The Muse of Fire

by Carol M. Cram

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  She broke off, laughing. “Oh dear! That sounds terribly wooden.”

  “It sounds perfect,” Mr. Renfrew said gallantly. “But you could linger a trifle longer on the second Romeo, as if you’re trying out the name on your tongue and deciding if it suits you.”

  “I’m already supposed to be in love with you.” For the first time, Grace noticed that his eyes were a very deep brown—soft and admiring.

  “That is true. Even so, a slight questioning might not come amiss. But of course, you must be the final judge of how you are feeling.”

  “I’m not sure what I am feeling.” The words were out before Grace could draw them back.

  “You are declaring your love for Romeo to yourself.”

  “Yes, of course.” The pages of the script fluttered in her hands. She threw the thin volume on a table and turned away from him. “I’ll try again.”

  “Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  She paused. “Better?”

  “Perfect the first time, sublime the second.”

  Feeling more confident, she spoke the next few lines into the room, away from his gaze.

  “And for that name which is no part of thee, take all myself!”

  She turned to face him as he delivered his next line at full volume the way he’d do when calling from the stage to the balcony.

  “I take thee at thy word.

  Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized.

  Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”

  He stepped forward and tried to take her hands, but she kept them firmly clasped behind her and raised her voice for the next line.

  “What man art thou that thus bescreened in night,

  So stumblest on my counsel?”

  “I believe you’d sound more frightened,” Mr. Renfrew said. “You’re a young, inexperienced girl who is startled by a strange man in the middle of the night. Wouldn’t you be terrified?”

  “I’m not sure about that. Juliet is not an ordinary girl.”

  “Perhaps not, but I still maintain that she would be alarmed by a man’s voice. Juliet is little more than a girl.” He smiled and quoted, “She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.”

  “We’re getting rather too carried away looking for hidden meanings,” Grace said. “Let us continue.” She felt she must keep her dignity, ignore the knocking of her heart, the warmth flushing her cheeks.

  “As you wish.”

  Grace and Mr. Renfrew continued to trade lines, inching ever closer to the declarations of love that would seal the fates of their doomed characters.

  “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” she said. This time when he reached for her hand, Grace let him take it. He drew her hand to his chest and held her palm flat over his heart. The fine cotton of his shirt was cool to the touch, but she sensed his heart beating under her fingers.

  Before she could get out her next line, he pulled her close, bent back his head to gaze up at her, his lips inches from her lips. “You do not need to be afraid of me,” he murmured.

  His breath smelled faintly of last night’s wine. Although shorter than she, he was broader, making her feel small and suddenly unsure of herself. A strange fluttering gripped deep in her belly—more pleasure than pain.

  “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” she said again, stronger this time.

  Would he kiss her? Did she want him to? She had so little experience of men. In Clevedon before her mother’s death, the local curate had taken a liking to her. He sat near her at dinner parties, applauded when she sang, and did everything he could with limited personal charms to make himself agreeable. Grace had not paid the curate any serious attention, which was just as well. After the death of her mother, the curate no longer wanted anything to do with her.

  She tried to step away, but Mr. Renfrew tightened his hold on her.

  “I don’t think . . .” she began.

  The large wooden outside door creaked open, and Grace heard footsteps. Mr. Renfrew released his grip, and she stepped back, her face crimson. Ned strode into the barn. He did not glance at her, but she sensed his disapproval in the grim set of his jaw.

  “Beggin’ pardon, sir, Mr. Renfrew, but I got a matter to discuss with you ’bout the ticket arrangements for tonight.”

  “What is it, man? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of rehearsal?”

  “Aye, I can see well enough. The box office keeper says we can’t charge more than what’s normal for the performance tonight.”

  “We are from the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden,” Mr. Renfrew said loftily. “We can charge what we wish.”

  “Will you come talk with the man?”

