The Vizard Mask (20 page)

Church bells rang all afternoon, adding to the din in Penitence Hurd's brain where the Pure Church thundered its denunciation of acting and actors. It wasn't until evening that she realized it was speaking in the Reverend Block's voice. And how pure were thee? The question silenced it, though the bells went on. She sat listening to them and compared two men; one who thought she was a whore and didn't treat her as one, the other who'd known she was not and had.

She went out to watch the sunset. There were lights in the Strand that she couldn't account for, until her nose twitched at a new smell. They were burning disinfectant in the streets to keep off infection.

Below her the neat black figure of Apothecary Boghurst crossed the Yard to the Ship where the Night Watch opened the door for him.

The Yard's living were at their windows, Mistress Palmer on her balcony, a few Tippins on the roof of the Stables. Footloose hauled himself out of his vat and into his trolley. They waited.

After half an hour the knot of watchmen by the door lit their lanterns. One left the group and headed for Butcher's Cut.

The Yard waited, knowing who would come back with him.

The tramp of the returning watchman's boots were accompanied by the shuffle of the Searcher.

Footloose hotched himself across the Yard to the Ship's door,- they could hear his high-pitched voice ask a question, a lower reply. Footloose began his round of the Yard, but the news travelled the round quicker than he did. It was whispered from the pawnbroker's to the roof of the Stables, went up and down the windows of the Buildings, leaped across the gap of Butcher's Cut to Mother Hubbard's.

On Penitence's side of the Yard it moved along the houses between the Ship and the Cock and Pie, but it was getting held up at the window of Mistress Chalkley, who was deaf. Nobody shouted it.

From Mistress Hicks's window on Penitence's right came a hoarse 'You there, Pen?'

'Yes.'

'It's John Bryskett. The oldest. That's six.'

Wobbling wheels creaked themselves towards the Cock and Pie's steps. She could hear the puff of Footloose's breath. 'Pen?'

'Yes.'

'There ain't no God, is there?' In the Yard her hat made her the religious authority.

'Yes there is,' she said. And He crucifies mankind for His pleasure.

She felt her way down through the sleeping house to the kitchen, lit a rushlight from the ration of coals that now burned in a brazier, and took it back, with a supply, to where the actor's book still lay by the side window. It was quarto- sized and looked as if it had belonged to several people in its time, none of whom had been kind to it.

With one finger, she flipped back the stained cloth cover and the title-page, knelt down and crooked her head round so that she could read without touching it. It was vilely printed and much scrawled. Some minutes later she put out another finger to turn the page and angle the book to a better position. Then she lay down on the floor. When the rushlight went out, she lit another and made herself comfortable on her bed, without knowing she was doing either of those things.

Just before dawn she put the book down and sat up with her arms round her knees. The pith of Kinyans's last rushlight was a twig of ash of which only the bottom quarter sent out a circle of light beyond which existed grief and suffering and a God who cared about neither.

Within the circle it was still Messina. Hand in hand a man and a woman danced out of her sight to the sound of pipers; an insubstantial, foolish couple for whose company, however long or short a time she lived, she would be grateful. There were tears in her eyes to watch them go, though she had them, here, in this smudged book. She opened it at the title- page to see what it was called, and nodded. The author had known, had blown his fragile bubble and let it shimmer, iridescent, into an attic in a plague spot for her, who had never played, to know what play meant.

When the bearers came she was on her balcony to watch John Bryskett's coffin taken away on the cart with only Footloose to follow it. Then she went to her side window and waited for the actor's shutters to open.

He yawned and stretched. 'Did you read it?'

'Yes.' She had it in her hands.

'Well?'

She said: 'It is r-ri-ri-ridiculous.' Too flimsy to warrant the charge of being sinful, it had no moral, no religious purpose. Stripped down to its basic plot it was absurd.

'It's not his greatest. On the other hand ...'

On the other hand. Whoever this Shakespeare was, he had clothed the feeble bones of his play in starlight. Words so luminous had lit up her attic that, unfamiliar as she was with play form, she had been able to see the movements of the men and women who spoke them as they cavorted around her.

'Did you like Beatrice?'

'Yes.' Last night the lump that was Penitence had found the form it was prepared to sell its soul to be fashioned in. 'H-how d-did he d-do it?'

