The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  There were plenty of people to tell her if she did it wrong.

  Knipp, the Marshalls and the others were quick with their disapproval if she didn't cue them exactly right or if she put more into her part than was necessary, thereby distracting from their own. Even the good-tempered Gwynn was forced to reprimand her: 'Don't overdo it, ducky. They come to see me, not you.'

  The rest of the time she acted into what seemed a vacuum. She tried to tell herself and the others that her eye was on the £1 a week a top actress earned, and to an extent it was, but the spur that goaded her was the frenzy to express something within her which had woken on the balcony of the Cock and Pie when the people on the rooftops had been moved by one impulse — hers.

  That night she had experienced control; she had used magic as a projectile, she had been the gyrating stoat bringing the birds closer. She had tasted power after a lifetime of powerless- ness and she wanted, she lusted, to taste it again.

  Then Hart told her she was to play Desdemona. She was so astounded she almost argued him out of it. 'But she's the heroine.' They had just come offstage after the last curtain of The Indian Emperor and Hart's large painted eyes were tired. 'Thank you for telling me, dear. Of course she's the heroine, or she was when I played her in the old days. What you do with her remains to be seen. Now run away and learn the words. We go on in a month.'

  Penitence floated home, babbling. 'It's the first time she's ever been played by an actress. The first time. Othello hasn't been put on since only men played women's parts. Hart's been watching me, he says, and he thinks I can do it.'

  The Cock and Pie was sure of it and MacGregor insisted they have a night out with ale all round at the Ship to spread the news.

  The Ship was the same fine inn it had always been but much of its atmosphere had gone with its children. Mistress Bryskett was a broken woman and rarely put in an appearance. Her remaining child had never come back; the friends who'd taken her to the country had begged to keep her, and since the little girl was thriving in the good air, she had been allowed to remain. Sam was quieter and sterner, but that night he insisted on treating everybody. 'Playing the heroine? Make her jolly then eh, Prinks? Need a bit of jolly nowadays.'

  'I'll do my best, Sam.' Penitence couldn't bear to mention the word 'tragedy' in the presence of the Brysketts, and Sam, who never left his inn, was unlikely ever to find out that Othello lacked jollity. She doubted if any of the Rookery would; the theatre may have had common appeal in Shakespeare's day but now it was almost exclusively the resort of the upper class.

  She reckoned without Dogberry. The ex-watchman had made the Ship his local, though he now had a thriving butchery business in Drury Lane. He put a proprietorial arm round her waist and hoisted her on to a table: We're drinking tonight to my progeny,' he announced, 'as I taught everything I know to. The hours I spent in the alley listening to this girl go through her lines was ... hours. The toast is Mistress. Penitence. Hurd. My progeny. May she bring the house down and the butchery trade be there to watch it.' As he lifted her down among cheers, he was troubled. 'Penitence Hurd,' he said. 'It don't sound right, Prinks. All right for pummelling pulpits, but not for bringing houses down.'

  Hart said much the same thing. 'You'll have to change it, dear. It won't look good on the programme. We're trying to entertain them, not save their souls.'

  'Can't it be just Pen Hurd?'

  Hart shuddered. 'We're not in the cattle business, either.'

  She was not averse to a change of name. The Indians, who regarded names as magic, had always changed theirs when they wanted to make a new start in life. Matoonas, when she'd first known him, had been Manitowwock and only became Matoonas after passing the test of his initiation ceremony. In this, her great departure, she would be not unhappy to leave behind the detritus carried by her old name. 'Penitence', after all, had been foisted on her as an atonement for her mother's sin, and strictly speaking, she was a Hoy, like her putative father, a FitzHoy, rather than a Hurd.

  Aphra suggested 'Miranda' and Dorinda 'Roxolana'. Oddly enough, it was Mistress Palmer who said: 'Her Ladyship'd been so proud of you. Why not do her proud, eh? Take her name.'

  'Margaret Hughes,' Penitence told Hart, firmly.

