‘I’ve no idea. Ask him.’ Unhelpfully, Penitence handed the letter back. Since it had become known through the Clerk of the Assizes, who had come ahead of his master, that Sir George Jeffreys wished his favourite actress, Mistress Peg Hughes, to be included in the arrangements for his welcome, she had been consulted on every aspect of the Lord Chief Justice’s likes and dislikes. It was why she’d been invited today.
‘Suffering something wicked from the stone, he is, Peg, and very hasty with ut they do say,’ explained the mayor.
‘’Tis all very well but do judge and king know the expense we’re put to?’ Sir Roger took over the reading of the letter. “‘Halters to provide for the rebels, faggots for the burning of their bowels, a furnace and cauldron for the boiling of heads and quarters, salt for the preservation of the pieces – half a bushel each man.” Do he know the price of salt? “Tar, oxen, drays and wains.”’
‘They haven’t even been tried yet.’ She looked wonderingly about her. These weren’t cruel men; good husbands, fathers and neighbours. Like her, they knew some of the rebels personally, their shoes had been mended by them, wool from their sheep had been woven on the now-deserted looms. Yet they could consider the provision of instruments for such people’s destruction in the same manner with which they discussed a coming storm.
Sharply, she turned to the reason she’d accepted the invitation. ‘Can I rely on your tenants in my fields next month, Sir Ostyn? Sir Roger?’ With so many casual labourers in prison, field workers were at a premium and Penitence was worrying for her teasel harvest.
Sir Roger looked at her craftily. He was a Somerset man. ‘How about this yere acting, then?’
She had a deep reluctance to meet Sir George Jeffreys ever again, let alone put on a performance for him, but it would undoubtedly be politic to do so; nobody would suspect a woman in favour with the greatest judge in the land of harbouring a rebel. And she needed her teasels harvested. But damn. ‘A short performance, then,’ she agreed.
They shook hands. ‘And yere,’ Sir Roger was back to his letter, ‘“sufficient number of spears and poles to fix the heads and quarters.” How many do ee think’s “sufficient”? I wonder, would His Lordship mind if we stuck un on palings?’
‘For God’s sake.’ She turned away and took Sir Ostyn to one side. ‘Any sign of her, Ostyn?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve searched every list from every gaol this side of the Poldens and I’ve not found un.’
‘What about MacGregor? Perhaps she gave her name as Dorinda MacGregor. Ostyn, there can’t be that many women in gaol in Somerset.’
‘You’d be surprised, maid. They be rife, rife. Silly girt besoms like the schoolmistress—’
‘That reminds me.’ Penitence turned on her neighbours. ‘Who’s going to speak to Sir George about the Maids?’
They might be prepared for the execution of troublesome rebels, they might not stand up for poor Lady Alice Lisle but, surely, there wasn’t a man in the room who wouldn’t protest against the imprisonment of the twenty-seven little girls whose only crime had been to present a flag to Monmouth. Poor Hurry Yeo of Athelzoy’s Hoy Arms, whose daughter was among those in the gaol at Taunton Castle, had solicited her support, and she’d been sure that she’d find a sympathetic hearing from even the strongest Tory.
Until now. ‘Who’s going to speak?’ she asked again. After a long silence she said: ‘I see.’
‘He do know thee, see, Peg,’ said Sir Roger.
Angrily, Penitence turned back to Sir Ostyn. ‘And Mudge Ridge? He’s not on a prison list either?’
‘I’m sorry, Peg.’
What am I going to say to Prue? What am I going to say to Tongs? It was as if Dorinda, MacGregor and Mudge had disappeared off the face of the earth. She had tried to pretend to herself that the silence with regard to Dorinda and MacGregor had been because they’d got away, had managed to avoid the aftermath of the battle and find a boat to Holland. But Mudge’s absence since he’d gone off to bring them to the house made this explanation unlikely. Every day that passed reinforced the obvious: the three were dead or captured.
The trouble was that the captured had been dispersed among prisons all over the county and beyond, with little record of who had been sent where. Henry had made enquiries for her at Weston Zoyland where most of the rebels killed during the battle had been buried in huge pits, but nobody remembered the corpse of a woman. Oh, Dorinda.
