The Mad Monk and the Christmas Pie

Excerpt

The Mad Monk and the Christmas Pie
Mark Lesney © 2021
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

New York City, August 1897

If I had known Stephen was going to try to kill me, I might have practiced my fencing more often.

For some reason, my nemesis was now darting at me like a fiend, his sword slashing. These weren’t our choreographed moves—he was out for blood.

He’d warned me he was going to kill me if I didn’t stop smiling at his wife or talking to her beyond the confines of rehearsals and the stage. But how could I take him seriously? I knew he never loved her, not really in the manner of husband and wife, for the very same reason I was not a credible threat to what passed for their wedded bliss.

I liked Sarah, and she appreciated me. She was one of the few people with wit in the company, so why would I listen to her fool of a husband and break off our budding friendship? But my nonchalance in the face of his threats was finally going to get me killed—or at least would wind up killing my career.

I dodged and parried across the stage, nearly slipping on the smooth wooden planking in front of the floor lamps; it was too soon for me to die, both in real life and the play. Stephen’s face was wild, his eyes wide with fury, though the stark menace in his gaze was somewhat spoiled by the almost comic beard, spirit-glued beneath his real mustache.

As he thrust at me with his sword, I froze for a moment in panic, then barely dodged away. The blade was conspicuously missing the guard on its tip—the nubbed cover that was supposed to keep me from getting skewered. My blade, of course, was useless as a weapon, except for parrying. I had intended no mayhem, so I hadn’t even dreamed of removing the protective sheath.

I did my best to try to disarm him, even though he was so much better than me at swordplay, having practiced it incessantly like a little boy with a new hobby. I’d watched him in mild disdain at how seriously he took it up with our trainer. Though more likely, he wanted to gain proficiency for the chance to engage in another sort of swordplay with our German fencing teacher. Herr Heimrich admittedly had excellent form—especially in white tights.

I’d admired them both as they leaped about in the gymnasium, not realizing that all the while Stephen was practicing how to kill me.

*****

“God, look at them. I’d almost give Karl a tumble myself,” Sarah had breathed out softly, watching her husband and the fencing instructor in action just two short days ago before our opening.

She’d held one hand to her eyes, squinting beneath her chestnut-colored bangs at their quite impressive dance. Both of us were half blinded by the rays of the early morning sun pouring through the arched windows of the fancy gymnasium. The theater management had rented it to hold both our fencing and our dancing lessons.

Sarah pursed her small, delicately pink, and slightly greasy lips. She was nibbling on a buttered crusted roll.

Karl had a nice behind. A perfectly normal, nice, masculine backside, well complemented by the muscular torso above it, the square-jawed manliness of his face, and the dark black of his close-cropped hair.

But Stephen? Greek sculptors might have been at a loss carving such a perfect set of nether quarters out of marble. And Stephen knew it, always choosing pants a size too small, consciously outlining those firm and perfectly formed buttocks. They were not too big to make them feminine, and unlike too many men, they were not so flat as to seem not there at all. He was modestly endowed from the front, as outlined by the slightly noticeable bulge. But then again, his was the perfect Greek mean in all his physical aspects. And though Greeks had gods, not angels, Stephen would have been an ideal naked subject for a Michelangelo to have brought worshipful religious beauty into light.

His golden hair in the sun’s rays through the window was a halo that put my yellow hair to straw in comparison. Had he been a slightly less flamboyant actor, there would have been no one who could have kept him from the highest temples of the stage.

But sadly for the world, and more so for his wife, that perfect ass of Stephen’s was also mounted on the perfect ass. A man whose wit was brilliant, but pointed like a surgeon’s knife, one who operated on the psyches of the people around him without the benefit of chloroform. Or perhaps he was more like a fishmonger, filleting the souls of his victims, like poor Sarah, one right after the other.

But damned that grace and beauty as he slashed and danced in whirling swordsmanship like a master. Or the lead male in a perfectly choreographed ballet, which in truth was what this was, a set of moves destined to awe and captivate an audience far more significant than his poor wife and me.

“It is a marvelous rear end, I must admit,” said Sarah. And I had the grace to blush. She must have been following my thoughts…and gaze.

“But I truly fell in love with him because of his eyes. And I still melt when he looks at me in a certain way. And I tell myself he always comes home, eventually, no matter how far he strays. To me.”

“He’d be a fool not to,” I said chivalrously.

“Yes. Especially since Stephen’s such an utter idiot with money. I hold the purse strings, after all. It’s so hard to keep up paying for his clothes, though, his port, his cigars, and his expensive gifts to agonizingly winsome younger men.”

