Vital Secrets (10 page)

“Where does that door go?” Rick asked, glancing to his left.

“Oh, that takes you into Mr. Frank's quarters,” Tessa burbled, reaching down for Rick's hand. “The Franks've got the most beautiful furniture you've ever seen. It's just like a doll's house!”

They crossed the stage—the chandelier was now extinguished—and, through the wings on the right, down into another unlit space. There was a door to their left and a set of steep stairs straight ahead. The door appeared to be the only
link between theatre and tavern. Tessa eased it open. They could see the bar just ahead and beyond it a room full of boisterous patrons, not of the drama but the bottle. Tessa eased it closed again.

“Show us
your
rooms,” Rick suggested slyly.

“Oh, wait till you see them! We had nothin' like this in Buffalo!” Tessa testified, and skipped up the stairs with Rick on her heels. The party paused on a landing, and then continued up again to the second floor directly above the theatre.

“Is this the only way in here?” Marc asked anxiously. The upper storey of Frank's addition appeared to be self-contained and separate from the original building.

“That's right,” Tessa said. “Unless you want to go through that window at the far end of this hall and jump off the balcony onto the street.”

“I could call for you like Romeo from underneath the balcony out there,” Rick teased.

“What if there's a fire?” Marc asked.

“My, would you look at this!” Rick cried, ignoring Marc's question. He pointed through the partly opened door to the first room on their right.

Tessa blushed, giving the effect of a white carnation magically transformed into a red one. “That's our bathroom. You ain't supposed to peek in there!”

But peek they must.

An elephantine copper tub squatted ostentatiously in the centre of the room, around which, on clothes-horses, were
arrayed a dozen bath towels of varying pastel tints. In a far corner a Chinese folding-screen offered privacy to the diffident bather. On top of a pot-bellied stove, spitting and aglow, sat a kettle big enough to swim in.

“The Franks have a maid who readies the bath whenever we wish,” Tessa said.

“Looks like that tub could hold more than one person,” Rick said, and was rewarded with another full-petalled blush.

A guttural cry directly across the hall from the bathroom interrupted this bit of by-play, as if someone had muttered a curse while stumbling over a coal-scuttle or bag of nails.

“What on earth was that?” Jenkin asked.

“Oh, that's just Jeremiah's babble-talk,” Tessa said. “Don't pay him no mind.”

At this, the three men turned to the open doorway of a storeroom, where a huge black man was staring at them with white-eyed, menacing curiosity.

Tessa made what appeared at first to be several flirtatious gestures with her hands and fingers across the top of her bosom. Jeremiah, if that's who he was, relaxed immediately, and greeted the newcomers with a gleaming smile that consumed most of his large, round face and bald head.

“He doesn't speak English?” Rick wondered.

Tessa laughed, a bubbling little-girl laugh. “He don't speak at all.”

“He's mute, then?” Jenkin said.

“Aaargh,” Jeremiah said forcefully, with a painful contortion of both lips.

“He's deaf and dumb,” Tessa said matter-of-factly. “But he can read and write and read lips a little—can't ya, Jeremiah?” Here she flashed him a sign, and he nodded vigorously.

“He does the haulin' and settin' up of the flats. Annie—Mrs. Thedford—picked him up off the street and gave him a place to sleep. I told her he was probably a runaway slave but she don't bother listenin' to anyone, especially when it comes to pickin' up strays.”

Like you, Marc thought, and raised his opinion of the imperial Mrs. Thedford another notch.

“What's that?” Jenkin asked, indicating a slate that hung by a rope from the man's neck.

Jeremiah smiled, and Marc could discern the intelligence in that face, whose age might have been twenty-five or forty. He realized that the overly demonstrative facial gestures and hand movements were an attempt to communicate almost physically, but might easily lead people to assume he was a simpleton. Marc thought of Beth's brother Aaron and winced inwardly.

Jeremiah drew a piece of chalk from a big pocket in his smock and wrote something on the slate: “My name is Jeremiah Jefferson.” Then he held the slate out to Major Jenkin, who erased what was there with the sleeve of his tunic, and wrote: “I am Owen Jenkin.”
and accompanied her command with several intimidating hand-signs. “You got props to get ready for the farce tonight.”

