Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (16 page)

    In the gloom of the stage-door entrance, Cedarn found that the nose belonged to a gangly man of ill-kempt appearance. They eyed each other cautiously.

    “And you are?” asked Cedarn.

    “Bonville de Tongfort. Stage manager. Stay here, I’ll get the boss.” De Tongfort strode off into the shadows like a long-legged wader on the Thames flats at high tide. Cedarn looked around. The hallway was choked with miscellaneous scenery flats, racks of costumes and lantern boxes with big reflectors. He leaned his lute and bag against a section of forest, and sat down on a stool beside a length of plyboard battlements.

    “Down there,” he heard de Tongfort say presently, and footsteps approached. He got up. A barrel-chested man wearing a hearty grin and a fully sequined, taffeta gown emerged through the archway of a makeshift church.

    “Basil Gaumont,” announced the petticoated man brightly, “your humble servant! Captain of the Swan’s valiant Company, an impresario of sorts, as I style myself! Actor, manager, dramaturge, darling of the theatre-going world, what can I say. I am famous for my Paris, my Caesar, my Zeus and my Oberon. And my Dido’s pretty flaming good, too. You’re the lutenist fellow, Cedarn?”

    “At your service,” smiled Cedarn nervously, with a bow. “Monsieur,” he added.

    “Good fellow!” rejoined Gaumont, clapping him hugely in the small of his back. “Let me show you the boards. We have a big do coming up.”

    Cedarn followed the swishing train of the dress down through the backstage stores, past whole landscapes of scenery, and under the mass of winding gear and pulleys that operated the drop-curtain and all the stage effects. The complex ropes and wires reminded him pleasantly of a galleon’s rigging.

    They stepped out onto the stage, and Cedarn got a good look at the tiered gallery stalls, the pit and the high walls of the wooden polygon. It all looked rather open and worrying from the little apron stage. He’d been to the Swan dozens of times before he had suddenly become Louis Cedarn. From the galleries, as one of the roaring eighteen-hundred-strong crowd, everything looked exciting and glamorous. From down here, it was grubby and threadbare, and not a little ripe with the smell of tallow, greasepaint and sweat. It was as reassuring as looking into the mouth of a primed bombast.

    “Ahhh, it quite knots your belly with pride, doesn’t it?” beamed Gaumont.

    Cedarn nodded. Something had knotted, but it wasn’t his belly, and it wasn’t with pride.

    “This way,” said Gaumont, plucking him by the sleeve of his mandillion. Cedarn allowed himself to be led back through the facade into the smoky confines of the tiring room. A dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at him. Five women and seven men, all thoroughly made up in grotesque face-paint that enlarged their lips and eyes, were sitting around in their underwear or less, smoking, laughing and drinking. All of this ceased as Cedarn entered.

    “This is Louis. He’ll be joining our merry company of players as lutenist,” announced Gaumont to the ensemble.

    “Hello. Er bonjour.”

    A few of the gathered players nodded in return.

    “I ‘opes you play well, Frenchie,” said a man in a false moustache and little else, sitting in the corner. “We ‘ave need of a fine dose of playing to please our public. Especially on this coming Saturday.”

    “Oh, well, you know,” Cedarn began.

    “That’s Edward Burbage, our star player. And, of course, the rest of the bold company. They’ll make you welcome, I’m sure.”

    Someone belched, and there was some sniggering.

    “Is there no performance tonight?” asked Cedarn nervously.

    “Jesu, no,” said Burbage, rising and wiping droplets of wine from his moustache. “We were meant to start a run of
The Gentleman Fop of Innsbruck
on Friday, but there’s some business concerning the company of the Oh, and so we’re resting.”

    “The Oh?” asked Cedarn, his curiosity suddenly piqued. Doll was a member of the Wooden Oh company.

    “It’s flooded, and can’t be used for a week. By arrangement, their company will use our premises to begin their rehearsals of
Dutiful Husbands at Their Duty
tomorrow, along with their preps for the Masque,” Gaumont explained, “so we all have to bunk in together to make sure we’re ready for Saturday’s show.”

    “It’ll give us time to rehearse up a supporting piece on our programme while we brace for the big event,” said Burbage.

    “A little musical farce I’ve been working on,” said Gaumont. “That’s where you come in, with a few tunes, sir.”

    “What’s the piece called?” asked Cedarn.

    ”
Lark Rise to Camel Toe
,” replied Gaumont.

    “Oh,” said Cedarn. He wasn’t really paying much attention to the talk of plays. A large number of awkward possibilities were beginning to run through his mind.

    “Would the Frenchie like a drink?” asked a bosomy actress to Burbage’s left. Her grubby lace underskirts and whalebone-reinforced stomacher strained anxiously around her well-upholstered frame.

    “Why, ask him yoursen, Mistress Mercer!” mumbled Burbage through a swig of musket.

    With a shy grin, she stepped forward, holding a beaker of wine. The boards creaked under her advance.

    Mistress Mercer
Mary
Mercer
, thought Cedarn. She who was called the Beauty of the Stage, for whom lords and potentates swooned and threw coin. Close-up, she was a rather frightening matron, with a sad, eager look in her eyes. Cedarn supposed that to look exotically nubile and desirable from forty yards away across a theatre pit, she would have to possess exaggerated attributes that scuppered any close-quarters charisma. Like the Theatre itself, Mistress Mary Mercer was a tremendously disappointing let-down in person. Time could not wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety, but they’d both had a bloody good try.

    “Voudrais-vous uh desirai un cup de drinkie?” she asked with an embarrassingly demure turn of the head. An ogress with the coquettish mannerisms of a five year-old child.