“Men throw themselves at you all the time. Or try to,” I countered.

“And sadly, no one interests me but Stephen. The one I can’t have.”

I was slightly embarrassed and looked back down at the men in their dance below us.

It was hard not to admire the lunge and thrust between the two of them, both shining in the sunlight in their fencing uniforms. I sighed, knowing my practice bout was next. I was more sturdily built than either of them and much too tall to manage such elegance with a blade. And frankly, I was not at all motivated to exert myself to such tremendous efforts just to look good in a play. Acting was a necessity for me, not a grand ambition as it was for Stephen.

Sarah sighed. “Part of me would almost take Karl to bed for the fun of showing Stephen he couldn’t have just any handsome man he blinked his lashes at. There are still men who prefer women in this world,” she said, popping the last bite of the roll into her mouth. “Though I never seem to meet them,” she finished after a moment’s chewing. “And sometimes I wish I’d married one.”

She was staring directly into my eyes, and I had to look away. She knew full well what I was about, and this was just uncomfortable. The whole conversation was.

“It’s a wonder Stephen never took a fancy to you, Alex. Though I suppose it’s understandable. You’re too threatening to him.”

“Threatening! I’m nothing but a bit player, and he’s one of the twin lights of the modern theater. A younger Jack Gilman…”

“Don’t let Jack hear you say that or Stephen either.” She laughed. “No, you threaten him in so many ways. You’re almost as handsome as Stephen in your way. Even though your nose is a little crooked, no one can see that from the stage. And you’re a bit less pretty. But then, you don’t try to be good-looking as hard as Stephen does. Don’t you hate what he does with his mustache? That wax!

“You’ve lived a real life. A hard life. Not cushioned in a world of make-believe like Stephen. You’ve been out West. You’re an ex-Pinkerton, a former jailbird, a salesman, and everything in-between. You’ve experienced twice the life Stephen has if even half your stories are true, and it shows in everything about you. There’s no pretense. Stephen is all pretense. He’s just an actor. That’s why he hates you. Why he’s jealous.”

“Well, my stories as you call them are all true, though perhaps a tad less glamorous than I make them out to be when I’m drunk. But I’m certainly trying my damnedest to be an actor now. And surely even he can see how little a threat I am in that department!”

“Language, Alexander,” she corrected me automatically. “I love Stephen with my whole heart and soul, but at his worst, he’s a vain little coward and a bit of a bully. And sometimes a spoiled brat! And you show him up by not paying the slightest bit of attention to his boundless wealth of charm.”

I wisely laughed at what she said as if it were a joke.

I was too curious for my own good then. I asked, “Have you and Stephen ever managed to fulfill your marriage vows?” The idea was so foreign to my nature I couldn’t imagine someone like Stephen, someone like me…

“Oh yes, and that’s the terrible thing. It’s the endless chain binding me, giving me belief. And hope.

“Because I am the only woman Stephen ever managed to make love to, however rarely he manages it, and however drunk he has to be. I don’t know what makes me special in his eyes. I only know that I long for those nights when he embraces me with wild passion and then falls into misery like a frightened child clinging to me when we are through. I can’t break free. Because, I guess, at heart, I don’t really want to.”

I shuddered and wondered why she was telling me all this. I had asked without really expecting an answer, but a joking dismissal. It was a horribly private thing to bring up. But then I often wondered what it was about me that made people pour out their confidences. They’d air their dirty laundry as if I were some papist clergyman in a confessional. Perhaps it was my sympathetic face. Or maybe it was because one thing I had learned in life was one should never judge. At least not out loud.

“I’m such a fool, Alexander, a terrible fool. Because I do love him. I love him so much I—” She turned to me, smiled sadly, and reached out to squeeze my hand for comfort. I put my other hand on hers and pressed gently. Then I turned to look down and saw the fencers had paused, separated for a moment from their dance, resting and drinking water scooped up in ladles from a bucket.

Stephen was staring at me now while elegantly dabbing delicate beads of sweat from his perfect forehead with a small white towel. And if he were indeed the living sculpture of a god, I knew right then I would be dead, a lightning bolt tearing through my brain from the hatred he was beaming at me.

I quickly released Sarah’s hand, and the hatred in his gaze spread to a nasty smirk upon his lips and whispered words I couldn’t hear from where I sat, but ones I knew didn’t bode me any good.

And yet, the man was beautiful, even in his mask of jealousy and hatred as Lucifer must have been, still angelic as he fell from heaven’s heights while cursing God.

