The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  A warm sun shone on Newgate Street which was already busy with be-wigged men on their way to city businesses, vendors on their way to St Paul's and the markets and wains coming in from the country blocking the egress of coaches, but all days were grey to Penitence.

  Dorinda stood in the road with Benedick in her arms, swaying back and forth as people pushed past her. Seeing Penitence, she came close to the bars. 'You all right?'

  'Yes.'

  'Don't look it. We got another printing order — Fifth Monarchist crackpot, but his money's good and MacGregor says he can cope but we need more ink.' Her voice sank to a whisper. 'I pawned the sword.'

  Penitence nodded. A woman behind her was already trying to pull her away from the window, but she held on to the bars. Dorinda looked her straight in the eye and then down at Benedick. 'See his dear little shawl?' she said. 'Ma Palmer knitted it.' Mistress Palmer had knitted it weeks ago. 'Lovely, ain't it? Rich. Feel it.' She held Benedick up to the window and Penitence's hands, apparently stroking the shawl, felt the shape of a purse and curled over it. As she did it her son's fingers gently went round one of her own and she had to shake them off so that she could transfer the purse to her sleeve. The baby's eyes widened and his mouth opened to give out a tiny mew of sound.

  Sensation rushed in on Penitence then. It was as if she was seeing her son for the first time, not as something foisted on her, but a personality she had just badly hurt. Her hands went out to clutch him, but Dorinda had taken him back. 'Say bye- bye to Mumma. Say see you tomorrow.' She was bobbing Benedick's fist up and down in a farewell. The baby was still looking at his mother and as Dorinda carried him away he turned his head to keep watching her.

  Oh God. The bars indented Penitence's face as she pressed against them to keep the round little head over Dorinda's shoulder in sight as the two of them dwindled into the press of the street. Every step away from her was a reproach. How could she have overlooked him all this time? How could she have spurned her son's touch for a damned purse? Where was he? She couldn't see him. Then she glimpsed Dorinda as she paused at the gate, waiting for a cart carrying planking to come through. As it jolted past a plank slid off its load and Dorinda had to skip out of its way.

  But if she hadn't. Penitence's nerve-endings were no longer the exclusive property of her own body but connected to those of the morsel of humanity being taken away from her towards the Rookery, its pain now her pain magnified. A carelessly loaded plank of wood would obliterate her at the precise moment it crushed in that small skull. Love for her baby shrieked through her like a typhoon. They had to batter her hands before she would let go of the bars.

  I shook him off. She felt the softness of the boneless little fingers still. Until that rejection it was as if she hadn't been aware of him, the most important thing in the world, hadn't known the diseases that could kill him or the need to stay alive so that she could protect him. This was the cat nightmare brought into the everyday; she would never be free of it.

  Dorinda's chatter screamed into her ears. Fifth Monarchist crackpot. She cried out: 'Oh Jesus.' Fifth Monarchists were illegal, and so were the people who printed their sedition or blasphemy or whatever it was. They got hanged. If they caught this one, he'd be forced into revealing who'd printed his pamphlets, and then Dorinda would be arrested, and Benedick left alone. She was lacerated by the sound of weak cries from the crib where he was starving to death. Men with guns were advancing through the nightmare to shoot him and she couldn't get to him in time.

  'No good giving way, duck.' The bed-owner put an arm round her shoulders. 'Nice little fella like that, he's better off out there. I know. My last died in here.'

  Penitence stared at her. In this new state she'd woken to, it amazed her that a woman could say such a thing without screaming. 'What's your name?'

  'Bet.'

  'I've got to get out of here, Bet.'

  What might have been a laugh turned into a fit of coughing. Ineffectually, Penitence patted the woman on the back, then guided her to her bed and helped her in. She sat down on the edge: 'Help me, Bet. I've got to get out of here.' Now that her brain was working, a new horror had manifested itself. Her creditor was entitled to repossess the Cock and Pie in lieu of payments. The spectre of Dorinda walking the streets with Benedick in her arms and nowhere to shelter flashed in a vivid image before her mind's eye. 'I've got to get out.'

