Читать книгу The Last Suitor - A J McMahon - Страница 13

NINE

The Visit of Lady Isabel Grangeshield

to the Emperor Theatre

7:15 PM, Friday 20 May 1544 A.F.

Nicholas stepped into the theatre and stood to one side for a while looking around as people poured past him. He had never been in a theatre before. He was struck first of all by the luxury of red: the curtains were red, the seats were red, the carpeting was red, and the walls and ceiling were ornately painted a mixture of glittering white and red. He stood to one side taking it all in, and then Isabel leaped into his view.

She was sitting in one of the box seats, talking to a companion next to her. At the sight of her Nicholas felt unaccountably nervous, so he ended his inspection of the theatre and began to look for his seat. He was in “the gods”, which Ben had told him was right at the very top. They were the poorest seats in the theatre, Ben had told him further, envious that he had not himself got a free ticket, and they were not for people who suffered from vertigo. Nicholas made his way up the stairs, a deferential space around him as he moved amongst the denizens of “the gods”, the only theatre-goers poor enough to know who he was, and found his seat and sat down.

He attracted a fair amount of open-mouthed attention from his fellow patrons, which he ignored with a lofty disdain. The story of how he had taken down Jolly had oscillated through New Landern in its rotating voyage changing form as it went along until the form in which it was now most commonly told was as follows: Jolly had abducted Miss Ashton, the most beautiful woman in New Landern and held her prisoner in his stronghold, intending to have his evil way with her. Nicholas Raspero had stormed this stronghold single-handed, taking down hundreds of Jolly’s men without killing a single one of them, capturing them as easily as if they had been children; he had freed Angela and taken Jolly prisoner. Jolly had a room full of treasure, with jewellery and strada coins and bank notes piled up to the ceiling, an Aladdin’s cave of treasure beyond counting, treasure beyond imagining. Nicholas had tied Jolly up and thrown him into this treasure room, leaving Jolly there and carrying Angela away with him in his arms; all the demi-monde knew that the four successors of Jolly had thrown their discs into his neck at the same time and taken his treasure for themselves.

Nicholas had not replaced Jolly as king of the New Landern demi-monde but he had in a sense become its patron saint. Despite being poor he had turned his back on a fortune and no-one could understand this; it was as inexplicable as the action of a deity. It was fear of Nicholas the wandfighter that led the most violent and dangerous criminals in New Landern to step courteously out of his way as he came walking along but it was something like the honour due to a saint that meant that Nicholas was no longer charged for anything by the poor of New Landern. If he got a drink the barmaid refused to take his money with a disapproving shake of the head; if he bought freshly-baked fish with fire-baked potatoes, drizzled in lemon juice and seasoned with salt and pepper, the street vendor of his meal would wave away the strada Nicholas offered in payment with a furious gesture of his hands as if Nicholas had deeply insulted him by offering to pay for his meal.

Nicholas obviously couldn’t know this but some of the streets of New Landern he wandered along would in the decades to come have pubs named “Sir Nicholas” in his honour, their most common sign being that of a man tied up next to a pile of money. The story of what he had done to Jolly would continue to be told and, in time, it would perhaps even become a fairytale.

The play Nicholas was watching tonight had once been a fairytale. A woman had been obliged to remain silent for seven years in order to lift a curse on her twelve brothers who had all been turned into ravens, and so even when falsely accused she had maintained silence despite the imminent danger to her life; the audience, as was common in those days, did not take any of this lying down— they shouted out to her to beware the villain, there was at times a deafening bedlam of conflicting and advisory comments being hurled at the stage when it was clear that innocence was being taken advantage of by evil doers— and everyone cheered with delight when the ravens turned back into her brothers and they all lived happily ever after.

Nicholas enjoyed the performance but above all else he was struck by the presence of Angela on stage: her radiant beauty, her imperiled innocence and the occasional evocative costume combined to form a lasting impression on his youthful senses. He was, in short, star-struck. He even felt a little nervous as he made his way backstage to see her as if he were walking a narrow bridge above an abyss. He was guided to Angela’s dressing room by a wide-eyed boy who was himself star-struck to be in the company of the nemesis of Jolly, and then Nicholas found himself knocking on Angela’s dressing-room door. He entered on hearing Angela call out.

