The Muse of Fire

by Carol M. Cram

  Faces blurred and shifted—angry faces, leering faces. With a roar, Ned reared up and swung his fist. He connected with flesh, heard a cry and a curse. He had them now. From his good eye, Ned glimpsed an arm coming at him. He drove both fists into the face above the arm, bellowing his rage.

  “Ned!”

  Ned dropped his guard and whirled around to see Olympia running toward one of the men, her small fists flailing. As he lunged toward her, hands snatched at his waist from behind. He threw back his head and banged into a skull with a solid, satisfying thunk.

  One man was down now, rolling in the mud, groaning. Olympia was still beating on a second man, and Alec was grabbing at a third, yelling something Ned couldn’t hear. The face of the biggest man, the only one Ned hadn’t gotten the better of, loomed in front of him, snarling through cracked teeth.

  Moments later, Ned’s forehead exploded.

  * * *

  The cut on Ned’s forehead streamed blood. He heaved himself to his feet and staggered back to the theater, his face striped red so he looked like Banquo’s ghost. Alec had run off with the attackers rather than stay to help. His friend’s betrayal hurt Ned almost more than his cut forehead. The stage door opened just as he got there and he collapsed into Grace’s arms.

  “Dear God! Ned!” Grace’s knees almost buckled under Ned’s weight. Olympia rushed up behind him and took hold of an arm.

  “Quick! We need to get him to Mrs. Beecham,” Olympia said. “She’ll know what to do.”

  Between them, Grace and Olympia hobbled with Ned down the corridor to the costume room. Mrs. Beecham was coming out the door, the candles in her room already extinguished. She stood aside to let the women and Ned through and then found and lit a fresh candle.

  “What happened? So much blood!” She didn’t wait for Ned to speak. “Sit.”

  She flew into action, a dervish on a mission as she gathered up a bundle of cotton and then barked out orders to Grace and Olympia to find water and another candle. Ned couldn’t deny that his head ached, but he suspected the cut looked much worse than it was. Watching three women run around on his behalf was a new experience for him. He couldn’t help feeling just a little bit glad that his injury was capable of inspiring such alarm, particularly in Olympia. She’d tried to help him. That had to mean something.

  Mrs. Beecham plunked the basin on the table and set to work tearing the cotton into thin strips.

  “It’s not too bad,” he said, putting on a brave face. He was very aware of Grace and Olympia standing nearby. They were clasping hands and watching Mrs. Beecham soak the cloth in water and dab at his forehead. He would not wince, not with Olympia looking so concerned. Why had she come back?

  “You hush,” Mrs. Beecham said. “I’ll be the judge of what’s bad. What happened? Did you see who did this?”

  Both women shook their heads. Ned opened his mouth to explain and then closed it with a snap when Mrs. Beecham applied more pressure to the cloth with one hand while she glanced around the room. “My sewing things. Where did I put them?”

  “Sewing things?” Ned asked. He saw Olympia go pale.

  “Don’t be a baby,” said Mrs. Beecham. “The cut’s deep. I’ll need to sew it.”

  “You can’t sew skin!”

  “Of course I can.” Mrs. Beecham turned to Olympia. “Come over here and hold the cloth with a firm hand. You’ll need to put some muscle into it to stop the bleeding.”

  “But—” Ned protested.

  Olympia’s hands were very soft—much softer than Mrs. Beecham’s. She stood close to Ned, her arms shaking with the strain of holding the cloth steady over his wound. Ned relaxed a little bit. He knew for sure now that she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Mrs. Beecham came back into his line of sight. She was holding something up in one hand, something that glinted in the candlelight.

  “No!”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”

  “You have?”

  “Hush! Olympia, you hold his hand, and, Grace, you stand behind him and press his shoulders down. I can’t have him moving while I work.”

  “I ain’t going to move. Ai-yee!” The needle was a hot poker slicing through his flesh. He gripped the sides of the chair with both hands; sweat popped out all over his body. The urge to pull away was overwhelming, but even if he’d wanted to, he’d be hard pressed to break free of all three women at once. Mrs. Beecham sewed with slow, deliberate care. He counted the stitches. One, two . . . The pain was appalling. He had to cry out. He saw tears glistening in Olympia’s eyes. Three, four . . . Mrs. Beecham was insane to put him through this. He’d never heard of anyone sewing flesh. Five . . . He couldn’t endure another second.

