The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  'Newgate?' asked Henry of her.

  'For debt.'

  'Ah.' She waited for him to say he was sorry for all she'd suffered, instead he said: 'That's two swords the boy's had off me. What happened to the first one I gave you?'

  "We sold it' she said and was glad to say it. Incongruity added to unreality. Did she sit under the beautiful windows of her own hall, talking of the past with a madman while another waited to lead her to infamy and death? Or was it a dream?

  Would I have gone to Newgate if it hadn't been for him? She had blamed him for it so long that it was difficult to remember. It didn't matter now anyway.

  'It was a good sword,' said Henry. Now she realized. He was trying to keep her cross in order to stop her being frightened. He was failing. Every nerve was listening out for the sound of a horse outside.

  'Shut your fucking fornicating mouths,' said Nevis, disconcerted at losing his audience. 'One more word from you and the bitch is pulled into Taunton naked.'

  'Spanish,' said Henry. 'Or did I get it in Morocco? Anyway' - he settled down more comfortably against the wall - 'I remember the swordsmith telling me what a fine regiment the Tangiers was, considering it took only those who didn't have the brains to join any other. Insisted on shagging only the best camels, he said ...'

  No, don't. He was deliberately trying to enrage the man, as he had her — for what purpose this time she couldn't imagine.

  Nevis's face stayed as neutral as ever but out of his mouth came a stream of vituperation, much of it against militia captains who'd never seen a shot fired in anger and ran when they did.

  Penitence was amazed that two men could consider the denigration of each other's regiments an insult. What does it matter?

  It was then she noticed the rat. A wavy rat, which was impossible, but grey like a rat. It bobbed for a second against the ornate banister of the stairwell next to Nevis's foot where he stood at the top of the stairhead. A wavy rat was no more extraordinary this night than anything else. She didn't question it. She was very tired. If she went to sleep perhaps she would wake up to find herself back at well-regulated, well-respected Awdes, with Rupert. I'm so sorry, Rupert.

  'Goats now,' said Henry. 'They weren't so particular about goats . . .'

  Stop it. He'll kill you.

  The cocked pistol in Nevis's hand shook as he stepped forward. The hole of its muzzle became larger and so magnetic that as it bobbed her eyes went up and down to follow it. 'You arrogant bastard. You never had to work for anything. All your food and your carriages and your commission, what did you do for it but fornicate.'

  He was inching forward all the time, and Penitence knew he would shoot if Henry wasn't quiet.

  And Henry wasn't quiet. He was spouting Proverbs at the top of his voice, louder than ever: 'Steel sharpeneth steel; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his enemy. Sharpen it in the name of the Lord.'

  Again he was misquoting but by now she'd spotted the rat again. She saw it rise up and become Martin Hughes's grey head. He was coming up the stairs behind Nevis. The top stair creaks. She tried to will the information towards him. He'll hear you. Of course, that was why Henry was making such a noise.

  'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy cheek, smite him on his.'

  The Lord never said that. Besides, the old man held no weapon. What could he smite with? She wanted to join in the diversion by shouting something, anything, but she had gone back twenty years. Her words had blocked and her head nodded like a fool's in the effort to get them out. Instead, she stamped on the floor.

  Now it was they who were frightening Nevis. His eyes had widened and she could see hers and Henry's wildness reflected in them. There was a sort of power in losing control and she no longer tried for words but screamed, the scream of the lamb before the wolf, the terror beyond terror.

  And she saw her great-uncle tiptoe unsteadily up behind Nevis and stroke him on his neck. It appeared almost a touch to attract the man's attention, so gentle a movement that Nevis didn't shoot. He put up the uncocked pistol as if to brush something off his collar. It disappeared in an outburst of blood. Some bung seemed to have shot out of Nevis's neck under pressure. The blood sprayed black in the moonlight;they could hear it rapping against the pistol and splashing on the floor. Martin Hughes fell back to avoid it.

  Then Nevis pulled the trigger; a reflex action. The shot was towards the fireplace but he was already sinking to his knees like a slaughtered ox. He looked puzzled.

  Henry leaped forward and pulled up Nevis's cloak as a shield against the blood. 'Well done, Uncle.'

  'I smote the son of Belial with the edge of the sword,' said Martin Hughes.

  'You certainly did.'

  He's been expecting this. She couldn't understand what had happened. Her lover and her uncle congratulating each other.

  'Is he dead?' she asked.

  'Don't stand there like a sodding lily, Boots. Get a bucket of water. Lots of buckets. We've got to get rid of the blood before Jones comes.' He looked up at Martin Hughes who was still clinging on to the stairhead. 'We can't kill Jones too, unfortunately. We couldn't explain two deaths. We're going to have enough trouble explaining this one.' He turned back to Penitence. 'Move, woman. And don't step in the blood, for God's sake. We don't want footprints all over the place. Go on, move.'

  'But why is he dead?'

  He looked pleased with himself. 'Show her, Uncle.'

