Secret Lament (3 page)

I lowered myself on to a crate of candles waiting to be loaded on board one of the keels. My companion stretched and arched his neck, stripped off his coat and dumped it in a heap over his bag.
Under the coat, he was dressed in drab brown, clearly with an eye more to practicality than fashion.

“I have not introduced myself,” I said. “Charles Patterson, at your service.”

“A violinist?” He gestured at the case on my back.

“I prefer the harpsichord. But I play whatever I must to earn a living.” In truth, I preferred the organ, but my opportunities to play are limited to acting as deputy at All
Hallows’ Church.

He inclined his head. “Domenico Corelli, at your service.”

I spluttered through my beer. “Domenico – ”

“The great composer himself was my father.”

I did not have the honour of being acquainted with the gentleman in question because he died when I was three years old. But I knew he had no son called Domenico.

“Illegitimate, of course,” he murmured.

“I am a musician, sir,” I said tartly. “You cannot pull the wool over my eyes!” I began to think him not as respectable as he looked and told him so.

He fanned away a little cloud of flies. A trickle of sweat ran down his cheek – he was not as impervious to the heat as he had pretended. “And you, sir?” he said lazily.
“Are you respectable? What sort of respectable man has fellows shooting at him?”

“Ruffians,” I said shortly. “They tried to rob me a couple of months back and I fought them off. They didn’t like it and they have long memories.”

He sipped at his beer as if it was an overlarge glass of wine. “And no one was hurt, I take it?”

“Hurt?”

“When they fired at you? I see you came away safe but were there others around you?”

I swore. I had a momentary vision of John Mazzanti ducking back into the theatre. Or had he fallen? I tossed back the beer. “I had better go see.”

He stood, lazily, a big man and, I realised with some surprise, intimidating. “Then if you’ll direct me to a decent inn with comfortable rooms?”

I gave him instructions to get to Mrs Hill’s in the Fleshmarket and turned back to Usher’s timber yard.

My legs were aching by the time I had climbed the Side and reached the gates of the timber yard. I have never enjoyed weather as hot as this; it weakens me and leaves me disinclined to do
anything. I wove my way across the yard towards the warehouse that served as our theatre, tired of darting looks left and right to be certain I was not being followed. The worst of it was that it
was all my own fault; I had taunted the ruffians when we clashed – I should have had more sense.

All was chaos inside the theatre. Some of the timber yard apprentices had been attracted by the excitement and were laughing and shouting about the back of the theatre, miming firing a pistol
and shrieking, “Bang, bang!” At the stage’s edge, Julia was drooping in the arms of Ned Reynolds, who looked both embarrassed and annoyed; young Richard was hovering behind them
unhappily. Proctor looked on from a corner – the psalm teacher clutched his bassoon case to his chest almost as if he thought it would protect him. Above, the spirit swung from cobweb to
cobweb singing a rousing hunting song.

On the stage itself, Mrs Keregan sat in majestic isolation and indifference on one of the costume boxes, chewing her way through a large chunk of bread. Below her, the rest of the company were
gathered in a huddle and I heard the mellow, soothing tones of Gale the barber surgeon.

Athalia saw me and came dancing across, her red curls bobbing. “I don’t suppose you caught the villain?”

I bridled at her mocking tone, said brusquely, “No, I didn’t.” I noticed with some satisfaction that her face was flushed with the heat and was almost redder than her hair. I
pushed past her and marched up to the affecting little scene.

Mazzanti was sprawled in a chair, his eyes closed as if he was in a faint. One hand clutched affectingly at his chest; little moans escaped his lips. Gale had removed Mazzanti’s coat,
rolled up one shirt sleeve and was bleeding him to relieve the shock; Julia, who cannot have been able to see a thing for Ned’s encircling arms, murmured distractedly, “The blood, the
blood…”

“Was he hit?” I demanded.

Gale glanced up at me. “Mr Mazzanti has suffered a great shock.” In other words, no.

