The Hidden Man (40 page)

According to Barton, the disposal of the body on the Moor had been Canavan's idea, which I found implausible. The body had been arranged on the Bale Stone under the pretence of a savage ritual which, so the villains had hoped (and as Elijah Quick had surmised), people would think had been performed by the victim's negro servant. It was Barton, not Canavan, who possessed the knowledge of the Moor and its history; only he would be likely to suggest the Bale Stone as a suitable place for a pretended satanic ritual. But Barton was the Crown's witness, and these considerations counted for nothing.

Doubleday did not stand trial either. Having evaded capture at Garstang, and despite further attempts to run him down, the captain got clean away into Scotland. From there it was thought he travelled to Holland, and beyond the reach of English legal authority. Canavan from the dock tried to follow Barton's example in placing all blame on Doubleday for the killing, but he failed to convince the court. Standing alone in the dock, he was speedily convicted and, a few days later, they hanged him at the gallows on Lancaster Moor. I did not attend: the legal rituals of death do not attract me.

It was not until some time after this that we learned the truth about
The Fortunate Isle
. A ship trading from Ireland had put into Liverpool with the name
Looby
painted on her. An old mariner sitting by the dock loudly said he'd be damned if she weren't
The Fortunate Isle
, that had sailed for Guinea a year before. Captain O'Riordan, who had been in command of the
Looby
a bare two months, claimed to have little knowledge of his vessel's previous history. One of his crew, however, gave a statement to Messrs Willoughby and Pickle of Lombard Street, marine insurers, that he had served on the ship three years continuously and that she had indeed put to sea previously as
The Fortunate Isle
. He also attested
that she had never sailed further from Liverpool than the port of Galway on the western coast of Ireland. So it was that we knew the whole of her Guinea voyage, and supposed end in the Spanish Main, had been a sham.

And what of Zadok Moon? He seemed to have disappeared into the air.

 

Chapter Thirty-one

F
OR THOSE OF
us who could remember the festivities of twenty years earlier, the Guild Merchant that opened on the penultimate day of August 1742 was composed of all the expected elements. In between the pompous bestowal of freemanships and promulgation of by-laws, the town danced and drank its way through the fortnight. The trade guilds put on their fancy hats and decked their carts with flags, banners, fruits and flowers and rode through the streets singing and posturing as they had always done – except for the goldsmiths, who had had the festive spirit somewhat knocked out of them by the Pimbo scandal. There was also a string of assemblies, masquerades, banquets, concerts and balls for the quality, who came to town from near and far to enjoy themselves, and at the same time court popularity by distributing largesse to the poor.

Yet the grand programme that Grimshaw had hoped to provide contained rather too many disappointments for the Mayor's own comfort. All summer he had barked for the Guild whenever he spoke in public. He had boasted that Mr Thomas Arne would return, with a performance of music from his opera
The Judgement of Paris
; but Arne it seemed had better things to do. Grimshaw then claimed to have engaged a company of players, ‘that has lately acted to public acclaim in Dublin, with Mrs Woffington and Mr Garrick', according to the programme he had printed. The town was agog for their appearance on the Preston stage, but the celebrated pair, like Thomas Arne, let us down. Many explanations were bandied around: Arne had made enemies in Preston during his last visit; Garrick was opening a new season in London; Peg Woffington was with child; adverse winds had pinned their ship inside Dublin harbour. The more likely truth was that insufficient fees had been offered, for this was, in truth, a relatively impoverished Guild following the loss of all the money entrusted to Pimbo.

There was further humiliation for the Mayor at the races, when The Flanders Mare came last in the main prize, as well as in his attempt to stage the first bear-baiting to be held in the town for fifty years. He had made a grand announcement that a full-grown animal had been obtained with great difficulty for the purpose, but a committee of ladies was immediately formed against the project and the brown bear was left to sit out the fortnight in a cage in Market Place, a passive object of vulgar curiosity.

‘The poor old Bruin!' exclaimed Elizabeth when we had strolled out one morning after breakfast to see him. ‘He is so alone. I am glad we put a stop to the baiting. It would have been quite barbarous.'

