The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  There was a shout from the bed. She dropped her frame and ran to him. He clutched at her. 'I dreamed I was back.' He was shaking, though not from cold.

  Seven years. For the first time they became his years, not hers. Appalled, she got a glimpse of wasted day after wasted day dragged out under a tomb's lid which he could have had no expectation of lifting. 'There,' she said, 'there. You're safe now. You're home.'

  He tucked her hands under his cheek and went to sleep on them. So as not to shift him, she knelt awkwardly on the bed- steps, not caring what Peter thought. For her those same years had been showered with applause and achievement, thanks to him. Tears were dropping down on to her arms, and, gently, she extricated one hand to wipe them away.

  In the evening, after more cinchona and some broth, he became revived and spiteful. 'Did I tell you I had a pet rat in prison, Peter?'

  'No, lord.'

  'Pet rat. Called it Boots. Taught it tricks.'

  'A clever rat, lord?'

  'A very clever rat, Peter. When she came to me, all she could do was squeak. By the time I'd finished with her she could talk, what do you think of that?'

  'You're joshing me, lord.'

  'I'm not. She could even sing. She used to sing Bathazar's song.'

  'What happened to the rat, lord?'

  The Viscount lay back on his pillows. 'Oh, she went off to another's cell where the crumbs were better. You know what rats are.'

  Penitence bit off her silk, jabbed her needle into her embroidery and got up. 'Good-night, my lord.'

  'Going?'

  'Yes.'

  'Sing to me. Balthazar's song. To remind me of Boots.'

  'I only sing professionally, my lord. I'll send you our lutist. That's what he's employed for.'

  It was soothing to walk in the knot garden. As she paced round the tortuous pattern, the light from the terrace's flambeaux showed up the hedges as black, raised stitching against the pale background of the gravel.

  He definitely thought his tuition of her had established some sort of chattels-right. What she couldn't fathom was whether he resented Rupert's possession of the chattels which were more rightfully his, or whether, as he saw it, the same chattels were proving a stumbling block between Rupert and the crown.

  Like the knot garden, their relationship had a repeating pattern. Its form depended on the illness. On the third day he began shivering again and was reduced to being pitiful. In the fever that followed his mind wandered away into Grand Designs and prisons. Afterwards he was exhausted and pettish until the the cycle started once more three days later.

  When the second fever, which was very bad, was at its height, he shouted out again: 'But that was in another country.'

  She and Peter were fighting to hold him down. This time she finished the quotation for him. 'And besides, the wench is dead.'

  He stopped struggling.

  'That's his wife is dead,' said Peter, wiping his forehead with his arm. 'Fair as the moon, she was. Song of Solomon.'

  'Tell me.'

  He shook his head. 'The wages of sin is death.'

  'Romans 6, verse 23,' she said, automatically, causing the black man to look up in surprise. 'What happened when the King took her away from him?'

  Peter looked sadly at the head tossing from side to side on the pillow. 'He wailed, he gnashed his teeth. We thought he'd go mad, the Prince and me, and we kept him a-locked up in Spring Gardens in case he injured the King. Or himself. And him cast out by his pappy for a-marrying her in the first place.'

  'His father had cast him out?'

  'For she was a Roman. And the King said: "Don't you mind your pappy, Anthony, you and her you come live with me in Whitehall until your pappy's dead." But the King he lusted for the fair lady and she lusted for him. And the wages of sin is death.'

  His white-rimmed eyes looked meaningfully at her, and although she had more questions, he would say nothing.

  So he married a Catholic, and his father cast him out for it. Some of the man's history was becoming clear. With no money, and refusing to accept payment for his wife's infidelity, as had Roger Castlemaine, he'd wandered drunk and singing along an alleyway in the Rookery and rescued a girl being set upon by ruffians for her boots.

  The fever left him in a depression: 'Send me a confessor. And a lawyer to draw up my will.'

  'You're not dying.'

  'Yes I am.' He had a discontenting thought: 'Bloody Cromwell died of malaria.'

  She grinned, but as Peter was momentarily out of the room, she took the opportunity: 'Why join the theatre?'

  'What?' he asked, irritably.

  'When . . . when your father cast you out. Why did you choose the theatre? Why King's?'

  He closed his eyes. 'Mind your business, madam.'

  As his health improved, so did his manners. It was a moving away; they had been nearer the truth of what was between them when he'd been insulting. There was no reason — she faced it, there was no excuse — for an attendance on him that could be performed by servants. She visited him each morning, after the barber had shaved him, to make polite enquiries and receive polite replies, and once again in the evening. She oversaw the preparation of the food sent up to him, she stuffed a pillow with herbs to sweeten his room and quizzed Peter on his needs.

  Fervently she wished for his departure — in two more weeks the boys would be home for Christmas — and struggled not to admit the knowledge that every moment since his arrival had thrummed with a significance she hadn't known since the days of life and death in the Rookery.

