The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  'I agree, sir.'

  'And what do you think we should do with him?'

  'Personally, sir, I'd find the nearest hole in the marsh and throw him in.'

  'I agree. Wrap him up again.'

  'No.' Every instinct screamed at her to overlook the claim of common humanity and let the men rid her of this bane, to quickly turn her head and be left unburdened. What did you and your like ever do for me? Why should I take in one more male who thinks I'm a whore? Wearily she said: 'Bring him up to the house.'

  'Boots, you have trouble enough.'

  'I know, but he's a relative of mine. His name's Martin Hughes.'

  While Henry and Muskett took the unconscious man to the scullery to strip him of his damp clothes and wash him, Penitence went up to the main north-wing bedroom to find more blankets and some clothes of Rupert's. She opened the panel and helped Benedick out of the secret room, explaining what had happened.

  'Did you come up here just now?' he asked. 'I thought I heard somebody moving about the room.'

  Penitence looked around uneasily. There was a rule that he wasn't to make a noise until the panel was opened and, knowing the risk to her if he was discovered, he'd carefully obeyed it, though to avoid the worst horrors of claustrophobia he always kept the door behind the panel open.

  She looked under the bed and in the cupboards and locked the door behind her before she went downstairs to tell the men. Martin Hughes lay on the scullery table, wrapped in a blanket.

  'Shall I search the house, sir?' asked Muskett.

  'What's the point?' said Henry, wearily. 'The bloody place has got more ins and out than a weevilled cheese. Get upstairs and guard the boy.' When his sergeant had gone, he turned on

  Penitence. 'I want you out of here,' he said. 'Muskett will escort you to Cheynes, that's my place, and you can stay there until we get rid of all these relatives you keep collecting.'

  'No. I can't go.' She began preparing a poultice to relieve Martin Hughes's chest; she was fast running out of sheets to tear up.

  'Look.' He was getting angry. 'This old spindleshanks was planted in the drive to draw us out of the house while they searched for the boy. They suspect you.'

  'No,' she said. 'It was Nevis was in the house.' She heard her voice rise in hysteria and brought herself under control. 'Nevis was in the house. He watches. He's suspected me from the first but as long as he can't find the secret room he has no case. It was Lady Alice who sent... the carpet.'

  'Lady Alice Lisle? I thought she'd been arrested.'

  'She has. She willed it to me. She saw the family resemblance.'

  There was goose grease in a pan in the larder and she fetched it. While it warmed by the fire, Penitence told Henry King what she knew of her mother's story. 'They took her child, me, to the Americas leaving her to starve. Only she didn't. She went to London and opened the Cock and Pie instead.'

  'Her Ladyship was your mother?'

  She wondered if this confirmed his suspicions. Like mother, like daughter. She slapped goose grease on to lint, lint on to the cloth, and the cloth on to Martin Hughes's bony, hairless chest. His skin was hot and his thin mouth was open to suck in air.

  Very well,' said Henry, 'but none of this says you can't get out of the firing line. If you insist on heaping coals on this nasty old bastard's head, leave it to me and Muskett. We'll get him away.'

  'There's Dorinda,' she explained, 'I can't leave without knowing what's happened to her.'He was getting angry. He'd never held any brief for Dorinda. Apart from that, Penitence knew he was impatient to take her to bed again before he returned to Bridgwater. 'The wench is dead or in clink. Either way, what could you do?' He was dismissive.

  'I'd go to Jeffreys,' she said, unguardedly. 'He'd give her to me.'

  'Really? Another admirer?'

  She looked up from tying the poultice into place and saw the polite interest fixed on his face, and began to get angry herself. 'Yes, as a matter of fact.'

  He nodded. 'You actresses cover a lot of ground.'

  'No,' she said. 'We don't. We stay still and men come around us. Being on the stage doesn't necessarily mean a woman's a whore. Being in a brothel doesn't necessarily mean she's a whore.'

  'Really?'

  She thought of the industry which men devoted to seducing women and the industry with which they then defamed them. She thought of Aphra, traduced for earning her own bread. She thought of Dorinda made a laughing-stock for believing a man loved her. The man before her stood for the entire genus of exploiters. 'Really,' she agreed. 'She becomes a whore later, when she's left holding the baby and is put in Newgate for debt. That's when she becomes a whore. And when she's trying to earn a living for them both and a man says she can't unless she sleeps with him. That's when she becomes a whore.'

  Twenty years' resentment fed her fury; it had the bit between its teeth and was unstoppable. The exhilaration of hearing the truth come out of her mouth at last was like a trumpet to a battle-charger; it went the faster. She let Martin Hughes's body flop back on to the table so that she could lean over it and shout at the man opposite, the enemy. 'And if Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys wants to tumble her in return for letting her friend free, then it's a small price to pay because she's used to being the whore you made her.' She screamed the words.

  Then she was sorry. It was no time go into all this when she was overburdened and overfrightened and they were both too tired. I love you. I only ever loved you.

  But it was too late now.

  He bowed. 'Obviously I cannot help you, madam. May I suggest you bring back some of your staff to protect you and yours.'