She was sitting in front of a mirror, wiping at her face with a cloth in her hands.

‘Mr Raspero!’ she said with pleasure, ‘how wonderful to see you again.’

‘I hear that all the time, but I never tire of it,’ Nicholas said with a smile, closing the door behind him. ‘You were magnificent, Miss Ashton. Congratulations on your performance!’

Angela looked as if no-one had ever paid her such a compliment before. ‘It is so very kind of you to say so, Mr Raspero. I cannot say how much your words of commendation mean to me.’

‘You were amazing, Miss Ashton,’ Nicholas continued in the same vein. ‘I was thrilled, moved, excited and dazzled by your performance.’

‘You are much too kind,’ Angela protested, still looking as if no-one had ever paid her so much praise. ‘I will blush if you continue with such unmerited endorsements of my poor performance, Mr Raspero. I must beg you to stop before I am too much reminded of my own unworthiness to receive such accolades.’

‘All right,’ Nicholas agreed as if reluctantly, ‘but only if I can sit down.’

‘Oh, Mr Raspero!’ Angela burst out. ‘Where are my manners? Please, sit down.’ She gestured to the side, where there was a bench fastened to the wall covered in red velvet cushions. Nicholas closed the door and sat down.

‘And how have you been, Mr Raspero?’

‘Chugging along, thanks. And yourself, Miss Ashton?’

‘Everything is going well for me, Mr Raspero. In no small measure due to you.’

‘Your success on and off stage is due to your own ability, Miss Ashton.’

Angela said nothing, resuming wiping at her face with the cloth in her hands. Nicholas looked steadily at her in the mirror stealing glances at him. At that moment there came a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ Angela called.

The door opened, shielding Nicholas from the view of the person standing in the doorway.

‘Ange,’ a man’s voice said, ‘there’re some people here who want to see you.’ Nicholas thought the voice sounded like Mr Ansel Horado, the actor who had played Bernard the Yeoman in the play. ‘Lady Grangeshield, Miss Nicholson, Miss Earlson, may I present Miss Angela Ashton. Miss Ashton, may I present Lady Isabel Grangeshield, Miss Sophie Nicholson, and Miss Penelope Earlson.’

Isabel entered the dressing room sideways, facing Angela all the while, not realising that anyone was sitting behind her. Nicholas could see her bare shoulders above the strapless low-cut dress she was wearing. He heard Isabel say, ‘How very interesting to meet you, Miss Ashton.’ Her voice was pitched high, but with a musical sound to it that gave it depth.

Isabel was standing so close to Nicholas that he could have reached out and pushed her in the small of the back. Her wide skirts were brushing his knees. Nicholas straightened his back as straight as straight could be in order to pull himself back as far as possible into the wall. Her presence was overwhelming. He could smell her perfume, he could see every curl in her carefully coiled hair, her right arm hung by her side holding her fan pointing downward; he could see the curves of her biceps and forearm. Nicholas tried to relax so that he could breathe more easily.

‘It is very kind of you to say so, Lady Grangeshield,’ Nicholas heard Angela reply. He noticed that her voice sounded different, and then he realised that she had pitched it to sound like Isabel’s.

‘Your performance was astounding,’ he heard another woman’s voice say from near the door. ‘I cried when that cruel man left you all alone in the forest. I cried, I assure you.’

‘You are much too kind, Miss Earlson,’ Angela said. ‘I am overwhelmed by such praise.’ Nicholas noticed that she was still using Isabel’s voice.

Isabel moved her arm behind her back, waving her fan about restlessly. Nicholas moved his head aside to avoid being poked in the nose. Her hand was so close he could see her fingertips pressing lightly into her palms forming slightly whitened indentations.

‘I have never seen the role of Ursula so well performed,’ another woman’s voice said. ‘I could not but believe that all this was really happening. I was on the edge of my seat when you were at the mercy of that terrible man.’

