But if she hadn’t. Penitence’s nerve-endings were no longer the exclusive property of her own body but connected to those of the morsel of humanity being taken away from her towards the Rookery, its pain now her pain magnified. A carelessly loaded plank of wood would obliterate her at the precise moment it crushed in that small skull. Love for her baby shrieked through her like a typhoon. They had to batter her hands before she would let go of the bars.
I shook him off. She felt the softness of the boneless little fingers still. Until that rejection it was as if she hadn’t been aware of him, the most important thing in the world, hadn’t known the diseases that could kill him or the need to stay alive so that she could protect him. This was the cat nightmare brought into the everyday; she would never be free of it.
Dorinda’s chatter screamed into her ears. Fifth Monarchist crackpot. She cried out: ‘Oh Jesus.’ Fifth Monarchists were illegal, and so were the people who printed their sedition or blasphemy or whatever it was. They got hanged. If they caught this one, he’d be forced into revealing who’d printed his pamphlets, and then Dorinda would be arrested, and Benedick left alone. She was lacerated by the sound of weak cries from the crib where he was starving to death. Men with guns were advancing through the nightmare to shoot him and she couldn’t get to him in time.
‘No good giving way, duck.’ The bed-owner put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Nice little fella like that, he’s better off out there. I know. My last died in here.’
Penitence stared at her. In this new state she’d woken to, it amazed her that a woman could say such a thing without screaming. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bet.’
‘I’ve got to get out of here, Bet.’
What might have been a laugh turned into a fit of coughing. Ineffectually, Penitence patted the woman on the back, then guided her to her bed and helped her in. She sat down on the edge: ‘Help me, Bet. I’ve got to get out of here.’ Now that her brain was working, a new horror had manifested itself. Her creditor was entitled to repossess the Cock and Pie in lieu of payments. The spectre of Dorinda walking the streets with Benedick in her arms and nowhere to shelter flashed in a vivid image before her mind’s eye. ‘I’ve got to get out.’
‘Ain’t we all,’ said Bet, flatly. ‘Well, there’s the silver bridge to the outside for them as can afford the toll.’
‘P-pay the debt, you mean.’
‘Ain’t just the debt,’ Bet told her. ‘There’s exit money. Them bastard keepers need garnishing afore they’ll let you out, debt paid or no. Ain’t you got nobody to hark-ye?’
Perhaps she could borrow from the Reverend Boreman or the apothecary. If they’d let her develop the printing business she could pay them back in time. Or she could throw in with the Tippins and steal it. She’d do anything. But to do it she needed to be outside.
No, Bet told her, nobody from Flap Alley was allowed out on parole. ‘You want to get yourself a place in Press Yard. Them hoi polloi get privileges if they garnish. Let out on day passes, them. Only way out for us is when we done our time, or if we get turned off.’
Bet’s husband, it appeared, had been ‘turned off’, hanged, for theft. She herself was serving a four-year sentence for assaulting the neighbour who’d informed on him. Apart from wondering how a woman could risk such consequences for herself and her children – Bet had three left from the Plague, all of them struggling to survive on the outside – merely to avenge a husband, Penitence paid her little attention. She was looking around her with eyes suddenly sharpened to danger, taking in the slopping chamber pots under every bed, the sores on the children’s mouths, the coughing, the woman who was vomiting, the old woman in the next bed gasping for breath. Even life in Dog Yard had not prepared her for this place. It would kill her. Just breathing its air was a death sentence. More important, it would kill Benedick by extension. She could trust nobody, not even Dorinda, with his survival without her. I’ve got to get out.
‘How do I get a room in P-Press Yard?’ she asked. If Press Yard was the only starting place for her release, then to Press Yard she must go.
‘I’m due at the windy.’ Bet was scrambling out of the bed to get to the queue at the window. ‘Midday’s ’a best time.’
Penitence clutched her arm. ‘How do I get into P-Press Yard?’
‘You aren’t half green,’ said Bet, impatiently. ‘Did George do his you-don’t-like-me?’
‘Yes.’
‘There y’are then. Get out my way.’
Penitence followed her as she barged to the head of the queue. ‘What d-do you mean?’
