Chapter 11 #2
She oughtn’t be thinking about passion in connection to Dante.
She caught the ribbons slapping her neck and held them in one fist. She oughtn’t be thinking of him as Dante.
He was and must remain Mr. Manelli, a draughtsman employed for the benefit of the troupe as a whole, a craftsman whose only relation to her life lay in his skill.
She most certainly ought not be thinking how the austerity of his buildings reflected the polished surface of the man, a scrupulous correctness that she so desperately longed to unravel.
There was fire within him, and she wanted to sever the iron chain by which he bound himself and let the inner man go free.
Mame paused beside her, a touch of wistfulness in her expression.
“I’ll stay on the stage as long as an audience will pay to see me, and after that I’ll stay on as tirewoman to the younger ones,” Mame said.
“Dottie will likely stay on to take over running the company after Dorsey’s done—it’s a family business to her.
Hackett will want his heart to give out while moving furniture between acts, and Meek wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.
But the rest of them, especially Rhoda and Tryph.
Rhoda will fall in love again someday, and Tryphenie…
” She paused. “Tryph might spend her life with the group. She’ll never want anything more. But you, child.”
There it was again. “You’re all just waiting for the day I decide to leave.” Cerys tried to keep her voice light and careless, veil the bitterness in her tone. “Turn myself out of the company as easily as I burrowed my way in.”
“We all know you’re meant for more, Cerys. And we’re just wondering when you’ll want that for yourself.”
Cerys resumed walking, passing Liddell’s Boarding House and the soaring neoclassical facade with its parade of windows and columned porch.
She twitched her shoulders, trying to shrug off Mame’s question and the guilt it raised.
They were no more than the same questions she asked herself in the wee hours when a pale moon shone through her window, peering into her thoughts.
Asking when she would go back to what she had left behind, and all the people she pretended weren’t depending on her.
Weren’t waiting for her to recover from her lark or her freak or whatever fancy had struck her brain in taking off as she had.
When would she come home and be a valuable extra set of hands, and keep turning round the world she had grown up in, behaving as if she didn’t know now there was so much more out there.
Cerys gestured toward the buildings of gentle stone, arranged in graceful lines, and pushed away also the memory of Dante Manelli that they brought to mind.
“I know you think I came from a great house, like one of these,” she said to Mame.
The other girls trailed behind them, dallying along the road lined with the homes of the wealthy and fancying what it would be like to live within them.
Fred and Meek, their escorts, lagged farther behind still, country boys gawking at the wealth of town.
There was little chance the others would hear, or were even listening.
“But I didn’t,” Cerys said. “I grew up poor as a church mouse. I didn’t have a thing to call my own except my name.
When my mother came to Newport, we had nothing.
She and her friend moved into an old priory they thought was abandoned and made a home of it, taking in others like us who had no home, no family, no place in the world.
” She smiled at Mame’s expression, half fascination, half horror.
“It was better than the workhouse,” she said.
“I had a large family, really. And in time, my mother married Evans, and the lord who owned the place sold it to my mother, and now travelers come to St. Sefin’s to visit the shrine of the saints and see the treasures the old nuns left behind, to eat real Welsh food and hear the language and see the Norman architecture in the church next door to us.
It’s a boarding house of a kind, much like this one. ”
She turned onto the Colonnade, broad and spacious, the columns drawing the eye, and the soul, upward into a contemplation of higher, more beautiful ideals.
She now knew this was another project Dante had been hired to begin but had not been able to complete, and she guessed how that felt, to know he had the vision and the determination but must depend on others with the tools to bring his vision to life.
“And if—when—I go back to that…” Cerys stopped in the half-completed Colonnade, outside the building advertising itself as a circulating library.
She wanted to savor the grandeur for a moment, the ambition of a place that had tried to make itself over to suit the fancy of a King and partially succeeded.
“When I go back,” she said softly. “I’ll be minding the babanod, airing the linens, and giving the tour of the treasures, telling the exciting story of how they were hidden from thieves and the King’s armies in the great oaken altar that had been made in the time of the Empress Matilda.
