The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  Young Simmons said: 'Before my time, my lord.'

  'It wasn't before mine.' He remembered the terror. 'Men dug their own graves and laid in them to die, knowing their wives couldn't carry them. Nobody else would touch them.'

  Every twenty years. Not this twentieth, for Christ's dear body. He'd worked for this; alderman, sheriff, staying loyal to young Charles in exile. The first civic dignitary to be knighted after the Restoration — and he'd deserved it. Now with the rightful king back on the throne, and himself - between them they'd give London such days as it hadn't seen since the time of Dick Whittington. He wouldn't be robbed of it.

  In the rectory of St Giles-in-the-Fields, the Reverend Boreman

  broke a long silence. 'And there's no possibility it was fever?'

  William Boghurst shook his head. 'The tokens were plain. 1 was apprentice to my father in the '25 outbreak. One saw them then.'

  The Reverend Boreman persisted. 'The Searcher says it was rickets.'

  'She's wrong.'

  'They do say,' said Peter Simkin, almost to himself, 'they do say as the Searcher buys meat every day now instead of once a week.'

  'God damn the hag,' shouted the Reverend Boreman. 'So it could be rife.'

  'Undoubtedly,' said the apothecary, calmly. 'The Ship is the most popular inn in the Rookery. And the largest.'

  The Reverend Boreman got up and strode to the rectory drawing-room windows which were open to let in the May scents of his garden. It was at its best this time of year. His wife had planted it. 'Plague,' he said. He realized he was rubbing his thumb and third finger together, a nervous habit Janet had tried to cure him of. He'd christened all the Bryskett children. Eight? Nine? Red-headed every one. Sad, sad Sam Bryskett, a better fellow than most in the Rookery. God help him.

  'The Lord Mayor's instructions was to tell him immediate, Rector,' said Peter Simkin. 'So's he could isolate it.'

  'Isolate it? How? The parish hasn't even a pest-house.'

  'The Worshipful Company's clerk was telling me as Sir John had plans to take all the healthy out from a plague parish and move all the sufferers in. If it came. Isolate it, like.'

  The Reverend Boreman snorted. 'Easier said than done.'

  'But,' went on the parish clerk, doggedly, 'I was also told as how the Privy Council's sent down orders for shutting-ups.'

  The Reverend Boreman was receiving too much information too quickly, but one thing stood out: 'You mean to tell me, Peter Simkin, that the Privy Council has suspected an epidemic?'

  'Looks like it, Rector.'

  'One imagines that St Giles is not the only parish to have more deaths than usual,' said the apothecary. 'It has been suspected, but concealed. Myself,' he continued, 'I recommend my electuary antidote, an infusion first compounded by my father which proved highly efficacious. Eightpence an ounce.'

  'Make some up,' the rector told him. 'A lot.' He was putting off the moment that would solidify the phantasm into reality. Suffering, work, responsibility, would come crashing in. He was too old; perhaps he should retire now and let a younger man .. . die. Oh, God, that was what he would be doing. He was afraid. Christ in Heaven, he was afraid. 'Well, Peter Simkin, be off and alert the Lord Mayor. And the wardmote. Sexton, of course. Tell the parish officers to be here tonight.'

  As Simkin went, the rector turned to the apothecary. We must inform Doctor Whaley. He'll be needed.'

  William Boghurst laced his fingers. 'I called in at the good doctor's house on my way. He has been called away. Suddenly. With his family. A visit. To his sister who is ailing. In the North.'

  'I see.' The wall between his garden and the churchyard was covered with Janet's favourite pink rose. If she'd been alive and the children still at home, would he have emulated Whaley and run for it? But she wasn't. They weren't.

  The apothecary's self-righteous little voice was saying: 'I must take issue with the Privy Council's policy of shutting up, if that is intended. It did no good in '25, it will do no good again. It results in even more concealment, to say nothing of flight. Above all, it is unchristian. I go so far as to say it is murder.'