  Shyly, as if proffering a sweetmeat, Martin Hughes held out his hand. Set in the bend of his forefinger was a curved, steel blade. For a moment she couldn't see what it was; his whole hand was blood. 'I have cut down the unrighteous.'

  'It was on the table next to the bed,' said Henry. 'How the hell Nevis didn't see it, I'll never know. It was practically sitting up and waving. I managed to knock it near Uncle's right hand as we went out of the door.'

  She'd put it there. She'd picked it up off the table on the day she'd handed out the other knives to the harvesters and received the news that Mudge Ridge had escaped from Ilchester gaol. Meaning to put it back with the others, she'd been interrupted by .. . what was it . . . hearing Martin Hughes's breathing coming from the gargoyle, and run upstairs. It had been on the table so long it had become a fixture she hadn't noticed.

  She was sent to loose Nevis's horse from where it was tethered by the gates, but though she slapped its rump time and time again, it wouldn't gallop off. For the time being she took it to the farm, until they could think what to do with it, then joined the others in the hall.

  Nevis was wrapped in his cloak and then the lovely rug that had lain near the fireplace. Henry checked the house to see where the man had got in and repaired the damage while Penitence lit more candles in the hall. They all three worked frenziedly, chucking water over the blood, mopping, then squeezing the pink water into the buckets, fetching more water. It was impossible to understand how a man's body could have held so much blood. It had shot everywhere, on to the stairhead, the walls, into the moulding of the banister rail. Diluted by water it was gradually lifted from the floor, though at the cost of making the boards look as if they'd come up from the sea, but it would take days before every splash of it could be found in the cracks of the walls.

  And there was no time. Already she was amazed that a night could last so long. If Jones hadn't come yet, he would certainly come at dawn.

  While they worked, Martin and Henry argued about what to do with the body. Penitence wasn't consulted. Death was men's business. They talked about it in a businesslike way. She was amazed by her great-uncle's composure. She supposed she had no idea of him. He could teasel a son of Belial before breakfast every day for all I know. She laughed at the thought even as she shook.

  Henry King shot her a look. 'There's no time for hysterics.' He leaned on his mop. 'All right, we'll put him in the secret room.'

  'No!' She screamed it.

  Henry said: 'Boots, there isn't time for anywhere else. We'll wall it up tomorrow, tight as a tomb.'

  'Not in my
house. Not in my house. Not in my house.'

  'All right. All right, Boots. It'll have to be the moat. And it'll have to be quick.'

  She held the candle while the two men dragged the carpet down the staircase and then along the screen passage to the front door. By the time they'd got there Martin Hughes was puffing so badly she had to help him push while Henry pulled the body up over his shoulder. Her hands were splayed in the effort of forcing them to touch the carpet. Out. Get out of my house, you thing, you dreadful thing.

  'We'll need a weight.'

  Between them she and Martin rolled one of the heavy flower urns along on its base across the cobbles, spilling earth and marigolds. Its crunching was so loud she couldn't hear anything else. What if Jones comes now? Outside the courtyard she looked to the east. It might be her fear, but it looked one transparency lighter than the rest of the sky.

  At the drawbridge she kept a cowardly look-out so that she didn't have to see the business of lashing the urn to the body.

  She heard the splash and saw the ripples waft the water- lilies below the drawbridge up and down.

  It wasn't until then that she could think. 'You must go,' she said to Henry. 'You're supposed to be in Bridgwater. Jones will know you killed him. They'll find his horse at the farm. Go now.'

  'Jones won't know anything. It depends what Nevis told him. We can bluff it out.'

  'We can't bluff the horse,' she sobbed. 'Take it and go.'

  'No.'

  She pulled herself together. This was going to require cunning. She wiped her eyes and smoothed back her hair. 'If we can get them to think Nevis has never been here . ..'

  'He would have told them where he was going.'

  'It doesn't mean he arrived.' We're actors. Deception is our middle name. They had fooled everybody — everybody except Nevis - once. How to repeat the trick? Think. Into her head, God-sent, came a deep, ungodly voice from long ago. 'Do you remember Ma Hicks?'

  For a second the tension on his face faded. 'The only woman I ever really loved.'

  'Do you remember when they were shouting for an encore, she said: "Never mind about 'encore', make the buggers do it again?" Let's do it again.'

  She began running back into the house. Questions and answers chased through her brain. Where had they put Nevis's hat? Would it be bloody? It was a black hat, blood wouldn't show. They both wore the same sort of cloak. Henry is taller. You can't easily assess the height of someone on a horse. He's dark. Nevis is fair. Was fair. Mist, we need a morning mist.

  Reaching the hall, she raced to the window. It had got just chilly enough towards morning to create vapour; there was a veil-like quality to air that was slowly achieving greyness.

  Nevis's hat had rolled off his head as he fell and lay against the banister of the stairwell. On the underside of the brim there was a gleaming splash on the matt felt but with luck nobody would be near enough to notice.

