The Vizard Mask (34 page)

When Dorinda brought Benedick on a visit after Penitence's first encounter with George, she was reluctant to hold him. 'I feel so dirty,' she said, 'I feel dirty all the time. Didn't you?'

'Not after that old bastard,' said Dorinda of her grandfather. 'You'll get used to it, Prinks. I never had a choice and you ain't neither if you don't want to go back to the Alley. And you don't. My ma died there.'

'Did she?' Penitence had never heard Dorinda mention her mother.

'I think it was my ma,' said Dorinda, doubtfully.

Penitence knew she would never get used to it, and didn't. On the second, third and fourth nights when the turnkey came for his rent, she was vomiting even as he led her to the empty cell which, for some reason, he felt to be appropriate for their assignations. She was grateful he didn't insist on using the room she lived in and equally found the condemned cell appropriate in that what went on between them there was in itself a form of death. But a better form of death in that she passed through it and was alive again.

She had the choice of going mad or rationalizing her harlotry. 'Better than death,' she kept telling herself. 'Better than Flap Alley.' It was a form of professionalism; she couldn't do as Dorinda and the others at the Cock and Pie had done and regard whoring as a job like any other and forget about it when she was off duty, but the knowledge that it was essential if she was to stay alive stopped it overwhelming her.

Dorinda was helpful on procedure. 'Oh, a fumbler,' she said as Penitence reluctantly described George's sexual proclivities. 'That's easy. Brim him early.'

It added to her self-contempt to employ the art of early- brimming - playing more elaborately to his fantasy, embroidering to absurdity the character of the despising aristocrat, allowing her disgust to display as he fumbled and sucked at her breasts — but it was so effective that sometimes his ejaculation occurred before they reached the bed, and he was too old and usually too busy to insist on another turn.

She became skilled at it. It took on the aspect of work, a filthy job which could be ameliorated by expertise. 'Better than Flap Alley' became an incantation.

She had discovered the truth women in her position had known through the ages: there is no fate worse than death when you have a child to live for and when death is the only alternative.

She refused to allow the gaoler humanity since he had shown her none, but she had to admit he played by the rules.

His power over her was absolute; he could have summoned her to the condemned cell every time he came on duty, but he'd reckoned the cost of her room over Press Yard to be worth £20 a week to her and the price of her service to him at £10 and, on this accounting, only called her out twice in every seven days.

Since he was a permanent night gaoler, they rarely ran into each other during the day, but on the one occasion when they did, his thumbs-up and winks sent her into a frenzy of fear that everybody would guess their relationship. Sensitized, she read into the other gaolers' every smirk that they were aware of what was going on. She was sure that Aphra did, although her friend never mentioned it; the woman's especial kindness on days after the nights in the condemned cell suggested she had heard Penitence's dragging footsteps follow George's excitedly pattering boots past her cell door.

She was paying for her room not just with her body, but with her youth. Her face took on the expression of one who in the extremes of need had asked for God's intervention and, receiving none, would never ask for it again.

The Assizes were still trying to catch up on lists interrupted by the Plague, so that the numbers hanged on execution days tended to be large, while spectators, deprived of their amusement for so long, turned up in their thousands. Aphra's mother and brother followed the carts to Tyburn and on their next visit were full of detail which Penitence refused to hear. She didn't want to know how long it had taken Mary Moders to die. What interested her was Peter Johnson's account of how the Ordinary's 'confessions' had sold. 'He'd got six or more barkers shouting 'em at thruppence a sheet and they went like hot cakes.'

'He ordered eight reams p-printed,' said Penitence, who'd taken the trouble to find out.

'And they all sold,' said Master Johnson. 'You never seen such a crowd. There was more died in the crush than on the gallows. Gawd knows how much he'll make from Swaveley's confession if he gets it. That'll fetch 'em. There ain't been a pressing in years. He could sell that at fi'pence.'

'Sixpence with a nice woodcut,' said Penitence, thoughtfully.

When Mrs and Master Johnson had gone, she said: 'Aphra, you know my printing press .. . and you know Swaveley ...'

Aphra was ahead of her: 'How many sheets in a ream?'

Penitence smiled. 'Five hundred and sixteen.'

'So he sold ... what's eight times five hundred and sixteen?'

With difficulty they worked out that the Ordinary had, not counting the cost of paper and barkers, raked in an astonishing £51 14s 4d in the course of one afternoon. They got carried away with calculation: if they printed ten reams ... if they sold at sixpence a copy ... if they had a nice woodcut ... if Swaveley would agree.

'Will he?'

'It would be base for us to do it if he will not,' said Aphra, firmly. 'On the other hand, he is intent on his course, one is favourable to him, and one can wipe the floor with the Ordinary when it comes to syntax. Did I tell you I was writing a play?'

'Yes,' said Penitence. She still didn't believe it. 'Aphra, what we'd want is not so much literature as sprightliness.'

'One can certainly be sprightlier than the Ordinary.'

Penitence sat back. This unsuspected business sense of Aphra's, while most welcome, was still surprising in such a fantastical woman. 'I thought you'd despise the enterprise.'

'Dear one,' said Aphra, 'one does not intend to pass one's life in Newgate. One intends to get on. Ah, if one could live on love for love. But the world is against it, alas.' She patted Penitence's knee. 'There are occasions when we poor women must stoop, however against our nature, if we are to win our freedom.'

