The Blooding of Jack Absolute (20 page)

Though the first streets were dark, wharf front and warehouses, the further he progressed the brighter the world became, passing
from trade to pleasure. Lamps lit stalls selling everything from quack potions to stewed grigs, while beyond their light,
women urged him into the shadows. As he drew
closer to his destination, the stalls became plusher, the women prettier. Fans, decorated with the latest events, were offered
to him, porcelain figures, charcoal sketches, broadsides, ballads – and masks. Masks were everywhere, rows of them like an
audience in the theatre. Jack still had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched and these ranks of eye sockets
only increased that sensation. But as he approached the entrance to the Pleasure Gardens, the reason for their abundance became
clear. Everyone lined up at the gateway was wearing or carrying a mask.

Jack stepped to the side. ‘Is it a masquerade tonight?’ he asked a stall-keeper.

‘It is, sir, aye,’ came the reply. ‘And you have come in the nick, for I’ve precious few left.’

Cursing the necessity – for how would he swiftly find his enemy in a place where everyone was hidden? – Jack purchased the
simplest of Venetian dominoes, the commonest disguise.

The last of his florins bought him entrance, but beyond the gilt gates there was another problem.

‘Your sword, sir.’

Jack tipped the mask up to his forehead so he could look properly at the lilac-coated flunkey who’d accosted him. ‘I never
give up my sword, sir.’

‘You will tonight,
sir,’
replied the man, ‘or you’ll not come in. We collect for families whose men have died in the war. We do not seek to make yet
more widows and orphans.’

Those queuing impatiently behind loudly urged Jack to comply. With a shrug, he did, taking the token, ignoring the coin tray
shoved toward him. ‘No swords’ was becoming the norm in more and more places. Before long they’ll ban ’em in the theatres,
Jack thought sourly. The only thing that improved his mood was the coolness of metal within his boot, the knife he’d stolen
from Mrs Porten’s.

Stepping beyond the portico that covered the entranceway, Jack stopped and looked around. He had been coming to the Vauxhall
Pleasure Gardens for years, as a child by day with his
mother to gaze at the curiosities, later as a young man with his Mohocks to gaze at girls. He had not been lately, the atmosphere
tame and cool compared to the hothouse of Covent Garden. Respectable behaviour was expected here where tailors and bankers,
jewellers and shopkeepers walked, ate and drank beside the nobility, and kept their excesses in check. The King could sup
in a box next to a brewer. But if he wanted to fornicate with his mistress he’d have to do it outside the grounds.

Yet Jack knew tonight would be different. The point of a mask was to conceal identity, leaving the wearer free to indulge
hidden desires. The sober burgher, as Bacchus, could drink till he puked. His prim wife could display her flesh as Salome
while the rector ogled her through her veils. And a scholar from Westminster could don the domino of Venice and transform
into an assassin. He would show Craster as much mercy as he had shown to Clothilde.

But by the time he’d twice trod the Walks, circled the Temple of Comus, lingered at the Cascade where the crowds were thickest,
Jack was close to despair. It would have been difficult to distinguish someone amongst these numbers on a normal evening;
at a masquerade, it was near impossible. His steps began to drag and, by the time he stood before Handel’s statue, his anger
was being replaced by exhaustion. He clung to the memories of Clothilde’s agony, her shrieks, her bloodied dress. He needed
his fury to fuel him; yet the masks – leering eyed, lolling tongued – sapped it from him. Tall though he was, he felt that
everyone there was looming above him, bearing down upon him.

Jack sank onto a small stone ledge, pulling off his domino, lowering his head into his hands. What could he do but return
to his school, skulking behind its walls to avoid the man who’d left the black-edged card at his house while being slowly
consumed by his failure to act, like the Hamlet he’d seen with his mother only a few weeks before at the Lane. What had the
fellow said, something about ‘dull revenge’?

He became aware of a Pastoral being played, composed by the man whose stone figure loomed above him now, who had also written
the Messiah that her father had taken Clothilde to hear at Coram’s Fields at Christmas. She had not stopped talking of the
experience and Jack, to please her, had attempted to play some of the German’s music on his flute. In truth, he had no true
skill at the instrument, but she had laughed and clapped and cried for more. And that vision, of her happy tears mingled with
the vision of her most recent ones, had Jack up and moving now, his anger bright again, towards the Rotunda. Many did the
same, for the concert and dancing there were the climax of any evening at Vauxhall. Everyone would be there in that gaudy
room. Craster would be there.