Bet put her arms through the bars of the window. ‘Of your charity, lady,’ she whined, ‘remember the poor debtors. I got six childer starving, my lord. George is all right, is George. Remember a poor debtor, lady. I wish as he’d ask me for garnish but I ain’t high-sniffing enough for him. In debt for sixpence, my lord, that’s all. Remember a poor debtor.’
The woman behind Bet, who’d allowed her precedence at the window, chimed in: ‘George offered for you? That’s luck, that is. No harm in George.’
There was approval from the rest of the queue. As a purchaser in the sexual favours market, George apparently ranked high. Penitence was regarded as fortunate. ‘He’s more one for the lady-ins.’
‘Just lay back and tell him you hate him and he’s happy.’
‘An’ he delivers. Not like that bloody Pudsey.’
The conversation became a discussion on which keeper liked to do what to whom and for how much. Using their bodies to gain privileges from the keepers was as normal in Flap Alley as begging from passers-by. They might have been discussing fat-stock prices. Penitence left them and climbed back into Bet’s bed while it was empty.
I’ve got to get out. Cautiously, huddling against the wall, she manoeuvred Dorinda’s purse from her sleeve and opened its string. Two crown-pieces. Not even enough to rent a Press Yard room for a week. She’d have to beg, borrow, or steal the rest. Where was the crime in theft? Newgate was a royal prison; the king and his authorities were prepared to let it be run by thieves more rapacious than any the Rookery had ever turned out.
She flopped back on to the bed, allowing her thoughts to run on highway robbery and associated crimes, unaware of a hand sidling from the bed behind her until it snatched the purse away from her side. Yelling, she scrambled after it but the thief, a skinny little girl, had run with it to a group of women. In the centre of it was Bet. She faced Penitence with a sly hostility. ‘Forgot to tell Your Ladyship, didn’t I,’ she said, ‘but the rule is if one of us’s got gorse, we all got gorse.’ The group sniggered.
Penitence charged. ‘Give it back. It’s mine.’ Two of the bigger women grabbed her arms and held her while she struggled.
‘Ours,’ corrected Bet. ‘Orders of women prisoners’ tribunal. Let’s see what the Lord sent.’ Her spiny fingers delved into the purse and came out with the crown-pieces. ‘Two coach-wheels.’
‘Flanders fucking fortune,’ said one of the group, appreciatively.
Without taking her eyes off Penitence, Bet handed the silver pieces to the thin young thief. ‘Sary, you take these to the tap room and you tell ’em as Bet wants enough pints of Geneva for all Flap Alley. No rag-water, neither. Best Geneva. Order of a tribunal. On our Ladyship here. Off you go.’
Penitence stopped struggling as she watched the child run off. That they were going to spend money on gin which might have bought food or medicine was almost as bad as the theft itself. Almost. She took up her old position by the fireplace and watched Sary run back and forth with relays of blackjacks, watched the women gulp the spirit and pour it down their children – even babies were given sips – watched as it sent them silly or quarrelsome or comatose. She watched little girls and boys stagger in circles, giggling, until they fell down.
Bet wavered up to the fireplace holding out a blackjack by its neck. ‘Put some of that where the flies won’t get it. No hard feelings, eh?’
Penitence took it.
‘No.’ She hadn’t. As well to have hard feelings for rain or cold. These women were elemental, too random in their cruelty to be resented.
‘Got to have a bit of fun now and then, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone for themself in this life, ain’t it?’
Penitence drank to the woman who had just voiced the only principle to life which had any validity. ‘Yes.’ Bet, if you only knew it, you’re my midwife. A new Penitence was being born.
Bet stretched out a skinny hand. ‘My turn.’
Penitence held the bottle out of her reach. ‘Oh no you don’t. I paid for this. And I need to be d-drunk to do what I’m going to do.’
Bet squinted at her. ‘What you going to do?’
‘I’m going to get out of here, Bet. By Christ, I’m going to rise above this rat-hole, all rat-holes and the stupid bitches in them. And I’m going to take my son with me.’
When the keeper George came on duty that night, Penitence was waiting by the door for him.
