a well-bred voice declared. ‘And now, my dear, shall we continue
with …’ The conclusion of the proposition was cut off by the door closing. Jack breathed deep, then began to climb cautiously
on, hand against the wall, feet reaching carefully, each floor giving him its own variation of sound and seeping light. The
top floor, Harris’s list had said, was where the masked actress resided.

So attic-wards Jack went. And when he could go no further, he stopped and felt around him, touch his only sense for no light
gave its slight comfort. He found the entranceway, sure enough, traced its outline; yet it was dark and when he tapped lightly
upon it, got no response.

Then a door downstairs opened, closed. He knew it was the outside one and not one of the rooms because the opening brought
a trace of noise from Wardour Street, instantly cut off. Whoever came in, paused; for there followed a silence so deep that
Jack thought his breathing a roar, the floorboards, as his weight shifted, a shriek. When he settled, so did the silence but
only for a moment … just until the sound of footsteps began.

There was nowhere to flee whoever ascended. The one window
was glassless, boarded tight and the door, tested again, still locked. He could only press himself and hope that the darkness
was as engulfing for the climber as for he, that whoever approached would not see him trying to be as small as possible in
the corner. Then, as the creaking of steps reached the first floor, he realized that they would indeed see him for one obvious
reason – they were looking for him. The man who climbed steadily had followed him all day and into this night, wore a pink
coat and had Lord Melbury’s gold in one pocket, a cudgel or a pistol in another. And all Jack could do was press himself against
the wall and thrust his stick before him.

The last stairs began their chorus of creaks and Jack could wait no more. ‘Aaah,’ he screamed, swooshing the stick from on
high, encountering nothing but air until he reached the floor with a force that jarred his arm. ‘Aaah!’ came an equally forceful
cry from below, though this was decidedly female.

Jack held the stick high but didn’t let it fall again. ‘Who’s there?’

Silence for unutterably long seconds. Then a woman’s voice, but in a shriek. ‘Keep away! I’ve a knife.’

‘So have I.’

More silence, except for breaths sucked in. ‘ ’arris?’ the woman said at last. Jack couldn’t think what to say to that, so
he didn’t. The voice continued, ‘I’ve promised you the money, ’arris, I’ve got it for you, really I ’ave.’

‘I’m not … ’arris. I’m … a customer.’

‘You’re … what?’ Silence came again, shorter-lived. ‘ ’ow did you get in?’

‘Um … the door was open.’

Another pause. ‘Who are you then?’

‘Jack—’

The voice was sharp. ‘Jack … ’arris?’

‘No, I’ve said. Jack, just Jack!’

‘And you mean me no ’arm?’

‘None, I swear!’

There was a longer silence. Then, ‘Well, Just-Jack, why don’t
we get inside and get a light going? Then I can take a look at you.’

‘That would be … yes.’

The steps creaked again, a key entered a lock. Jack stayed in his corner until he heard the door opening, took a step. ‘Wait
a second, there’s a poppet,’ came the voice. The door was shut, locked. Jack stood in the darkness, debating whether to run.
Surely he had dared enough. One rite unfulfilled … then, just as he decided to, the door opened again, light shone out. Standing
before the lamp was a woman in a long purple dress and loose bodice of yellow. Covering her eyes and nose was a feathered
mask.