The Vizard Mask (30 page)

Penitence turned away and went to sit in the shadows next to the empty grate in the end wall. Some part of her was connecting with what she'd just seen; the other part considered the ineffectualness of women. Women cast out, women shut up, women dying, women watching other women die. In the clarity of her depression she saw that the beds were hutches to contain creatures who'd no more control over their own lives than small animals at the mercy of weather and predators; powerless because they were ignorant, ignorant through powerlessness.

There was quiet until George came back with some keepers carrying a hurdle. Their boots made sharp, authoritative sounds on the stone floor and they were teasing each other about a card game they'd been interrupted in. Whether or not she resented the masculinity of this intrusion, one of the women by the bed suddenly screamed and threw herself at them, clawing. Within seconds the room was in pandemonium, women with children clinging to their skirts emerging from their beds to join in the attack on the men, and in some cases each other, yelling and swearing.

At the door, George pulled on a bell rope, adding clangour to the general howl. Other keepers came rushing in, carrying buckets of water which they threw indiscriminately over rioters and children alike. The speed with which the scene quietened down with no apparent ill-will on either side indicated that it was a regular occurrence. The bodies were taken away; women, wringing water from their hair and dresses, gathered up their children, went back into their hutches and once more allowed peace to descend on Flap Alley.

Penitence hauled herself out of the fireplace in which she'd taken shelter and squelched a puddled way along the beds, trying to find one that was empty, knowing it was a hopeless search, that hopelessness was all she would ever feel again, that the women prisoners' rage had come from their own hopelessness, an expression of despair so deep that it could only be expressed in hysteria.

Eventually, she went back to her spot by the fireplace, took off her wet shoes, tucked her feet under her skirt and went to sleep.

She was woken by a boot nudging her hip and a voice saying: 'What you in for?'

One of the women who'd attended the dying mother was looking down at her with the hostility of an old hand for a new recruit, a tall woman whose facial skin seemed to have been soaked too long in water before being squeezed out.

'Hundred and eight p-pounds,' Penitence told her. Her Ladyship hadn't bothered to pay off much of the mortgage, content to keep her creditor at bay with the appalling rate of interest.

'Any garnish?'

Penitence shook her head.

'You ain't having Colley's bed,' the woman told her fiercely, 'I'm in it now.' She was overtaken by a fit of coughing.

Penitence nodded wearily. She could die on the floor; it wouldn't be long in any case. Not here.

'Hungry?'

Penitence nodded again.

'Yes,' said the woman, 'and if you ain't got no garnish you'll stay hungry lessen you want to eat Whitt stew what's already gone over a goodish piece o' grass and that don't come 'til noon. You'd better take your turn at the windy.' Coughing, she pointed to where a line of women and children waited in a queue behind a grille set in the side of the fireplace wall through which came the uncertain light of dawn and the sounds of traffic. One of their number had her arms through the bars and was shouting: 'Have pity, good people. Have pity on a poor debtor and her childer.'

'Debtor,' scoffed Penitence's new acquaintance, 'only ones she's in debt to is glaziers for breaking in through too many of their windies.' She had been mollified by Penitence's compliance over the matter of the bed and now indicated that Penitence could get in it. 'A couple hours is all. Don't think you'll have it for regular.'

The palliasse on the bed's base was soaked with blood. Penitence removed it, clambered in and fell instantly asleep. She had an infinite capacity for sleep these days, dreaming dreary dreams but finding them preferable to waking life.

She was woken by hearing her name shouted. 'Hurd. Anyone here called Hurd?' She was summoned to the begging window by the queue which bad-temperedly allowed her to go to its head: 'You're asked for, and don't take all bloody day. It ain't your turn.'

A warm sun shone on Newgate Street which was already busy with be-wigged men on their way to city businesses, vendors on their way to St Paul's and the markets and wains coming in from the country blocking the egress of coaches, but all days were grey to Penitence.

Dorinda stood in the road with Benedick in her arms, swaying back and forth as people pushed past her. Seeing Penitence, she came close to the bars. 'You all right?'

'Yes.'

'Don't look it. We got another printing order — Fifth Monarchist crackpot, but his money's good and MacGregor says he can cope but we need more ink.' Her voice sank to a whisper. 'I pawned the sword.'