‘They’d’ve given false names I dare say. Protect their families, like,’ said Sir Ostyn, kindly. ‘Don’t ee despair, my beauty. They’ll be safe in gaol, depend on ut.’
No comfort there; reports from the prisons said conditions were so bad that if the Assize didn’t start soon there’d be no rebels left to try.
Her voice quavered. ‘They shouldn’t be in gaol at all. They haven’t done anything.’ As far as Dorinda and Mudge went, this was true. She’d seen no reason to tell the magistrate that Dorinda’s husband had been with Monmouth’s army.
After the cool of the dark upstairs room of the White Hart, to step into Fore Street was like opening a kiln; heat rushed at her, ferocious for late afternoon. Further along the moony eyes of the Paschal Lamb stared at her from the standard hung on a bracket from the door of the inn where the officers of Kirk’s regiment had made their headquarters. She couldn’t bear to look at the thing. She noticed that pedestrians hurried their steps to pass it. Already the area of Taunton where the noncommissioned Lambs were billeted was known as ‘Tangiers’ and its formerly mild, provincial alleys had attained many of the less savoury aspects of that city.
It was not likely that James Il’s troops would be kind to the people of Taunton, which had been called by succeeding Stuarts ‘the most factious town in England’. It had been steadfast for Parliament through the Civil War, withstanding two royalist sieges which had destroyed two-thirds of it. A breeding ground of Nonconformism, it had supplied a regiment of men for Monmouth and its prisons now held over 500 awaiting trial by Judge Jeffreys.
She turned in the direction of the Castle where the parents of the Maids of Taunton kept a vigil outside the prison; she’d brought Mrs Yeo in the donkey cart and must now collect her to take her home. The woman’s dreadful anxiety was infectious. Penitence knew that tonight she would again send Boller over to the Cartwrights at Crewkerne to see that Ruperta and Tongs were safe, despite her assurance that they would be; the Cartwrights, nice people, had absorbed them as well as most of her staff and even her dogs into their own, huge family, thrilled to be able to tell their neighbours that they were fostering Prince Rupert’s daughter for the duration.
Penitence missed the girls badly. The reason she had given for not allowing them to return yet was that, with the Priory so near Sedgemoor, there was still a likelihood of rebel activity in the area, to say nothing of unpleasantness from the proximity of Kirk’s Lambs. Even in Crewkerne, they shuddered at the name of Kirk’s Lambs.
What worried her more, what kept her awake at nights, was the consequences to them if it was discovered that the Priory was concealing one of Monmouth’s commanders. At best Penitence’s estate would be sequestered and Ruperta thereby deprived of her inheritance. Tongs would have lost not only her mother, but a home.
‘Mistress Hughes?’
She spun round. The man following her down the short cut to the Castle was ordinarily dressed but she recognized a Dissenter; there was something Puritan in the rigidity of the neck and shoulders, the way the fingertips of each hand were prinked together, as if relaxation might lay him open to the accusation of being human. ‘Yes?’
‘A word, Mistress Hughes.’ He was looking around to see if they were observed.
‘Yes?’
‘I bring thee opportunity to serve the Lord and save thy soul, mistress.’
She was relieved. Just a more sophisticated form of begging. ‘My savings are my own,’ she said neatly, walking on.
He was a typical Puritan preacher; the more rebuffed the more persistent
. ‘Lady Alice willed thee a carpet, mistress, afore she was taken. Twill be delivered tonight. Thou art advised not to unroll it until thou art alone. Nor to inform the authorities that thee has it.’ His eyes narrowed to look significantly into hers.
‘What carpet?’ She was suddenly frightened.
‘Lady Alice said thou wouldst recognize the pattern,’ the man said, and turned.
Penitence walked on, trying to calm herself. A harmless madman, that’s all. Or perhaps it was poor Alice who’d been sent mad by her arrest and begun willing carpets to her neighbours. This fear she felt was groundless; a result of hiding Benedick; she saw menace everywhere.