  Outside, the two men were brushing away the spillage from the urn. Panting, Penitence began pulling Henry across the drawbridge. 'Get the horse. Get the horse.' The drive seemed like a lit stage-ramp pointing straight at them.

  Henry swung her back to the shadow of the gatehouse. 'Don't be a fool. Boots. I'm not leaving.'

  'You've got to.'

  'There'll be suspicion. You can't face that alone.'

  'There won't be if Nevis is seen riding away from here.'

  'There'll be suspicion,' he said again. 'Questions. They might drag the moat.'

  'They won't.' How to make him go. How to get him safe.

  Then she knew.

  She pulled away and looked up at him: 'You've got to go. You're putting me in danger.'

  'Don't be a fool.'

  'I'm better off without you,' she said. 'Martin Hughes goes back into the secret room until the countryside is quieter. Nevis is seen riding away from the house, so he can't have died here. I shall be safe if you go now. Jeffreys will protect me.'

  He hadn't seen Jeffreys's face. She could work on his jealousy. Anything, anything to get him away.

  Immediately he became casual. 'I suppose he will' he said, 'for a price. It depends on whether you want to pay it.'

  'It's a small price.'

  'Not to me.' He had never admitted his jealousy, for that matter he had never said he loved her. He was telling her now. 'Boots, not to me.'

  'Well it is to me,' she said. She smiled. 'I've paid it before. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. It's a sale. It keeps food on the table and people out of prison. It got me this house. It means I can keep this house and my daughter.' The tension broke and she was hammering on his chest and screaming. 'You're putting my daughter in danger. Why don't you go? I don't want you here. I'm a whore, don't you see? It's what I'm good at'

  She couldn't see his expression because the wobble of reflected dawn light on the water played through the floorboards of the bridge up on to his face.

  He began to walk away from her towards the drive and she dragged along behind him. Well done, Peg Hughes. Welcome another twenty years without him. She doubted if she'd survive them.

  They turned right towards the farm. She found herself shivering. The dawn was the first presage of autumn after the long, dry summer. She noticed spider webs strung between the bushes with sliding globules of dew on their filaments. There was a satisfactory mist rising from the marsh, lying in curtains like the finest gauze between willow and hazel.

  The farmhouse had been wrecked from too many searches but a comforting smell of cow manure and poultry lingered in the farmyard. Nevis's horse looked round at them from where she'd slung its reins over the gatepost.

  The Viscount began tightening its girth. 'I do understand,' he said, reasonably. 'You're probably trying to save me as well as yourself. I can imagine you are being brave. But I'm taking my bow because I can't go on like this. I need peace.'

  He let the saddle-flap fall, put his foot into the stirrup and swung himself up. He put out his hand for Nevis's hat and she gave it to him. He looked at it, twisting the brim until the blood showed.

  He said: 'I think it's true - you will be safer without me. But I should have to leave anyway. Whether you sleep with that monster or not isn't the point at issue. What is, what's irredeemable is, that you can plan to do it. You've been a whore too long.'

  It was what she wanted but it was so painful that she reacted. 'Who made me one?'

  'I presume that I did. There's no blame for what you've become.' He looked down at her at last. His voice was almost kind. 'You are a remarkable and beautiful woman, Boots, and I admire you. Actually, I love you. But it appears I'm a creature of my past as much as you and I cannot face a future with a woman whose first thought in any difficulty will be to fuck her way out of it. And there's the truth.'

  He put Nevis's hat on his head and shook the reins.

  She walked back to the house without watching him go. There was no need for goodbyes. He'd said his.

  In fact Lieutenant Jones didn't turn up until late morning; even then he came more out of force of habit than suspicion. On his way over to the Priory he and his troop had been diverted by sentries' reports that Major Nevis had gone by at the gallop in the mist, heading north. Wonder he didn't break his neck. Yes sir, unmistakably the major; they knew by the hat.

  'Did he say where he was going?' Lieutenant Jones asked Penitence craftily.

  She was huffy. 'I never saw him. He didn't come here. And if he had, after all the trouble he caused searching the place when I had guests, he'd not have been welcome.'

  In the hall the servant Prue was equally aggrieved. 'Look at this danged hall and the mess you gennulmen make with your vittles. Taken buckets, buckets, to get the danged grease out of this floor.'

  For the look of the thing, Lieutenant Jones searched the house and grounds but was interrupted by a militia messenger who carried the news that Major Nevis's hat had been found by Ticky Hole, a quagmire on the other side of Sedgemoor with the reputation of never yielding up its dead.

  Nobo
dy ever found out what he'd been doing there. There was a strong suspicion that he had been pushed rather than fallen but to question suspects, let alone take reprisals, was difficult because Ticky Hole was far away from any habitation. In the end it was decided that he had been chasing an escaper who had overpowered him. King James made a graceful allusion to his courage and loyalty but was unable to reward the major's next-of-kin because, like the major's body, they couldn't be found.