The huge chandelier in the Rotunda shimmered with close to a hundred flames. The walls that circled were studded by sashed
windows beneath which mirrors, reflecting the light of yet more candles in their sconces, were angled down to reflect the
company back to itself. Pushing just inside the door, pressing his back to a wall there, it was to one of these mirrors that
Jack looked, for it reduced the mob to sections.

Fauns mixed with satyrs, Mother Shipton conversed with Punch and Joan, while the wardrobes of the Theatre Royal had been pilfered
to recreate Olympus. Jack saw Zeus take a pinch of snuff from Dionysus, the powder snorted up under the plaster mask; a chubby
Poseidon used his trident to lift the cloak of Artemis. The next mirror conjured a different scene; at centre, His Satanic
Majesty whispering into Caesar’s ear. And next to them …

Jack started, looked from the mirrors down into the crowd. Once seen, it was unmissable, the focus of the entire room. A woman
stood, her pose an agony of embarrassment. Naked. Perhaps not quite, for jewels glowed in her piled-up hair, a scarf obscured
her from nose to chin, something silken just covered her loins. But that was all, and men – many men – jostled around her,
a special cruelty in their anonymous,
masked regard. And then he saw something else, something that had him moving at last, swiftly away from the wall. He saw her
breasts. And he knew them.

The orchestra began an introduction to the first dance, a quadrille, and those who would take part scurried to make up their
fours, those who would watch stepped away. Jack now had a clear view through to the naked woman, saw Satan seize her hand,
place her quite alone, before moving to join another forming four. Her circle of men had not dispersed, were joined now by
several women, whispering loudly behind their jiggling fans.

The company had not fully formed. The orchestra commenced another eight bars. Jack moved before her. ‘Fanny!’

Her lowered eyes came up sharply. They reminded him of a hunted deer brought to bay. ‘You fool! Why did you come?’

‘Why your note, it—’ Until that moment he had forgotten her summons, his mind so fixed on vengeance for Clothilde. But she
gave him no time to dwell on his guilt.

‘Leave me alone,’ she hissed. ‘Go away!’

‘But Fanny, you—’ He unclasped his cloak, thrust it towards her. ‘Take this.’

‘No!’

‘Why not? You can’t … enjoy—’

‘Enjoy?’ Fire displaced the fear. ‘This is not to enjoy. This is the first part of my punishment.’

‘For what?’

The words came bitter from beneath the veil. ‘For you, my dear. For you.’

The introductory bars were ending. They were facing each other, thus half of a four. A man dressed as Priapus joined them
and a giggling young woman was thrust forward by her friends. Both raised their hands. Jack raised his.

‘No!’ Fanny hissed. But it seemed she had no choice. She raised her hand.

The music paused, hovered before its start. For a moment all that could be heard were fans and whispers.

‘Why for me?’ he said, ignoring the two who leaned close to listen.

‘Lord … M devised the punishment. “Bathsheba the Harlot.” Said that if I did as he asked, he might not proclaim me a whore
to the Town, might let me keep my beautiful house, my servants, my … position.’ A tear ran, disappearing into the filmy covering
at her nose and, just as it did, the dance began. The circles moved left, then right. He walked through, passing the other
man back to back, bowing at the turn. The women did the same. Then the other couple peeled off to join a couple also parting.
He took Fanny’s hand to move a few paces to their next position. Their heads now close, Jack said softly, ‘But Bathsheba wasn’t
a harlot. Bathsheba lured David from a rooftop.’

‘Just so,’ she said, the tears coming faster now, ‘and that is the second part of my punishment. To lure you. Then deliver
you.’

They had reached their new position. Another couple awaited, their hands reaching out for them, but he did not see them, could
only look at her. ‘Deliver me?’ he said. ‘To whom?’

‘To me, boy. To me.’

It was Satan who spoke, their new partner in the four. And Jack needed no eyes to penetrate the red plaster of the exquisite,
horned mask, for when he’d heard that voice before it had been similarly muffled … through the folds of Fanny’s dress.

