Amanda Scott (51 page)

Pamela wrinkled her brow. “It is a very long article, of course, but I thought you said they hissed inside also, Gwen.”

Gwenyth chuckled. “That was because they mistook the Duke of Kent for the Duke of York, who has become rather unpopular lately. No, please don’t ask why, Pamela. The matter is a complicated one having to do with his mistress and the fact that she was selling army commissions, and I don’t propose to explain it all to you now. Matters did grow rather loud inside, ma’am,” she said to the countess. “So much so that Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons were unable to make themselves heard above the tumult.”

The countess shrugged. “Mr. Kemble has ever had a knack for making himself disliked,” she said, “and he has not grown more popular through becoming manager of the new theater.”

Lady Cadogan said quietly, “Much of the discontent arises from the fact that Mr. Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, and others of their ilk demand such extortionate wages for their performances. And when the common folk see them in their finery and know the ticket prices have been raised to accommodate their vanity, well—”

“Fiddle faddle,” the countess said, banging her cane against the floor. “I’ve no patience with such talk. If we expect such people to perform well, we must be willing to pay them well.”

Gwenyth, who had been reading silently while the others talked, said suddenly, “If this sort of thing continues, perhaps we ought not to go on Wednesday.”

Pamela exclaimed indignantly, “Not go? Oh, ma’am”—she turned agitatedly to the countess—“you will not change your mind! Surely you will not.”

“No, of course I will not,” the countess said calmly. “In my opinion, ’tis no more than the veriest tempest in a teapot. By Wednesday, everything that can be said will have been said.”

She remained adamant, and even Gwenyth ceased her objections by Wednesday evening, for although the disturbances continued, nothing dreadful had happened. By the time the doors opened for Wednesday’s performance, not an extra seat was available, and the only shadow over her pleasure was the lack of young gentlemen to escort them. She would even have settled for her brother, but Davy had informed her that one Shakespeare play was enough for him. Thus, their only male escort was one of the countess’s elderly swains, who was to meet them at the theater, since their coach would hold only the four ladies in comfort.

They drove to the Prince’s Place entrance, where there were liveried footmen waiting to hand them from their carriage and direct them through the proper entrance, located beneath a noble stone portico. They had to pass through a mob of people, hissing and shouting against the high prices, waving placards and generally making nuisances of themselves, but inside the great lobby, a long and narrow but disappointingly small room, it was quiet by comparison. Turning to the left, they mounted a short flight of steps lighted by bronze Grecian lamps, to an anteroom dominated by a statue of Shakespeare and supported by pillars in imitation porphyry marble. Gwenyth thought the staircase rather narrow and the anteroom even smaller for its purpose than the grand lobby, but all in all, the theater was wonderful.

“How elegant it is!” Pamela exclaimed as they stepped into their box and took their seats. “Do you suppose those gold pillars are made of real gold?”

Seeing that each tier was supported by a good many of the gold pillars, from the top of each of which ran a gilt iron bracket suspending a superb glass-and-gold chandelier for wax candles, Gwenyth laughed. “Don’t be nonsensical. Of course they are not or the price of tickets would be even higher. It astonishes me that the management would purchase wax candles, for that matter. Goodness, listen to that din!”

The theater was crowded, and now that the initial impact of its elegance was fading, she noted that placards demanding the old prices had been hung against the dove-colored fronts of the boxes on either side of them and opposite. As she took her seat beside Lady Cadogan, she saw that in one part of the pit below a long banner was being raised aloft, held by three sticks tied together. Inscribed upon it in large capital letters were the words “
RESIST THE IMPOSITION EVERY NIGHT, UNTIL ABATED.
”

Lady Cadogan, having settled her knitting bag beside her and taken her work into her lap, now took time to look about her. “Good gracious,” she said, shaking her head, but whatever else she might have said was drowned out by the roar that greeted the raising of the pit banner.

Gwenyth leaned near her and said into her ear, “I doubt we’ll hear much of
Richard III
tonight, ma’am.”

