The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  Men had come from all over the county to enlist. So many, said Prue, that she thought the whole world must be for Monmouth. 'Five or six thousand foot and a thousand horse, people do say.'

  But the next Sunday Sir Ostyn Edwards, JP, had ridden over to tell the Athelzoy congregation that it mustn't aid the Duke with men or food. '... and if us did we'd be traitors to our lawful king. None of the gentry were joining him, Magistrate Edwards said, and we mu'n't neither. But after he'd gone comes Master Hughes to the village cross and says the good old cause of God and religion as had lain dead is risen again. And who cared what the gentry did anyhow.'

  Martin Hughes. Benedick and Martin Hughes. How strange that two such dissimilar relatives should be on the same side; the fanatical old man from conviction; but what could have tempted the young one to Monmouth? Romance, of course. And love of a fight. She heard Dudley's voice saying that Benedick wanted to join an army, any army.

  Her son would almost welcome that the cause was lost as long as he fought for it; he would see himself as another Rupert. Oh, Benedick, why didn't you tell me?

  She went to the window and held on to the sill, feeling it vibrate with the percussion of the guns. I've been here before. A long time ago she had stood at a window, just as helpless. Then, as now, it was to Dorinda that she'd had to entrust her son's safety. I thought it was I who'd changed while she stayed the same. But all I did was become rich. I haven't been paying attention.

  It was Dorinda who'd paid attention to the people who mattered where she had let them go, too busy - as Dorinda had said - to find out what they were feeling.

  MacGregor's letter to Dorinda had argued a depth to their marriage that Penitence had never guessed at. Never tried to. It was Dorinda who had kept in closer touch with Benedick, through MacGregor's frequent visits to the radical exiles in Holland, than she had. Dorinda had known it was in her son's mind to sail with Monmouth, and tried to change it.

  A moth singed by one of the candle flames fluttered on to the back of Penitence's hand and she stared at it. I don't know what to do. I don't even know what to do with this moth. It rolled off her hand to the floor and she turned away.

  Together they tore up an old sheet for bandages and prepared soup. Prue was full of her own and Mudge's cleverness in having concealed so much of the harvest from 'they old wreckers', as she called army requisitioners. Her complaint was against James's men, who had occupied the area when the Duke had marched off towards Bristol and done little to endear themselves by demanding, then forcibly taking, supplies. The Duke's quartermasters, on the other hand, hadn't had to requisition food; it had been brought to them in cartloads, flocks, herds — a gift from the common people of Somerset to their Protestant saviour.

  She had thought she knew what her village thought and did, but she suspected Prue's narrative of concealing that many of its men had joined Monmouth, or certainly sympathized with him. I didn't pay attention.

  The candles in the windows were low and they fetched others to replace them. They burned without flickering in the heavy air but there was a tremor to the flame. The noise of bombardment was getting louder and it seemed to Penitence that she could distinguish out of it the racket of drums and trumpets.

  'How far away is it, do you think?'

  Prue joined her. 'Five mile. Six. I reckon 'tis round about Chedzoy.' For the first time her self-possession gave way. If you get killed, Barnabas Turvey, don't you come crying to me.'

  'Barnabas?'

  'Chedzoy chapel,' wailed Prue, 'and a girt fool. Couldn't wait for Monmouth to get to Taunton, oh no. Has to leave his tidy little loom in Chedzoy and tramp all the way to Chard to enlist.'

  'Nice lad?' Penitence put an arm around the girl's shoulders.

  'I seen worse,' sobbed Prue. 'What for do they do ut, Leddyship? Eh? Answer me that.'

  '1 don't know.' Young men, perhaps Benedick, perhaps Barnabas, had their limbs blown apart. Wheatfields were trampled and soaked in blood. All the good, growing things mangled because somebody thought their religion better than somebody else's. I did once. And then she had met Her Ladyship, and come to know Dorinda and the Cock and Pie, and found that, basically, it didn't matter what you believed as long as you didn't hurt people and you let the corn grow. Stop it. Stop it.

  It was impossible to stay still. She went out and led the donkey round to the farmyard, fed and stabled him. She walked down the driveway to the gates, her eyes checking but not registering the dark rows of young chestnuts which would one day line its avenue.

  She stood, keeping her eyes away from the flashes so that her sight could distinguish between the blacks and not-so- blacks of the near moorland, trying to hear local sound beneath the barrage. The moon was coming up; she could see the outline of the Poldens against the sky. Make for them. Come home and be safe.

  She couldn't bear to watch any more. She turned round and went slowly back to the house.

  Chapter 3

  The night was so long that Penitence kept taking out Rupert's time-piece and shaking it, believing it had stopped, until it did. She fell asleep and woke up to find she was clutching the time-piece to her chest. Prue was still standing at the window. 'Ladyship.'

  Penitence went to stand beside her. The artillery had stopped, though sounds of musketry had become widespread. And the sky had changed, losing the deepest layer of black. 'Dawn.'

  They went out into the expectant air of a July dawn, crossed the moat and went down to the gates. Firing was much closer now and they could see the occasional tiny stabs of light that went with it. The first scream they thought was an owl's until it lasted too long. There were others, shouts and splashings, travelling easily over the flatness from differing distances.