  He raised his eyes. 'Most exciting, dear, I'm sure. Very well, if you must, you must. Only I think we'll give it a teeny bit more verve and make it Peg Hughes.'

  So Peg Hughes was what went on the posters.

  It was only because Hart, having played Desdemona as a young man, had always coveted the part of the Moor that King's was putting on Othello at all. Nobody else was sanguine about its chances of running more than one night; tragedy was out of date: heroic drama was what the public wanted nowadays, while Charles II was well known for his preference for comedy. 'I don't care, it's a great play,' Hart said stubbornly.

  What he really meant, Penitence discovered when they began rehearsals, was that it was a great part and he intended Desdemona to be merely a sounding board to his playing of it. He had picked Penitence, an unknown, because she was unknown.

  'She's the epitome of innocence,' he told Penitence in their first coaching session. 'And, while one wouldn't wish to cast aspersions on the other ladies of this company, to represent any of them as lily chaste would make a cat laugh, let alone an audience.'

  Penitence was used to the double standard of morality as it applied to Puritan men and women, but was surprised to discover it in the free and easy atmosphere of the theatre. Hart, for all his elaborate effeminacy, was no lily maid himself. Some women, though not Penitence, found his slim, well- preserved body and languid air irresistible; his affairs were legion. It was rumoured in the walkers' foyer that his present one was with the seventeen-year-old Nell Gwynn. But she was forced to admit he knew his public. The fops could jeer at anything. Hart was afraid of casting Gwynn or Knipp or either of the Marshalls in case Othello's demand of Desdemona, 'Are you not a strumpet?', was answered by a roar of 'Yes' from the pit.

  'Whereas you, dear,' he said, 'look like a primrose nobody's picked yet.' He raised an eyebrow. 'Though, does one gather there's a little fatherless bud?'

  'My son, yes.' She was too proud of Benedick to conceal him and had even brought him to the theatre once or twice.

  He nodded. 'Well, don't worry. The audience won't know. Married or unmarried, all our lady Thespians are "Mrs". Since our dear King was restored, the title "Mistress" has acquired unfortunate connotations. But we digress. Now then . . .'

  Penitence reported back to the Cock and Pie in discontent. 'He wants me to play her all insipid. He keeps referring to her in terms of little white flowers.'

  "Course he does,' said Dorinda. 'He's the cock. He don't want no hen sharing his ballocking applause.'

  'One's never seen the play,' said Aphra, 'but, reading it, I am forced to say that Desdemona appears insipid. A Venetian Matchless Orinda.'

  Together in the attic she and Penitence scoured the text for clues to Desdemona until they practically knew her shoe size. 'The poor, poor soul,' said Aphra, wiping her eyes. 'To be as innocent as she was, and yet suspected of being a whore by the man she loves.'

  '1 can play that,' said Penitence, quietly.

  But Aphra decided there was more. 'Not so insipid after all,' she said. 'The dear girl doesn't know it, but she has appetites. She positively lusts after Othello. She is a creature of nature, like my poor, dear Caesar's wife. She makes "the beast with two backs" — what a powerful phrase, how did the man do it? — with that lovely black Othello in the artless joy of love.' Aphra picked up her fan to cool herself. 'The thing is, Penitence, she radiates animality. She can't help it. It's directed at her husband, but other men pick up its scent. Cassio does. That horrid rogue Iago does. It is why he sets out to destroy her. It's the old, old story. Men want us, and hate us for making them want us. Desdemona is Eve.'

  Penitence was floundered. 'You are clever, Aphra.'

  'If you ever felt lust,' said Aphra, 'prepare to play it now.'


  Penitence's eyes went to the attic window; she had felt it. Once.

  *

  'No, no,' shouted Hart. 'Would you make the girl into a wanton?'

  Rebecca Marshall and Kynaston were in the pit, learning the parts of Emilia and Cassio. Knipp, with the smaller part of Bianca, was watching. 'I don't know, Charlie,' she said, slowly. 'Her playing of it makes sense.'

  'When I want the interpretation of someone who's never seen the damned play, I'll ask for it, thank you very much,' said Hart.