  'Ain't we all,' said Bet, flatly. 'Well, there's the silver bridge to the outside for them as can afford the toll.'

  'P-pay the debt, you mean.'

  'Ain't just the debt,' Bet told her. 'There's exit money. Them bastard keepers need garnishing afore they'll let you out, debt paid or no. Ain't you got nobody to hark-ye?'

  Perhaps she could borrow from the Reverend Boreman or the apothecary. If they'd let her develop the printing business she could pay them back in time. Or she could throw in with the Tippins and steal it. She'd do anything. But to do it she needed to be outside.

  No, Bet told her, nobody from Flap Alley was allowed out on parole. 'You want to get yourself a place in Press Yard. Them hoi polloi get privileges if they garnish. Let out on day passes, them. Only way out for us is when we done our time, or if we get turned off.'

  Bet's husband, it appeared, had been 'turned off', hanged, for theft. She herself was serving a four-year sentence for assaulting the neighbour who'd informed on him. Apart from wondering how a woman could risk such consequences for herself and her children — Bet had three left from the Plague, all of them struggling to survive on the outside - merely to avenge a husband, Penitence paid her little attention. She was looking around her with eyes suddenly sharpened to danger, taking in the slopping chamber pots under every bed, the sores on the children's mouths, the coughing, the woman who was vomiting, the old woman in the next bed gasping for breath. Even life in Dog Yard had not prepared her for this place. It would kill her. Just breathing its air was a death sentence. More important, it would kill Benedick by extension. She could trust nobody, not even Dorinda, with his survival without her. I've got to get out.

  'How do I get a room in P-Press Yard?' she asked. If Press Yard was the only starting place for her release, then to Press Yard she must go.

  'I'm due at the windy.' Bet was scrambling out of the bed to get to the queue at the window. 'Midday's 'a best time.'

  Penitence clutched her arm. 'How do I get into P-Press Yard?'

  'You aren't half green,' said Bet, impatiently. 'Did George do his you-don't-like-me?'

  'Yes.'

  'There y'are then. Get out my way.'

  Penitence followed her as she barged to the head of the queue. 'What d-do you mean?'

  Bet put her arms through the bars of the window. 'Of your charity, lady,' she whined, 'remember the poor debtors. I got six childer starving, my lord. George is all right, is George. Remember a poor debtor, lady. I wish as he'd ask me for garnish but I ain't high-sniffing enough for him. In debt for sixpence, my lord, that's all. Remember a poor debtor.'

  The woman behind Bet, who'd allowed her precedence at the window, chimed in: 'George offered for you? That's luck, that is. No harm in George.'

  There was approval from the rest of the queue. As a purchaser in the sexual favours market, George apparently ranked high. Penitence was regarded as fortunate. 'He's more one for the lady-ins.'

  'Just lay back and tell him you hate him and he's happy.'

  'An' he delivers. Not like that bloody Pudsey.'

  The conversation became a discussion on which keeper liked to do what to whom and for how much. Using their bodies to gain privileges from the keepers was as normal in Flap Alley as begging from passers-by. They might have been discussing fat-stock prices. Penitence left them and climbed back into Bet's bed while it was empty.

  I've got to get out. Cautiously, huddling against the wall, she manoeuvred Dorinda's purse from her sleeve and opened its string. Two crown-pieces. Not even enough to rent a Press Yard room for a week. She'd have to beg, borrow, or steal the rest. Whe
re was the crime in theft? Newgate was a royal prison; the King and his authorities were prepared to let it be run by thieves more rapacious than any the Rookery had ever turned out.

  She flopped back on to the bed, allowing her thoughts to run on highway robbery and associated crimes, unaware of a hand sidling from the bed behind her until it snatched the purse away from her side. Yelling, she scrambled after it but the thief, a skinny little girl, had am with it to a group of women. In the centre of it was Bet. She faced Penitence with a sly hostility. 'Forgot to tell Your Ladyship, didn't 1' she said, 'but the rule is if one of us's got gorse, we all got gorse.' The group sniggered.

