“Why? Afraid that if your charge gets knocked over the head with a whiskey bottle, it will go on your record and tarnish your perfect image?”
He looked at her for a long while. “If you were injured, I wouldn’t like it at all.”
Again she looked away from him. “You can’t stop me. I’m going out there.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Maddie, don’t do this just to prove to me that you can do whatever you want to. Use your common sense. I can’t control a crowd that size and that mean. And this time you won’t be able to make them hear one single note.”
She knew that he was telling her the truth, and if it were up to her alone, she’d leave right then, in the dark, and head back to Denver City, but her orders were to sing in six camps and in six camps she was going to sing. “I have to,” she whispered.
He held her at arm’s length for a few moments, looking into her eyes. “I sure wish you’d tell me what is going on that makes you have to go on this trip in the first place. Both our lives would be a lot easier if you’d trust me.”
If I trust you, she thought, maybe it would make our lives easier but it just might end the life of one little girl. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She moved out of his grasp. “I am going to bring a little culture to these poor men and—” She had to stop as a series of gunshots rang out.
“I’ll do the best I can,” he said at last, then left the tent.
Maddie stood still for a moment and looked after him. She wasn’t the fool she portrayed herself to be. It was one thing to impress men with her voice who were lonely and mostly sober, but she’d seen too many drunks not to know that many men who otherwise were respectfully nice often became violent when they drank.
About a dozen shots rang out, making her jump, and when her heart stilled, she thought back over the years to other performances. She remembered all the roses thrown at her feet in Florence. In Venice she’d gone riding in a gondola with a tenor—what was his name? It was amazing how forgettable the names of other performers were—and they’d sung duets. All the other gondolas had stopped, and the people of Venice had opened the windows of their houses to listen. When she and the tenor had finished singing, the bravos had echoed through the canal. Now she was going to have to persuade a crowd of drunken, dirty miners to like her.
“You look like you’re about to cry,” Edith said, coming into the tent.
“Of course not.” Maddie smacked herself in the face with a powder puff.
“If I had to face them men singin’ the songs you do and lookin’ the way you do, I’d be scared too.”
“What does that mean? ‘Looking the way I do.’ ”
“This is one of Harry’s towns. She’s this big redhead. Well, not really red, but close enough, and she heard you was comin’ and she don’t like it. She considers these men hers and she don’t wanta share ’em.”
“I can assure you—and her—that I do not want any of these men. I merely want to, shall we say, borrow them for a while.”
“Whatever, she don’t like it none. She’s talked against you so much, sayin’ that you’re a snob and a lady and that you’ll look down your nose at ’em that the men are preparin’ to hate you. She’s also told ’em that you’re an iceberg and that opera is for men with ice water in their veins.”
“That’s ridiculous. All the opera stories are full of passion and love.”
“But they’re in foreign languages and nobody can understand ’em, can they? And the way you stand there singin’ ’em” Edith straightened her spine, put her hands in a prayerful attitude, a proud, haughty look on her face, and pursed her mouth. “You don’t look like you’re singin’ a song about love when you’re up there.” Edith’s eyes turned sly. “I don’t think that Captain Montgomery thinks about you and love in the same breath either.”
That did it. Maddie threw down the powder puff. “Edith, I want to borrow that red and black corset of yours, that really gaudy one.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Go and get it now. This minute.”
“It ain’t gonna fit over that chest of yours.”
“Good. I shall have to allow a great deal of it to hang out.”
Edith’s eyes widened. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and scurried out of the tent. Maddie began to change out of her lovely, simple silk dress.
Forty-five minutes later, Captain Montgomery came to the tent so that he could lead her onto the stage that Sam had put together. He’d planned to try one more time to persuade her not to sing, but he took one look at her set jaw and didn’t say a word. He walked in front of Maddie, and she wondered how he could move with the weight of all the weapons he was wearing. A serious-looking Toby followed her.
Maddie did her best to hide her nervousness, both about the coming crowd and about what she planned to do. She wasn’t sure that she had the nerve.
She walked onto the stage, and the noise of the men quieted to a dull roar. They weren’t going to welcome her; they were going to make her prove herself.
She could see by their eyes that they thought she was just what this woman called Harry said she was. But perhaps her voice could change their minds.
She took the stance that Madame Branchini had taught her, the stance that the rest of the world expected from an opera singer, and began to sing a beautiful aria from Don Giovanni.
She hadn’t sung five minutes before they started booing. A couple of shots were fired and some of the men started muttering in loud tones.
She glanced at Captain Montgomery, saw that his eyes were scanning the crowd, one hand on his pistol, the other on his sword, ready to draw them if need be.
Maddie stopped singing. She turned and went to Frank. “Do you have the music from that new opera?”
“Carmen?”
She nodded. “Give me some of the overture and then play the ‘Habanera.’ Play it three times. Play it as though your life depended on it.”
