The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  'Funny thing,' said Becky, 'so was I, when I came on just after. A man in the doorway reminded me of Henry King. Do you remember Henry, Peg? No, he was before your time.'

  Hart came in. 'Marvellous, my dear. Truly a performance to make the gods applaud.' He was exultant. 'Wasted on that pitiful crowd, of course, but we had them in the palm of our hand. Did I notice the teeniest lapse of concentration in Act IV, Scene ii? We nearly lost them, dear. I thought we were going to get goosed.'

  'I'm sorry, Charlie.'

  'Never mind, never mind. Your good Rupert has given me a benefit purse that will do much for my retirement, like the true prince he is. He asks me to tell you he awaits you in his chariot.'

  Outside in Drury Lane the carriage lamps shone fuzzily through a cold drizzle. Boiler was holding open the door.

  Rupert's hands grasped hers as she got in. 'My dear girl, what a performance. Always you have moved me, but tonight as never before.'

  He made the introductions between Penitence and the dark figure in the corner of the carriage. 'The Viscount is an old friend. He has been abroad for many years on the King's business, and I fear his health has suffered for it. He protests he will go to an inn tonight, but I have overridden him and said Hammersmith air and my lady will make him well.' He was delighted at what he'd done: 'My stratagem surprised him. You did not know until tonight that my lady and England's finest actress were one and the same, did you, Viscount?'

  'I didn't,' said the voice of Henry King.

  'And what do you say to it?'

  'I congratulate Mrs Hughes on her performance.'

  The journey passed in Rupert's triumphantly gloomy summation of the state of England. When an answer couldn't be avoided, the Viscount of Severn and Thames gave it, shortly. His voice was tired.

  Penitence didn't speak at all. In four miles she had only one coherent thought: Thank God Benedick isn't home.

  Chapter 3

  Peter stood between the Corinthian pillars, the open doors behind him casting a wide path of light up the steps. 'Welcome home, Your Royal Highness. Welcome home, Your Ladyship.'

  'Thank you, Peter.'

  'Hello, Peter,' said the Viscount.

  For the first time since she'd known him, the major-domo showed emotion: 'Lord, Lord be praised. This is good times come again, Lord.'

  For some reason it seemed a terrible thing that Peter knew and loved him. Her anger activated her legs sufficiently to cross the great black and white floor of Awdes' entrance hall and mount the staircase to the Long Gallery at speed ahead of him.

  Like a good hostess, but without looking at him, she opened the door of the main guest apartments and said: 'I hope you will be comfortable, my lord. I shall send the housekeeper to make sure you have all you require.' He bowed. She curtseyed and left.

  In her room, she went to her looking-glass, wondering if she'd aged, wondering if the force of anger she felt would splinter the glass; the face of a hag stared back at her. How dare he come back. How dare he. How dare he know Rupert and Peter and re-enter her temperate, equable life where, if there was no passion, neither was there pain. Why isn't he dead? How dare he not be dead. Where had he been these thirteen years? And what did she care where the hell he'd been?

  I don't. She collected herself, pulled back her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap, controlling her breathing. There was no necessity for this turbulence. He was a man she'd known long ago, and that was all he was. True, he was the father of her son, but he was not aware that he was, nor was anyone else except Dorinda, Aphra, MacGregor and ... Oh God, Mistress Palmer. She had a nightmare vision of Henry King and the former Rookery laundress meeting on Awdes' stairs.

  It won't happen. Palmer was usually in bed by this time of night. I'll see it doesn't happen. Nothing will happen - nor should it. Two people who were once acquainted have encountered each other again by chance, that was all it was.

  But if that was all it was, why this fury that suffused her even to the tips of her hair? You left me. You thought I was a whore and you left me. Because of you I brought up a baby alone. Because of you I became the whore you thought me.

  For sure, he had never intended to re-enter her life. When she'd seen him in the theatre doorway, when he'd seen her on the stage, the shock had been mutual, she could tell from the way he'd stood ...

  The outline of his head should not have been so familiar after all this time, she should not have been able to tell the set of his shoulders from all the other pairs of shoulders in the theatre .. . God, God, what a mess.

  A knock on the door made her tense. It was Rupert. 'You look tired, my dear. I apologize for inflicting a guest on you tonight, but Torrington deserves well of us. I don't doubt that later he will tell us all he has been through.'

  She nodded. 'Rupert.'

  He turned back. 'My dear?'

  'I have something for you.'

  Smiling, he said: 'Another birthday present?'

  'In a way.' She went to the chest where she kept her old beaded satchel and took out the letter she'd found in Her Ladyship's box. 'I think you'll recognize the writing.'

  'What's this?' He took it to the candelabra and read it, holding it at arm's length. 'And how did my lady come by this?'

  'You wrote it to my mother. Captain Hoy was my father.'

  He folded the letter with great care and put it down. 'I remember Hoy. A good man and a brave soldier. He had a stutter.' He took her in his arms. 'Why didn't you tell me before?'

  'I don't know. Tonight seemed appropriate. I wanted you to know that we've always been connected. We always will be.'