‘But then Denver came and saved you!’ Penny said. ‘Hurrah!’

‘Thank you, Miss Nicholson. You are all so very kind,’ Angela said, modulating her voice now so that it was slightly deeper than Isabel’s. ‘I cannot thank you enough for saying such laudatory remarks about my performance. It is only such praise as yours that gives me the courage to step out onto the stage.’

Nicholas was fascinated by how Isabel’s bare neck rose above her bare shoulders, her pale skin gleaming in the lamplight of the dressing room, her dark brown hair coiled around her head in a spiral pattern held in place by white and green gemstone hairpins. He was breathing as silently as he could through a wide open mouth, his head turned sideways to avoid breathing onto Isabel’s hand.

‘We have resisted the insistence of all your admirers that we come and witness your performance for ourselves, and how much we have lost in not coming to see you before now!’ Isabel said.

‘But you are here now, and surely that is what counts, Lady Grangeshield.’

‘And we shall surely be here again, Miss Ashton,’ Isabel continued. ‘What will your next play be?’

‘The Kingdom of Happiness, Lady Grangeshield, I believe.’

‘Ooh,’ Penny squeaked, ‘that is my very favourite play of all!’

‘That is such a wonderful play,’ Sophie said. ‘Isn’t it, Izzy?’

‘I have never seen it,’ Isabel said. ‘But I am indeed fortunate to have something to look forward to in the future.’

‘How can you never have seen The Kingdom of Happiness, Izzy?’ Penny burst out in astonishment.

‘Circumstances,’ Isabel said briefly as if all the complexities of her explanation would be irrelevant. ‘And when does The Kingdom of Happiness open, Miss Ashton?’

‘The fifth of August, Lady Grangeshield,’ Miss Ashton said.

‘I am pleased to hear that it is to happen so soon,’ Isabel declared. ‘I do not have long to wait.’

‘And I so much look forward to seeing you if you are so kind as to visit me again. It was so wonderful for you to have visited me tonight,’ Miss Ashton said.

Nicholas was reminded of how Lady Starfeld had brushed him off, but her visitors simply ignored Angela’s hint that they leave now. ‘But how did you come to take to the stage, Miss Ashton?’ Sophie asked.

‘I was a lady’s companion after the death of my mother, Miss Nicholson, and Mr Ansel Horado was so kind as to allow me to enter the Kerrick Company some five years ago.’

‘That is so brave!’ Penny exclaimed. ‘How very brave of you, Miss Ashton!’

‘No, Miss Earlson, I have never had any reason to fear. Everyone has been so kind to me. Surely to be brave means to have a reason to fear. But you know this, of course. I am taking up so much of your time only to tell you what you already know.’

Another hint for them to leave, Nicholas noticed, but Angela’s visitors appeared to completely miss it.

‘But your greatest triumphs are surely off the stage, Miss Ashton,’ Isabel suggested in a neutral tone. She took her fan out of Nicholas’s sight, and from her posture he guessed that she was holding it in both hands as a schoolteacher holds a cane. He noticed that her back had straightened. It was as if she were preparing for battle.

‘It is kind of you to see me as having triumphs, Lady Grangeshield,’ Angela said with unruffled calm.

‘You are so thin, Miss Ashton,’ Isabel continued with friendly concern. ‘Do you manage to eat enough?’

‘I eat wonderfully well, thank you, Lady Grangeshield.’

‘If you do ever need to eat, Miss Ashton, I will instruct my servants to prepare you some food. They will make a spacious place available for you in the servants’ quarters where you may eat in comfort. You have only to ask, Miss Ashton, and I will see that it is done.’

‘There is no need to take so much trouble, Lady Grangeshield. But I can only thank you for expressing such a warm and generous impulse.’

‘But you are so thin,’ Isabel persisted. ‘And you hardly have breasts. You are flat-chested, Miss Ashton. I am sure that it must be the result of poor nutrition.’

‘Your concern for my welfare moves me deeply, Lady Grangeshield. But I assure you that I eat very well, and your concern is misplaced.’