Chapter 2
For her first venture into harlotry, Penitence Hurd could have chosen worse clients than Keeper George. The turnkey aspired both above his station and his performance – the Cock and Pie would have put him in the fumbler category. Also, as far as honesty went in Newgate – which wasn’t far – he kept his word. Dorinda would have told her she was lucky (and later did).
That first night, however, as Penitence followed him and his shaking lantern into the bowels of the prison, such blessings were not apparent. He dithered with excitement, touching her, insisting that she didn’t like him.
She could not, could not have survived the Plague for this; any moment there would be a miraculous intervention. She’d made a mistake; there were other ways out of Newgate, must be. Oh God, she could get pregnant. She’d tell him, sorry, but she must return to Flap Alley. At that she kept walking. Flap Alley was death. Criminals had a defined sentence: debtors were imprisoned until they paid. She wished she’d drunk more gin.
‘P-PP-PPress Yard?’ she asked him. ‘You p-promise?’
He looked at her suspiciously: ‘You got a stutter?’
Mustn’t stutter, mustn’t stutter. Must stay alive. Why didn’t I bring the mask? He had no use for vulnerability; she had to play up to this grotesque fantasy of his. ‘No,’ she told him clearly. ‘Ladies like myself do not stutter.’
Gratified, he opened a small, iron-studded door and ushered her into a cell and put his lantern down on a table. ‘This is where we keeps them as is going to be turned off.’ The place was tiny and windowless. From its smell and the wet walls, it seemed to be drying out from inundation by a river carrying corpses. The bed had been made up with blankets.
She felt the area round her mouth go cold and press against her teeth as her blood retracted.
‘You going to faint?’ asked George, admiringly. ‘Ain’t used to this, lady-in like you.’ He sat down on the bed, indicating that she should undress and holding up the lantern to watch her better. ‘Tell us what you are used to.’
It can’t be happening. It won’t happen. She knelt down and forced her hand to touch his knee. ‘P-please, Master George,’ she said, reasonably. ‘P-perhaps you have children. I have a s-son.’ She had difficulty emitting the lovely word, but she was sure he could not withstand it. ‘For their sake let us live in decency. Allow me a room of my own, and I promise you in time you shall be paid very well. I have a p-printing—’
She had timed it wrong; his expectation had grown too high for his better nature, such as it was, to respond to appeal. His mouth stretched like a baby’s about to cry and he yelled: ‘You’re spoiling it.’
He picked up his lantern and began pushing her to the door. ‘You’ve spoiled it. You ain’t a lady-in at all. I’m taking you back to the Alley.’
‘NO.’ Somewhere, at some time, someone had taught her to act. Act. She stepped away from him. ‘You horrid rogue. I shan’t go back.’
He looked sullen. ‘I’m not having you spoil it with childer and such.’
‘It was a lie,’ she told him.
He sat down, mollified but still suspicious. ‘What then?’
She took the vizard mask out of a mental drawer and put it on. It wouldn’t be her it happened to; it would be someone else. The voice of a high-born lady said: ‘How should I submit to this life? Heretofore I have lived in mansions.’
‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
She heard her mother’s… aunt’s… voice: ‘All actresses are harlots.’ Wrong again. All harlots are actresses. She began unbuttoning her basque with fingers she couldn’t feel. ‘Were I to tell you the name of my father, you would recognize it as among the highest in the land, but it shall remain unspoken, to save his shame and mine.’ This is ridiculous.
‘Lovely.’ The lantern was vibrating so hard its flame was in danger of going out. ‘More.’
Did survival rest on a hideous farce like this? She couldn’t remember why she was here, didn’t want to, only that it was necessary. Eventually, chattering nonsense, she was naked except for the mask he couldn’t see. It wasn’t her face, in any case, he was interested in.
‘Ooh, them little lily bubbies.’ He stood up and fingered them for a while, muttering to himself: ‘You lady-ins. You ladies.’
She closed her eyes. I’m not here. I’m somewhere else.
‘You lady, get on that bed.’
She got on it, staring at the wall. Her fists were clenched tight. She heard the keys rattle as he unbuckled his belt and threw it on the floor. He was struggling out of his breeches. God save me. Oh God. She panicked as she felt the heat of his body press down on hers.
‘You look at me, lady. You look at old George.’ His breath was awful. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’
With perfect honesty, she said: ‘I hate you.’
