The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  'Her Ladyship wishes me to hope,' finished Rupert to his audience, 'she finds you as loyal and willing as she will be your true liege lady and ever bear you in her heart and mind.'

  There was a cheer. 'Do be she give us work, ull she?'

  'Indeed,' said Rupert, nodding, 'I am sure my lady will be needing staff she can trust.' Loud cheer. 'And I am instructing the landlord of the Hoy Arms that anyone wishing to drink Her Ladyship's health tonight may do so at my expense.' Cheer so loud the rooks came out of the churchyard elms and circled, cawing, in the breezy blue sky.

  Together she and Rupert moved away. 'They are suffering,' Rupert told her. 'Time was when every household in this area kept its own sheep, sheared its own wool and spun it for sale to the clothiers. That and harvest work kept them going. Now the clothiers have better profit from putting their spinners in something they call a "factory"'

  The old ways are the best,' she teased him.

  'And so quite frequently they are,' he said seriously. 'These "factories" will loosen the bond that exists between high and low on the land. Look, now, at these cottages, half of them empty. Good peasants who loved their lord and their land gone to work in a box.'

  Rupert still hankered after the feudal system at its best, and tended to regard as dangerously revolutionary anybody who didn't. Penitence refrained from pointing out that only extreme hardship or strong incentive could have tempted anybody away from Athelzoy to work in a box. A stream ran down both sides of the street under flagstone bridges that led to fat, white, mud-and-plaster cottages with deep windows and even deeper thatch. Almost every back garden had a well, hazel or apple or pear trees and a vegetable plot. A morning shower had added the smell of damped dust to that of cows and spring.

  Yet it was true, half the cottages were deserted. Her Priory had provided much of the employment on which this village depended and the death of its master, her grandfather, had thrown out of work the labourers who had gathered in his harvests and the servants who had manned his household.

  Further down the track widened to become the nearest thing Athelzoy could boast to a village square; sheep and cattle pens encircled a cross that was quite as big and almost elaborate as the Eleanor cross in London's Charing. A thin man dressed in Puritan black suit and hat stood on its steps, intoning from a Bible.

  Opposite the east side of the cross was the Hoy Arms. Built in the same style as the Priory's timbered wings, it reminded Penitence of the Ship back in Dog Yard; the same air of unwarranted jollity, the same architectural nudge in the ribs to its neighbours.

  As the inn's landlord emerged from his door to greet them, wiping his hands on his apron, the man on the steps of the cross shuffled round so that he faced in their direction.

  Penitence tensed and tightened her grip on Rupert's arm. She had a sudden sense of deja vu.

  'Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father, but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.'

  She'd known it. The tone was the tone of Titus Oates, the Reverend Block, the sing-song that Puritan saints considered necessary to the expression of righteousness. She hated it. But it was the timbre of the voice, the long-drawn aaa put into 'harlot' that took her back to another time and another country. For a moment she was confused, then she put her whole weight on Rupert's arm to stop him as he pulled foward towards the man, waving his cane in fury. 'No!'

  'I'll whip the rogue, I'll have his skin off.'

  'No. Leave him. Rupert, he's not worth your attention.' He dragged her on, intent to kill. Frantically, she gestured to the landlord to come and help. Between them they turned a puffing, shouting Rupert round and, by confiscating his stick, got him through the door of the Hoy Arms where the landlady added her considerable weight to sit him on a settle.

  'Excuse me a moment.' Penitence hurried outside and over to the man on the steps of the cross. He was being verbally attacked by villagers returning from church for having insulted a royal prince and source of future employment. A few were throwing handy lumps of manure as if they'd only been waiting for an excuse. Not a popular man. He wasn't trying to protect himself but had closed his eyes in martyrdom, his lips moving in prayer. The crowd encouraged her to join in the fun. 'You give un what for, Ladyship, proper paain in the bum, they old Presbyters.' Someone suggested the stocks.

  'What's your name?' asked Penitence, quietly.

