The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  She shook her head and hoped he'd go away now. She hated fusses. She was grateful for the rescue but he didn't have to be loud about it.

  'Does this happen often?' From under his cloak he produced a leather bottle and offered it to her. She shook her head. It smelled of liquor. So did he. He took a swig himself. 'What did those noblemen want?'

  Wearily, she pointed down at her boots.

  He studied them. 'Why?'

  How rude. They'd seen better days, but they were solid Massachusetts boots, and desirable in a district where half the population went barefoot. And his own were nothing to write home about. She knew now why she'd assessed him as a gentleman. In her community it was not a title of respect; it applied to the despised representatives sent out to the Massachusetts Bay colony to represent the English government. From her few glimpses of them on visits to Boston and from her grandfather's unflattering descriptions, she had built up a picture of braggadocio and here it was. In spades. Everything about the man had flourish, his cloak trailed over his shoulder and on to the ground, his sword bobbed with the swing of his legs, his wide hat boasted an outrageous feather and performed a parabola when he twirled it off to bow.

  Also, he was drunk. She was about to get up, but he bumped down on the step beside her. 'Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,' he said companionably. He took another drink from his bottle. 'And how you can't trust any of the buggers.'

  Embarrassed, still shaken, nervous of his peculiarity and his swearing — even at that early moment, Penitence caught the contrapuntal moan of hurt underneath the gibberish, and relaxed in recognition. Miserable men had no harm in them. He was impersonal with the self-absorption of drunkenness; she was an incident he'd happened on, nothing more.

  He wagged his finger at her: 'Put not your trust in princes, madam. Well, possibly Rupert. But the next time a king asks you a favour ...'

  She smiled placatorily and stood up.

  'No, no,' he scrambled unsteadily to his feet, 'here wast thou bay'd, brave heart; here didst thou fall: and here thy hunters may still be lurking about. We go together.' He took another swig, replaced the bottle beneath his cloak and offered his arm. Feeling a fool, she took it.

  Their progress was erratic and noisy: he sang all the way.

  As they were approaching Dog Yard, he stopped. 'I am lost in this forest, fair maid. Tell me which of its palaces is the Cock and . . .' he squinted at some writing on the back of his hand.'.. . the Cock and Pea?'

  There was giggling from above their heads where the girls of Mother Hubbard's establishment were leaning out of their back window. 'Pie, darling,' said one of them, 'Cock and Pie. And we'd oblige you better. For free.' From the way she was ogling, she meant it.

  Penitence couldn't think why. Admitted, the man had panache, but he was ugly. His overlarge nose, which the cold had turned red, contrasted with a livid, pockmarked face, his eyes were baggy and he was definitely down on his luck. There was a split in his doeskin boots, the edge of the cloak was ragged where it dragged on the ground and his hat, like her boots, had seen better days, but not recently.

  He was doffing it to Mother Hubbard's: 'Gracious ladies, forgive a poor actor; I'm spoken for.'

  Penitence pressed on. An actor, was he? Spawn of the Devil's playground. In Massachusetts they'd have cropped his ears for him, and rightly. Irony was new to her, but she resented the gentleman's use of it. He was ridiculing all about him. The moment he called her 'fair maid,' she'd known what a scarecrow she looked, just as his address to the Mother Hubbard girls disguised the loathing for their trade. And his own little better. For the first time she felt protective of the Rookery; he might think himself too good for it, but patronage of the Cock and Pie showed he was not — her growing tolerance for the Cock and Pie's whores had not lessened her loathing for their clients. And if he thought he would be obliged cheaper at the Cock and Pie than in the brothels of Drury Lane, he had a shock coming.

  Descending the steps into the well of Dog Yard, she pointed across at the Cock and Pie's signboard and held back, unwilling to be taken, even by this man, for one of its obligers. But he was insisting on seeing her home.

  She stumped up the steps to where the lantern above the door glowed into the mirk and turned defiantly. She saw the actor's wide mouth go down and his eyebrows up as he looked from her Puritan hat to the red light. He was amused.

  She opened her mouth then closed it. She would not expose her stutter to this man. Not ever.

  Dost care what a sinner thinks of thee, Penitence Hurd?

  Yes, she did. In this case, she did.

  He was consulting his hand again: 'Left, left.' After an elaborate bow, he was walking on to stop outside the house on the other side of the alley that ran past her west window. His destination wasn't the Cock and Pie: it was Mistress Hicks's.

  He knocked on the door and, when it opened, swept off his hat. 'Ah, madam, I am informed your delectable establishment has rooms to rent.'

  He had fallen on bad times. Mistress Hicks rented on the principle that if you were desperate enough to take one of her rooms you deserved everything you got. Penitence's mouth twitched. Interested in this encounter, the Yarders came to their windows.

  'What trade?'

  'A poor actor, ma'am, an unfortunate follower of Thespis who—'

  'Resting?' Mistress Hicks's voice, which could have gravelled driveways, indicated that she had taken in actors before.

  'I am assured of employment at the Cockpit, ma'am,' said the actor, humbly

  'Name?'

  'Henry King, ma'am, at your service.' Listening ears at the windows round about caught the split second of thought that preceded the announcement. Arrivals in Dog Yard rarely used their own names.

