He startled her with that. ‘You would still do that. Now? After—’
‘It is one more day, Louisa. One more night. The world will keep turning without our guidance. Nations will not be formed or enslaved by our lack of action. If we were to disappear now … suspicion would be upon us.’ He smiled. ‘And maybe I am enough of an actor after all to want the play to go on. Even this one. So let us lose ourselves in the drama and let us decide our future afterwards.’ She made to speak but he overrode her. ‘I will do nothing, report nothing until we have decided … together. I give you my word. And you know that, whatever my other failings, I always keep my word.’
She studied him, then nodded. ‘I do. Till tonight then and the end of the play.’
‘Till tonight.’ He did not go near her again; he knew if he did he would not be able to leave. He went through the door, down the stairs, out the front door. Enough snow had fallen to hide his prints from the night before. With a sigh, he began to make new ones – back to his lodgings, on to his future.
– EIGHTEEN –
The Rivals
‘Am not I a lover; aye, and a romantic one too?’
A roar rose at the words. It was extraordinary what people found to laugh at. Yet André had warned them before the performance that the audience would have dined and drank heartily before crowding into the small auditorium to be entertained. And since The Rivals was a cunning and proven piece of craft, they had come prepared to be amused by it, to leave outside the cruel winds and the threat of Rebel raids – they had been growing ever bolder in their assaults – and lose themselves in the comedy. Each entrance was cheered, every exit applauded, demands made for especially good lines or bits of business to be repeated. It was intoxicating, Jack had to admit. He had only experienced it before t’other side of the footlights and had found it pleasing enough there. Now he was learning what various player friends had tried to tell him – to be the focus of all that attention, the centre of that vortex of power, to shape and direct it … well, it was akin to drunkenness on the finest champagne. Or very much like being in the first passion of love, making it easy to forget anything else.
Which reminded him … What a stew this is, Jack thought, staring out, his mind in three worlds at once. There was himself, Jack Absolute, playing the character Jack Absolute, re-enacting a very partial view of an episode from his own past. There was the actor mouthing the lines, waiting for the reaction. And somewhere shoved away behind these two, there was the spy who had compromised himself with an enemy agent, worse, fallen in love with that agent – who was also his on-stage lover! And before the midnight bell tolled, a decision must be made about that agent. One that would change many lives, his own not least, and could even affect the outcome of a war.
A stew, indeed. While the audience still enjoyed his line, Jack looked out, let his gaze sweep over the entire house. It may have been considerably smaller than Drury Lane, a mere five hundred crammed in, but it was its match in miniature, with the open space of the pit crowded with benches, a gallery above, a box just encroaching upon the stage on each side. He looked at the one Stage Left now, then looked swiftly away. General Howe, with his mistress, Mrs Loring, and several of his most senior officers, occupied it. Suddenly it felt most peculiar to be observed in this role by his commanding officer when he, and indeed the entire audience, believed that Jack was playing ‘himself’, and revelled in the fact. Unnerved, he turned to the box Stage Right. André sat there, leaning forward, apparently more nervous than any of his players.
Jack spoke his next words straight to him. André had encouraged them to make direct contact with members of the audience. Line delivered, he glanced to André’s right. There was another man there, leaning back, talking to someone behind him. His face was in shadow but his hand was before him, thin, pale fingers moving ceaselessly across a cloak draped over the box’s front. Heavy, blue-black, its hood was pointed and Jack recognized it instantly from the night before. Its wearer had escorted Louisa to a lodging house where rooms could be rented for a shilling and a half.
His mind, so split before, now focused on one need – to learn the identity of the agent that Louisa had concealed from him, Cato – and find out why that man was now sat next to John André. That identity could be a vital part of the decision he was to make at play’s end.
Returning his mind reluctantly to the stage, he realized the other actor was staring at him peculiarly. He glanced into the auditorium. The audience looked back expectantly and sudden heat surged through him, bringing sweat instantly to his forehead. It was his line and he had not an idea what it was! He stared again at the man playing his servant, Fag, and shook his head slightly. The fusilier lieutenant swallowed and spoke, repeating Jack’s cue.
