The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  Her eye was drawn further into the square of light. It was a forest. Not a forest with wolverines or elk or undergrowth. Here all was clear and sharp. It was a dryads' forest; she couldn't see them but she knew they were there, hiding among the flat, painted trees which stretched back in cunning perspective to a far-off grove. It didn't seem odd that its sunlight came from banks of chandeliers. From that moment she was lost. The god of this temple asked for her soul and she gave it. A thousand whispered screams reminded her that this was the Devil's chapel, the pit of artifice. But it was the artifice that transfixed her. The light which fell so lovingly on these glades had never fallen on sea or land, but it had coloured the most beautiful of her dreams. Outside, a million miles away, it was grey winter; here, encapsulated in a frame, was summer, and it always would be.

  The hair stood on her neck. She knew this place as she had known Henry King. The essence of the man was here, or he had carried the essence of theatre in himself. She'd been in exile from this sumptuousness, this unbearable delight of childhood. Like a turtle sensing the sea, she yearned towards it.

  Here and there a few people on the benches read by tapers. Above the stage a man was knocking at the curtain mechanism with a hammer while below, in a fenced-off part of the pit, a violin tuned up.

  Voices came and went from the flats at the side of the stage, somebody was swearing. Penitence didn't notice them any more than birdcalls or a breeze rustling in the leaves of a true forest; they fitted. She wasn't even surprised that an actor on stage was speaking dearly familiar lines: 'Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you ...'

  Penitence's lips moved in synchronization. '. .. And though you know my inwardness and love is very much unto the prince and Claudio, yet, by mine honour ... is that bloody woman here yet?'

  A head popped out from behind a flat. 'No she ain't.'

  Happily, Penitence settled herself to watch this new play.

  The actor flung out his arms. 'Where is the Athanasian slut? How can I make love to a bloody vacuum? You read it, John.'

  'I haven't got time,' said John's head, crossly, 'I've got—'

  'Then find somebody who has. Why should I waste my breath if the harlots who pose as actresses in this ballum rancum can't be bothered—'

  'All right, all right,' grumbled John's head. Its body joined it as it limped to the front, peering, and called to the prone figure of a woman on the bench behind Penitence: 'Knipp, you wouldn't...?'

  'No, I bloody wouldn't.' Knipp didn't look up from her script. 'I've got to learn Sabina by this afternoon, so cock off.'

  John raised his eyes to Heaven, then cast them hopelessly round the silent figures on the other benches, finally coming to rest on Penitence. 'Here, you.'

  Penitence looked around her.

  'You. In the cap. Can you read?' 'Me?'

  'Oh, for God's sake. You. Can you read? Then come up here.'

  It was inevitable; fitting. She was going up the steps. She was under the lights. John grabbed her arm and led her to where the actor had sat himself down, his head on his knees, his arms over his head. 'Now then, dear,' John said, as if she were a baby but directing his look, which was venomous, at the hunched figure on the floor. 'That gentleman there is an actor, believe it or not.' A book was pushed into her hands. 'If he ever stands up I want you to read to him all the little words that come after the name Beat. See here? Beat. When it comes to the name Bene, he'll talk. All right, dear? All right, Kynaston?' He went away.

  Kynaston sighed and stood up. He was tall with fine-boned head and hands. His hair, which was his own, hung in a beautiful wave over his eyes and he pushed it back. 'Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?'

  By the mercy of God nobody was looking at her. Even so she stuttered. 'Yea, and I w-w-will w-weep a w-while longer.'

  Kynaston covered his eyes. Why?' he asked. 'Why me?' But he kept on. 'I will not desire that.. .'

  Put the mask on. You can join the cavalry. 'You have no reason. I do it f-freely.'

  Kynaston was concentrating on his moves and not looking at her, so gradually she improved. I can do this. There was a 'p' coming up in a couple of lines. Breathe. 'It were as possible for me to say ...' Did it. '... but believe me not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.'

