Wicked Company (5 page)

Sophie had always admired these brave words and had subscribed to his philosophy with all her heart and soul. Certainly freedom of speech applied when her father defended Fielding’s
Tom Jones,
which critics had declared “indecent,” or championed the newspapers and magazines censured by Parliament for printing the truth about some proceeding in the House of Commons or the House of Lords.

But those
engravings!
she thought, recalling their vile images. How could her own father defend such a thing?

Her internal debate was abruptly halted by the familiar sight of colored juggling pins arching against the buildings leading to Playhouse Close. The youthful street entertainer and his band had made their way down the Royal Mile and were performing for a small but enthusiastic throng at the entrance to the Canongate Playhouse itself. Edging closer, she smiled as she watched a toothless bawd grin broadly when the spirited conjurer caught his pins in one hand and kissed the doxy’s grimy paw, addressing her as “m’lady.” However, Sophie shrank back nervously when the cocky young man circled in her direction. With a look of recognition, he approached her for the second time this tumultuous day and bowed deeply from the waist.

“And now, m’friends… just to show you we’re all Scots lads and lassies here—not squabbling Highlanders and Lowlanders—I’ll ask this fair sweetling to join me in a fine old Scottish country dance.”

Before Sophie could protest, the strolling player reached for her hand and pulled her into the circle of bystanders that fanned out around them. He pried the playbills from her clenched fingers and handed the packet, along with his tambourine full of coins, to the woman he had called his mother. The crowd was clapping hands and shouting encouragement as the wizened old harpist began to pluck a sprightly melody from his harp.

“Just follow me,” the juggler whispered. He was a foot taller than she and was forced to bend sharply at the waist in order to instruct her, his warm breath blowing against her ear. And as the music grew faster, to Sophie’s utter astonishment, she and the stranger named Hunter Robertson began to dance.

Two

Hunter clasped Sophie’s hands and whirled her around in a dance of his own invention—a lively Highland fling blended with bits and pieces of a Scottish reel. Sophie quickly realized that the combination of steps made no sense, as she had observed proper reels, jigs, and strathspeys for years from the children’s gallery at Miss Nicky’s weekly Dancing Cotillion in Bell’s Wynd.

Hunter’s touch was firm and his gaze spellbinding. He spun his young partner faster and faster to the encouraging shouts of the onlookers. Sophie threw her head back, gamely imitating the simple heel-to-toe steps her handsome partner performed in front of her. To show her his appreciation, he flashed her another dazzling smile, which revealed his straight, even teeth and deepened the striking cleft in his chin.

All memories of carping black clerics were banished from her thoughts. Her anxiety over her father’s financial woes faded from her consciousness, as did her new-minted fear of the menacing Lord Lemore and his drawings. All her senses were attuned to Hunter’s extraordinarily tall stature and his palpable magnetism. Her only concern was that she be able to match the graceful movements of this exuberant young man who had chosen her as his dancing partner.

Presently, the old harpist played a long rolling trill, his clawlike nails skittering back and forth on the strings of his instrument to produce a crescendo of sound. Hunter whirled Sophie to his side and, holding her hand firmly, prompted her to perform an elegant curtsy. With that, the throng shouted their approval and tossed a few more coins in their direction. As Hunter nimbly bent over to scoop them up, the audience sensed the performance had concluded and began to drift off down the road and into the darkened closes and wynds.

“Since you couldna give me a coin, here’s one for you, pet!” Hunter laughed, placing a penny in her hand. “’Twas a braw performance for such an unrehearsed team, wouldna you say, wee one?”

Sophie could only nod her assent, breathless from their recent exertions and awed by his good looks and easy charm. She pocketed the money gratefully, relieved she’d have at least something to offer her father to offset the disappointment of Lord Lemore’s refusal to pay his debts promptly.

Meanwhile, Jean Robertson was eagerly counting the coins in her tambourine and extended a hand to Hunter for the few he’d harvested among the cobblestones. Hunter’s grandfather said nothing. He was leaning over his harp as if it were the only thing keeping him from tipping into the stone gutter.

“Da’s a bit fagged,” Jean Robertson remarked. “We can buy a bit o’ mutton and ale at the tavern over there,” she added, offering her arm to the frail old man. “You bring the pins and the stool when you come, eh, lad?” The woman hardly gave Sophie a second glance, leaving Sophie to conclude that this was not the first time she had observed her son making friends with females from the audience.

At the mention of beer, the elder Robertson suddenly appeared strong enough to sling his small harp under his arm and walk slowly beside his daughter-in-law. However, he leaned heavily on her arm, his sightless eyes staring vacantly ahead, as they made their way to the Red Lion Inn on St. Mary’s Wynd.

“I suspect you’re a mite too young to tipple ale,” Hunter said, looking at Sophie’s slight frame speculatively. “Could I offer you a bit o’ water from the well, here?”

“I drink ale,” Sophie asserted, “that is, when my da can afford to give it to me.”

“Well, you look like a lass who still laps milk to me.” Hunter’s blue eyes bored into hers with renewed curiosity. “What’s your name and how old might you be? Twelve? Not fourteen, surely?”

“My name’s Sophie McGann and I’m nearly
seventeen!”
Sophie said with exasperation for the third time that morning. “Not much younger than
you,
I’ll wager.”

“No!” he replied mockingly. “Ye canna be such an old crone as
that!
I know you canna be eighteen, like me.”

“Well… I’m rather small for my age… barely five feet, in fact,” she replied earnestly, so fascinated by the dark golden eyelashes framing Hunter’s startling blue eyes that she totally disregarded his playful tone. “And the absolute truth is that I was sixteen last February, but da’s customers can testify I know his stock of books well enough to be
twice
that age!”

