The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  He had wonderful instinct right enough, but he wasn't sure. And I'm an actress. She could feel his mind probing her stance, looking for weakness and disconcerted at not finding any. Time to bring in the big guns. 'Fellow,' she said, 'you will regret this nonsense when I tell Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys of it.'

  'Tell the King while you're about it, mistress.'

  'I could,' she said, 'I know him too.'

  He brought his hand out from the bedcovers and sniffed it. 'And explain to the King why there's fresh blood in your bed?'

  Her toes curled with the effort not to show shock. She'd dragged Benedick to the bed, then climbed on it and hauled him so that his head and trunk rested across it while she got the panel open. That's when the blood went on the covers; after that she'd put a pillow over the two sills and sledged him through on it. He'd bled on the pillow as well, but by the mercy of God she'd just had time to put it between his head and the floor of the secret room.

  'You humiliate me, Major, if you force me to explain what happens to women at certain times of the month.' She ought to blush but her face was bloodless. It might shame him.

  It didn't. He nodded — more at an opponent scoring a hit than if he believed her. She braced herself. He was capable of having her stripped to make sure she was menstruating.

  Slowly, like a-puppet's, his head began to turn to the left as if it was being drawn to consider the bedhead. He brought up his sword and casually began digging its point into bits of the carving and flicking it out again. Penitence stood frozen, unable to think, just watching as the swordpoint went into the eye of a hare, then flicked off the nose of a dachshund, stabbed Adam's navel, waiting for the inevitable when it pierced Eve's nipple.

  There was an altercation at the door; somebody shouting, Nevis's lieutenant was shouting back. She heard the word 'wounded'. Pay attention to them, not Eve. The man had powers but perhaps she could will them towards something else. Not Eve. Not my son.

  He was looking at her. 'I'm going to find him, Mistress Hughes. Wherever he is, I'm going to find him.'

  And she believed him.

  'Bring her down.' He stood up and went out of the door, and the soldiers took Penitence's arms and marched her after him.

  In the courtyard a standard hung above the archway of the gatehouse tunnel painted with the Paschal Lamb. Beneath it, two horses were coming in, the wheels of the cart they pulled still sounding on the bridge. Sir Ostyn Edwards in the red and yellow uniform of the Devon and Somerset Militia was striding ahead of it, shaking his fist at Major Nevis: 'I ain't leaving the wounded waiting in that dang marsh no more. Fly-blown, poor 'andsomes. They needs good water and good women to nurse un.' He turned to Penitence: 'Ain't that so, Mistress Hughes? Good water and good women.'

  She could have kissed him. 'Bring them in, Sir Ostyn.'

  Mollified, the magistrate gestured to red-and-yellow-clad soldiers to start lifting down the men who lay in the cart and the one behind it, grumbling to Penitence and the world in general as he did so. '"Wait" he says. "There's rebels in that house," he says. "May be Monmouth," he says. "Wait 'til I go and ferret un out," he says.' He turned on Major Nevis, looking like a gaudy bantam cockerel. 'And I told you Mistress Hughes was a good friend to Prince Rupert hisself and as like to shelter Monmouth or his rebels as my arse.'

  Major Nevis addressed his lieutenant: 'Nobody to go in the house until you've finished searching, Captain. After that nobody to go in the house without they're accompanied by you or Canto.'

  'Yes, sir.' Nevis's lieutenant had long black hair, olive skin and an earring but he looked capable. Of anything, thought Penitence.

  'I'll be back.' Major Nevis swung himself up into his saddle and rode out with his mounted troop behind him. He hadn't so much ignored Sir Ostyn as seemed unaware of his existence.

  The magistrate shook his fist after him. 'I'll write to the King, iss fay. Just because we'm militia, don't mean you can treat us any old way.' He nudged Penitence and repeated, 'Just because we'm militia.'

  But Penitence was watching the major doff his hat in a salute to the standard hanging from the gatehouse as he rode under it, or rather, she watched the hat. It was black and had a high feather. It had been predominant among the hats that had hunted down the men in the mist that morning.

