The Blooding of Jack Absolute (15 page)

‘Come in, dear sir, come in,’ she said, in a voice quite different from the one she’d used on the stairs, richer, deeper,
certainly from another class. She stepped aside, her arm descending in a flourish to wave him in. ‘I am Matilda. And you?’

‘Jack … Harris … son! Jack Harrison. Ha!’ He entered. The room was an odd shape, much smaller than he’d expected, little bigger
than the bed that occupied most of it. A small table, which held the oil lantern and a porcelain basin, took up most of the
rest of the space. He then saw why it was undersized – the walls weren’t walls at all but screens, wooden-framed and paper-panelled,
with stays and stockings dangling from their crests. The real walls of cracked plaster and bulging horsehair were just visible
above.

The door closed behind him. ‘Your stick, sir. Your hat. Please!’ She gestured and Jack took off his tricorn, placed it on
the knob of his stick, leaned both against a screen. When he straightened and faced her again, she had stepped closer to him.
She was tall, her nose level with his neck.

‘Now, sir,’ she said, making a little curtsey, her voice still husky, ‘what is it I may do for you?’

Her eyes were hidden beneath the gold and the feathers of her disguise so it was her mouth he looked at. Not so much the lips,
which bore some purplish stain, but an exquisite little
mole to the left of them. And as he studied it, he realized he had seen it before and that very night and just as he recognized
her, her eyes at the very same moment widened. They spoke as one.

‘I know you—’

‘I saw you tonight—’

They both paused. The woman moved back, the eyes still upon him. She went on first. ‘You were the gallant who intervened when
those boobies would upset the play.’

He nodded.

‘You were a hero, sir.’

‘Hardly that.’

‘To me you were. And I’m sure also to the author for … wait, were you not sat beside Burgoyne? You are his friend?’

This was not the time to go into why he was there. He’d told the Mohocks that this would be a danger, picking out an actress
for him to visit. The last thing he needed was for this story to become theatrical gossip. And get back to his mother.

‘I am.’

Matilda had stepped back closer to him. ‘Colonel Burgoyne is fortunate in his friends indeed. So brave, so handsome.’ She
reached up and pulled the mask from her face. ‘No need for that precaution tonight. You know me already.’

The uncovering revealed something slightly different than Jack expected. The maid of the play was not a blushing sixteen but
at least ten years older, the face not unblemished perfection, but full of the little lines and signals of a hard life. The
paint that had smoothed all under the soothing stage lights looked thick and cracked by lamplight. She was still pretty, or
would be were not an underlying tiredness the primary look in her eyes. Nevertheless, Jack said, ‘But a man always desires
to be reacquainted with such beauty, madam.’

She clapped her hands, laughed. ‘So gallant. You are not … I have heard that the Colonel has one or two … indiscretions, who
usually reside in the country. Are you perhaps …’

‘One of Burgoyne’s country indiscretions? No indeed, madam.’

Jack was rather alarmed to find that he was blushing as he spoke, a colour that deepened when a hand reached up to rest on
his face. ‘And you sport the badge of youth,’ she said, laughing again.

Now that he was here, Jack felt two things equally keenly: the first that this encounter, a mere pistol shot from Thrift Street,
was hardly worthy of one who loved such an innocent as Clothilde; the second that what had sounded marvellous when concocted
as the fifth Mohock Rite at Tothill Fields was ridiculous in the Town. How the rite was performed was up to the individual
warrior, but any thought Jack had had of taking what he wanted by sudden surprise or subterfuge had vanished in the mutual
recognition.

‘Why the disguise?’ he asked, as she finally removed her hand and reached past him to hang the mask on the screen. Their bodies
were very close, she was leaning forward and the loose bodice flopped forward, revealing two rather large but finely shaped
breasts. She appeared unaware of the effect the sight had on him, yet took her time leaning back.

‘Though it is too late with you, sir, I will rely on the gallantry you have already displayed to keep my secret. I took on
this extra … profession when times were especially hard and it was that, starve or return to my Methodist mother in Barnstable.’
She shuddered. ‘But though the two trades are thought to be interchangeable, it would not do me much good when contracts at
the Garden or the Lane are being discussed, if “whore” was atop my list of recent credits.’