“Oh,
do
you now? And are those books you had clutched in your hands before?”

“Sink
me!” she cried with sudden alarm, remembering the playbills. “Where’s the packet I had?”

“Not to worry,” he soothed, pointing to the stool his grandfather had used during his performance on the harp. Sophie dashed to retrieve the parcel. “They must be most valuable,” he murmured.

“These?” she replied, surprised at the solemn tone of Hunter’s voice. “Oh, these are just playbills and actors’ sides for
Macbeth
and
The Beggars’ Opera.
We print the play notices in our shop… McGann’s… among the Luckenbooths near St. Giles?” she explained. “Have you seen where we are?”

“No,” Hunter said, his expression growing serious. “But I’d like to pay a visit… especially if you stock printed plays. I’d dearly love to see what one looks like.”

“Well, we do carry some. I can show you the copy of Shakespeare I worked from, if you like,” she said shyly. “It actually belongs to Mr. Beatt,” she added as she carefully unwrapped the package she was to deliver to the playhouse just a few yards away. “I copied these speeches myself from his printed version,” she said proudly, pointing to a stack of papers with neat, even writing centered on the pages. “The prompter usually makes these copies for the actors, but he’s been a mite boozy of late, so the manager, Mr. Beatt, hired me to copy a few of the smaller parts for some new players that are filling in.” She smiled brightly, pleased to be able to impart a bit of backstage gossip. “When the theater’s about to close for the summer months, players have a nasty habit of departing early if they’ve employment in Dublin, or Sadler’s Wells, or such, and wrongly take their parts with them. At the end of a season they just stash them in their trunks. Mr. Beatt was furious to have to pay to have more copies made, but da was pleased I could earn a few extra shillings.”

Hunter scarcely seemed to be listening. He was preoccupied with running his thumb down the spine of the bound volume of
Macbeth
that Sophie was carrying with her commissioned work. He turned the pages of the book slowly, his eyes scanning the print. Then he stared at the sheaves of rag paper that bore her handwritten copies of several scenes. Finally, he fingered the stack of playbills and their written announcement.

The BEGGARS’ OPERA and MACBETH

will be performed successively

at the CANONGATE PLAYHOUSE

through May fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth

with HIGH LIFE BELOW STAIRS

as an AFTERPIECE in which the

FINEST PLAYERS in the KINGDOM will appear!

“Have you ever performed your juggling act in a theater?” Sophie asked tentatively, unnerved by the intensity of Hunter’s concentration on the playscript.

“What?” he asked vaguely, reluctantly pulling his eyes away from the pages he held almost reverently in his hands. “Ah… no… I’m merely a strolling player… a clown, really. Not like a genuine actor. Not like the artists at the Canongate.”

“Oh
them!”
Sophie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Most of them are really comical… they hardly know their parts, and the women are forever squabbling as to who has the comeliest gown—even on stage, during the actual play
itself!
I expect the actors who perform in London at Drury Lane or Covent Garden would please you a great deal more. The ones who come to Edinburgh have usually been sacked from other theaters or run out of some place for bad debts or drunkenness. I wager
you’d
make a far better job of it than most of
them!”
she added stoutly.

“Me… on a real stage?” Hunter scoffed, “I dinna think so.” The confidence that had so dazzled her during his juggling and dancing performances seemed to have evaporated. Swaggering Tom Jones had turned almost timid.

“Why ever not?” she demanded, staring at his dejected expression in utter amazement.

“Because…”

“Because
is no reason,” she said tartly. “My da says people who say
because
and don’t finish their sentences are mental sloths.”

By this time, Hunter’s handsome features had taken on a scowl and he stared over the top of her head in sullen silence.

“From what I’ve seen of you,” she teased, “you’ve enough boldness to prance upon any stage and speak your lines with the best of ’em!” she exclaimed, pointing at the pages, or “sides,” she would soon deliver to the playhouse manager. “Give me
one
good reason you couldn’t learn these speeches?”

“Because I canna
read!”
he said explosively, turning to face her, his blue eyes blazing. “I’m the grandson of the most famous living bard in the Highlands… the son of a man educated at the university in
this
city, and the grand-nephew of the chief of the Clan Robertson, but I
canna read!
”

Sophie flinched at the anguish she heard in his voice, the pain and regret and fury. Instinctively she laid her hand on his arm and stared up at him sympathetically.

“But surely, you read a
wee
bit?
”
she whispered.

“I can read nary a
word!”
he snapped, and then looked at her as if he regretted his harsh tone. “We’ve lived the wandering life since I was a bairn… m’grandfather’s sight faded years ago and he canna teach me… and Mother’s as doltishly illiterate as I,” he said sadly. “Thanks to old Rory, though, I’ve memorized some Shakespeare and a bit of Milton, and I inherited a few books from m’father, until we had to sell ’em to keep from starving.”

“Have you no home? Your da…?” she asked in a low voice.

“Killed at the Battle of Culloden Moor, when I was a lad of two,” he answered, all animation draining from his expressive face. “I never knew him. Like many who fought for the Bonnie Prince, we lost everything we had… our land… many members of our family. All m’life, I’ve traveled from town to town performing as a strolling player to earn a few coins.” He shrugged. “Vagabonds though we are, we manage to keep body and soul alive most times—unless the constable or the kirk elders chase us out the city for vagrancy or disturbing the peace. ’Tis an interesting life,” he finished wryly, his pleasant disposition and cockiness slowly returning.

The kirk elders!
Sophie’s heart ached with the injustices in life. Here was a stalwart well-born young man, desperate to learn to read and educate himself, without a farthing to spare, and just down the road lived that
toad
Lord Lemore, with enough money to buy books aplenty and an entire collection of repulsive drawings in the bargain! ’Twas
galling,
that’s what it was!