Mistress Firebrand

by Donna Thorland

  “Why now?” asked Severin. “Howe has had twelve months to find and deal with the Widow, and while we may flatter ourselves that his capacity for intelligence work was much diminished by our respective captivities and absences, surely there are fresher leads than my year-old encounter with the woman.”

  “Trenton,” said André. “She was all but invisible for the last year. There was talk of her being in Cambridge and in Salem, but then nothing, until Trenton. One thousand Hessians captured, the Jerseys lost to us, on what should have been the morning of our victory in America. Our ‘Merry’ Widow turned up in Mount Holly and ensorcelled one rather sentimental Jaeger colonel into tarrying there for three crucial days, with all of his forces. But for her, we would not have lost Trenton.”

  Oh, Angela, thought Devere. And I imagined we had something special. He hoped the poor German bastard had gotten away with his ribs intact. Jenny had been right: he did admire the woman. He hated her a little too, but he definitely admired her.

  “You were resourceful enough to find me,” observed Severin. “Surely you have been able to identify at least some members of her network.”

  “I have,” said André. “Unfortunately, they are so well placed that they are currently untouchable. I need new leads. You tracked her in Boston and managed to meet with her. She attempted to have you killed in New York. She succeeded in getting you immured in Simsbury. That means you had contact with at least one of her disciples.”

  “Such encounters do not usually compass a polite exchange of introductions.”

  “But you no doubt have your suspicions as to whom she might have used.”

  “Suspicions that are a year old, and wholly unconfirmed,” said Severin.

  “And naturally you wish to pursue them yourself, to allay any doubt as to where your loyalties lie after so long a captivity. I understand. That is why I have brought this.”

  He drew a pamphlet from his pocket and placed it on the table. “In Boston, I believe, you discovered the true identity of the writer of The Blockheads and recommended the Warren woman’s arrest, but Howe moved too slowly and she slipped our grasp.”

  “I did.” It was one of the many things he had done for Howe, who had not repaid his loyalty.

  “This,” said André, tapping the pamphlet, “is very much of a piece with that business—though, unfortunately, it is an altogether more effective, and popular, bit of propaganda.”

  He slid the booklet across the table and Severin glanced at the cover. It was an unbound play printed on cheap paper: The Miles Gloriosus in a New Translation for American Audiences. Severin affected disinterest while his heart pounded in his chest with sick anticipation.

  “The damnable thing is everywhere,” said André with some asperity. “We have confiscated thousands of copies in the coffeehouses, but it is impossible to suppress. Students perform it and wags quote from it and scenes are recited in parlors from Williamsburg to Albany. Copies and reprints have even reached London.”

  The captain sat back, steepling his fingers. “The title character is a very thinly veiled version of John Burgoyne, who is incensed and has vowed to hang the author. General Howe and he both blame it for the poor turnout in loyalist support, although I do not entirely credit their assessment of that situation. Americans are, as a people, not much given to loyalty.”

  “It is a play, for heaven’s sake,” said Devere, ignoring the jibe. “An entertainment, like a Punch-and-Judy show. If Burgoyne ignored it, the thing would fade into obscurity. Vowing to hang the scribbler is like printing a thousand handbills. It inflames public curiosity. Cry ‘sedition’ and every fashionable young buck in America will decide he needs a copy.”

  “Quite so. No doubt Burgoyne’s advisers told him as much, but wiser heads did not prevail. And the thing has struck an uncomfortable chord. Read the bit where Jack Brag recruits the savages to plunder the frontier.”

  Severin flipped through the play, trying to ignore the feelings stirred by the familiarities of phrase and style. Oh, Jenny. Let this be coincidence only: my mind reading too much into these printed words.

  He found it easily enough, a speech before a crowd, a bit of bombast that was a very good imitation of Gentleman Johnny’s oratory, in which he exhorts the Indians to chastise the wicked Rebels. And, reading it, hope died. Severin knew all too well where the author had gotten the idea: from the plans she—Jenny—had stolen from his cabin and given to Angela Ferrers.

  “Much of this strikes me less as sedition and more as perspicacious observation,” said Severin, casually, tapping the very passage with one finger. “It is no secret that Burgoyne wishes to employ natives in his campaign. And it is not sedition to call that what it is: a terrible idea.”

  “But one approved, I understand, by the King,” said André.

  “Who has never been to America. Burgoyne sees the Indians as an instrument he can use to terrorize the colonists. He imagines that they are childlike in their simplicity and will look to a white man for leadership. He thinks they will fight for him. They will not. They will fight for themselves, for their own aims, to drive settlers out of the borderlands. They will not discriminate between loyalists and Rebels, and as soon as some overeager brave scalps one English child, Sam Adams and his rabble-rousers in Massachusetts will paper the country with broadsides and engravings and it will be the Boston Massacre all over again.”

  “Burgoyne sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between the playhouse and the battlefield,” agreed André, “but the damage is already done.”

  “Then why come to me?”

