The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  The moans became a wail, then an excited crescendo of profanity.

  Penitence covered her ears to shut out the sound. Obliterate them, Lord. Send down Thy bolt and pierce these sinners in their uncleanness. Punish these deans and bishops who call the Indians savages.

  She fell on her knees. And, Lord, in Thy infinite mercy, guard the people of the Squakheag from all harm.

  Though she'd been late going to bed, Penitence, commanded by the habit of a lifetime, woke up as the night sky began to respond to a sun still below the horizon. During her dreams the previous day's experiences had enmeshed into an almost frantic need to be clean.

  I must wash. This attic, her clothes, her very soul were mired.

  She got up, used her chamber pot, then, having wrapped herself in a blanket, carried it downstairs, feeling her way with her other hand.

  The greyness coming through the high, east windows of the salon lighted her way along a ghostly clerestory. The place smelled of tobacco, scent and food. The doors of the harlots' rooms were shut. Were the male fornicators still in them? Did they stay all night or did they return in the early hours to their palaces and cathedrals?

  She went through the door at the far end, locating by the snores the room where Kinyans and Job slept, and negotiated the dark cupboard stairs to the kitchen where the embers of a fire in the grate threw out warmth and glow. Something soft touched her leg and she saw that the cats had been allowed into the kitchen and were waiting for her to let them out. Putting the pot on the floor, she drew back the bolts and smelled the air that might have been fresh before it passed the laystall. There was utter silence from the buildings around her, re-emphasizing the Rookery's godlessness; by this time back home the trading post would have been awake and working.

  Cautiously, she crept out into the alley, emptied her pot and left it in the yard while she went into the cold larder to draw water from its well. She returned to the yard and scoured out her pot.

  She drew two more buckets from the well, stoked the fire, poured the water into a cauldron and hung it from a jack to warm. Wondering again where the Cock and Pie did its laundry, she sniffed out a clove-scented tub in a cupboard and took a ball of its storax soap.

  When the water was ready she lugged it upstairs, bolted her door, stripped, plunged her head into one of the buckets and washed herself from top to toe. After she'd finished she set her undergarments, cap and dress to soak and put on the fresh ones she'd brought in her satchel from America. She felt better; cold, damp - she'd had to rub herself down with the blanket — but better.

  The horrors that had manifested themselves the previous night had changed her mind yet again. I must go.

  But Penitence Hurd had a careful soul. Undoubtedly she was in the frying pan of Hell; however, before she jumped out of it, she had to be sure what temperature of fire awaited her.

  She went to her unglazed west window and opened its shutters. Less than six feet away the upper storey of a house loomed towards her. It contained a shuttered window exactly facing hers. She leaned out, looking north along the alley between the houses, and saw it passed the Cock and Pie's back gate and the laystall before losing itself among more houses. In the other direction were the steps leading down into Dog Yard.

  She padded over to the south window. For a moment, as she opened its shutters, she thought she was again facing a brick wall, this time only three feet away. She stepped up and out on to the platform to find that in fact she was on a balcony. The wall, now waist-high, was a parapet formed by the upper part of the Cock and Pie's peculiar frontage; immediately below her were the medallions, she could see the curve of their blue, pottery tops. Further below and to her left was Dog Yard, but a great deal more compelling than that was the view.

  The Cock and Pie was the tallest building in the Rookery, and its parish of St Giles the highest point of the West End. The prospect before her, beyond a rickety roofscape, was a panorama of London.

  On her few visits to Boston with her grandfather, its multiplicity of white-spired churches had been impressive enough; she saw now that it had been a puppy. What lay before her here was the splendid, muscled adult, a coiled, silver-scaled dragon of a city.

  The sun rising like a giant orange was giving the morning air such veil-like texture that she could almost rub it between her fingers. Here and there were open spaces where the tops of autumnal trees provided palettes of colour. In between, stacked geometrical confusions of roofs became denser as her eye was led east to where, loomed over by the cathedral and the prissy uprightness of the Tower, they became a squeezed mosaic held by the mould of the City walls. Only the Thames had clear definition; along its bank directly to her south, the streets and gardens were indistinct in a haze from which emerged the chimneys and cupolas of the Strand's palaces.

