by Robin Blake
‘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.’
Fidelis offered Goodenough his hand.
‘Extenuate no more, Sir, lest you make matters worse again. I wish you luck!’
Goodenough shook with Fidelis, but grimaced at his words.
‘I beg you, Sir, do not wish me that in here. It is bound to lead to misfortune. Gross, gross misfortune!’
* * *
Returning to the theatre, we found it nearly empty.
‘Where is Mrs Butler?’ said Fidelis. ‘I had quite forgot her.’
‘Gone with Elizabeth and the others back to Cheapside, I am sure,’ I said. ‘My wife is charmed by her and we are all to have a bite of supper, which I hope you will join us in.’
He said he would, and we walked directly to Cheapside, where we found Mrs Butler among the party. The dining room’s sideboard was dressed with a great steaming ham, that had been boiling all through our excursion to the theatre, a dish piled with buttered potatoes and a big boat of parsley sauce. Elizabeth carved and distributed the ham while I made sure the wine decanter was handed around the table. Then, when everyone was served and we began to eat, I told of the extraordinary thing Fidelis and I had learned about the actor that we had all just witnessed playing the wicked Governor of Surinam.
‘He had impersonated none other than Zadok Moon, Phillip Pimbo’s cheating business partner,’ I told them.
‘Does he know this Moon, then?’ asked my mother-in-law. ‘And can he lead you to him? If so, the last and biggest mystery of all that Pimbo business will be revealed and all the gossip can stop, for which I for one will be grateful.’
I doubted the veracity of the last part of her statement, for Mrs George enjoyed gossip as much as anyone I knew.
‘In that case, Mrs G, you will be glad to know there isn’t any mystery now about Zadok Moon,’ said Fidelis, who was in the process of cutting his sliced ham into small dice.
‘Apart from the mystery of where he’s hiding himself,’ I said.
‘Oh, no. That is solved.’
Mrs Butler turned to him and expressed the surprise of us all.
‘Solved, Luke? You know where he is to be found? If so, for heaven’s sake tell us. We are on tenterhooks.’
Fidelis put down his knife and contemplated his handiwork for a moment. Every little cube of ham on his plate was an identical size.
‘Zadok Moon,’ he said, ‘is to be found nowhere.’
‘Is he dead then?’ gasped my mother-in-law.
‘No, not dead. He does not exist, Mrs G. He never existed. He was imagined. He was a phantom.’
I was again a link or two behind in my friend’s chain of thought.
‘Imagined? Not imagined by the actor Goodenough, surely!’
‘No, he was imagined by the late disgraced Moreton Canavan. That deceitful and devious merchant now emerges, with Captain Doubleday, as the real instigator of the fraud against Pimbo – of the other one, too, for there were two frauds. The attempt to diddle the insurers Willoughby and Pickle out of fifteen thousand guineas was the other. The crimes are linked, of course, because Canavan needed Pimbo’s money first to buy a leaky old ship, The Fortunate Isle, and then to insure its fictional Guinea voyage, during which it would suffer a pretended slave revolt and be reported sunk far from the land.’
‘But why did he invent for himself a business partner?’
‘Moon was not supposed to be a business partner. Canavan sought to protect himself, in case the scheme were ever discovered, by making out that he himself was just another innocent investor, like Pimbo, and that the real embezzler, then, would be discovered to be Zadok Moon – a man who could not be arrested and turn King’s Evidence against Canavan, or anyone else, since he did not exist. But also, for that very reason, Canavan had to hire someone, when required, to be Zadok Moon. He was lucky enough to find Goodenough at Pinchbeck’s Coffee House, an actor used to taking on roles of doubtful honesty.’
‘I see it all now!’ I burst out. ‘Of course! His original, and most important job was to play the role for Pimbo. He made one or two secretive night-time visits to Cadley Place in the guise of Zadok Moon, and did so, naturally, at Canavan’s behest. I did not previously understand why they did not meet in Preston, but now I see that Canavan would not risk exposing a mere actor to the people in the real business world. He’d have no difficulty fooling poor gullible Pimbo in his own home, but he might not stand up to scrutiny by members of the Corporation, should he meet any of them.’
‘He did not reckon with the insurance company investigator, though.’
‘No, Jackson was incalculable. He was altogether too intelligent and determined.’
‘I’m right sorry for Mr Jackson,’ said Elijah who, until now, had been listening carefully to all that was said. ‘To have died just as he saw the light and understood that his whole profession was founded on nothing but injustice and cruelty. He did not have the chance to make amends.’
He spoke his words with all the solemnity of a preacher so that the company, as if in meditation, fell into a few moments’ silence. This was broken by Mrs George.
‘But what about this actor, Goodenough? Should he not be taken up? Put on trial? Something should be done to him, surely.’
‘I fear he will escape punishment,’ I said. ‘The proof of his part in the affair has been extenuated, by time and circumstance. Pimbo cannot give evidence. Doubleday has gone. Miss Peel saw the man she thought was Moon, but only in the dark of night, and cannot swear to what he looked like. Fidelis here is the only witness who clearly saw Goodenough playing Moon, but in that case he merely took delivery of a letter addressed to someone that did not exist. It is not a crime of much weight.’
There was another pause as the company contemplated the doubtfulness of the legal process. Then, quite unexpectedly, old Charles George, who had seemed throughout to be attending more to his food than the conversation, rose unsteadily to his feet with his glass in his hand.
‘Titus,’ he said in booming tones, ‘it has been a long pull but you’ve got there, you and your clever friend. As a member of the profession myself, I am glad to say it was also done with the help of shoemakers. But however it was done, you have got to the bottom of the reasons for the death of poor Phillip Pimbo, and I must congratulate you on that. Truth, Sir, that is what counts: more than punishment, more even than retribution. Without truth, and the trial of truth, there is no justice and no advancement. I salute you, son-in-law, with all my heart. You are a credit to this town. You are an apostle of tr
uth!’
It was a strange moment that I had not looked for. Everybody around the table rose, lifted their glasses and drank my health. I felt myself reddening and, as I got up to reply, stammering.
I did not say much – only that Mr George was right, of course. My job was not to find and punish malefactors but the more significant one of asking questions and finding true answers. In this I always relied on the help of others – my darling Elizabeth, my household, the invaluable Furzey – and in this case, even that pest of a dog Suez, of which I had somehow grown increasingly fond.
‘But not least of all, I owe rather a lot to my friend who has twice the brains and twice the energy of myself. You all know to whom I refer. May I ask you therefore to join me, now, in drinking his health?’
And we did, turning as one to him, lifting our glasses in the air and saying with one loud voice,
‘Luke Fidelis!’
As we called out his name I noticed Mrs Butler looking at our friend, and caught the very faintest gleam in her eye.
About the Author
ROBIN BLAKE is the author of acclaimed works on the artists Van Dyck and Stubbs. He has written, produced and presented extensively for radio, is widely published as a critic, and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. He lives in London. Sign up for email updates here.
Also by Robin Blake
Dark Waters
A Dark Anatomy
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