  'My dear, my very dear.' He kissed her, then became brisk. 'We'll speak more of this. But for now, shall we go down?'

  At dinner Peter hovered, ensuring that the guest, who hardly touched them, was served enormous portions. Penitence found this irritating almost to screaming point, though she didn't know why, any more than she knew why tonight of all nights she had told Rupert about her father, except that he had suddenly seemed so vulnerable that she'd wanted to make him a gift of reassurance.

  For that matter, she wasn't sure why she hadn't told him before. Ferhaps it was because he'd been so careful never to enquire into her past that it had taken on an aspect of forbidden territory and his questions might have led to the fact that she had spent two years of it in a brothel. It would hurt him, even while he accepted her explanation that she had not been one of its whores.

  Something you never believed, Henry King. For the first time that night she looked straight at the Viscount Severn and Thames.

  For the first time the Viscount looked back at her. And you still don't, God damn you to hell. The Viscount was smiling and, with her capacity to understand him still alarmingly alive, she knew he, too, was angry. And, damn him, proprietorial.

  Bad health, not age, made him appear older than the intervening years warranted. His skin was near yellow and his eyes bloodshot. But, apart from a touch of grey in his hair, he looked as he always did, damn him again.

  Talking happily, Rupert ate his way through the interminable courses with an appetite ensured by the Stuart immunity to weight. It was Peter who picked up unease from hers and the actor's silence. He paced softly from Henry King's side of the table to hers to watch their faces. Time to put on the mask. 'And how did you and my lord first encounter each other. Viscount?'

  It was Rupert who answered. 'In Ireland, it was. The wicked year of '49. Anthony here was a sprog not sixteen year old and sent like a parcel by his father that he shouldn't be raised in a regicide country. I took him aboard the Antelope. The Antelope, good little ship. Remember her, Anthony?'

  Very well, Highness. I remember Her Majesty pawning her jewels to buy her ordnance.' The Viscount nodded towards Penitence. 'I am happy to see the pearls at least were redeemed.'

  Penitence put her hand to her throat. The pearls had belonged to Rupert's mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and were so magnificent that only Rupert's insistence overcame her terror of wearin
g them.

  Rupert beamed. 'Her Majesty would have been happy to see them inherited by such beauty. By God, we had to pawn our eye-teeth to sail at all, and we did so as much to provide our living as to fight the King's enemies. The Cavalier fleet we called ourselves, though others provided less flattering epithets — "buccaneers" was one.' He smiled. 'And not without some justification. If we needed to refit, we first had to capture some passing ship and sell her, like damned corsairs, though I trust we eschewed those rogues' cruelty.'

  'You were never cruel, Your Highness,' said the Viscount.

  Penitence experienced a wave of relief. He loves Rupert. He won't hurt him.

  'What days. Portugal, the Azores, the Indies, Africa. Remember, Peter? We gained you, at least.' He frowned. 'And lost him I loved best in the world.'

  Rupert's brother, Prince Maurice, had drowned in a West Indies hurricane. Rupert never mentioned him without crying.

  In the silence, the Viscount broke the spell of reminiscence.

  'And how did you and my lord first encounter each other, Mrs Hughes?'

  Again it was Rupert who answered. 'My lady' - he emphasized the words gently - 'was making her first appearance as Desdemona, a role she has since made her own, as you saw today. 1 was hard put to win her, but eventually she was persuaded to grace me these eight years.' He raised his glass to Penitence. 'And yet has the ability to surprise me.'

  'I'm sure she has,' said the Viscount.

  At the end of dinner, she was glad to withdraw to her parlour. The whiff of tobacco smoke and port came from the dining-room. She heard the men go out into the garden to do what men did out there, and return to Rupert's library. She wanted to go to bed: she couldn't go to bed.

  The sound of raised voices brought her to her feet. They were quarrelling. He's told Rupert. This must be faced at once. As she entered the library, both of them were on their feet, the Viscount doing some heated talking. Rupert was surprised to see her, but courteous as ever. 'Please sit down, my dear. A glass of port.' To Henry King he said: 'I have no secrets from my lady.'

  The Viscount, it appeared, did. He slammed his hand on the mantelpiece and stood with his back to the room, staring at the fire.

  Rupert, tight-lipped, handed her the port. 'The Viscount has returned from abroad on a mission, my dear. He is come to offer me the throne of England.'

  Penitence sat very still and waited.

  Rupert took a chair near hers and faced her, though she wasn't the one he was talking to. 'He seems to be ignoring three things: firstly, that it is not his to give away; secondly that I fought a war to preserve the rightful succession of the crown, and thirdly that Charles is my cousin to whom I have sworn eternal loyalty.'

  'Charles can keep it,' said the Viscount to the fire. 'It's James who must not have it after.'

  'James too is my cousin.'

  'And a Catholic.'

  'His religion is immaterial.'

  The Viscount turned round. 'Is it? His personal faith isn't in question, I grant you. He could salaam to Allah three times a day as far as I'm concerned. But the man will try and impose it on the country. I tell you I know. If the English would accept it, which they won't, could you see them in slavery?'