The bear sat on his haunches, chained by neck and leg, regarding those who had gathered to gawp at him. As his head swung slowly this way and that, I discerned a depth of wary sadness in those eyes. There were patches missing from on his pelt where the fur had moulted. The flies that sported themselves around his nose received from time to time an ineffectual swipe from his paw.

Feeling ashamed that my own kind should so traduce and maltreat such a noble creature, I turned away and immediately noticed a large dark-skinned man in fantastic costume passing among the crowd and giving out hand-bills. His face was painted in stripes and he seemed to be clad mostly in coloured feathers. It was not until he came nearer that I recognized him.

‘Look!' I said, turning Elizabeth in his direction. ‘It's Elijah Quick.'

We hurried over to him and shook his hand heartily. His smile was as broad and candid as ever.

‘What brings you back to Preston, Elijah? And why are you dressed as a bird?'

‘I am a living advertisement of tonight's play, Mr Cragg. I am not a bird, you see, but a savage.'

He handed me one of the bills.

To be played at the PRESTON GUILD in the Playhouse, Mr Robert Southerne's excellent Tragedy OROONOKO or THE ROYAL SLAVE, by the Old Ropery Players of Liverpool, being the FIRST TIME IN THE COMPANY'S HISTORY that it has presented this celebrated drama.

‘We have tickets,' I told him. ‘Shall we expect to see you acting on the stage?'

‘No, Sir. I would willingly do so but the actors will not let me, which is very perverse as the play has numerous Africans in it, and I am the only natural black man amongst them all, and the only one that was ever a slave.' He sighed at the contrariness of his fellows. ‘But all I do is see to the costumes and direct the negroes when they dance in their black paint.'

I asked after Amy.

‘She is here, with me, Sir. We have hardly left each other since we returned to Liverpool.'

‘Then you must both come to the play,' exclaimed Elizabeth, ‘and we will all sit together.'

*   *   *

I had not seen this famous play before. It told of a noble African prince tricked by a sea captain into slavery and conveyed to Surinam. At the colony are many slave-owning planters whose wealth attracts young ladies from England in search of husbands, which provides the comic part of the plot. There is nothing comic about Oroonoko, however. He is a modern Othello, a great warrior who leads a slave revolt and is briefly reunited with his beautiful wife, who has also been enslaved. But she has become the object of the Governor's lust and after the revolt's defeat she still resists him. So, though Oroonoko manages to contrive the death of the hated Governor, the pair of noble slaves themselves suffer, in the final scene, their own bloody and terrible deaths.

At several moments during the performance I glanced at Amy and Elijah, and never had I seen two people more enwrapped in a play. They groaned as the slaves were brought ashore in chains, cheered as the flag of revolt was raised, wept as Oroonoko and his wife fell into each other's arms, and cheered again at the thrilling defiance in Oroonoko's words:

‘Thou hast roused the lion in his den; he stalks abroad and the wide forest trembles at his roar.'

Yet when the rebels were betrayed and defeated, and Oroonoko was once again loaded with chains and forced to look on as the Governor renewed his attentions towards the lady, I thought mournfully of poor, caged, helpless Bruin. At the last, most of the audience was in tears over the bloody fate of the great black hero and his love, but none sobbed more than Amy and Elijah.

In our party, as well as Elijah and Amy, were Elizabeth's parents. Immediately in front of us sat Luke Fidelis with a handsome companion beside him who had travelled for the occasion from Liverpool – Belinda Butler.

‘You know this is the first time our players have done the play,' Mrs Butler had told us as we waited between acts. ‘It is thought too strong at Liverpool, you know, with so many Guineamen growing rich with every new completion of a voyage, and not wanting to have their consciences pricked. New men, not true seamen, my late husband called them.'

‘He did not engage in the Trade himself, then?' asked my ever curious mother-in-law.

‘Oh no, he plied Leghorn and the Levant. He would never consent to trade in human beings. Silk and spices and Italian marbles, that is what he carried.'

Later our conversation turned to admiration of the actors. Oroonoko was splendid even in slavery, and his wife was beautifully woebegone. The fellow playing the evil-hearted, black-bearded Governor gave an especially fine turn, his strutting lasciviousness drawing whistles and cat-calls from the pit whenever he walked on stage. I glanced at my playbill to see his name: Mr Goodenough. He was, I thought, better than his name.

