The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  At the entrance to Albemarle's apartments he wondered if the Duchess was to be inflicted on him. He didn't feel up to Xanthippes today. But their progress through the suite to the Duke's office was mercifully unimpeded by Lady Monck.

  'Now then, Lord Mayor, distribution of relief.' Seated among the Duke's heavy furniture, sipping on over-sweet malmsey, they discussed it.

  Sir John, by right of office, would administer the City itself; the Duke to take over the out-parishes. The pest rate levy that had been ordered would depend on how many people in each parish were left untouched by the Plague to pay it. 'Then there'll be private gifts and subscriptions from other cities.' The Duke looked hard at the Lord Mayor. 'Thee'll be expecting thy share of that for the City I don't doubt.'

  'The major part, certainly,' said John.

  'Aye, but dost thee know thy City's population?'

  He didn't. Estimates varied. 'Half a million? A million? Bigger than out-parishes' at any rate.'

  'Is it now? Is it? Look at this.' The Duke produced a rough map of the City and out-parishes. He drew a ring round the City making a solid central block surrounded by a ragged fringe.

  'It's still bigger,' said Sir John.

  'So it do look, but thee needs a soldier's eye. Watch now.' He drew a grid of equal-sized squares over the whole area. 'Thee counts t'squares over t'City, then count t'squares left outside.'

  The City had twenty-seven squares, the outlying area twenty-eight. 'I tell thee, Lord Mayor, there's as big a mass of people outside as in.'

  Sir John was devastated; he'd had no idea London had spread so wide. Nor was it any use to say, as he was tempted, that the City's population was more concentrated; he knew the overcrowding of the out-parishes.

  He felt the now-familiar anger seize him. 'I know what you're asking and I won't do it. Bloody foreigners, swarming in from the country to live like rats, nobody asked them.'

  'Aye, but they're not foreigners, are they? They're English men and women as couldn't find work elsewhere, and thy City was glad enough of their labour in t'good times.'

  Damn the man and his soldier's eye and damn, damn the Plague. Into Sir John's own eye came the picture of the monument which he'd hoped would have been erected to himself. He'd have dearly liked future ages to know that John William Lawrence's mayoralty had left London more wonderful than it had found it. Now it would be remembered as the Plague Year. He made the bravest decision of his life. 'I shall consult my Aldermen,' he said, 'but you may take it that only money raised in the City will be spent there.'

  'God will reward thee, John,' said the Duke, quietly.

  'He'd better,' said Sir John.

  The Duke's steward came in: 'The parish clerk of St Giles- in-the-Fields is here, my lord, with his Bill. I have baked it, my lord.'

  The Duke rose. 'I suppose I'd better be acquainted.' He turned to the Lord Mayor. 'Any road, he's t'lad who's swallowing most of the funds. Do thee like to see him, John?'

  'I'd like to see him in Hell,' said the Lord Mayor, sincerely, 'I'd like to see him buried alive in one of his own pits. I'd like to see him screaming on the rack. Him and his whole damned parish.'

  Peter Simkin, waiting with his head bared, fingering his hat, saw a small man rush past him who, he thought — near-fainting with the heat as he was, he couldn't be sure — wore the necklace and insignia of the City of London. The Lord Mayor, if it was the Lord Mayor, seemed to be shaking his fist at him.

  Like most windows in the Rookery, the actor's was unglazed, a square wooden frame inset with shutters through which woodworm supplied ventilation. The shutters punctuated his moods, slamming to when she enraged him, nudging open to show he'd forgiven her, remaining closed when he was sick of her, bursting outwards for a fresh start.

  Today was a fresh start. 'Today' he said, 'I have a good idea.'

  Not another one.

  Today he'd acquired a recorder. 'We will sing the phrase.'

  She was amazed by his persistence. She had long given up hope for improvement; the lessons were an end in themselves. We might just as well play chess.

  At the first note, the girls below popped their heads into view. 'Singing now, is it?' And, from Dorinda: 'Pen likes singing to her gentlemen, don't you, Pen?'

  'I c-cc-can't.'

  'You can.' The shutters would slam to any moment, she knew. Quickly, she weighed embarrassment against another stifling day with nothing to do. She opened her mouth .. .