  She was transfixed by the sense of being waited for. In one of these magical towers there lay an expectation, some marvel, something that accorded to an unknown capability within herself if she could only find out what it was.

  But not yet. Contempt had gone, to be replaced by unwilling respect. Sinful it might be, but it was the sin of the very old, a city negligent with wisdom and riches, a city with too much history to care what anybody thought of it, and still worth ferreting in for the wonders it contained.

  She felt negligible, provincial, yet excited. To discover whatever it was that beckoned her would need sophistication; London was excluding her and, by excluding her, stimulating the desire to join ...

  Could she start from here?

  Unwillingly, she looked down to see if Dog Yard had been improved by daylight. It hadn't.

  It was too early in Penitence's experience for her to know that what the area around St Paul's was to the City of London, Dog Yard was to the Rookery. Anyone with the physique, will-power and sheer luck to survive a Rookery childhood regarded Dog Yard as the next move up. It was its hub, its bourse, the place where you strolled to pick up news and gossip. Just as most of the world's trade was conducted in the colonnaded loggias of the Royal Exchange, the Rookery's commerce was concentrated on the cobbles of Dog Yard. The fact that nearly all of it came from theft was neither here nor there; as Will Tippin, Dog Yard's late pickpocket, had remarked in his speech from the gallows, so did the Royal Exchange's.

  Its eminence arose mainly from the Rookery's only two solid pieces of architecture: the Ship Inn and the Cock and Pie. The Ship was Elizabethan, a building with the raked, be- windowed frontage of a galleon. That it was occasionally patronized by gentry who wanted to see low life while tasting good ale and without having one's throat cut, was due to the muscle and intelligence of its landlord, Sam Bryskett.

  The emergence of the Cock and Pie as a brothel - it had led a varied career since its days as a Tudor farmhouse - had at first been an affront to Dog Yard where prostitution was on a freelance basis. More affronting yet had been Her Ladyship's barring of would-be customers living in the Rookery itself, and her prices, which would have barred them anyway. Behind her back the 'barge-arsed bitch' was resented, along with her girls, for her pursuit of the genteel both in clientele and manners.

  However, Dog Yard had benefited from Her Ladyship's aspirations. It watched her purchases with interest, noting that she patronized only country sellers of the freshest food, sent her linen to the laundry in Holborn, bought wine at St James's, and sprinkled fresh sawdust on her kitchen floors every week.

  In the entrepreneurial spirit for which it was famed, Dog Yard adapted to the situation, Sam Bryskett improved his own cellar and sold direct to Her Ladyship, thereby saving her transport charges.

  The country vegetable- and meat-suppliers were persuaded, mostly at the point of a knife, to hand over the retail of their produce to certain Dog Yarders. The Tippin family, who lived in the Stables on the Yard's south side, considered the feasibility of either blackmailing or robbing the Cock and Pie's clientele, but in the end decided against killing the ganders who were laying the golden eggs, and instead instituted a practice
of demanding protection money, known locally as 'angel's oil', from the sedan-chair carriers for the privilege of waiting for their masters unharmed. By raiding the nearest woodyard at night, the youngest Tippin gained the sawdust concession.

  Her Ladyship fought off - literally - Pont Tippin's attempt to fill the post of the Cock and Pie's apple-squire in exchange for a proportion of the profits, at the same time rejecting his offer to sell her two of his daughters, but she was astute enough to allow all other changes in the interest of goodwill, a commodity always in short supply in Dog Yard.

  She also entrusted her washing to the undoubtedly capable hands of Mistress Palmer after two occasions on which it came back muddied from the Holborn laundry, Jethro Palmer having twice tripped up the Holborn laundrymaid who carried it.

