The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  Boots ...' It was over a week since he'd called her that. '.. . you don't need a piece of silk to be masked. Everybody wears a mask. If I were to take you to court and tear the visages off the lords and ladies who parade around it, you would be astonished by the rogues, double-dealers and strumpets who would then stand revealed. Who am I? You don't know. Who are you? I don't know. For all I know Dogberry in the alley down there is an Oxford scholar. What I do know is that I am making you into the finest actress of your generation. You have the ability to be anybody you wish, I swear it, anybody. Now, please, take that damned bit of material off and show me the face of Beatrice.'

  You dear man, she thought. As it happens I am of a line of mask-wearers. If they could do it, I can.

  'Thank you. Now then. Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?'

  Through real tears, she said: 'Yea, and I will weep a while longer.'

  At last Benedick told Beatrice: 'I do love nothing in the world so well as you - is not that strange?'

  And Beatrice said truthfully: 'I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.'

  'Come, bid me do anything for thee,' begged Benedick.

  'Kill Claudio.'

  'Not like that,' shouted the play-actor. 'You don't say it quiet, like that. This is the great demand, the shock. It changes the play. It takes the audience by the throat.'

  'Took me,' said Dogberry from the alley. 'Fair took aback, I was.'

  'Shut up,' said the actor. 'Beatrice, even in this moment of declaration you do not give all your heart to this man. He gives all his to you, but you retain compassion for your cousin's unhappiness and the need to avenge her honour. The audience is thinking: hurray, now Benedick'll take her off to bed, then comes "Kill Claudio" and it thinks: shit, it's all gone wrong. You have them in your hand. Whisper it if you must, but also shriek. Shriek for poor maligned Hero. Feel it.'

  She was quiet for a moment. Beatrice was an amateur in the insult stakes; it was Penitence who knew about insult to women. She gathered up the Reverend Block, encompassed the men who came to the Cock and Pie, took in the actor who thought Penitence was a whore.

  She said: 'Kill Claudio.'

  There was silence.

  'Gawd 'elp,' said Dogberry.

  'Not bad,' said the actor. 'Not bad at all.' He yawned. 'I'm tired. We'll finish the scene tomorrow.'

  'What's the cat look like?' asked Dogberry in her dream.

  'Not handsome,' she said, 'but its features are relevant.' The too-large nose, the long planes of cheek, chin and throat ... she knew them as well as the bole of the tree she climbed down by the river. Uproot it, plant it in a forest and she could still pick it out from all other trees.

  'Oh, him,' said Dogberry. 'That's Henry. Lives up there. Hey, Henry.'

  She woke up at the shout. There was a rattle on the shutters opposite hers as someone threw stones at them. She got up and went to her own shutters to peer through the crack.

  She heard the actor yawning and asking who the hell was there.

  'Some nob wanting you, Henry,' called Dogberry.

  'It's me, my lord,' said a different voice.

  She saw the actor come to his window in his shirt. His eyes were on her shutters, but she doubted if he saw her, or the shutters. He looked down very slowly to the person who stood down in the alley out of her sight. 'And when did I become "my lord"?'

  'Four days ago, my lord. Our deepest sympathy, my lord. He was a fine man. We've been looking for you ever since. The King has realized his obligation to you, my lord, and commands me—'

  'Better say it in French, George.'

  Blast you, Dogberry. The watchman would be sitting immovable on his stool, watching this as he did every other performance.

  Whoever George was, he spoke French rapidly.

  'I see,' said the actor. 'Well, one's heavily engaged just now, but another week, God willing.'

  More French.

  'No,' said the actor. 'Not too bad. Quite instructive, really. Amusing people. But one won't be sorry to leave. Where will the coach be?

  'Then I'll see you there. Bring a change of clothes.'

  And that was that.

  'By popular demand,' roared Job from the balcony, 'brought all the way from France by our own His Majesty King Charles to personal perform at the Court of Whitehall, we give you tonight the famous, the inmit—the only Lord Henry king.'

  Dogberry's account of the actor's night visitor had obviously lost nothing in the telling.

  The play-actor stepped on to the balcony and bowed to the applause. Job pushed forward again. He was getting carried away. 'And pre-senting that well-known beauty, that moon of the Americas, all the way from her recent success among the Red Men, Princess penitence.'

  I'm not going to be able to do this. She felt sick. She had the Plague, worse than the Plague. She was dead, unable to feel her feet, her hands. Slouching, she nodded in the direction of the Buildings, and slunk back into the attic.

  'How many Watch out there?' asked Dorinda.

  'I d-didn't notice.'

  'You pudden. That's why we're doing this.'

  Was it? It had seemed a splendid cause while still a project, but while it was still a project she hadn't known she would feel like this.

  Job was barking Dorinda now and the girl swept out for it. '... that mistress of the comic arts, that rose of the Rookery, our own Mademoiselle dorinda.'