  'No ailing sister, then?' He turned round and saw the apothecary blink behind his spectacles.

  'As it happens I do have a sister who is, indeed, unwell. She has the rheumatics. Unfortunately, she lives in the parish.'

  'You'll stay?'

  'Oh yes.'

  Boghurst and Boreman, thought the Reverend Boreman. Defenders of St Giles. And who would remember them? Ah well, perhaps God would.

  He crossed over to where the apothecary sat and pressed his hands on the thin, prim shoulders. 'Let us say our prayers, my son,' he said.

  'G-g-go?' Penitence stared at Her Ladyship. 'W-where shall I g-go?'

  'Listen, will you? We're busy. A-first Leadenhall Street. Number forty-two. Ask for Master Patterson. He's a scrivener and my legal man. Say you've come for Her Ladyship's papers. Understand? Her Ladyship's papers. Then back here and pack your bag. Tomorrow you go.'

  'B-b-but w-where shall I g-go?' asked Penitence again.

  There was knocking from below, and Her Ladyship hurried out.

  Penitence stood where she was, waiting, oddly shocked. It was one thing to have been trying to leave the Cock and Pie under her own volition; quite another to be ejected. What have I done? Her sewing had been more than adequate.

  It had been a shock in itself to be summoned to Her Ladyship's bedroom. After the first glance she'd kept her eyes away from the flounced pink voile which framed the chains and fetters decorating the wall beyond the bed.

  She winced at Her Ladyship's agonizingly ladylike vowels floating up the staircase. 'Not at all, my lord. I understand perfectly. This way, my lord. Can I suggest our Mistress Fanny? Prime of all my rosebuds.'

  The busy click of the woman's heels and the slower march of male boots passed outside the boudoir door on their way along the clerestory.

  Her Ladyship came back, puffing, but before she could return to the room there was another knock on the great outside door. She went downstairs again and ushered another client up — this time for Sabina.

  Penitence found it puzzling. It was so early. The Cock and Pie's clientele usually visited under cover of darkness.

  Her Ladyship came in and lumbered over to a walnut bureau from which she took a purse. 'There's two guineas in that. It'll keep you till you find work.'

  W-w-umm-where?' Penitence asked again.

  Her Ladyship's lips went thin with irritation. 'Away from London. Go to Taunton and join the rest of the God-botherers. Your aunt came from Taunton. Mention her name at the George in Fore Street.'

  It was disconcerting to have her dearest wish materialize in this fashion. She was grateful, but now that it came to it she was floundered by the prospect of change. 'W-why?'

  'Why what?' snapped Her Ladyship. She shoved the purse under Penitence's nose. 'Here's your wages. Take it. There won't be no more.'

  Penitence went into her stammering attitude. Her head went down, her hands fisted. 'Bu-bu-b-b-umm-bu-but why?'

  'Acause trade's finished, is why. No more gentlemen, is why. No more sewing, is why.' Her Ladyship sat down on a stool with a pink cushion. She stared at her hands. 'From here on the clientele we get won't care iffen we're ragged.'

  There was another thunderous knock on the outside door. Angrily, Her Ladyship heaved herself up and went to the balustrade outside. 'You answer it, Job. If he's sober and can pay, let him in. Tell Mary to show him up to Francesca. It's her turn.'

  Penitence persisted. 'B-b-but it's so b-b-b-busy.'

  Her Ladyship shut the drawer of the bureau. 'We're busy all right.' She turned on Penitence, who flinched back. 'You want to know why? We're busy acause the gentlemen's got wind of Plague.'

  'P-p-plague?'

  Her Ladyship did what she'd never done; she imitated Penitence's stutter. 'P-p-plague. Oh, they don't know there's Plague at the Ship. But they know there's Plague around town somewheres.'

  Bewildered, Pen
itence caught at the most immediate fact. 'The Ship?'

  Her Ladyship let out a deep breath. 'Sam Bryskett's littlest. Died in the night.'