  Her voice became stronger as it hit the stride Henry King had taught her; she could hear it issue out into the auditorium and thought how nice it sounded.

  Kynaston, too, was gathering momentum. 'Come, bid me do anything for thee.'

  She gave it what she'd given it on the balcony of the Cock and Pie. 'Kill Claudio.'

  'Ha, not for the wide world.' He was a very different Benedick from Henry King, but he was feeding the same anger.

  'O! that I were a man,' hissed Beatrice. 'O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.'

  'Hear me, Beatrice ...'

  She rampaged into the 'Princes and counties!' speech without a single misplaced 'p', then Benedick had turned back into Kynaston who was kissing her hand, bidding her farewell and saying: Very nice, my dear, thank you. You can go back now.'

  As she shambled back into exile, she heard him tell John: 'Get her to do something about that walk. She moves like a bloody horse.'

  The man above the stage was still hammering, the violin still tuning up. But it had all changed. Taking her seat again, she thought she heard Knipp hiss: 'He wanted a read-through, dear, not a bloody audition', but when she looked round the actress's eyes were fixed on her book.

  Then Dogberry, Verges and Sexton came on for the discovery scene and the Dogberry was so funny she gave a yelp before she could clap her hands over her mouth. From then on he played to her, until Dorinda tapped her on the shoulder and she had to follow, still looking back, out into the corridor. 'It's not what I expected,' she babbled, 'and yet it is. Oh, Dorry, I've had such a lovely time.'

  To her surprise, Dorinda kissed her. 'Ain't been able to say that in a bit, have you?'

  No. In the minutes, hours, she'd been here she'd been given a childhood, somebody else's childhood, full of presents and wonder.

  Aphra ain't though.'

  She came back to earth. 'Won't he take her play?'

  'Won't even read it. The old gut-fucker's pretending he's never met her before. I reckon he's ashamed he got her into the spying business and then wouldn't help her.' Aphra in trouble had become one of Dorinda's own.

  A rich, deep voice rolled out of an open door. 'Madam, plays I have got. What I lack are audiences. D'ye know how many attended The Slighted Maid yesterday, even with the damned masque?'

  A large fat man with a brutal jaw was sweeping a twittering Aphra out into the corridor. 'Two hundred and four. Two paltry hundred - most of those with their knuckles brushing the ground — and four. Twenty-one pounds and ninepence, madam. From which rent will take five pounds fourteen shillings leaving fifteen pounds six shillings and ninepence for running costs, not to mention actors who insist on being paid even though they couldn't make a goose hiss. Don't talk to me of new plays, madam. We're having to recoup with Much Ado tomorrow. Thank God for Shakespeare, I say.'

  His voice brushed all three women before him, like a broom, and piled them up at the exit where Jacko held open the door. Sir Thomas pushed up Aphra's sleeve and ran his moustache along her forearm, making pecking noises. 'Your play may be worthy of you, madam, but the last we had by a damned woman ran one night. Too damned virtuous. A play needs balls, madam, balls, and women don't have 'em, thank God. Return to your husband, madam. I wish you good-day.'

  The door slammed behind them and they trudged back up the alley. Penitence put her arm round Aphra's shoulders and found Dorinda's arm already there. 'Did you tell him Buckingham and Rochester were your patrons?' It was stretching things a bit; since the gift of money that had liberated them from Newgate, they had heard nothing from the noble lords. The aristocracy had mostly retreated to the country away from the dismal ruin of London where detritus still lay so thick it
had raised the ground level by four feet.

  'Yes,' said Aphra, miserably.

  'I'll give him balls,' said Dorinda. The entire Cock and Pie had been depending on Aphra's play. 'Wish I'd twisted his off when I had the chance.'

  Penitence shot her a look over Aphra's head. 'You didn't.'

  'Had to,' said Dorinda, 'or it was goodbye oranges. He's got droit . . . droit something over every quim in the house. King's warrant, he calls it.'