Jeremiah did not seem to take offense at this rude outburst. He merely bowed his head and backed into the storeroom, but what lay behind the mask of his eyes and his practised public demeanour could only be guessed at. In the room behind him, they saw a straw pallet surrounded by half a dozen steamer-trunks.

“You brought all this with you?” Rick said with enough interest to have Tessa pause and lean against his nearest shoulder.

“Those are trunks with the props and costumes we're gonna need in Detroit next week but not here. There's one or two more downstairs somewheres that Mr. Merriwether's plannin' to send back to New York—stuff we used in Buffalo but don't need no more.”

“But how on earth do you haul all of this stuff?” Jenkin asked, his quartermaster's curiosity piqued. “Not over our roads?”

Tessa gave him an indulgent smile, glanced at Rick, and said, “Our stuff comes down the Erie Canal on a barge and then up from Buffalo by boat on the Welland Canal. That's what we got Jeremiah for—to ride with it. And, of course, to protect us from dangerous strangers.” She batted her near-invisible lashes at Rick.

“But he's deaf,” Rick said with real concern.

“He sleeps right there at the top of them stairs with the door open all night. The teensiest vibration will wake him up straightaway.”

Jeremiah was busy opening one of the trunks as they turned to move farther along the carpeted hallway.

“We each got a trunk in our rooms. We're responsible for our own costumes once they get here, though we do help each other dress.” She checked out Rick's response to this double entendre, and was not disappointed.

“Who does the repair work?” Jenkin asked, ever interested in the care and deployment of uniforms. He stumbled for a second over a decorative spittoon near one of the doors, righted himself, and continued: “You must have a lot of it with all the costume changes.”

“Thea does the little bits of stitchin' an' patchin'. She's real handy with a needle. But if we're stayin' put for a week or so, like here, Mr. Merriwether finds us a local seamstress.” They were moving down the hall now, where doors on either side indicated the sleeping chambers of the cast. Tessa revelled in her role as tour-guide, with Rick at her elbow endeavouring to bump against her at every opportunity. “This here's Clarence's room and that one's Mr. Armstrong's,” she said, pointing to the next two rooms on the right, and then putting a forefinger against her pretty lips. “They like to have a snooze after the afternoon rehearsal.”

“And where is
your
room?”

“Here at the end,” Tessa said, “across from Mr. Merriwether's.”

As Tessa opened the door on the left, Marc glanced out the dusty window onto Colborne Street, and noted that the
balcony which adorned the front of the Regency Theatre was indeed a false one, making it a dubious escape mechanism for those fleeing a sudden fire and a precarious perch for would-be Juliets.

“The maiden's bower!” Tessa gushed as they followed her inside.

Marc had to admit that the room was nicely decorated, with lavender wallpaper aflutter with sprites and fairies, a thick carpet in some neutral shade, a commode-and-vanity with tilting oval-mirror, a quaint Swiss clock, a settee embroidered with daisies, and a four-poster bed swathed in pink. On a night-table, a decanter of sherry winked at the interlopers.

“Mrs. Thedford insisted I take this room. Usually I have to share with Thea.”

“Where does Thea sleep?” Rick asked. “With Mrs. Thedford?”

“Lordy, no. Annie always stays by herself. Thea's sleepin' on her own in a little room in the Franks' place. Annie's afraid the rest of us might catch whatever she's got.”

“You've a fondness for sherry,” Jenkin said with a smile.

“Oh, that. It's somethin' Mrs. Thedford taught me—to have one or two small glasses after a performance to help me sleep.” Giving Rick a sidelong glance, she added, “'Course I do
share
it once in a while.”

“Well, that leaves us with all but Mrs. Thedford accounted for,” Jenkin said in what he intended to be a disinterested tone.

“We've gone past her rooms,” Tessa said.

“Rooms?” Jenkin asked, intrigued.

Tessa led them back into the hall and pointed to the door next to her own room. “I'll just give a tap an' see if she's still up.”

“Oh, please don't disturb her,” Rick said.

But Tessa, who apparently liked to have her own way whenever it could be arranged, had already rapped, and a moment later the door opened.

“Oh, do come in, gentlemen,” Mrs. Thedford said. She stood tall and elegant in the doorway, clad only in a satin kimono, her coiffed hair almost touching the lintel above her. “I heard you in the hall and was about to step out and invite you in.”