  “Because I want Angela Ferrers. You had your chance at her, sir, and you failed. I want your informant, this associate of the Widow, and I am prepared to give you this playwright fellow in exchange. It is a good bargain. Angela Ferrers will never come to trial, but her capture and execution, behind closed doors, will make my career. This seditious scribbler, though, Burgoyne will hang publicly. He is not enough to advance me to the rank I desire, but delivering him up to the general is ideal for proving your loyalty.”

  Severin schooled himself not to betray any emotion as he reached for the play. “What you are giving me,” he said, “is nothing.” He held up the booklet. “It is written under a pseudonym.”

  André regarded him coolly. “You are an expert at handwriting, Colonel, and were, until your imprisonment, scrutinizing an extraordinary breadth of North American correspondence, including the private writings of hundreds, if not thousands, of Rebels and suspected Rebels.” He drew another set of papers from his pocket and pushed it across the table.

  It was the manuscript text of the play, written in an all too familiar hand.

  “Do you recognize it?” asked the captain.

  He hesitated a moment too long.

  “You do, don’t you?” pressed André.

  He did. It was mate to that first fateful letter addressed to Burgoyne, to the single-word missive in his breast pocket. Oh, dear God, Jenny, what have you done?

  “It is possible that I have seen the hand before,” he said.

  André smiled. “I think we understand each other, then.”

  “My memory will doubtless improve when I am once more in New York,” said Severin. Where he was going to find Jennifer Leighton, and get her and her impossible aunt the hell out of the city—away from Howe, away from André, and beyond the reach of British cavalry and the hangman’s noose forever.

  Seventeen

  Manhattan

  January 1777

  The fire had destroyed Trinity Church but spared John Street, which, as Bobby had remarked, ought to settle once and for all the question of whose side the Almighty favored: the pulpit or the playhouse.

  Jenny reserved judgment.

  The British reopened the theater, but they did not return it to the stewardship of Robert Hallam. Instead, they informed him that the interior had been
so wrecked by its use as a hospital that repairs were going to cost a fortune, and the considerable expense of refitting it after the American occupation must be underwritten in some fashion. All profits from the newly rechristened “Theatre Royal” were to go into the pocket of Howe’s Strolling Players—the amateur association that had fronted the repair money—with the exception of those nights held as benefits for widows, orphans, and deserving performers in the cast.

  Deaf to Bobby Hallam’s protests, they fixed a notice to the theater door that read:

  The Theatre in this city, having been some time in preparation, is intended to be opened in a few days for the charitable purpose of relieving the Widows and Orphans of Sailors and Soldiers who have fallen in support of the Constitutional Rights of Great Britain in America. It is requested that such Gentlemen of the Army and Navy whose talents and inclinations induce them to assist in so laudable an undertaking be pleased to send their names (directed to T. C.) to the Printer of this Paper before Thursday night next.

  The players were made up largely of army officers and their mistresses. The soldiers appointed a physician named Beaumont, their surgeon general, manager of the company, and the only deal Bobby was able to strike with New York’s latest high-handed occupiers was that he should be paid a pistole a week for Mr. Dearborn’s services.

  Bobby seethed quietly and Jenny kept out of his way, particularly after the too charming Captain André from the 26th engaged her to play certain parts that seemed to require a professional thespian, being “a bit beyond the repertoire” of the officers or their mistresses. Jenny agreed at once. As Angela Ferrers had said, no one would suspect a loyalist actress who had lost her livelihood to the Rebels of being the infamous Cornelia, whose plays were now being quoted in coffeehouses and acted in parlors and refectories up and down the coast.

  Both of Lewis Hallam’s sets of fine London painted scenery had been destroyed, the first in the riot, the second during the theater’s use as a hospital. Captain André himself volunteered to create a new backdrop, and Jenny watched, fascinated, as a new Arcadia took shape before her eyes.

  “You draw beautifully,” she said to André in quiet tones. They were standing upstage, and he was roughing in the design with charcoal, while Lieutenant Pennfeather rehearsed his role in The Beaux’ Stratagem opposite Captain Bradden’s mistress. Captain Bradden, for his part, sat in the pit and looked on with displeasure.

  “But I can’t paint worth a damn,” said André. “Bayard Caide is a far better colorist than I, but he’s off terrorizing the Jerseys, so it will have to be Captain DeLancey who daubs it in for you.”

  “It doesn’t look like our last Arcadia,” she observed. “It’s missing all the pointy trees.”

  André laughed out loud. “That is because I am not painting Italy. This is New York, around Fort Ti. It seemed absurd to import someone else’s wilderness here, when you have your own so close to hand.”

  Jenny had never thought of it that way before. Scenery had always been something to be brought from England. She had assumed that anything painted in America would be inferior, and she had never even considered the idea of using American scenery for an American stage.

  “It is every bit as wild and beautiful as Italy,” she decided.

  “It is every bit as beautiful as Tuscany,” agreed André. “Though far more likely to kill you, in my experience.”

  * * *

  Later that week Courtney Fairchild returned, now attached to Howe as a staff officer and thoroughly sick of ships and sailing. He announced that he was moving into John Street with Frances, and that he would entertain no arguments to the contrary. Jenny supposed she ought to be scandalized, but in truth she was relieved. Fanny had declined to appear in the British productions at the “Theatre Royal,” no matter how much Beaumont or John André had implored her, saying it was high time she retired and allowed the younger generation to have its turn. Jenny suspected that her aunt wished to make the most of her days with Fairchild, and she could not fault her for it. Not when Jenny herself carried Devere’s unsigned letter in her pocket and read it to herself daily.