  “There. That should do it. You’ll look a right mess tomorrow, like you’ve been in the wars.”

  Mrs. Beecham bound strips of cotton around his forehead and then removed the blood-filled basin to another table. “You’d best sleep here tonight.”

  “In the theater?”

  “Why not? Go into Mrs. Siddons’s room. It’s not like she’s using it, and she has a sofa. I’ll get cleaned up here, and the girls can get on home. You’re not going to die, leastways not tonight.”

  “There was four of them, maybe more.”

  Mrs. Beecham laughed and even Grace smiled, but Olympia still held his hand. She squeezed it before letting it go.

  “This is all because of Mr. Kemble and those pugilists he’s hired,” Olympia said. “The OPs are madder than ever.”

  “I don’t suppose we can blame them.” Ned wished she’d take his hand again. The stitches felt like red-hot screws digging into his flesh.

  “I can blame the ruffians who attacked you.” Olympia smoothed the hair from his forehead.

  “One of the prats swung his rattle at me.”

  Olympia helped him to his feet and then went to stand next to Grace. “You must take it easy tomorrow, Ned.” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Kemble will understand.”

  “Fat chance of that.”

  He gave the women a clumsy salute, then felt his way down the dark corridor to the room allocated to Mrs. Siddons. No other actress had dared take it over since she left. When she’d get back to the theater and onstage again was anyone’s guess.

  The riots had now raged for twenty-two nights since the New Theatre opened on September 18. The longer the riots dragged on, the more entrenched became Mr. Kemble. He was oblivious to the numerous cartoons depicting him in all manner of undignified ways, the insulting placards, the constant calls for his removal from the theater.

  Ned settled himself on the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest like a dead person. Olympia was back, and Alec was running with the OPs.

  Why had the world suddenly turned upside down?

  Chapter 24

  The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

  So quick bright things come to confusion.

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1.1.148–49)

  “Dear Grace, you can’t be serious.” Olympia pulled Grace aside in the crowded dressing room. “You told me you hated him.”

  “That was last season.” Grace smiled at the look on Olympia’s face. “You have missed a great deal. But please don’t worry about me. I have no intention of letting anything happen.”

  “You don’t know what Mr. Renfrew’s like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. You’re such an innocent, Grace.”

  “I am a married woman.”

  “Yes, and that state never gave any woman sense.” Olympia turned around for Grace to unlace her costume.

  “I promise to stay away from Mr. Renfrew. Will that satisfy you?”

  Olympia twisted her head around. “I don’t trust him.”

  “No, but I presume you trust me.” Grace leaned forward to plant a kiss on her friend’s cheek. “Let’s not quarrel. I have enough to worry about with Percival. The last thing I need is a lover.”

  “Grace!”

  “Dear me, Olympia. Look who’s
shocked now!” Grace would have liked to say more about Percival—how he often stayed out long past the time she returned home from the theater and then avoided her at breakfast, and how if he chose, he could forbid her from ever setting foot in the theater again. Not for the first time, she wished she could have pursued her career on the stage without tying herself to a husband.

  “Will you come with us tonight to the tavern?” Olympia asked.

  “I can’t. Percival will know if I come home late. I’m glad you’re back, Olympia. Are you ever going to tell me what happened?”

  Olympia shook her head. “Please don’t ask me. Just know that I’m here to stay this time.”

  “You are living still with your mother and the general?”

  “With my mother, yes.”

  Grace wanted to know more, but Olympia pushed past her to join a group of actresses leaving the theater.

  * * *

  “But he can’t do that!” Grace wanted to stamp her foot like a child.

  “As actor-manager, Mr. Kemble has complete dominion over us all.”

  “You are not happy with the decision. You cannot be.”

