The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  They'd agreed the stage should be the grassy platform that formed a natural terrace to the south side of the house before sloping down to the yew chessmen, the lawn and the moat. Tonight it looked as if it had been invaded by giant fireflies. Chinese lanterns imported by Rupert through the East India

  Company hung from branches and the spears of yew horsemen. Jeffreys's musicians played softly and unseen from the moat edge where lampions hung over the water, showing up the white of its water-lilies and adding their reflections to the moon's bigger one.

  On the platform itself had been ranged urns of flowers. The children's sea-shells, collected during an excursion to the coast, formed the reflector of the footlights and the back set was provided by the open french doors to the lit interior of the room in the south wing that had been Rupert's library.

  A couch trailing silk shawls and rugs had been set centre back and was causing ribald comment from the members of the audience as they took their seats on the cushioned benches.

  Penitence and the major-domo stood in the wings — a curtain hung between the yew Red Queen and one of her pawns. He had his elbows together and was banging his fists, like a child afraid of thunder. 'Listen to the noise. How can you quell them, dear lady? Aren't you quaking?'

  She was, but not from stagefright. 'What's your name?'

  'Gilbert.'

  'Gilbert, I've quelled audiences that make this one look like Puritans at prayer.' Compared with the stinkards in full cry from Charles II's court, these were amateurs.

  Down by the moat the musicians were waiting for her signal. She raised an arm, a trumpet blared, the audience on the benches whoo-hoo-ed, and Peg Hughes stepped out before the footlights once again.

  Had she gone straight into the serious speeches they'd have goose- and cat-called as a revenge for the disapproval she'd radiated during dinner. She wrong-footed them. She'd pinned her hair into a cap of curls, decoiletaged her basque until it almost showed the nipples, and in Cockney sang them:

  'My lodging upon the cold floor is, And wonderful hard is my fare, But that which troubles me more is The fatness of my dear.'

  At the familiar song, those who were theatregoers burst into spontaneous applause. 'Nelly,' called Fenton, 'Nelly to the life. Wonderful.'

  Penitence strutted, swishing her petticoat and winking at Jeffreys.

  'Yet still I cry "O melt, love, And I prithee now melt apace, For thou art the man I should long for If 'twere not for thy grease."'

  It brought a laugh at Jeffreys's expense which was dangerous, but it got the rest of the audience on her side to play with. Gradually, teasingly, she led them along the gamut from sauciness to the maudlin, picking up Jeffreys along the way by a heart-rending appeal to him as she sang:

  'None ever had so strange an art His passion to convey, Into a list'ning virgin's heart, And steal her soul away.'

  It was inviting a cat-call for 'virgin' but each time she took a bow she inched her basque a little higher and they listened more soberly. During Balthazar's song she dared switch her attention for a second. White buttocks pumping up and down behind a yew knight were Sir Nicholas Fenton's on top of a Taunton whore. Her Ladyship wouldn't have let a Cock and Pie girl be so sluttish. On the benches Nevis himself was the only one sober. He sat upright, his head turning from her to the moonlit garden, as if he knew she was up to something. Beyond him she could see he'd ranged his men and Jeffreys's dragoons round the far side of the moat at twenty-five-yard intervals, dark statuary in the moonlight.

  Several of them leaned on their pikes, listening, instead of holding them at the slope — but that didn't matter. For the purposes of Muskett's plan, it was what was going to happen in a moment that counted.

  She went into Portia's 'The quality of mercy', kneeling and holding out her arms to Jeffreys. And you listen, you pig.

  It was time. Somewhere in one of the upper windows, Henry had been waiting for his cue. From the far side of the house came screams and shouts. Somebody loosed off a musket, one or two on the benches sprang up groping for their swords.

  Round the corner of the house, pursued by Muskett with a clapperboard, capered a tall figure dressed in stuffed pantaloons, full-sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed hat with a feather so drooped that it curled under its owner's nose. Its face was black and its codpiece was the size of a plum pudding from which stuck an enormous dildo. It was a clown straight from the Harlequinade out of Scaramouche via the Mysteries and, automatically, the benches laughed.

  One of the sentries, a sergeant, was apologizing to Kirk. 'Gave us a start, sir. Black face an' all, came rushing out at us like and Davis let off a shot. Thought it was the Devil, sir.'

  Kirk was still laughing, it was Nevis who snarled: 'Get back to your post and stay there.'

  The black-faced clown fell on its knees at Jeffreys's feet:

  'Is it the law? When he knocks on the door?

  For poor old Nick? Merely showing his dick,

  In the cause of farce? To get shot in the arse?'

  The Lord Chief Justice twitched the clown's hat off. He'd been put out when he arrived to find Henry in situ, regarding him as a rival, but now he collapsed with laughter. 'The man shall suffer the utmost rigour of the law, Viscount.'

  Penitence retired to the wings to unpin her hair while the major-domo draped Desdemona's cloak around her. As she brushed out her hair, Henry joined her. Muskett helped him change, put Othello's cloak around him and exchanged the hat for a turban made of Penitence's green brocade bed-curtain pinned with a brooch of brilliants that Rupert had given her after the birth of Ruperta.