  “Tell him I’ll be there directly.” He turned his back on Ned and spoke softly to Grace. “I am sorry, my dear. It appears that our rehearsal must be cut short. Do you feel confident?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Renfrew.” She barely recognized her own voice.

  Renfrew placed the palm of his hand against her cheek. One finger stroked downward toward her top lip. “I can help you if you let me.”

  Grace glanced back at Ned, who stood in the middle of the room, his arms crossed, blond brows furrowed. He would not look at her. Mr. Renfrew’s meaning was clear even to her, but surely a liaison with him was impossible, unthinkable. Grace shook her head and stepped back. “Thank you, Mr. Renfrew. I believe I will manage.”

  When he brushed past her to follow Ned, she saw squinting eyes and lips pressed together, his irritation plain. Grace wondered if she would come to regret turning him down.

  Chapter 8

  I have no other, but a woman’s reason

  I think him so because I think him so.

  The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1.2.23–24)

  A few yards from the open door of the makeshift dressing room Grace shared with the other actresses, the entire company pounded through the ballroom scene, the whirl of color and noise a prelude to her entrance as Juliet.

  Ned appeared at the door. “Five minutes!”

  She couldn’t move. Singing was one thing, but this . . . acting? Saying lines and pretending to fall in love with Mr. Renfrew? She should never have come away with the company.

  “Grace?”

  “I can’t, Ned. I . . .”

  He held out his hand, palm upward, long fingers steady. “You can, Grace. I got faith in you.”

  The memory—never far from her mind—of rocks grinding against the wheels of the new gig—a light, two-wheeled affair—threatened her confidence.

  The gig was more suited to smooth roads than the rough track that skirted the cliff edge at Clevedon. A stone wall curved with the track just ahead—too close. Grace pulled on the reins, but she could not stop the poor mare.

  No! Grace rose to her feet. She could not let what happened to her mother hold her back.

  “I am Juliet Capulet. I am Juliet Capulet,” she said to herself as she followed Ned along the short corridor to the wings. Light blazed from the candles floating in oil baths placed in front of pieces of polished metal ringing the stage perimeter. Grace closed her eyes and breathed deeply into her belly to confront the fear that rose and swirled like sea foam.

  “Go!” Ned’s voice was hot in her ear.

  She opened her eyes and walked slowly down the slight incline. The heavy train of her gown tugged at her shoulders, tipping her backward so she was in danger of losing her balance. She stiffened her spine and took small, shuffling steps. As the dancers swirled around her, Grace glanced up. Beyond the candles, Bath’s New Theatre Royal heaved with people. Fashionable dandies preened themselves in the front rows of the pit. On benches behind them lounged tradesmen and clerks, with a sprinkling of gentlemen and the occasional rouge-cheeked whore. From the three tiers of boxes, elegant arms waved fans to paramours across the narrow expanse of the auditorium. The theater was as brightly lit as the stage.

  The music faded, and a hush fell over the audience. Grace lowered her eyes and
stopped a few feet from the front of the stage to wait for Mr. Renfrew. She held her hands in front of her stomach to keep them from shaking.

  Mr. Renfrew stepped forward and grabbed Grace’s elbow.

  “If I profane with my unworthiest hand . . .”

  He half turned to the audience, his features arranged in a sentimental leer. Instead of looking at her as he’d done in rehearsal, he declaimed his lines into the auditorium. He had not forgiven her.

  “This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this;

  My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand . . .”

  In Renfrew’s case, the blushing pilgrims owed a great deal to a pot of red paint. Grace cocked her head to one side to indicate her struggle between doubt and curiosity. She would not let him get the better of her. Mr. Renfrew brushed the top of her hand as lightly as possible so as not to smudge the paint.

  “To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

  When Mr. Renfrew drew back, Grace held her arm out, her fingers just grazing his chest. She delivered her first line.

  “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much . . .”

  Mr. Renfrew sighed with such vigor that her next line stopped at the first few rows of the pit.

  “Which mannerly devotion shows in this . . .”

