‘Genius.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a bauble, I grant you. In dealing with true situation Molière outstrips him. But our Will undoubtedly had genius. Nearly as much as I have.’
She ignored that. ‘Had?’
‘He’s dead, woman. What did they teach you in New England? He died in 1615, 1616, something like that.’
She’d felt his breath on her cheek and he’d been dead when her grandfather was a boy.
Dogberry slouched down the alley towards them. He looked disgruntled.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘so it’s not agin promulgation. But I’m watching you two.’ He leaned his halberd against Mistress Hicks’s wall, then himself.
‘So,’ said the actor, ‘you’ll play Beatrice. I’ll be Benedick.’
Play Beatrice? How could she, an inarticulate, play a mistress of repartee? Automatically, she said: ‘It’s d-did-dis-umm-ddis-sembling.’
‘Dissembling,’ agreed Dogberry from the alley.
‘Of course.’ He was surprised. ‘Dissemble. Pretend. Imagine. Why not? When you read it, did you think for one moment about the Plague? No, you didn’t. Were you sad? No, you weren’t. It’s a trifle to amuse.’ He picked up his quill. ‘The lessons are the infantry, step by step. The play’s our cavalry. Now then, we’ll begin where Beatrice and Benedick meet.’ He gestured to Penitence to find the place in the text.
As she ruffled through the pages, she felt nerves snatching at her breath. She breathed as he had taught her, surreptitiously wiping her hands one after the other down her skirt, trying to relax them. She could do this; she could join the cavalry.
‘What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?’
Immediately, she was thrown. He’d sat himself in the angle of the window, one knee drawn up so that his boot rested on the sill, the sun catching a face that had grown younger. The voice was negligently Benedick’s as she’d heard it in her head last night. One finger beckoned Beatrice’s line.
‘Is it p-p-po-umm-possible D-di-dummdi-ddisdain…’
She had thought Beatrice’s words would speak themselves, that because they were somebody else’s they would have their own volition. What a fool. Penitence’s tongue was patented to stumble whatever it spoke. Dumbly, she looked down at the book in her hands and closed it.
‘Breathe.’
She shook her head. It wasn’t the breathing. ‘It’s m-m-me.’
‘Ah ha.’ He was the play-actor again. ‘But you are not you, are you? You’re not poor little Pentecost or whatever you call yourself.’
Penitence, she thought miserably.
‘You’re a grand lady, with spirit, presence. You’re cleverer than Benedick; you best him every time. Come on, Boots, you’ve seen great ladies in their carriages, haven’t you?’ He flirted his hand across his face, like a fan. ‘Imagine what it’s like to be one, roasting your maid, cuckolding your husband…’ He closed his eyes. ‘Jesus, I could do with a drink.’ He looked down at Dogberry: ‘Why don’t you toodle off and get me some ale?’
‘Why don’t you give me the gelt?’ asked Dogberry.
The actor looked back at Penitence. ‘Will you wear the diamonds today? Boots, you must have imagined what it would be like.’
She most certainly had not. Contempt for the trappings of wealth had been built into her. Pentecost or whatever you call yourself. He couldn’t even get her name right. But that’s what she was, poor. Poor and dumb. She’d never be anything else.
She heard Dogberry say: ‘Take some imagining that would. She looks like the cat dragged her in.’
‘Her gentlemen like the churchy style,’ called Dorinda.
But the actor was thoughtful. ‘Dogberry,’ he said, ‘you are not the fool you look.’ He peered beyond Penitence into her attic. ‘Those boxes. What’s in them?’
She shrugged. What does it matter?
‘Open them up. We’ll get rid of that, that thing you’re wearing. Beatrice must dress as Beatrice.’
She fought back, defending her habiliment’s moral worth. ‘It’s c-c-clean.’
‘Also an atrocity. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but even I can’t act attraction for that. Open.’
Spiritless, she dragged the first chest to the window and rummaged through it, releasing clouds of pennyroyal long turned to dust. Do this, do that. Put a hat on the monkey. He’ll be wanting to paint my face next.
