The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  'What can I do?' Aphra had said, when they'd received their money and gone. 'I love him.'

  'Do you have to love him quite so much? He's bleeding you dry.'

  What would love signify if we did not love fervently?' sighed Aphra. 'It is the one matter in which excess is a virtue.'

  Obviously Jeffrey Boys had believed it was; a month later he had transferred his affections to a younger woman.

  Penitence went round to comfort Aphra, who was scribbling away at the table which had a book shoved under one leg to keep it from wobbling and which served her as a desk. 'What are you writing, Aphra?' she'd asked, gently.

  'It's a poem, my dear, to her.' Aphra wiped the tears from her eyes, leaving an ink-stain across her cheek. 'Warning her. She's so pretty, Penitence. One can see why she out-rivalled me. He had a right to go, of course, love must always be free, but one wouldn't want her heart broken too.'

  'Oh, for God's sake, Aphra, stop being so damned generous.' But Aphra never learned, and went on loving and being betrayed.

  Because none of them had been sure what a vulture looked like, the Vulture Press had been renamed the Cock and Pie Press, and, thanks to the recent legislation lifting the ban on unlicensed printers, was at last legal — and successful.

  The medallions on the Cock and Pie's frontage had been freshly painted, as had its door, putting it in line with the rest of the Rookery which was coming up in the world with the influx into it of hard-working Huguenot refugees. The sign still showed a cock standing on some unlikely-looking pastry, but underneath it bore the legend: 'Printers by Royal Appointment'.

  'What royal appointment?' asked Penitence as she entered.

  'Well, you're a sleeping partner as is sleeping with a prince, so that's royal,' said Dorinda, 'and we're doing King's playbills and posters now, so that's royal. Want some of this new tea?'

  'Tea,' said Penitence. 'My, my, we must be doing well.'

  'Special occasion,' said Dorinda, nastily, 'when Prince Rupert's lady deigns to visit us poor printers', and went off to make it.

  Why do I bother to come? Mostly she didn't. It was weeks since she'd last set foot in the Cock and Pie, and it was only out of a sense of guilt that she'd come this time. Rupert, who disliked coarseness in women, made it clear that, while he would not forbid the friendship, he approved of Dorinda even less than of Aphra. 'She isn't worthy of you, my dear.'

  Penitence protested Dorinda's staunchness in times of adversity but she was relieved to make Rupert's disapproval a private excuse not to see the woman so often. Dorinda was undeniably common and she made too many references to a past Penitence was trying to put behind her.

  The mock marriage with which the Earl of Oxford tricked Dorinda had done for her on the stage; or rather, she'd been jeered off it by wits who found her humiliation amusing. Her friends rallied round; Penitence had given her a half-share in the Cock and Pie printing business, MacGregor had taught her to read and helped her run it. Aphra, Rebecca Marshall and some of the actors sent her work.

  How much she minded the loss of her theatrical career was difficult to gauge because she never spoke of it. She had become a tradeswoman with the same bravado she'd shown as a prostitute, as if she didn't expect anyone to believe it unless she acted and dressed the part. Her tongue was sharper than ever and in the spectacles she wore for reading, her hair scraped under a cap like a muffin and her figure hidden under an even more frumpish apron, she was daunting. But customers apparently expected a lady printer to be eccentric and spread the word that her printing was workmanlike and her prices low.

  With MacGregor's help she'd branched out into books as well as pamphlets, so that the bank draft for Penitence's share of the profits, which MacGregor took to Awdes each Lady Day, was larger every year.

  The salon was now a printing works. The press Penitence had liberated from Goat Alley stood on the spot where Francesca and Job had once formed a tableau. The couches and gilded chairs were for customers and had been pushed back against the walls to make room for setting tables among the painted pillars.

  A businesslike smell of paper, lead and ink exorcized stale scent and sickness. A new skylight in the roof let in the morning sun.

  To keep her eyes away from the doorway where, for her, sheeted bodies were always lying, Penitence strolled the room casually reading proofs that hung from the drying lines. She stopped being casual and read more closely. Nearly all the sheets were pamphlets and nearly all the pamphlets screamed hysterical anti-Papism with titles like The Whore of Babylon's Poxy Priest or Jesuit Assassins: the Popish Plot further demonstrated in their murderous practices, or Conspiracy for the destruction of the Protestant Religion.

  A couple were downright seditious: The Growth of Knavery and Popery at Court. One was a song:

  A Tudor! A Tudor!

  We've had Stuarts enough,

  None ever reigned like old Bess in a ruff. ..

  She raised her voice: 'What the hell's all this?'

  Coming back into the salon from the kitchen, Dorinda put down the tray, adjusted her spectacles from the top of her head to her eyes, and came to look. 'That's a bit of old Marvell,' she said. 'He goes well nowadays.'

  'And this?' Penitence held out the sheet Neville Payne, the actor, had given her saying it was his death warrant. It looked as if it might be. Nell Gwynn had sent word round to Aphra's that he'd been accused of being involved in the Popish Plot and arrested when he'd arrived back at his lodgings.