After the third interval I became aware that, whenever the Governor appeared, Luke grew more attentive to the action, leaning forward and watching his performance with singular concentration. Then, at the play's conclusion, while both Elijah and Amy were having their tears mopped by Elizabeth, he stood up and, taking my arm, pulled me to my feet.

‘Come, Titus. There is someone I want you to meet.'

He would not explain further as he summarily abandoned his companion and hurried me away, forcing a path against the tide of departing playgoers that filled the aisles and doorways. A few moments later I found myself behind Fidelis at the door of the tiring room which, without ceremony, he pushed open and marched through.

Arranged along the walls were tables, loaded with pots of face-paint, wig-stands, and boxes overflowing with false moustaches and paste jewellery. Each table had a looking glass set above it, and the actors sat in front of these, dabbing some sort of cream on their faces and scrubbing them, as they were fawned over by knots of ladies and gentlemen. Fidelis walked around behind their backs, scrutinizing each mirrored face as he came to it. At last he spied one with no admirers in attendance, which was understandable since this was the one that had played the villain of the piece: Mr Goodenough.

Fidelis approached him.

‘May I congratulate you on your acting, Sir?' he said.

‘Thank you, I have enjoyed taking the part,' said the actor smoothly, without looking around. ‘Most gratifying it was, to hear the cat-calls.'

‘You are used to playing the villain, I think.'

‘I am, Sir. You have perhaps seen my Iago at Liverpool? My Captain Bluffe? My Dorax, in
Don Sebastian
?'

‘No. It was indeed in Liverpool that I saw you, but in another role.'

Goodenough stopped working on his face. There had been something in the doctor's voice that disturbed his complacency.

‘When was that?' he asked.

‘In the early part of June, I think.'

‘There you must be mistaken. We suffered a fire and the theatre was shut for all of the month.'

‘It was not in the theatre, Mr Goodenough, but in Pinchbeck's Coffee House that I saw you acting the role.'

Now Goodenough was visibly shaken. He turned and looked hard at Fidelis, and then at me, but did not seem to recognize either of us.

‘I do not understand. What role are you talking about?'

‘The role, Sir, of Zadok Moon.'

Goodenough's mouth dropped open.

‘I … I, well … What role is that? I do not know it. I haven't—'

‘It is the role you played at the behest of Mr Moreton Canavan in the coffee house, at the time of our meeting there. It was a small part, but an important one, in which you were brought across the room in the character of a merchant called Zadok Moon, in order to accept from my hand a letter written to the said Mr Moon by my friend here, Coroner Titus Cragg, of Preston.'

‘I know nothing of this letter.'

‘I have no doubt that is true, at least to the extent that you did not read it. I recall you scurrying out by a back door when you thought I would not be looking. You met Canavan outside, I suppose, and passed the letter directly to him, according to his instructions. Had you played Zadok Moon before, though? I fancy you had, if only for an audience of one: I mean, Mr Phillip Pimbo of Cadley Place.'

Goodenough sat half twisted around in his chair, with his eyes fixed on Fidelis's face. I understood that he was trying to read it, while wondering how many of the facts he could afford to admit, and how many to omit.

‘What are you going to do?' he asked in a low, croaking voice.

Fidelis smiled and, like an indulgent uncle, patted Goodenough on the back of his shoulder, then turned to me.

‘What
can
we do, Titus? Should Goodenough pay for the crimes of Zadok Moon? Or is that a case of hanging the horse instead of the highwayman?'

The surprise of my friend's coup of recognition had abated a little, and I tried to take a clear view of the case.

‘No,' I said, after a moment's consideration. ‘In such a case I think one should continue to pursue Mr Zadok Moon himself, as it would be hard to prove that his impersonator was anything but an unknowing recruit.'

‘Oh thank you Sir!' burst out the actor, his manner beginning to regain its previous assurance. ‘I was, as you say, an innocent in all this. Poor but pure, you know. We were all out of work with the playhouse closed. One does what one has to at such times.'