Or at least, that was the story I made up.
” She caught the loose end of a ribbon from her bonnet and tucked it into place, giving Mame a wistful smile.
“I invented many of the stories we told about St. Sefin’s.
I was performing for our pilgrims and guests for years before I ran away to join the theater. ”
Mame nodded in understanding. “You wanted to play a different role.”
“Yes.”
In truth she couldn’t say precisely what she had wanted.
Only to tame the restless urge itching beneath her skin, to see more of the world, to do more.
She’d wanted to play many different roles.
She’d been the Welsh hostess and tourist attraction.
She’d been apprentice to healers, wise women, and bakers.
She’d had brief moments of religious ecstasy, but then realized the Anglican Church had no roles for women, unless to be wives of vicars or deacons and directors of the charitable committees.
She’d been the pet of Lady Vaughn, running tame through the rooms and gardens of Greenfield, and she’d spent Seasons in London with Lady Penrydd, making visits and excursions, attending card parties and soirees and what balls she was allowed as a young woman not officially out, and not of any status that would merit a presentation to the Queen.
And she’d been to the theaters—all of them, as many times as she could find someone to take her—and there she’d found a world that held everything all at once, all the ideas, all the characters, all the stories of heartbreak and triumph and danger and love that were so much grander than anything the dreary ordinary world could provide.
It had been an opportunity not only to explore the world, but to test herself.
Who was she, outside of St. Sefin’s and the bounds of her extended family, that home she had always known?
Did she have a voice, an identity that was her own and not constructed from her history and her past?
Could she matter to the world beyond her indulgent family and the protection of her powerful friends?
“I suppose you’ll think me silly,” she said slowly.
“And vain. I didn’t run away to escape cruelty or find a better life.
No young woman could have a better life than I did, when it comes to being loved.
I suppose I wanted to test the world and see if those who didn’t know me might love me, too. Or at least see something of value.”
“The admiration of the world is a fickle thing, child. The love of an audience the most fickle of all. You’re better off being cherished by a few people who know you well than leaving your fortunes, or your worth, to be judged by the wider world.”
Cerys turned to face the older woman. “So you think I should go back?”
“By no means,” Mame said lightly, tucking Cerys’s arm into hers.
“Dorsey’s growing plump in the pocket thanks to you.
We all benefit when the tickets are sold.
If you can wheedle funds out of the pockets of a few investors, we’ll have a theater of our own and a place to give the crowds a good show.
We’ll bless your name for always, no matter where you end up. ”
“I suppose, if I’ve behaved as if my time with you was temporary, it’s because I knew my family was indulging me, letting me roam about and test my wings.
” Cerys walked in step with the other woman, taking comfort in Mame’s wisdom and warm, generous frame.
“At some point, I will need to return, and hopefully have some small success to boast of, if I may. I do have my share of vanity, I suppose.”
“All actors must, I think,” Mame drawled. “But you’re young, Cerys, and clever, and a bit lovely, even though I do think you could stand to put some flesh on your bones.” Mame nudged her playfully. “But is it only the theater or Wales, child? What if there is somewhere else? Or someone?”
“I won’t make a good mistress,” Cerys said at once. “Too headstrong, too used to having my own way. If I’m to bend myself out of shape to please someone, I’ll do it for my mother’s guests, and earn honest coin in the doing.”
“I’m not saying you must give yourself into another’s keeping. And I wouldn’t recommend you take any proposition from the Italian, come to that. I am only saying, your mother built her own life, and she sounds like an admirable woman for doing so. But must that be your life, as well?”
Cerys walked along, leaning on Mame’s arm as they emerged into High Street with all its toil and bustle. “You’re asking me what I want next.”
“You must know, girl. You’ll have some wish in your heart.”
But she didn’t know what else there could be for her. There was the world she had known, and the family she had found with Dorsey. At some point she would have to pick one or the other, and stick with her choice, knowing…