by Diana Norman
Dear God, she thought, I’ve had the best of it.
‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘that you shouldn’t even be asking me this? We’re not trading slaves, Stephen. You don’t need me to say yea or nay, have her, don’t have her. If Jenny says she’ll wed you, that’s enough. She’s old enough to make up her own mind. She can give or withhold her consent as she likes. For God’s sake, man, she is a free human being.’
‘I have your permission, then,’ he said.
‘Good-bye, Stephen,’ she said, and went. There was no point in staying.
THAT night, at the theater, they came for Jacques.
It was towards the end of the interval. Makepeace was at the-front of house, ushering in the half-timers, the people that had come to fill the upper gallery for the second half of the play.
She was always brusque with them at first, resenting the fact that they were only paying half the price, but they were invariably poor; famished-looking students, shop girls, old theater workers who remembered Garrick in his prime. Therefore, just as invariably, she would end up explaining to them the action of the play so far and directing the more elderly into any vacant and comfortable seat in the stalls.
‘Oroonoko is an African prince who’s been captured along with his wife by slavers . . .’ she was saying to a couple of men when one of them stopped her.
‘Mrs Hedley?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you the owner of this establishment?’ A neat man—she’d put him down as a clerk—he made it sound like a bordello.
‘I am managing this theater, yes.’
He produced some paper. ‘I have here a warrant. You are ordered to deliver to me the body of a certain Jacques de Vaubon, otherwise known as Jack Watt.’
She didn’t look at the warrant; she wouldn’t have been able to read it for terror. ‘Why? What do you want with him?’
‘We are informed he’s a French spy.’
She gaped at the man. ‘He’s eleven years old.’
‘His age don’t matter. Our information is he’s son to a notorious French revolutionary.’
‘Eleven,’ she said. ‘He’s eleven years old. What are you going to do with him?’
‘That’s not our business, madam. Or yours. Usually they get sent back to France.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he came here for safety.’ I trust him to you, missus.
‘Not our business,’ the man said again. He didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Our business is executing this warrant. Where is he?”
‘He’s not here.’ Oh God, God, she should have denied all knowledge of the boy. Told them he’d gone to Timbuktu, wherever that was. Told them he was dead, which, if he were repatriated to France, he might be. De Vaubon and Danton at war with Robespierre. If they lost, their heads would topple into the basket. The guillotine was killing children quite as young as Jacques.
Images kept pace with fractured thoughts; she was seeing Jacques in a tumbrel with his father, Jacques mounting the steps . . .
And then she saw the eyes of the man with the warrant focused on something across her shoulder, saw him nod as if in response to a direction. She turned round.
Sir Boy Blanchard was standing behind her, a champagne glass in his hand.
She turned back, but the two bailiffs had gone, pushing their way through the crowding half-timers into the body of the theater.
Blanchard was all concern. ‘What is it, missus?’
‘You,’ she said in a long breath. ‘You told them.’
‘Told them what?’
But she was running out into the street, down the alley, through the stage door. He’ll be underneath the stage with his traps. Please God, let him be under the stage. Unless the two magistrate’s men were familiar with the geography of a theater, its doors and corridors would bewilder them. We can make a run for it.
Sanders. Where was Sanders with the coach? Usually, he came early to fetch them so that he could watch the last scene. Smuggle Jacques into it and go. Go where?
‘Where’s Jacques?’ She’d bumped into Bracey.
‘Dear Lord, what is it, missus?’
‘They’ve come for Jacques. Bailiffs, magistrate’s men. Two of them.’ Tears were pumping out of her eyes, she could hardly see. ‘They’re going to deport him. Bracey, I’ve got to get him away.’
Polly had come up. ‘What’s this?’
Makepeace ran on, while behind her Bracey said, ‘Something about a couple of quodders come for Jack.’
‘Have they, the bastards.’
The two men were on the stage now, having clambered under the curtain and were blundering among the flats, knocking one of them over.