  A few titters rose from the pit. She shouted her next two lines.

  “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

  And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

  She placed her two palms together as if in prayer. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a pair of young men stroll across the empty space between the first row of the pit and the orchestra. One cuffed the other’s shoulder and tossed him a small purse. When they reached the end of the stage, they turned to walk back. Mr. Renfrew nodded at the men, who both hallooed greetings. She’d seen Mr. Renfrew greet acquaintances from the stage before, sometimes in the middle of his most tragic soliloquies, but this was her debut. Grace drew herself up to emphasize the height difference and heard a few chuckles. Mr. Renfrew looked up at her with surprise, but at least he looked at her.

  They played the rest of the scene like two pugilists circling each other in a ring of blood-steeped sand.

  Mr. Renfrew lunged at her for his final kiss just as Olympia, dressed outlandishly as the Nurse, swept across the stage.

  “Madam, your mother craves a word with you.”

  Olympia’s shameless mugging soon had the crowd roaring their appreciation, all the pretended tenderness of Grace’s scene with Mr. Renfrew forgotten. At least three times, Olympia’s antics drew so much laughter that Grace’s lines were lost. She had to look ridiculous mouthing words no one could hear. Grace forgot about feeling anything other than rage as she shouted her newfound love for Romeo.

  “My only love sprung from my only hate!”

  A man in the front row let out a loud guffaw that set off several of the other men. Her face flamed the color of her dress. When Mr. Renfrew stepped forward to speak with the Nurse, Grace fled from the stage.

  * * *

  The next morning Ned rose early with the intention of finding and destroying any of the newspapers that might be delivered to the inn. He was too late. Renfrew was already up and fuming. He threw a copy of the paper down on the table, splattering grease from a plate of half-finished eggs. Ned was at least grateful that none of the girls had come down to breakfast yet.

  “Stupid girl. I thought better of her.”

  “She did all right, sir,” Ned said loyally. “She just needs some time to get used to acting.”

  “I don’t have time. We have two weeks left on the tour, and I can’t risk putting her onstage again. That business in the death scene! People were laughing.”

  “That weren’t Grace’s fault, sir.”

  “She dropped the dagger, for God’s sake! What kind of an actress drops the dagger in the death scene? No wonder people laughed. It was a good job I was already dead, or my lines would have been lost. As it was, I wanted to sink through the floor. I should never have put her on.”

  “Grace will work hard to get better. You can’t just dismiss her.”

  “I most assuredly can, and I believe I will.” Mr. Renfrew squeezed his nostrils together as if he’d just scented a particularly plump fox. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ll send her off with her pay. She mentioned that she grew up in Clevedon, which isn’t too far from here. She can get a coach from Bristol tomorrow.”

  Ned felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Mr. Renfrew believing he could have his way with Grace was bad enough, but this anger toward her was worse. Much worse. It was all on account of that damn critic.

  Wooden and unlifelike . . .

  A Shadow of a Girl without a Hope of exciting Passion in herself, let alone her Romeo (played masterfully by the incomparable Thomas Renfrew), and most certainly not her Audience . . .

  Miss Green is best advised to attend to her Needlework. Acting is not for her.

  “When will you tell her?” Ned asked.

  “I see no profit in wasting time.” Mr. Renfrew mounted the stairs leading to the rooms, and moments later Ned heard him banging on the door to the room shared by Grace and Olympia.

  The seagulls were making almost as much racket as Mr. Renfrew when Ned emerged from the inn and inhaled a noxious mix of sulfur from the baths and fresh horse droppings. He’d rarely felt so helpless. Anger at Renfrew was mixed with worry about what would become of Grace when she left the theater.

  He wished the tour was over and he was back in London where he knew the lay of the land. Bath unnerved him—too much cream-colored stone with every house looking just like the one next to it. And the theater was far too small. He missed prowling the dark corridors backstage at Covent Garden and the convenience of a well-stocked prop room.