  Penitence charged. 'Give it back. It's mine.' Two of the bigger women grabbed her arms and held her while she struggled.

  'Ours,' corrected Bet. 'Orders of women prisoners' tribunal. Let's see what the Lord sent.' Her spiny fingers delved into the purse and came out with the crown-pieces. Two coach- wheels.'

  'Flanders fucking fortune,' said one of the group, appreciatively.

  Without taking her eyes off Penitence, Bet handed the silver pieces to the thin young thief. 'Sary, you take these to the tap room and you tell 'em as Bet wants enough pints of Geneva for all Flap Alley. No rag-water, neither. Best Geneva. Order of a tribunal. On our Ladyship here. Off you go.'

  Penitence stopped struggling as she watched the child run off. That they were going to spend money on gin which might have bought food or medicine was almost as bad as the theft itself. Almost. She took up her old position by the fireplace and watched Sary run back and forth with relays of blackjacks, watched the women gulp the spirit and pour it down their children - even babies were given sips — watched as it sent them silly or quarrelsome or comatose. She watched little girls and boys stagger in circles, giggling, until they fell down.

  Bet wavered up to the fireplace holding out a blackjack by its neck. 'Put some of that where the flies won't get it. No hard feelings, eh?'

  Penitence took it. 'No.' She hadn't. As well to have hard feelings for rain or cold. These women were elemental, too random in their cruelty to be resented.

  'Got to have a bit of fun now and then, eh?'

  'Yes.'

  'Everyone for themself in this life, ain't it?'

  Penitence drank to the woman who had just voiced the only principle to life which had any validity. 'Yes.' Bet, if you only knew it, you're my midwife. A new Penitence was being born.

  Bet stretched out a skinny hand. 'My turn.'

  Penitence held the bottle out of her reach. 'Oh no you don't. I paid for this. And I need to be d-drunk to do what I'm going to do.'

  Bet squinted at her. 'What you going to do?'

  'I'm going to get out of here, Bet. By Christ, I'm going to rise above this rat-hole, all rat-holes and the stupid bitches in them. And I'm going to take my son with me.'

  When the keeper George came on duty that night, Penitence was waiting by the door for him.

  Chapter 2

  For her first venture into harlotry, Penitence Hurd could have chosen worse clients than Keeper George. The turnkey aspired both above his station and his performance — the Cock and Pie would have put him in the fumbler category. Also, as far as honesty went in Newgate — which wasn't far — he kept his word. Dorinda would have told her she was lucky (and later did).

  That first night, however, as Penitence followed him and his shaking lantern into the bowels of the prison, such blessings were not apparent. He dithered with excitement, touching her, insisting that she didn't like him.

  She could not, could not have survived the Plague for this; any moment there would be a miraculous intervention. She'd made a mistake; there were other ways out of Newgate, must be. Oh God, she could get pregnant. She'd tell him, sorry, but she must return to Flap Alley. At that she kept walking. Flap Alley was death. Criminals had a defined sentence: debtors were imprisoned until they paid. She wished she'd drunk more gin.

  'P-PP-PPress Yard?' she asked him. 'You p-promise?'

  He looked at her suspiciously: 'You got a stutter?'

  Mustn't stutter, mustn't stutter. Must stay alive. Why didn't I bring the mask? He had no use for vulnerability; she had to play up to this grotesque fantasy of his. 'No,' she told him clearly. 'Ladies like myself do not stutter.'

  Gratified, he opened a small, iron-studded door and ushered her into a cell and put his lantern down on a table. 'This is where we keeps them as is going to be turned off.' The place was tiny and windowless. From its smell and the wet walls, it seemed to be drying out from inundation by a river carrying corpses. The bed had been made up with blankets.

  She felt the area round her mouth go cold and press against her teeth as her blood retracted.

  'You going to faint?' asked George, admiringly. 'Ain't used to this, lady-in like you.' He sat down on the bed, indicating that she should undress and holding up the lantern to watch her better. 'Tell us what you are used to.'