  He kept trying to get her to look at him. 'Look at me. See how my lips move.' But she wouldn't. Like most stutterers she avoided the face she addressed, unable to bear the grimace that reflected her own. She b-urred and p-urred to his right shoulder.

  'What you two doing?' Penitence was in the process of sending a near-perfect b-urr across the alley to the pitch of middle C. She unpuckered her lips and looked down.

  The new watchman, a former butcher's assistant, was regarding the two of them with suspicion. The Plague had taken Soper two days ago. Watchmen, in the Yard's view, were either knaves or fools and this, Soper's replacement, was promising on both counts. He used his powers under the Plague laws with tyrannous attention to detail. Yesterday he'd wanted Mistress Palmer prosecuted on the grounds that her washing hanging on the pulley line between the Buildings and the Stables' chimney was 'agin promulgation'. It had taken the intervention of Apothecary Boghurst to convince him it posed no threat of infection.

  Irritated, the actor removed the recorder and sent down a 'What?' which would have pierced a sensitive man like a shard of glass.

  The watchman remained unpierced. 'Blowing kisses. Agin promulgation.'

  The actor raised his eyes and waved the man away. 'Again. B-urr.'

  'B-b-bbu-umm-b.' Her face was in tics of self-consciousness.

  The actor growled. 'You see what you've done to her, you bacon-faced buffle? Go away.'

  'Don't you call me a buffle.' The watchman was indignant. 'This is agin promulgation this is and I'll report you to the magistrate.'

  'Do it.' The actor hammered on his window-sill. 'But go. This lady must have calm.'

  'I know what the Cock and Pie is. That's a lady, I'm a Dutchman.'

  The recorder was laid down on the table, very slowly. 'No,' said the actor, 'you're not a Dutchman, you're a pig-eared, dough-brained, privy-stinking dogbolt and you will apologize. You ... you Dogberry.'

  'I'm going to report this.' The watchman lumbered off.

  The actor scratched his chin. 'Dogberry,' he said, 'Dogberry, Dogberry, Dogberry.' His chair scraped back and he vanished into the shadows of his room.

  He shouldn't swear. But it was nice of him. Is it worth it?

  He was back, with a book in his hand. 'Listen to me, Boots. There's an actor in Paris with a stutter like yours. He's one of Moliere's company, Jean Bejart.' He was looking at her intently. He was having another idea. 'But when he is on the stage his speech is perfect. Perfect absolutely.'

  She nodded with tired indulgence and he became cross. 'For God's sake, when Jean is himself he stutters: when he's someone else he doesn't.'

  She understood what he said; she just couldn't see its application.

  He threw the book and she caught it, looked at it, then dropped it when she saw what it was. 'It's a play.'

  'A play, yes. It doesn't explode.'

  It can injure the soul. The childhood-engrained horror of the conjuring, mocking, delusive mummery that was theatre was strong in her.

  She was puzzling him: 'You read, don't you? I've seen you read.'

  The Bible. The B-Bb-umm-B ...' Did he think harlots read the Bible? Didn't he know it was the Bible? How could he persist in understanding her so little when she knew him so well? 'The B-Bbb ...' Let me tell him. This one word, Lord. I beg you. 'B-By-Bb-umm . . .'

  'God Almighty,' he said, 'do you want to stay in a brothel for ever? Read it.' He slammed his shutters.

  Church bells rang all afternoon, adding to the din in Penitence Hurd's brain where the Pure Church thundered its d
enunciation of acting and actors. It wasn't until evening that she realized it was speaking in the Reverend Block's voice. And how pure were thee? The question silenced it, though the bells went on. She sat listening to them and compared two men; one who thought she was a whore and didn't treat her as one, the other who'd known she was not and had.

  She went out to watch the sunset. There were lights in the Strand that she couldn't account for, until her nose twitched at a new smell. They were burning disinfectant in the streets to keep off infection.

  Below her the neat black figure of Apothecary Boghurst crossed the Yard to the Ship where the Night Watch opened the door for him.

  The Yard's living were at their windows, Mistress Palmer on her balcony, a few Tippins on the roof of the Stables. Footloose hauled himself out of his vat and into his trolley. They waited.