She couldn’t think. It had been a long day. Taunton, pleasant town that it had been, was now an occupied zone, too full of the Tangier regiment and preparations for death. It was so hot. She faced so many problems: How to handle the Lord Chief Justice when he came, after she’d so deeply compromised herself the last time they’d met. How to bear Mrs Yeo’s pain all the way back to Athelzoy. How to bear the journey itself, the mosquito-ridden hiatus that lay between her and a bath. How to bump over those miles and miles of marsh and not become frantic for Dorinda, Mudge and MacGregor. How not to worry about Benedick and what to do with him. How not to fear for Ruperta and Tongs.
Yet in the midst of all this, she had the assurance that God was a loving God. For occasionally, sparingly, ensuring she didn’t get used to joy, and almost always at night, He opened His hand and allowed Henry King’s return to the Priory and her bed.
* * *
She heard his horse’s hoofbeats while they were still on the track and was standing at her window to see him turn in through her gates.
Frogs were croaking in the marsh and a harvest moon lit the sweep of the drive like an enormous street lamp and put a yellow tinge on the lawn where the yew chessmen cast geometric shadows. She thought she saw one of them move. Nevis?
Then she heard Muskett’s challenge and Henry’s invariable answer: ‘It’s me, you silly sod,’ and everything else went out of her head as she went downstairs to greet him so that he could carry her up again.
This time, as he prepared to go into the usual bedroom, she stopped him and said: ‘Next door.’
‘What’s wrong with this room?’
‘Benedick’s recovering,’ she told him, ‘I don’t want him to hear us.’ It was part of the truth, not all of it.
He shifted her over his shoulder. ‘As long as there’s a bed.’
The bed was the trouble; the milk-flowing, honeyed land it had become for both of them was Rupert’s bed. It made her feel guilty. With Rupert she’d tried, gratefully, to return his love-making because she owed him so much. She had promised fidelity to his memory. And now, here she was, foaming with a passion that came free and much less deserved for somebody else. The least she could do was choose another bed to foam in.
The bedroom next door was smaller and its bed meaner but, as he said, it didn’t matter.
Abruptly, he’d asked her once: ‘Did you get this much pleasure from Rupert?’ And then said: ‘I’m sorry.’ She knew he wanted her to say ‘No’. Yet it would have been shameful to tell him that she’d felt nothing when Rupert touched her but guilt and a hope it would soon be over. The least she could do for a man who’d given her all that Rupert had was to keep the secrets of his bed. We mistresses have our ethics.
Instead she told him Helen hadn’t known so much pleasure from Paris as Penitence did from Henry King, that she drained the world’s supply of pleasure every time he took her to bed. And that was true.
She suspected such extravagance confirmed his suspicions even while it delighted him. It was the sort of wanton response men expected from whores. It couldn’t be helped. It didn’t matter any more. She’d lost her pride. He could take her on any terms. Just as long as he took her.
He did.
A long time later, when she was breathing normally again, she nudged him in the ribs. ‘Who’s the Portlannon girl?’
‘Who?’ He was drifting off to sleep.
‘The Portlannon girl. The one you’re courting.’
‘Oh, her. Nice girl. Rich. Good family. Not a trace of stutter. I’m considering her as the next Viscountess of Severn and Thames.’ He yawned and looked at her from the corner of his eyes. ‘Jealous?’
‘No.’ And she wasn’t. No good being bitch in the manger.
‘I thought I ought to have… children before I’m too old.’
‘Of course.’ He meant to say ‘a son’. But she didn’t protest that he’d got one. Like everything else, whether or not he believed Benedick to be his had lost its importance. It was as if the two of them had stepped into a walled garden outside ordinary life, created from previously unknown textures, with its own weather, in which they were the only inhabitants.
When he couldn’t get away from Bridgwater where he and his militia had been stationed, she went through the processes expected of her, spoke, moved, worried, discussed her crops, while all the time her soul clawed at the gate in the wall to be let back in. Once she set eyes on him again the lock turned and music that was like no other music floated through the gate as it slipped open in invitation.