  The littlest. That would be Jenny. Was Jenny. Unseeing, she stretched out her hand and took the purse Her Ladyship held.

  She was frightened and she would go, of course she would go, and quickly, but this woman, wicked as she might be, had provided a rock for her to cling to these past months.

  She found herself saying: 'W-why don't you come too?'

  Something happened in the brothel-keeper's large face; she went back to the bureau and stood before it for a second or two before she turned around. Penitence flinched again. How had she offended?

  'You bird-witted barrel of treacle.' Her Ladyship's fingers bit into the flesh of Penitence's upper arm as she dragged her out on to the clerestory. 'Hear 'em?' she whispered. 'Hear them beds going? Hear that one brimming?'

  She could. She tried to draw away.

  'Know what they're doing?'

  Penitence dragged her hands up to cover her ears. 'All t-too well.'

  'No, you don't. You don't know anything. These ain't my regulars. These have been recommended. These gentlemen have come for to get the pox, that's what they're doing.' Her whisper was more terrible than if she'd screamed it. 'Get the pox, you don't get the Plague. That's what them fine gentlemen want and that's why I'm charging double today. For the pox.' She looked along the corridor. 'God rot you, fine gentlemen,' she said, and smiled. 'As undoubted He will.'

  She was still smiling as she shoved Penitence back into her bedroom. 'Come too?' she said. 'Pippin, they'd love us in Taunton.'

  She became businesslike. 'There's a drayman delivering at the Ship and spending the night there - he don't know about the Plague, either. He'll lift you to the Great West Road tomorrow. Take a rattler to Taunton from there. Or walk. I don't care. Just go. But get the papers first.'

  Pushing her way through Drury Lane, Penitence saw male crowds at each brothel door. Outside Mother Bennett's they were waiting in line.

  Until then she hadn't been able to believe what Her Ladyship had told her, but it was obviously, appallingly true. With hideous deliberation, without the excuse of lust, the gentlemen back at the Cock and Pie, no less than these common men here, were deliberately seeking to inoculate themselves against disease by contracting another of delayed effect that they would take back to their wives. God damn men. God damn them. She began to run to get to Leadenhall Street quicker, to get to tomorrow faster, so that she could leave London and never come back.

  There was a touch on her arm. 'Where's the fire, Pen?'

  She looked into the sober face of St Giles's parish clerk- automatically they fell into step, but for once she was repelled by his company. He was a man. Who knew but that even he had been attending the Drury Lane brothels?

  Peter Simkin looked cautiously around, then muttered: 'You heard about the "P", Pen?'

  The pox? No, he meant the Plague.

  Born into a generation and an area of New England which had escaped the American Plague, the word did not carry the terror for Penitence which she had seen in Her Ladyship's eyes and now saw in Peter Simkin's; nor had her grandparents, always uninformative about their past in England, made much of any experience they might have had during the '45 outbreak. It was a bogeyman word, alarming but belonging to the out- there. She had never been ill; she could not imagine being ill. She was armoured by her own magnificent health and her trust in the Lord. And it was another lovely spring day.

  Nevertheless, alerted, she noticed little eddies in London's confident streets that indicated an undercurrent of alarm. All through Cheapside there were more sellers of hares' feet than there had been the week before. The window of a dark apothecary shop was newly strung across with wooden cabalistic letters 'to be hung round thee necke'.

  A jeweller was standing in the street holding an emerald between tweezers with which he angled it to catch the light. A green beam danced across the wall, and Penitence and Peter stopped to watch it. 'See, master,' the jeweller was saying, to his well-dressed customer, 'a sunbeam passing through this will extract all malignant humours from the body.'

  Tobacconists were doing a roaring trade. 'No tobacconist ever died from the "P", well-known fact,' whispered Peter Simkin.

  A lady and a small boy emerged from one such shop, both puffing on pipes. When the child broke into coughing and complained, 'But 1 don't like it, ma'am', his mother cuffed him: 'It's good for you.'