“Most distressing,” kind-hearted Mr Keregan murmured. “It must be most upsetting to be shot at – ”

So it was to be Mazzanti who had been attacked, not me. Well, I was not tempted to claim the dubious honour. I had friends who would have been distressed to know I was in danger, and I had long
since decided not to tell them.

Julia groaned and pushed herself from Ned’s arms. He let her go without protest; I caught his eye. He was grim-faced; his mouth twisted in a cynical curl. What the devil was he doing?

Mazzanti moaned as his daughter caught hold of his trailing hand. I fancied she must have accidentally dug her sharp nails into his fingers for he started with pain. His eyes opened; he stared
at her.

“Dear father,” she said brokenly. “You are safe now. We are all here, we will look after you.”

He feebly tried to wave her away; she brushed away a tear. “And I had thought there was no danger here…”

“Danger?” I said sharply.

She turned her lovely face up to me. Her hair glinted in the sunshine, bright ribbons gleamed amongst the curls. “This isn’t the first time he’s been shot at.” She
gripped his hand forcing another grunt of pain from him. “Twice before. Once in London and once more on our way north.”

Mazzanti struggled to sit upright. “It is nothing. Nothing at all. Just some madman.” He wiped a hand across his brow, leaving a faint trace of blood. “Nothing of any moment at
all.”

I stared down at him. I had told myself half a dozen times in the few days I had known him, that Mazzanti was the kind of man his acquaintances long to murder. Could it be that the shot I had
thought meant for me, had really been aimed at him?

We must strenuously condemn this modern tendency to lawless behaviour.

[Letter from JUSTICIA to Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne, printed in the
Newcastle Courant
, 15 May 1736.]

“Was he hurt?” Esther asked absently. She twitched a curtain back into place as we passed through the drawing room into the library of her house. The evening was
cooler than the day but not by much.

I swung my violin off my shoulder and laid it carefully on the harpsichord stool. “He says so.”

Mrs Esther Jerdoun (the title is purely honorary and the lady, I thank God, unmarried) comes from an impeccable family with aristocratic connections (albeit remote). She is my most constant
pupil; I give her a lesson in harpsichord playing almost every day. But more than that, she is my delight. I met her more than half a year ago and fell under her spell at once. The strong sunlight
is perhaps a little unkind to her, showing that she is a woman of mature age – thirteen years older than my twenty-six years – but she is still lovely in face and figure. I could have
looked at her for ever, at the tiny strands of pale gold hair clustering at the back of her neck and gleaming in the sunlight, at her faint smiles and cool mischievous glances…

And, dear God, here I was again, longing for what was out of my reach, in all respects. Her age, her social position, her wealth all come between us. She was one of the two people whom I thought
might have bought me that ticket for the organ; I avoided asking directly if she had – how could I take such a favour from a woman about whom I felt so strongly?

And there was of course the question of how she felt about me…

She stared out of the window into the garden at the back of the house. “Perhaps the ball ricocheted?”

“It did not,” I said forcibly. “We dug the ball out of the door jamb.”

She was still musing over the sunlit roses. I looked at her with some concern. She is the most practical of women, the most astute, the most down-to-earth. But here she was, staring
absent-mindedly out of the window into the enclosed garden beyond, as if I was not even in the room.

“Does it matter?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said sharply, then bit my lip and brought my attention back to the matter in hand. I had not told her about the ruffians and I did not intend to tell her; she would worry.
So it was difficult to explain why I thought Mazzanti might be lying. “He said later that he had offended some rich aristocrat in London by dallying with the actress the lord had in keeping.
His Lordship evidently sends his hirelings from time to time to remind Mazzanti to keep away from the lady.”

I reconsidered Mazzanti’s hurried man-of-the-world explanations, confided with a knowing air to the men in the company. They were just about unlikely enough to be true. Yet it struck me
that there was something else, something he was hiding… That look in his eyes when Julia started telling me about the previous attempts on his life – I could have sworn he was
genuinely afraid.

Esther glanced round at me, broke suddenly into a wry smile. “Oh, Charles, do forgive me! I am in the very worst of humours but I should not take it out on you.”