  Owing to the Dog Yarders' preference for drinking and gambling their profit rather than investing it in brick and mortar, none of their enterprise was evident to Penitence Hurd as she looked down from her balcony that late autumn day. She saw only squalor; irregular patches of lath-and-plaster where rendering had fallen off the walls, broken tiles, thatch on which grass grew in profusion, though none grew on the ground.

  The Cock and Pie's threshold, like the Ship's further along, led out on to stone setts which formed a platform running along the high, north side of the Yard and was served by steps. In more ways than one, everything went downhill from here. The Yard itself formed a sink.

  With the glory of the Ship hidden from her view unless she leaned out, and unable to see the Cock and Pie's daunting but dignified frontage, her impression was dire. Down and diagonally across from her, the arches of what had once been a decent stable-block were barricaded by criss-crossed planks of wood, though people lived inside - she could see smoke emerging from a decrepit chimney. Next to that, and nearer, was the Buildings, actually one building shared by twelve families, a rectangle of rendered wattle-and-daub which an apologetic mason had ornamented with a castellated top and Italianate, though rusting, balconies. Its bravery was accentuated by lines of Mistress Palmer's washing hanging from the crenellations.

  The far west side of Penitence's view was blocked by a high, thin, wooden loft which she knew, from slighting references by the Cock and Pie girls, to be Mother Hubbard's, a brothel which had set itself up in imitation of the Cock and Pie to take local trade or, as Alania had put it with a sniff, 'oblige a billy-goat if it paid 'em tuppence'.

  Wherever there was a space between the houses, somebody had filled it with another, so that habitations no wider than nine feet across squeezed in at crazy angles with their roofs and upper storeys tipping frighteningly over the Yard, shading it from all but determined, midday sun. Had the tiny alleys leading into it been wider they would only have been repositories for more detritus and sewage than they were already.

  The few persons in evidence were as unprepossessing as the place; pale children with heads shaven against lice so that it was impossible to sex them, since their rags gave no clue. The front Nof a vat opened to reveal itself as the home of a man without legs - Penitence later learned that the Yard, in its jolly way, knew him as 'Footloose'. With considerable expertise he hauled himself into a bucket on wheels and propelled himself off for what she assumed would be the day's begging.

  Somewhere in the east a church bell began to chime. The sound was taken up by St Giles's on the west, then by the towers and steeples with which the view of London bristled. The call to Anglican prayer had no effect on Dog Yard, but it reminded Penitence what day it was.

  Bartholomew, 'tis the Sabbath. Whether she go or stay must be put off until tomorrow. Today was the Lord's. Singing Psalm 121, she took her black Bible out of her satchel, sat herself down on her bed and began to read.

  She was still reading and singing two hours later when the Cock and Pie began to stir.

  Dorinda came into the attic, yawning, with a bodice in her hands and threw it on the bed. 'Give this a mend, will you.'

  Penitence put her forefinger on her place and looked up. ' 'Tis the Ssa-Sa-Ssabbath.' She returned to the Bible.

  'What if it is the Sa-Sa-Sabbath? Get my ballocking mending done.'

  Penitence continued to read.

  'You're a crophead,' said Dorinda, creeping towards the bed. 'You're a ballocking Leveller, that's what you are. Let's see your crophead.'

  She snatched off Penitence's cap. Penitence snatched it back, and kicked. Dorinda gave a return kick and grabbed handfuls of Penitence's short, fair hair. They fell on the floor, fighting.

  'Whose dog's dead?' demanded Phoebe from the door.

  Dorinda rolled away, jerking a finger from between Penitence's teeth. 'She's a ballocking Sunday saint and she won't do my ballocking mending. I'm going to tell Her Ladyship of her, and then I'm going to darken her ballocking daylights.'

  Phoebe and Sabina between them restrained Penitence from pursuit, and sat her down. 'See,' said Phoebe, gently, 'we need mending Sundays. Most of our gentlemen, they spend Sundays pummelling pulpits and tomorrow they'll come back wanting quiff badder than ever. Be a good fubsey, eh?'