  'Good riddance to un.' Sir Ostyn wiped his top lip with a hand that shook, and Penitence knew it had taken courage even for a magistrate to stand up to Major Nevis.

  'Who is he?'

  'Colonel Kirk's second-in-command. One o' the Lambs.' At her incomprehension he jerked his head towards the standard embroidered with the Paschal Lamb. 'See them colours? Never thought I'd see men scared of a danged sheep but that un'd frighten its own side, never mind the enemy. Kirk and Nevis, just back from the garrison in Tangier. Ask me, they've learned nasty ways from they danged Tangerines. Very nasty. Still, the King do love un.' He turned to his wounded who were being helped off the carts. 'Well, Jem, there's a cut to be proud of. Missus would have complained if ut was an inch higher, I reckon.'

  Nevis's second-in-command, a lieutenant with the unlikely name of Jones, interpreted his superior's orders meticulously; Prue was only allowed to enter the house under guard, Penitence wasn't allowed in at all, and the wounded lay on the cobbles of the courtyard in full sun all the afternoon. More and more injured were brought to the Priory gates as word spread that it had been designated the casualty post for the southern end of the Levels.

  'You thank God it's royal troops mostly down yere,' Sir Ostyn told her. 'Up by Weston Zoyland they got all the injured rebels in the churchyard. Thousands, they do say.'

  'How do they know which is which?' she asked furiously. Not all the militia were in uniform, having run straight from their fields and jobs to answer the call to arms. Blood mixed with mud rendered it impossible to tell the original colour of the cloth Penitence cut away from wounds that day. Army, militia, rebel, they were all suffering. She got up from her knees to face Lieutenant Jones: 'Will you let me go to my room for more bandages?'

  He surprised her: 'Yes.' He chewed tobacco — a habit she hadn't come across before. When he smiled, as he did now, his teeth were tan-coloured. He spoke very little, probably so as not to betray a foreign accent, but he listened a lot. As she'd bent over a dying man to catch his last words, Lieutenant Jones was there, catching them too. Soothing a patient's head with a cold cloth, her arm was obstructed by Lieutenant Jones as he listened to the delirious babblings.

  'Good.' She pushed past him to the north door, found he was going with her and changed direction to go in by the hall instead. The Tudor wing stairs might have blood on them.

  She strode ahead, desperate. She begrudged nothing to the men she was nursing, except that her own son lay without help a few yards away. This was the first time she'd been permitted to enter her house since .. . she looked back over her shoulder and saw that it was evening sun lighting up the screen passage . .. since midday. Prue had been allowed in, but always under guard. Even had Prue known how to enter the secret room she was too closely watched to help Benedick. The girl looked as desperate as Penitence felt; on top of the worry for Benedick was the anxiety for Mudge, Dorinda and MacGregor out on the marshes. The activity around the Priory would warn them not to come close, but on the other hand where could they hide? Royal troops were scouring the Levels for fleeing rebels. Every so often some half-dead scarecrow was flung into the courtyard to be patched up by the doctors before being marched off to the prison carts.

  If she had not lived through the Plague and seen what it did to the human body, Penitence would have been no use to the men who lay in rows across her courtyard. Prue had kept retching each time the surgeons uncovered an anemone- coloured bit of bowel or liver or revealed a piece of bone glistening white among the blood. Penitence, fighting sickness herself, had kept her busy fetching water from the pump.

  Flies were attracted by the stench and heat. There was no shade. Time and again, Penitence appealed to Lieutenant Jones to l
et his soldiers take the men into the cool of the hall but he refused.

  She was trying to bandage a stomach wound when some militia soldiers began dragging her patient away towards their cart. 'He's a Monmouth, Ladyship,' explained their sergeant, pointing to the white cockade pinned to the man's jacket.