He was dancing with the Devil and Lord Melbury’s grip upon his hand was indeed demonic. ‘You have two choices,’ the deep voice
came again, ‘a boy’s or a man’s. If you are a boy, you will consent to go with me to some ground outside where my friends
and I will give you the thrashing you deserve, which you will thank me for, thank me as each blow destroys what made you so
alluring to my Fanny. Or …’

His hand was released. A paralysis had seized him of mind if not of body; his feet kept moving in the dance. He settled, as
Fanny and Artemis the Huntress crossed and twirled between them.

‘Or?’

‘Or if you claim to be a man, you may meet me on that same ground … with a pistol. And then what I wrote upon the card will
truly come to pass – for you will be dead.’

He remembered what was said of Melbury. One of the finest shots in the country. So the choice was between painful humiliation
and death.

Some shouting drunkard had climbed up onto the bandstand and was trying to seize the leader’s bow. The music shuddered then
stopped; people paused and called out their displeasure.

Under the Devil’s mask, fleshy lips shaped a smile. ‘Which do you choose then, Jack Absolute? Are you a boy or a man?’

Even Jack could see an alternative here. ‘Oh, neither really,’ he said, and began to walk swiftly away through the scattering,
angry dancers towards the door.

‘Fool!’ hissed Lord Melbury. ‘Did you truly believe I hadn’t thought of that?’

The crowd shifted before him, masks on every side, any of which could have hidden one of Melbury’s friends. As he neared the
main door, he saw one broad shape step away from it, two others approaching from opposition directions. All were costumed
as Hell’s Imps, which, to Jack’s mind, showed both Melbury’s arrogance and his lack of imagination. Immediately he bore sharply
away, making for the screen of columns that separated the Rotunda from the Pavilion. There were other entrances there and
surely even someone as powerful as Melbury could not have enough men to guard them all?

The press was at its thickest where the rooms joined at a screen of columns; Jack was completely halted. On the columns themselves,
plaster boys ascended the gothic wreaths towards the heavens. Thinking that where one boy could go, another could follow,
Jack reached, slipped his fingers over a plaster ledge, hoisted himself up. For a moment he hung there
and, glancing back, saw the Imps as they saw him. Then he twisted around the column, dropping to the other side. Finding the
crowd there much diminished, he began to push speedily up towards the north and west entrances.

Relief was brief. Two large men, in plain dress, stood either side of each of the three entrances. They were not stopping
everyone, just those who, like Jack, sported black cloaks and Venetian dominoes. Word had been sent back.

Jack stood on one spot, yet quite unable to stop his feet moving, his breaths coming in ever shorter gasps, his panting causing
those nearest him to step away, fearing some contagion. He knew that if he did not move soon, he would not move at all, would
stand there waiting, held like a hare in the spill of a lantern, dispatched as easily as one. Yet everywhere he looked, the
hunters were closing in. He looked at his hands, shaking as if with some palsy. They would not hold a gun. Yet if they did
not he would have to submit to a beating that might leave him crippled.

A noise came from the north entrance, curses and threats. Behind Melbury’s men, two flunkeys, wearing the same lilac coats
and powdered wigs as the man who’d taken Jack’s sword, were preventing a group of bravos from entering, the source of the
dispute undoubtedly the flasks they were waving – for liquor could only be purchased from licensed purveyors within. Melbury’s
men had turned to observe the fracas, there was suddenly a gap between them and at this Jack drove, dipped, smelled freedom
in the night air as he slipped past. He started to move quicker, expecting to hear, at any moment, cries of recognition and
pursuit. Yet finally it was not sound that halted Jack’s flight, but sight.

Standing almost directly before the entrance was a man with the face of a satyr, wearing a jacket in a most distinctive pink.
And as Jack slowed, the fellow next to the satyr tore away from a flunkey’s restraint with a ‘Damn you dogs, I will enter’
and strangely, it wasn’t the voice he recognized first, slightly muffled as it was by an identical domino to the one he wore
himself, it was the white collar below it; or rather, the patch of blood upon it; those, and the three scratch marks that
ran beneath the mask from ear to chin.

All fears vanished with recognition. ‘Violater!’ he yelled, hurling himself across the small space between them. There was
no method to it, no remnants of the skills they had learned as boys in Cornwall. Jack was onto Craster, knocking him back,
punches flailing down to bounce off raised arms, crown of head, ears. Howling as he struck, no words now, just an outpouring
of animal sound.