I should have heeded the warning then.

*****

Little did I know my lackadaisical attitude to practicing swordplay on those sunny mornings in the gym would render me almost helpless now before Stephen’s wild attack upon the stage. I should have taken Sarah’s words about Stephen’s jealous nature to heart. But who could have expected the pompous, harmless Stephen to go entirely off the rails?

It was almost as if he’d become possessed by his character in the play. Why was he so jealous of me, compared to any other man who’d made overtures to Sarah? So many had, before my mild attempts at friendship, because she was such a beauty. And because her talent on stage, far less flashy than Stephen’s and far more natural, drew admirers to hover around her like bees to nectar-laden flowers.

Could Stephen possibly think I was going to supplant him as another loveless husband in her affections? That their admittedly unique and special relationship would be broken by her affinity toward me? He knew damned well I was an admirer of men. One early knowing glance between us at a stagehand stripping off his paint-smeared shirt had let us each know where the other came from. Was Sarah only attracted to men who loved other men?

But I could hardly worry about such things now. As if he wielded a broadsword and not a rapier, Stephen swatted the edge of steel hard against my cheek. I felt like I’d been hit by the lash of a mishandled buggy whip and stumbled back. Happily, only the blade’s point was sharpened, and it didn’t break the skin, but it stung like hellfire.

I was determined not to make a scene or, rather, determined not to interrupt one. So, I clung valiantly to my assigned part in the play—a thwarted lover destined to lose. Otherwise, I would have just rushed Stephen, knocked him down, and punched him in the face, sword in his hands or no. His slim form and lack of actual fighting skill would have been no match for me.

I’d battled wharf rats and thugs and fellow prison inmates in my time, so Stephen would have been nothing to subdue. But we had an audience and producers and theater critics gathered to witness. And I didn’t want my first real job on the stage to be my last by knocking out the lead actor of the play when my role didn’t even carry me to the second act.

At least for now, my longer reach and height and the little bit I’d garnered from my fencing lessons kept Stephen from coming too close to really hurt me. Still, the ungraceful flailing of my own sword against his wild attacks had to look embarrassing. And this was going on too long.

Luckily, Stephen’s anger and fatigue made him sloppy. He was so much better at this than me, but he didn’t have much stamina and couldn’t get in a real thrust. Also, once Sarah realized what was going on, she kept throwing herself at his arms, grabbing hold of him at risk to her own life and limb. Her efforts and my gyrations across the stage had kept me whole. So far.

I ducked as Sarah shouted at him, trying as best she could to stay in character. “Oh, no! Adolphus! No!” and “Spare him, please!” She improvised, giving me just enough time to dodge the most threatening of his thrusts.

But the narrowness of the stage area for our fight, and the damned velvet slippers I had to wear, finally tripped me up. I stumbled backward and fell between the footlights, spaced evenly three feet apart all across the front of the stage, whacking my head hard against the floor just near the edge.

When I looked up, half dazed, Stephen, alias Adolphus, loomed over me with a demonic grin. He shoved Sarah violently aside as she made one last attempt to stop him, and he raised his sword to take the killing blow. I was paralyzed, not with fear but with disbelief, and from the near swoon at having cracked my skull so hard.

Luckily, the lights were the new electrics and not limelight, so my long hair did not burst into flame when I’d rolled too close. But the one I was nearest to was hot as Hades, even several inches from my face.

A woman in the audience was so caught up in the action she shrieked out “No!” in concert with poor Sarah, who was still steadfast in her role. I was doomed. But then Stephen’s sword slipped quickly between my chest and arm.

Exactly as we’d rehearsed it.

Except for one minor thing: he lunged deliberately too close to my inner arm. I felt the sharp pain as the unsheathed tip of his sword scored a quarter inch of my flesh and thudded into the wood beneath my silken shirt. The bastard!

It wasn’t about killing me after all, but about terrifying me, making me the fool upon the stage, and getting in a nasty cut as denouement. It was something of a relief though it hurt like hell.

“Let him die, as all traitors and false friends die! Behold your lover, wench, unmanned and killed before you!” Stephen shouted out his lines with more glee than he had shown all week throughout rehearsals.

I lay there motionless, trying to retain my part. But my arm burned like the devil’s flaming tongue was licking it, and there was blood seeping slowly through my shirtsleeve. And my face was frying so near the light. I fought off a shriek of my own as Stephen pulled free his sword from where it stood upright in the wood beneath me, for it scraped against my wounded arm again as it came free.

But I dared not move because I had to keep in character. If a corpse had any character to speak of.