‘Were I in your place, I should certainly drop his acquaintance.’
Yes, Jack thought, that’s your line. But what the devil’s mine?
And then he just said it and eternity ended, for somehow it was correct. Pushing the man aside, as per his stage directions, he exited. He didn’t have long. A scenery change and then the first entrance of Sir Lucius O’Trigger. The actor playing him had cut it very fine indeed and had only arrived at the theatre after the play began. Jack had not even met him yet; the man would just have to stand still and say his lines. And of course, the climactic duel, that Jack had desired, could not now take place.
But, as he left the stage and proceeded to the corridor that led to the Stage Right box, it was not actorly considerations that preoccupied him. He was an agent again and an enemy spy, who wore a black cloak, who had been alone with Louisa in a cheap lodging room, was ahead of him.
‘What are you doing here?’ hissed André, as Jack pushed open the door.
‘I need to be introduced to your friend,’ he said, stepping in. André was between him and the seated figure whose face was still in shadow. But the man rose and spoke as he did.
‘Surely we need no introduction, Captain Absolute. For are we not old friends?’ said the Count von Schlaben.
If it was hard for Jack to find words on stage, it was worse now. Similar feelings came, a difficulty in breathing, a flush to skin, a prickling of brow. He reached to grasp the back of André’s chair.
His director had risen between them. ‘You know each other?’
‘But yes. Did I not mention that fact?’
André frowned slightly. ‘Not a word of it, no.’
Von Schlaben’s voice was as soft, as insinuating as ever. ‘Really? Oh, I have long been a great admirer of Captain Absolute’s remarkable and varied talents. Not least his one for survival.’
‘You—’
Jack had left his grip on the chair, taken one step towards the man. But André was in the way and, as Jack moved to go around him, two shapes cleared the shadows in the box. An Abenaki rose from his squat beside Von Schlaben’s seat; and the huge German Sergeant, his face now half-obscured by a full moustache and sideburns, stepped away from the wall.
Jack halted, a measure of calm returning with a deeper breath. He turned to André, who was still looking quizzical, and said, ‘The Count and I are indeed old acquaintances. Or perhaps I should say, rivals. How appropriate that we meet here.’ He took in each of the bodyguards, letting his gaze meet and hold theirs, before returning it to Von Schlaben. ‘I so look forward, Count, to the end of the play and the renewal of that rivalry.’
‘As do I, Captain. As do I.’
Music had underscored their last words. Now someone hissed at them from the pit just below the box. ‘Shh, sirs. The play continues!’
Von Schlaben’s voice lowered to a whisper. ‘I hope you will not be offended but, despite your talents, it was really this next player that I was most looking forward to seeing. It was I who recommended him to Major André, you see. I do hope he justifies my confidence.’ He gestured behind Jack to the stage.
‘Here he is, Jack.’ André had taken him by the elbow, was swinging him around. ‘Talk about a late entrance! Here’s your
other rival, Sir Lucius O’Trigger.’
Though he was meant to be playing an impoverished Irish baronet, the figure who entered was dressed in the smartest of uniforms, a beautifully tailored green jacket with three columns of silver buttons up the front, braid at sleeve and neck, buff trousers, gleaming black riding boots. He had a cavalry sabre at his waist, his hand, resting on the pommel, tipping it up to a jaunty angle. And it was the weapon that brought the man’s name to Jack, rather than the voice, which was anyway speaking in a rather well-done Irish accent, or the face, even more eerily beautiful in the underlit glow of the footlights. It was the weapon; because when he’d last seen this man it had been on Hounslow Heath in London and the sabre in his hand was descending from a winter sky to snuff out Jack’s life.
‘Banastre Tarleton,’ Jack breathed.
‘It is he, indeed. And how delighted my young friend will be to see you again.’
He had no time to pause, to consider. ‘Jack,’ whispered André, taking him by the arm, ‘you’re on.’
Somehow he walked to the wings, waited while the actors talked before him, watched Tarleton exit on the opposite side, leaving the servants to their gossip. He saw the action, heard the words spoken, but it was as if everything before him now was a stagecloth against which his whirling thoughts played.