  'He's hurt.' she screamed. The sergeant - a local man, she knew his face from somewhere - was not unsympathetic. 'Better let me have un, Ladyship.' He cocked his head towards the mild woolly shape sewn on the standard over the archway. 'He's a rebel dog, but tid'n pretty to see dogs torn by Lambs. That old boy Nevis, he don't take prisoners.'

  His subordinates didn't leave stones unturned either. As Penitence passed through her house she couldn't see a chair standing upright. Cupboard doors were off their hinges, every tapestry cut from its pole. All the portraits, even the two of Rupert, lay face-down in the hall.

  But the greatest destruction was in her bedroom. Nevis had returned to it to inflict more. Her down quilt had been stabbed so that the place was snowed with feathers. Her needlework which had been stretched on a frame by the window was slashed across and across.

  The devastation had a message. Nevis's instinct was telling him the room concealed something. It was also a display of sexual hatred; her shifts and under-petticoats had been hung from the tester rail of the bed and a hole gouged out from the front of each skirt at pelvic level. Most serious from her point of view was the door's smashed lock which stopped her from securing it.

  Lieutenant Jones's dark eyes were on her face to see how she reacted. She almost forgot to - she could only think of the boy in his hiding-place. He could have bled to death or choked on vomit. He'd been in darkness without food or drink for over four hours.

  It was an effort to keep her eyes away from the bedhead. It was an effort not to pick up a torn piece of wood from her tapestry stand and stab the leering pig to death. They'd hear if he screamed. It was her only reason for not doing it.

  The bandages from her medicine chest were spilled on the floor. As she gathered them up she caught a glimpse of her face in a shard of her looking-glass. It was dirty. Now she came to think of it, she hadn't done anything to her appearance since she left the inn at Yeovil ... incredulously she counted back . .. only yesterday morning.

  God damn them all. I'll he clean if the skies fall. 'Will you leave while I wash?' she asked.

  She glimpsed his brown teeth as he spat. Deliberately, she went to her toilet cupboard and washed. She balanced the sliver of glass on her scored dressing-table, searched among the wreckage for her hairbrush, righted a stool and sat down to brush her hair.

  'You want change your robe I don't mind.' Lieutenant Jones's voice insinuated down from somewhere above her head. He was behind her. She could feel the heat of his groin against the back of her neck.

  Will it help Benedick if I do this? It's how I saved him once before. She calculated. Was there the remotest possibility that this man would allow her to tend to Benedick for services rendered? No. Her body wasn't sufficient incentive now for a man like this to betray his superiors for long. She studied the dark eyes reflected in the mirror and knew they had looked on excesses she couldn't even think of. Benedick was better off dying unconscious in his hole than in the hands of this man.

  'Get away from me,' she said.

  For a moment she rested her head in her hands, her fingers threading her hair. How had all this happened in a day? This was war, then, this thing arbitrated by other people, those poor men out there, her son dying in his hole, this sudden collapse of all structure, this lady of the manor transformed back to actress and then to calculating whore.

  Hooves clattered in the courtyard and Jones moved over to the window to see, then jerked a thumb at her. 'Down. Now.' He was suddenly in a hurry.

  She began gathering up ointment jars from the floor in the hope that he'd lose patience and go without her. He lost patience but drew his sword instead. 'Down.' Hastily, she swept jars and bandages into her apron and preceded the man down the stairs.

  'Evacuate this place. Get these men down to the ambulance carts.' It was Major Nevis's voice. Some of his soldiers were already joining the militia doctors in carrying stretchers across the bridge.

  Not until she saw him again did Penitence realize what fear Nevis had left in her. His figure on his horse was outlined against a glorious sunset - and turned it grey. She might cope with everyone else to bring herself and her son out of this situation intact — Sir Ostyn, bless him, the lustful Jones, even Monmouth if he found his way here — but Captain Nevis was beyond anything that she could manage. He had no bounds.

  The men with him were of similar, though paler, stamp. Uniformed, they still gave the impression of irregulars: thinner, quicker, more wolfish than standing army soldiers.