    “Thank you,” Cedarn said anyway, reaching out for the cup.

    “Wait there,” called a voice from the back. De Tongfort stepped across the tiring room with a purposeful grin. “Let the fellow earn his first share of the company vittals.” He held out a sheaf of tatty sheet-music. “Let him play for his cup. Come on, now, Frenchie.”

    There was a chorus of approval and some slow hand-clapping. Cedarn took the sheaf of music and swallowed hard.

    “Well, now, really,” he began.

    “Come on, Frenchie! No excuses!” bellowed Burbage.

    Cedarn set the music on the top of a tea-chest, looked at it in alarm and took up his lute. He tested the courses, and tried an open chord. The silence was overpowering.

    “Come on!” Burbage insisted.

    Louis Cedarn had never had a lesson in his life, but as that life had only begun three hours earlier, it was hardly surprising he hadn’t fitted any in. Rupert Triumff, on the other hand, had been schooled on the lute since childhood, and had spent many a drunken afternoon with his neighbour Edoard Fuchs manufacturing delicious melody.

    He played “St Layla’s Galliard” and “Coverdale’s Jig” and followed them with “Come To Me, Oh Lover, And Groove Upon My Love”. The flabbergasted company stomped and shouted, and rained applause that showed no signs of abating.

    Louis Cedarn smiled appreciatively, and sipped the first of many cups of wine. Unseen by him, on the far side of the wings, Gaumont watched him with narrowed, dangerous eyes.

“Of course I’m worried,” said Uptil. He sat back in Rupert Triumff’s chair in the Solar of seventeen, Amen Street, put his hands behind his head and managed to look anything but.

    Doll sat glumly on the bench seat nearby, and toyed distractedly with the lace trim of her gloves.

    “You don’t seem very worried,” she said. “He could be dead.”

    “He could be,” remarked Uptil smoothly. “He could be dead drunk. You know what he’s like.” Uptil stretched and looked out at the damp evening that pressed itself against the Solar windows. The third quarter of eight had just chimed from St Ozzards, and it was turning into a soggy, unattractive night.

    “I must say,” said Agnew, sipping peppermint tea in a dim alcove on the other side of the room, “that on this occasion, I share Mistress Taresheet’s concern. It has been my” Agnew paused and rummaged mentally for just the right word. He gave up.

    “honour to serve Sir Rupert for more years than might be considered sensible. For all his failings, his one admirable quality is his ability to survive. He does it on wild oceans, leagues from land; he does it in battle; he does it in taverns when the drinks go down and the knives come out. I’ve seen him. Often. Too often, perhaps. But what with Lord Gull, and the business at the Baths yesterday, I truly feel he has sailed too far over the dangerous side of common sense. Today, this house has had more than the usual number of visits from the Militia and the Guild Officers, even by Soho standards. There is a price on his head. One would assume that is the result of misdeeds that we have yet to learn about. Whether by his own hand or another’s design, Sir Rupert is in grave circumstance.”

    “I keep thinking I should go back to Paternoster Lane, in case he turns up there,” murmured Doll.

    “Didn’t you say the Militia had it staked out?” asked Uptil.

    Doll nodded.

    “They left a man watching the house after they searched my rooms this morning,” she said. “I think he was meant to be inconspicuous, but you can’t help standing out with a halberd.”

    “There’s no point going back, then. If Rupe’s rolled up at your place, in whatever state, the Guard will have him,” Uptil said, boinging a letter-opener experimentally on the side of the desk. Doll shivered despite herself. That was something Rupert used to do. The spring-bounce noise made him laugh every time. Right now, it was the saddest sound she could have heard.

    “After all, what can we do?” Uptil went on. “Go out looking for him?”

    “We could.”

    “Oh, right. And if every investigator and blood-hound in the City can’t find him, what hope do we have?” Uptil said.

    Doll was about to answer, but she was interrupted by a loud knocking at the downstairs door.

    Agnew rose.

    “I’d better get that,” he said, brushing out his sleeves in a businesslike way and heading for the stairs.

    “The Ploy,” Doll squeaked at Uptil, who had almost forgotten.

    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, dropping off the chair and scurrying into the corner of the room.

    Agnew led Lord Gull into the Solar a moment later. Raindrops twinkled like diamonds on his coal-black cloak.

    “All his known associates in one place. How convenient,” mused Gull. “Good evening, Mistress.”

    “Lord Gull. Twice in one day. A lady could get the wrong idea.”

    “Let’s hope not,” said Gull, looking around. “So, he still hasn’t returned?”

    Doll took a step closer to the lean soldier.

    “Lord Gull, I want to know, why are you so desperate to find him?” she said.

    “Treason,” answered Gull succinctly.

    There was a pause.

    “Remind me again when you last saw him,” Gull said.

    “During the early Flirtacious Period,” Doll replied.

    “When?”

    “First thing this morning before he left.”

    There was a second loud rapping from the downstairs door.

    “No rest for the domestic,” muttered Agnew, and disappeared again.

    A distinct chill greeted his return.

    “The Divine Jaspers,” he announced.

    Jaspers stalked into the Solar, glancing around at those present with hooded eyes. He put down his ebony cane, and

removed his kid gloves with elaborate slowness.

“Gull.”

“Divine, our investigations cross again.”

    “What a busy day we’re all having. There’s nothing like an abominable crime to make everyone pull together,” Jaspers said, wandering over to the desk and helping himself to a glass of claret. “I take it you’ve ascertained that the traitor has not returned to these lodgings?”