Jenkin demurred. “We don't wish to disturb you at your …”

“Toilette?” She laughed, giving the word its French pronunciation. “Don't worry, sir, you're not invading milady's boudoir.”

As they followed her in, they realized that the owner-operator of the Bowery Touring Company had a suite of rooms befitting her status. After introductions were made and requisite courtesies completed, Mrs. Thedford offered them sherry, sat them on her comfortable chairs and settee, and regaled them with witty tales of theatre life in New York. Marc noticed two things: Owen Jenkin was quite taken with the woman, and she herself appeared as regal, confident, and genuine as the image she had projected from the stage. Nor did she seem to
be playing a role, of which she was perfectly capable. And if she were, it was one she believed in.

At one lull in the conversation, she looked at Marc and said, “Edwards … my, what a fine English name.”

“I can't take credit for having applied it to myself,” Marc said, and it was plain from her approving expression that Mrs. Thedford—who slept alone in the adjoining bedroom and was, according to her story, long a widow—appreciated the witticism and the lineaments of the man who'd made it. Good Lord, Marc thought, surely I'm too young for her attentions. Besides, it was Major Jenkin who was paying court to her with all the Welsh charm he could muster.

“I noticed the lovely lilt of your accent,” the major said gallantly. “Do I detect a shadow of English in it?”

Mrs. Thedford gave him a smile worthy of Cleopatra.

“The merest shadow, Mr. Jenkin. My father was English, but he brought me to Philadelphia when I was still a toddler. I have, alas, no memory of my birth-country, only a few of the unconscious traces of its glorious speech.”

“Which is no drawback in the theatre,” the major replied.

“Those pieces on your commode there look very English,” Marc remarked, admiring a pair of silver candlesticks. “I remember seeing something of that design in London.”

“You are very observant, Lieutenant. In fact, the hairbrushes, hand-mirror, and the candlesticks were especially made for my parents as a wedding gift, a matched set. Or so my father told me when I was old enough to understand. They
are all that I have left of them—or England—and I bring them with me everywhere.”

“Aren't you afraid they'll be stolen?” Rick asked.

“Not with Jeremiah nearby, I'm not. And as he's been complaining of a toothache all day, I expect he'll be more vigilant than usual at his post tonight.”

“And we've got policemen patrolling our streets,” Rick said, as if he himself were native-born and a major contributor to local improvements.

As they were getting up to leave, Mrs. Thedford said, “I hope you all plan to come to the farce tonight, as guests of the company. And, of course, you're welcome to join us in the hotel for supper.”

“Thank you. I wouldn't miss either for the world,” Jenkin said with a brief bow.

“I'll be here every night this week,” Rick said with an artful glance at Tessa, who had sat through the polite chatter without saying a word, though she and Mrs. Thedford had exchanged cryptic looks, and the latter had given Rick what could only be described as critical scrutiny.

Tessa beamed him a conspiratorial smile, then turned to determine its effect upon Mrs. Thedford. But that lady's gaze rested on Marc.

“And how about you, Mr. Edwards?”

“I must decline, ma'am. I am engaged to dine with my fiancée's aunt this evening.”

“Ah, I understand.” Mrs. Thedford's eyebrows rose in
interest. “But you'll come later in the week, to the Shakespeare, perhaps?”

“Yes, I will,” he said, and realized with a start that he meant it.

Rick accompanied Marc back through the gloomy theatre to the front doors. “Isn't Tessa just the most darling thing you've ever set eyes upon?” he asked imploringly.

“You've got quite a girl there, Rick,” Marc replied, and left it at that.

C
ATHERINE
R
OBERTS WAS
B
ETH'S AUNT, HER
mother's sister, who had grown up with the McCrae family in Pennsylvania. After Beth's mother died, her grieving father had taken his children to a new Congregational ministry in Cobourg. Aunt Catherine married and went to live in New England, where her affection for things English had taken root. So much so that when she herself was widowed just two years ago, she had readily accepted Beth's offer to come to this British colony and invest jointly in their millinery shop on fashionable King Street. Ever since his engagement to Beth had been announced (“proclaimed” would be a more accurate description), Marc had arranged to have supper with Aunt Catherine on the second Monday of each month.