'Do what?'

'H-how d-d-did he m-m-make you kn-kn-know th-the-they I-loved each other f-f-from the b-be-umm-be-beginning ...' It was almost the longest sentence she had spoken to him and it was too difficult. They hadn't known they loved each other, everybody else thought they hated each other, the ludicrous devices with which their friends tricked them into declaring love - all that was the plot - but the author had reached over and, in the battle of words between Beatrice and Benedick, had said to Penitence: 'You and I know their attraction, even if they don't. Let us watch them fall off the knife-edge of passion they teeter on.'

'Genius.' He shrugged. 'It's a bauble, I grant you. In dealing with true situation Moliere outstrips him. But our Will undoubtedly had genius. Nearly as much as I have.'

She ignored that. 'Had?'

'He's dead, woman. What did they teach you in New England? He died in 1615, 1616, something like that.'

She'd felt his breath on her cheek and he'd been dead when her grandfather was a boy.

Dogberry slouched down the alley towards them. He looked disgruntled.

'All right,' he said, 'so it's not agin promulgation. But I'm watching you two.' He leaned his halberd against Mistress Hicks's wall, then himself.

'So,' said the actor, 'you'll play Beatrice. I'll be Benedick.'

Play Beatrice? How could she, an inarticulate, play a mistress of repartee? Automatically, she said: 'It's d-did-dis-umm-ddis- sembling.'

'Dissembling,' agreed Dogberry from the alley.

'Of course.' He was surprised. 'Dissemble. Pretend. Imagine. Why not? When you read it, did you think for one moment about the Plague? No, you didn't. Were you sad? No, you weren't. It's a trifle to amuse.' He picked up his quill. 'The lessons are the infantry, step by step. The play's our cavalry. Now then, we'll begin where Beatrice and Benedick meet.' He gestured to Penitence to find the place in the text.

As she ruffled through the pages, she felt nerves snatching at her breath. She breathed as he had taught her, surreptitiously wiping her hands one after the other down her skirt, trying to relax them. She could do this; she could join the cavalry.

'What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?'

Immediately, she was thrown. He'd sat himself in the angle of the window, one knee drawn up so that his boot rested on the sill, the sun catching a face that had grown younger. The voice was negligently Benedick's as she'd heard it in her head last night. One finger beckoned Beatrice's line.

'Is it p-p-po-umm-possible D-di-dummdi-ddisdain . ..'

She had thought Beatrice's words would speak themselves, that because they were somebody else's they would have their own volition. What a fool. Penitence's tongue was patented to stumble whatever it spoke. Dumbly, she looked down at the book in her hands and closed it.

'Breathe.'

She shook her head. It wasn't the breathing. 'It's m-m-me.'

'Ah ha.' He was the play-actor again. 'But you are not you, are you? You're not poor little Pentecost or whatever you call yourself.'

Penitence, she thought miserably.

'You're a grand lady, with spirit, presence. You're cleverer than Benedick; you best him every time. Come on, Boots, you've seen great ladies in their carriages, haven't you?' He flirted his hand across his face, like a fan. 'Imagine what it's like to be one, roasting your maid, cuckolding your husband . ..' He closed his eyes. 'Jesus, I could do with a drink.' He looked down at Dogberry: 'Why don't you toodle off and get me some ale?'

'Why don't you give me the gelt?' asked Dogberry.

The actor looked back at Penitence. 'Will you wear the diamonds today? Boots, you must have imagined what it would be like.'

She most certainly had not. Contempt for the trappings of wealth had been built into her. Pentecost or whatever you call yourself. He couldn't even get her name right. But that's what she was, poor. Poor and dumb. She'd never be anything else.

She heard Dogberry say: 'Take some imagining that would. She looks like the cat dragged her in.'

'Her gentlemen like the churchy style,' called Dorinda.

But the actor was thoughtful. 'Dogberry,' he said, 'you are not the fool you look.' He peered beyond Penitence into her attic. 'Those boxes. What's in them?'

She shrugged. What does it matter?

'Open them up. We'll get rid of that, that thing you're wearing. Beatrice must dress as Beatrice.'

She fought back, defending her habiliment's moral worth. 'It's c-c-clean.'

'Also an atrocity. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but even I can't act attraction for that. Open.'