  Dorinda peered at it. She still tended to move her lips as she read. Penitence helped her out: 'It says Papist armies are coming to rape all Protestant women and dash out their babies' brains. Recognize it?'

  Dorinda shook her head. 'Nah. Drink your tea.'

  'For God's sake, Dorry, of course it's ours. I'd know that chipped "P" anywhere.'

  'Yes, well,' grumbled Dorinda, 'we've ordered new type from Holland. MacGregor's gone to fetch it.'

  'Never mind the type,' said Penitence, 'the point is what the hell are you doing printing inflammatory stuff like this? You're going to get yourself royally appointed to the Tower if you're not careful.'

  'Not us, Prinks. It's ballocking Papists going to the Tower nowadays and there's nothing the King can do about it.'

  'I know,' said Penitence grimly. 'A harmless Catholic, a friend of Aphra's, has just gone there, and bills like yours helped put him in it. They're whipping people into a frenzy.'

  Dorinda put her spectacles back on her head: 'Aphra should choose her ballocking friends more careful, then, shouldn't she? She always was a bit on the Romish side. Drink your tea.'

  '"Romish".' Penitence was scornful. 'Who's teaching you these terms? You didn't used to care if they wore rings in their noses. So who's turned you Puritan all at once? MacGregor?' She was using irony, but suddenly she caught up on what Dorinda had said. 'Holland? MacGregor's gone to Holland? Oh Jesus, that's who's commissioning this trash — you're in touch with those damned Levelling exiles.' 'Levelling exiles' was a phrase of Rupert's, who saw little difference between the Whigs' aim to exclude James from the throne and downright republicanism.

  She stood up. 'Well, you can tell MacGregor that I'll not stand for the Cock and Pie Press printing sedition. I've Prince Rupert to think of.' And found herself pushed back into her chair.

  'Don't you,' said Dorinda, whose face had suddenly acquired a new angularity, 'don't you dare come poncing in here first time in I-don't-know-how-long with your perfumes and parasol and tell us what to print and what not to print. Prince Rupert don't like our pamphlets, eh? Well, hoo-ballocking-rah. Rocked your and Nelly's carriages, did they? Oh, I heard. Hoo-bloody-rah again. We're going to rock more than that. We're going to rock that ballocking James right out of the succession, the bastard.' She put her hands on her hips. 'We're going to rock dear Charlie and all the rest of his stinking Papist boot-lickers into thinking a bit less of their pricks and a bit more about their country. And if you and your ballocking Prince don't like it you can stuff it up your arse.'r />
  'How dare you!'

  Dorinda waggled her shoulders in mimicry. 'How-dare-you, oh, how-dare-you? You weren't so fond of the King yourself once, not 'til you started fucking his relatives.'

  'You were happy enough to fuck an earl.' They were both out of control. Penitence could hardly think of anything to shout that was bad enough. 'That's who you're getting back at, isn't it? You don't give a damn about politics. Because one of the court made you look a fool you're getting back at all of them. You're jealous. You always were.'

  'Get out. Get out, you Popish ballocking whore.' Dorinda was looking around for something to throw. 'Coming in here all lady of the manor visiting the poor. Don't forget I remember you when you was spreading your legs for a bloody turnkey.'

  'And I remember you when you were spreading yours for anybody and I'm going.'

  Ribbons of paper clippings wound themselves round her right heel as she stalked up the salon, and she kicked them away.

  Common bitch. Past the couch that had been Phoebe's deathbed. I should have cut the connection years ago. Rupert wanted me to. Past the place where they had sat together watching over the dying Her Ladyship. He said she'd try and drag me down to her level. Where Dorinda had nursed her, kept Benedick safe while she was in prison ...

  She was at the doorway now where, together, they had dragged so many precious corpses. If I leave now it's ended.

  She turned and said petulantly: 'I'm pregnant.'

  Dorinda took in a deep breath and cupped her hands round her belly. Gruffly she said, 'Oh, come and drink your bloody tea. So'm I.'

  For a moment Penitence was dumbfounded. 'Dorry, I'm glad.'

  'So'm I,' said Dorinda again and burst into tears of sheer pleasure.

  Penitence was taken aback by how happy for this pregnancy she was, happier even than for her own. God had at last given something to this woman whose life had been so deprived and who deserved so well of her. How could I have been so ungrateful?

  God and who?

  Sitting over the teacups with her partner in parturition, Penitence tried to think of a polite way of asking, and couldn't. 'Who's the father?'

  'Cheeky bitch,' said Dorinda without heat. 'MacGregor, of course.'

  'MacGregor?'

  'And why not?'

  Penitence said hastily: 'No reason. I just never thought of MacGregor.'

  'He ain't as old as your Rupert,' said Dorinda, defensively.

  'I'm sure not.' She'd never thought of MacGregor as being old or young, or, for that matter, having a sexual existence; merely as someone with an aptitude for printing and drink, hovering on the periphery of life.

  'He's off the booze. He's respectable. We're getting married.' She cocked her head to listen to her own words: 'I'm going to be a married woman.'

  Penitence said: 'Congratulations. He's a good man.' Is he a good man? To judge from what he was printing, his politics had become revolutionary. She was ashamed she knew him so little.

