The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  Penitence sulked. I want my baby. Men always pushed you in directions you didn't want to go.

  But as the coach rattled on westwards, she became enlivened by the change of scene. She hadn't, after all, left Awdes in over a year, partly afraid that Rupert's suggestions that she accompany him to Town might involve her in another meeting with the Viscount of Severn and Thames to the disquiet of her emotions. She had allowed motherhood to overwhelm her, neglecting her looks, current events and, more importantly, Rupert himself. Pull yourself together. Her milk had been drying up in any case. With Dorinda, Annie, who'd been promoted to nursemaid, Mistress Palmer, the Reverend Boreman and the rest of the Awdes household to look after her Ruperta would be safe enough.

  It was a fine late April. Along the firm roads the countryside was regaining colour and patches of interesting shade from the unfurling leaves of trees and the cow parsley frothing in the banks. They stopped at inns where Rupert had hired all the accommodation for the night so that they could have privacy and only their own staff to attend them.

  She began to enjoy herself. On the second day they were crossing the sweep of Salisbury Plain and made a detour to see Stonehenge. Rupert twitted her Puritanism for making her uneasy in the presence of the great pagan stones. 'How my Cavaliers would rub their eyes to see me now in thrall to a Roundhead.'

  He'd fought over nearly all the territory they passed through and had an anecdote for every mile of it. Penitence had heard most of them before, but to see the location renewed their interest.

  After the plain the country grew less neat, more jumbled with trees and colour. Increasingly their progress was slowed by the declivity of a hill and the steep rise of the one after it.

  For Dorinda, who considered that civilization stopped outside a five-mile radius of London, this would be here-be- dragons country. She'd make her will. Yet, though the villages and towns they passed through were increasingly remote, they were often impressive and prosperous, even if their traffic was halted by slow men driving flocks of even slower sheep, and the buildings were preponderantly Tudor, or earlier.

  'This was for Parliament,' Rupert would say of one town, or 'There were brave Royalists here,' of another, and left her with a confused sense of political geography that the nearer a place was to sea-level the more it had supported the Roundheads, whereas if it had been set on a hill it was certain to have declared for the King.

  'We are in Somerset now,' Rupert said, and pointed north. 'Somewhere over there is the ancestral home of your former patient.' He mistook her alarm for blankness. 'Anthony, my dear. The Viscount of Severn and Thames.'

  'We're not going to visit him, are we?'

  'No, no. Though it is a remarkably fine house. But we should never get away; he would wish to fete his nurse.'

  I don't think he would, Rupert. Immediately the countryside took on significance from being in his county, but because it was his county she knew she would for ever be uneasy in it.

  By the evening of the fourth day they had reached very strange countryside indeed, a land that was almost uniformly flat, so flat that anything which interrupted the straight line of the horizon, a gaggle of pollarded willows, a church tower, attracted the eye with an almost mystical significance. Their road became a causeway over reedy marsh where the hooves of cattle made sucking sounds as they grazed, leaving dark pools of water in the deep prints they left behind.

  The landscape was the loneliest they had passed through, alien with the song of birds she had never seen before, rustling with strange grasses, and yet she was teased by a feeling that if the carriage wheels would only stop their rolling she would be able to speak the place-names, or know what was the medical use of the little catkinned myrtle that spread over the bogs, or tell Rupert the local nickname for the tiny, bearded bird fluttering in the rushes. It was like being haunted by a phantasm that flickered just beyond the range of vision.

  'Is this still Somerset?'

  'Still Somerset.'

  'I feel very strange, Rupert.'

  'Not long now, my dear. We're nearly there.'

  But she was far from tired; as the carriage left the causeway and began to negotiate a slight climb, she clung to the window frame so that she could look behind her to the apparently endless, level expanse of varying greens. 'What is that place?'

  'Those are the sedgemoors, my dear.'

  Sedgemoors. 'The Levels.'

  He was surprised. 'Yes, the Somerset Levels. Have you heard of them?'

  'I can't remember.'

  The carriage was proceeding through a winding avenue of horse-chestnuts which looked as if it might be going somewhere grand and instead debouched them into a farmyard. Penitence thought they had come the wrong way but they drove on, scattering hens, through an archway and along a track. The carriage halted.

  'I think perhaps we should walk from here, my dear,' Rupert said.

  Now she knew, though not for anything would she have spoiled his surprise. Bless him, oh bless him.

  In front of her was a moat where the arch of an uncompromising, square, stone gatehouse made a tunnel's entrance on to a flat wooden bridge that led to the moat's island.

  And the house.

  From here there were only glimpses of stone and tile and chimney through the trees. As she crossed the drawbridge, the corresponding gatehouse on the far side framed a courtyard. She walked through the archway, along a drive skirted by overgrown lawn. Immediately in front of her was a crenellated rectangle of a hall in the warm oolite of Ham Hill, as plain as the gatehouses except for the stone-traced quatrefoils at the head of its three long windows.

  It was an old-style hall with what had once been an undercroft where animals were kept, now a habitable ground floor with its own front door.