  The man's eyes opened. He couldn't be more than sixty, though he looked older. It was uncanny to see on this face the same bitter lines as on another face she'd once known well.

  'My name is everlasting,' he said.

  'I'll wager it's not,' she told him, 'I wager it's Hughes.'

  'He that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance,' he said, sulkily. 'Proverbs 29, verse 3.'

  Verily the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you,' she told him. 'Matthew 21, verse 31.' And went back to the inn.

  Distracted by the bad impression made on his royal visitor, the landlord and his wife were trying to mollify him with words and best ale. Rupert ignored both. Under control now, he sat upright, white with rage.

  He wouldn't reprove her in public — he rarely reproved her even in private — but she'd shamed him by not letting him defend her and by going to talk to her detractor.

  She ignored him. 'Who is that man? Where does he live?'

  The landlord turned to her in relief. 'Not one of ours, I tell ee. Comes from over by Sallycombe. Whole viper's nest on them preachifiers as says its their duty to din a respectable body's poor ears every Sunday.' The landlord spat into the sawdust of his floor. 'Sallycombe folk, every one. Why Lady Alice do tolerate un I don't know. I don't. Roundheads and Dissenters they was. Roundheads and Dissenters they still be.'

  'What's his name?'

  'Martin Hughes, Your Ladyship. A teaseller. Oh, what a viper.'

  Mudge Ridge put his head round the inn door. He'd brought his cart to the smithy to have a wheel straightened and was now going home. Would His Highness and lady like a lift?

  Penitence accepted; Rupert's hands were still shaking. He didn't speak during the journey back, but sat on the bouncing seat of the farm cart with the dignity of a Cavalier on a charger. Penitence sat beside him and talked to Mudge who walked ahead, leading the horse. He too was apologetic but saw further than the landlord.

  'Somerset now,' he explained — he pronounced it Zummerzet - ' 'tis divided twixt Royals and Roundheads, church and meeting-house. Always is, always was. And what with the gentry becoming richer and the Church more Romish, poor folk are turning to Dissenting. Not so much farm folk, mebbe, but weavers and spinners like.'

  Weavers and spinners like her maternal grandparents had been before they left for a new world.

  Come to that, she hadn't seen either Mudge or Prue Ridge in church this morning either, though their parents had been. Casually she said so.

  Mudge glanced over his shoulder at her and she realized that in the old days her grandfather, royalist and churchgoer, would have punished his tenants for non-attendance. She winked at him, and saw his white-lashed blue eyes widen first in surprise and then in relieved amusement.

  Back at the Priory she sat Rupert down in the room to the right of the screen passage that they had made into a parlour, poured him a brandy and then knelt at his feet. 'I'm sorry, Rupert.'

  'The man shall be whipped despite you. If such unmannerliness goes unpunished there will be revolution come again. The magistrate shall be informed. You shall not be insulted in broad daylight.'

  She doubted whether a magistrate could pillory someone for an insult, but perhaps in Somerset it was possible. 'Please, Rupert...'

  He held up a hand. 'You shall not speak for him. Such tenderness is out of place. I'll put the vermin in the stocks myself.'

  'I hope you won't, Rupert.' She took his hand. 'I'm fairly sure he's my grandmother's brother. The vermin's my great- uncle.'

  Chapter 6

  The Viscount of Severn and Thames, it transpir
ed, was in the Low Countries and would be unable to accept the kind invitation to dine with His Royal Highness Prince Rupert and Mrs Hughes on May the 4th.

  'They say he's thick with Prince William,' Rupert told her, troubled. 'I wish I may not hear he has become a Whig.' Whigs upset him; not only would they exclude James from the succession but their extremists called for the Protestant Duke of Monmouth to be legitimized so that he could be the next king — something Rupert would as soon see done as enthrone the Devil.

