The Vizard Mask
Page 1
The Vizard Mask
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Publisher’s Note
Dedication
BOOK I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
BOOK II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BOOK III
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
BOOK IV
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BOOK V
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Author’s Note
Copyright
This book contains views and language on nationality, ethnicity, and society which are a product of the time in which the book is set. The publisher does not endorse or support these views. They have been retained in order to preserve the integrity of the text.
To Bertie and Oliver Norman
BOOK I
Chapter 1
Penitence Hurd and the Plague arrived in London on the same day.
Penitence was eighteen and carried a beaded satchel.
The Plague travelled by fur-lined carriage and was as old as sin. It had been to London before – part of it had never left – but this time conditions were perfect for its purpose. The summer of 1664 had been the hottest in living memory and an overcrowded population was being swelled daily by workers in the luxury trade catering for the merry monarchy of Charles II – the number of ribbon-makers alone ran into thousands. In the poor areas people were crammed so close they breathed in air that had just been breathed out by everybody else.
Master Endicott, captain of the Deliverance, was being flustered by Customs men. ‘Thee wait now, Pen, until I can take thee to the minister.’
Penitence had no intention of waiting, especially for a minister. Her experience with the Reverend Block back in Massachusetts had rendered her fearful of all ministers. She stood still until Master Endicott took the Customs men into the hold and then she scurried down the gangplank.
From another ship further along the Plague was carried down a hawser to the wharf.
A rat whisked across Penitence’s path, but she barely noticed it. She’d encountered rats before, it was London she was new to. The smell along this piece of its river frontage was a combination of dockside and country; the stink of fish, tar and dirty water was almost wiped out by the manure rotted on the towering heaps of dung gathered from the streets, ready to be shipped to the gardens of Whitehall.
But it was the noise. Drivers of wagons going down to the wharf altercated with the drivers of wagons coming up. Wheels rumbled as dockers yelled, ships and cranes creaked, rigging flapped and water-boatmen called ‘Ho’s’ eastward and westward. Beyond it all, like a titanic millwheel, was the resonance of a city that shook with the vibration of half a million people.
Deafened, Penitence just in time jumped out of the way of a wagon carting strong-smelling wool. ‘Some trust in chariots, and some in horses,’ she scolded it, ‘but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20, verse 7.’ She glanced up at the sun to take her bearings. It was setting now, and London Bridge with its houses was a black cut-out against vermilion.
‘West.’ To go west she had first to go north along the narrow, loomed-over street that had led up from the river, but she turned left as soon as she could. Politely, she dropped a curtsey to everyone in her path, but, since that meant bobbing up and down like a sanddipper and nobody saluted her back, she became tired of the exercise. ‘They have mouths but they speak not: eyes have they but they see not. Noses have they and they smell… awful.’ The school joke was to cheer herself up. Master Endicott, bless him, had tried to tell her. ‘Thee cannot contain the thought of it, Pen. ’Tis a Leviathan. Thee could put all Boston in one of its parishes and lose it.’
He was right; she had been unable to imagine it. She was used to distant horizons. Here the few open spaces were cross-angled by buildings that blocked in her vision, buildings that bent over her, seeming to shuffle up and claim her attention with beautiful woodwork and worn gargoyles. Overhead a forest of signboards splattered her face with raindrips from an earlier shower as she gawped up at them.
She was an odd figure, her neatness pointing up the chaos through which she moved. Her black dress covered her thin body from her throat down to the tops of her ploughboy boots and showed that she had no breasts to speak of and was stiff-backed. Her walk was ungainly for a woman, the lope of one who covers long distances easily. Plainer women were more attractive than she was because Penitence Hurd not only was not aware that she had beauty, but would have been ashamed of that fact if had she known it.
Even without the high-crowned hat – its buckle exactly centred – covering every inch of her hair, she would have declared herself a Puritan by her care to avoid physical contact with passers-by and the purse of her lips as she looked about her. London had known that look during the days of the Commonwealth; it had toppled maypoles, cancelled Christmas, closed theatres, killed its king and forbidden sin. Now it had set up a new king along with the maypoles, the bears were back, sin was in fashion, and no disapproving sniff from Penitence Hurd’s nose was going to get rid of them, thank her kindly. She sniffed on, occasionally jeered at as an oddity by rude boys, though no more than they jeered at beggars, madmen, amputees, soldiers, richly dressed women and jugglers in this modern Babylon. Men and women openly tumbled each other in the doorways of taverns. Others fought, some vomited. A lady in a carriage passed by with her bosom exposed and was not arrested.
‘’Tis an habitation of dragons.’ Crime she had expected, but not this engulfing wickedness, not foul words from men as she passed, not a flaunting of sin that was an aggression aiming itself at her, as if hers alone was the innocence it meant to destroy.
‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.’ Clutching her righteousness and her satchel, Penitence travelled on. The sun had long gone down, but, instead of retiring to bed like a Christian, London lit the flambeaux in its streets, illuminated its windows and intensified its wickedness.
