Wicked Company (103 page)

“
Jesu…
is it truly you?” she whispered, grasping his ragged arm and feeling faint with relief. “Escaped from Newgate?”

“Aye, my lady scribe,” Hunter replied. “Garrick’s letter to Lord Mansfield finally gained my release this morning without so much as a fine…
only
my promise to remain mute about the embarrassment of Darnly’s extorting Peter Lindsay to file suit against me.”

“So Hannah had Garrick’s letter delivered, as promised,” Sophie murmured, recalling the young woman’s red-rimmed eyes staring down from the gallery at David’s open grave.

“I am now a free man while you’re a condemned woman, charged with libeling the odious Dr. Monro,” Hunter declared. “There’s only one remedy.”

“An escape to Bath,” Sophie replied, knowing that solution was, at best, risky. She was now privy to the secret that Trevor and Darnly had committed murder. They would try to silence her wherever in Britain she fled.

“My Lord Mansfield had another suggestion,” Hunter replied.

“What?”Sophie asked anxiously.

“Leave the country. He’s arranged passage on a privateer sailing within the week from Plymouth for the West Indies. He thinks ’tis a way of avoiding embarrassment to all concerned.”

“The West Indies!” Sophie said, horrified. “What playhouses have they there?”

“’Tis as close as we can get to the Colonies until the
real
battle royal is finally decided. However, once peace is declared, I think we should head for Annapolis. I know it well and ’tis a city that appreciates its players and playhouses.”

Sophie threw her arms around Hunter’s filthy neck and held him close. Then she pulled away to look at him earnestly.

“Are you absolutely
sure
you wish to leave everything here? You must be certain ’tis what you truly want, or I fear—”

“What I fear, darling girl, is remaining in London!” Hunter replied with alacrity. “Lord Mansfield released me from Newgate on the condition that you and I make ourselves scarce. Let us not forget, I’ve given Darnly a broken jaw, a blackened eye, and now, a good crack on his noggin,” he added, tossing his alms bowl out the window. “I believe a swift exit is called for.”

“Aye,” she replied, suddenly starting to tremble as the full impact of Roderick and Trevor’s revelations began to penetrate her consciousness. “The shorter chap you flattened with your fist killed Peter on Darnly’s orders, I believe. And Roderick…” Sophie hesitated, feeling both revulsion and an overwhelming sense of pity for her sometimes-benefactor. “Roderick caused the mine accident that ultimately gained him the title of Earl of Llewelyn.”

“Yes… I know,” Hunter replied soberly. “Thank God I saw you dart out the door to the cloisters, followed by those two scoundrels. I bided my time behind a pillar and heard most of what transpired between you three.”

“But there’s not a shred of proof for any of it,” Sophie sighed, “so, on
both
our accounts, ’tis probably best if we—Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly, entirely changing the subject. “What about Rory? And my trunk? I’ve more than four hundred pounds in it! We must go back to—”

“Look out the window, lass, and calm yourself!” Hunter laughed, pointing at familiar landmarks near the outskirts of the Covent Garden district. “Mrs. Phillips told me this morning that Rory was with Lorna. I sent word by messenger for her to bring the lad to the alley behind the Green Canister, along with your trunk.”

Sophie sank against the coach’s upholstered interior and sighed with relief. Then she cast Hunter a sideways glance.

“You
knew
I would be foolhardy enough to pay Garrick my last respects, did you not?”

“Say farewell to your champion? That I did,” Hunter replied smugly. “I even guessed you’d dress like a man… but not like one of fourteen matched footmen!” His fingers tweaked an auburn curl from her disheveled coiffeur. “Thank God, Mrs. Phillips could describe your disguise. So, off I went to Covent Garden’s wardrobe chamber, assumed
my
disguise and—”

“Your wounded eye was ghastly,” she interrupted. “I truly thought you were the filthiest of beggars.”

“And when I heard you defend us theater folk to Darnly,” he smiled, “I thought you truly the bravest, most loyal, wee lad I’d ever cast one good eye upon.”

They rode along in silence, hand in hand.