  Where had Job learned all this? Dorinda, of course. Dorinda and the actor. He'd taken to it like a duck to water. Dorinda was a natural, Job was a natural, the actor was a professional — which left just her.

  Reasonably, Penitence looked towards Dorinda as, preening, the girl climbed back down into the attic. 'I can't d-do this.'

  'Stop thinking about yourself. Think about the Brysketts.'

  Job clambered in. 'They're gatherin',' he reported. 'There's most of the Rookery Watch down there already and word's spreading.'

  'We need the ones towards Tottenham Court,' said Dorinda.

  'They'll come. Listen to Henry. He'll fetch 'em.'

  The actor was explaining theatre, and this play in particular, in case there were those among the audience who'd never even seen a fairground performance. His voice permeated every cranny of the room behind him, just as it was carrying through Dog Yard without strain. If they were to succeed tonight it had to reach down far-away alleys to tickle the ears of bored watchmen and lure them from their posts.

  'C-couldn't they smuggle her out through the b-back?' pleaded Penitence, as she'd pleaded times before. Perhaps, even now, this trial was avoidable.

  Dorinda tutted. 'All the back windows is boarded fast. Knocking 'em out would make a racket. We been through this. Pull yourself together.'

  She couldn't. In a moment she would have to go out on that balcony and begin speaking. This is for the Brysketts. After all it's done we are going to beat the Plague this one time. But it was no good, altruism was not enough. Her legs ended at her thighs; she was standing on stumps. How could she do it without the mask? How could she do it at all?

  The actor was in front of her now. 'Breathe.' She breathed, her eyes fixed on his.

  'Who are you?'

  'I am Beatrice.'

  'Are you rich? Beautiful? Witty?'

  'Yes.'

  'Who am I?'

  'Benedick.'

  'Do you love me?'

  'Yes.'

  He extended his hand, palm-upwards. She put her own on it and together they walked out on to the balcony.

  They were welcomed by applause so loud it took her by surprise; word that there was to be an entertainment had been carefully filtered through the Rookery grapevine, but she had not expected so many to risk the journey across the roofs to see it. She had underestimated the desperate need for distraction. Not daring to look outwards, she kept her eyes on the actor, heard her cue coming with the same dread with which she'd awaited an inevitable plosive consonant. I'm going to stutter.

  Then the actor tur
ned to her in his disguise as Leonato and instead of bowing, as they'd rehearsed, he took her face between his hands. '.. . There are no faces truer than those that are so washed: how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping.' He looked her full in the eyes and kissed her.

  How much better. Dorinda was right. Penitence was an irrelevance; Beatrice was waiting to dispel fear, pain, hers, everybody's. For one hour, just one hour, by God, there should be enchantment and Penitence could go hang herself. She heard Beatrice's voice float over the chimney-pots: 'I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?'

  When Beatrice said that Benedick would hang upon Claudio like a disease, there was a laugh. A laugh. How long since the Yard had laughed? The actor had worried about this; would lines like 'He is sooner caught than the pestilence' go down well with a Plague-ridden audience? But she had done it. She could do anything.

  That there'd had to be a false floor built on to the balcony to give them more height and that every time they moved it juddered like a drum, that when three of them appeared together their elbows jostled, that the audience was getting too involved — during the masked scene Mistress Hicks could be heard shouting from her roof 'It's her, you fucking pudden' — that they had to incline slightly backwards so that their costumes didn't singe against the lanterns ranged along the balcony edge, none of these inconveniences could dint the omnipotence that had come over them all.

  With her hair pushed into a boy's cap, she sang Balthazar's song and for the first time looked at her audience. It was dark but the moon was up and the watchmen gathered below carried cressets. It wasn't the watchmen she saw, it was Mistress Palmer sitting on her balcony, Mistress Hicks leaning perilously over her eaves, the empty darkness of Mistress Fairley's window, the two lonely figures in Mother Hubbard's, a child brought from somewhere in the houses behind tied to a chimney-pot so that he wouldn't fall off, the faces ranged along the roof-poles intent on hers, some of them with still- healing plague spots, all white, all thin.

  'Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,' she sang to them, and heard Balthazar's voice quaver before she pulled herself together; tears would be self-indulgence; these people deserved the best.

  'Men were deceivers ever;

  One foot in sea, and one on shore,

  To one thing constant never ...'

  The melody was the actor's and as potent as the words. More watchmen coming into the Yard stood still under its spell.

  'Sing no more ditties, sing no mo'

  Of dumps so dull and heavy . . .'

  There was a shift on the cobbles below; two figures, a man and a woman, were quietly passing behind the crowd of watchmen in the direction of the Ship. They'd come then. How brave. She'd almost forgotten the raison d'etre of the entire performance. She saw some of the faces in the windows glance down and sang as she'd never sung before to get their attention back. The Dog Yarders were privy to the secret, but the watchmen must not be distracted, it was vital to keep their gaze riveted on the Cock and Pie's balcony, away from the Ship.