  The only place that gave her an illusion of peace was the herb garden. It was her creation, the only place in all of Awdes' grounds that hadn't been designed by somebody else. She knew herbs; her grandmother had used them for everything from cooking to curing constipation, but the plot at the trading post had been typically utilitarian. Not until she'd begun visiting great houses with Rupert had Penitence dreamed that herbs could be grown in anything but a plain patch. Inspired, she'd read every treatise on the subject she could find and begun transforming a disused area of ground on the far side of the stableyard.

  Though she said it herself, after trial and many errors, she had created something so pleasing that she and Rupert sat there to enjoy it as often as they did on the terrace over the knot garden. It ran down the length of the high stableyard wall which was of rose brick and which she had softened with apothecary roses and a quince tree. Paths of brick to match the wall were laid in chevrons and edged the formal centre where neat little grey hedges of cotton lavender made a lacy pattern filled with cushions of thyme and parsley. Mop-headed bay trees stood at the four corners, like sentries, guarding the standard honeysuckle which commanded the middle.

  The bed running along the wall contained the untidy but useful plants like borage, sage and rosemary against a misty background of fennel. Rupert had given her a sundial for the garden and she'd stood it in an archway cut in the yew hedge which marked off the far end.

  On the opposite side to the wall was a bank leading off under three great oaks to the enormous park and her present project was to make a small flight of grass steps in it. Dunstan, her gardener, had cut out the levels but she was laying the turves herself.

  It was a cold, bright day and she'd wrapped up warm, covering her hair with a cloth. The activity of trundling back and forth, cutting and patting, absorbed her and she sang in bursts. 'Jackie boy. Master? Sing ye well? Very well. Hey-down, ho-down ...' The garden's robin watched her from the top of the spade Dunstan had left stuck by the turf pile. '.. . Derry-derry down. Among the leaves so green-oh.'

  Somebody else was watching. She got up from her knees and saw the Viscount standing beautifully in the wall gateway, a cloak swung round him as it had been when she'd first set eyes on him.

  He's an ornament. Like the sundial. He should stand there always. 'Why did Peter let you out? It's too cold.'

  'I escaped. May I talk to you?'

  As she crossed the garden she was aware of what a
fright she looked in her gardening boots and enveloping, pocketed apron. She dragged the cloth from her head and shook her hair out. He watched her every move, like a man studying a stranger.

  They sat down on the lichened stone bench against the wall as far away from each other as its length permitted. Her hands were grubby with soil. She always started working in gloves, but unwarily stripped them off. She stuffed her arms under her apron.

  He stared straight ahead and she had to make the running: 'I wish you could see the garden in the summer. I'm vain about it then.'

  He looked around at the muted greys and greens. 'It is pleasant enough now.'

  The robin flew across to one of the bays and eyed them. 'He's quite tame,' she said in desperation.

  'I have come to apologize,' he said, stiffly. 'I have said unpardonable things.' He addressed himself towards her half- laid steps. 'I was unsighted by illness and the past.' He waited for a response and glanced irritably down at her fingers, which were tapping on the bench, when she didn't make one. It wasn't the reaction he'd expected, but he pressed on: 'You have been not only my hostess but my nurse, and have deserved infinitely better than I have given.'

  The words were handsome but delivered without emphasis, like a schoolboy made to apologize for a lapse in manners to a rich aunt. 'Prince Rupert is wiser in his generation than I in mine. After all,' he added, 'a rose is no less a rose because it was originally rooted in a dunghill.'

  How to hurt him. How to hurt him badly. 'Thank you, Viscount. Do you think I should terrace the whole bank, or only that section?'

  'Did you hear what I said?'

  'Yes. But we mustn't sit here chattering, you in danger of catching cold, and me with work to do. Shall I see you at dinner tonight? I look forward to it.'

  When he stalked off, she returned to the turves in misery. Why did they react to each other's gambits? Why use gambits at all? After all this time, why couldn't they hold converse without running through every emotion in the human experience in as many seconds?

  She knew why. She'd known from the moment he'd appeared in the doorway at the theatre. She wondered if he did.

  Penitence looked around the garden, towards the sundial, the oaks that made a mystery of the park beyond them. Only a week or so before she had worried because she had not earned the munificence Rupert had showered upon her.

  She had to earn it now. God had stretched out His hand from that clear, cold sky and demanded settlement of her debt. It was time to pay.

  They emerged into the dining-room from different doors and carefully, like tortoises testing the air. They sat at opposite ends of the table and called remarks on health, weather and gardens.

  The length of the table enabled her to whisper to Peter: 'Don't keep refilling my lord's glass. It's bad for his condition.' But it was too late; the decanter was down his end, and he made sure it stayed there.

  Half-way through dinner she thought how silly this was. Defiantly, she moved down to the chair on his right; she wanted to know more of his political views, and since they had already proved to be high treason, their elaboration could hardly be exchanged at a distance of twenty feet.

  'I'm curious, Viscount,' she said, quietly. 'If not James to succeed, then who now? Monmouth?'

  'Monmouth?' He was incredulous. 'Monmouth?'

  Not Monmouth. 'Who, then?'