  It can't be happening. It won't happen. She knelt down and forced her hand to touch his knee. 'P-please, Master George,' she said, reasonably. 'P-perhaps you have children. I have a s-son.' She had difficulty emitting the lovely word, but she was sure he could not withstand it. 'For their sake let us live in decency. Allow me a room of my own, and I promise you in time you shall be paid very well. I have a p- printing—'

  She had timed it wrong; his expectation had grown too high for his better nature, such as it was, to respond to appeal. His mouth stretched like a baby's about to cry and he yelled: 'You're spoiling it.'

  He picked up his lantern and began pushing her to the door. 'You've spoiled it. You ain't a lady-in at all. I'm taking you back to the Alley.'

  'no.' Somewhere, at some time, someone had taught her to act. Act. She stepped away from him. 'You horrid rogue. I shan't go back.'

  He looked sullen. 'I'm not having you spoil it with childer and such.'

  'It was a lie,' she told him.

  He sat down, mollified but still suspicious. 'What then?'

  She took the vizard mask out of a mental drawer and put it on. It wouldn't be her it happened to; it would be someone else. The voice of a high-born lady said: 'How should I submit to this life? Heretofore I have lived in mansions.'

  'Lovely,' he said. 'Go on.'

  She heard her mother's ... aunt's . .. voice: 'All actresses are harlots.' Wrong again. All harlots are actresses. She began unbuttoning her basque with fingers she couldn't feel. 'Were I to tell you the name of my father, you would recognize it as among the highest in the land, but it shall remain unspoken, to save his shame and mine.' This is ridiculous.

  'Lovely.' The lantern was vibrating so hard its flame was in danger of going out. 'More.'

  Did survival rest on a hideous farce like this? She couldn't remember why she was here, didn't want to, only that it was necessary. Eventually, chattering nonsense, she was naked except for the mask he couldn't see. It wasn't her face, in any case, he was interested in.

  'Ooh, them little lily bubbies.' He stood up and fingered them for a while, muttering to himself: 'You lady-ins. You ladies.'

  She closed her eyes. I'm not here. I'm somewhere else.

  'You lady, get on that bed.'

  She got on it, staring at the wall. Her fists were clenched tight. She heard the keys rattle as he unbuckled his belt and threw it on the floor. He was struggling out of his breeches. God save me. Oh God. She panicked as she felt the heat of his body press down on hers.

  Tou look at me, lady. You look at old George.' His breath was awful. 'You don't like me, do you?'

  With perfect honesty, she said: 'I hate you.'

  'Oooooooh.' He was shrieking. 'Lovely.' It was over. His weight went slack on top of her. There was liquid on the top of her thighs. He lay, panting into her neck. 'Too quick.'

  She felt a moment of gratitude that he hadn't penetrated her, and then she was sick.

  He was good about it, bustling cheerfully to help her dress; the vomit was an indication of her disgust and, therefore, her nobility. H
e'd clear it up later.

  She was never able to remember the walk to the room she'd just bought in Press Yard. It had a window. 'Water,' she said. 'Get me lots of water.'

  'You lady-ins.' He was roguish, but he brought her some in a bucket, a sliver of soap, and a stub of lit candle stuck in a square of clay.

  When he'd gone she stripped and washed herself all over, put her clothes back on, took them off and washed herself again. She was very cold as she dressed herself once more. She lay down on the bed, shivering, afraid to think. If she thought, disgust would destroy her.

  It's so cold. Like winter. Winter. The Pocumscut winter. In winter she always went out to watch the tree swallows ... and she didn't want to miss them. She made herself float down to the stream where they congregated on the last of the bayberries. They were the only birds she knew that played, dropping a feather to float in the air, twittering cheerfully as they skimmed down to pick it up again, the sun catching their metallic blue wings. Matoonas was fishing along the river bank; she didn't want to face him, so, cold as it was, she stepped into the stream and lay down, letting it carry her into the river which swirled her along to where her stains could be pounded clean by the rocks of the rapids.