  Panting, Penitence looked at Phoebe's kindly face and saw she was older than the others, perhaps no more than twenty- four, but ageing rapidly. She shook her head. "Tis the Ssa-Sab- bath.'

  'See,' went on Phoebe, 'it was rare good of Her Ladyship to take you in like she done. Especial if you ain't to be one of the game. Afore, she sent out the mending. Now she's letting you at it. Roof over your head, good pan and peck twice a day. Can't ask more than that, eh, Sabby?'

  'That you can't,' said Sabina. 'Don't you go crossing Her Ladyship, Pen. She's a terror when crossed, Her Ladyship. Ain't she, Pheeb?'

  Still persuasive, Phoebe patted Penitence's hand. 'And don't you mind Dorinda. She's jealous at Her Ladyship favouring you. Loves Her Ladyship, does Dorinda.'

  Sabina nodded. 'More than a mother to us, Her Ladyship's been.'

  Penitence stared at her, wondering what their real mothers could have been like.

  'Dorry's bark's worse than her bite,' said Phoebe, 'and she obliged a lively 'un last night, didn't she, Sabby? A robe-ripper.'

  'Thank Gawd I didn't get him.' Sabina spoke with feeling.

  Dorinda's bark might not have been as bad as her bark, but her teethmarks were still hurting Penitence's shoulder, as much as Phoebe's and Sabina's converse was offending her ears. She shook her head once more.' 'Tis the Ssab-Ssabbath.'

  Sighing at the retribution soon to fall on her, the two girls left the attic hand in hand.

  Penitence adjusted her cap and dress, rubbed her shoulder, returned to her Bible and braced her courage against Her Ladyship's wrath.

  It didn't come. Later, Dorinda poked her head round the door: 'Her Ladyship says no work, no food.' Her tone spoke satisfaction, but her dark eyes showed disappointment at the mildness of Penitence's sentence.

  While going hungry allowed Penitence pleasure in being martyred for righteousness, it was hardship for a girl with a good appetite. Still, as Phoebe had pointed out, it was also hardship for the brothel not to have its mending done. On the one hand, Penitence did not want to contribute to the practice of licentiousness; on the other she would soon have spent two nights under this roof and her Puritan ethics demanded she pay for them.

  I'll mend her Bartholomew bodice on the morrow. Then I shall

  go-

  Bui on the morrow there was other mending than Dorinda's to do, and there came a heavy fall of rain flecked with snow which battered on the roof and poured down the steps outside into the blocked plughole that was the Yard. Looking out, Penitence imagined herself splashing through it with nowhere to go. She was hungry and the smell of Kinyans's beef hare was already wafting through the damp air of the attic.

  She felt trapped and aggrieved. Thee must help a bit, Lord.

  As she and Kinyans cleared after dinner, he said: 'Shall I tell ye about Margaret Hughes?'

  She spun round. He'd been indulging in a bonalay of his own concocting, 'to keep me feet warm'.
It made them unsteady. He was winking at her and tapping the side of his nose.

  'That had ye. Don't know everything, Miss Prinkum-Prankum, but Kinyans do. Old Kinyans do come from Somerset too. Died in the West Indies? So did my arse. Want to know—'

  'One more word, Kinyans.'

  Her Ladyship stood in the doorway, jewelled in purple, with her face painted for the night to come, but beneath the cupid's bow she'd drawn round her mouth her lips were thin, and colour gave out at her eyes, which were blank. For all its heat, the kitchen fell chill on its two occupants.

  Her bulk on its tiny feet moved forward, and Kinyans retreated before her fat, upraised finger.

  'One more word,' she said again, 'ever.'

  'I weren't going to—'

  'Ever.' She went out.

  Penitence, by winking and making encouraging noises, tried to reanimate Kinyans into conspiracy, but the old man had sobered and didn't speak again.