Nicholas couldn’t tell even the least irritation in Angela’s voice. It was as if she simply hadn’t noticed Isabel’s deliberate provocations.

‘Do you have a medical condition, Miss Ashton?’ Isabel asked in a tone of the sweetest sympathy. ‘Your face is that of a skeleton. The bones all show! I know the best doctors in town. I will foot the bill for your medical expenses, I assure you. You have only to ask for my assistance.’

‘I am in perfect health, thank you, Lady Grangeshield.’ From the sound of Angela’s voice, there seemed to be not the slightest crack in her composure. ‘But it is so kind of you to be so concerned about me.’

‘I hope you are not too proud to seek help, Miss Ashton,’ Isabel said, her concern appearing to have grown. ‘Please do not feel so ashamed by your notoriety that you dare not seek assistance.’

‘I never hesitate to seek assistance, Lady Grangeshield, I assure you. But I need none.’

‘But the lifestyle you lead, Miss Ashton, is surely not conducive to good health. Good health is dependent on a sound mind and body and where does that leave you? Why do you refuse my help, Miss Ashton? I do not understand. I reach out my hand to you and you only bite it.’

‘I cannot tell you how welcome your kind intentions are, Lady Grangeshield, but surely you must understand that your concerns are entirely misplaced.’

‘But you are as skinny as a rake, Miss Ashton. You obviously do not eat properly, you do not have proper medical attention, and yet you say that my concerns are misplaced! Surely you will surmount your pride and seek my help before it is too late! Or do you insist on throwing my concern for your welfare back in my face as you have done until now?’

‘Your concern for my welfare is such a blessing as I have never before received, Lady Grangeshield. But the hour grows late, and surely I am keeping you from the rest of your evening?’

‘Not at all,’ Isabel said reassuringly, ‘you are not keeping me from anything at all but the opportunity to help you! You have refused my offer of nutrition, you have refused my offer of medical assistance; well, all that is left for me to offer you, Miss Ashton, is moral guidance. But perhaps you will refuse that as well?’

‘I can only thank you for your kind offers of assistance in all these matters, but the hour grows late and we all must be moving on. I can only thank you for having visited me tonight.’

‘Your gratitude is surely feigned, Miss Ashton.’

‘The time has come, Lady Grangeshield, for me to bid farewell to you and your companions, but I would like to say that I would be only too happy to see you again.’

‘But how can you be happy to see us again when you are so unhappy to see us now?’

‘Lady Grangeshield, it is not my fault that the Club of Appreciation voted as they have. You must take up the choice they have made with them, not with me. In the meantime, I must bid you farewell.’

‘I do not understand you,’ Isabel said coldly, though judging from the shifty slightly-shivering barely-perceptible alteration of her posture, Nicholas guessed that she did, in fact, understand Angela all too well, ‘but this is beside the point. You are unhealthy, Miss Ashton, in both a physical and a moral sense. The whole of New Landern knows that you are a whore, Miss Ashton, and it is well known that whores lead dissolute and unhealthy lives. Do you really refuse my moral guidance?’

‘I never refuse guidance, Lady Grangeshield, but surely guidance must be sought, not imposed.’

‘Yes, you will quote Keane to me, Miss Ashton, but without understanding. You are a monkey, are you not, Miss Ashton, a monkey which chatters in imitation of what it imitates? But what do you say yourself from your own understanding, or perhaps you have none?’

‘What I say myself, Lady Grangeshield, is that you must address your grievance to the Club of Appreciation. Surely I do not quote someone else when I say this?’

Nicholas could see the muscles flexing in Isabel’s back on hearing this. He guessed that Isabel was being fought to a draw, though he could not follow exactly how the blows were being given and received in the battle he was witnessing. What was the Club of Appreciation, anyway?

‘You are a whore, Miss Ashton. A whore! Surely that has nothing to do with the Club of Appreciation, unless you slept with all those who voted for you!’

‘I did no such thing, Lady Grangeshield. You must take up the reason for their vote with those who voted. But that has nothing to do with me!’

