“Damn me, Mrs. St. Clare!” she said now, and her deep hoarse rough voice carried above all the noise of the room. “But it pleased me mightily to hear of your good fortune!” She leaned close, smelling strongly of brandy and spoilt fish, and gave Amber a jab in the ribs. “When ye asked me t‘other day where ye might hire a woman I says to m’self, ‘Aha! Mrs. St. Clare’s a-goin’ into keepin’, I’ll warrant you!’ But I’ll swear I never guessed the gentleman’d be Captain Morgan!” She leered and nudged, and jerked her thumb in the direction of the glowering group across the room.

Scroggs had taken Amber’s cloak and fan and muff and was helping her out of her gown. “Neither did anyone else, I see,” murmured Amber, glancing toward them with a significant lift of one eyebrow. She bent over to step out of her petticoats.

“Foh! Ye should’ve seen the look on the face of Mrs. Snotty-nose when she heard the news!” She laughed heartily, showing 250 the holes in her mouth where teeth had been, and slapped her great thigh. “Damn me! I thought she’d bust a gut!”

Amber smiled, taking the combs out of her side curls and giving her hair a shake. And then, as she looked at her, Beck’s head turned and their eyes met directly. For a long moment they stared, Amber exultant, taunting, Beck seething with rage, and then all at once Beck turned away, raising her right hand to show Amber the stiff middle finger. Amber laughed out loud at that and picked up the black wig she was to wear for her part as Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s tragedy, sliding it down over her own coarse bright silken hair.

She knew well enough herself that she was ill-suited to play the Egyptian queen—the part might much better have gone to Anne Marshall—but the idea had been Tom Killigrew’s and in her black wig with her eyes elongated by black pencil, a sleeveless sequin-spotted vest which just covered her breasts and a thin scarlet silk skirt slit to the knees in front, she had attracted an overflowing house for the past week and a half. Most productions were limited to three or four days, because so small a part of the London population attended plays, but some of the young men had been back four or five times to see this Cleopatra. They were used to a woman’s breasts being displayed in public, but not her hips and buttocks and legs. Every time she walked onto the stage there were whistles and murmurs and the most unabashed comments, but the boxes had been noticeably empty and the ladies were said to have protested they could not tolerate so lewd and immodest a display.

Amber more than half expected trouble and was prepared for it, but though the atmosphere was undoubtedly tense, everything went as usual until the last scene of the last act. Then, as she stood waiting at the side of the stage for her cue to go on, both Beck and Anne Marshall came to stand beside her, Beck on her right, Anne slightly in back. Amber gave Beck a careless glance but continued to watch the stage where the men—in their great plumed head-dresses which told an audience that this was tragedy being performed—were deciding Cleopatra’s fate.

“Well, madame,” said Beck. “Let me offer my congratula-251 tions. You’ve progressed mightily, they tell me—to be kept by only one man now.”

Amber looked at her sharply, and then said with an air of profound boredom: “Lord, madame, you should see your ’pothecary. I swear you’re turned quite green.”

At that instant a pin pricked her from behind and she gave an angry start, but before she had time to say anything Mohun came off the stage, scowled, and muttered at them to go on. With Beck on one side and Mary Knepp on the other Amber walked out, proclaiming in a loud clear voice:

“My desolation does begin to make


A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar ...”

But for the commotion in the audience, the last scene progressed smoothly—through Cleopatra’s dialogue with Caesar, her decision to end her life, the trial suicide of Iras, and then Cleopatra’s own seizure of the pâpier-maché asp, which she addressed in full dramatic tones:

“With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate


Of life at once untie; poor venomous fool ...”

While Beck, as the faithful serving-woman who could not bear her mistress’s death, ran distractedly about the stage, Amber applied the asp beneath her vest and heard a young man down in Fop Corner remark, “I’ve seen this six times. That viper should be weaned by now.”

She clenched her teeth and shut her eyes as in a sudden spasm of pain. But she did not take her tragic parts very seriously and had to resist the inclination to laugh.