He looked out over the crowd with an uneasy eye. “In this place it might.”
She tried to get the attention of the men to tell them the story of Carmen and about the song she was going to sing, but no one listened to her. She looked at Captain Montgomery and saw the worry on his face.
I shall show them, she thought. I shall be Carmen, the lusty girl who works in a cigarette factory.
Frank started playing some of the overture, and Maddie began to unbutton her blouse. What her singing couldn’t do her skin did. She had the attention of the first row now. And when she unpinned her hair, letting it flow down her back, she gained the attention of the next five rows.
Carmen was a mezzo soprano’s role and Maddie’s voice didn’t have quite the necessary darkness, but she had the emotion. The first words to the “Habanera” were “Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it’s all in vain to call it if it chooses to refuse.”
As she sang the words about love being a Gypsy child, she acted them out. She swished her skirt so that her ankles in their black silk stockings were exposed. When she got to where she sang “L’amour” several times, she drew it out as seductively as she knew how.
She’d never done anything like this in her life, but as she started to sing the song for the second time, Maddie began to regret that she had never before acted like this. She could feel the captain’s eyes on her. Yesterday she’d been forward with him and he’d told her no, but the wide eyes of the men in the audience told her that none of them would tell her no.
She left the stage and went down among the men. Her blouse was open to her waist now and, as Edith had predicted, a great deal of her was coming up over the top of the bright, gaudy red satin corset. She leaned over men and sang, speaking of love, “You think you can hold it, it escapes you,” and as she did so she slid away from the men’s clutching hands.
By the third rendition of the “Habanera,” she was practically slithering around the room, from table to table. She was the promiscuous, luscio
us Carmen and she could entice any man in the world—but they couldn’t have her.
When she finished the song for the third time, Maddie looked at Frank. He was trying to keep the surprise off his face, but he wasn’t succeeding. Captain Montgomery was scowling at her. She smiled at him and then slid into the next song from Carmen, the song where she tells Don José that her heart belongs to no one.
She suspected that most of the men could not understand the French words, but she knew that Captain Montgomery did. She sang the song with real feeling, giving it all she had when she said that she’d take her lover with her to keep her from being bored. Then when she remembers that she’s between lovers, Maddie put her back to a post in the building and rubbed up against it, moving down, her knees bent but slightly wide as she asked who wanted to love her. Who wanted her heart?
The miners might not have understood the words, but at her actions and her tone about five of them made a lunge for her. She slipped away from their grasp and sang that she was going to Lillas Pastia’s tavern to drink manzanilla.
It was at the end of the chorus that Maddie got what must have been the surprise of her life, for out of the crowd came a scruffy-looking older man, who marched to her and told her, in French, in a quite pleasant tenor, to keep quiet, not to speak.
Maddie recovered from her shock and sang to him that she could sing all she wanted, that she was thinking of a certain army officer who she could possibly love. Her eyes slid to Captain Montgomery, who was watching her with the intensity of a hawk watching its prey.
The gray-haired man sang, “Carmen!”
Maddie sang to him that she was a Gypsy in love with a man other than him and she could make do with that man, hinting that she didn’t need an officer like Don José.
The man, singing Don José’s part, asked her if she could love him, and Maddie said yes.
The miners were grinning and punching one another as they watched ol’ Sleb sing to this beautiful woman. They watched as Maddie, as Carmen, teased him, her face and body showing that she may or may not love him, as the mood took her. Poor Sleb looked like all the men there felt: that he would sell his soul to the devil if he could have her and that he might end his life if he could not.
Sleb sang his agony while Maddie sang the role of the woman in command, her voice so powerful that every note could be heard above all the movement and noise of the many men around her.
They cheered when Sleb pretended to be untying Maddie’s hands from the rope that bound them, and then they watched as she sang again that she was going to the tavern to drink and dance, while poor Sleb looked at her with lust and longing.
They cheered more when the two voices blended in a short duet.
At the last chorus, Maddie made her way back to the stage. Her blouse was open all the way down to her waist now and hanging out of her skirt. She flipped her skirt and sang one last time about going to the tavern and ended with a magnificent tra-la-la-la-la.
When the miners’ cheers shook the foundations of the building, it was a gratifying sound. She looked at Captain Montgomery and was pleased to see that he was frowning at her. She bowed to the audience and held out her hand to the man who had so unexpectedly sung the part of Don José.
But the men weren’t going to allow her to have an ordinary ending. In one frightening motion they surged toward the stage. Maddie saw ’Ring make a leap for her, but he was lost to her sight as the men grabbed her and put her on their shoulders. She yelled, “ ’Ring!” a couple of times, but no one could hear her over the noise and confusion.
Chapter 9
As Maddie was carried along on the men’s shoulders, she held on for dear life. She could smell the stench of whiskey and unwashed bodies rising from them. This wasn’t the same as having Russian students pull her carriage, for these men were so drunk that by sheer accident, they could drop her and trample her. They were so drunk that if they did drop her, it would probably be an hour before they realized it. Also, she was worried that some of the men would think that she had meant her performance and believe that she was Carmen.