  Cordite tinged the air which grew lighter until the landscape revealed itself as if dipped in milk; white at the bottom where the mist was thick and then in opaque gradations so that the top branches of willow and alder stuck up like flat scenery artistically arranged between a muslin haze. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  The sharp kik-kik-kik of a water-rail in the reeds woke up the land birds in the Priory trees. A marsh harrier began quartering his hunting ground, waiting for the mist to clear.

  With the birdsong came the ragged shouts of men, still some way off but unmistakably swearing in panic.

  'Where are they?' It was like being marooned on a mountain top trying to penetrate cloud cover below them.

  'Heading for Scaup rhine,' said Prue. They couldn't see the men, only the dislodgement of the haze made by their running. What they could see was the horsemen who chased them because eerily, almost ridiculously, the horsemen's hats were the only things visible. Ten or so hats, mostly brown, one black with a high feather, zigzagged through the marsh like hounds. Once a sabre rose up above the haze to gleam in the dawn sun before it flashed down. There was a scream.

  Giggling even as she wept, Prue said: 'Which is which?'

  'It doesn't matter.' It only mattered that the hidden foxes should escape those dreadful, millinery hounds. Even if it was Benedick under one of those hats, she still prayed that the men he was chasing got away.

  The mist was clearing and the bank of the rhine was high so that they could see the running men as they topped the bank and fell down into the trench of fog on the other side. 'So many.' Twenty or so. They were too far away to distinguish faces, for which Penitence was always glad, but they could see the fear. They could tell that one didn't attempt the bank but ran along it, because the figure of a cavalryman bobbed in a horizontal direction on his invisible horse until his sabre swept in a beautiful movement along the line of his gallop. They saw him come trotting back.

  The cavalrymen dismounted and ran to the top of the bank. This time they had pistols in their hands.

  'Oh no,' said Prue, "tis too deep.' The men in the rhine would be dragged down by mud, trying to climb up, slipping, clawing. She began to jump up and down shouting, 'Leave un be.'

  'They won't.' They were too far away to hear P
rue's light voice anyway. Still Penitence joined her, waving her arms, yelling, because if it was useless, it was also against nature not to protest.

  The cavalrymen used the men in the ditch for target practice. They made an elegant frieze along the bank, perfectly etched now in the sun that had burned away the mist, taking aim, once or twice pointing out an escaper to each other.

  Penitence dragged Prue away as the shots began.

  The two of them ventured back out of the gates when the firing was over. If the royal army had won the battle, two of the men in the ditch might be Benedick and MacGregor. Whoever had won the battle, there might be somebody still alive in the rhine.

  But though the cavalrymen had gone, the Levels were busy and they didn't dare venture into them. Here and there knots of mounted men rode the causeways. Sometimes they dismounted to slash at clumps of reeds with their sabres. Every hut and haystack on the marshes was burning. Once, the two women saw a line of men roped around the neck being driven north along the Taunton causeway. At least they're taking prisoners. But who's taking who prisoner?

  The morning wore on while they dithered and did nothing until it became afternoon. 'I can't bear it. I'm saddling the damn donkey. I'll ride over to Ostyn's. I've got to know.'

  Together they went towards the farm, Prue protesting it was dangerous to go. Then she said: 'There's some'un behind us.'

  They had come the old way to the farmyard rather than up the house drive; it was quicker. Behind them the deep ruts of the track disappeared round a bend dappled with cowpats and the shadow of leaves. As Penitence listened she heard a dislodged stone rattle away from a foot. 'Get into the trees.'

  But lumbering round the bend with a body across his shoulders was Mudge. The body's dark hanging hair hid its face and funnelled blood down Mudge's jacket but Penitence knew who it was. She ran to him. 'Thank you, Mudge. Oh, Mudge, oh Mudge, thank you.'

  She steadied her son's head as Mudge lowered his body on to the track. 'Is he all right?' She could see he wasn't. Around his forehead a piece of lace she recognized as the bottom of one of Dorinda's petticoats had dislodged and was allowing blood to seep out of a wound that had torn across the back of his head. His skin was yellow-white.

  'He'll live.' Mudge straightened and put his hands to the small of his back. 'He's a tidy weight.'

  'Where did you find him? Is Dorinda with you? Where's MacGregor?'

  'Miracle 'twas.' Mudge addressed his sister. 'There's King's men all over but the man MacGregor'd got un in a dip on Yancy Hill. Miss Dorinda weren't pleased we had to go so far. "I told you further south, you ballocker," she says to her man as she kissed un and he smiled like, then he fainted. Broken ribs, I reckon.'

  'Who won, Mudge?' On reflection it was a stupid question. If Monmouth had won MacGregor and Benedick could have stayed on the battlefield and waited for the ambulance carts instead of dragging themselves to a dip in the Polden hills.

  The Devil,' Mudge told her. He kissed his sister. 'Can 'ee drag the boy from here? I'd better get back before the patrols get un other two. Miss Dorinda can't manage alone.'

  'Be careful, Mudge. Thank you, Mudge.'