  To make up for the hall's starkness some early Tudor adventurer had enclosed the courtyard on north and south by two wings of the then latest trend, crazily timbered, deep- tiled, gabled, lattice-windowed buildings whose upper storeys leaned over towards Penitence like tipsy revellers. The sun setting over the Levels behind them shone straight into the courtyard to make a ragbag of architectural textures into a mellifluous collage, honey-coloured stone, cream-and-mush- room timbering, tiny oaken doors, diamond-paned windows that winked reflected amber. Even the cushions of lichen on the tiles of the many-angled roof were a matching grey and gold.

  Rupert was tutting with disapproval at weeds and dilapidation. Penitence didn't see them. The tilting upper storeys of the Tudor wings gave the impression of packed theatre galleries; the house was making a statement only she could hear; she wasn't just being welcomed but applauded.

  A door set in a surround of worn carving opened and Peter stood in the archway looking curiously in place, as if they had gone back to the time of Crusaders and Saracen servants.

  'Furniture in?' snapped Rupert.

  'Yes, lord.'

  Inside she was almost blinded as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of a passage formed by two screens of black oak panelling. The stone floor had been polished and gently hollowed by centuries of feet and reflected a triangle of daylight at its far end where a door stood open at the back of the house. On the left was a staircase with a newel post carved in the shape of a Saracen's head. Peter, candelabra held high, led the way up the staircase which made a dog-leg into a passage, and then stood back to allow her to go first through a door. She went into the hall.

  Space and God. Those were her first impressions. It was sparsely furnished and somewhere Rupert was apologizing for not yet having procured suitable pieces for it. The hall's dimensions had managed to incorporate into themselves the cool beauty of medieval holiness. The lattice panes of the three tall windows were so old that their amber and green glass threw the sunlight on to the stone floor in the effect of a honeycomb. Over the plain and enormous rectangle that was the fireplace were carved the arms and roses of the first Tudor.

  Rupert stopped talking as he glimpsed her face. Instead he smiled and came to stand formally in front o
f her, holding a ring on which were a set of huge keys, and a scroll hung with seals on ribbons.

  'Madam, I have the honour to present to you your own home. Your good father was born here. It is fitting that now it is yours.'

  'Mine?' She had guessed it to be her father's home but had expected only that they were paying a visit.

  'The ownership was in dispute since your grandfather's death. Both parties were pleased to resolve the quarrel by selling outright.'

  'Mine?'

  He looked pleased with himself. 'It is not, perhaps, as beautiful as the birthday gift you awarded me, and certainly not in as good condition, being nearly five hundred years older, but it is nevertheless a present, though one which, I had hoped, would evince some other reaction than tears.' He mopped her eyes with his handkerchief.

  It was called Athelzoy Priory. She tried the name on her tongue; an apple-tasting name, beautiful with an undercurrent of the comic, like the combination of dignity and exuberance that had met her in the courtyard.

  Rupert strode to the fireplace. Across its top was a white stone beam inscribed with Latin. 'Quod Olim Fuit Meminisse Minime Juvat,' he read out. '"There is little joy in remembrance of the past."' He bowed to her. 'I intend to have it changed, if you will permit, my dear. I trust that for you, as for myself, there has been joy in these past years we've spent together.' He had his hat in his hand, and the colours of the last of the sun coming through the panes turned his exquisite black velvet coat into motley.

  She crossed the floor of her hall and put her arms round him.

  The next day they examined everything together. Rupert himself had only been here once before — to see if Athelzoy was worth buying. As it is, my dear,' he assured her, 'though I fear your grandfather and his forebears were not the men to exploit its possibilities. Gamblers all. Like your father.'

  'Was my father a gambler?'

  'Renowned for it throughout the regiment. We loved to play him, 1 remember; he so invariably lost. Poor fellow, poor, brave fellow.'

  The manor had stood empty since her grandfather's death, he told her; he had procured the basic furnishings in London and sent them down in carts for the servants to arrange. He had chosen well, selecting plain but excellent chairs, settles, beds, presses and tables from the time of Elizabeth. Modern pieces would have looked out of place.

  The servants, too, had done well. The interior was spotless and had been burnished within an inch of its life with beeswax and soap.

  In the Tudor wings jars of buttercups threw yellow reflections on to the dark wood of the window-sills, pewter dishes glowed severely along the sideboard and the creaking flights of stairs to the upper floors were lethal with polishing.

  The Glastonbury priors owned it from time immemorial, but it fell to the crown in the Wars of the Roses and Henry VII gave it to his henchman, d'Haut, from whom you are descended, my dear. It was modernized in 1521, and damn all done to it since.'

  It was so unusual for Rupert to swear that she knew how much the manor's disrepair was upsetting him. The roof leaked in parts, there was woodworm in some of the timbers of the north wing, the drawbridge wouldn't work because its chains were rusted into their grooves, jackdaws nested in the twisted brick chimney-pots. 'And as for the sanitary arrangements . . .'