‘I see you do not deny that you are a whore, Miss Ashton. Men buy your body for money, do they not? Is your soul also for sale, Miss Ashton? Or have you already sold it?’

‘I must ask you to leave my dressing room, Lady Grangeshield.’

‘But surely I have not offended you, Miss Ashton?’

‘I have other business to attend to, Lady Grangeshield, and if you will excuse me, I must be moving on.’

‘Other business? Would this other business be Lord Foxley, by any chance? The whole of New Landern knows that you are his whore, as you were the whore of Hudson before him, and Nieves before him, and Zavanna before him. Yes, I am sure that Lord Foxley is eagerly awaiting you in order to receive the services you will provide for him in those conditions of privacy and secrecy which I am given to understand are associated with such transactions.’

‘Lady Grangeshield, I must ask you once again to leave my dressing room. It is only common courtesy on your part to respect my wishes in this matter.’

‘Common courtesy? How dare you presume to lecture me about courtesy? You, a whore who has climbed out of the gutter, presume to lecture me about courtesy? How dare you! You know nothing of such matters as courtesy, Miss Ashton. You are merely an ape who mimics the behaviour that you witness.’

‘Whatever my understanding of courtesy, Lady Grangeshield, you are in my dressing room and I am asking you to leave.’

‘This is not your dressing room, Miss Ashton. It is the dressing room of the Emperor Theatre, and I assure you, if I spoke to the owners of this establishment, they would see to it that you never set foot in this dressing room again.’

‘Then you must speak to them, Lady Grangeshield, for I continue to insist that you leave my dressing room. I grow tired of asking you to leave.’

‘Yes, you must not grow tired, Miss Ashton. You must conserve your energies for the attentions of Lord Foxley later tonight. Your work for the day is not yet done, is it, Miss Ashton? You have your work as a whore ahead of you still!’ With that Isabel left. Her companions must have gone with her without a word of farewell, for Angela stood up and closed the door after them. She returned to her seat before the mirror and resumed inspecting her face, cloth in hand to remove the remainder of her stage make-up. Nicholas could not see that she was the least bit rattled.

‘Are you all right, Miss Ashton?’ Nicholas asked her.

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Raspero, I am perfectly all right.’ Angela sounded as if nothing had happened at all.

‘Lady Grangeshield gave you a hard time,’ Nicholas said cautiously, not knowing whether to say anything or not.

‘Did she? I did not notice.’

‘She called you a whore several times. Did you not notice that?’

Angela said nothing in reply. She was tidying up the surface of her dressing room table, neatly stacking everything away. Nicholas could tell she was the tidy sort of person who likes to have everything in its right place.

‘Will you excuse me while I change, Mr Raspero?’

Nicholas stood up. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

‘Oh no, Mr Raspero, it is perfectly all right. Please stay where you are. I have a screen to change behind.’

Angela stepped to the other side of the dressing room and pulled a screen across the room, leaving large gaps between the screen and the walls. Nicholas sat down uncertainly, not sure whether or not he should step outside anyway. He could hear Angela moving about behind the screen and the rustle of clothes falling to the floor. He tried not to think about what was happening behind the screen, but it was next to impossible for his mind not to wander. He tried to sit perfectly still as if that would help; it helped, but only a little bit.

Angela took her time changing behind the screen, in no rush to be done with her performance. This was the first step she always took when Jolly had selected a client for her. Not one of them had waited on the other side of the screen; they had all put their heads around and playfully manouevred themselves to her side of the screen. After playing the shocked lady who had no idea what to do while they ogled her, she would firmly recover her composure and keep them at bay by being very strict about driving them away, but the tantalised men dug deep into their pockets to come up with gifts to win her favours, and after playing them along for a while and milking them for all she could, she would allow them to obtain the outcome they sought. After that, it was just a matter of staying ahead of them and breaking off relations with them just before they were about to leave her — that always brought them around with a fresh shower of gifts, and she would allow herself to be enticed back into their arms where she would remain, at least until the whole process was repeated or Jolly told her to change clients.