It was with great relief that she saw Captain Montgomery making his way through the crowd to her. He was at least a head taller than the other men, and he was a man with a mission, so he was perhaps using more force than was necessary. As she buried her fingers in the hair of one of the men holding her and tried her best to keep her seat, she realized she wouldn’t have minded if Captain Montgomery had made his way toward her by using a cannon.
When he got near her, she could see that he was very angry, but when he put his arms up for her, she didn’t hesitate. She let go of the hair of the man holding her and fell into Captain Montgomery’s arms. She hid her face against the wool of his jacket and snuggled against him as tightly as possible. She could hear the sound of his heart over the angry shouts of the miners, but she heard some other shouts and knew without looking that Toby and Frank and Sam were there also.
Captain Montgomery carried her back to her tent, which Sam had moved into the trees during her performance, away from the camps of the miners.
He dropped her without much gentleness on the cot, then turned his back on her and poured some whiskey. “Here,” he said, holding the glass out to her.
He can’t be too angry if he’s offering me food, she thought. She took a sip, then he jerked the glass from her hand and drank the whiskey himself.
“You don’t deserve any and I don’t trust any whiskey that you keep,” he said, scowling down at her. “That was some exhibition you put on in there. Did your Madame Branchini teach you that?”
“It was done purely on my own instincts.” She smiled at him. “Did you like it?”
“I’m glad the men couldn’t understand the words of the songs. Gypsy love, indeed.” He turned away to refill his glass.
She leaned back on the cot on her elbows. Her blouse was still open, Edith’s corset showing, and she just happened to notice that with her arms back as they were, her breasts plumped up rather nicely. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I think I did rather well, don’t you?”
He turned back and some whiskey splashed out of his glass when he looked at her.
She smiled as innocently as she knew how.
“If you keep playing with fire, you’re going to get burned.”
“Oh? And who is going to add fuel to my fire?”
“Not me, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
That cooled her off. She sat up. “I should have known I wouldn’t get a compliment out of you.”
“Is that what you want? Your singing was magnificent. I have never heard anything like it in my life. Every note was like a precious jewel being given to the earth.”
She blinked a few times, hearing the sincerity in his voice. “But what about my acting?”
“Acting?” He snorted. “You weren’t acting. You were Carmen.” He gave her a look up and down. “But you can stop now.”
She snatched her blouse together and got off the cot. “Thank you so much for rescuing me from the miners, Captain, but I’d like to get ready for bed now, so perhaps you should leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“You can’t spend the night with me.”
“No, not spend the night with you, at least not the way it sounds. I am going to try to keep those men who you did your best to entice from coming in here to get you. Sam and Frank and Toby are going to sleep just outside.”
This made Maddie feel rather like an extraordinarily desirable woman.
“You can stop looking so pleased with yourself. I hope no one gets hurt.”
“I do too, and I’m sure they won’t with you looking out for me.” She smiled at him. “They did like me, didn’t they?” She began to hum the “Habanera” and, with her skirt held out, she moved about the tent as though she were dancing.
He watched her, frowning. “Is that who you want to like you, men like them?”
&n
bsp; “You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me.”
She took his empty glass from his hand, refilled it, and then drank from it. “People have such odd ideas about opera singers. They think we’re not quite human, as though we are creatures closer to divinity than to flesh and blood. They think just as you did, that we were born singing and that it has all been easy for us. They don’t see that we are human and that we want the same things that all women want.”
He caught her wrist, pulling her close to him. “And what do you want, Maddie? To be a saloon singer who swells out of the top of a too-small corset?”
“No, I want what I have, but tonight it was…I don’t know, it was nice to be liked for my womanly characteristics and not just for my voice.”
“But your voice—”
She pulled away from him. “I know that my voice is magnificent. I wanted to know that the men like my…I wanted to know that they liked me as a woman also. And they did.”
“How could you possibly doubt that?” he asked softly.
She turned and looked at him, and for a moment she was again Carmen, the lusty cigarette girl who knew that she had power over men. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to kiss her, possibly to make love to her.
“Save your seductions for your miners,” he said, and turned away.
Maddie felt as though she’d been kicked in the stomach, and it took a moment to recover her breath. She walked to the cot. “I don’t want you here tonight, Captain. If you feel that I’m not safe, then send Toby or Frank or Sam to stay with me.”
“After the display you made tonight, I wouldn’t trust my own father alone in here with you. My own grandfather.”
“But I’m perfectly safe with you, aren’t I, Captain?” To her horror, she could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes. Tonight, as she had been singing about the army officer that Carmen had loved, she knew she had been singing to this army officer who was beginning to fill her thoughts.
“I would protect you with my life, but you have to trust me.”