  Even Penitence, who found new enchantments every way she turned, had to admit to the insanitariness of those arrangements which were a large privy built into the wall of the solar at the back of the house with a channelled drop down into the moat. The five bottom-shaped holes in its seat — two large, three small — over the drop showed that the Hoys' privy- going had been familial, though the state of it also showed their aim to have been terrible. The fact that at the same time they had allowed the springs and streams of the moat to block up caused Penitence to wonder not only at her paternal family's hygiene but also at their insensitivity to smell.

  Never mind, Rupert had called in modern builders and drainage experts and brought down from Awdes a selection of close-stools with their removable pots, carved lids and padded seats. She was more concerned that the topiary of the life- sized yew chessmen in the south garden had been allowed to outgrow to the point where their shapes might be lost.

  Her yew chessmen. Her timbers with their fine graining like the wrinkles in the skin of a very old woman. Her square, lead drainpipes, each one carrying the 'H' of the Hoy crest. Her White Room in the north wing with its superb plaster ceiling moulded into pendants and strapwork.

  She circled the house in a saraband of disbelief, touching and stroking. Her ancient chestnut trees coming into bud. Her slit to the left of the gatehouse arch for parleying with the enemy. Her fishponds beyond the moat, her fields beyond that, her stretch of the sedgemoor turbaries, her section of the River Minnow. Her rowing boat moored against steps going down into the moat at the back of the house.

  'Well?' Rupert asked her.

  'Very well. Very well. Very, very, very well.' She butted her head into his chest. 'Is it really mine?'

  'Completely. It is a small manor, I fear, but totally yours. Nobody can gainsay you, my dear. Not now nor when I'm gone.'

  She stood back, frightened by the elegy in his voice. 'Where are you going?'

  'My dear, in the nature of things . . .'

  'No.' She had to stop him saying it. 'I can't do without you.'

  He was pleased and roused and took her to bed.

  Afterwards, triumphant, he was full of solicitous plans. 'We shall entertain my lady's neighbours.'

  She protested. 'It will tire you too much; the house isn't ready.'

  'I'm younger than I thought, it seems,' he said smugly. He was anxious that she be established as part of the country scene 'while I am yet here to introduce you'. He knew, as she knew, that without the protection of his name she - and more importantly, Ruperta - would find entry into Somerset society difficult if not impossible.

  She rested her head on his arm and stared up at the tester, ashamed all over again at having had to simulate pleasure when Rupert deserved not only his own sexual fulfilment but hers. She'd prayed a thousand times for her love for him to be as physical as it was emotional. It would have made things easier all the way round. Damn Henry King. How could the memory of the night with him, one single night, nearly twenty years ago, still come between her and a man so much worthier?

  An old complaint; she watched it entwine itself in the riot of carved oaken creatures and swirled designs that decorated the tester. They had chosen the biggest room in the north wing for their bedroom but even so it was dwarfed by this bed, a huge, shining, black, muscular edifice that sprouted carving on every surface. It was the only piece of furniture that had not been removed from the house by Penitence's grandfather's quarrelling heirs - presumably because it was too heavy to shift. Perhaps her father had been born in it.

  'Don't leave me, Rupert.' She wasn't thinking of herself. For his sake she wanted this Indian summer of his to last for ever now that he had his daughter and a home life where he was looked up to and didn't have to suffer the rudeness of young men who had taken the place he should have had at the side of his fickle king. 'I can't do without you,' she said again.

  She could; she could bear anything. But it would be a ruder, lonelier life without him. 'And don't let's bother with entertaining.' Not only did she not care a damn for Somerset society, there was also the risk that entering it would involve an encounter with the Viscount of Severn and Thames; already Rupert had put him at the head of the list of people to be invited to a series of dinners.

  But that evening Peter was put in the carriage and sent back to Awdes with detailed instructions from Rupert to fetch more kitchen staff and pack up sufficient glassware, silver and napery.

  In the meantime noblesse had to be obliged. On Sunday they walked across the drawbridge and followed the moat round to the back of the house where a track led them through orchards to the surprisingly beautiful parish church to attend a less impressive service conducted by a hurried curat
e for whom the souls of St Mary's, Athelzoy, formed only one of many congregations he had to lead in worship that day.

  Outside in the churchyard, where sheep nibbled the graveside grasses, the congregation gathered in a respectful ring to listen to Rupert's carrying voice introduce himself and his lady. It was a small number for such a large church, forty or so adults, the majority of those elderly. Ancient bonnets on fair or greying hair, jerkins and skirts matted from too much washing, lovely complexions even among the old, the necks of the men engrained with earth, the hands of the women calloused from perpetual spinning. Some of the younger women carried a distaff resting on the belt round their waists, and spun as they listened. The children — she especially studied the children to see if this place would be a salubrious home for Ruperta and Tongs — seemed healthy enough.

  She liked the young people she'd met so far: Mudge and Prue Ridge, the son and daughter of the farm that encroached on the Priory's frontage. Both seemed intelligent, were handsome and very strong. It was Prue who brought the Priory's milk each morning, carrying it from the farm in a pail balanced on her head. Once, when she'd left it in the kitchen, Penitence had surreptitiously tried to heft the pail, and failed. 'A full five gallons on her head with the same ease I wear a hat,' she told Rupert, amazed.