Penitence nodded. A woman behind her was already trying to pull her away from the window, but she held on to the bars. Dorinda looked her straight in the eye and then down at Benedick. 'See his dear little shawl?' she said. 'Ma Palmer knitted it.' Mistress Palmer had knitted it weeks ago. 'Lovely, ain't it? Rich. Feel it.' She held Benedick up to the window and Penitence's hands, apparently stroking the shawl, felt the shape of a purse and curled over it. As she did it her son's fingers gently went round one of her own and she had to shake them off so that she could transfer the purse to her sleeve. The baby's eyes widened and his mouth opened to give out a tiny mew of sound.

Sensation rushed in on Penitence then. It was as if she was seeing her son for the first time, not as something foisted on her, but a personality she had just badly hurt. Her hands went out to clutch him, but Dorinda had taken him back. 'Say bye- bye to Mumma. Say see you tomorrow.' She was bobbing Benedick's fist up and down in a farewell. The baby was still looking at his mother and as Dorinda carried him away he turned his head to keep watching her.

Oh God. The bars indented Penitence's face as she pressed against them to keep the round little head over Dorinda's shoulder in sight as the two of them dwindled into the press of the street. Every step away from her was a reproach. How could she have overlooked him all this time? How could she have spurned her son's touch for a damned purse? Where was he? She couldn't see him. Then she glimpsed Dorinda as she paused at the gate, waiting for a cart carrying planking to come through. As it jolted past a plank slid off its load and Dorinda had to skip out of its way.

But if she hadn't. Penitence's nerve-endings were no longer the exclusive property of her own body but connected to those of the morsel of humanity being taken away from her towards the Rookery, its pain now her pain magnified. A carelessly loaded plank of wood would obliterate her at the precise moment it crushed in that small skull. Love for her baby shrieked through her like a typhoon. They had to batter her hands before she would let go of the bars.

I shook him off. She felt the softness of the boneless little fingers still. Until that rejection it was as if she hadn't been aware of him, the most important thing in the world, hadn't known the diseases that could kill him or the need to stay alive so that she could protect him. This was the cat nightmare brought into the everyday; she would never be free of it.

Dorinda's chatter screamed into her ears. Fifth Monarchist crackpot. She cried out: 'Oh Jesus.' Fifth Monarchists were illegal, and so were the people who printed their sedition or blasphemy or whatever it was. They got hanged. If they caught this one, he'd be forced into revealing who'd printed his pamphlets, and then Dorinda would be arrested, and Benedick left alone. She was lacerated by the sound of weak cries from the crib where he was starving to death. Men with guns were advancing through the nightmare to shoot him and she couldn't get to him in time.

'No good giving way, duck.' The bed-owner put an arm round her shoulders. 'Nice little fella like that, he's better off out there. I know. My last died in here.'

Penitence stared at her. In this new state she'd woken to, it amazed her that a woman could say such a thing without screaming. 'What's your name?'

'Bet.'

'I've got to get out of here, Bet.'

What might have been a laugh turned into a fit of coughing. Ineffectually, Penitence patted the woman on the back, then guided her to her bed and helped her in. She sat down on the edge: 'Help me, Bet. I've got to get out of here.' Now that her brain was working, a new horror had manifested itself. Her creditor was entitled to repossess the Cock and Pie in lieu of payments. The spectre of Dorinda walking the streets with Benedick in her arms and nowhere to shelter flashed in a vivid image before her mind's eye. 'I've got to get out.'

'Ain't we all,' said Bet, flatly. 'Well, there's the silver bridge to the outside for them as can afford the toll.'

'P-pay the debt, you mean.'

'Ain't just the debt,' Bet told her. 'There's exit money. Them bastard keepers need garnishing afore they'll let you out, debt paid or no. Ain't you got nobody to hark-ye?'

Perhaps she could borrow from the Reverend Boreman or the apothecary. If they'd let her develop the printing business she could pay them back in time. Or she could throw in with the Tippins and steal it. She'd do anything. But to do it she needed to be outside.

No, Bet told her, nobody from Flap Alley was allowed out on parole. 'You want to get yourself a place in Press Yard. Them hoi polloi get privileges if they garnish. Let out on day passes, them. Only way out for us is when we done our time, or if we get turned off.'