  It was an added strangeness to this night that here, within twenty-four hours, was someone else prophesying that James would be a tyrant. Reluctantly, Penitence turned her gaze away from Rupert's face to the Viscount's, where it stayed.

  'And it is slavery,' he was saying. 'Spain is crumbling under her monasteries' weight. France is trying to whip the world into submission with it. You're a man of science, Rupert, for God's sake, would you see all progress stopped because the Pope doesn't like it? Rome still holds Galileo a heretic and pretends that the sun revolves round the earth.'

  I thought it did, I thought it did. I thought I knew you. Where was the actor in Mistress Hicks's window? This wasn't him; this was some other man.

  'He would not impose it,' said Rupert stubbornly.

  'I happen to know that he will. He's a fool and he will. And the English won't stand for it. They fought against absolutism before: they'll do it again, and we'll have another bloody revolution on our hands. The people I represent are trying to prevent it. Why won't you?'

  'James would not impose it,' persisted Rupert.

  'He'll sell us out to France. Charles has already done it.'

  Rupert stood up. The fire cast his shadow across the rugs and floorboards to Penitence's feet, where it mingled with the other man's. 'You are a guest in my house, or I should run you through.'

  The Viscount stood where he was. 'Your Highness, seven years spent in a French prison have earned me the right to say that. They've earned me the right for you to listen.'

  Rupert sat down.

  Agonized, Penitence thought: Seven years in prison. And then she thought, ignobly: Where's he been for the other six?

  The Viscount picked up a stool, carried it over to them and sat at Rupert's feet, leaning forward. 'You must believe me, my lord. This has nothing to do with Charles's personal betrayal of me. I've long forgiven him that. I swore fealty to him as you did - at the same time, if you remember — and I'll keep my oath. It's James I won't serve. But the fact remains that Charles signed a secret treaty with Louis in '70. His sister was the go-between.' His long fingers were outlined against the light of the fire as he counted on them. 'The parties to it were Louis, Charles, James and Madame, nobody else.'

  'I fear you have taken pains for nothing, my lord,' said Rupert. 'The Cabal knew of it. Even I knew of it eventually. The treaty with France is no secret. Charles was merely insuring his country against all eventualities, as a cunning monarch must.'

  There was a treaty within a treaty. The Cabal only thought it knew the terms. What it didn't know was that Charles has promised not to oppose Louis' domination of the Netherlands. Nor did it know the very considerable sums Louis is paying him for his compliance. Nor did it know that, for more money, Charles has promised to go over to the Church of Rome.'

  'No!' Rupert rose to his feet, almost pushing the Viscount off his stool as he stamped across the room. 'I'll not believe it.'

  The Viscount followed him, relentless. 'I was a better secret agent than Charles thought I would be, and the information was given to me. I didn't believe it at first; like you, I didn't want to. Then my informant was found murdered and I thought: Hello, hello. When the secret police arrested me the next day, it began to look as if I knew something Louis didn't want me to know. By the time I'd spent seven years in La Reynie's prison, it had become a bloody certainty. Especially as Charles never lifted a finger to get me out.'

  'We didn't know where you were. I sent to Louis myself—'

  'Charles knew. He may have had enough compunction to stop Louis having my body weighted and dropped down an oubliette, but he knew.'

  Oddly the anger in the room had dissipated. Rupert poured himself and the Viscount more port from the open tantalus and the two men sat down facing each other on opposite sides of the fire, stretching out their legs as if they'd come to the end of a long, not unpleasant, day.

  'You have been hardly used, Anthony. I'm sorry.'

  The Viscount held up his glass, and twisted it, watching flames shine through and turn it to ruby. 'So is the King. It was, he tells me, all the fault of his Scoutmaster-General. I'm to be given a handsome pension.'

  A log crashed down on to the hearth and he put out a leg to kick it into the grate. 'I'm not complaining, Rupert. I was serving my country, and England is greater than her individual kings and certainly greater than her viscounts. It's England I'm frightened for. Charles thinks he's playing a subtle game — he calls it the Grand Design. But he's a child compared to that monster across the water. It's Louis who's playing with him. As for James, Louis'll eat him and spit out the pips. Louis XIV is a genius and if he's not stopped soon, he will rule all Europe - England included.' He tossed back his drink and got up. 'So I'm not serving James. He'd not mean to allow it perhaps, bu
t Louis would have this country in his pocket before breakfast.'

  Suddenly he leaned forward until he was almost kneeling. 'Your Highness, there need be no bloodshed. Half England already wants James excluded from the succession, and if it were known that you were prepared to take his place, the other half would come over. I beg you to consider. Allow your country what she needs, a king of moderation and common sense.'

  Penitence knew the answer before it was made. To Rupert kingship was sacred and inviolable. An uncomplicated man who lived by the rules of precedence, he clung to tradition because it had provided the only certainty in a world of revolution and toppling thrones. His anger when someone of lower rank, like the Prince of Orange, was given preference over himself arose not from vanity but from a terror of disorder.