  Mr. Renfrew did not immediately reply. They were strolling through the Piazza on a drab afternoon in late October, the sky swollen with clouds of unshed rain. Grace took his arm as she stepped over a rivulet of filthy water running across the pavement. If they were seen walking out together, tongues would wag, but Grace no longer cared. All around them swarmed the street life of the great metropolis—beggars and whores and pickpockets vying for the notice of neatly dressed merchants and black-frocked clerks and gentlemen wearing tall beaver hats and gloves of fine leather. With Mr. Renfrew—Thomas—so close that his arm pressed against hers, Grace felt protected. The noise and clatter gave her energy where they had once tired her. Strange and wonderful sensations filled her waking hours with anticipation and her nights with a new kind of dream in which her husband played no part.

  “I confess that I am put out.” Mr. Renfrew steered them around a cart rumbling toward the market. “It would have been my first turn as Romeo on the London stage.”

  “And mine as Juliet.”

  “But you will still perform. You should be pleased.”

  “It won’t be the same without you.”

  “And I am sorry for it,” he said quietly. He stopped walking and turned to look into her eyes. He was just a little shorter than she was, but he filled the space in front of her with a comforting solidity that anchored her, made her feel like she could do anything. How had she ever thought him plain? When he smiled, as he was doing now, his soft lips parted, and his eyes—a very deep brown—regarded her with a pleasing earnestness so different from the piercing blue of Percival’s gaze.

  “Miss Green.”

  “Grace,” she said.

  He shook his head. “No, I must not be so bold. I would not expose you to scandal. Your husband . . .” He started walking again, guiding her with light pressure across the Piazza.

  Her heart, so long closed, was a rose on the point of blooming, petals unfurling to the sun—insistent, unstoppable. She wanted him to touch her skin, to hold her against his chest and make her feel like she mattered. But she was not free, and no amount of hoping could change that.

  “What do you think about Mr. Charles Kemble?” she asked to turn the subject.

  “He is Mr. Kemble’s brother.”

  “Yes, but can he act?”

  “Well enough. He will make a creditable Romeo. Mr. Kemble is not wrong to exchange me for him. Mr. Charles Kemble won’t embarrass you.”

  They reached the Strand, beyond which a maze of small, stinking lanes led to the river. A steady stream of carriages rumbled up and down the busy thoroughfare. Mr. Renfrew spotted a rare gap and pulled Grace across and into one of the lanes. The overhanging houses almost obliterated the sky.

  “Grace,” he whispered. He held her chin with his gloved hand.

  She knew she should pull away. Love was for doomed ingenues on the stage, not for wives. But one kiss . . . What was the harm? No one would find out if she gave in—if just this once she let herself be Juliet. A fine, misty rain leaked through the narrow gap between the buildings. If she lifted her face, she’d feel it wet her cheeks while his lips closed over hers. One kiss. What harm in one kiss?

  “Blast!”

  Mr. Renfrew broke away from her so abruptly that Grace staggered back against the blackened bricks of the building running alongside the lane. She saw a blur of movement next to Mr. Renfrew that sharpened into the figure of a young boy shouting in triumph and holding aloft a gold watch.

  “Mr. Renfrew! Thomas!”

  But he was not listening. He set off after the boy, who darted down the lane and around a corner. Grace heard a cry and a scuffle, and then, minutes later, Mr. Renfrew climbed back up the lane, his face a mask of fury.

  “Damn the little rascal!” He clenched his fists. “He slipped out of my grasp.”

  “He’s only a child and likely starving!” Grace exclaimed. The violence of his anger shocked her.

  “He’s little better than vermin!” Seeming to recollect himself, he bowed absently. “Forgive my language, madam.”

  “Please, walk me back to the theater, Mr. Renfrew. I am not scheduled to perform this evening, and my husband expects me home.” Her heart, so recently opened, snapped shut.

  With a scowl, he held out his arm.

  She took it, and they walked in silence for most of the way back across the Piazza to the theater. He made one half-hearted attempt to engage her in conversation, but she suspected his mind was more on his stolen watch than on her comfort.

  They arrived at the theater to find Ned standing in the open stage door. He still looked a mess after his ordeal four nights earlier—one of his eyes was swollen closed, and his forehead was a mass of crisscrossed lines.