Bet's husband, it appeared, had been 'turned off', hanged, for theft. She herself was serving a four-year sentence for assaulting the neighbour who'd informed on him. Apart from wondering how a woman could risk such consequences for herself and her children — Bet had three left from the Plague, all of them struggling to survive on the outside - merely to avenge a husband, Penitence paid her little attention. She was looking around her with eyes suddenly sharpened to danger, taking in the slopping chamber pots under every bed, the sores on the children's mouths, the coughing, the woman who was vomiting, the old woman in the next bed gasping for breath. Even life in Dog Yard had not prepared her for this place. It would kill her. Just breathing its air was a death sentence. More important, it would kill Benedick by extension. She could trust nobody, not even Dorinda, with his survival without her. I've got to get out.

'How do I get a room in P-Press Yard?' she asked. If Press Yard was the only starting place for her release, then to Press Yard she must go.

'I'm due at the windy.' Bet was scrambling out of the bed to get to the queue at the window. 'Midday's 'a best time.'

Penitence clutched her arm. 'How do I get into P-Press Yard?'

'You aren't half green,' said Bet, impatiently. 'Did George do his you-don't-like-me?'

'Yes.'

'There y'are then. Get out my way.'

Penitence followed her as she barged to the head of the queue. 'What d-do you mean?'

Bet put her arms through the bars of the window. 'Of your charity, lady,' she whined, 'remember the poor debtors. I got six childer starving, my lord. George is all right, is George. Remember a poor debtor, lady. I wish as he'd ask me for garnish but I ain't high-sniffing enough for him. In debt for sixpence, my lord, that's all. Remember a poor debtor.'

The woman behind Bet, who'd allowed her precedence at the window, chimed in: 'George offered for you? That's luck, that is. No harm in George.'

There was approval from the rest of the queue. As a purchaser in the sexual favours market, George apparently ranked high. Penitence was regarded as fortunate. 'He's more one for the lady-ins.'

'Just lay back and tell him you hate him and he's happy.'

'An' he delivers. Not like that bloody Pudsey.'

The conversation became a discussion on which keeper liked to do what to whom and for how much. Using their bodies to gain privileges from the keepers was as normal in Flap Alley as begging from passers-by. They might have been discussing fat-stock prices. Penitence left them and climbed back into Bet's bed while it was empty.

I've got to get out. Cautiously, huddling against the wall, she manoeuvred Dorinda's purse from her sleeve and opened its string. Two crown-pieces. Not even enough to rent a Press Yard room for a week. She'd have to beg, borrow, or steal the rest. Where was the crime in theft? Newgate was a royal prison; the King and his authorities were prepared to let it be run by thieves more rapacious than any the Rookery had ever turned out.

She flopped back on to the bed, allowing her thoughts to run on highway robbery and associated crimes, unaware of a hand sidling from the bed behind her until it snatched the purse away from her side. Yelling, she scrambled after it but the thief, a skinny little girl, had am with it to a group of women. In the centre of it was Bet. She faced Penitence with a sly hostility. 'Forgot to tell Your Ladyship, didn't 1' she said, 'but the rule is if one of us's got gorse, we all got gorse.' The group sniggered.

Penitence charged. 'Give it back. It's mine.' Two of the bigger women grabbed her arms and held her while she struggled.

'Ours,' corrected Bet. 'Orders of women prisoners' tribunal. Let's see what the Lord sent.' Her spiny fingers delved into the purse and came out with the crown-pieces. Two coach- wheels.'

'Flanders fucking fortune,' said one of the group, appreciatively.

Without taking her eyes off Penitence, Bet handed the silver pieces to the thin young thief. 'Sary, you take these to the tap room and you tell 'em as Bet wants enough pints of Geneva for all Flap Alley. No rag-water, neither. Best Geneva. Order of a tribunal. On our Ladyship here. Off you go.'

Penitence stopped struggling as she watched the child run off. That they were going to spend money on gin which might have bought food or medicine was almost as bad as the theft itself. Almost. She took up her old position by the fireplace and watched Sary run back and forth with relays of blackjacks, watched the women gulp the spirit and pour it down their children - even babies were given sips — watched as it sent them silly or quarrelsome or comatose. She watched little girls and boys stagger in circles, giggling, until they fell down.