Chapter 12 #4
Nobody laughed. Dante had never been part of an audience so silent, so fixated on the relentless tragedy.
He was not alone with his gasps and exclamations as he watched the combat between Cerys and their Laertes.
They fought in the French style, their lunges and parries a lethal dance.
He flinched every time a blow seemed to land, especially when Cerys, taking a blow to the midsection, clutched a hand to her belly and stumbled backward.
Logically Dante knew they would have taken care their stage blades could do no damage, and he saw how the heavier, stronger actor playing Laertes adjusted his steps so the lighter, faster Cerys had an advantage.
But the whole notion of it, a woman, sword fighting, even in play—he’d never seen such a thing before. Cerys Evans had steel to her core.
Dante wasn’t the only one who sucked in a breath when Hamlet, alerted that he wielded a poisoned blade, turned and plunged his sword into the chest of King Claudius.
Dorsey staggered backward, his face full of astonishment and fear, turning over his throne with a resounding crash.
The woman next to Lady Diana screamed and fainted, slumping in her chair.
Without taking her eyes from the action, Diana pulled a vinaigrette from her reticule and waved the bottle beneath her neighbor’s nose.
The sting of ammonia, tempered with lemon, floated through the air.
The poor widow roused only to sob through the rest of the scene as a staggering Hamlet wrested the poisoned cup from Horatio and pretended to down the last of it so Horatio could not.
Dot, on her knees, held Cerys in her arms as she delivered her last speech, celebrating Hamlet’s triumph even as she looked upon the horror and futility wrought by his acts.
Dante shivered at the sorrow and rage in Dot’s voice as she bid her sweet prince good night and closed her friend’s staring eyes. The actors dimmed the lamps as they exited, leaving one to shine on the carnage left behind, Cerys in the center, so still Dante was not certain she was breathing.
Utter silence swelled in the room, edged by the murmur of wind outside and the stifled sobs of a few ladies. Bathsheba stared stonily at the stage, her eyes gleaming.
Andover stood and clapped loudly. “I say! Bravo.”
His hearty tone broke the spell. Dutton leapt to his feet and joined the applause. “Indeed, bravo!”
One by one the other men stood, and even a few women.
Lady Diana drummed her closed fan on one gloved palm.
Her neighbor clutched a handkerchief to her face with one hand, vinaigrette in the other, valiantly striving to bring her emotions under control.
Pearson Thompson, overcome by the press of feeling, whooped and threw his hat into the air.
Lord Baeccon turned and spoke low into the ear of his wife, who didn’t bend her head or change her expression, but nodded briefly.
She clapped a few desultory times as the actors assembled for their bows, the ones sprawled on the stage helped up by their peers.
Dot hauled Cerys to her feet and the two women grinned with delight at one another, then stepped forward, arm in arm, to bow together to the admiring audience. Dante applauded as hard as he could.
Ophelia came forward and put her hand in Cerys’s, who gave her a look of frank delight, then bowed as Ophelia curtsied.
Mame curtsied on the arm of Dorsey, who made an extravagant bow, sweeping back his furred cloak and enjoying the boos and hisses mingled with the applause that told him his king had been properly villainous.
But when he handed Cerys forward, the sustained applause was for her, and she bowed and bowed again, her face alight.
Dante rubbed the center of his chest, buttons of his coat scraping his palm.
There was an ache he’d never felt before.
He didn’t have the words for it. He felt he were being stretched in two directions.
He was larger than he’d ever felt before, swelling with this unidentifiable sensation, and yet at the same time he felt he could be snipped in two and done an irreparable injury.
Andover stepped forward, took Cerys’s hand, and kissed it. The move seemed incongruous, dressed as she was, but she responded with a curtsy, and the woman returned. A woman who had brought a nuance to Shakespeare’s hero in a way Dante had never seen.
Andover brought her forward into the crowd, where she might accept their praise and congratulations.
The lights brightened again, the lamps turned up as servants brought candles into the room.
Dante could see how the makeup had accentuated her features, darkening her brow, hollowing her cheeks.
This close, the softness of her face and the grace of her breeches-clad form made it seem impossible she could ever be mistaken for a man.
