Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  If and when contact had been made, word would be relayed by Cobb or Wilkie to Spooner, who would be in the audience and remain in the pit after the play was over. Because they did not know when or how the contact would be made, much had to be left to chance. If there was no time for Marc to consult or relay details, a small group of mounted officers was to follow Marc to any rendezvous, maintaining a safe distance, since the rebels would be very wary of being caught or betrayed. Marc would be unarmed—to Spooner’s horror—because he was certain to be searched and wanted nothing to frighten off the plotters. He stressed, with only moderate success, that his principal task was to try to identify them, not capture them. They could be rounded up easily, but only if the ruse was complete and undetected. Spooner provided Marc with a canvas tote-bag for the two rifles—to be secretly marked—which he was planning to take as bait. The exchange of even one dollar for the sample would constitute high treason. The two men nodded agreement, and Marc left for the theatre, determined to get at least one thing right before the day ended.

  AS BOTH HE AND COBB HAD been doing all day, Marc slipped into Frank’s place through the back door because Marc’s exceptional height and distinctive tunic made him an easily recalled figure, as did Cobb’s uniform and eccentric profile. If the rebels were keeping an eye on the theatre and hotel, then the frequent arrivals and departures of officers would have raised more than suspicion. Of course, if the rebels had engaged one or more of Frank’s stable boys to act as scouts, then the jig was up anyway. He would only know for sure sometime this evening when “Jason Merriwether” hit the boards with his inimitable presence and panache.

  FOURTEEN

  The rehearsal went much more smoothly than Marc had anticipated. Mrs. Thedford had arranged that only those actually involved in the scenes shared by her and Marc be present: that meant Dawson Armstrong, who delivered the famous “barge” speech describing Cleopatra, cleverly placed at the beginning of the sequence, and Thea Clarkson, who played Charmian, the great queen’s confidante, in the death-by-asp scene at the end. For most of the two hours they spent together, Marc and Annemarie Thedford were alone on the Regency stage. The other scenes in the program, well rehearsed on Monday afternoon, had been reviewed earlier for any changes necessitated by the star’s absence and the cast was then sent upstairs to rest.

  They’d begun with Antony and Cleopatra. As Cleopatra, Mrs. Thedford seated herself upon a low stool near the unlit footlights. Antony was to stand off to her left and gaze soulfully at her as Enobarbus (Armstrong) introduced the Egyptian queen to him and to the audience. Armstrong had barely begun when Marc felt a chill run up his spine. Without costume or makeup, Mrs. Thedford had transformed herself into the figure described by the Bard’s poetry. Moreover, it seemed to Marc that many of the phrases described Mrs. Thedford herself.

  I saw her once

  Hop forty paces through the public street,

  And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,

  That she did make defect perfection

  And, breathless, pour forth breath …

  Age cannot wither nor custom stale

  Her infinite variety: other women cloy

  The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

  Where she most satisfies …

  As Armstrong finished, Cleopatra gave a flick of her right hand and Enobarbus withdrew. Marc heard him clumping offstage towards his room upstairs. Then Cleopatra spoke her opening lines:

  If it be love indeed, tell me how much …

  Antony, besotted with her lethal beauty, found himself replying:

  There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned …

  The scene unfolded, speech and counter-speech, as the ageing lovers bantered and probed, swore fidelity and recanted. The lines which last night had been words on a page and vague phrasings in the head now came readily to Marc’s tongue, and he felt the emotion behind the rhetoric when he declaimed:

  Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch

  Of the rangèd empire fall! Here is my space,

  Kingdoms are clay …

  The nobleness of life

  Is to do thus.

  Yes, he was thinking—even as he flinched under Cleopatra’s scornful, teasing ripostes—there is truth here: kingdoms are clay, and love is …

  “I am amazed,” Mrs. Thedford was saying, “and it takes much to amaze a woman of my years and experience. You did that as well or better than Jason, who always made too much of himself as Antony to be a credulous dupe of the queen’s charms.” There was a catch in her voice and Marc realized that the mention of Merriwether’s name had unexpectedly upset her.

  “He was a fine actor,” Marc said. “He will be missed.”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “And I feel like a fraud and a cad pretending to be him, but what we’re doing tonight is an urgent matter of the province’s security. I would not be part of such a scheme if it were not so.”

  “No wonder you can play Antony with such ease.” She smiled, her composure regained. “Let’s work through the rest of these scenes, then I’ll have Thea come down for my grand exit.”

  The next two scenes went more haltingly because they involved a range of suddenly shifting emotions as the conflict of sensual love and moral duty, personal commitment and public politics, the power of love and the love of power played itself out. Cleopatra’s death-scene, with Thea’s assistance, was a moving and grandiose bit of theatre, and only an actress of deep character and subtle sensibility, like Annemarie Thedford, could rescue it from mere melodrama. With period costumes and stronger lighting, it would bring the audience to its knees.