I was furious and impotent. I’d fallen not where I was supposed to, but much too close to the edge of the stage. I was lucky I hadn’t tumbled over the lights and plunged headfirst into the orchestra pit some ten feet below.

From the corner of my eye, I could see grinning members of the orchestra and the front row of seated patrons beyond. I was strangely gratified by the audience’s rapt and open-mouthed attention—a much better reception than I’d imagined for our opening night in this somewhat silly play.

Their reaction almost made the pain in my side worth it, though I’d be unable to appreciate their attention much longer. The play was less than halfway through, and my part was over, at least once my body was carried off the stage. It was the only hope I had of safe escape.

Sarah looked wide-eyed at the blood now staining my puffy white shirt. She struggled to kneel between the footlights and my body, as her part demanded, and wailed against the heavens and her looming husband, Adolphus.

She pounded my chest, and I nearly joined her wailing as she hit once too close to my wounded arm. She was wildly distraught at my cruel and sudden death, at least in the part she played. But my close-up glance saw only fury and disgust in her eyes as she looked back and forth between my wound and her husband. Stephen stalked triumphantly about the stage, swinging his sword as if beckoning for applause.

As she struggled to get up then and to rave at her Adolphus, her too-well-upholstered pseudo-Renaissance gown caught on the nearest footlight, and she lost her balance.

Sarah cried out as she stumbled at the edge of the wooden stage, tilting to the pit below. I threw off my demise, and despite the agony of my side when the muscles strained, I managed to grab the bodice of her dress with one hand and held on tight to stop her fall.

It was a transitory effort at best, for I saw the relief in her eyes turn to terror as the cheap seams of her flashy costume began to rip. The front piece pulled away in a spray of cheap costume jewels and tearing threads. I scrambled and spit a fake pearl from my mouth before it choked me, but couldn’t make a better grab as, to my dismay, she fell from the stage.

Luckily, the pause in her tumble caused by my seizing her front piece allowed the nearest orchestra members to react. They created a human net, catching her awkwardly but safely before she hit the hard oak floor below.

Not knowing what else to do, six hefty musicians shoved her up by her amply padded bottom, and she scrambled back on stage. The show must go on, as they say.

Unfortunately, the play was not intended to go on with the lead actress fully exposing her bosoms to the audience at large. There was laughter and frantic applause that all but drowned out any outrage as the first rows of spectators realized here was an extraordinary show they hadn’t paid for. I’m sure most of the audience was too far away to comprehend what all the pinkish-whiteness was. Sarah herself only realized a moment too late and valiantly crossed her arms.

I was sure the gentlemen and perhaps a lady or two in the frontmost rows were disappointed at how short the incident really was.

In any event, Sarah had nothing to be ashamed of. It was an accident. And her breasts were appropriate in size and shape so as to please the eye of those who cared for such things.

Stephen rushed to her side and slapped her hard across the mouth—or at least it seemed that way to the audience. Sarah responded gratefully, slipping back into her role as well as into the extra fabric from the shoulders of her dress, which she pulled tightly closed around her.

I still had a problem, though. As a corpse, it was a bit awkward for me to be sitting up, too obviously alive, staring at my murderer and my grieving lover.

So I did the only thing I could. I reached out helplessly to Sarah and improvised. “My love, goodbye! I die!” and fell back once again, shifting away from the edge of the stage and the orchestra pit as best I could, clutching my bloody arm with a wretched groan that was only part pretending.

This time I remembered to turn my face away from the audience and the lamplights; I tried to minimize my breathing as best I could despite my pain.

I lay there wondering about our coming reviews in tomorrow’s newspapers. Several reviewers were sitting out there, I knew, including those from the Tribune and the Sun. They were likely scribbling their hearts out in tiny notebooks for the early morning editions.

I could hardly wait.

*****

The stage doctor tsk-tsked when he saw my wound. He poured some rubbing alcohol over it—no need to waste good gin—and uttered a tsk again at my startled hiss. Then he slapped a big piece of gauze and tape across the cut and sent me on my way without a word of either condolence or encouragement.

I thought I would get some sympathy from the rest of the company and homage for having saved the day and possibly Sarah’s life. Instead, I was met with universal glares and mutterings by the other players and the stagehands. I went back to my cupboard of a dressing room. I brooded over both my insult and my injury, waiting until I heard the thunderous applause indicating the play was finally over. Two more rounds told me curtain calls were taken. I hoped it meant the play was a success, despite the minor mishap of my departure.