Makepeace dodged backstage and lifted the trapdoor. ‘Jacques.’
Out in the orchestra pit, the Marquis de Barigoule had brought his baton down to begin the overture to the second half. She hissed louder over the music: ‘Jacques.’
Nothing. A single safety lamp showed a mass of hanging ropes, pulleys and lifts like a torture chamber—but no human being.
She made for the Green Room, then stopped. The émigrés. Once they heard the hated name de Vaubon, they wouldn’t lift a finger to help her save Jacques.
They’ll hand him over. Oh God, this is enemy territory. Where is he?
Where were the bailiffs? She went back to the wings. They were still on stage, staring at a black and commanding Aaron who was saying loudly, ‘My dear fellow, I am the leading actor of this production and I do not know the whereabouts of every whippersnapper in its employ, French or not.’ He caught Makepeace’s eye. ‘Fly away with him, I say. And be off with you, too. The curtain is about to rise.’
Of course, that’s where he was—in the flies, readying the damn cannonballs for the storm scene. And he’d have heard.
She began praying that neither of the bailiffs would look up; she kept her own eyes rigidly to the horizontal.
Which caught the attention of the better-spoken man. ‘Here, you, lady. You come and stand with Nobby. Don’t want you warning our subject, do we?’
Makepeace was ushered into the wings on the prompt side and her arm firmly held by the man called Nobby. ‘You can’t do this,’ she said. ‘You can’t keep me here.’
‘Miss, we got a warrant signed by a judge. We can do anything.’
The conversation between the other bailiff and Aaron was still going on. ‘I’m not here to stop the play,’ the man was protesting. ‘We’re to apprehend this Vaubon and apprehend him we will. Our information is he’s here, so you be a good little actor and get about your business and we’ll get about ours. I got a man watching the front and another at the back so he’s not getting out. And while you’re playacting, I’m searching. That clear?’
Aaron nodded and dragged the man off the stage just in time—the curtain was going up.
Makepeace stood. Just stood. If she was aware of anything, it was only of the grasp on her arm and the voice of de Vaubon. I trust him to you, missus.
Somewhere there was guilt—I brought him here, I should have hidden him—but it was subservient to a searing grief. He’d be taken from her, as the little slave boy had been taken from his mother. He’s mine, he’s my little boy.
Everything she knew so well, the lights, the music, the rustle of costumes and the smell of greasepaint as one player after another pushed past them to go on stage, thinned to a gray hell where demons capered beyond her comprehension. Only the Countess d’Arbreville and Henri on the other side of the boards, clasping each other, had relevance. They’ll take him away from me.
To her captor, however, here was an experience he’d never known. He kept nudging her, asking questions she didn’t hear and didn’t answer. Suddenly, between scenes—she couldn’t have said which—she found herself being taken away from the wings and down to the stalls. Two protesting members of the audience in the front row were being ousted from their seats by the display of a warrant. She was sat down.
The bailiff sat next to her. ‘It’s g
ood, this is,’ he said. ‘Might as well make oursel’s comfy.’
Some sense began to return. They haven’t caught him yet. Somehow he’s got away. Unless, the dampening thought, unless they have caught him and dragged him off already and haven’t bothered to tell this dolt next to me.
She glanced up to Blanchard’s box. Félicie, as usual, was transfixed by what was happening on stage, leaning forward, her pretty mouth parted. Blanchard was sitting back, frowning slightly. His eyes flickered and met her own for a second, then looked away.
You did it, she thought. You told them. She was as sure of it as of anything in her life. None of the émigrés, it was you. But how had he known who Jacques was, and why had he then betrayed the boy . . . ?
Luchet, she thought. Luchet told you. No, not you, he told Félicie. The tutor had laid the information, an I-know-something-important gobbet, at the adored one’s feet, and Félicie, of course, had told Blanchard.
But why, then, go to the authorities with such a grubby betrayal? We don’t like each other, you and I, but you know how important Jacques is to me and how important I am to Andrew.