  'He'll do, Prinks.' Dorinda was smiling wryly; they both knew they weren't talking about love. 'He's trustworthy. He'll look after us, the sprog and me. Whore like I was, I'm lucky to get him.'

  'He's lucky to get you.' Penitence was working herself up into anger again. 'And you make sure he doesn't drag you into the Tower.' She nodded towards the proofs. 'Who's commissioning all this rabble-rousing?' It was too much of a coincidence that every client wanted the Cock and Pie Press to print anti-Papism. There was organization here. MacGregor was working for somebody, a group.

  Dorinda nearly answered. 'It's -' She stopped. 'You just never listened to him, Prinks. He's a political little bugger, is our Donal. Comes of being Scotch. Something to do with all them "C"s.'

  'Seas?'

  'Letter "C". All them "C"s up in Scotland. Conventiclers, Covenanters, Clans. He's tried to explain 'em but I can't understand half what he says. All I know is, Scotch religious quarrels make ours sound like a ballocking madrigal. The government there don't just ban Dissenters, they hunt 'em down and cut their tripes out. His family's Dissenters. Some of his cousins got rounded up the other day, taken to Edinburgh and booted.'

  'Booted?'

  'It's a torture. They put their feet in an iron boot and hammer in wedges.' She leaned forward belligerently. 'And your ballocking Duke of York there, apparently, watching like it was entertainment.'

  'He's not my Duke.'

  'He's your Rupert's ballocking cousin.'

  'I don't believe it. James is too stupid to be cruel.'

  Dorinda sneered. 'You're too close to the treacle, Prinks. But MacGregor believes it. And I believe MacGregor. He says William ought to succeed because James ain't fit to rule and I agree with him.'

  Penitence was confused. 'William?'

  'The Dutcher. The prissy little bugger we met that day at Newmarket. Of Orange.'

  Light began to dawn. 'Is that why MacGregor's gone to Holland? He's working for Prince William? All this is to get William on the throne?' She was too concerned now to feel angry. 'You listen to me, Dorry. He's got to stop it. MacGregor is not to use the Cock and Pie Press for this. I don't care if James lopped his mother's legs off, I won't have it. He's to leave politics alone, it's too dangerous. For me and you. We've got babies to consider. I'm not having mine born in the Tower.'

  Dorinda bridled but it was obvious that she had been conscious of the risk MacGregor ran of offending the King to the point where it was dangerous. Penitence's alarm infected her into promising to tell MacGregor that they must revert to printing more normal commissions. 'But he's a stubborn little bugger, Prinks. You don't know him.'

  Thinking, as she walked from the Cock and Pie to the theatre that afternoon, of the position he had put her in — owning a press which was advocating a policy which not only her lover but her king would regard as treason — Penitence had to agree that indeed she did not know MacGregor.

  She'd begun to wish she never had.

  By Act IV, Scene ii Rupert was still not in the theatre. She

  knew it with the tiny remnant of awareness she kept for the audience. It wasn't like him to be late. The friend he was bringing must have delayed him.

  'Swear thou art honest,' raved Othello.

  'Heaven doth truly know it.'

  'Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.'

  As Aphra had predicted it was a poor house, but the play's spell had gripped it. She felt its nerves with hers. Hart pulled her to him, rocking in agony, and went into his affliction speech.

  As he put his hands round her face — 'Turn thy complexion there' — she registered that Rupert was standing in the auditorium doorway, another figure behind him.

  'By heaven, you do me wrong.'

  'Are you not a strumpet?'

  'No,' she told him, 'as I am a Christian:

  If to preserve this vessel for my lord

  From any other foul unlawful touch

  Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.'

  Rupert had moved towards the boxes. His companion stood where he was, his face to the stage.

  'What! not a whore?'

  'Nnnno. A-as I shall b-b-umm-bb ... as I shall b-bb-b—'

  Othello grabbed her to him again so that his mouth was by her ear. 'What's the matter, Peg?'

  'As I sh-shall b-b-b .. .'

  'As-I-shall-be-saved,' came John Downes's prompt.

  She didn't hear it. There'd been a change of pressure in her ears, a sensation resembling deafness. Somewhere there was an audience and poor Hart subsidizing Shakespeare with frenetic fill-ins of his own, but she stood outside time, opposite the figure in the doorway. Perspective was altering the distance between them as if they were being blown towards each other, like ships on a collision course.

  'What!' roared Hart. 'Do I hear you say you are not a whore?' He pulled her to him once more. 'For Christ's sake, Peg, say something.'

  The line was out there. Desperately, she hooked herself on to it. 'No, as I shall be saved', and heard Hart continue in relief: 'Is it possible?' />
  She threw back her head. 'Oh, heaven forgive us.'

  As they changed in the tiring-room after the play was over, Becky Marshall said: 'I've seen you give performances, Peg, but tonight's topped them all. You were magnificent. Win a pair of gloves.'

  'Two pairs,' agreed Anne. 'What happened in Act IV, Scene ii, though? I thought you were going to die. Hart nearly did.'

  'I was distracted.'