  The magnificent gateway of the Guildhall was choked with carriages. Penitence arranged to meet Peter back there, and hurried on to Leadenhall Street, all her dread now concentrated on the next few minutes during which she must face strangers and request Papers from a Patterson.

  'Her Ladyship's papers, please, Master Patterson,' she practised. No good. Too many p's together. Her hands were beginning to sweat. Documents, I'll ask for Her Ladyship's documents. She was better on 'd's. And I'll leave out the 'please'. It would make her sound churlish, but she was used to that; stammerers couldn't afford nuances of courtesy. 'Please pass the salt' had to be pared down to the peremptory 'Salt'.

  Can I leave out the 'Patterson'?

  A woman buying a chicken outside the Market was staring at her. Penitence glared back: 'Master Lawyer, I require Her Ladyship's documents,' she said. Oh, Bartholomew. I sound like a highwayman.

  Here was Number forty-two, a thin, elegant house with a brass plate at the door, and here she was, a perspiring wreck. Why don't I go back to the Yard and get Pa Tippin to burgle the place?

  It was worse than she'd imagined. The porter was deaf or stupid or both and made her repeat the request to see his employer three times. Master Patterson, a careful Scot and a typical lawyer, proved reluctant to hand over papers without Her Ladyship's written request, despite his knowledge of Her Ladyship's illiteracy. Penitence had to stammer answers to questions designed to test her bona fides.

  At last, and reluctantly, she was given a box and shown to the door. Even there, the lawyer delayed her: 'Eh am surpraised that a gairl of your . . . pairsuasion is . . . May eh enquaire what is your capacity in Hair Ladyship's employment?'

  She'd had enough, 'W-what's yours?', and stamped off, careless of the existence of all plagues but her own. Until she saw Peter Simkin's face.

  'The B-b-bill? Is it up?'

  He was as precise as ever, though his hands shook. 'The total Bill of Mortality for London is nine.'

  Nine. One of them little Jenny Bryskett. But for all London it didn't amount to disaster. 'N-not b-bb-bad then.'

  'No,' he said, 'ain't bad at all. Only it ain't true.' He lifted his hat to wipe his forehead, then replaced it. He had a newspaper in his hand — he always bought the weekly quarto- page Newes so that he could read it to his wife, who liked to know what King and court were up to. 'There's a special Privy Council committee been set up.' He read her the names: 'General Monck, Duke of Albemarle - he's the one got the King back on the throne, Pen. Lord Arlington, he's the Head of State. Earl of Southampton, he's Lord Treasurer. The Lord Chamberlain. The Duke of Ormonde. The Earl of Bath. The Comptroller. The Vice-Chamberlain. Mr Secretary Morice.'

  He looked up. 'Nine,' he said. 'That's nine very grand gentlemen for only nine deaths.'

  They began walking. 'Know what I reckon, Pen? I reckon it's been creeping up all winter, and now it's at the gates.' Peter Simkin was looking around him as if seeing everything for the first time. 'It's a rare city, Pen,' he said.

  As always, they cut through the nave of St Paul's down to Ludgate instead of going round by Carter Lane. Penitence never minded, though Cromwell had condemned the cathedral as papistical. She regarded the nave as a secular thoroughfare — as did most of London.

  Steeling herself to squeeze through the stalls selling everything saleable and push away pedlars selling a great deal that wasn't, she was taken aback when Peter Simkin said 'With your permission, Pen' and slipped off into a side chapel. She saw him go down on his knees
.

  Embarrassed, she went back out on the steps to wait for him. He's acting as if it's the end of the world.

  From here she could see over the churchyard, over the jumbled roofs beyond it to the Thames where the eel ships scudded upriver, their brown sails bellied out by the May breeze in satisfying, pregnant curves.

  To her left the thin tower of the Exchange rang the bell to end trading just as, beyond it, the clock on the ornate lantern of St Mary-le-Bow chimed the hour. Between the flying buttresses behind her, the booksellers began gathering up their texts, poems, broadsheets and translations and dismantling their trestles.