  Henry said: 'All right, Muskett, get back to the bedroom and stay there. Major Nevis may try to search it again. From the sight of him he's unimpressed by our hostess's display.'

  He didn't look at Penitence as he added: 'Though she seems to have seduced the rest.'

  'Oh for God's sake,' she said, irritably, 'I'm lulling them.'

  'Is that what Her Ladyship called it? Go and get on the bed. Let's finish the farce.'

  'Decus et Dolor' she said, but he wouldn't answer.

  The french doors to Rupert's study had been closed. After a minute they opened, revealing the bed and, this time, Desdemona in her nightgown and her hair down, singing her willow song. There were no bed-jokes now. As she finished and lay down to sleep the garden was quiet except for a nightingale singing in the woods behind and, again, the Lord Chief Justice's sobs.

  I did lull them. Why are you always jealous?

  She heard him pad on to the terrace and begin pacing as he went into the great soliloquy from Scene ii of the last act. It was a long time since he'd been on a stage, but the emotion he shared with the man he was playing added a vibrancy to his Othello that even Betterton wasn't capable of. She realized how much he hid from her by humour. I'm so sorry. Why don't you believe I love you? Perhaps he did but, like Othello, like all men, he was incapable of understanding that a woman could be sensual and faithful at the same time. If she felt passion she must be passionate. If passionate she could not be faithful. Eve, she thought. It's all the fault of Eve.

  How had the two of them evolved from Beatrice and Benedick to Desdemona and Othello? Whatever he thought she had done, however many men he thought she'd had, why couldn't he accept it and take what happiness they possessed now? Men were such egotists, such exclusivists. They had to possess things to love them.

  'Yet I'll not shed her blood,

  Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

  And smooth as monumental alabaster.

  Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.

  Put out the light and then put out the light.'

  Henry, I'm so sorry. Until now she hadn't penetrated how deeply she'd tormented his soul.

  It was too late to change her interpretation of Desdemona as a sensual woman. It was the way she had played her when Rupert had brought him to the theatre. He'd stood in the doorway at King's and seen her abandoning herself to love in Hart's arms.

&n
bsp; I was acting then. You must know I'm not acting now.

  When he woke Desdemona, she put out her arms and pulled him down on her like a woman used to making love the moment her man came to bed. She heard the hiss of Jeffreys's breath. So did he, and dragged away so that she was thrown back down with her hair across her face.

  As she pleaded for her life, she stroked his face. As Desdemona and as Penitence she tried to show how much she loved him.

  'Think on your sins,' he commanded. Remember the Cock and Pie.

  'They are loves I bear to you.' I do remember. I lived twenty years on the memory. Don't leave me.

  'Ay, and for that thou diest.'

  He forced her down on the bed, calling her a strumpet, and as the pillow went over her face she knew it flashed through his mind from some barbaric reservoir within him to press until she couldn't torment him any more. He mastered it within the second.

  A high falsetto spoke unseen from the wings telling Othello that Iago had contrived the situation from malice and that Desdemona was innocent. The major-domo had offered his services as Emilia and was reading from a precis composed by Penitence allowing Othello to go into 'Behold! I have a weapon' and then to 'I kissed thee ere I killed thee'.

  The body she knew so well fell on hers. 'No way but this, killing myself to die upon a kiss.' And he was kissing her; no professional actor would have kissed like that — it was too distracting, let alone being barely decent. She was aware of nothing but him, the applause was a background, like far-away thunder.

  Her body was so part of his that she felt the tap on his back, somebody knocking at the gate of their secret garden. It was Jeffreys trying to get in. The scene had inflamed him; it was his right to lie down on Desdemona - he'd provided the dinner. 'You have maddened me, my dear,' he said, as he helped her up. 'Let us steal away for some time to ourselves.'

  The Viscount got up, stretching: 'I fear it would be stealing, my lord. I see Mistress Hughes and I must reveal our secret. Come, madam.' He pulled Penitence to her feet and put his arm round her, bringing her to centre stage and raising his voice: 'Mistress Hughes has consented to be my wife. We are to marry as soon as my duty is over at Bridgwater. Aren't we, sweetness?'

  She knew what he supposed he was doing; protecting her with his name when he left her with Jeffreys and his retinue, as he would have to in a minute if their plan was to succeed. It was past two o'clock already.

  She doubted if he knew what he was doing in fact; marking his territory so that nobody else should have her in his absence. Worse, he'd humiliated the Lord Chief Justice in public. He didn't see Jeffreys's face — in accord with the plan, Muskett had come up saying the horses were ready and they were late returning to Bridgwater for duty. From this moment everything must be conducted at a rush.

  Only she saw Jeffreys's furious blush of humiliation that his plan for the night had not just been foiled, but foiled in front of all the friends who'd known what it was.

  Jeffreys wasn't one of the court wits who could seem to shrug off the fickleness of one woman — however much he might punish her in verse later — as long as there was another to take her place. That a woman was affianced had meant nothing to such as them; they would take her just the same. But Jeffreys came from a lower-class, higher-church stratum of society than theirs; he was a bourgeois; his women had to dote on him while he had them, and on him alone — they must not have given their hand to another man practically under his nose. He'll never forgive me. She saw the hatred come into his small, boar's eye, not for the Viscount but for her, who'd led him on.