A crowd at the top of Ludgate Hill stopped Penitence’s progress and in trying to press through it she was trapped between a wall and a well-covered gentleman. Penitence’s hat had been pushed to the back of her head and, glancing round, the well-covered gentleman saw her eyes. ‘Keep close.’ Unable to do anything else, Penitence kept close as, shouting ‘Make way’, the gentleman whacked a path with his staff for them both through to the front. ‘Get along there.’
His was the first amiable countenance she’d seen since leaving Master Endicott and, as she couldn’t move anyway, Penitence stayed by him.
‘Sir John Lawrence, heard of him?’ asked her new acquaintance.
Penitence shook her head.
‘He’s our new Lord Mayor, Sir John. Queenhithe man. Being chaired today. And what do you think of our little city?’ It was a rhetorical question. Penitence’s acquaintance was revelling in unfolding the wonders of it to this country bumpkin.
Trumpets and drums sounded in the distance, the crowd began cheering the empty street in anti
cipation until runners in the king’s livery and carrying torches filled it. ‘Now then,’ said the well-covered gentleman, ‘here they be.’
The City and Charles II were still on their honeymoon, and a wild affection suffused the crowd as coaches carrying the court presaged that of the king’s. Penitence’s acquaintance showed off, sweeping his hat to each coach, listing his familiarity with the great in a litany of names for his own benefit as much as Penitence’s. ‘Count Cominges, the Frog. Hyde, the old devil. Duke of Buckingham. Albemarle. Southampton. Arlington. Ormonde… and here he is, bless him. Got the queen with him tonight.’
Ignoring the presence of the queen, the crowd emitted rutting noises in appreciation of its king’s libido. Forearms imitated the sexual act as voices in the cheering advised him to ‘Swive ’em, Rowley’. The loudest calls, however, were for war with the Dutch. ‘Blow the butterboxes to hell.’
Charles Stuart himself. Shall I spit? Turn my back? Who else in this mass of sinners would reprove the man? It was Christ the Lord should be ruling England, not this Papist-sympathizing wencher. She risked a peek at Satan rampant. No smell of sulphur, no forked tail. Penitence’s nose sniffed perfume, and for a second her eyes, instead of the hackneyed evil she’d expected, saw something more complex and more awful.
Sobered, she followed her new friend through the dispersing crowd. ‘Now then, young lady, where do you want to go?’
Penitence delved into her satchel-bag and brought out the slate she had prepared with the words: ‘I do search for my aunt. Last known address, the Rookery, St Giles-in-the-Fields.’ She held it up.
The gentleman was pitying. ‘Dumb eh? Poor maid, poor maid.’ Then his expression hardened. ‘The Rookery? You don’t want to go to the Rookery.’
But the girl’s expression too had changed, the eyes he’d admired were dull with the obstinacy often observed in the afflicted. ‘Very well, I’ll show you your way, but I warn you…’ He warned her all down Ludgate Hill to the gate and up Fleet Street. Civilization was the City: its extension into the Strand, Covent Garden, Whitehall and Westminster was still the home of gentlemen, but half-way up Drury Lane things became dubious and by Holborn, and especially St Giles, downright barbaric.
That his beloved city had no charitable alternative to offer the poor girl made his warnings increasingly angry, so that by the time they had reached Drury Lane he shouted: ‘I have a care for my purse, mistress, if you have not,’ and stumped away, giving her no chance to thank him. After a few paces, however, he paused and watched the strange small person in its dreadful hat and boots lope out of sight. Her chances of reaching her destination without assault were slim, her chances of staying unraped once there were non-existent. Well, he’d told her, done his best, gone out of his way, couldn’t think why he’d bothered. The memory of her eyes put him out of temper the rest of the night.
* * *
By a quicker route than Penitence’s the Plague’s carriage took itself to the Fleet Ditch by the time Penitence and her companion crossed it. It could have settled more than once, but a force stronger than itself twitched the rat on towards even greater congestions of people. It liked the habitation of people, the more crowded the better.
Finding itself in the gardens of Bedford House, it sensed there was nothing for it in these spaces. Its teeth couldn’t gnaw marble and stone, it couldn’t breed in roof-tiles. Its shadow elongated as it slipped along a gutter at the edge of Covent Garden Piazza. It turned left and north.
Better. Better. Thatch, and rotten wood, open cesspits, the warmth of human bodies living close. There was no point in going on; its flickering whiskers brought the message that not far away habitation thinned into fields which were no use to it.
It was glad to stop. It wasn’t feeling at all well.
* * *
As her acquaintance had noted, there was a stubbornness under Penitence’s apparent vulnerability which had been formed as a protection against a religion, guardians and a community demanding absolute obedience. Penitence approved of the religion, had dutifully loved her mother and grandparents – and just as dutifully grieved for their sudden death; she had done her best to conform to the community, but to preserve an unbroken spirit under such an upbringing had necessitated reserving a place in her mind and soul against the lot of them, and in that place had grown the obstinacy which had brought her 3,000 miles against all advice.
