The Vizard Mask

by Diana Norman

  She heard his horse's hoofbeats while they were still on the track and was standing at her window to see him turn in through her gates.

  Frogs were croaking in the marsh and a harvest moon lit the sweep of the drive like an enormous street lamp and put a yellow tinge on the lawn where the yew chessmen cast geometric shadows. She thought she saw one of them move. Nevis?

  Then she heard Muskett's challenge and Henry's invariable answer: 'It's me, you silly sod', and everything else went out of her head as she went downstairs to greet him so that he could carry her up again.

  This time, as he prepared to go into the usual bedroom, she stopped him and said: 'Next door.'

  'What's wrong with this room?'

  'Benedick's recovering,' she told him, 'I don't want him to hear us.' It was part of the truth, not all of it.

  He shifted her over his shoulder. 'As long as there's a bed.'

  The bed was the trouble; the milk-flowing, honeyed land it had become for both of them was Rupert's bed. It made her feel guilty. With Rupert she'd tried, gratefully, to return his love-making because she owed him so much. She had promised fidelity to his memory. And now, here she was, foaming with a passion that came free and much less deserved for somebody else. The least she could do was choose another bed to foam in.

  The bedroom next door was smaller and its bed meaner but, as he said, it didn't matter.

  Abruptly, he'd asked her once: 'Did you get this much pleasure from Rupert?' And then said: 'I'm sorry.' She knew he wanted her to say 'No'. Yet it would have been shameful to tell him that she'd felt nothing when Rupert touched her but guilt and a hope it would soon be over. The least she could do for a man who'd given her all that Rupert had was to keep the secrets of his bed. We mistresses have our ethics.

  Instead she told him Helen hadn't known so much pleasure from Paris as Penitence did from Henry King, that she drained the world's supply of pleasure every time he took her to bed. And that was true.

  She suspected such extravagance confirmed his suspicions even while it delighted him. It was the sort of wanton response men expected from whores. It couldn't be helped. It didn't matter any more. She'd lost her pride. He could take her on any terms. Just as long as he took her.

  He did.

  A long time later, when she was breathing normally again, she nudged him in the ribs. 'Who's the Portlannon girl?'

  'Who?' He was drifting off to sleep.

  'The Portlannon girl. The one you're courting.'

  'Oh, her. Nice girl. Rich. Good family. Not a trace of stutter. I'm considering her as the next Viscountess of Severn and Thames.' He yawned and looked at her from the corner of his eyes. 'Jealous?'

  'No.' And she wasn't. No good being bitch in the manger.

  'I thought I ought to have ... children before I'm too old.'

  'Of course.' He meant to say 'a son. But she didn't protest that he'd got one. Like everything else, whether or not he believed Benedick to be his had lost its importance. It was as if the two of them had stepped into a walled garden outside ordinary life, created from previously unknown textures, with its own weather, in which they were the only inhabitants.

  When he couldn't get away from Bridgwater where he and his militia had been stationed, she went through the processes expected of her, spoke, moved, worried, discussed her crops, while all the time her soul clawed at the gate in the wall to be let back in. Once she set eyes on him again the lock turned and music that was like no other music floated through the gate as it slipped open in invitation.

  There was no past in the garden. Because he grew restive when she mentioned the past he refused to talk about his own though she would have liked to know more. He only said: 'The late Viscount, my father, was pleased to exercise droit de seigneur over every female on our estate, probably not excluding the sheep. But, by God, when I brought home a Catholic wife — suddenly he was the outraged Puritan. He threw me out. He said no good would come of it.' He closed his eyes. 'And he was right, the venal old bugger.'

  Knowing the uniqueness of what they shared — and she knew he knew - it was a wonder to her that her past mattered so much to him. It exasperated her that it did. But it did.

  It was time to leave the garden. 'Shall we go down to supper?'

  'I thought you'd never ask.' He began to feel about for his clothes. 'All this pleasuring makes a man hungry.'

  'It's very good of you to do it,' she said politely.

  'I'm like that. No thought of self. You say Benedick's better. How much better?'

  'He worries me, Henry. Sometimes he's confused and other times he's just bad-tempered.'

  'To be expected after a concussion like that. He's got to be fit two nights from now. He's riding to the coast to catch the tide at four-thirty a.m.'

  She put her head against his sleeve. 'How did you get the boat?'

  'Yacht, woman. She's a yacht and she's mine, crewed by my men.' She kept forgetting he was a viscount. 'She's moored in a creek in the Parrett estuary, which by impure coincidence is guarded by Severn and Thames's North Somerset Militia, bless 'em. I'll put him in a basket or something and tell them he's smuggled goods. All my men are smugglers. The place is about fifteen miles from here as the crow flies.'

  'We haven't got a crow, Henry dear. We haven't got a damned horse since the requisitioners took the last one. We've got a donkey cart.'

  'I'll bring another horse with me.' He ushered her out of the door and along the corridor. Their footsteps echoed as they went down the newel staircase, emphasizing the quiet. There was no staff now, except Muskett and Prue; the rest were helping out at Crewkerne.

