The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  To foster the back-to-nature spirit, the company sat on silk cushions and, much to Dorinda's relief, ate with their fingers.

  Having helped Penitence to sweetbreads and asparagus, Sedley disappeared behind a small hill of chops. 'What will you drink? Beer, Lambeth ale, mead, claret, champagne, Spanish or Rhenish?'

  What she wanted most was cold water. Taking a fine pewter tankard with her, she went looking for a brook and found a stream running along the edge of a wood. She knelt beside it and drank, enjoying the rustle of leaf and water, examining paw prints and remembering her tracking days.

  'Another water-drinker,' said a voice. It was the Prince of Orange. He had no receptacle and after she'd curtseyed she offered him her tankard. 'They try to make me drunk, I think,' he said.

  She nodded. 'They would.' As he drank she remembered Becky had said the boy was special, something like that, and thought Becky was probably right. Somebody'd said he was younger than the Duke of Monmouth, but his fewer years had given him a caution the King's son would never know. She decided she liked him.

  'Lovely lady,' he said, 'I am bewildered by so many lovely ladies. Who do you belong to?' When she raised her eyebrows he apologized: 'Forgive me. My English.'

  'I'm an actress. And, thank God, I don't belong to anybody.'

  'So?' He had a nice smile when he was animated. 'An actress? Do you know Moliere? I have a friend has introduced me to Moliere. I like him very much.'

  'So do I.' They strolled back over the heath, talking theatre. He had recently produced a ballet, he told her. As if he were becoming too informal, he put his hands behind his back and asked conscientiously: 'Have you always been an actress?'

  'No, before that I was a printer.'

  They had to stop then while he questioned her, and if he'd been knowledgeable about the theatre, he was twice so on the printing trade. 'My country makes the finest type, I think.'

  'So do I.' She found herself telling him about the Cock and Pie Press, then remembered and looked suspiciously around at the bushes. 'But please don't mention it to the King. I'm not licensed.'

  'You have no free press in England?' He was horrified.

  'I must go,' she said. Sedley was coming towards them, chewing a capon.

  He insisted on shaking hands. 'Goodbye, madame.'

  'Goodbye.'

  Sedley put an arm round her waist to draw her back to the picnic. 'It's not safe to let you near princes,' he said, 'young or old.'

  Dorinda and her earl had also been for a walk. Dorinda floated to where Penitence was sitting with Sedley and the Marshalls. 'He's done it,' she whispered. 'He's only gone and done it. Asked me to marry him.'

  'Congratulations' said Sedley, while the girls fell on her.

  'I'm so happy for you,' said Penitence, 'if you're sure.'

  'If I'm sure?' Dorinda was still whispering. 'If I'm sure? What do you think? But it's got to be hush until the dirty deed's done. Acause of his family. We're creeping off soon. He's found a priest as'll tie the knot. Wish me luck.'

  When she'd gone to rejoin her beloved, Penitence and Rebecca looked at each other, doubting the ease of the fairytale. Becky asked Sedley quietly: 'The Earl's not married already, is he?'

  'Quiet your virginal suspicion, my dear,' he said, 'the noble de Vere is between wives at the minute.' The way he said it did nothing to lessen Penitence's unease for her friend, but when she went to look for her to offer herself as bridesmaid, the Earl and his future Countess were nowhere to be seen.

  There was a diversion as the Queen and some of her ladies borrowed red petticoats and waistcoats from the servants' tents and, amidst a lot of giggling, set off on cart-horses, accompanied by guards dressed as peasants, to visit a nearby fair in what they hoped was bucolic incognito.

  'Incognito,' scoffed Sedley. 'They look about as countrified as the Old Bailey.'

  There was the night's jollification still to come, but Penitence was beginning to look forward to the whole thing being over. The reality of court life, though dazzling and magnetic, was also full of tension. And with the departure of the Queen on her country-fair adventure, what little restraint there'd been on those who remained behind was lifted.

  Penitence and Becky were constantly harassed for sexual favours by courtiers who assumed, probably rightly, that was why actresses had been invited. Anne early deserted them and disappeared with the Earl of Dorset. The drinking became frenetic; Rochester got pale and vague as he grew drunker, Sedley got redder and a foul-mouthed nuisance. She had to keep batting him off, like a homet.

  Day turned to night, the pastel silks and muslins of afternoon costume were laid aside for deeper colours and richer cloth. The venue became the lovely gallery of the Earl of Suffolk's palace at Audley End. Cards replaced horses, dalliance was transferred from behind bushes to couches in discreet niches. Everybody became drunker. She and Becky sang for their supper, but got booed for not singing bawdy enough songs, though they'd seemed bawdy when they'd rehearsed them. Sir George Etherege took their place and, wavering, plaintively sang:

  'Love's chiefest magic lies

  In women's cunts, not in their eyes ...'

  Penitence saw William of Orange trying to take his leave of the King and go to bed, but being impeded by the Duke of Buckingham who lectured him on incivility.