  They were back in winter with a dead cat in a dirty alley

  and worry gnawing their stomachs, to say nothing of hunger. If I shave the remains off the lamb bone and boil it with the last of the carrots we can have soup. Aphra stopped. 'Dorinda.' 'Yes, Affie?'

  'Can you smuggle me into the play this afternoon?' 'You're not going back?'

  'One is not living off Penitence's charity for ever ...' 'I took yours quick enough.'

  Aphra was trembling with desperation. 'I don't know what else to do.' She straightened herself up. 'One's talent lies with the pen, that I know. It's the only recourse one has. I shall go back today. I shall go back tomorrow. I shall go back the day after. Whenever there is a play, one will be there watching it. I'm going to see what the public wants and what it doesn't. And if testicles are the order of the day, testicles it shall be.' She dashed tears from her eyes. 'With knobs on.'

  'Hey you.' The shout came from behind them where John had emerged from the theatre door. 'You. Where you going?' 'Home,' shouted back Penitence coldly. 'Back here on the chap of two and we'll practise moving. I'm not having my walkers tramping the stage like woodcutters.' The door slammed. He'd gone. 'Walkers?'

  'Spear-carriers.' Dorinda was torn between pleasure and envy. 'Ladies-in-waiting. Them as don't speak. Divers attendants.' 'Oh.'

  'There's a turnaround,' said Dorinda. 'We come here to sell Aphra's play and you get the ballocking work.' 'Oh.'

  They hurried to catch up with Aphra who, deaf to everything but her own misery, had reached the mouth of the alley and was turning in the wrong direction. They took her arms and piloted her north. She looked up at them ferociously. 'With knobs on,' she said.

  The ill wind which had fanned flames across the City brought prosperity to the untouched West End. Masons, bricklayers, wagoners, carpenters, architects came in from the four quarters of England needing accommodation and provisioning.

  Even the Rookery profited from the boom; there was work for those prepared to do it, and plentiful pockets to be picked by those who weren't. Houses which had been empty of humans and rats filled up again.

  Penitence was tempted to turf MacGregor out of Job's and Kinyans's room, put him in what had been Phoebe's, and rent the vacated space. She was stopped by a warning from the Reverend Boreman on one of her visits to St Giles's to pick up a text for printing. She had fallen into the habit of asking his advice, though not necessarily taking it.

  'Bring strangers into the Cock and Pie? Are you mad, girl?'

  'Sam Bryskett's renting to a pair of tilers from Bedford,' she said, 'at a guinea a week. What's mad in a guinea a week?'

  'Sam Bryskett hasn't got an illegal press in his kitchen.'

  She still found it difficult to grasp the concept of censorship. 'If I may point out, sir, you use it.'

  'You're cheaper than the others.'

  'Nobody's b-bothered me yet.'

  The Reverend Boreman shook his finger at her. 'They haven't bothered you, my girl, because the country's at peace and you're printing nothing inflammatory. But times change. And they change fast.'

  Penitence scanned the scrawled sheet he'd given her, a blast against the authorities for still ignoring conditions in suburbs like St Giles which had given rise to the Plague. "'... The debauched who build their piazzas while the poor have not even clean water to drink.'" She looked up. 'And this isn't inflammatory, I suppose?'

  The rector was pleased. 'Pray God it is. Pray God they put me on trial that I may denounce them to their faces.' He frowned. 'You have my assurance, Penitence, that they would never learn from me who printed it.'

  She knew they wouldn't. They wouldn't put him on trial either. Who among the powerful cared for a poor rector's tantrums over clean water?

  'You look tired, child. Is it too much cavorting at the theatre?'

  Cavorting. This idea of the public's that theatre life was an endless Lucullan banquet. She got up to go and changed the subject: 'Do you think it was the Papists who set the Great Fire? Everyone says so.'

  'I wouldn't put anything past those idolators,' said the Reverend Boreman, 'but I don't think so. Not the Papists, nor the Dutch.' He smiled at her. 'Not even the Puritans.'