  “There you are, Grace!” he said. “I’ve been looking all over. Mrs. Beecham is in a state. Turns out the gown you’re to wear for the death scene’s been torn. You’d best come right away.”

  Grace followed Ned into the theater without a backward glance at Mr. Renfrew.

  * * *

  On the last day of October, Ned stood at the Bow Street entrance to usher out the constables and their charges. At half time that evening, dozens of London’s young wags had crowded into the theater, sometimes to cheer on the rioters with their placards and badges, at other times to pick fights with the “New Price” supporters that Mr. Kemble paid to attend performances. Ten arrests were made—a larger number than usual, mostly laborers, clerks, and tradesmen, with one or two gentlemen.

  “Alec?”

  A constable held Alec by the elbow. His stained waistcoat was missing a few buttons, and one sleeve of his jacket was torn. Alec twisted around. “Tell ’em, Ned. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

  Ned hesitated. Alec’s eyes bored into his. Gone was the cheeky grin at a world that had never wanted him. Hollow cheeks streaked with dirt hinted at a hard few weeks after his dismissal from the theater. Alec hadn’t been back to the lodgings he shared with Ned and had left no word about his whereabouts. Ned was still too angry with Alec for not helping him after the attack to investigate. But then he remembered Mrs. King’s words.

  “I know this man,” Ned said. “He worked for Mr. Kemble.”

  “Don’t matter to me,” said the constable. “He was seen throwing punches at a gentleman in the pit and hallooing at the stage.”

  “He and dozens of others, Constable. And I’m sure he’s very sorry.” Ned glared at Alec, who had the sense to hang his head.

  “Sorry, Constable,” he mumbled. “I ain’t never meant no harm.”

  Reluctantly, the constable let go of Alec, who stumbled over to Ned, his head still down, although Ned knew the grin was creeping back.

  “I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble,” Ned said. “There’s plenty more need arresting. Mr. Kemble will appreciate you clearing the theater.”

  “It wou
ld be a damn sight easier to clear the theater if it weren’t for them pugilists that Kemble’s hired. They cause more trouble than they’re worth.” The constable hefted his truncheon and headed toward the auditorium where he’d find enough heads to bang together to keep him busy for at least another hour.

  “Told you so,” said Alec.

  “Shut up,” Ned hissed. He pushed Alec back along a narrow corridor to a dark area backstage. “What on God’s earth are you playing at? Why did you leave me?”

  “Honest, Ned. I chased after the fellow and got the rattle off him and then gave him a good swipe of me own. But when I went back to help you up, you’d gone.” He peered up at Ned’s forehead. “He got you good, I see.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “I tried to get ’em off you.” He grinned. “Leastways, it looks like your girl’s back. That ought to make you happy.”

  “She ain’t my girl.” Ned grabbed Alec’s arm. “You shouldn’t even be in the theater. Mr. K. let you go.”

  “I got a right to come into the pit, same as anyone. I paid me way.”

  “What if you’d gotten arrested?”

  “That weren’t goin’ to happen. I’d have given that constable the slip long before he got me to the station. Besides, I ain’t in the wrong here. Kemble’s the villain for raisin’ the prices.”

  “Come off it. Since when do you care ’bout theater prices? You’ve never been in an audience in your life.”

  “Don’t mean I haven’t wanted to.” Alec pulled himself to his full height, still a foot shorter than Ned. “Can I go now, or are you wantin’ to keep me here another hour to lecture me?” Alec spat on the floor. “Yer as bad as old Mrs. King.”

  “Get on with you then.” Ned crashed his shoulder into the wall as he turned, sending a shuddering pain through his arm. “I got work to do.” He stomped down the corridor to the wings where a couple of scene changers were shunting the flies along narrow tracks set into the floor at the back of the stage.

  Fuck Alec.

  * * *

  Grace lay on her funeral bier, her eyes tightly shut. She breathed shallowly to prevent anyone seeing her chest rise and fall. It was November 9—almost two full months since the theater opened. After a few blessedly quiet nights, the mob had returned with a vengeance. The solitude of her closed eyes amplified the cacophony of whistles, bells, shouts, and thumps.