  Mistress Hicks's nose, which knew a thing or two about liquor on its own account, analysed the actor's breath. 'Shilling a week. Fire, pan and peck extra. And no spewin' in the room. Take it or leave it.'

  'Done.'

  Going upstairs, Penitence remained irritated. The swaggerer had done her a good turn, but he had diminished her in doing it. Of course, one could not expect someone of his debasement to recognize a woman whose moral fibre made her anybody's equal. On the other hand, he might have found it difficult; her hat rammed on top of one of Her Ladyship's swathing shawls, thick boots, old coat, made it hard to divine somebody's sex, let alone their moral fibre.

  For the first time in her life, Penitence considered her appearance.

  Mary met her on the clerestory. Gawd, Prinks, where you been? Dorinda's roaring. One of her gentlemen's due soon, and you promised a fit of her new jacket.' Mary vibrated like a tuning fork to the house disturbances and her present tizzy indicated that Dorinda's temper was special.

  Dorinda could Bartholomew off.

  A yawning Alania emerged out of her bedroom on her way downstairs. 'Did you see any, Prinks?'

  Penitence nodded. In her capacity as Cock and Pie dressmaker, she had that morning walked down to Hyde Park to examine the fashions of the high-society skaters on its lake. 'M-m-muffs are in.'

  'Always were, dear,' said Alania, languidly adding another to the apparently infinite number of euphemisms for the female pudenda. 'Make me one if I buy the silk?'

  Penitence nodded.

  'You're not a bad old bundle, Prinks.'

  She'd left the door of her room open, and in going past it Penitence hesitated. All the girls' rooms, though small, were equipped with large mirrors which she now knew — another piece of knowledge she could have done without — had other functions than to see if one's hair was tidy.

  Standing by the open door, Penitence battled with the temptation to look at herself. Not a bad old bundle. Was this how she seemed to others?

  Until now, glimpses of her own reflection had been in buckets of water. Mirrors were vanity. 'The Devil stares back from the looking-glass.' Who'd said that? Oh, Reverend Block, the old Bartholomew. On the other hand, though she had cast out the teachings of the Rev
erend Block, she had not abandoned his God. She was merely in the process of reassessing Him.

  Sternly, she resisted the mirror's temptation and took herself off to her attic. She would not imperil her soul by narcissism because some coxcomb hadn't noticed its worth.

  Instead, she went to her balcony. Despite the cold, she had taken to standing here every evening to watch the sun go down over London.

  This time at the end of every day transfixed her. Misery, vileness, crime — nobody knew better than she what went on in the hidden streets. Yet in these moments they were wiped away by distance and a sunset that magicked frosted spires and roofs into pure amber and sent a golden wave along the Thames. Again, tonight more than ever, she felt the sense of expectation.

  A shuffle and tap below drew her attention downwards, back to Dog Yard and its depressing mortality. The Searcher was crossing the court to the Ship Inn steps. It occurred to her that the Searcher was much in evidence these nights.

  Behind her, the attic filled with invective and Dorinda's bad temper. What are you doing out there, gawdelpus? Get your fun in here. And where's my ballocking jacket?'

  But by the time Penitence had climbed back into the room, the girl had stopped and was staring out of the side window. 'Well,' she said to herself, slowly, 'and how's your poor feet?'

  Penitence peered with her. The room across the alley, which had been shuttered since she'd arrived, had become an oblong of candlelight. An unsuspected grate in its far wall held a fire before which they could see the actor. He had divested himself of cloak and hat and was sitting on a chair, his arms behind his head, apparently lost in an unhappy exploration of the cracks in Mistress Hicks's ceiling.

  Dorinda was appreciative. 'And who's that bit of butter and bacon?'

  Penitence shrugged. 'S-some actor.'

  Firmly, Penitence closed the shutters. Dorinda's eyes didn't move. 'He looks like he looks, and my gentlemen look like my gentlemen. And they say there's a God.'

  It happened again. She kept getting stabbed by pity at the girls' weariness with their profession; now even Dorinda, most unlikeable, foulest-mouthed of the trollops, was gnawing at the jaws of the trap.

  She could give the girl a pious 'Go and sin no more'. But if Dorinda asked: 'Go where?' she would be answerless. She'd searched the Bible only to find no solution to that one. The soles of her boots were wearing out in her own attempt to find somewhere else to go, and the jaws of her trap were padded compared with the teeth that held this girl where she was.

  Mildly she said: 'I've near f-f-finished the jacket', and Dorinda, recovered, said: About time.' She stood quiet while Penitence put it on her, smoothing and patting. Dorinda's jealousy was subsiding; Her Ladyship's attitude towards Penitence, a wariness that verged on hostility, gave it no cause. It was puzzling; Penitence knew she was repaying Her Ladyship's charity by hard work; the hostility must be connected not so much with herself as with her aunt. Undoubtedly, Her Ladyship owed a debt to the memory of Margaret Hughes, but had not liked her much.