The clothes were a job-lot from the pawnbroker’s where they had lain unclaimed until Her Ladyship bought them cheap, hoping they could be refashioned for her girls. Most had proved forty years old with tight bodices and waists impossible to alter into the flowing, modern, natural line. What was usable had already been used, the rest kept for purses or patching. To Penitence, who had never worn a colour more garish than grey, they were hideously over-bright. She chose the least gaudy thing she could see, a faded primrose partleted bodice still attached to a black skirt.
‘Up. Up.’ Slouching, she held it up.
‘Into the light if you please.’
She shambled to the window, clutching the material to her shoulders. The actor shook his head. Below in the alley, Dogberry considered and then shook his: ‘Nah.’ Penitence glared at him. A sober green jacket was rejected by the two of them, so was a more daring magenta pelisse.
The actor considered. ‘It’s the hair.’
‘What hair?’ asked Dogberry.
‘Exactly. That abortion on your head. Off.’
She clutched her cap. She’d never appeared capless in public in her life. This was her best. ‘It’s g-g-gumm-good l-linen.’ Her hair was her worst feature. It was light yellow. Her mother had called it wilful and cropped it close in an effort to subdue its wave. Penitence had neglected it, meaning to cut it every time she was reminded of its length when she washed it, but hadn’t, bundling it into her cap instead.
The play-actor lost his temper. He grabbed his sword and, holding on with one hand, swung outwards. Penitence’s cap twitched off her head. Her hair, heavy and warm, fell over her face. Peering through it, she saw the actor regain his room, her cap on the tip of his sword, saw him turn and look at her.
‘Rip me,’ said Dogberry.
The actor put his chin on his fist. ‘The blue,’ he said.
Trailing from one of the boxes was an old silk shawl the colour of a peacock’s neck. She put it round hers.
‘Like this.’ He swung his own cloak across his front from shoulder to shoulder. Penitence swung hers.
‘Rip me,’ said Dogberry.
‘Well, well,’ said the actor. ‘Who’d have thought it? Have you a looking-glass? Then permit me to say “Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks.” Boots, my little Galatea, thy speech shall be as fair as thy face. If we’re ever released from this rat-hole, I’ll make thee Empress of Cathay, princes shall fawn upon thee, thou wilt be the mistress of kings. Now then. “What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?”’
Forced to rely on Penitence’s cavalry, the Model Army would have had a bad war. She was just Penitence Hurd with her hair down and a bit of old blue silk across her front. She felt exposed and silly.
The day got hotter. Dorinda got nastier. Dogberry got bored and sat down for a sleep. The actor, persistent in his good idea, waxed long on the techniques of acting, which she failed to grasp.
Eventually, she stuttered them both into an exhausted silence.
She broke it with the final admission of defeat. ‘C-c-an I h-have m-my c-ca-cum-cap b-b-back, p-pp-pl-umm-please?’ Her head ached and the unstopping tolling of bells expanded and contracted it with each stroke.
The play-actor slumped in his window, fingering her cap. ‘Perhaps.’
‘P-pl-pl-umm-pplease.’
He stood up and went to the back of his room.
I shall manage. I am no worse off than I was. Something soft fell across her shoulder. She picked it off. It wasn’t her cap, it was a scrap of black satin with strings. She looked enquiringly across.
‘A vizard mask. People wear them at the theatre. Put it on. And here.’ A gleaming object arced across the alley and she caught it. It was a gentleman’s travelling mirror, a small silver oval embossed back and front with a coat of arms.
Penitence took both objects away to the front of her attic; to look in a mirror was still a shameful act – to be done in private, if at all. The mask was made to cover the lower half of the face, leaving only eyes and forehead exposed. There was a slit for the mouth, and a raised area to go over the nose.
Here, then, was the ultimate in deception, the capstone of guile; to put it on, the final severance from God’s grace.
The example of God’s grace clanged in her ears.