Angela knew she could not expect gifts from Nicholas. Yet, to keep him as her protector would be worth the occasional extra work. It would in a sense be a gift, even if it was not one she could cash in. The successors of Jolly, who had not dared touch her while Jolly was alive because she was his investment, had nonetheless leered at her and made suggestive remarks, as Jolly was indifferent to this kind of treatment of her; now they did not even look her way except politely. They had too much to lose to make an enemy of Nicholas. She wanted to keep Nicholas as her protector, and her seduction of him was beginning now in order to guarantee that protection. Yet, she finished dressing without Nicholas trying to make his way to her side of the screen. She pulled the screen back to see Nicholas still sitting where he had been.

Angela turned her attention to the strategy of jealousy. ‘I must leave soon, Mr Raspero. Lord Foxley is waiting for me.’

‘Lucky Lord Foxley.’

‘I believe he has a gift for me tonight, Mr Raspero.’

‘It can’t be a surprise gift, then.’

‘It is a hairbrush.’

‘Don’t you have a hairbrush?’ Nicholas asked in surprise.

‘This hairbrush has a silver backing with an inset ruby. A very large ruby.’

‘Does it indeed? Well, that’s nice.’

‘And why shouldn’t I, Mr Raspero?’ Angela asked him calmly. ‘Tell me that. Why not?’

‘You make your own choices now, Miss Ashton. You are no longer Jolly’s spy.’

‘Tagalong told me you burned those notebooks.’

‘I believe that the sight distressed him greatly.’

Angela giggled as if she had not intended to. ‘You should have seen his face!’

‘I have had this experience. It is not one I care to repeat.’

‘Tagalong’s all right. The others are worse.’

‘They are all rogues, Miss Ashton.’

‘And what are you, Mr Raspero?’

‘Whatever I am, I am not a rogue.’

‘That is what you are not. What is it that you are?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘I am a gentleman with no money.’

‘Why did you not take any of Jolly’s money, Mr Raspero?’

‘Because I am not like the men who did take his money, Miss Ashton.’

Angela considered this answer for a moment.

‘Everybody needs money, Mr Raspero.’

‘That’s true,’ Nicholas agreed.

‘But you have no money, Mr Raspero.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Do you not want any money, Mr Raspero?’

‘I would be very happy to be rich, Miss Ashton.’

‘You could have twenty million strada in your pocket right now, Mr Raspero.’

‘No, Miss Ashton, that twenty million strada would have me in its pocket.’

‘I do not understand you, Mr Raspero.’

‘Do you want to?’

Angela made no reply. She sat on her seat by the mirror, which she had turned around so she could sit on it facing him, and played with her fan. Nicholas sat where he was and watched her in the ever-lengthening silence.

‘You have done so much for me, Mr Raspero. How can I ever repay you?’

Nicholas considered the question for a moment. ‘Free theatre tickets to your plays should cover everything, I think,’ he said.

‘But is that all, Mr Raspero? I could not deny you anything you asked for. Anything at all.’

Angela looked so meaningfully at Nicholas then that he looked away. He was aware that she was continuing to look at him, and he was also aware of the nature of the offer she had just made.

‘I will let you know if anything comes to mind, Miss Ashton,’ he said eventually.

Angela laughed then, catching herself by surprise. It was the second spontaneous moment of laughter she had experienced since Nicholas had sat down in her dressing room, and she wondered if Nicholas was having a bad influence on her. She was quite deliberately never spontaneous, yet here she was, laughing without a moment’s planning beforehand, laughing before she even knew herself that she was going to laugh. She knew why she had laughed, however. Nicholas was not saying yes and he was not saying no; he was, in short, treating her as she treated her clients in the early stages of her seduction of them. Now she had to behave as a client would behave and it took her a moment to work out the correct response on her part.

‘I will still be here if anything does come to mind, Mr Raspero,’ she said.

‘Yes, well, there we are,’ Nicholas said awkwardly, not knowing what else to say, and for the third time that evening Angela Ashton laughed, and this time she threw her head back and laughed merrily for the first time in eleven years.