He flinched slightly at the word, the venom with which she said it. She noticed, smiled again. ‘But do not fear me, young
sir. This contract at the Assembly Rooms means I can dispense with my second occupation. And I’d asked Harris to remove me
from the new edition of his book. He said that it had already gone to press and that he would be by to collect his money soon.
That’s why I,’ she gestured to the door, ‘was a
little afraid when you appeared at my door. I haven’t been here for a fortnight, see. I only came by tonight to pick up my
things.’

Matilda kicked at a leather case that Jack had not noticed as it was wedged in under the bed. ‘I have played this stage for
the last time,’ she continued, stepping close again, bending forward again, ‘but since I
am
here and since you are a friend of Burgoyne, a man who will write many more lovely plays with many more lovely roles in them,
perhaps … perhaps …’

She was so close. And Jack had always loved actresses, been around them ever since he’d come to London and his mother, prevented
from acting by acquiring the title ‘Lady Absolute’, had started writing her plays and satires. And, after all, he had been
on heat all day, torn from Clothilde’s embrace, forced to flee from Fanny’s … In three other rooms in Soho he was quite sure
his brethren were facing no such qualms now.

So he bent and kissed the perfect imperfection of that mole and though she sighed and pressed against him and yielded tongue
for tongue, yet there was something … studied in the giving, with none of the fearful anticipation of his French love, or
the complete hunger of his mistress. As he probed, he warred within himself, but what he’d drunk still fired him and a woman’s
body was pressed close. And then the bells of St Anne’s, Soho, sounded. He pulled away.

‘What’s wrong, Jack?’ she whispered, trying to re-engage. So he held her at arm’s length and told her what he’d really come
for. She asked him to repeat it. He was scared she might be angry. He knew many women who would be. Instead, she just laughed.
‘Well, I’ve had a lot of strange requests in my time but that …’

Then she stepped away from him and began to roll up her loose dress, taking her time, her eyes on him. He watched the dress
rise in circular folds, passing up the stockinged legs that he remembered so admiring earlier that night.

‘Come then, Mr Harris … son,’ she breathed, ‘my gallant, my hero. Come and take your reward.’

Jack reached into his satchel and, when he was quite ready, leaned forward.

Bob Derry’s Cyder House in Maiden Lane, the Mohocks’ rallying point, was misnamed, having neither Cyder nor Maidens – not
so far as Jack could see out of the one eye that remained open. It was all Cats and Jig girls, all arrack punch and gin, and
though one small part of his battered brain kept reminding him that, for some undoubtedly important reason, he had vowed to
stay with brewed liquids, sup nothing fermented or distilled, yet he only ever remembered this when he’d already taken a gulp
of whatever was placed before him. With an exclamation, he’d dash the remaining contents to the floor, invert the mug, shout,
‘No more, damn ye, not one drop more!’ But then he’d turn, the pewter would be brimming, he’d take a gulp, swallow, gag, swear,
dash, invert … and the whole ghastly sequence would begin again.

His friends were of no use. Marks refused to sit, just loomed and swayed and occasionally crashed his forearms down upon the
table when he wanted to contradict some particular point. Their little table in the corner of the main room had space around
it despite the crowd for he would not confine his arguments to his own set. His last sober moment had been on his arrival
when, quite solemnly, he’d handed Jack a purse.

‘A hundred guineas – for the match against Craster,’ he’d said, winking profoundly. Jack had spent the next ten minutes trying
to get him to take the beastly thing back. It was the first of the arguments and the trigger for many more.

Ede made up in recumbence for his friend’s verticality, being stretched full out on a bench and, though prostrate, was going
through every nuance of his recent triumph in the Latin play at Westminster.

In one corner of the vast cellar, two women were raging. Clothes had been torn, bosoms revealed and ripped by flaying nails
and teeth, hair jerked out in chunks. They were surrounded by screaming partisans and neutrals placing bets. An
equal crowd had gathered around another scrap, this between a man and two women in the main, though others would join in when
appropriate, when one side had gained an upper hand. To Jack, the fight, which had been going on for at least fifteen minutes,
was turning in the favour of the women, who had pinned the man to the floor and were taking turns raking him with long nails.
Yet even as he watched, another man stepped in and hauled one of them away by the hair while the man on the floor bucked the
other one off. The crack her head made on the table seemed in no way to daunt her for she was up and on him again and, with
seconds out, battle was reengaged.