At length, Sophie said, “What a long journey we’ve made together,” thinking wistfully of the first day she had ever laid eyes on Hunter Robertson when he’d flung gaily colored juggling pins high into the Edinburgh sky.

“Why, we’re not old crones—yet,” Hunter protested mockingly. “We’ve a long journey ahead of us, my lass.”

The swaying carriage turned into the narrow alley known as Bedford Court. Sophie peered out the window, relieved to see Rory bundled up to his eyebrows in coat and muffler. He stood expectantly between Lorna and Mrs. Phillips. Aunt Harriet’s leather trunk rested nearby on the icy cobblestones.

“Driver!” Hunter called up through the window to the coachman. “Pray, turn ’round the horses. We’ll set off again directly.”

“A guardsman is still posted in front of the Cider House,” Mrs. Phillips said nervously, “and there’s another at Maiden Lane.”

“Oh, Sophie!” exclaimed Lorna, throwing her arms around her friend as she descended from the coach. “I was so worried!”

“So was I,” Sophie agreed, bending down to kiss her son.

Rory, glancing first at her and then at Hunter, appeared bewildered by the sight of his parents’ odd attire.

“A beggar and a boy!” the lad exclaimed, pointing at their absurd apparel.

“Your mother and I make a fine pair, do we not, laddie?” Hunter laughed, hugging his son with abandon and then flinging his arm around Sophie’s shoulders, pulling her against his chest. With his other hand he drew her mouth close to his and kissed her slowly on the lips. “A playwright and a player,” he murmured softly. “What a fine pair, indeed.”

“Now, now, there,” Mrs. Phillips declared, glancing uneasily at the door leading back to her storeroom. “You’d best be off straightaway, you three!”

Reluctantly, Sophie pulled away from her husband’s embrace. Bending over her trunk, she opened its lid and retrieved several items, including a simple wool dress and her cloak.

“We can’t have Lorna charged for the price of this costume,” she smiled. “Let me get my clothes from my trunk and I’ll just step inside and change.”

“I’ve my own garments beneath this disguise,” Hunter volunteered as he doffed his ragged garments, “but I’ll need
help ridding m’self of this hump.”

The couple swiftly repaired to the storeroom, changing their attire with dispatch amidst the potions, piles of condoms, and mercury ointments Mrs. Phillips so liberally dispensed to her needy customers.

“Hunter?” Sophie said softly, pulling a plump pouch of coins and a leather-bound book from beneath the cloak she had draped over her arm. “I have two gifts for you…”

“Gifts?” he repeated.

“To celebrate your release from Newgate and this journey we’re about to embark on together. ’Tis from David Garrick… and me.”

Hunter first peered into the coin pouch and grinned. Then he slowly opened the book’s morocco leather cover and gazed at the title page, scanning the inscription written in Garrick’s own hand.

“The Tempest…
” he said in a breath, his fingers tracing the bold letters printed many years before.

“An early quarto… from Mr. G’s library. He gave it to me as an offering for Edward Capell if I thought it would cool the censor’s ire. But he really wanted us to have it.”

Hunter reached for her cloak and settled it on her shoulders. Then he clasped her hand and pressed it softly against his lips.

“You are kind, and generous, and a very bad liar,” he smiled at her tenderly, handing her the rare copy of Shakespeare’s play. “The inscription reads ‘With great admiration.’ Garrick meant this for you, my darling. You are his fellow playwright and ’tis to you his tribute was intended. However”—he grinned at her—“I shall enjoy perusing these pages from time to time when we finally reach America. I don’t want either of us ever to forget how to play Prospero and Ariel.”

Sophie stood on tiptoe so that her lips grazed his ear.

“‘All hail, great master, grave sir, hail I come,’” she whispered, “‘to answer thy best pleasure, be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire—’”

“‘—to ride on curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task,’” Hunter continued, repeating the airy sprite’s opening speech from
The Tempest,
just as he had that stormy night in their darkened bedchamber in Stratford’s White Lion Inn.

“…to ride on curled clouds,” Sophie murmured, tenderly pushing a stray strand of blond hair off Hunter’s forehead.

“Now we are to ride across an ocean,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Come, my Ariel,” he commanded, taking her hand and leading her out the door toward the coach, where their trunk was now lashed on the roof and their son Rory waited excitedly to depart on their promised adventure.

