Madame Presidentess

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

JUNE 1856

“Christ in Heaven! This is the last week of the show. Where are we going to find someone willing to learn this bit part for a pittance?” The director’s near-hysteria carried through the dressing room door and over the laughter of actors, clanging of gears, and whining of pulleys as the set men prepared for the evening show.

Anna looked over her shoulder as I sewed her into her costume. “You and I have been running lines from this show for months now. Surely you know the part of the country cousin?”

“I think I know all the parts,” I said around a mouthful of pins. I spit them out and set them on the table in front of Anna. “But that doesn’t mean they will give it to me.”

The idea was tempting. The more I’d watched the actors over the last two years, the more I’d come to realize that what they did wasn’t all that different from what Tennie and I had done in Pa’s shop. In fact, acting was easier. They only had to say the lines prepared for them; they didn’t have to worry about real spirits changing the script. And the money… as the director said, it wasn’t much, but it would be a nice supplement.

“Yes, they will.” Anna shrugged away from me. “Just you watch.”

That was how I found myself onstage for the first time that night, wearing a costume rather than mending one and saying a few simple lines in front of the gaslights. I wasn’t onstage for long, but when I was, the feeling was like nothing I’d ever experienced, not even when I was in touch with the spirit world. I felt as though the power of all those eyes on me transformed me into the best version of myself. Or maybe because I got to be someone else, I felt free enough to be who I really was and more. After all, for those brief minutes, I wasn’t Victoria Woodhull, seamstress and wife to an alcoholic bastard of a husband. I was the country cousin of the great actress Anna Cogswell.

By the time New York by Gaslight closed that Sunday, San Francisco had begun to take note of the newest actress on its stage. There was even a small blurb in the paper that mentioned me by name in the closing night review.

“Look, Canning, isn’t it exciting?” I said to him the next day while we ate breakfast. “Anna says the director was so impressed by my talent he’s thinking of casting me in his next show. Can you believe it?”

Canning looked up from the review I’d shoved beneath his nose. “Another bit part or a real role?” He sniggered. “The more time you spend onstage, the more time those Johnnies are going to expect from you after the curtain falls, and I won’t have any wife of mine playing the demimonde.”

I waved away his concerns. “This is a real part. It pays fifty-two dollars a week. That’s nearly three times as much as I make as a seamstress.”

That caught Canning’s attention. “I’ll give you my blessing, but know I will be there almost every night and I will be watching what you do after the show. If you so much as look at one of those backdoor bastards, I’ll pull you from the show by the roots of your bleached wig, you hear?”

Canning must be around here somewhere. Please let him show up soon. I never thought I’d actually want to see my husband backstage—most nights he flitted around like an annoying mosquito—but tonight I could have used his temper to rid me of this particularly persistent admirer.

“Come on now, darlin’, I’m only asking you to dinner.” Anton Joss’s cigar-stained breath ruffled my hair as he trailed a finger up my arm from wrist to shoulder then back down again. “What happens after that is up to you.”

He had me pinned against one of the stage walls, one arm on either side of my neck so I could barely move, much less escape. “Mr. Joss, your offer is very kind, but as I’ve told you before, I am married to a very jealous man who would not take kindly to my being out at all hours with you when I should be at home in his bed.”

I glanced away from his thick mustache, my gaze darting around the wing. When I caught her eye, Josie sent me a concerned look. But there was nothing she could do, nothing anyone could do. Mr. Joss was one of the show’s backers, and if I wanted to keep my part in The Corsican Brothers, I had to keep him happy—even if that meant spreading my legs for him. I’d managed to fend off his advances thus far, but it appeared his patience was at an end. Where is my husband?

I swallowed hard, seeing I would have to consent. Perhaps I could slip out after the show without him noticing? But then I’d just have to face him the next day. There were only two ways this could end: I could say yes and submit to whatever depravity he required, or I could refuse and watch my job disappear.

“Your offer is very kind, but I simply do not feel right accepting it as a married woman.”

Mr. Joss stepped toward me, closing the inch of space between us. “If that’s the way you wish to play it—”

“The lady said no.” Canning’s voice from somewhere behind my admirer was a blessed relief. Before I could even let out my breath, Canning had pulled him away from me and landed a punch square on Mr. Joss’s nose. “You can play with the other actresses all you wish, but my wife is off-limits. And if you don’t heed me, I will personally see that you don’t have the equipment”—he shot a purposeful look at the man’s crotch—“to ever make a play for another woman again.”

Mr. Joss recovered quickly, straightening his rumpled suit. “Remember that I hold your wife’s employment in my hands. One word from me and she will never find another job in these theatres again as an actress or seamstress.”

Canning answered by throwing a rude gesture over his shoulder as he hustled me toward my dressing area. “I think it’s time you find another line of work.”

“Doing what, Canning? This is all I can do. I know I’m meant for something higher, but what? And how? Will you lay off your drink and your laudanum long enough for us to find out?”

Canning blanched at my mention of his newest habit.

“Don’t act like you think I don’t know that gin and whiskey alone don’t satisfy you anymore. Am I to become a cigar girl, as you once joked, to support your new habit?”

Canning smacked me hard, but I hardly noticed. After five years of marriage, I barely registered his blows anymore. If I didn’t react, he was less likely to do it again. I’d figured out long ago it was the rise, the reaction, he enjoyed. If I robbed him of that, he lost interest.

I was saved from any further conversation by the shrill call of “Places!” as the director made his last-minute pass through our dressing area, ensuring everyone was prepared for the opening scene.

Without another word, Canning left to take his seat. I paced through the first several scenes, waiting for my cue. Maybe it was my encounter with Mr. Joss or the words Canning and I had exchanged or perhaps that the moon was full, but I was restless, unable to still my body or mind. Something was tugging at my edges like a communication from the spirits I could not quite hear.

Thankfully, all that melted away when I took the stage. Under the lights, amid the swell of music from the orchestra that accompanied our ballroom scene, I was able to think clearly again. My lines spilled forth without conscious effort as I charmed the audience and my castmates with graceful aplomb.

The conversation onstage centered on an exchange about the separation of the two titular brothers, but I couldn’t pay attention. My restlessness returned with a force I could barely contain. The gaslights faded, and I saw Tennie in my mind’s eye. She was dressed in a striped calico dress, holding her arms out to me.

“Victoria, come home,” she said with no small amount of urgency.

Something was wrong. I had no idea what, but whatever was going on, my sister was in dire enough straits to send her spirit directly to me to beg for help. Without a thought for the play taking place around me, I dashed off into the wings and didn’t bother to remove my pink silk dress or slippers. I gathered up my few valuables from my dressing area and ran headlong into the foggy drizzle.

Canning met me around the front of the theatre. “Vickie, are you unwell? What is going on?”

I shook my head, trying to catch my breath while simultaneously urging him back toward our home. “We have to go.”

“What? Why?”

“I’ve had a vision of my sister. All I know is we are needed. We must be on the morning steamer to New York.”