  'But would you want him a Tory?' she asked and then regretted it as she watched his indecision; she hated seeing Rupert, a man who had always been clear as to where his duty lay, struggling with doubt in his old age. His cousin's rule worried him - not least by suspending Parliament. Every day he received letters from his London financier and merchant friends complaining of the King's gerrymandering to gain political control of the City and its juries. Rupert's loyalty to England's institutions were almost as great as his loyalty to its throne, and he became upset that each was threatening to abolish the other.

  No doubts bothered the neighbours who came to dine at the Priory. Church of England Tories to a man, magistrates, sheriffs, nouveau riche clothiers, they expounded the damnation of Whigs in their rich, drawn-out, heavily diphthonged accents. Their equation was crudely simple: Whigs were Dissenters and Dissenters were damned.

  Penitence, who knew many aristocratic Church of England Whigs, realized that this far from London she was in a different world; the sons of men who had fought for the crown still despised the men whose fathers had fought for Parliament. Toryism reigned supreme. To be successful was ipso facto to be a Tory. Whiggery, on the other hand, flourished among the defeated Nonconformers: insignificant but independent artisans; weavers, small farmers, craftsmen.

  If Martin Hughes was an example of Somerset Whiggery and these local landowners who were her guests and who displayed their wives, wealth and prejudices in the absolute assurance that Prince Rupert would approve them, were typical Tories then she — and she realized for the first time that she was the result of a mating between a representative of both - didn't like either of them much. She felt more in tune with the countryside than its people.

  'Y'ear there was naastiness twixt yourself and one of they dang blue-nail preachers, Your Highness,' brayed Sir Ostyn Edwards, Penitence's nearest neighbour and the local magistrate. The news had spread with speed; even the Cartrights, a couple of strong but likeable Tories at Rupert's end of the table, had heard of it - and they lived at Crewkerne, a good ten miles away.

  Rupert played it down. 'There was a fellow spouting some foolishness. It was of no matter.' He made no mention of Penitence's presumed relationship with the preacher just as he did not tell the guests that on her paternal side she was a by- blow of Captain Hoy, their contemporary. It was none of their business.

  'Trouble-makers and revolutionaries,' pronounced Sir William Portman, the MP for Taunton. 'They're Whigs, sir, weaving, thieving Whigs. You should send 'em down, Ostyn, send 'em down.'

  'Ah do,' said Sir Ostyn, indignant. 'Then you gennulmen complain as ah'm taking away your workers.'

  'They Hugheses is no workers of maahn,' complained Sir Roger Pascoe. 'Too danged independent. Teasellers. You want to kick 'em off your land, Alice' - he raised his voice; Lady Alice Lisle was deaf - 'I say you want to kick 'em off your land and into my factories, Alice.'

  'I don't want to do no such thing then,' said Lady Alice. 'Ah'm not saying they ain't bothersome preachifiers, but ah'm not seeing they starve at your looms for four shillings a week when the going rate be seven and well you know it, Sir Roger.'

  Sir Roger beamed, not at all put out. 'And find their own harness, size and wind their own quills. If 'tis good for the trade, 'tis good for the country.'

  "Tis good for thy pocket,' scolded Lady Alice. 'Commerce uz made for man, not man for commerce. And I do mean all men, young Maister Pascoe.'

  Alice Lisle was the only unaccompanied woman there and the only woman whom Rupert had been advised to invite in her own right. She was a local institution, a widow of seventy or more who ran her manor farm two miles away with efficiency. Bom and bred in the area, part of the landed gentry, she was not only the widow of a Cromwellian but a Dissenter herself. Yet she had outlived disapproval to become a respected part of the landscape. Because they'd known her all their lives, the Tory gentry accepted her and her inconvenient philosophies as they accepted Barrow Mump or Glastonbury Tor, those eccentric hills which rose out of the flat countryside like altars.

  'What is a teaseller?' asked Penitence. She'd heard the word twice now in connection with Martin Hughes.

  Every head at the table turned in her direction as if in anticipation, though of what she wasn't sure. She had kept silent during most of dinner unless urging her guests to eat. Women, all except Lady Alice, were not encouraged to do more than admire and agree with the male conversation, and most of the wives kept their elaborately dressed heads down and did just that.