  The woman's exploitation of her girls seemed less appalling as Penitence found out what it had saved them from, and there were times when, in her loneliness, Penitence very nearly envied the Cock and Pie's camaraderie, the sisters-in-arms spirit, which Her Ladyship fostered between her girls and herself without allowing it to lapse into disrespect.

  'Not pulpit-bashing tonight?' asked Dorinda.

  Penitence shook her head. She'd stopped preaching. Sometimes it worried her; was she guilty of what her grandfather had denounced as 'Anythingarianism', becoming so tolerant that she no longer possessed any fixed views on right and wrong?

  Well, if she was an Anythingarian, she was still closer to Jesus's teaching than the Reverend Block's Cut-their-ears-off- and-brand-them school of divinity. She'd learned that much.

  Lord, she was tired; tired of confusion, and the girls who caused it, tired of this cold attic.

  She stood back. 'P-p-perfect.'

  Dorinda looked round for a looking-glass and found none. She marched over to the shutters and flung them back. 'Hey, Play-actor.'

  Penitence rushed forward to stop her, but the man was already looking in their direction. He bowed from his chair.

  'This is my friend, Penitence,' said Dorinda.

  The actor bowed again.

  'Like my new jacket?' asked Dorinda, twirling.

  He squinted blearily and nodded. He wanted to be left alone.

  Horrifyingly, Dorinda said: 'Why don't you leap over and take it off?'

  He stretched and came to the window. 'Madam, between you and me is a great gulf fixed: your honour, mine, and that bloody great drop down there. I wish you and your friend richer pickings tonight than my old carcase.'

  He bowed, reached for his bottle, and went back to his chair.

  'Well,' said Dorinda, 'he put it nice.'

  Penitence wrested the girl's hands from the shutters and banged them to. 'H-how c-cccc-could you?'

  Dorinda's mouth was twisted 'Let him know he's neighbour to a cat-house right away,' she said. 'Gentlemen like him, they get that look when they find out. So I tell 'em. And ballocks to them.'

  Again that unsuspected vulnerability, and this time complicated with self-punishment. The girl had declared herself a

  whore on the principle that, being attracted, she must kill the likelihood of attracting. She thrust her face towards Penitence's. 'Fancy him yourself, do you?'

  She most certainly did not. But it rankled that such a man should think her a whore. When Dorinda went, she wondered if she should go back to the window and explain. Prithee, sir, I am no prostitute.

  She practised it. 'Prithee, sir, I am no prostitute.' It was a peculiarity of her affliction that when she was alone she did not stammer. The 'p's came out in beautiful puffs of sound.

  But the statement hung ludicrous in the air, and how much more ludicrous would she appear as she heaved out the terrible syllables in delivering it from her window. Pri-prri-pri, pro-ppro-pro.

  Damned if she did; damned if she didn't.

  She got angry. Who was this busking mountebank to pity her, either as stutterer or strumpet? What did she, whose soul would be saved on the Day of Judgement, care for the opinion of one who would be sucked, screaming, into the Pit?

  A beautifully enunciated, soul-endangering phrase spoke itself into the attic, alarming its utterer even as she uttered it. 'Ballocks to him,' it said.

  Chapter 4

  Mondays were Bills of Mortality days. On Mondays Peter Simkin took himself, an ink pot, a quill, a ruler and paper into the vestry of St Giles's church and copied from its register of births, marriages and deaths the names of those who had died in his parish in the previous seven days, and why.

  He drew lines for the columns, then checked through the register list for the deaths to write them down in alphabetical order which, since death did not come alphabetically, meant arranging them on a slate before he could make the final fair copy. His comfort lay in the fact that all over London, parish clerks like himself were going through the same procedure, though St Giles's parish, being overcrowded, poorer and more frequently visited by death than others, involved greater work for less pay than theirs.

  Like the rector, he was ashamed by the number of times he had to write 'Pox' in the column detailing the cause of death.

  Usually the job took him not quite an hour. On this first Monday of April it took him nearer two. He counted the number of deaths again. Thirty-one. Usually they averaged out at nineteen. He went to the vestry door and called in his rector to show him the list.

  'I know,' said the Reverend Boreman. 'It's been a bad winter.'

  'Eight fevers,' Peter pointed out. 'A deal of fever.'

  The Reverend Boreman shrugged. They were dependent on what the Searcher told them. 'And how many with the pox this week?'

  Embarrassed, Peter Simkin moved his eyes. Following them, the Reverend Boreman looked over to a dark corner of the vestry where a prim figure sat under the choir
surplices. She was here again. Peter Simkin had told him she was inhabiting the Cock and Pie, in which case she'd be cognizant with the word 'pox' by now, even though she was not, again according to Simkin, taking part in its raison d'etre. He was even inclined to believe it; in that Puritan get-up she could inspire lust only in the religiously deranged. He nodded 'Mistress' and received a frigid curtsey in reply.

  'The cold,' he repeated. 'Things will improve now spring's here.'

  Doubtfully, Peter Simkin rolled up his list, adjusted his hat and set off for the City, with Penitence loping along at his side. Their acquaintance, renewed by a meeting in the High Street, had led to mutual weekly forays to the City, he to deliver St Giles's Bill of Mortality to the authorities, she to try to look for new employment.