  Penitence didn't even watch him go, and didn't allow Prue to, but called her to put Benedick's arm round her shoulders and help her get him to the house. He was completely unconscious and his weight was fearful; he'd grown. The toes of his boots dragged wavy lines in the dust of the track. Once across the other side of the moat, the women had to prop him on the bench inside the gatehouse tunnel while they rested.

  They'd reached half-way across the courtyard when they heard hooves trotting up the drive. Prue began to pull towards the hall door, but Penitence pulled to the left. 'In here, in here.' The north wing door was nearest and stood open. Doubled up under their burden, they almost fell over the threshold and Penitence kicked the door shut behind her.

  'Upstairs. Quickly. Quickly.' Whoever it was would try the hall first — the more impressive door and the first to be seen on entering the courtyard. She had her son's hands in hers now and was hauling him from above while Prue pushed from below.

  Benedick's boots caught on every rise with a loud click but the sounds of hooves and voices in the courtyard covered it — whoever it was, there were a lot of them. The door to her bedroom was only a yard away now. The staircase was narrow but, thank God, well polished.

  The men were in the house now. Even from here she could hear boots and spurs in the screen passage and somebody shouting in the name of the King.

  'Go round,' she panted to Prue. 'Go round the hall way so they don't think you've come from here. Keep them there. Offer them ale.'

  'Wreckers took that last week.' Prue let go Benedick's legs and squeezed past him up the stairs to the tortuous passage that eventually bent round to run between the hall and solar to the stairs.

  'Offer them anything. I need a few minutes.'

  They'll look under the bed,' Prue warned her.

  Not behind it. 'Go, for God's sake. Before they come up.'

  How she did it, she never knew. Later that day she was hobbling from lifting a weight half as much again as her own on to her bed, clambering through the panel, then pulling the body through after her. At the time she didn't notice pain. She had to do it anyhow, no time to consider the boy's wound. The elegant frieze of figures standing on the bank of a rhine taking aim at men floundering below kept moving through her mind. They'll shoot him. She tugged fiercely at her son, furious at him, ready to kill for him, until his legs scraped over the sill and they both fell backwards on to the floor of the secret room.

  No time to see him comfortable. Even above the sound of her own panting she could hear boots coming along the corridor towards her bedroom and Penitence's voluble protests: 'Her Ladyship's sleeping.'

  Penitence dived for the square of light that was the opening in the bedhead, got herself through, squirmed round and dragged the panel back. It clicked into place, she got off the bed, the bedroom door opened — all simultaneously.

  She patted bits of her dress and herself into place, and the man who came through the door saw her do it. But that's all right. If I'd just woken up I'd do the same. It was an actress's response: yes, my character would do that. She knew she was going to have to act to the top of her bent for this man.

  He was bleach-haired, thirty-odd, not bad-looking and he didn't believe anything; not that the earth went round the sun, not that the sun went round the earth, not in God, not in non- belief. From the moment Penitence set eyes on Nevis she knew he lived in a vacuum.

  'Major Peter Nevis, mistress.' His eyes roamed the room before resting on her: 'Search it.'

  So exactly did the last words match the tone of his greeting that she thought he was addressing them to her but, as he said them, two soldiers leaped forward and pushed her out of the way to kick open her clothes press, tear down paintings, overturn her mirror and shake out the contents of her scent bottles and powder boxes. While one ripped through the bed- hangings with his sword the other dived under the bed and came up with the chamber pot, shaking it over the floor and then, as if disappointed it was empty, throwing it against the wall, where it broke.

  She remained calm. Would my character remain calm? It would have to; she was shaking too hard with relief at having got Benedick hidden to simulate anger. Anyway, the destruction was being perpetrated less as a search — who would hide in a scent bottle? — than to get her frightened. And this much she already knew: if she showed fear to Major Peter Nevis he'd want more.

  She showed dignity instead. 'And why is this being done?'

  'Guess.' He was tossing robes out of her clothes press with the end of his sword, idly, not looking at them. His eyes were directed at the bed.

  '1 guess it is because you are a lout, sir.'

  'Not a bad guess.' He sidled over to the bed and sat on it with his sword point-down to the floor between his knees and his hands crossed on its hilt. 'But my guess is you're hiding somebody, Mistress . ..?' He raised an interroga
tive eyebrow.

  'Hughes.'

  'Mistress Hughes. In fact I know you are. A man carrying another was seen coming up this rise from the marsh.'

  Is that all? There was some abatement to her terror. 'Oh well,' she said with sarcasm, 'that proves it. He wouldn't have been going to the village, or the church, or the farm, he'd have been coming here. What an idiotic fellow you are.' Play the grand lady, the royalist, make him ashamed of suspecting her, her, of hiding a rebel.

  'Yes,' said Major Nevis, 'he would. You see, Mistress Hughes, I have a wonderful instinct. The Arabs used to say I had a third ear. That may be because I cut off so many of theirs, of course, but I like to think it was because I hear the things people aren't saying.'

  His left hand was feeling in the rumpled bedclothes. 'For instance, the first thing your abigail didn't say to me when she met us in the hall was that she had something to hide. Now you aren't telling me you are concealing someone.'