Yet the illusion of the stage still clung, and Dante felt he looked upon her with dimensions enlarged and deepened by the entire world of thought and feeling that she had created on stage.
The limpid ingenue, the competitor matching wits with Bathsheba, the little twit hiding on the chaise that day in the library, and the harpy who had raked him over when he was being dull and sullen—they were all aspects of her.
So was the talented actress who could draw an audience into her hand and manipulate their emotions at her whim.
Who was the real woman? Had he even seen her yet?
He might have. Perhaps the girl he’d kissed in the moonlight was Cerys stripped down to her core: confident, passionate, clever, beautiful, and all supple silk in his arms.
He ought not think of kissing her again. Therein lay its own kind of madness. He searched for words of congratulation as Andover, bearing his star in his wake, brought Cerys to him.
Bathsheba appeared beside them. She was an inch or two taller than the girl, and far more voluptuous, a luxurious ornament in her expensive evening gown. But Cerys burned with raw presence, and her dignity was greater as she made her curtsy to the lady, who acknowledged her with a cold nod.
“There, milady Baeccon. You cannot say their play didn’t bring the house down.
” Dutton, as usual, pushed his way in. People milled about the saloon, still arguing about the action and the characters.
Customarily, in the theater, a play was forgotten the moment it ended by all save those who meant to write about it in the next day’s papers.
“Your Hamlet was a sensation,” Dutton said to Cerys. “You’ll be the talk of the town.”
“I know Lady Baeccon was most keen to see Ophelia,” Cerys answered.
“Would you say our Tryphenie did admirably well, your ladyship?” Her voice was slightly hoarse, after all the long speeches, and her heavy-lidded eyes gave her an expression both tired and content.
She had wrung the utmost passion out of herself for hours, and she was spent.
She might wear much the same look after hours in his bed.
Dante shoved the thought away. He should not burn for the girl, and moreover, Bathsheba must not see him burning.
“I think your Ophelia tripped on one or two lines. And she has a weak voice for singing,” Bathsheba said.
“I thought I was going to weep,” Thompson said, joining them with his son at his side. “And I very nearly shouted when Hamlet went after that old wretch Polonius. You handle a sword with some flair, Miss Evans. Considering you’re a woman.”
“But when you threw yourself into Ophelia’s grave,” Pearson Thomspon said, regarding Cerys with the purest adoration. “You made it seem there is nothing more noble in the world but to die for love.”
“Nothing more foolish, perhaps,” said Bathsheba. “I thought that scene was particularly overwrought.”
“Hamlet as a woman!” Lady Diana sailed up to the group, waving her fan beneath her chins.
“I admit I heard Siddons had pulled it off once or twice, but I never thought to see it done myself. You were splendid, Miss Evans. Come here, girl, and kiss me.” She presented her cheek, and Cerys leaned in for a soft peck, leaving a tiny print of red behind.
Dante burned.
Bathsheba looked sour. “I cannot say the ploy altogether succeeded with me. Too strange and unusual, to see a woman in men’s clothing.
And with the sword fighting, and violence, and madness, and cursing—I cannot think a refined lady would attempt such a role, and a refined lady watch such vulgarity with any pleasure. ”
She delivered this to Dante, as if trying to say again that Cerys was not for him. Not the woman who could help his career or his reputation. Not the woman who could bring him status as a gentleman.
At the moment it hardly mattered. What he wanted was to enfold Cerys in his arms and draw her close to him. He wanted to press that slender body against every inch of his own and hold her so close he might feel her heart beat against his skin.
“That must make me a vulgar lady,” Diana reflected, “as I had a smashing good time. And poor Prudence was completely overset, weren’t you, Pru?”
“I admit it is often said of me that I am tender-hearted.” Her friend in widow’s weeds pressed a large embroidered handkerchief to her face.
“My friends will tell you that I am too easily moved. But that was splendidly done, my dear. And your Gertrude—she quite pierced my heart. She did not love Claudius, but she could not escape him. She was trapped.”
Cerys nodded. “I will convey your appreciation to our Gertrude, madam. She will be grateful to hear you were moved.”
“And that Polonius!” Thompson remarked. “He got what was coming to him. Scheming, manipulative worm. All he cared about was exploiting his children to get them close to the crown. How I despise ambitious men.”