Suddenly, she clapped the mask to her face and tied its strings under her hair. The slipperiness of the material moulded to the warmth of her skin. At once she felt oddly concealed and powerful, as she had not since hunting days when she and Matoonas had waited in hides along the deer runs, spears at the ready.
She picked up the silver oval and slid aside its front. The interior of one side held a miniature of the play-actor when he was younger and richer. She looked into the glass set in the other side.
The eyes of a strange woman looked back at her. They were long, stretching almost to the temples. A strong blue. The lashes were dark – a contrast to the appalling colour of the hair above them – and also long. Above the black anonymity of the mask, they were compelling. It was no vanity to consider them; they were disembodied, unrelated to anything outside the mirror. For the first time that she could remember, Penitence looked somebody straight in the eye. The eyes looked straight back, intelligent and, Lord, amused. Beatrice’s eyes.
Power was a new sensation for her; she felt it so strongly that she shut the mirror and took the mask off to examine it for witchcraft. No runes had been stitched along its seam which, if anything, was carelessly sewn. She put it back on again, opened the mirror, looked, and took it off again, being careful not to glimpse her bare-faced reflection; she had no interest in Penitence Hurd. She did this several times.
When it hung from her hand the vizard mask was a shaped piece of satin. When she put it on, it was a cap of darkness that vanished Penitence and replaced her with a new and potent being. Nothing, nobody would ambush the woman behind the mask; it was she who lay in ambush. It was a cloak of invisibility allowing the wearer to be whoever she wanted.
She tied it on and ducked out on to the balcony into hot air polluted by the slow chime of bells and smoke from disinfectant bonfires. A fine time to come into possession of a city, but it was hers. She stretched, raising both arms above her head in acknowledgement of fealty.
From below her came a gasped ‘Oh my Gawd.’
She looked down. The only two people in the Yard were Dogberry, who had resumed his patrol, and Footloose, sitting in the mouth of his vat and baring his stumps to the sun. Both were staring at her; Footloose had crossed his two forefingers in front of his face to ward off evil.
Beatrice spoke through the mask-shaped hole in the barricade of Penitence’s stutter. ‘Cousins, God give you joy.’
Footloose patted his heart: ‘Gawd, Pen, you didn’t half give me a turn. I thought you was a demon.’
I am.
She turned back into the attic.
She was agin promulgation, a thing of darkness, a shape-shifter, a changeling to spin her mother and grandparents in their grave; the Pure Church would wash its hands of her and call in the witch-finders. She’d sold her soul. But the price was right.
I am a voice.
She raised it: ‘But then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.’
The voice whipped round the room. It found everything funny. It was a voice surprised to find itself where it was. Its echo slid over the planks of the floor as if expecting to find them marble. It ran a vocal forefinger over the beams and raised its eyebrows at the dust. Clear, used to command, it was the voice of the governors’ daughters who had viewed New England settlers as backwoodsmen.
The masked woman cocked her head to listen to it. Not quite right.
As a child her mind had escaped into the animal spirits of the Indians, becoming an owl, an eagle, a fish. The woman’s mind swooped into Beatrice.
These men went off to their enjoyable wars, they came back, ignorant of the boredom that existed without them. Were she of a resentful humour, which she was not, she would be piqued, just as she was piqued by the changes in her breathing when she looked at him – some devilish aberration for which he must pay. Since he was here, she’d have his attention.
She swept to her side window, wiggling Beatrice’s be-ringed fingers.
Benedick still sat in the angle of his window. His hat was over his eyes, so that his face was in shadow, but the light caught his throat where it rose from his shirt. A linen cap dangled from his fingers.
She said crisply: ‘Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick?’
For a moment he still seemed asleep until, very slowly, he raised a finger and tipped back his hat…
Somebody was knocking on the front door of the Cock and Pie, from the inside. Alania’s voice was shouting for the Watch to fetch the apothecary.