All at once Drury Lane’s smart roofs lowered, becoming tile or thatch rather than slate. Its traffic was as thick as it had been further back, but here it consisted of single horsemen and pedestrians, and the jollity was cruder. Penitence’s mouth gaped as she was turned this way and that by the entertainment on offer. There was singing and dancing everywhere. A seven-foot giant was teetering along on stilts which put his head on a level with upper windows while a dwarf ran alongside collecting pennies in a hat. From the windows ladies showing too much of their anatomy leaned out, screaming and laughing, to try and push him off. ‘She painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window. Kings II, chapter 9.’
Everywhere she looked there was evil, and, more appalling, the enjoyment of evil. She broke into a run. At any moment the Lord would destroy this Sodom and Gomorrah with fire.
It was darker further up, what light there was showed meaner houses and fewer people, but it was quieter and she could slow her pace. Back home she could have walked ten times as far and not felt as tired.
I’m in peril. The familiar sense of danger cut through her fatigue and was immediately trusted. She knew it well.
Penitence’s twice-weekly journeys to school had involved paddling a canoe five miles down the Pocumscut and a subsequent walk of three miles through forest. She’d carried a satchel of books and a primed flintlock. Attack by men was unheard of, unless you counted the occasional Iroquois raid, but bear, moose and wolverine, especially wolverine, posed a threat that required instant reaction to the inexplicable shadow or the leaf moving when there was no wind. Reading the signs had become an instinct that had twice saved her life. Now, here, in this dark lane, there was a wolverine.
She had no flintlock, but she slipped the knife from its sheath on her wrist in one concealed movement, as Matoonas had taught her to do.
* * *
Just as the Drury Lane beadle’s nose could detect a possible charge on his parish, so the Reverend Robert Boreman, rector of St Giles-in-the-Fields, had suffered enough from Puritans in the Interregnum to smell them at forty paces. The one at his gate was young and female, but stank of bigotry. ‘What do you want?’
Penitence was no more amicable towards the Reverend Boreman than he to her. To be seeking assistance at the gate of an Anglican church was nearly as bad as asking help from the Pope. However, she knew she’d been lucky to get this far. In the walk between Drury Lane and here she had been pestered, pawed and propositioned. Two women, one old, one young, had tried to enrol her for Lord-knew-what. (‘Put you in the way of riches, dearie.’) A man had tried to steal her purse and she had been forced to jab her knife at him.
From this high point above the river, she had looked around at the jumbled roofscape and known that unless she had a guide she was defeated. She’d made for the spire.
The Reverend Boreman groped for his spectacles and took the proffered slate to the lamp by his lych-gate. ‘“Penitence Hurd.”’ He was right, only damned Puritans could have called a child ‘Penitence’. Searching for her aunt, last address St Giles Rookery. Despite himself he was touched. ‘My child,’ he said, ‘go home. Go back to where you came from. Where do you come from?’
The girl retrieved the slate and wrote: ‘New England.’
New England. What was wrong with the old one? Stiff-necked, hypocritical heretics calling themselves pilgrims sailing off to create their joyless Zion and plague the poor savages. New England indeed. Still, he could hardly send her back there.
Was your aunt born here? Married here?’ Another shake of the head that wobbled the ridiculous hat. No, o
f course not. Her aunt was probably not married at all; indeed, if this was the child of Dissenters, she was a bastard whose parents imagined that some words said over them by a magistrate rendered them married. Nothing the Puritans had done had upset the Reverend Boreman more than denying the sacraments of the wedding service. On the other hand, if the aunt was a Puritan, what was she doing in the Rookery? He found himself curious. ‘Are you dumb?’ Obviously, she wasn’t deaf.
‘Shall I try to tell him?’ She was tired, it would be too hard, and she wanted no involvement with a church that had persecuted her people. Besides, he was the height and shape of the Reverend Block back home, dressed in black, white tippets to his collar just like the Reverend Block’s, only older. The sooner she got away from him the sooner her stomach would stop heaving. Insistently, she pointed to the slate.
The Reverend Boreman shrugged. ‘On your own head be it. I must warn you that the Rookery is the lowest sink of sin, and that if your aunt is still in it she is undoubtedly defiled or dead, probably both.’ He didn’t believe in sugaring the pill, and merely having to admit the existence of such a place in his parish shamed him. God knows he’d done his best. ‘Ah, Peter Simkin.’
His clerk joined him at the gate. ‘I’m away to alert the Searcher, Rector.’
‘Peter, here is a person from the Americas trying to find her aunt. Last known address the Rookery.’ The two men exchanged looks.
Peter Simkin turned to Penitence: ‘What’s her name?’ It might be that the Rookery woman was a member of the congregation, though unlikely; precious few were.
As Penitence wrote, the rector said acidly: ‘Our young friend from the Americas, though not dumb it seems, does not deign to speak to us.’
‘“Margaret Hughes,”’ read Peter Simkin. ‘Plain. Also unknown.’
‘Oh, take her along to the Searcher,’ said the Reverend Boreman. ‘If anyone knows this woman, she will.’ It had been a long day and he wanted his supper. ‘And don’t forget to get Sexton to toll the bell and ask John Gere to dig the grave.’ Reluctantly, he added to Penitence: ‘If you don’t find your aunt, you’d better come back.’ He’d have to procure her employment, or put her in the workhouse if she was indigent, which he was sure she was.