  “Now, let’s see if you can switch to Macbeth,” she said when Thea had left. “I’ve seen few actors under thirty-five years of age who can do the part justice. However, in the three scenes we’re doing together, Lady Macbeth is the dominant force—goading, wheedling, and bolstering her weak-willed husband, who, nonetheless, is an impressive military man.”

  “What do you suggest? I’ve got the lines down and I’ve seen the play at Covent Garden in London, so I can visualize this part of the play leading up to the murder and the moments just after it.”

  “Well, perhaps you could think of me as a mother figure. Lady Macbeth is often played as an older, haglike virago—bossing you about and taunting you over your lack of courage and questioning your manhood when you believe you’re a grown-up boy who can think for himself. That should give you the tenor of these scenes and put some vigour into the lines.”

  This stratagem took less practice than either of them imagined, for so quick and cutting were Lady Macbeth’s barbs, so mocking and sardonic her tone, and so convincing the fury in her face that Marc found himself reacting viscerally. Macbeth’s pathetic and ineffectual replies popped out with the requisite cowardice firmly attached. It was only the speed of the exchanges and their pacing that prompted repeated run-throughs. Marc found it very difficult to re-establish his role during such repetitions, but Mrs. Thedford, to his wonderment, was able to recapture the intensity of a dialogue even when it was restarted in the middle. He soon acknowledged to himself that, in the Macbeth sequence at least, Mrs. Thedford would have to carry the audience: his amateurism would be on full display. Fortunately, the concluding piece of the Macbeth sequence was to be Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing scene with Thea as the gentlewoman and Beasley as the doctor, which had been rehearsed to perfection earlier. She would be cheered to the echo.

  By the end of the Macbeth rehearsal Marc felt drained. The post-murder scene, with its multiple references to blood and seas being incarnadined, stirred up images of the carnage in Tessa’s room and a soldier’s sword steeped in gore. Mrs. Thedford seemed to be capable of charging her lines and gestures with legitimate passion and then simply withdrawing to whatever constituted her own personality with its separate virtues and feelings. But then, of course, here was a woman something less than fifty years of age who had succeeded in a man’s world against insuperable odd
s. Extraordinary emotional strength, self-confidence, and perseverance, in addition to intelligence and talent, would have been necessary. To own and manage a theatre and theatrical troupe would require the ability to motivate and supervise people who were inherently competitive, envious, and insecure, to navigate the shoals of financing and legal contracts, and to weather the inevitable economic setbacks and personal betrayals that were the thespian’s lot. Undoubtedly, it was such strength of character that had carried her through the crises of the past two days. If she had wept or lost her nerve or entertained despair, she had done so in private and alone.

  “Now, then, Marc, let’s do the Hamlet. It should be child’s play after Antony and Macbeth.”

  “But why not let Clarence play Hamlet in this scene as well as the others?”

  “In order to keep our audience happy and unquestioning, I felt we needed to find a third piece for you, but Beatrice and Benedick would have been impossible for us because it’s all tempo and tone, and our complete Hamlet sequence is too long and involves too much blocking. So I just picked out this edited version of the bedchamber scene between Hamlet and Gertrude—one we could rehearse alone.”

  So they proceeded as before. The lines and speeches came easily, as Mrs. Thedford had foreseen, in part because Hamlet was closer in age and temperament to Marc and in part because Marc had been compelled to memorize copious swatches of the text during his home-tutoring period with Dr. Crabbe. But he found it much harder to be on the attacking side than the receiving end, as he had been in Macbeth, much harder to be shaming his mother with lines like.

  Nay, but to live

  In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,

  Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love

  Over the nasty sty!

  and to watch in horror as the proud and confident Mrs. Thed-ford reduced herself to a cringing, mortified creature, defenseless against her son’s moral tirade. With the ghost’s appearance edited out, the scene wound down with the queen utterly abashed and Marc having to mouth epithets that caused his gorge to rise, but apparently made young Hamlet feel purged and righteous:

  by no means …

  Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,

  Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,

  And let him for a pair of reechy kisses

  Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,

  Make you ravel all this matter out …

  When Mrs. Thedford had concluded the piece with “I have no life to breathe / What thou hast said to me,” she took a deep breath, reached over, and caressed Marc’s wrist. It was a simple gesture, wistful almost. But it struck Marc like a jolt. He felt himself physically aroused—attracted and intimidated at the same time. There seemed to be something mysterious and taboo in her appeal that left his feelings in turmoil.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, her concern now taking over. “I’ve pushed you too hard, I believe. I’ve forgotten that this ordeal has had a personal meaning for you as well as us.”

  “I haven’t slept well, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Your friend, Mr. Hilliard, stands in the shadow of the gallows?”

  “I’m afraid he does. And there is nothing I can do to help. He has confessed.”