Lady Cadogan grimaced, and since the roar died a little, Gwenyth was able to hear her clearly when she said, “We ought never to have come here tonight. ’Tis common and unbecoming.” Her needles began to move swiftly in her lap, but she didn’t look at them. She was still watching the crowd. “I believe they have nearly doubled the number of seats in this place, but if they can get people to pay seven shillings to sit in those little pigeonholes above us, as I’m told they do, when the view there must be twice as bad as it is in the one-shilling gallery, then the management are magicians. No wonder so many are complaining.”

Lady Lyford rested her cane against the box partition and turned to face them. “I call this exciting,” she said in a carrying tone, “so don’t be putting your Friday face on, Wynnefreda, for I’ve no patience with such stuff tonight. You watch. They’ll quiet down once the band begins to play. Where is Sir Algernon, do you suppose?”

But her swain had not appeared by the time the band had settled itself in place below the front of the stage, and although the first notes of “God Save the King” were heard with perfect clarity, the rest of that patriotic tune was drowned out entirely by a theater orchestra composed of watchman’s rattles, horns, and whistles, with which members of the audience had previously provided themselves. More placards appeared, and papers were thrown onto the stage itself, settling in little piles against the front of the drop curtain.

At last the curtain went up, and for a moment the roar subsided, only to begin again when the actors began to speak. It continued unabated, turning Shakespeare’s famous play into a pantomime, but the actors went on to the end. In the middle of the third act the uproar became so alarmingly violent that Mr. Kemble, still in costume as Richard III, stepped forward, and after another volley of shouts, toots, rattles, catcalls, and shrieks, he was able to make himself heard.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have at last comprehended that the cause of your displeasure consists in the small advance of prices on the boxes and pit.” Encouraged by cries of “Yes, yes!” from his audience, he continued, “In the reign of Queen Anne the price of admission to the pit was three shillings. One hundred years ago, the galleries, ladies and gentlemen, were—”

But although he continued to speak, his listeners had heard enough. The roar grew louder than ever, until the men in the pit beneath the wide banner began shouting, “Get on the stage!”

Gwenyth saw to her shock that people were beginning to press forward, and suddenly a veritable posse of Bow Street officers in red coats erupted from the stage doors. First they opened trapdoors in the stage to catch any unwary person laying siege. Then they descended into the audience. People appeared cowed at first, but when Kemble stepped forward again to speak, pandemonium erupted. Soon men were fighting the Bow Street officers and each other everywhere and women were shrieking. Even as the four ladies prepared to take immediate departure, loud altercations erupted outside their box door.

Gwenyth looked at her aunt. “What do we do, ma’am?”

Before Lady Cadogan could reply, the door to the box burst open, and two men, clearly inebriated, surged in, stumbling into the extra chairs. “We’ll have them seats, ladies,” jeered one, reaching to pull Lady Lyford out of hers, only to yelp in pain when she cracked her cane down on his knuckles.

“Here, here!” exclaimed the second man. “Watch that damned thing!” His gaze shifted appreciatively to Pamela, but before he could say more, Lady Lyford whacked him hard across the backside.

He screeched and turned menacingly toward her, reaching out in fury, his purpose clearly to murder her, but Lady Cadogan slid the knitting from her needles and jabbed his hand. Crying out again, he snatched it back and glared at her.

There was movement in the anteroom behind them. “Get out of here,” Lady Cadogan snapped at the two men. They hesitated, but when the countess lifted her cane menacingly, they rushed out again, stumbling over their feet and each other in their haste.

The old lady said sharply to Gwenyth, “Shut that door behind them, gel. Quickly, now, before anyone else gets in!”

Gwenyth made haste to obey her, pushing the door hard against a hand that pushed back from the other side.

“Here,” said her aunt beside her, dragging a chair up. “Put the chair back beneath the handle. “That will help.”

But as Gwenyth attempted to do as she suggested, the door was suddenly thrust harder from the other side, too hard for her to withstand. The edge hit the side of her head as she was thrown heavily against the box partition. As she slid to the ground in blinding waves of pain, she thought dreamily that she saw Lyford knock an unknown man to the floor with his bare fist. The thought was so ludicrous that she spurned all possibility of its reality as she sank into oblivion.