  'Then sigh not so, But let them go . ..'

  She had the Dog Yarders back now, conspiring with her, knowing what she knew, knowing she knew they knew, part of the mystery in which the group became greater than its constituents. She smiled at them and poured out her blessing:

  'And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny nonny.'

  She backed into the attic where Dorinda and Job were wiping their eyes. The play-actor took over in his evil guise as Don John, soliloquizing over the hisses his plot to make Claudio believe that Hero was unfaithful, then whipping back into the attic to pull a ridiculous hat over his eyes. The next scene was his and Job's. They'd worried about this one too; it was all very well for Shakespeare to portray his Watch as clownish dolts, he hadn't had to present it to an audience of watchmen.

  She listened while she changed. Job's delivery was leaden, not unfitting the part of Verges; the actor was playing Dogberry with a perfect East Anglian accent. He'd studied his fellow-lodgers, the pipe-makers, who came from Suffolk. He was very funny. She heard whoops from the rooftops, but it was drowned by the delight from the cobbles.

  'They don't think it's them,' Dorinda said.

  They snatched the hats and wigs off the two men as they came in through the window, and replaced them with Claudio's and Leonato's. Job was almost drunk with his success, but the play-actor was groaning for the interval they didn't dare allow themselves. The watchmen could not be permitted time to do a patrol. Her next scene was the crucial one.

  Listening at the window she heard Job miss his line. He was beginning to think of their purpose rather than the play. She prompted him. Even Dorinda wavered; it was the actor who held the scene together. As the men came in she swept out to comfort the slandered Hero.

  Now it was the love scene, the crux of Master Shakespeare's play and of the Dog Yard plot. She stood at the far end of the balcony looking down along the alley that ran past Mistress Hicks's which tonight was the nave of a church with moonlight falling in splashes on its marble flagstones. The floor resonated as the actor stepped out behind her. 'Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?'

  Without turning round she said: 'Yea, and I will weep a while longer.'

  Question. Answer. Benedick's voice held surprise as well as compassion, a man amazed at himself. Question. Answer. Their awareness of each other gathered up the magic of the night.

  Tell her, for Gawd's sake.' Mistress Palmer's whisper crossed the church, 'tell her you bloody love her', and turned into a puff of relief as Benedick said: 'I do love nothing in the world so well as you — is that not strange?'

  It was coming. Below them, round about them, nothing moved, nobody breathed.

  'Come, bid me do anything for thee.'

  Then she turned, every eye in the world on her, her own registering for one second the scene being enacted at the Ship.

  She put out her hand with the Rookery in it. 'Kill Claudio.'

  Dog Yard dragged in its breath. Mistress Palmer was peering through her fingers. The child attached to the chimney began to cry. A halberd fell from nerveless fingers on to the cobbles. Nobody stopped watching. Only Beatrice and Benedick were aware, in another life, that a man and a woman were tiptoeing down an alley on their fraught, maze-like route towards Tottenham Court and the country, with a bundle in their arms.

  She left the stage. Dogberry and Verges were on again. She fell on to her bed. Dorinda was shaking her. 'Did they do it?'

  'They did it.' The second's glimpse was on the retina of her eyes; she could see, would always see, the naked body of a little girl being lowered by its parents to a couple standing in the street below. She began to sob; the emotions she had called up had opened her to the pity and terror of the world.

  'Don't you bloody give way,' said Dorinda, snivelling. 'They ain't out the wood yet. They got a long way to go.'

  They'll get there.' The Brysketts' friends, whoever they were, had to get there, wherever it was, with the one tiny brand they had plucked from the burning. Thought of them stayed in her mind as Beatrice and Benedick teased each other to the last.

  They swore that you were almost sick for me.'

  'They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.'

  There was still no hue and cry. They must have reached the outskirts by now. There would be a wagon filled with straw, Sam Bryskett had said.

  'Come,' said Benedick, 'I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.'

  She spoke her last lines: 'I would not deny you; but, by this last day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.'

  'Peace! I will stop your mouth.' They kissed.

  Dog Yard gave a sigh of utter satisfaction. The applause began as, joined hands held high, they backed into the attic. Stamping feet dislodged tiles from the Buildings' roof, roars came up from the Yard where over thirty watchmen pounded halberd hilts on to cobble
s; bandages, kettles, chamber pots waved from the windows in lieu of programmes. A voice from the crowd demanded: 'Encore, encore.' Mistress Hicks was heard to answer: 'Never mind about "encore", make the buggers do it again.'

  They went out again to bow and bow. Dorinda and Job drew more applause as they squeezed in beside them. Adoration poured at them, between them, and was poured back by them into the shared experience. She had never known love like this, never known love at all until now. If she leaped high the wheat would grow; she had all that was glorious here, in her fingers.