“Good-bye… good-bye… safe journey!” Lorna and Mrs. Phillips cried as Hunter helped Sophie and Rory into the carriage.

“Driver!” he shouted up to the coachman joyfully, hoisting on high before the man’s bulbous nose the fat pouch of gold coins that Sophie had given to his keeping. “There’s a month’s wages for you if you speed on to Devon and the Plymouth docks! Quickly, man! Let us be gone!”

Acknowledgments

A proper list of thank-yous to the scores of people who made significant contributions to this novel would comprise a book in itself.

Let me begin with heartfelt thanks to Dominique Raccah, founder and CEO of Sourcebooks/Landmark, and to editor Deb Werksman and her deputy, Susie Benton, along with a wonderful art department for the amazing welcome they have given me and the beautiful new editions of my work.

The tortuous history of bringing this rather orphaned historical novel back to print is quite a tale, but let it be known that I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Shauna Summers at Bantam Books, Eric Fitzgerald at Random House, and my talented, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer agent, Celeste Fine of Folio Literary Management.

To everyone who helped me during my two-and-a-half-year odyssey into the world of eighteenth-century British and American theater, I also offer my sincere appreciation.

Beginning 1983, I held a Readership in eighteenth-century British-American History at the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, California, where I was given a desk in the magnificent Main Reading Room and limitless kindness and assistance from the staff and administration.

Foremost among the Readers’ Services stalwarts were Virginia Renner, Doris Smedes, Leona Schonfeld, Mary Jones, and rare book watchdog, Mary Wright. Assistant Curator of Rare Books, Susan Naulty, and I enjoyed many conversations as we browsed through booksellers’ tradesmen’s cards or chatted about the admirable David Garrick or debated the date when actresses first played the male sprite Ariel in Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.

Assistant Curator of Early Printed Books, Thomas V. Lange, advised me on the intricacies of the smaller English wooden printing press. Cheerful support for this project also came from Robert Skotheim, President of the Huntington Library; William Moffett, Director of the Library; Martin Ridge, former Director of Research and Education; and Linda Zoeckler, Art Reference Librarian.

I received invaluable guidance and encouragement from Huntington staff members Evie Gutting and Lee Devereux, as well as my fellow researchers and authors, among them Suzanne Hull, Grace Ioppolo, Harriet Koch, Karen Langlois, Karen Lystra, Barry Menikoff, Linda Micheli, Robert Middlekauff, Susan Morgan, Jeanne Perkins, Elizabeth Talbot-Martin, Midge Sherwood, and Paul Zall. Shakespeare and theater historian Helene Wickham Koon was enormously helpful.

A one-woman show, “The Incomparable Aphra,” part of Leia Morning’s series
Literary Ladies… Working Women,
was presented at the Huntington in 1988 and provided additional inspiration for this effort, as did the late playwright, Hollywood screenwriter, and novelist Catherine Turney—to whom this book is dedicated. For nearly a decade, Cathy shared with me her wisdom and good humor concerning the hurdles facing woman writers in any century.

I also extend special thanks to Ellen Donkin, Associate Professor in the Theatre Program, Hampshire College. Her wonderful monograph “The Paper War of Hannah Cowley and Hannah More,” in the book
Curtain Calls
(see page 608) made me realize I would be wise to make a pilgrimage to Amherst, Massachusetts, to discuss the entire subject of eighteenth-century women dramatists. Dr. Donkin was as extraordinarily knowledgeable, generous-spirited, and witty as any of the eighteenth-century dramatists we both admire.

In Edinburgh, as elsewhere, my research traveling companions showed as much pluck as my heroine, Sophie McGann, indulging my desire to walk and photograph virtually every inch of the Royal Mile. One even stood patiently in the rain as dusk enveloped Holyrood Palace, watching with a puzzled look as I reenacted James Boswell’s celebrated farewell to the city of his birth as described in
Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763.
Also, a Harvard classmate and friend, actor Kenneth Tigar, who has created a one-man show on James Boswell, drew my attention to a number of intriguing insights concerning this brilliant scamp.