There were running footsteps on the stairs to her attic and Phoebe fell into the room. ‘It’s here, Prinks. Oh, what we going to do?’ She ran to the window and repeated the shout for the apothecary, then turned back. ‘It’s here, Prinks. It’s in here. Kinyans has got it.’
Penitence’s eyes met the play-actor’s for one long minute. Then she held out her hand for her cap.
She was to remember his hand clenching on the piece of linen as if he could not bear to let it go, and that he said: ‘No.’
She knew his concern was not for her as such but for the promising pupil he was about to lose, but she was always grateful.
She’d known. For one moment she had experienced such appalling joy that it was only to be expected that the Puritan God would make her pay for it.
She smiled at the play-actor and held out her hand again. Bad-temperedly he threw the cap across.
She caught it, took off the vizard mask and put her cap on her head to go downstairs, tucking in her hair as she went.
Chapter 8
The girls were gathered on the clerestory, trying to catch what the apothecary was saying over Kinyans’s screams. Below them, Her Ladyship and Job struggled to hold the old man down on one of the salon’s couches.
They managed to hear Master Boghurst say: ‘This is the fear stage.’
Kinyans was attempting to crawl away from something only he could see, though his horror made it vivid enough for Job, his great hands clasped like manacles round the old man’s wrists, to keep glancing in the same direction in case it had taken shape.
Her Ladyship snapped: ‘How long does it last?’ She wasn’t paying out half a crown to be told the obvious.
‘Four, five hours. Sometimes longer.’ He raised his voice without changing its tone. ‘After this will come vomiting and the flux. I advise you to have pails ready. Has he the buboes yet?’
The Cock and Pie’s front door was open for the first time in three weeks and late afternoon sun was making a path sideways across the salon to the east wall, letting in fresh air. As Job and Her Ladyship fought to strip the patient, Kinyans’s hands batted at their faces as if they’d become monstrous. He kept crying out with pain. The apothecary stepped closer and peered. Job kneed the couch into the path of the sun coming through the Cock and Pie’s front door. Kinyans’s sparse, yellow body was covered with pinhead spots, some of which had run together into rings the size of a fingernail. Dark lumps were forming in each armpit and the groin, giving the impression that giant black beetles had lodged themselves under his skin.
The apothecary pointed at the buboes. ‘Hot mustard plasters to gather the poison. They must burst, or be burst. How old is he?’
‘Sixty, sixty-five,’ puffed Her Ladyship.
The apothecary said without inflection: ‘Then he may survive. This is a young person’s plague. So far I have been unable to save a single child.’
Oh God. Oh God. This is normal to him. This is what Plague is. She had counted up names with the abbreviation ‘Pla.’ beside them and transferred the totals to the Bills of Mortality and thought she knew the extent of the disaster upon them all.
It was brought home to her now; every name on Peter Simkin’s list had been prefaced by this scene from hell. Behind every padlocked, red-crossed door this had been enacted, often in multiplication, with noise, with convulsions, with victims evacuating their bowels on the bed-sheets as Kinyans was doing now. One by one the Bryskett children had screamed on this rack while their parents watched, unable to stop the turn of the screw.
She had listened to bells ringing out orderly, sanitary messages of deaths that should have been recorded in jangles of pandemonium.
‘I do not recommend a nurse,’ the apothecary was saying, ‘unless you would take in a sot and a thief. If you wish to choke the patient you may purchase some of the more preposterous physics on offer, or you may prefer my electuary at eightpence a bottle. Keep him clean, warm and, as you love him, no cold drinks until the sweats are gone.’
He spoke through the screams to some inner measure that could not be hurried, as if exercising his profession was an end in itself.
He’s lost hope. For us, for him, for everybody. The apothecary’s emotions had stopped being kindled by fear, by love of man, love of God, by disapproval for harlots. She saw through him the presence of wholesale annihilation. How to await it was a matter of choice – in gibbering terror or, as this little man was, in a dignified continuity.
There was another shriek under which Her Ladyship asked a question. The girls couldn’t see her face; she had her back to them.
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