  Jones crossed the courtyard, stepping over the stretchers, and his commander bent down so that the man could whisper in his ear. Is it about me? The men surrounding Nevis's horse were fixing bayonets. The click of the knives fitting into the muzzle of muskets brought up the head of each man in the courtyard capable of lifting it.

  With Jones leading the way Major Nevis, still mounted, followed to one of the wounded lying in the shade of one of Penitence's flower urns. Their men came behind, lifting their feet like cats to avoid the bodies stretched on the cobbles. She heard Jones say: 'He's one.'

  It was the wounded man who'd been delirious and babbling while she cooled his forehead and Jones listened. She'd known even then that he was a rebel who'd been mistaken and brought in for a royalist soldier — he'd kept raving of 'King Monmouth' as she tried to hush him and hope that Jones didn't understand his thick Somersetshire.

  She watched Nevis nod, saw the right elbows of two of his men crook as they brought up their muskets, then straighten. She saw the bayonets go into the body of the man at their feet, and still didn't believe what had happened. The steel went in so easily. There'd been just a twitch then, again so easily, the man was dead.

  Penitence found herself running forward. What are you doing? He was alive.' Sir Ostyn was behind her, backing her up. You varlet, you villain. I protest, sir.'

  'Do you?' asked Nevis. 'The man was a rebel. Perhaps a spy.'

  'You dog, sir,' shouted a militia surgeon from the other side of the courtyard. 'He was entitled to trial.'

  'Trial?' said Nevis. 'You want a trial?' He was looking towards the gatehouse. The setting sun was shining through its tunnel in an arch of orange light that made the eye blink. Black figures stood against it, one dumpy and still with a distorted collar round its neck and what looked like a lead snaking upwards from it.

  Penitence couldn't make it out. But from the other side of the courtyard she heard Prue gasp: 'Barnzo. Barnzo, what they doing to ee?' She watched the girl run into the light and be pushed to the ground by one of the guarding figures.

  Penitence turned to the man on the horse. 'It's Barnzo,' she said, as if he'd know.

  Nevis's voice was negligent but it carried into the silence. 'Stands accused of obstructing His Majesty's soldiers when they were searching the village for rebels and of shouting epithets against the King. Ask the prisoner if he has anything to say, Harris.'

  There were villagers on the other side of the moat. From his height Penitence recognized Jack Fuller, who was the tallest man in Athelzoy and Barnzo's father.

  'He says Bur, bur, bur, sir,' called back Harris, and somebody laughed.

  It was a trick of Major Nevis that as he talked he looked elsewhere than at the person he was addressing until his last sentence. He did it now, turning his head as if considering the upper windows that looked down at him from three sides. 'Anything to say in this man's defence, Mistress Hughes? Like who was being carried up this rise this morning and by whom?' Now he looked at her. 'And where he is now?'

  He's trying to make me an accomplice. The sun through the tunnel turned the gatehouse entrance into a proscenium arch against which actors stood in perfect, black silhouette. It's a play. It isn't real.
She said: 'He's a simpleton. You can't hang him. Please don't.' It wasn't the right line. Too feeble. It is a play. But it's real. Even if she could trade Benedick's life for Barnzo's, she had no right to trade Mudge's.

  Nevis nodded to the silhouettes around Barnzo and Penitence shut her eyes. She heard the screams from Prue and the villagers.

  When she opened her eyes again the silly round face of the Paschal Lamb looked down on a bundle that swung beneath its embroidered hooves. Beneath them both carts with wounded were trundling across the bridge and down the drive. On the other side of the moat the relief of villagers was kneeling, all except Jack Fuller who stood upright and still.

  A shocked Ostyn Edwards lectured Nevis. 'No harm in that poor soul, 'twas sheer cruelty to hang un. I'm going to report you to the King.'

  Nevis stretched. 'You're going to take the wounded to Taunton.'

  Penitence said quickly: 'Don't leave me, Sir Ostyn.' The thought of being alone with Nevis terrified her.

  'I won't, maid,' he said stoutly. 'I take my orders from the Duke of Somerset and from the Duke of Somerset only.'