Von Schlaben, he wanted to scream to General Howe, to the audience. He is the head of a secret society and a Rebel spy, plotting against the Crown! But what was this dangerous man doing with John André, Howe’s intelligence officer? Was André aware, and drawing the German into a trap? If Jack cried out against him, would he tear apart an intricate web André had woven? And if he exposed the Count, would he not also expose Louisa? All he knew for certain was that Louisa had been consorting with this enemy. He had probably controlled her as an agent from the moment they docked in Quebec. He remembered Von Schlaben’s grip upon her elbow. Louisa had said he was a spurned suitor from London. She had lied to protect him. For if, in that first secret message he had decoded, Louisa was ‘Diomedes’ then Von Schlaben was, undoubtedly, ‘Cato’.
The play was accelerating towards his entrance. He could see his ‘father’ in the wings opposite. But he was trapped there by a thought: what if Louisa truly was a sublime actress? What if she had seduced him to turn him to their cause?
He shook his head, though the thoughts refused to vacate. He could only do one thing now – finish the play and get Louisa out of the city, there to uncover her true nature. Only when he knew everything could he return, expose – and kill – Von Schlaben.
There was applause. Actors left the stage, scenery changed and his ‘father’ was on. He walked to meet him.
The play, somehow, continued. If the audience noticed a change in him they did not show it. They ‘ooh’d’ and ‘aah’d’ where appropriate, laughed on worthy and unworthy lines, especially when he said the words that had exercised him the previous day in rehearsal. But as these followed his kiss with Louisa, he barely noted it. The kiss was strange – chill and at the same time desperate. He had seen her glance into André’s box; she had paled and been less animated since.
Yet it was Tarleton who brought the blur into focus for Jack. They came to the scene in which Sir Lucius challenged Jack Absolute to a duel. Tarleton looked at him as a fox would regard the occupants of a chicken shed. And he changed a line. When he chose weapons, he did not say, as scripted, ‘Sir, there will very pretty small-sword light,’ but instead ‘There will be very pretty light – for sabres.’ As on Hounslow Heath, Tarleton wanted to fight with the weapon that would inflict the most hideous wounds. Jack now recalled André’s words, which had annoyed him before, with relief: ‘You only cross blades, then the rest will rush on and separate you.’
The play marched to its climax – the duel at Kingsmead Fields, Bath. As all the actors gathered in the Stage Right wings for this finale, Jack managed to pull Louisa aside.
‘Be ready! As soon as the epilogue is spoken we must leave the city.’
‘Leave?’ She turned even paler. ‘Have you then decided?’
‘I have decided nothing. All I know is the man who wants me dead more than anyone on this earth is your man in the black cloak. I believe the Count von Schlaben will try to kill me after the play tonight and with four of them and this cursed arm …’ he raised his right hand, just that night out of the splints and bandage that had held it for four weeks. ‘I doubt I have the strength to stop him.’
‘Jack …’ she said, trouble in her eyes. But then his cue was called and he was walking on to the stage. Towards Banastre Tarleton.
‘Well then, Captain,’ he said, the Irish accent still perfect, ‘tis we must begin – so come out, my little counsellor,’ he drew his sabre with a flourish, ‘and ask the gentleman whether he will resign the lady?’
Jack drew his sabre, buckled on his right so he could draw it with his healthy left hand. ‘Come on then, sir,’ he said. ‘Here’s my reply.’
The blades crossed, they both settled into their stance. Jack looked to André’s box. The Major was still there. The black cloak had gone.
His eyes came back to look into Tarleton’s. That hunger was clear, stronger than ever. And it seemed that meeting Jack’s gaze was all that he required now. Disengaging his blade, he swung it, not with a full force but hard enough. Jack watched it come, disbelieving. Even when the blade bit into his right upper arm, when he heard the cloth of his jacket shred, when he felt that familiar, peculiar coldness of steel cutting into flesh, he still could not believe it. It was only when he looked into the wings and saw the black cloak spread out to block the entrance of the other actors, saw the Abenaki and the giant Sergeant with their own weapons unsheathed that he knew. The Illuminati, through their representative, the Count von Schlaben, would pay him for his opposition. He did not need Tarleton’s words to confirm this.