Her own words, spoken a long time ago to Philippa, came back to her. ‘He’s a schemer. I ain’t jealous of him, he’s jealous of me. He’s jealous of everything Andrew has.’
Was it that? As sordidly simple as that? Smashing something in a line of affection that led back to the man Blanchard called his best friend?
Mick knew, she thought. You’re his Danny O’Whatsisname. You’re a born betrayer.
It came to her that tiny changes were occurring in the play onstage. Familiar lines were being altered, additions made. Widow Lackitt had come on in an unscheduled appearance, gaining a laugh where there shouldn’t have been one. Makepeace heard Chrissy say unscripted, as if of one of the slaves, ‘Is he not ebonied?’ And the answer, ‘Black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat’, gaining another laugh.
What are they up to? They’re up to something. Then she answered herself: Bless them, oh God bless them, they’re hiding him.
She had allies. Never on the side of authority, they were upholding liberty as they saw it. This troupe of barnstorming sinners, this rag-bag harlequinade of hers was marching to her aid—and Jacques’s.
Melting with love and gratitude, she was nevertheless frightened. Whatever it is, they’ll overdo it, they can’t help it. Look at them mugging.
She glanced up to see if Blanchard had noticed; he knew the play as well as she did. His eyes had narrowed, he’d lifted a finger to beckon forward the footman he and Félicie invariably brought with them to stand behind them in the box and run their errands.
The play was ending—it seemed to have lasted a thousand years; Oroonoko and Imoinda were dead.
There was no epilogue; Aaron, who should have read it, was leaving the stage empty except for the separation of the slave mother and child, their hands imploring for each other as they were led off.
The bailiff beside Makepeace was sobbing his heart out.
The usual stunned silence and then the thunderclap of applause.
One curtain call, only one, for Aaron and Mrs Jordan. Only one for the other leading players, despite the roar from the audience.
The whole company came on. Makepeace’s bailiff was on his feet, clapping, whistling, stamping; if his prisoner had wanted, she could have slipped away to China without being noticed.
Instead, she was intent on the line of the bowing, curtseying cast, which, she thought, was taking up a fraction more of the stage’s width than it had before. Was there one more jewelled, black-corked, beturbaned Indian boy in it than usual? Somewhat shorter than the rest?
She looked up at Blanchard’s box. He had seen; he was talking to the footman, pointing. She saw the footman hurry out.
‘Want to meet the players?’ she asked her bailiff, already dragging him towards the stage. Behind her, a frustrated audience tried to clap the curtain into going up again.
So willing was her captor that, when they reached the Green Room, he pushed Makepeace aside and was lost to her, enveloped into the exuberant, sweating, shouting postmortem that was the inevitable result of another successful night.
Bracey, staggering slightly as if already drunk, pushed her way through the players towards Makepeace. ‘We’re taking over the Boar’s Head for a celebration,’ she shouted. ‘All of us, in costume.’
Aaron came up and planted a black kiss on his sister’s cheek. ‘You won’t want to come, I expect,’ he said, quite as loudly as Bracey. ‘You’re tired. You’ll want to take the coach home now. We’ll order hackneys later.’
Makepeace looked at him in inquiry.
‘Now,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘Come along then.’ With Makepeace on one arm and Bracey on the other, Aaron led the way into the passage and towards the stage door, the whole company following him, still talking and laughing, still in costume, carrying the enchanted bailiff with them.
The other bailiff looked as disgruntled as any man who had spent an hour peering into prop rooms, stumbling over ropes and scenery and generally being hissed at for getting in the way. He held the narrow passage to the stage door, one hand up to stop the oncoming procession while he listened to Blanchard’s footman who was whispering in his ear.
‘What?’ Gabble from over-excited actors tended to inhibit communication.
‘He’s dressed like a blackie,’ the footman said, more loudly, ‘turban on his head or was. Smallish chap, about so high.’