  Rupert had done his best to make it clear that Penitence was the giver of the feast: 'Is it your wish that I carve, my dear?' and 'Her Ladyship has not yet had time to furnish her table as she would wish, have you, my dear?' But his guests refused to follow his lead. They found the situation peculiar. For years they'd listened with horrified delight to tales of what happened at court, they knew the lechery of princes and the wantonness of actresses and had prepared themselves to witness goings-on. When what went on was a domesticity only unusual in its harmony they were not just wrong-footed but disappointed.

  Now they stared down the table at Penitence like boys at a fair watching a sword-swallower who was taking his ease between acts. She fought down the impulse to snap a garter, to appal them as they so obviously wanted to be appalled, and stared back.

  'Eh?' grunted Sir Ostyn. He was the local magistrate and recently widowed; there had been much jollity from his friends about his search for a suitable wife. The linenfold panelling of her dining-room made the perfect background for his over- curled fair wig and upturned nose. If you could frame him, thought Penitence, you'd have a fine portrait of a pig. The candlelight shone on richly polished board and silver and was kinder to the faces round it than most of them deserved. Why do I have to bother with these people? I want to go home. I want my daughter.

  'Her Ladyship asked what a teaseller was,' prompted Rupert.

  'Oh, teaseller,' said Sir Roger, triumphantly. 'Don't know that then in Lunnon. Teaseller's a man as grows teasels.'

  She caught Rupert's eye and rose. 'Shall we leave the gentlemen, ladies?' I'm damned if I ask what a teasel is.

  Chairs were pushed back as the gentlemen stood up and the ladies exited.

  'Do we have our hostess's permission to smoke?' asked Rupert.

  Bless him. 'Of course.'

  She led the ladies along the screen passage to the north wing and showed them where to find the close-stools in the room Rupert had insisted on for a bathroom, then afterwards led them back to the passage in the hall's undercroft and along it to the parlour. 'I thought we could gossip over our coffee in here,' she said brightly, 'it's small, but warm on this chilly night.'

  Lady Pascoe, disconcerted by the Priory's bathroom when her own, larger mansion had none, scrabbled for reascendancy. "Tis small, iss fay,' she said. 'You want to get your man to build un out. My parlour's twice the size.'

  It would have to be. 'Coffee? Tea? Or chocolate?'

  If she'd been in a more tolerant mood, she'd have realized they were intimidated as much as disapproving. For all she was a fallen woman, she was a sophisticated fallen woman, the intimate of princes, an habitue of wicked London and its even more wicked court. They had to impress on her how little they were impressed, how much bigger their houses were than hers, how much better acquainted they were with local matters, with the Priory itself.

  'Ah used to play with the Hoy children when I were a babby,' said Lady Portland. 'Knew every inch of this place. Have ee found the secret room ye
t?'

  Penitence sat up, intrigued for the first time that night. 'No. Where is it?'

  'Old Maister Hoy, he'd tease us and never let on. But 'tis yere somewhere.' The plumes in her hair nodded as she looked around the panelling.

  The word 'tease' stimulated Lady Pascoe into telling Penitence about teasels, a thistle-type plant apparently, its bristled head much used in the clothing industry for carding. Didn't she know what carding was? Mercy me, they didn't learn 'em much in Lunnon, did they? Well, carding was ...

  Lady Alice, the only one of them Penitence really wanted to hear, slept openly and enviably through the whole discourse until the glorious sound of men's boots released them all to follow Rupert and the male guests up the staircase to the hall where Peter was waiting with further trays and trolleys of savouries, sweetmeats and marzipans which, Rupert had assured her, were a necessary topping-up of Somerset stomachs before everybody went home.

  The hall, rarely warm and on that early spring night positively chilly, was lit by a fire. Apple logs six feet long filled the grate and sent out scented flames that sparkled the guests' jewellery and changed the expressions on the faces of the gargoyles, one at the bottom of each of the roof's great trussed arches.