  After half an hour the knot of watchmen by the door lit their lanterns. One left the group and headed for Butcher's Cut.

  The Yard waited, knowing who would come back with him.

  The tramp of the returning watchman's boots were accompanied by the shuffle of the Searcher.

  Footloose hotched himself across the Yard to the Ship's door,- they could hear his high-pitched voice ask a question, a lower reply. Footloose began his round of the Yard, but the news travelled the round quicker than he did. It was whispered from the pawnbroker's to the roof of the Stables, went up and down the windows of the Buildings, leaped across the gap of Butcher's Cut to Mother Hubbard's.

  On Penitence's side of the Yard it moved along the houses between the Ship and the Cock and Pie, but it was getting held up at the window of Mistress Chalkley, who was deaf. Nobody shouted it.

  From Mistress Hicks's window on Penitence's right came a hoarse 'You there, Pen?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's John Bryskett. The oldest. That's six.'

  Wobbling wheels creaked themselves towards the Cock and Pie's steps. She could hear the puff of Footloose's breath. 'Pen?'

  'Yes.'

  'There ain't no God, is there?' In the Yard her hat made her the religious authority.

  'Yes there is,' she said. And He crucifies mankind for His pleasure.

  She felt her way down through the sleeping house to the kitchen, lit a rushlight from the ration of coals that now burned in a brazier, and took it back, with a supply, to where the actor's book still lay by the side window. It was quarto- sized and looked as if it had belonged to several people in its time, none of whom had been kind to it.

  With one finger, she flipped back the stained cloth cover and the title-page, knelt down and crooked her head round so that she could read without touching it. It was vilely printed and much scrawled. Some minutes later she put out another finger to turn the page and angle the book to a better position. Then she lay down on the floor. When the rushlight went out, she lit another and made herself comfortable on her bed, without knowing she was doing either of those things.

  Just before dawn she put the book down and sat up with her arms round her knees. The pith of Kinyans's last rushlight was a twig of ash of which only the bottom quarter sent out a circle of light beyond which existed grief and suffering and a God who cared about neither.

  Within the circle it was still Messina. Hand in hand a man and a woman danced out of her sight to the sound of pipers; an insubstantial, foolish couple for whose company, however long or short a time she lived, she would be grateful. There were tears in her eyes to watch them go, though she had them, here, in this smudged book. She opened it at the title- page to see what it was called, and nodded. The author had known, had blown his fragile bubble and let it shimmer, iridescent, into an attic in a plague spot for her, who had never played, to know what play meant.

  When the bearers came she was on her balcony to watch John Bryskett's coffin taken away on the cart with only Footloose to follow it. Then she went to her side window and waited for the actor's shutters to open.

  He yawned and stretched. 'Did you read it?'

  'Yes.' She had it in her hands.

  'Well?'

  She said: 'It is r-ri-ri-ridiculous.' Too flimsy to warrant the charge of being sinful, it had no moral, no religious purpose. Stripped down to its basic plot it was absurd.

  'It's not his greatest. On the other hand ...'

  On the other hand. Whoever this Shakespeare was, he had clothed the feeble bones of his play in starlight. Words so luminous had lit up her attic that, unfamiliar as she was with play form, she had been able to see the movements of the men and women who spoke them as they cavorted around her.

  'Did you like Beatrice?'

  'Yes.' Last night the lump that was Penitence had found the form it was prepared to sell its soul to be fashioned in. 'H-how d-did he d-do it?'

  'Do what?'

  'H-how d-d-did he m-m-make you kn-kn-know th-the-they I-loved each other f-f-from the b-be-umm-be-beginning ...' It was almost the longest sentence she had spoken to him and it was too difficult. They hadn't known they loved each other, everybody else thought they hated each other, the ludicrous devices with which their friends tricked them into declaring love - all that was the plot - but the author had reached over and, in the battle of words between Beatrice and Benedick, had said to Penitence: 'You and I know their attraction, even if they don't. Let us watch them fall off the knife-edge of passion they teeter on.'

  'Genius.' He shrugged. 'It's a bauble, I grant you. In dealing with true situation Moliere 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.