  Marc could see his own pain mirrored in her eyes, and some of his confusion. “Was it Tessa’s visit?”

  Marc nodded. “He is under the illusion that he has killed for love, even though he has no recollection of doing the deed.”

  “That sounds Shakespearean, doesn’t it?” she said lightly. Then her face became grave. “But I am sorry that Tessa escaped us this morning. She went out through the tavern. She’s still a child in many ways, but she has done Mr. Hilliard a great wrong.”

  “And he has wronged himself also,” Marc said. He smiled with some effort and said sincerely, “Anyway, I would like to thank you for helping us with this enterprise tonight. I may not get a chance to do so again.”

  “Oh?”

  “You are free to make arrangements to leave tomorrow, if everything works out as we expect this evening. Unless you want to stay and complete your schedule.”

  “Tempting as that is, I think it best for the others if we get on to Detroit as soon as possible. I’ll give you an address in Buffalo where you can ship the body, if that is all right. Jason has an elderly aunt there, his only relative.”

  “I’m sure the governor will approve that.”

  “And Major Jenkin tells me you are to be married soon.”

  “Yes. A week this Sunday.”

  “Lucky young woman,” she said. She paused and went on: “This … enterprise tonight, will it put you in danger?”

  “Not if my acting skills hold up.”

  Mrs. Thedford smiled. “They’ll do just fine.” It seemed for a moment that she might take him in her arms and … what? But she didn’t, and for that Marc was grateful beyond measure. If she had, he had no idea what he might have done or what irrevocable train of events he might have set in motion.

  “Break a leg,” she said.

  • • •

  IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK WHEN HE left Merriwether’s room, where he had been mentally rehearsing his roles, and started walking towards the Cobb residence. Using the key that Ogden Frank had given him, Marc left the theatre by exiting through the door that led directly into the owner’s quarters (thus avoiding the tavern altogether) and then out the rear door into the alley. Frank, with his hand-wringing now more anticipatory than despairing, had even supplied him with a key to the outside door so that he could slip in and out by this means whenever he wished.

  On the bed in Merriwether’s room Marc had laid out a suit of the dead actor’s clothes from cap to boots. If he were called out to a rendezvous tonight after the performance, then he would have to go in Merriwether’s guise, not his own. But for now he was just another soldier strolling east along King Street towards the “old town,” where Cobb lived.

  Marc felt somewhat guilty that he had not visited the constable before now. Despite the differences in background, life experience, and class, Marc had developed a comfortable rapport with Cobb, without either of them having to resort to pretense or false formality, or move an inch away from who they were. Marc respected Cobb’s native cunning and hoped Cobb’s admiration of his intelligence was not misplaced. He soon found the clapboard cottage on Parliament Street just above Front. He was delighted to find a neat little house freshly painted or whitewashed and, around it on three sides, the vestiges of the summer’s vigorous vegetable garden. Bean-hills, withered tomato plants on stakes, yellowed cucumber vines—all attested to care and diligence. He almost tripped over a fat pumpkin-squash beside the stone path that meandered up to the front door.

  “Kickin’ ’em won’t make them ripen any quicker!” Cobb called from the doorway.

  “A bit like us, then?”

  Cobb chortled. “Glad ya could make it, Major. I figure a solid meal and a restful pipe or two should set us both up fer the ruckus later on.”

  “I needed to get away from that place—and Government House. Thanks for inviting me.”

  Cobb led Marc inside, where he found himself in a cozy parlour with cushioned chairs, a throw rug, a stone fireplace, and a deal table set for supper. The remains of a log in the hearth radiated a welcoming warmth.

  “It may be ’umble but ’tis h’our h’own,” Cobb said in his execrable imitation of a Cockney accent.

  “It’s very comfortable. Your missus must be a conscientious homemaker.”

  Cobb looked decidedly uncomfortable at this compliment. “Most times, I’d agree with ya, Major. But not today.”

  “Is Dora ill?”

  “Healthy as a horse,” Cobb snorted, as if this state were somehow sinful. “Healthy as two horses!”

  “What’s wrong, then?”

  “She ain’t here, that’s what.”

  “Oh,” Marc said, confident that Cobb would get to the point sooner or later.

  “Off on
one of her calls—again.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “She’s a midwife,” Cobb said in a tone that was both boastful and accusatory. “An’ the women of this town arrange to have their off-springers at the most inconvening time they can think up!”

  “I didn’t know that,” Marc said, casting about for an appropriate place to park himself. “But surely you are proud of her: she plays a most important role in the community.”

  Cobb looked as if one cheek or the other would soon burst. “But she was the one that went an’ invited you!”

  Marc just laughed, and sat himself down in one of the two cushioned chairs. “You’re worried about a breach of manners? Well, don’t be. Besides, I smell something delectable cooking in the other room.”