  Penitence felt a fool. She also felt relieved. Taking the memory of the passion that had possessed her for Henry King on the night nearly two years before, distancing herself enough to control and direct it towards somebody else, even a fictional somebody else, had given new meaning to the dictum 'All actresses are whores'.

  But Kynaston joined in. '1 agree with Knipp, Charlie. It gives an explanation for Othello's jealousy. I always wondered why the silly bugger was so quick to believe Iago's lies. But if Desdemona's a bit of a wagtail, even if she's only wagging it for him, Iago's just confirming Othello's fears.' In an aside to Knipp, he added: 'It makes sense of Iago, too. The sod's jealous.'

  Hart raised his eyes. 'If only Shakespeare'd had your command of language.' He came to the unlit footlights. 'Othello isn't about sense, my dears. It's about chaos. The destruction of a great man. They're not coming to hear sense. They're coming to hear me reduce them to terror and pity. I shall be wonderful.'

  'Good. Good.' Kynaston held up his beautiful hands. 'Sorry I spoke.'

  'You do see, though ...'

  'Please,' said Kynaston. 'Continue. Lay on being wonderful. Turn the girl into a dairymaid. If the audience wonders what Othello ever saw in her, it's no skin off my nose.'

  'No, it isn't. But you do see ...'

  Kynaston returned to his script. 'Go ahead.'

  Lacy, who was playing Iago, was called in for his opinion. Penitence, not called for hers, settled herself on a couch set for the afternoon's production of The English Monsieur, while the argument continued.

  To her surprise, Knipp came up from the pit and joined her. 'Reminds me of my husband,' she said.

  'Hart?'

  'Othello. Wants a woman attractive, but only attractive to him.' More than once Penitence had noticed that Knipp's delicate small face sported a black eye. It had one now. Close to, the wrists of her stylish sleeves were worn and there was a hole in her stocking. 'Did you hear Gwynn's sent in her scripts?'

  It was promotion for Penitence that, for the first time, Knipp was prepared to gossip with her. In King's hierarchy, the top-rank actresses rarely addressed their inferiors unless in the course of work, and when they did they referred to each other - and insisted on being referred to — by the title 'Mrs'.

  Nevertheless, she was sorry that Nell Gwynn was leaving, and said so. 'Where is she going to?' It seemed incredible that someone who already possessed the moon Penitence was reaching for should surrender it.

  'Higher things. The King's setting her up. Didn't you know?'

  'I'm sorry to hear it.' For all her rejection of Puritanism, two generations of free thinking had inoculated Penitence against monarchy. Nor had her glimpses of the King during his attendances at the theatre changed her conviction that it was wrong to set up a man and worship him. On her very first day in England, when she'd seen Charles II pass by in his coach, she'd decided he was a bad thing and nothing had since changed her mind.

  Knipp glanced at her. 'And why be sorry, miss? It ain't every day a child who had to serve drink in a brothel becomes a royal mistress.'

  Penitence shook her head. 'I like Mrs Gwynn.' It had been a pleasure to watch her. Penitence knew that when it came to acting she was already the comedienne's superior, but that if she remained a player until Doomsday she'd never be able to pick up an audience and bounce it like a ball as Gwynn did. 'I hope she will not become another Mrs Farley.' Elizabeth Farley's story was still bandied about the walkers' foyer as an Awful Warning of what could happen if an actress gave in too easily to the King's priapism. She'd been Charles's fancy for a night or two, was discarded to one of the courtiers, discarded again, became pregnant, was put in a debtors' prison and now, so legend went, walked the streets of Cheapside.

  'Oh Lord,' said Knipp, 'a bloody sermon-sniffer. Farley was a fool. As to that, we were to talk to you later, but it might as well be now.' She looked to where the actors were still in discussion and shifted round so that she was facing Penitence. 'Look, Hughes, you can end up set comfortable for the rest of your life, or you can end up like Farley. Which do you want?'

  'I want to act.'