  Fatigue, the noise, tobacco smoke and fumes from the brandy glasses gave her the sensation of drunkenness from which she kept waking up to vignettes of awful clarity, Sedley pawing at her breasts, the King pawing at Castlemaine's, Buckingham repeating his lecture, this time to a legal-looking gentleman who seemed to have wandered in by mistake ... 'and I advise you, my lord, to keep a whore, for it is politically ill-advised in this court to be faithful to your wife.'

  Everything's upside-down. She'd stepped into a distorting mirror where immorality was as rigid as the Puritans' adherence to piety. If she half-closed her eyes the impact of the candlelight on the costumes and jewels created a rainbow shimmering. They're so beautiful. These are the cleverest people in England. They must be right. The room was whirling. She was very thirsty. The orange-water in her glass tasted strange.

  There were a lot of dogs around. A bitch was suckling some whelps on a satin-covered couch to the discomfiture of a couple who had other uses for it. The man tried to push the bitch off, there was a snarl. The King lurched to his feet: 'Leave my dog alone, varlet.'

  The courtier held out a bleeding finger. 'God save Your Majesty, but God damn your dogs.'

  That's funny,' Penitence said and laughed. 'That's so funny.'

  'And you're so desirable,' said Sedley. They were in a dark corridor, which struck cold after the heat of the gallery.

  'Where's Becky?'

  'She'll be along in a minute. You're so lovely, so desirable.'

  'Where's the Prince of Orange? Orange-water. Something in my orange-water.'

  'Quiet now. Buckingham's putting something in his. In here, you beauty, you lovely baggage.'

  'Can't see.'

  'Over here. Ups-a-daisy.'

  'It's cold,' she said. The silk bedcover was chill against the back of her shoulders.

  'Here's something'll warm you.'

  Part of her mind was aware of what was happening, but it was stuck high up in the corner of the bed's tester which she could just see in the moonlight, and she couldn't reach it. Her body was crying: Why not? Why assume the mask of lust and not experience it?

  Tell me no more of constancy,

  The frivolous pretence

  Of cold age, narrow jealousy,

  Disease and want of sense.

  Constancy was withering her, and for whom? He'd left her, paid her and left. 'You're right,' she sobbed, 'I've grown old for him.'

  'You're beautiful, you Puritan bitch. Stay still.'

  She wished he wouldn't talk. So long since he'd lit the heat between her legs to warm her. Rub me, rub me back to life.

  He was rubbing hard; her head was knocking against the bedhead. Why did he spoil it with
swearing? Not nice.

  'God damn it.' She woke up. 'No you don't. Get away from me.'

  'Stay still, you whore. I'm coming.'

  'no.' With all her strength she jackknifed, jerking Sedley out of and off her. He lay screaming and bucking, then collapsed.

  'You got me drunk . . . you, you,' she couldn't think of a word bad enough for him, or for her, 'you vile thing.' She stumbled against a wall, feeling for the door, traced the shape of a panel to a doorknob and turned it, shook it. It was locked. No key.

  She was in fuming control now. She marched back to the bed and slapped the shape on it. 'When I say so, do you hear me? When I say so. Me. Not you.' He mumbled something. She pulled the bed-curtains back further and saw the gleam of the key that was still in his hand. She found later that it had scored her skin.

  Out in the deeper darkness of the corridor, she stopped and ran her hands down her body. Her breasts were hanging out of her basque. She pulled it up. Where's my damn room? Don't they keep servants in this damn house? There was a hullabaloo going on somewhere to her right. Staggering, she moved towards it, slowing down as it resolved into the sound of shouts, drunken laughter and, in a recessed echo, high-pitched screams. There was a draught curtain between her corridor and the next. Carefully, she peeped round it.

  A group of men - she recognized Buckhurst and Rochester - were standing around a wild figure, cheering it on as it hammered on a door. 'Go to it, Your Highness.' It was Buckingham's voice. 'What are maids of honour for but to lose their honour to princes?'

  The feminine screams were coming from behind the door, but it looked strong enough, and was obviously locked.

  Poor little devil. They've done it to him too. Keeping the curtain across her, she edged forward to lift a flambeau out of its sconce. Nobody noticed. As she scurried back, her eye's retina retained the image of the Prince of Orange's face, distorted and streaked with tears.

  She tried every door except to the room Sedley was in, and at last found one that opened. Inside it was empty, the bed's curtains open and its coverlet neatly laid back. Women's clothes lay over the chairs, but their owners had presumably found other beds. She shut the door and locked it, put the flambeau in a Chinese vase and sat in a chair by the open window, welcoming the cold on her skin.

  No good searching for her own room in this enormous house until things had quietened down. Then she'd find it - once the drunks had retired they'd sleep like the dead - put on walking shoes and her cloak and set off home. Highwaymen, dogs, distance, what were they to her after a royal recreation?

  Out of her self-disgust had come at least negative knowledge of who she was. Not them. Never them. A deluded, prating, one-time whore of an actress she might be, but when St Peter asked her on the Day of Judgement where she belonged she knew enough now to say: 'Not with them.'

  Occasionally she tensed as the courtiers staggered back to their rooms. Twice somebody lurched against her door, and once someone else rattled at its knob, then shouted 'Swive well, mes braves', and passed on.