After standing motionless for a long moment she began to turn slowly in her death agony. Halfway around, she was arrested by a sudden barking shout of laughter from nearby. And then the sound was repeated from hundreds of throats. It swept on up through the boxes to the galleries beneath the roof, growing ever louder and noisier as it rose, until it seemed to fill the theatre and to come from all sides at once, hammering against her with an almost physical force.

Instinctively conscious that the laughter was directed at her, Amber swung quickly about, putting her hand to the back of her skirt. And though she half expected to find it torn open, she felt there instead a piece of cardboard and ripped it off, sailing it furiously across the stage. Beneath and before and above her she saw a blur of faces, a seemingly endless vista of opened mouths, and at the same instant the apprentices began to beat their cudgels and stamp their feet and a roaring chant went up:

“My tail’s


For sale.


Half-a-crown


Will lay me down!”

Half-crown pieces had begun to ring upon the stage and Amber felt them pelting her sharply, hitting her from every side. The men were climbing onto their benches, shouting at the top of their lungs; the ladies had put on their masks but were shaking with laughter; from top to bottom the theatre was a bedlam of noise and confusion—though not more than forty seconds had passed since Amber’s unlucky turn.

“You lousy bitch!” Amber ground the words through her clenched teeth. “I’ll break your head for this!”

With a hysterical titter Beck started off the stage at a run and, just as the curtains swished frantically together, Amber went after her as fast as she could go, yelling, “Come back here, you damned coward!”

Anne, waiting in the wings, stuck out a foot to trip her, but Amber jumped over it, gave Anne a backhand swipe that sent her staggering, and rushed on. Flying down the narrow dark hallway Beck turned to look back just as she reached the tiring-room, gave a shriek when she saw how close her pursuer was, and dashing in slammed the door. But before she could throw the bolt Amber had burst against it, shoved it open, and with a violent push was inside. In one movement she flung the bolt herself and turned to grapple with Beck.

Clawing and biting, screaming and kicking and pounding at each other with their fists, they rocked and swayed from one side of the room to the other. Their flimsy costumes were soon torn to shreds; their wigs came off and the black eye-paint smeared their faces; bloody scratches appeared on cheeks and arms and breasts. But for the time they were engrossed in rage, unfeeling, unhearing, unseeing.

Outside a crowd had gathered and was pounding at the door, clamouring to be let in. Scroggs moved straddle-legged after them, keeping just out of reach of thrashing arms and legs, cheering and shouting for Madame St. Clare. Once, when she came too close, Beck gave her a vicious kick in the belly that knocked her into a breathless groaning quivering heap on the floor.

At last Amber locked one leg behind Beck’s knee and they went down together, clasped as tight as lovers, rolling over and over with first one on top and then the other. Amber’s nose was streaming and her throat was beginning to feel raw from the blood she had swallowed, but at last she got astride Beck and pummelled her head and face with her fists while Beck fought her off with teeth and clawing nails. Thus they were when Scroggs opened the door and half-a-dozen men rushed in to drag them apart, hauling Amber off and pulling Beck away in another direction. Both women collapsed from sudden nervous exhaustion, and neither protested at the interference. Beck began to cry hysterically, babbling an incoherent stream of accusations and curses.

Amber lay stretched out flat on a couch, Hart’s cloak flung over her, and now while Scroggs sopped at the blood and muttered her fierce congratulations she began to feel the sting and smart of her wounds. Her nose was numb and seemed to have swollen immensely and one eye was beginning to close.

Faintly she heard Killigrew’s loud angry voice: “—the laughing stock of all the town, you damned jades! I’ll never dare show this play again! Both of you are suspended for two weeks—no, three weeks, by God! I’ll have some discipline among you impudent players or know the reason why! And you can pay the cost of replacing your costumes—”

The voice went on but Amber’s eyes were closed and she refused to listen. She was only relieved that Rex, who held his commission in his Majesty’s regiment of Horse Guards, had been on duty at the Palace that day.

Still, when she came back at the end of her enforced vacation she found that though the other women probably liked her no better and envied her no less, she had been accepted as one of them. There was tension and amusement in the tiring-room the first day that she and Beck met face to face, but they merely looked at each other for a moment, then nodded and exchanged cool greetings.