  'We all want to act, dearie,' Knipp was impatient, 'always supposing they let us. But what happens is, the moment you step out as Desdemona on that stage in front of that audience, you're prey. You're hunted. You're the hind and they're the stag-hounds. This theatre's a pudding and actresses are the plums. It's all a matter of which hand you let grab you.' She wagged a finger under Penitence's nose. 'Make sure you pick the one with the best rings on. And get guarantees. Put away a nest-egg for when your looks go. Believe me, that's soon enough.'

  A figure squatted down beside them and Knipp looked at it for confirmation. 'I'm telling her Farley was a fool as didn't get guarantees before she got the pox, ain't that right, Becky?'

  The younger Marshall's face remained beautifully remote. 'I'm afraid it is.'

  'Nelly never made Farley's mistake,' continued Knipp. 'No more did Moll Davis over at the Duke's. They got Old Rowley to cough up before he lost interest. He's given Moll a baby, but he's given her a house and a thousand a year to go with it. And our Nelly's got that out of him already.'

  'And not even pregnant yet,' said Becky Marshall.

  Penitence was warmed by their concern — there was no doubt these two lovely women were very much in earnest — but she was repelled by their assumption that an actress should pick a protector on the basis of his income. She thanked them with the complacence of one about to receive the heady sum of £52 a year.

  Knipp shook her head at her and went off to the tiring- room.

  'You'll learn,' said Becky Marshall.

  'Mrs Knipp doesn't seem to have profited from being a plum,' Penitence said, defensively.

  Marshall yawned. 'Ah well, you see, she married for love, poor thing.'

  Hart was beckoning her over. Penitence went, prepared to feel sympathy for him. If what she'd heard were true, he'd just lost his beloved to a king. But the actor was insouciant. 'Now then, dear,' he said, 'we're going to try an experiment. We're going to make Desdemona a woman for these lusty times. I want you to give her passion. She doesn't just dote on Othello, she's on heat for him . ..'

  Frangipani was the in perfume that month, and the actresses had splashed it on. Warmed by bare necks and bosoms and the heat trapped within the tiring-room's baize-hung walls, it reached a level that interacted with the noise of female voices crescendoing as the time came for curtain-up and actresses and their dressers jostled for places in front of the looking-glasses.

  Outside the door, Jacko and the property boy, Cully, seventy if he was a day, were arguing with Sir Hugh Middle- ton, who was enamoured of Rebecca Marshall and wanted to enter. Further off the audience's chatter had become a one- pitch note interspersed with the thump of tabors, and the 'Penny-a-pipeful' call of the tobacco-sellers.

  Mrs Coney stepped back and looked at Penitence with her head on one side. 'Does she need more powder. Marshy?'

  Rebecca Marshall put down her own powder-puff. 'Lord, no. Here, put some of this on her cheeks.' She passed over a leaf of Spanish rouge.

  'Hart said "a lily".'

  'He didn't say Hamlet's ghost. Watch out.' Penitence was gulping.

  'Sick bowl,' called Mrs Coney. 'Quick.'

  A bowl was brought. Penitence vomited into it. Sighing, Coney wiped her face and began again. 'There, pigeon. You're not the first.'

  The argument outside grew louder. Sir Hugh Middleton was refusing to accept the rulin
g that no male except the property boy was allowed in the tiring-room on first afternoons. 'Becky,' he was shouting, 'Becky, my little bone-ache.'

  Marshall covered her ears. Why do we have to put up with this? I'm going to complain to the King. I never encouraged the stinkard.'

  'Cully's called for Sir Tom to take him away.' Coney patted Penitence's hair and put on its wreath of flowers. 'There now, pigeon, you look lovely. Don't she look lovely, Marshy?'

  'She does indeed.' Rebecca gave her own hair a final pat, and stood up. Carefully, one by one, she uncurled Penitence's fingers from around the posy of roses Dorinda and Aphra had given her before she left home. 'Let go now, there's a good girl.'

  Freed, Penitence's hands fastened desperately on the front of Rebecca's robe. 'I c-can't remember the first line.'

  'I know. Stand up now.'