  He shrugged. 'If Rupert won't, it must be the next legitimate heir. Mary.' He tossed back his glass and muttered, 'Monmouth', disgustedly to himself.

  Into her mind came a picture of James's elder daughter as she'd seen her a year before; round-faced, ordinarily pretty, young and sobbing. It had been a large family party at Whitehall - as usual, Rupert had insisted that 'my lady' be included as family — and fifteen-year-old Mary had suddenly burst into tears at the mention of her forthcoming marriage to William of Orange.

  'Can't wonder at it,' Barbara Castlemaine had murmured to Penitence as they hovered in the consoling circle around the girl. 'Married to a dull, Dutch dwarf. A Protestant dull, Dutch dwarf. What a fate.'

  'My dear,' Queen Catherine had said to her niece, trying to be kind, 'at least you've met the young man. When I came to England I had not even seen the King.'

  'Madam,' Mary had blubbered, 'you came into England. But I'm going out of it.'

  Penitence said now: 'She's not Elizabeth Tudor.'

  'She doesn't have to be. She's acquired a consort who's the next best thing.'

  She smiled. She still treasured the picture of William of Orange in a skirt after the debacle at Newmarket. He and Rupert regularly exchanged a correspondence into which she slipped the occasional note and in which he included replies. Viscount, if you have your way Penitence Hurd will one day be able to say of her king that she knew him when he didn't have any breeches. It was unlikely.

  'Don't underestimate him.' The Viscount filled up his glass again. 'That youth is all that stands between us and Louis. If our children are not to be speaking French and worshipping the Pope when they grow up, it'll be thanks to young William.'

  That didn't seem likely either.

  They wandered into Rupert's library. Peter fussed about the fire, set decanters, plumped cushions, but eventually ran out of things to do and had to leave them together, though he also left the door to the hall wide open. Penitence didn't close it.

  They sat on opposite sides of the fire. Having kept to neutral ground through dinner, he was easier in her company; she felt he wasn't having to concentrate so hard in order not to insult her. For her part, she'd done a good job on bringing him back to health and it was luxury to look at him. She'd cropped his hair after the first fever to husband his strength, and the barber had fitted him with a wig which, with his elegant clothes, moulded him into the standard gentleman- about-town. She had a sudden anguish for the patched, funny man in Mistress Hicks's window. Perhaps he was there somewhere, under the lace and brocade, but neither of them could afford to call him back.

  Carefully she said: 'Viscount, may I ask, what are your plans?''I thought of having some more of this excellent port, then of going to bed, and tomorrow taking my departure. Thanks to you, I'm well enough to go.'

  The mask was well and truly on so she was able to incline her head to the compliment. 'You must stay as long as you wish. However, I didn't mean that. I just thought . .. you have had trouble enough. Must you get involved in more politics?'

  He smiled. 'Politics have a way of involving themselves with everyone. It's inherent in the word.'

  'But yours seem ... personally inspired.'

  He was angling his glass, as he had on his first night, so that it gleamed like the bezel on a ring. 'If you mean do I oppose my king because he slept with my wife, then no. I admit I didn't take kindly to it. In fact, to answer another of your questions, that's why I went and joined the mummers at King's.'

  'Why?' It was good of him, she thought, after her assumed indifference this morning to treat her to an explanation. He must still feel he owed her something.

  'Oh, he was trying to tempt me out of the country with ambassadorships and the like so that he had a clear run to the bed of the late Lady Torrington.' He took a drink. 'And I wouldn't take them. We cuckolds have our pride. And I like the theatre — I spent time with Moliere and his troupe in my youth - and I had some puerile idea of capering in front of him, like Scaramouche, so that he'd be reminded of what he'd done. Perhaps I even thought of leaping off the stage into his box and stabbing the bastard.' He stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, looking down at her. 'God, what fools we mortals be. Believe me, the late Lady Torrington was not worth it.'

  Good.

  He yawned. 'As it was, events overtook me. My grievance diminished in the face of all that death. England, I discovered, was more than courtiers dressing up as shepherds to leap in and out of each other's beds. It was poor and brave, like Ma Hicks, and MacGregor, and the girl in the window opposite mine. So when my country called me back to duty because it wanted me to keep an eye on the Dutch
threat, I went.'

  The Dutch threat?'

  'So it was believed at the time, but when I delved deeper the threat manifested itself not as the Dutch, but as Louis XIV and England's own king. Oh no, madam, my concern is not personal, I assure you. I happen to like my country's balance. I do not wish it shaken.'

  'But is Charles shaking it?' she asked. 'It seems at the moment as if it's shaking him. Accusing poor Catherine of treachery and making him arrest all those Catholic lords.'

  He was dismissive. 'Ebbs and flows, mere ebbs and flows. Oates will overreach himself — men like him always do. The danger is deeper. With the pourhoires Louis is giving him, Charles may soon be in the happy position of not needing Parliament to vote him money. He can increase his standing army all by himself. And there, madam, lies the beginning of absolute rule.'