W
HEN GWENYTH CAME TO,
they were in the carriage. She had vague memories of being jostled, of loud noises that made her head ache, of being carried in strong arms against a muscular chest. Now, however, as the carriage rattled over cobblestones, she felt warm and safe and as comfortable as one could feel when one’s head ached abominably, one’s body felt as though it had been systematically pounded into one large bruise, and one was sitting rather awkwardly on a lumpy seat. There was silence in the carriage, although in the glow cast by the carriage lamps, she could see that her aunt and Pamela occupied the forward seat.

“Her eyes are open,” Pamela said just then.

Lady Lyford spoke from a little behind Gwenyth. “Told you she’d be all right. No need to have made such a fuss.”

Gwenyth, realizing that she was sitting sideways and forward of her ladyship, struggled to straighten, only to feel two strong arms tighten around her, making her squeak with pain.

“Don’t try to move yet.” The voice was Lyford’s, and to her astonishment, she realized he was holding her on his lap.

She struggled more. “Put me down, sir.” Her voice was weak, and her movements had no effect on him other than to make him loosen his hold a little when he realized he was hurting her.

“There is no room to put you down,” he said quietly. “And you must be quiet. I fear you must have been badly hurt.”

“I am perfectly all right,” she lied, “and it is most unsuitable for me to be sitting on you like this.”

“Hush,” he said.

Pamela spoke again. “Really, Marcus, you ought to stop the carriage and hail a hackney for yourself. We are abominably crowded with five of us in here, and Gwen is right. You—”

“If I were you,” he said harshly, “I should not open my mouth again tonight. I have a number of things to say to you, but I do not want to be plagued by your foolish prattle now.”

“But—”

“Be silent!”

Since even Pamela could not fail to note the menace in his tone, she subsided, and the rest of the journey passed in the silence he had requested. Gwenyth would have liked to ask him several questions, but the effort required to put even one of them into words was too great. Relaxing her head against his shoulder, she sighed deeply and shut her eyes, falling asleep almost instantly.

When they reached Lyford House, she wakened and tried to free herself again, but without bothering to discuss her wishes, he carried her up to her room, ordering one of his footmen in passing to run for the doctor.

Only Lady Cadogan followed them upstairs, and as Lyford laid Gwenyth upon the bed, the viscountess said calmly, “You may leave her to me now, Marcus. I will ring for her maid.”

“No,” he replied, drawing up a chair to the bed. “We will wait together for the doctor.”

“I am all right now,” Gwenyth said feebly.

“No, you are not. Don’t talk.”

“How did you come to be there?” she demanded instead.

“I reached the house at nine, and Frythorpe told me where you had gone. Since the ructions have been fully detailed every day in the London papers, I could not credit my ears, but he insisted that you had gone to Covent Garden, so I hailed the first hackney coach that came along and went to fetch you home. Had all I could do to get into the place without a ticket, since there were none to be had, but all bedlam broke loose as I was attempting to explain to the money takers that I wanted only to fetch my family. Took me some time to push my way to the third tier and find your box. I had to break into two others before I saw you. Now, I have answered your question, so do not speak again until the doctor has seen you, unless, of course, you wish to explain to me how you came to do something so foolhardy.”

Since she did not think she had the strength just then to explain anything, let alone to justify her actions, she fell silent again, only moving at all when Lady Cadogan placed a cool, damp cloth that she had wrung out at the washstand on her forehead. Her headache began to subside a little.

Silence reigned in the bedchamber until Dr. Hastings, a round, twinkling little man, came a quarter of an hour later. Shooing a reluctant Lyford from the room, he examined Gwenyth carefully, beamed at her, and gave it as his considered opinion that she would live.

She smiled at him. “I’m quite certain of that, sir.”

“Well, head wound, you know,” he said. “Tricky, some of them. You’ll want to have a care, my lady.”

She frowned. “How much care, sir? I am not much good at playing the invalid.”

Lady Cadogan, who had been hovering anxiously, said in a crisp tone, “You’ll do as you’re bid, my dear. His lordship will see to that if I cannot.”

Gwenyth grimaced, having no doubt that she was right about Lyford. She began to turn her head to look at the doctor again, decided against it when a bolt of pain rewarded her effort, and shifted her gaze instead. “Must I stay in bed?”