  “Excuse me, but do you work at the theater?”

  A man as tall as Ned stepped forward. He was dressed with the casual elegance of a gentleman—snowy cravat elaborately pleated, black coat of fine wool, boots shined.

  Ned touched his hand to his forehead. “Sir.”

  “I am looking for one of the actresses—a Miss Johnson? I was told the Covent Garden company was staying at this establishment.”

  “We don’t got no Miss Johnson in the company, sir,” Ned said. He couldn’t say why, but something about the gentleman put him off. He reminded Ned of one of those big cats that he’d seen at the menagerie—sleek and well fed, sleeping most of the time, but deadly when it got its claws out.

  “That is not true,” the man said. “I saw her perform last night.”

  “I ain’t lying, sir,” Ned said. “You must have mistook her for someone else.”

  “I assure you that I have not.”

  “Percy?”

  Ned turned to see Grace standing in the doorway to the inn. Tears streaked her face.

  “Do you know this gentleman?”

  “Hello, Grace,” the man said and bowed.

  * * *

  Grace grimly appreciated the irony that the last time she’d encountered her cousin Percival Knowlton was during her first and only visit at the age of twelve to the very same theater that had witnessed her disgrace the night before. Grace’s father had been away on one of his crusades to the shipyards of Liverpool. If he’d been home, Mrs. Johnson would never have dared take Grace with her to stay with her sister Augusta in Bath. And she certainly would not have taken Grace to see Hamlet at the old Theatre Royal. Grace remembered seeing the actor who played the doomed Dane standing alone at the front of the stage, one hand raised to the candles flickering in the massive chandelier, the other at his hip. He was very handsome—tall and commanding, his broad forehead shining in the candlelight.

  “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

  Grace’s mother leaned forward, her elbows resting on the edge of the box, her fan drooping from her wrist. In profile, her mother appeared almost young again, the lines of disappointment smoothed out, her lips mouthing
Hamlet’s well-loved speeches. Aunt Augusta sat on the other side of Grace. Directly behind her lounged Percival, a lanky youth of fifteen.

  “Pretty poor specimen if you ask me,” he hissed in Grace’s ear. “Mama’s right to despise him.”

  Grace ignored him.

  “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind

  To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune . . .”

  She knew the speech, having practiced it many times with her mother. Sometimes Grace overheard her parents arguing about her.

  “She’s never to set foot in a theater, Charlotte. I forbid it.”

  “I see no harm in teaching her to speak well.”

  “There is a very great difference, my dear, between speaking well and acting. We must not raise another actress.”

  “He’s an ass,” whispered Percival. Grace resisted the urge to swing around and smack him across the face with her fan. She closed her eyes to hear the actor, without the distraction of the people seated in the boxes across from them—so close that Grace could see jewels glinting at the throats and wrists of the ladies.

  The actor finished his soliloquy and accepted the enthusiastic applause with a graceful bow. Aunt Augusta rose to her feet and shook out her fan. Grace glimpsed a painted scene of ocean waves and palm trees.

  “Come, Percival. We will not stay.”

  Charlotte Johnson twisted around to look up at her sister. “You can’t mean to leave now, Augusta.”

  “I cannot bear another moment. His acting has become insufferable. Are you coming?”

  “No. We will find our own way home. It is not far.”

  “Suit yourself.” With more noise than she needed to make, Augusta scraped her chair out of the way and swept from the box. Percival pinched Grace’s arm between two hard fingers and then laughed when she gasped and turned red.

  In the ten years since Grace had seen Percival Knowlton, he’d grown very tall and some would say exceedingly good-looking. His smug self-assurance had definitely increased. She allowed him to take her arm and walk with her along the street to a tearoom.

  “Dear Cousin, I am impossibly chagrined!” Percival said as soon as they were seated. “Your charming mother! My most beloved aunt! I was otherwise engaged when she was laid to her rest, and was not able to come.”