It was all quite diverting, though there was one worry that drew Jack’s one eye occasionally to the door: Fenby was an hour
late at the least and in that part of his brain still functioning, Jack was concerned for his little friend. Then, just as
the woman picked up a pewter mug and was narrowly restrained from smashing it on the prone man’s skull, Fenby appeared.

‘Here, here!’ Jack leapt up, pushed past spectators and combatants, seized Fenby’s arm and dragged him back to the table.
Marks finally sat down, Ede up, and all regarded, in some horror, the Last of the Mohocks.

He was a sight. Both lenses of his glasses were stoved, pushing in like starburst fireworks, and both eyes were swollen, appeared
to be blackening, while one had the added problem of a trail of blood running down from the scalp and pooling in the socket.

‘Damn, man,’ said Ede, ‘what have you been about?’

‘Did some ruffian …’ Marks was rising again, his big hands thrust before him.

‘No, no,’ said Fenby, ‘t’was no villain, I assure you, t’was …’ He reached up to touch his glasses and as soon as he did they
crumbled off his face, ending on the table in four pieces. He sighed, produced some wire to attempt repairs. ‘I was trying
to f … f … fulfil the Rite, see.’

‘And did you?’ said Jack. They had none of them discussed their success or failure that night for they had agreed all tales
must be told together.

‘Well,’ said Fenby, after a long pause, ‘can a m … man not get a drink to wet the whistle?’ Punch was poured and Fenby gagged,
spat, took his time drinking again, looked up.

‘So?’ said Marks impatiently, ‘did you hunt the Big Carrot-head?’

‘I did.’

He sipped again. The other three sighed in exasperation. ‘And?’ said Jack.

Fenby put down the mug. ‘What could I do? I have not your g … g … gift of speech, Absolute, nor Ede’s alluring nobility, nor
Marks’s courage. I could only use subterfuge. But when I finally made the attempt the result was, well, as you see.’ He indicated
his face, his shattered spectacles, wincing and smiling simultaneously.

‘And was this the only result, Fenby?’ said Jack. ‘Tell us now: did you complete the Last Rite of the Mohocks?’

Fenby looked at each of them in turn; then, very slowly, he reached into his coat’s inner pocket. First, he pulled out a piece
of scrap paper which he carefully unfolded in the centre of the table. He reached again and produced, this time, a silk sachet.
All recognized it, for it had formerly contained the cundum that Marks had handed out at the night’s commencement. However,
no engine of love fell out when Fenby shook the sachet over the table. Something else did, drifting down to settle on the
page.

‘As you can see, I did indeed complete all the Rites. For I hunted, I trapped, and finally, I … scalped. And as you can also
see, gentlemen … she was indeed a true Redhead.’

The other three leaned over. There, sitting in the centre of the table, tiny but unmistakable, was a tuft of pubic hair. Ginger.

The yell that went up, the cry of ‘Ah-ha-ah-ha-HA-HA-HA!’ was so loud, so triumphant that it caused even the
scrappers and their audience to cease for a moment, to turn and stare.

‘A bumper, a bumper for the first Initiate to become a Full Blood Mohock – Fenby, the Hawk!’ Jack turned, seeking a servant.
But before anything else, he saw a pink coat just disappearing into the mob.

‘A moment,’ he said, and swayed off in pursuit.

His quarry might have eluded him again had not the fights, paused at the Mohock cries, recommenced with double vigour. One
of the women leapt on the back of the single man who twisted and bucked. When these tactics failed to shake her, he began
to spin, roaring the while. Just as the pink coat was passing the fray, she was dislodged and landed pretty much square on
Jack’s quarry. Jack reached the fellow as he was endeavouring to rise.

‘Need a hand?’ he said, and, reaching down, he grabbed the man by the collar and jerked him to his feet. It was only when
he had him upright and was looking up into the face – an unaccustomed angle for Jack – that he recognized it.

It was The Man from the Harrow-Westminster cricket match.

‘You!’ Jack’s grip tightened, despite the fellow’s efforts to dislodge it. ‘I know you.’

‘Indeed, sir? Where from?’