I could forgive her anything when she used my name like that. We had fallen into this casual way of speaking, in private at least, some weeks ago; it was inappropriate and unwise but I could not
regret it.

She took a little key from her pocket and unlocked the harpsichord; I helped her fold back the lid and prop it up, revealing a garland of dancing nymphs and shepherds. I pressed a few keys to
see if it was in tune – hot weather plays havoc with such things – but I was distracted by the way Esther lingered beside me. Her perfume was bewitching; the pale green of her wide gown
complimented her colouring perfectly. But there is more than that: an air of decision, of cool independence – these are the things that I –

No, the word is inadmissible. A foolish self-indulgence.

She traced the dancing nymphs with idle fingers as I adjusted the tuning. We were alone in the room; Esther’s maid, Catherine (whom we told everyone chaperoned her mistress during the
music lessons) had taken herself off to examine the linen cupboard as she usually did. This of course was disgraceful. A single man and a single woman – no matter how unequal their ages or
status – are not to be trusted in a room together for fear they will be overwhelmed by the worst of human nature. Or for fear, rather, that everyone will assume they have been.

For that reason, when I first started teaching Mrs Jerdoun the harpsichord two months ago, we used the harpsichord at the Assembly Rooms, with Catherine sewing industriously in one corner and
the gregarious Steward of the Rooms easing in and out from time to time to enquire hopefully if we had everything we needed. A perfectly innocuous situation – nothing secret about it at all.
But not long since, we had, without discussing the matter, removed to Esther’s house.

“The harpsichord is very much out of tune,” she had said.

“Do you wish me to tune it for you?” I had said.

“Indeed – and you may give me my lesson at the same time.”

At the time I had been wary. I did not like Esther’s house in Caroline Square for it had once been the scene of the most extraordinary events which had left me unnerved and shaken. It was
a gateway, in some mysterious inexplicable way, to a different world entirely, one that ran parallel to our own, almost identical but not quite. I had met my own self in that world, and had nearly
come by my death.

But all this had happened last November, well before Christmas – seven months ago now. It had in some respects the quality of a dream; distance had blunted the edge of my fear. In many
ways I would have been intrigued to experience something similar again. But I could not open and close the gateway at will but had merely to wait and see if it opened of its own accord. So far it
had not.

“Esther.” I cleared my throat; she started.

“What? Oh yes. Now where is my music?” She started to sort through the books that lay on top of the harpsichord. Her bare arm, and the fall of lace about her elbow, brushed my
sleeve; I caught my breath.

“Tell me what is wrong,” I said.

She stared at me then let out a sigh. “You are right of course. But it is only a small thing. There is no need to worry about it.”

“I always worry when someone tells me not to.”

She laughed ruefully. I loved that laugh, that smile. (But I would never press myself on her, and no woman, of course, would be so immodest as to proposition a gentleman. Dear God, why was I
even thinking about this?)

“It
is
a little thing,” Esther said. “But come and have a look.”

I followed her out of the library into the rear quarters of the house, where the wooden floors gave way to cool flagstones, and servants clattered in the kitchens. The windows at the back of the
house looked to the west, and the sun, slanting down the evening sky, cast a red glow through the glass on to the lime-washed walls. I heard a male servant laugh.

We passed open doors – I glimpsed a wine store and a pantry before we came to the scullery, scattered with tubs and buckets and other mysterious machines. Here a door gave on to the
garden. Esther took down a key that hung on a hook beside the door and pushed it into the lock. The key turned smoothly, well-oiled and well-kept.

When Esther pulled open the door into the sunlit garden, I was assailed by the scents of herbs, mint and sage, thyme and rosemary; a border of chives was in full purple bloom, lavender heads
were forming on bushes beyond. I walked out on to a path that bordered cropped lawns. It was a rectangular garden, not large but well-tended and surrounded by a high wall that was almost
obliterated by climbing roses; two apple trees stood in the far corner.

Esther brought my attention back to the house door. “Here. Look.” She fingered the lock plate and I bent to examine it. The plate was shiny and polished, relatively new; the tiny
scratches surrounding the lock were very visible.

I straightened. “Someone has been trying to get in.”