  She'd told the village servants not to come, ostensibly because there was no work to be done but actually to give Benedick a chance to move about unseen when he was well enough.

  Prue had left cold meats, bread and preserves on the kitchen table. With the influx into the area of soldiers, and now all the officials and clerks necessary to the Assize, food was in shorter supply than ever. Tonight Henry had brought a bottle of Bordeaux and some smoked venison which had been sent down from his estate in the north of the county.

  Penitence couldn't eat. 'How can you get Benedick through? You said yourself the Levels were full of regular army still looking for rebels.' She'd be sending off two precious eggs in one basket.

  He crammed his mouth full of venison and dismissed the problem: 'Ay owe ee.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  He swallowed. 'They know me. Every roadblock on the causeway knows I have this insatiable woman to ravish. They give a cheer as I go by. It's very touching.'

  'They don't know Benedick.'

  He pulled her to him. 'Boots, I'll get him there. He'll be wearing Muskett's uniform. I don't know any other way to do it. We've got to be there two nights from now or the tide's wrong and we'll be seen by the guardships in the bay. Just make the boy fit to ride and I'll get him there if it kills me.'

  That's what worries me. She couldn't think of what else to do either and being close to him didn't encourage concentration. 'Still no news of Dorinda and MacGregor? Or Mudge?'

  'No, I'm sorry.' He let go of her. 'Jesus God, how could MacGregor be such a fool as to throw in with Monmouth? I'd only seen him at The Hague a week or so before and he made no mention of it then.'

  'You knew MacGregor in the Netherlands?'

  'I knew MacGregor in the Rookery, if you remember, drunken Scottish bugger. He was on the wagon when we met again in The Hague - saved by the love of a good woman, if you can describe Dorinda as such. So I employed him. He was one of our agents, he helped organize the English distribution of pamphlets for Bentinck and me.'

  'Bentinck!'

  'Prince William's right-hand man.' He looked at her curiously. 'Do you know Bentinck?'

  'I met him once, a long time ago.'

  Immediately he was restive. They were in the dangerous territory of her past. 'You seem to have met a lot of men in your time. Bentinck. Churchill.'

  She shrugged and began pr
eparing a supper tray to take up to Benedick and Muskett. And how many women have you met in your time? He was slouched in a carver with one of his legs up on the table and he still looked very much as he'd once looked in a Rookery window. His hair, long then, short now — his wig was somewhere in her bed - had gained some grey but not much. The light from the kitchen fire caught a throat the years hadn't thickened. He was as attractive as all hell, and he could make her crosser than any man she'd ever met with his doubts of her and his digs at Dorinda.

  If Dorinda's dead, it's because she tried to help your son. She hadn't told him that.

  For one thing, if he believed it he would be under such a burden of debt to the MacGregors for his son's life that he wouldn't rest until he'd found them, and thereby bring more suspicion on himself. She'd already heard murmurs against him from the county gentry; he'd spent too long in Holland with Orange William; he'd been heard to make caustic comment about King James. Churchill admired him, but Churchill was back at Whitehall by now; the county was at the mercy of Kirk's regiment and both Kirk and Nevis hated him, mainly because he had contempt for them and showed it. Dorinda, I'm sorry. I can't let him try to find you. To have a son with a price on his head was killing her; for his father to fall under suspicion would break her nerve completely.

  She said: 'So you're working for William.'

  He caught her every inflection. 'Good God, him too?'

  'I have met Prince William,' she told him coolly. 'Merely met him.' He was without his breeches at the time. 'Are you putting him on the throne of England now? Last time it was Rupert.'

  'Rupert was in the clutches of some harpy,' said Henry. 'William's got Mary trained. He's the better bet.'

  She went round the table and knelt by his chair. 'Darling, no more battles. They hurt people. People disappear or they get hanged. What does it matter which king's on the throne, or if nobody's on it at all?'

  He was appalled at first, then over his face came the toleration shown to idiots and children. He lifted her up on to his knee and tapped her nose with his finger as he made his points: 'There's got to be a king, you see, Boots, because otherwise coins would have blank spaces where the head should be. And you can have a king who's a fool, like Charles I. And you can have a king who's a Catholic, like Charles II. But if you've got a king who's a fool and a Catholic, like James, sooner or later you're going to have a revolution. And that's when William comes in.'

  She stroked his face. 'The first thing you ever said to me was how you couldn't trust kings. Not any of the buggers, you said.' A million years ago. A prissy, innocent, voiceless thing she'd been, crawling along a Rookery gutter to get away from attackers as poor as she was. And from the clouds had descended this jaunty deus ex machina to save her not only from the attackers but from prissiness, innocence and voicelessness.

  'I said don't trust them, I didn't say do without them.' His mouth went lop-sided as he remembered. 'That was a cold old day, Boots. I can see you now. You looked like a miniature Guy Fawkes.'

  And we let each other go. And now I've got you back. Peacocks and ivories, gold and sapphires, were in her kitchen in the shape of this man. Penitence wriggled herself closer into his lap and felt him instantly go hard. 'Oh no you don't,' she said, though God knows she was tempted. 'You'll wear yourself out.' She clambered off him. 'I'm taking supper to Benedick and Muskett.'