  The house fell asleep and so did she.

  It was still dark when she woke up to the sound of sobbing. There was a scraping noise, more sobbing, then retching. Quietly she unlocked the door and peered out, reached for the flambeau and held it up. Two doors along a creature was crawling away from her on its hands and knees. From her viewpoint it looked like a monstrous poodle with its hindquarters shaved. It had lost its breeches while, ludicrously, retaining its wig and waistcoat. A trail of vomit marked its progress.

  'Prince,' called Penitence, quietly. 'Your Highness, in here.'

  The poodle looked back at her, crying. 'Daar is geen Prins in den lande,' it said. 'There is no more prince.'

  'Oh, get in here.' She was tired of men. Her head ached. She had to venture out and help support him back, a process he hindered by doubling forward so that his waistcoat could cover his naked private parts. 'Get bending. Don't look at me,' he kept saying in his funny accent. 'Don't look at me. Get bending.'

  'Be quiet.'

  They staggered together into the room, and he struggled for the bed, covering himself to the waist with the coverlet, then sitting bolt upright, like an indignant maiden. 'I'm sick. Get bending.'

  She held the Chinese vase while he vomited into it. In between spasms he insisted she bend. 'I'm not bending to any of you,' she lectured him, 'not ever again.'

  He stared at her. 'Bentinck,' he said clearly, before his mouth filled, 'get Bentinck.'

  'Who's Bentinck?'

  'Get him.'

  'I don't know where he is, where anything is and I'm not stumbling around in the dark. Wait till dawn. I'll get him then.'

  He was sick again. She didn't know how his slight frame could have held so much, and wondered if they'd poisoned him, but perhaps alcohol was a poison to him. There was a silver ewer of water and a basin on a chest. She helped him drink and bathed his face with a scarf she took from a chair.

  His eyes began to focus. 'The water-giver,' he said. 'Twice in one day. I am ashamed before you.'

  'Don't be. They made me drunk as well.'

  'I am ashamed.' He was lost in his own misery.

  They never listen. She sat on the bed so that their heads were level. 'Do you hear me? They made me drunk too. They got me into bed with a man I don't like.'

  'You say this to ease my shame.'

  'So that we're shamed together.' He was so young. 'Now go to sleep. I won't let anyone in. When it's dawn I'll find Bentinck.'

  'What sort of people?' he asked. 'What sort of people do this?'

  She didn't know the answer to that. As he closed his eyes, she went back to the window to watch for the morning. She must have dozed again, because rustling movement woke her up. The boy was holding on to the bedpost, fighting nausea, but impelled by God knew what sense of form to be on his feet. He'd taken a woman's petticoat off a chair and put it on, knowing he looked ridiculous, trusting her, courteously insisting on joining her vigil. He pattered over to the window and took the seat opposite her.

  What a nice thing to do. She said easily: 'Is it a pretty part of the Lowlands, Orange?' He might forget to be sick if he talked.

  'It is nowhere near the Netherlands. It is in southern France. Once it was an independent principality. There was a William of Orange among the knights of Charlemagne. Now Louis has gobbled it up and kills its Protestant children.' He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. 'This I don't understand. I tell my Uncle Charles: "Beware of Louis. He intends to gobble up all Europe. England, too, perhaps.'" He gave a shrug, just like Rowley's, and deepened his voice: '"Be easy, nephew. Louis is one of us."' He leaned forward. 'But if he is one of us, why has England joined my country and Sweden in the Triple Alliance against him?'

  She gave him a shrug back. Politics were beyond her. 'Aren't you a Dutchman, then?'

  'What is it you call a dog of many breeds?'

  'A mongrel.'

  'I am a mongrel. Of my great-grandparents three were Germanic, two French, one Italian, a Scot - your James the First — one Scandinavian. But, yes, I am a Dutchman.' His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. 'I wish I were home.'

  Oh, bless him. He was only little. 'Tell me about home.'

  The scent of late roses and honeysuckle came through the window from the garden, but his longing was so intense he replaced it with a sea breeze that blew without impediment across illimited skies and dykes and sand-piled dunes and tough, salt-stained people. She heard carillons ring out across canals and markets where countrywomen brought their produce in boats, a land of painters and thinkers and poets. 'It is very clean,' he kept saying, then he apologized. 'But, of course, you love your country too.'

  'I don't know where it is.' And it was her turn to tell him about the forests of Massachusetts and their Indians, and the Pocumscut and the Puritans.

  She could see him, as she had done, contrasting it with the cloying, tarnished sensuality that enmired them both. 'I ran away from the Puritans, or, rather, their hypoc
risy,' she said, 'but from here they look . . . worthy.'

  He nodded. 'They have a cause, at least,' he said, 'an ideal. Here there is no cause. Those men tonight believe nothing.'

  He got up and paced, ignoring the swish of his petticoat. 'Do you know what my uncle said to me? He said' — again the voice went unconsciously deeper - ' "Nephew, if France should annexe the Netherlands, Louis would ensure you were given part of them for your kingdom. He is your relative. He will see you right. Listen less to your Dutch blockheads."'