‘I’ll get him.’ The bailiff scrutinized Aaron as if suspecting him of having suddenly shot up from ‘so high’ to six feet tall. He began to walk forward, squeezed past the Widow Lackitt’s ludicrous skirt, ignored Makepeace and slowly made his way down the passage, inspecting everyone in it. The stagestruck Nobby was pulled sharply out of the line and told to ‘go and help Tom watch the audience come out.’
Blanchard’s footman was now talking to someone in the shadows by the door. It was Luchet.
Makepeace went towards him. The tutor, catching sight of her, quailed at her approach. Seeing the look on her face, the footman opened the door and escaped, leaving it ajar to the bad air of the alley and giving Makepeace a glimpse of yet another bailiff, this one with a cudgel in his hand, waiting to stop any eleven-year-old fugitive leaving the theater. Where Jacques was, what plan her company had devised she didn’t know. Probably none of them would get away with it, the power of the law would come down on them all but, as God was her witness, she’d deal with the wobbling apology for a human being called Luchet before it did.
She grabbed his coat lapels and stood on tiptoe to put her face near his. ‘You betrayed your charge, tutor.’
He didn’t try to deny it; he was appalled. ‘I did not mean for this to happen ...’
‘I’ll write that on your tombstone,’ Makepeace said. ‘Because, sure as the Devil’s in Dockside, if that boy goes to his death your bollocks go with him.’
‘Missus, I swear, I did not know she would . . . She ask me who is the boy of mystery. I swear her to secrecy ...’
‘Swore,’ Makepeace amended automatically. ‘What else did you tell her as she’ll have told Blanchard?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
She looked behind her. Noise reverberated round the dark little passage. Protest at being kept from celebration was being raised by voices trained to carry, and towards the end of the line, the bailiff was causing the Countess d’Abreville to have hysterics by accusing seven-year-old Henri of being a French revolutionary spy.
Makepeace turned back to Luchet. ‘Did you tell her how you and Jacques came into the country? Or where?’
‘No, no.’ This was genuine. ‘She did not ask.’
‘Are you going to?’
‘No.’ The man was sulking now. ‘She promise she would say nothing but she tell him. She betray me.’
‘There’s a lot of it about.’ Satisfied, Makepeace let go of the man’s shirt. She’d have liked to hit him, bu
t to create a further kerfuffle seemed unwise and anyway the bailiff was allowing them to go.
He was telling his fellow in the alley to come inside and search the theater now that everyone else was gone. ‘I’ll see this lot off. Is Tom watching the front?’
‘Letting ’em out in groups.’
The usual admirers, male and female, were awaiting the cast at the end of the alley but even in the ensuing melée, the chief bailiff stuck to Makepeace’s heels as if instinct told him she could lead him to his prey. Nor could she dodge him because Aaron’s arm trapped hers. He walked slowly, both he and Bracey on the other side lowering their heads graciously to the spontaneous applause of the crowd as they passed.
Again, Makepeace had to wonder if Bracey was drunk; instead of her usual graceful walk, the actress was tottering as she went. Seeing Makepeace lean forward to look at her, she gave a broad wink.
They were in the street now, colliding with passersby who stopped to watch the costumed parade in amazement. Some of The Duke’s audience was still trapped in the foyer and only being allowed to leave in threes and fours.
Makepeace’s coach, an attraction in itself, was waiting outside. Dizzy had overtaken them and was talking to Sanders. Aaron’s feathers nodded towards a one-horse carriage on the other side of the street. ‘They intend to follow you home,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t let ’em.’
Sanders had opened the coach door and was letting down its steps. Makepeace felt the bailiff push past her and scramble inside, pulling at the coach’s cushions, tapping its roof. Sullenly, he got out again. ‘Empty. All right, get in.’ He stood by the door to make sure she did.
Aaron helped his sister inside, keeping the door open. ‘Godspeed, ’ he said.