  He sighed. 'Oh, very well.' To Penitence he complained that Benedick was a fool, that anybody who had joined Monmouth was a fool, but the boy intrigued him. Once she'd seen him put his hand on the bed next to Benedick's to compare the two. To her they'd seemed facsimiles, narrow and strong, but she hadn't said so. Go ahead. Let suspicion ruin the next twenty years as they've ruined the last. He made her so angry. She loved him so much.

  As they entered the bedroom, Muskett, who was playing cards with Benedick at the bedside table, stood to attention. 'Suh.'

  Henry looked at the piles of coins on the table. 'I shouldn't wager too much, Major Hurd. My sergeant is known through the length and breadth of North Somerset as Machiavelli Muskett.'

  Penitence loved Muskett. He was as dependable as he was solid and his humour made him more attractive than many a man with better looks. She had hopes of him and Prue. He was staring straight at the wall. 'The major is an honest card- player, suh. Which is rare for cavalry, suh. And officers. In my experience. Suh.'

  'Does your mind ever dwell on the kisses of the gunner's daughter, Muskett?'

  'No. Suh.'

  'It should.' He turned on Benedick. 'How are we tonight, Major?'

  'I don't know how you are, but my bloody head's pounding.'

  'Benedick!' Penitence could have killed him. He didn't know

  Henry was his father - until Henry was prepared to claim him, she had not considered it right to tell him - and had shown increasing truculence in his presence, but he'd never been outright rude like this. 'The Viscount has been good enough to come here tonight to inform you of the arrangements for your escape.'

  'That's what he's come for, is it? Nothing else?' Benedick was gaunt. Physical weakness was presenting his anger as petulance. Shaking, he held on to a chair-back to help himself up. 'I would like to know why the Captain Viscount is helping a rebel escape in the first place. Or perhaps it's a question I should ask my mother. Sir, I demand to defend her honour by calling you out.'

  'Do you, by God,' said Henry.

  How could I have raised a boy so stupid? He'd adored Rupert, of course. And he was ill. She supposed that as a single woman, much gossiped about, her honour must appear to need defending. Looking at her son, Penitence caught her breath at the resemblance to his father. The candlelight emphasized the hollows of the eyes and the new line down the long cheeks. He's aged. She was so sorry for him. By this ridiculous parade he was attempting to pretend that medieval chivalry still existed when, in fact, he had seen it blown to pieces during that night on Sedgemoor. She knew he had. She'd heard what he raved of in some of his nightmares.

  She caught at the Viscount's sleeve and dragged him away to whisper: 'Deal with him gently, Henry.'

  'Don't worry that I shall deal with him at all. He's probably a better duellist than I am. He's younger for a start. And as tall. Besides,' he added querulously, 'the little bastard outranks me.'

  'Something on the drive, sir,' said Muskett who'd been diplomatically looking out of the window.

  Henry went over to put his hand on Benedick's shoulder and force him back into his chair. 'You shall have satisfaction later, Major. Stay out of sight.' He joined Muskett and Penitence at the window.

  They could just see over the gatehouse roof to the bottom of the drive, a still, white river under the light of the huge moon. From here Muskett's 'something' looked black and softly rolled, like a slug. But if it was a slug, it was man-size.

  'Stay here.' Henry was priming his pistol as he went out. Muskett, who kept one to hand, was seizing his: 'Best stay here, mistress.'

  Whose house is it? She took Benedick by the arm and helped him up. 'Time to go back in the hole, I'm afraid.' When he had Muskett to guard him, she allowed him the run of the bedroom - as long as he kept away from the windows.

  'No.' Peevishly, he shook her off. 'I want to see what it is.'

  He's overtired. How many times had she said that during his childhood? They never changed. 'Benedick,' she said, 'you're weak enough and you're still young enough for your mama to slap you if you don't go back in that room.' And she meant it.

  He grinned. She'd forgotten he could. You're your father's son. She helped him through the bedhead then ran to join the two men. They were standing back to back, Muskett with his pistol pointed at the slug, Henry covering the left-hand side of the drive. 'Muskett didn't see the cart drive up, but he heard it go. And he thought he saw a shadow over there.' After a minute he relaxed. 'All right, Sergeant, let's see what they've brought us.'

  Penitence already knew. 'Lady Alice's carpet.'

  It wasn't just a carpet; as the men jerked at
the fringed end it unrolled and the body of an elderly man flopped on to the gravel.

  Laboured, noisy breathing told them he wasn't dead or the face, which was ghastly in the moonlight, would have suggested it. As a child Penitence had been made to join her community in filing past the coffin at the funeral of august Puritan preachers, and they had looked like this man; dressed in black with their Bible between their hands.

  This man's hands still moved and he smelled rather worse than the dead preachers, but he was of the same ilk. She knew it too well.

  'A rebel,' said Henry. 'With congested lungs from the look of it.' He ran his hand over the man's broadcloth black coat.

  'Damp. Been lying out in the reeds possibly. Somebody doesn't want to hide him any more, and I can't say 1 blame them. What do you think, Muskett?'