  He's changed. In the old days he would have said it was God's punishment. He's lost certainty. The Plague had taken everyone's certainty.

  Waving goodbye to her from his gate, the Reverend Boreman remembered the dumb creature who had challenged him at this very gate two years before. Such a change. For the better? She would think so, he thought; she had gained comeliness, she walked and talked with elegance. Yet at what cost. No face as young as hers should have eyes so old.

  She had returned to prostitution. Having taken the first step down the slippery slope in Newgate, it had been easier to take the second, though it had left her even more burdened with guilt because this time she hadn't had to take it.

  Mrs Compton, one of the walkers, had come into the ladies' back foyer where Penitence was changing into her attendant's costume for Secret Love. 'He's asking for you, dear.'

  There was only one 'He' at the King's Theatre. The other women looked at her in commiseration as she finished dressing and left the room with resolve and good intentions. I shan't. It stopped with George. I won't. If he dismisses me, so much the worse, but I won't go back to that.

  She paused outside the door to Killigrew's office. Damn the man. It's not as if he's paying me. Walkers, she'd found to her dismay, were expected to do their stage work for the experience and the meal they were given after the performance. She knocked.

  Sir Thomas was sitting at his desk in a loose robe, what looked like a furry nightcap with earflaps, and a temper. 'And what is this, miss?' He had a playbill in his hand.

  Oh God. 'A friend of mine p-prints them, sir. A good printer and cheap.'

  'And licensed, I have no doubt?'

  'Not entirely, sir. But they are only handbills, not p-posters.' She gave him the same persuasion she had given John the prompter, who in tum had persuaded the actor Hart, who, as one of the theatre's shareholders, had commissioned them: 'Ten shillings a ream and a well-written text. Master Hart was pleased to say they have put up attendances.'

  'Master Hart was, was he? And should His Majesty find out that his own theatre is using an unlicensed press, will Master Hart be equally pleased to be sent to the Tower?'

  She hung her head. Damn. Damn. It had been a nice little commission and the only one they had at the moment. That and Dorinda's oranges were keeping the Cock and Pie eating, but only just.

  'What's your name?'

  'Penitence Hurd, sir. I'm a walker.'

  'And a pretty little walker, too.'

  She looked up, alarmed. Killigrew's eyes were on the bill, but she wished she were wearing her old high-necked dress. She'd had to shut her ears to the Puritan voices that shrieked in her mind the first time she had tottered on stage in high heels and trailing decollete best silk - one thing, Sir Tom insisted that even his walkers be finely robed. The thrill of being on stage at all, part of that entrancing charade, the startling seduction of seeing herself in the looking-glass, painted, large- eyed, foreign, the applause, all these things had drowned out the mental chorus of disapproval - after all she was supposed to be a Persian lady and perhaps Persian ladies displayed the swell of their bosoms — but it still made her uncomfortable to be in costume offstage, and Killigrew's tone just then had plunged the low cut of her basque several inches lower.

  'It's well done, I admit,' said Killigrew. 'Who wrote it?'

  The purpose
of handbills was to extol the forthcoming production and Aphra made hers so mouth-watering they were frequently better than the plays themselves. Would it profit Aphra if she told him, or not? 'I'm not sure, sir.'

  'You little minx.' Killigrew had become skittish. 'Is this printer your lover?'

  'I have no lover, sir.'

  'But you would wish him to keep his commission?'

  'Yes, sir.' He was wandering the room, fingering his chin. Penitence became uneasily aware of the couch on the other side of the room. Its velvet was rubbed and well used.

  'The question is, how could I persuade His Majesty to overlook this matter, should it come to his attention.'

  'It's unlikely to, sir, unless you tell him.' You pig. Killigrew wasn't afraid of the King. He'd supplied women to Charles in exile. His rudeness in the royal presence was legendary. He'd once threatened the King that he'd dig up Cromwell's bones 'because no one else is taking care of the kingdom'.