‘First Blood, sir,’ the younger man whispered, gesturing to Jack’s arm, where a darker red was beginning to stain the coat, ‘just a marker, to begin. But this time first blood shall not be the last.’
With a cry, he whirled his sabre above his head and the other on-stage actors stumbled away from the curving blade. Then he charged, the sword going back, then coming down straight from overhead. Aware now, Jack managed to get his own weapon up just in time, holding his grip in two hands. The shock of collision shot pulses of intense pain through his barely healed wrist. He gasped, staggered back, let Tarleton’s blade slide down his own. Still two-handed, he thrust the tip out before him, as Tarleton took his own sword out to the side, parallel to the floor, then attacked again to Jack’s right. Jack tipped his own point towards the stage, at the same time stepping through with his front foot. Though he stopped the blade, his own was knocked backwards, bouncing into the very place where Tarleton had already cut him.
‘Fine swordplay, what?’ came a gruff voice from the audience.
‘Brutish,’ a woman lamented.
‘Bravo,’ shouted three more, while from the wings he heard Louisa cry, ‘No. No!’
Tarleton’s edge rested on his own, his tip still down. Flicking his wrists, Jack sent both blades flying up, stepped back again, again stood square with his sword held two-handed before him, point to face.
‘Oh, good.’ Tarleton was smiling. ‘It’s so much better when they struggle.’
He came at Jack, smashing his blade aside, thrusting up at his groin, Jack staggered backwards, just bringing his weapon across to deflect the thrust in time but off balance, which his opponent saw and scythed down again at his head. Jack stopped the blow, just, but the shock that went through his arm made him think he had broken his wrist again.
Tarleton noted it, savoured the pain. As someone in the audience called out, ‘Is this not a little much?’ Tarleton smiled once more.
‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘all good things must end. I’ll just make it look like an accident.’
The attacks came now in a flurry that was almost impossible to predict. Somehow, Jack
managed, getting his weapon across just in time, though with each blow he felt his wrist shudder, his strength failing. Finally, he slipped, went to one knee, and Tarleton stepped in and swept his sword up, knocking Jack’s out of his left hand. He barely held on to it with his weakened right. The blade hovered out there, with all of Jack open, exposed, his sword tip resting on the floor and the whole weapon as heavy and cumbersome as a tree trunk. He could not lift it if he tried.
‘Quel dommage!’ tsked Tarleton, stepping back to deliver what would be his last blow. Yet just as he did, something strange happened. There was a noise from outside the theatre, a rumble that became a roar in an eye blink. Tarleton’s blade had not yet reached the backward point from which he could deliver his death blow, when, directly above him, it looked as if some malevolent god had reached down and ripped the roof off the theatre.
There was a brief sight of stars and snow, then the flies and their rails were tumbling down. Jack rolled to one side just before a sheared pole impaled him. Tarleton vanished in the swirl of a backcloth as if he’d fallen down the well that was painted on it. Before people had time to rise from their seats, a second blow struck the theatre and a cannon ball came through the riverside wall, passed a foot above the audience’s heads, and exited the cityside wall without touching anything else in its flight.
‘The Rebels attack,’ came the cry from more than one voice, and in an instant the theatre was transformed into the hall at Bedlam, men and women screaming, gender ignored, as they struggled over each other to get out. Jack saw that Von Schlaben and his bodyguards had disappeared; while at his feet, entwining himself further into the backcloth’s folds with every roll, Tarleton ranted and cursed. Without a qualm, Jack suddenly found the strength in his sword arm to plunge the point into the mouth of the wishing well. Annoyingly, he felt it lodge in wood. At least Jack was gladdened by the yelp of rage and fear from the writhing body before the stage swirled with people and he was jostled away. Striking out against the panic, Jack managed to force his way through to Louisa, who was striving as desperately towards him.