  She had to call Muskett down to carry the old man upstairs. She could hear the spurts of gravel as Henry's horse took the drive at a gallop. As she was lighting Muskett through the door of the bedroom, the eyes of the sick man over his shoulder opened and focused on her. 'Jezebel,' he said. It was automatic, a response to any woman not buttoned to the neck. He probably wasn't even aware he'd made it. Why am I doing this?

  And as she threaded the skinny old body through the hole in the bedhead to Muskett on the other side, Benedick chose to protest: 'It's bad enough in that hole without having to share it with the likes of him.'

  Wearily, she fetched bedding, climbed through the panel and helped Muskett make the old man comfortable. Then she climbed out again.

  'That's your great-great-uncle,' she said. 'That' - she pointed to the drive — 'was your father. And that,' as hard as she could she hit her son across his face, 'is for growing up like them. Now I'm going to bed.'

  Most of the casual labour which Penitence had used in previous years to harvest her teasels had come from Somerset's Dissenting male population, a large proportion of which had either been killed in the Monmouth rising or now lay in prison awaiting trial.

  Even augmented by such labourers as her neighbours could spare, only eighteen men filed into her courtyard at dawn to receive their harvesting instructions.

  Penitence looked from them to the early morning mist hanging over the marshes and wondered if the heatwave would last long enough for so few to harvest so much before the rains came. Already wiseacres in the village were prophesying storm, and the air was becoming heavy. The Levels had gone quiet as if heat was squashing the life out of them.

  Waterfowl kept to the shade of the reeds. The only sound was a persistent hum of insects and the unexpected buzz past the ear by a dragonfly.

  She looked back to the men. They were waiting to be given the teasel knives and the blood-summoning, sinew-stiffening speech which, by tradition, Mudge had always delivered to them before they went out to the fields.

  'Do your best and do it quickly,' she told them clearly. What do they expect in this heat? St Crispin Crispian's? 'There'll be a bonus for any man who can finish his three acres first.'

  The incentive put a sparkle in the men's eye that Shakespeare couldn't have produced and they shuffled past her table in goodwill as she handed out the teasel knives which were always kep
t in a locked case in the hall cupboard. These were expensive, being especially made for teasel-cutting; small, lethally sharp blades which fitted inside the curve of a man's forefinger so that in using them a teasel-harvester's gloved hand looked as if it was picking the bristled heads rather than cutting them.

  Impatient but true to her duty as lady of the manor she asked after the men's families and gave back news of her own. Yes, thank you, Miss Ruperta and Miss Tongs were well and she hoped they would be returning soon, once the Assize was over. How are the little ones? Please hurry and go. Yes, thank you, she was managing quite well with Sergeant Muskett and Prue to look after her.

  If the teasels bring in enough profit, perhaps I can buy Benedick's pardon. Perhaps, if Dorinda and MacGregor were alive, she could buy theirs. It was being said that Lord Grey, one of Monmouth's few aristocratic lieutenants, had already been allowed to purchase the King's forgiveness with £7,000 and the betrayal of all his former comrades. Even from the sale of Elizabeth of Bohemia's necklace — half of which belonged to Ruperta in any case — she could not hope to raise such a sum. But then Benedick, being younger and less well-born, would not fetch so much as Lord Grey.

  Yes, thank you, Miss Ruperta and Miss Tongs were well. No, there was still no news of poor Mudge Ridge, but thank you for asking.

  'Do ee miss him, Ladyship?'

  She looked up because this was not a polite enquiry, but had the tone of a message. The man who gave it was heavy- set and middle-aged. She could not remember seeing him before.

  'Very much,' she said. The other seventeen men had retreated into the shade of the gatehouse preparatory to marching off to the teasel fields. She handed the man before her the last knife on the table, but he didn't take it.

  'Did ee hear about the escape at Ilchester gaol, Ladyship?' He was looking about casually, acting insouciance so hammily that Nevis would put him down a suspect right away if he saw him. Don't let Nevis see him. She felt a spasm of fear put her heart into an a-rhythmic beat. She suspected Nevis of being everywhere.

  No, she hadn't heard of it.

  'Sixty men, Ladyship. Sixty got away. We reckoned you'd be interested and you'd want to tell Prue Ridge.'

  'For God's sake,' she snapped, 'if Mudge was among them, tell me.' She couldn't bear this furtiveness, these cryptic 'carpets'. Even if Nevis was watching, he couldn't overhear. 'Do you know anything of a man called MacGregor? Or Mistress Dorinda?'

  The man shrugged, then he was gone. She saw him join the others to cross the moat, but then break away across the moorland.

  When she looked down at the table, she saw that he'd left the teasel knife behind. She picked it up and put it in her pocket before she went to tell Prue what had happened. She found the girl sweeping out the hall.

  'Is that what he meant, Prue? That Mudge was in Ilchester gaol and has got away? But how could Mudge have got to Ilchester?' The village was six miles to the south-east and well away from the battle.

  'They put un in prison all over the place.' Prue's once- plump face had brightened. 'And they damn Lambs wouldn't keep Mudge Ridge locked up for long, iss fay. 1 reckon that's what 'tis. Mudge's got free.' She began to cry on Penitence's shoulder. 'God preserve un for a good brother and keep un safe to get home.'