Spiritless, she dragged the first chest to the window and rummaged through it, releasing clouds of pennyroyal long turned to dust. Do this, do that. Put a hat on the monkey. He'll be wanting to paint my face next.

The clothes were a job-lot from the pawnbroker's where they had lain unclaimed until Her Ladyship bought them cheap, hoping they could be refashioned for her girls. Most had proved forty years old with tight bodices and waists impossible to alter into the flowing, modem, natural line. What was usable had already been used, the rest kept for purses or patching. To Penitence, who had never worn a colour more garish than grey, they were hideously over-bright. She chose the least gaudy thing she could see, a faded primrose partleted bodice still attached to a black skirt.

'Up. Up.' Slouching, she held it up.

'Into the light if you please.'

She shambled to the window, clutching the material to her shoulders. The actor shook his head. Below in the alley, Dogberry considered and then shook his: 'Nah.' Penitence glared at him. A sober, green jacket was rejected by the two of them, so was a more daring magenta pelisse.

The actor considered. 'It's the hair.'

'What hair?' asked Dogberry.

'Exactly. That abortion on your head. Off.'

She clutched her cap. She'd never appeared capless in public in her life. This was her best. 'It's g-g-gumm-good 1-linen.' Her hair was her worst feature. It was light yellow. Her mother had called it wilful and cropped it close in an effort to subdue its wave. Penitence had neglected it, meaning to cut it every time she was reminded of its length when she washed it, but hadn't, bundling it into her cap instead.

The play-actor lost his temper. He grabbed his sword and, holding on with one hand, swung outwards. Penitence's cap twitched off her head. Her hair, heavy and warm, fell over her face. Peering through it, she saw the actor regain his room, her cap on the tip of his sword, saw him turn and look at her.

'Rip me,' said Dogberry.

The actor put his chin on his fist. 'The blue,' he said.

Trailing from one of the boxes was an old silk shawl the colour of a peacock's neck. She put it round hers.

'Like this.' He swung his own cloak across his front from shoulder to shoulder. Penitence swung hers.

'Rip me,' said Dogberry.

'Well, well,' said the actor. 'Who'd have thought it? Have you a looking-glass? Then permit me to say "Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks." Boots, my little Galatea, thy speech shall be as fair as thy face. If we're ever released from this rat-hole, I'll make thee Empress of Cathay, princes shall fawn upon thee, thou wilt be the mistress of kings. Now then. "What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?"'

Forced to rely on Penitence's cavalry, the Model Army would have had a bad war. She was just Penitence Hurd with her hair down and a bit of old blue silk across her front. She felt exposed and silly.

The day got hotter. Dorinda got nastier. Dogberry got bored and sat down for a sleep. The actor, persistent in his good idea, waxed long on the techniques of acting, which she failed to grasp.

Eventually, she stuttered them both into an exhausted silence.

She broke it with the final admission of defeat. 'C-c-an I h- have m-my c-ca-cum-cap b-b-back, p-pp-pl-umm-please?' Her head ached and the unstopping tolling of bells expanded and contracted it with each stroke.

The play-actor slumped in his window, fingering her cap. 'Perhaps.'

'P-pl-pl-umm-pplease.'

He stood up and went to the back of his room.

I shall manage. I am no worse off than I was. Something soft fell across her shoulder. She picked it off. It wasn't her cap, it was a scrap of black satin with strings. She looked enquiringly across.

'A vizard mask. People wear them at the theatre. Put it on.

And here.' A gleaming object arced across the alley and she caught it. It was a gentleman's travelling mirror, a small silver oval embossed back and front with a coat of arms.

Penitence took both objects away to the front of her attic; to look in a mirror was still a shameful act - to be done in private, if at all. The mask was made to cover the lower half of the face, leaving only eyes and forehead exposed. There was a slit for the mouth, and a raised area to go over the nose.

Here, then, was the ultimate in deception, the capstone of guile; to put it on, the final severance from God's grace.

The example of God's grace clanged in her ears.

Suddenly, she clapped the mask to her face and tied its strings under her hair. The slipperiness of the material moulded to the warmth of her skin. At once she felt oddly concealed and powerful, as she had not since hunting days when she and Matoonas had waited in hides along the deer runs, spears at the ready.