‘Oooooooh.’ He was shrieking. ‘Lovely.’ It was over. His weight went slack on top of her. There was liquid on the top of her thighs. He lay, panting into her neck. ‘Too quick.’
She felt a moment of gratitude that he hadn’t penetrated her, and then she was sick.
He was good about it, bustling cheerfully to help her dress; the vomit was an indication of her disgust and, therefore, her nobility. He’d clear it up later.
She was never able to remember the walk to the room she’d just bought in Press Yard. It had a window. ‘Water,’ she said. ‘Get me lots of water.’
‘You lady-ins.’ He was roguish, but he brought her some in a bucket, a sliver of soap, and a stub of lit candle stuck in a square of clay.
When he’d gone she stripped and washed herself all over, put her clothes back on, took them off and washed herself again. She was very cold as she dressed herself once more. She lay down on the bed, shivering, afraid to think. If she thought, disgust would destroy her.
It’s so cold. Like winter. Winter. The Pocumscut winter. In winter she always went out to watch the tree swallows… and she didn’t want to miss them. She made herself float down to the stream where they congregated on the last of the bayberries. They were the only birds she knew that played, dropping a feather to float in the air, twittering cheerfully as they skimmed down to pick it up again, the sun catching their metallic blue wings. Matoonas was fishing along the river bank; she didn’t want to face him, so, cold as it was, she stepped into the stream and lay down, letting it carry her into the river which swirled her along to where her stains could be pounded clean by the rocks of the rapids.
Somebody was dragging her back, which made her irritable. She wanted to be pounded clean.
‘There,’ said a voice. ‘We’re warmer now.’
They might be. She wasn’t. She was turned to stone. Galatea in reverse. She opened her eyes. A heated brick warmed her feet, a spoon was hovering near her mouth and, above it, a face.
‘I heard your arrival and thought, God’s dines, a neighbour of one’s own gender and station at last. Then, nothing. So I ventured in, and just as well. How did you get so cold, yo
u poor creature?’
The woman’s affected drawl suggested falseness, an attempt at the languid assonance of the upper classes, so did the elaborately untidy hair, the clothes that were not so much worn as draped, but Penitence noticed none of these things at that moment. She saw only the interested yet vague large blue eyes and great kindness.
‘We must eat some of this calves-foot jelly, mustn’t we?’ The woman sniffed at the spoon. ‘One asked for calves-foot jelly, but… My name is Aphra Behn, by the way.’
‘Penitence Hurd,’ whispered Penitence.
‘How very… biblical. Now then, whatever this mess is it’s nourishing. We must eat it up or nasty Noll will come and get you. That’s what they used to tell us, didn’t they? Nasty Noll Cromwell will come and get you.’
They’d told Penitence no such thing. This woman was a royalist, then. But she was right about the soup; it was nourishing, and Penitence felt better after some spoonfuls. Even more nourishing, after Flap Alley, was the friendship on offer from a woman of about her own age.
Aphra Behn dabbed her patient’s mouth. ‘There, dear. Oh, the vicissitudes of life, that women like us should be so reduced… and for such small matters as a hundred and fifty pounds.’
So Aphra was a fellow-debtor. ‘Mine’s a hundred and eight.’
‘We shall not despair,’ said Aphra, patting her shoulder. ‘We shall arise from this darkness and our banners shall yet stream in a new dawn. “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage; minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage.” Dear Lovelace, also in prison when he wrote that to lift our hearts.’
There was only one person to lift Penitence’s heart and it wasn’t Lovelace, whoever he was, nor this prattling woman. Kind as she was, Aphra Behn was a reproach; her mild clear eyes showed no experience of a world where to inhabit a room in Press Yard at all was a step up from somewhere more terrible. For her, it was a step down.
At that moment Penitence would have cowered from the gaze of her son; it was for him she had prostituted herself, but by that same prostitution she had made herself unworthy of him. It was Dorinda she wanted, the only person to understand and not condemn. Until this moment she hadn’t valued enough a relationship that went deeper than friendship and liking – there were times when she actively disliked Dorinda – but existed in the bone, uncosseted and unremarked.
The Vizard Mask Page 24