There was no past in the garden. Because he grew restive when she mentioned the past he refused to talk about his own, though she would have liked to know more. He only said: ‘The late viscount, my father, was pleased to exercise droit de seigneur over every female on our estate, probably not excluding the sheep. But, by God, when I brought home a Catholic wife – suddenly he was the outraged Puritan. He threw me out. He said no good would come of it.’ He closed his eyes. ‘And he was right, the venal old bugger.’
Knowing the uniqueness of what they shared – and she knew he knew – it was a wonder to her that her past mattered so much to him. It exasperated her that it did. But it did.
It was time to leave the garden. ‘Shall we go down to supper?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ He began to feel about for his clothes. ‘All this pleasuring makes a man hungry.’
‘It’s very good of you to do it,’ she said politely.
‘I’m like that. No thought of self. You say Benedick’s better. How much better?’
‘He worries me, Henry. Sometimes he’s confused and other times he’s just bad-tempered.’
‘To be expected after a concussion like that. He’s got to be fit two nights from now. He’s riding to the coast to catch the tide at four-thirty a.m.’
She put her head against his sleeve. ‘How did you get the boat?’
‘Yacht, woman. She’s a yacht and she’s mine, crewed by my men.’ She kept forgetting he was a viscount. ‘She’s moored in a creek in the Parrett estuary, which by impure coincidence is guarded by Severn and Thames’s North Somerset Militia, bless ’em. I’ll put him in a basket or something and tell them he’s smuggled goods. All my men are smugglers. The place is about fifteen miles from here as the crow flies.’
‘We haven’t got a crow, Henry dear. We haven’t got a damned horse since the requisitioners took the last one. We’ve got a donkey cart.’
‘I’ll bring another horse with me.’ He ushered her out of the door and along the corridor. Their footsteps echoed as they went down the newel staircase, emphasizing the quiet. There was no staff now, except Muskett and Prue; the rest were helping out at Crewkerne.
She’d told the village servants not to come, ostensibly because there was no work to be done but actually to give Benedick a chance to move about unseen when he was well enough.
Prue had left cold meats, bread and preserves on the kitchen table. With the influx into the area of soldiers, and now all the officials and clerks necessary to the Assize, food was in shorter supply than ever. Tonight Henry had brought a bottle of Bordeaux and some smoked venison which had been sent down from his estate in the north of the county.
Penitence couldn’t eat. ‘How can you get Benedick through? You said yourself the Levels were full of regular army still looking for re
bels.’ She’d be sending off two precious eggs in one basket.
He crammed his mouth full of venison and dismissed the problem: ‘Ay owe ee.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He swallowed. ‘They know me. Every roadblock on the causeway knows I have this insatiable woman to ravish. They give a cheer as I go by. It’s very touching.’
‘They don’t know Benedick.’
He pulled her to him. ‘Boots, I’ll get him there. He’ll be wearing Muskett’s uniform. I don’t know any other way to do it. We’ve got to be there two nights from now or the tide’s wrong and we’ll be seen by the guardships in the bay. Just make the boy fit to ride and I’ll get him there if it kills me.’
That’s what worries me. She couldn’t think of what else to do either and being close to him didn’t encourage concentration. ‘Still no news of Dorinda and MacGregor? Or Mudge?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ He let go of her. ‘Jesus God, how could MacGregor be such a fool as to throw in with Monmouth? I’d only seen him at The Hague a week or so before and he made no mention of it then.’
‘You knew MacGregor in the Netherlands?’
‘I knew MacGregor in the Rookery, if you remember, drunken Scottish bugger. He was on the wagon when we met again in The Hague – saved by the love of a good woman, if you can describe Dorinda as such. So I employed him. He was one of our agents, he helped organize the English distribution of pamphlets for Bentinck and me.’
‘Bentinck!’
‘Prince William’s right-hand man.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Do you know Bentinck?’
‘I met him once, a long time ago.’
Immediately he was restive. They were in the dangerous territory of her past. ‘You seem to have met a lot of men in your time. Bentinck. Churchill.’
The Vizard Mask Page 59