  'Amen.' But not yet. Fond as she was of her bailiff, Penitence profoundly hoped he would make for somewhere else other than the Priory or the farm. The secret room was definitely getting overcrowded, and she was already at risk. Nevis suspected her of hiding one of Monmouth's commanders and whoever it was that had delivered 'the carpet' knew she was hiding the rebel preacher, Martin Hughes.

  If whoever-it-was got captured he might very well betray her to save his own skin. Somebody had betrayed Lady Alice Lisle for the same reason.

  I shall be ill. Nobody could live on such a knife-edge of anxiety for so long without amassing bad humours in her body. I haven't got time to be ill. She must investigate the possibilities of escape for her son and for his damned great- great-uncle, if the man survived.

  And now, added to her woes, was the thought that she had locked herself out of the secret garden by telling Henry of her whoredoms. He'd believed those, all right. Happy enough to believe truth that damned her; unable to hear truth that didn't.

  She was defiant nevertheless. I'm glad I told him. How had he thought she'd survived any other way? What did he expect? What did all men expect? That women keep themselves pristine, like new flower pots, for men to plant their own, exclusive seed into? I bet he didn't spend all these last years in self-denial.

  It was the late Lady Torrington's fault in cuckolding him with the King that he so mistrusted women. If he was as suspicious of the late Lady Torrington as he is of me, then I'm sorry for the poor dead slut.

  But if his jealousy meant that he wasn't coming back to smuggle Benedick to the coast and freedom, she didn't know what she would do.

  I shall be ill.

  She pulled herself together. There's no time to be ill. The problem with problems on this scale was that they absorbed your time in a stomach-clenching rotation that led nowhere except to madness. 'Go and get some breakfast ready for the men,' she said to Prue.

  'There in't much.' Prue wiped her eyes. Food was becoming scarcer than ever now that what had been left after army requisitions was being commandeered for the invasion of judges, clerks, barristers and servants necessary to the Assizes. The Levels' marshes were empty of cattle and the Levels' islands of sheep.

  'Do what you can.' The Assizes. There was another horror waiting to be faced and faced this very afternoon. In her escritoire in her bedroom was an embossed, be-sealed, be- ribboned letter which read:

  Dearest Madam, I saw your performance. Will you not come to see mine? We shall dine after. Your humble servant, Jeffreys.

  She crossed the hall to put the teasel knife back in its case, and stood still.

  Somebody was breathing.

  She looked round; Prue had left for the kitchens, the hall was empty, the morning sun coming through its windows in three patchworked stripes. Muskett was upstairs in the bedroom, guarding the two fugitives. There was no one else in the house. Yet somebody was breathing. A wheezing intake of air. A long, shaky expulsion. She was taken back twenty years to the condemned cell at Newgate and George's heavy panting as she undressed before him, chattering her nonsense.

  Nevis. She fought down panic as she whirled around. There was an explanation. Must be. Drains. A cat. Something up the chimney. It was loudest when she was close to the interior wall, and louder yet at the fireplace end. Of course. The gargoyle.

  She expelled her own breath in relief as she looked up. It was gasps from the still-delirious Martin Hughes she could hear coming through the vents from the secret room. Yet, even as she took in the rational explanation, she was shaken by superstitious horror of the life given to the gargoyle's malevolent face by the air that whistled through its mouth and nostrils.

  She ran through the hall door, along the passage to the main bedroom. 'For God's sake, Muskett, can't you keep him quiet? Where is Muskett?'

  Sitting by the window, her son directed a thumb over his shoulder towards the bedhead where the panel was open. Penitence clambered through, struck again - as she always was - by how drearily the shape of the room acted on the spirit, her spirit at any rate.

  Muskett was kneeling beside the palliasse on which lay the heaving body of Preacher Hughes, bathing his face and neck. A rushlight burned in the pincers of its holder, casting its unflickering light on the old man's slack, stubbled chin. Magnified by the high, sloping walls of the room the noise of his breathing was louder than ever.

  'Hear him, can you?' Muskett had already recognized the problem.

  'They can hear him in Taunton.'

  'Sorry, mistress. I'll stop up the vents. I got me some clay.' Not for the first time Penitence wondered how much Henry paid Muskett and decided, as always, that it wasn't enough. He handed her the cold cloth to continue cooling Martin Hughes while he began stuf
fing clay into the holes that led to the hall. 'But if the panel's closed, mistress, these'll have to come out. They'd suffocate else.'

  She examined Martin Hughes. He was still in crisis. 'He's no better, Muskett, is he?'

  'Him?' Muskett appeared not to approve of Dissenting preachers. 'His sort'd survive the Last Trump.'

  'Prue will bring breakfast soon. Muskett, I'm grateful to you. Muskett, will he come back?'

  'His Lordship?'

  'He said he'd be back tomorrow night to fetch Benedick.'

  'If he said he will, he will.' Was rain wet? Did birds fly?

  Penitence looked at Muskett with envy that any human being could rest such absolute trust in another. 'Have you known him long, Muskett?'