I left my tiny closet to go see what repercussions, if any, would result. And to give Stephen a piece of my mind and possibly my fist—to his stomach, of course, not that box-office-filling face—now he and I were both out of character and equally unarmed.

But when I got to the stage manager’s office, I saw a white-faced Sarah, a red-faced Stephen, and our esteemed producers all in a heated argument. Ominously, they were being watched by a pair of uniformed police officers, one of whom was taking notes.

“Someone sent for the cops about the obscenity in the play! They’re threatening to shut us down!” A pimple-faced chorus lad who played a pageboy in our script grabbed my arm and hissed at me sotto voce before I could approach the others. Whether he was warning me or threatening me or simply gloating over my discomfort was a toss-up. He was another of the company who had it in for me, as I’d rejected his advances just the other day. He was much too young for me.

“Just imagine what the papers are going to say—with all them critics sitting right up front and getting an eyeful! Mrs. Sarah’s career is probably ruined!”

I hadn’t thought of that. New York was on one of its proverbial anti-vice crusades, led by another Reverend Somebody-or-Other. And ours was a supposedly legitimate house of entertainment. Not a side-street bordello where such things might be acceptable on a tiny tableau stage. And for a private audience of refined older gentlemen of means.

I waited until the policemen finally left and made my unwanted entrance. The arguments between the lovebirds and the management still raged on.

“He’s been bothering her for weeks. That’s why I tried to teach him a lesson,” Stephen sputtered, angrily pulling at his false beard as parts of it were already falling off. He was still mostly in costume but with the heavy waistcoat removed. “But then right on stage—he assaults her!”

He saw me then. “Look at him! Pretending it was an accident. It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate and shame her for rejecting him. And for him to get his eyes on the loveliness he so much desired but was denied him!” It sounded like he was still playing Adolphus and not even realizing it.

“Stephen! Shut up, and don’t make things worse! It’s bad enough you told the police nonsense; don’t start believing it yourself. I’m mad enough at you as it is!” Sarah was still in her final costume, a voluminous nightdress—the clothes she wore when Adolphus strangled her at the end of the play and in which she took her curtain call. She had a woolen shawl, not part of the play, wrapped around her shoulders as if she was cold or still remembering her earlier exposure to the world.

“He tried to rape you! There onstage!”

“That’s ridiculous!” I shouted at the blithering fool as I came forward to join the conversation, one hand pressed against my side.

“Of course it is,” said Arnie Johansson, the producer. Then his eyes widened. “But then it’s not! It’s the perfect solution. There’s still time to send notes to all the papers. How it was an attack on Sarah’s virtue by a scorned suitor. An attempt to destroy her, her husband, and the play all in one go. An attack fended off only by Stephen’s brilliant swordsmanship!”

“What?” I squeaked out in disbelief, my voice a full octave higher than usual.

“I’ll go to the World myself. Willie, their theater critic, is a friend of mine, and he’ll write up the story the way we want it. He’ll be so angry he didn’t come himself to get an eyeful, he’ll be delighted to get the ‘true’ story before the other papers do. Especially since it’s so much more a juicy tale than we simply had a tawdry accident—we might even make the front page if we play our cards right. Sarah will be the pitiful victim and Stephen the hero. It will be perfect—and keep the police off our backs. And maybe invigorate the idea of the ‘lovers of the century’ in the public’s mind.”

“But what about me? I’ll be arrested.” I felt it necessary to point out.

“Oh, don’t worry. We won’t press charges. Just fire you. That should be enough to satisfy everyone. If they arrest you, it will just be for a minor indecency charge. You’ll hardly be in jail any time at all, and I’m sure we can do something about helping with any fine—”

“No company will hire me again!”

“Oh, well, dear boy, these things happen. Best to take it like a man. Good of the whole and all. We’ll give you some severance. Despite your looks, you aren’t God’s gift to the theater anyway, are you? I mean, you can manage the part of the handsome young swain well enough. But your acting and the sloppy swordplay at the end there. I was taking notes backstage and was going to talk to you about it afterward. So it hardly matters. I would have probably recast your part in a week or two anyway.

“At least, this way, you’ll do the play some good.”

And so, they threw me out into the streets. More or less. They did let me pack up my few belongings from my makeup stand in the narrow-mirrored cupboard room I shared with two other bit players, neither of whom cared enough to say goodbye. Though one of them kindly held the stage door open as I left.

One or two theater groupies were still lingering on, hoping to get a glimpse of the famous lovers. They were gravely disappointed as I scuttled away, disappearing with my arms clutched around my suitcase into the dark, still nursing my painful side.