  Opening night at the John Street Royal was, appropriately enough, Tom Thumb, with Jenny taking the role of Princess Huncamunca. Fairchild, who had taken over the rent for Frances and Jenny and leased the rest of the building, ground floor included, had declined to allow the garrison’s company to use the parlor for their greenroom. And so the late-night postshow suppers took place at the King’s Arms, with the players and the general’s party—Howe, Howe’s favored coterie of officers, Howe’s gorgeous mistress and her husband—all conveyed to the tavern in sleighs.

  Where once Jenny had avoided these “entertainments after the entertainment,” now she embraced them as a continuation of the play. As long as she acted the part of the loyalist, she could remain here in New York, near her aunt—and near her mysterious printer, who corresponded with her through a dead drop at Mr. Fraunces’ and had begun paying her a percent of his respectable profits from her work.

  So too, no matter how tempted she might be to retire to her rooms after rehearsal, she instead lingered, for a time at least, in the theater with the amateur players. They treated John Street like a private club: ordering catering from Mr. Lenzi and leaving bottles lined up on the gallery railings, and trysting when the mood took them, in the slots where she had almost succumbed to Devere.

  The play ran a week, and on Friday after their final performance Jenny emerged from the theater to find snow falling gently and three sleighs waiting to carry the players to supper. Jenny traveled in the first with the mistresses of the garrison, their conveyance piled high with furs and strung with brass bells. The next carried the gentlemen in their heavy wool cloaks, bells jingling a note above the ladies. John André and young Hulett, the almost painfully handsome son of the dancing master of the disbanded American Players, followed in a brightly painted two-seater, their bells providing the third note in a wintry chord.

  The ground floor of the King’s Arms was a sea of scarlet coats, and Jenny moved through them unchallenged. It was assumed, she learned from André, who was not only charming but also a bit of a gossip, that because she lived with Aunt Frances and Fairchild, the major was keeping her as well. She had opened her mouth to protest, but André had laughed and forestalled her by speaking first.

  “It is an absolutely delicious rumor and even if there isn’t a grain of truth in it, you should encourage it. Especially if there isn’t any truth in it. Such febrile gossip merely increases your fame as an actress and, from a purely mercenary perspective, your allure to audiences. The seats can hardly fill themselves, my dear.”

  He was right, though in truth, of course, she didn’t want to be known for her supposed lovers, or even for her acting. She wanted to be known for her writing. It filled her with secret pleasure to hear her Miles Gloriosus talked about, but it chafed to hear General Beaumont declaim her prologues and afterpieces on the apron, and to see him receive praise for them afterward. She supposed he had appropriated the scripts from Bobby’s office in the same way that the British had expropriated the whole theater.

  Howe had ordered a turtle dinner upstairs for the players, but Jenny had no taste for the dish, and she crossed the hall to the long room fitted up for dancing.

  That was when she saw him. It took a moment for understanding to follow recognition, because she could not comprehend his appearance here. Her hand slipped into her pocket, searching for his letter, as though somehow she could grasp and hold on to the real Severin Devere. Because this was not the man she had met in the greenroom at John Street, who had kissed her in the slots, who had gotten her off the Boyne, who had almost made love to her in a cloud of double-refined sugar and orange water.

  She felt alternately flushed and then icy cold. He had not yet seen her. He was standing beside Howe, speaking in his ear. His hair was as glossy black as she remembered, shining darkly in th
e candlelight. His face was as angular and finely wrought, but his cheekbones, always sharp, were bladelike now, and his whole graceful frame appeared slighter, more cleanly limned. It was as though the sculptor had returned to refine his work, chiseling away everything that was not essential to Severin Devere.

  All this she would have welcomed as her spirit had longed to welcome him for these months. All this, save the scarlet coat with blue turnouts and cuffs. She did not recognize the facings and lace as belonging to any particular regiment, and she deduced that, like Courtney Fairchild, he must now be a staff officer of some kind. He wore no sash or gorget, which made sense since he was not on duty, but a battered blade hung from his belt beneath his coat, and he had a pistol tucked beside it as well.

  She knew the moment he sensed her presence, not because he did anything so blatant as to turn and look at her, but because he inclined his head in silent acknowledgment while still speaking to Howe, the way the John Street cat cocked his ears when he knew you were there but had not chosen, just yet, to recognize you.

  When he turned, it was a performance, as convincing as any she had seen onstage, but a performance nonetheless. He anticipated it a little, pivoting his body before he turned his head, saying something crude that elicited a sly smile from Howe and allowing his gaze to light on her and sweep her body from head to toe.

  Howe nodded, filled his punch glass quickly, and led Devere across the room. Jenny felt like a sailor who could see the fin in the water, heading straight for her.

  And then Howe was standing in front of her and Devere was at his side and the general was making the same introduction Courtney Fairchild had once made, only this time Jenny had not been hoping for the arrival of another man. Except, of course, that she had.