  The Viscount was speaking to Kirk, laughing and slapping his back like a boy: 'See me frighten the sentries, Percy? What do you say? I think I'll stay in costume and frighten all the ones who've fallen asleep on duty as I ride back. That'll make the lazy sods sit up.'

  Jeffreys bowed to Penitence. 'Madam, be good enough to order my carriage brought to the door.'

  It was apparent to eveiyone that such entertainment as there'd been was all the Priory was going to provide. The night's fornication was cancelled, unless it could be had in the carriages on the way back to Taunton. Perhaps this was why the Viscount's suggestion was appealing. Everybody was for dressing-up and scaring the sentries on the roadblocks across the moor. Lampblack was produced and most of the men and at least two of the women were smothering their faces in it, winding their scarves round their heads in imitation of Othello's turban.

  Sir Nicholas Fenton had gone so far as to take off his trousers and, to the horror of Lady Portland, was blacking his penis. 'That'll fright the sentries.'

  Everyone repaired to the courtyard where the carriages waited. Jeffreys clambered into his. Penitence ran to it to say goodbye but the Lord Chief Justice refused to look at her. He called to Kirk, who was standing nearby: 'Withdraw your men, Colonel, we shall need them in Taunton tomorrow. Leave this mistress to be guarded by her husband. I wish him well of her.' He jabbed his coachman in the back with his staff and was driven off, leaving the other drunks to crowd in the three remaining vehicles.

  Nevis was shifting from place to place, checking faces.

  Penitence had set aside a punch as a stirrup cup. She ran to fetch it and in going with it from guest to guest kept their attention away from the Viscount and his casual remark that he must fetch his sword from his tiring-room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his robed and turbaned figure retreat into the screen passage and disappear up the newel staircase.

  It came down a minute later, buckling on its sword, the black face invisible in the dark of the passage and only the brilliants in the turban catching the reflection of the carriage lamps in the courtyard.

  Muskett helped him up on his horse and then got up on another. Penitence handed him the stirrup cup. 'Good luck with the sentries,' she said. When he'd drunk, he gave her back the cup and she felt his fingers stroke the back of her hand for a second before he shook the reins and his horse walked forward to join the queue of departing guests at the gatehouse.

  Nevis stood on one side of it and Lieutenant Jones on the other, both of them with a lantern held high, scanning the faces as they went by. Kirk was arguing with him: 'If you've been through the house, then he's not here. We'll need the men in Taunton tomorrow — from the look of Jeffreys' complexion he'll hang the whole town. It's an order, Nevis.'

  Servants carrying lampions were riding ahead of the carriages, each one slowing down until Nevis nodded them through and Jones slapped their horses' rumps to send them on their way. Behind the next carriage Othello and Muskett were approaching the gatehouse.

  The Portmans and Sir Ostyn bade subdued goodbyes. 'You didn't tell me as you were betrothed to a viscount,' Sir Ostyn reproached her.

  'I didn't know I was,' she told him.

  He peered at her. 'You don't look too viddy, maid. Do ee want me to stay?' He meant it kindly, and she refused as courteously as she could. Just go.

  Gilbert the major-domo was supervising the loading of his wagons by the kitchen and came teetering in and out of the courtyard to tell her what couldn't be found and what would have to be fetched the next day. He was worried and as affronted as his master: 'You've upset him. I said there'd be tears before bedtime. It's all very well, dear lady, but it isn't you that gets Gilbert you're a varlet and a boot at your head.'

  She peered over his shoulder to see what was happening at the gatehouse. There was a delay. Nicholas Fenton leaned down from his carriage - it was the last - to scream his thanks and show her his black genitals. She nodded at them, 'Very nice, Sir Nicholas,' her eyes on the hold-up where Nevis's lantern was practically scorching the lampblack on Othello's face as he examined it.

  Please God. If they were discovered now she had added Henry to the list of those who would stand before Jeffreys in the dock.

  They were through. The lantern had lowered. Nevis had nodded. Jones had slapped the rump of Othello's horse and now the rump of Muskett's. Kirk was following the two of them. Nevis was following him. His men were fo
rming into a phalanx ready to march off. Thank you, God, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  She stood on the bridge of the moat waving as the last of the major-domo's wagons lumbered through the gates at the bottom of the drive to join the cavalcade as it wound its way to the moonlit causeway. She watched the twinkling line until distance extinguished its lights one by one. At Middlezoy, with luck, two of its riders would peel away from it and ride like hell towards Bridgwater and the coast. There would be so many roadblocks to negotiate. Most of the sentries would know Muskett - and they knew the Captain-Viscount's horse. Would they let them by?

  She wondered how she had the strength to go on worrying. She was empty; no emotion left, yet the part of her that had gone with the man now crossing Sedgemoor still had the ability to be afraid.

  The quiet of the night was soothing; her ears vibrated with the noise she had lived with for the past few hours.