Penitence felt tears come into her eyes. 'Thank you,' she said.

In a way it was as much a fantasy as one of Aphra's. She didn't really think it would succeed. It was men who thought up schemes to make money. Women didn't initiate things: they reacted. Everything that had happened to her had been in response to an act of God or man. Her enterprise in liberating the printing press had only come about because it had been going begging ... it was hopeless, They would foil the plan, whoever They were, it wouldn't succeed.

But it began to. Swaveley said he'd be damned if he confessed, but he'd tell Mrs Behn his life story if she wanted to publish it, and proceeded to do so with a frankness, especially on the subject of his sexual prowess, which raised a flush on even Aphra's cheeks.

'On horseback?' repeated Penitence incredulously. 'You can't.'

'He assured me that he did,' said Aphra. 'And performed the same exploit with the lady in the next coach he robbed. He tells me both were willing. And enjoyed it.'

'B-Bartholomew me.'

'Exactly,' said Aphra. 'Master Swaveley's life may be short but it has most certainly been full. And, one imagines, will sell.'

'It'll burn the paper,' said Penitence. 'We'd better print on tin.'

While Penitence visited the cell of the little man who had complained of the pork in the dining-hall and turned out to be an engraver, Aphra demanded, and got, an interview with Newgate's Keeper for permission to attend Swaveley's hearing at the Old Bailey the next day.

She came back fuming. 'The nauseous old fool said i'faith and diddums a delicate young thing like oneself would faint at such things as I should see there.'

'So you said ...?'

'One told him the late Mr Behn had fought for the return of English justice and it was a poor thing if his widow was to be denied the chance of seeing it in action.'

Aphra, Penitence noticed, used the late Mr Behn like an umbrella, wielding him when necessary, raising him to protect herself from charges against her respectability, and forgetting him when he wasn't of use.

'Did he fight for the return of English justice?'

'That's neither here nor there,' said Aphra. 'That they shall not see it because they are women is the point.'

'But the Keeper refused permission.'

'Oh, he gave it,' said Aphra. 'Eventually. It's the obturation one had to fight through to get it that puts one out of countenance.'

She came back from the Old Bailey pale and feebly flapping. 'The flies, my dear, and the people.' Penitence had to fetch her a restorative from the tap room before she could give her account.

Swaveley had persisted in his refusal to plead and the judge had passed his sentence. 'You, Richard Swaveley, shall be sent back to the prison from whence you come and lie naked on the earth, without litter, rushes or raiment save that for decency, and one arm shall be drawn with a cord to one quarter, the other arm to another quarter and in the same manner let it be done with your legs, and let there be laid upon your body iron and stone as much as you can bear or more, till you die.'

'Should we be doing this?'

But the Ordinary was going to, even if they didn't. Unaware of competition, the man was boasting that he was preparing for publication an Awful Warning as Evinced by the Wicked Life of John Swaveley, Highwayman.

'He'll make his up,' said Aphra. 'Ours will be the real thing. And Awfuller.'

The anti-pork engraver, whose name turned out to be Clarins, agreed to wait for his fee until the bills should be sold, but they couldn't expect the same patience from the paper suppliers who would want cash on delivery.

MacGregor and Dorinda came in for a consultation, leaving Benedick in the care of Mistress Palmer. 'We made a wee profit from the Fifth Monarchist madman,' MacGregor said, 'but not enough to buy ten reams, leave alone the ink. Have ye no more assets to sell, Penitence? I'd pawn my pipes, but the dear things are long gone, long gone.'

'While we're on the subject,' said Penitence, 'there's to be no more p-printing for Fifth Monarchist or any other madmen. We don't want trouble from the authorities.'

'We'll maybe get it anyway,' said MacGregor, examining the confessions of James Spiggot and Mary Moders. 'This was set by Catnatch of Seven Dials. He's a licensed printer. We're not.'

'Our bills won't carry our name.'

'Aye, maybe, but we'll be needing barkers with a good turn of speed not to be caught.'

Penitence's eye met Dorinda's. Together they said: 'Tip- pins.'

MacGregor nodded. 'Ye'll no' catch the Tippin lads. But there'll be precious little to catch if we don't get the siller.'

There was silence as they racked their brains.

'Oh, that one hadn't been forced to sell one's rings,' said Aphra.

'Oh, if one had kept one's ballocking diadem.' Dorinda was jealous of Penitence's friendship with Aphra Behn and mocked her continually, though Aphra herself took no notice. 'Here,' she said, throwing something into Penitence's lap, 'why not sell that? You paid enough for it.'

It was a silver oval. A gentleman's embossed travelling mirror.

Damn.

She had put it away in the attic and tried to forget it, like everything else about him. The hurt and anger at his manner of leaving had redoubled, tripled, at finding herself carrying his baby, to say nothing of the realization that, by the act of bearing the child, she was, in the eyes of the world at least, the whore he thought her to be.

She'd railed against it over and over. 'It's unfair.'

Dorinda had shrugged. 'Fairness ain't life's speciality.'

They had tried to abort the baby by every way Dorinda knew. On her instructions, Penitence had drunk gin, taken hot baths and jumped from the clerestory - ending up with a hangover, a sprained ankle and still pregnant.

'Old Ma Perkins over in the Cut used to do it for us with a knitting needle,' Dorinda said, 'but the Plague got her.'

It was as well this option was closed to Penitence because otherwise she would have taken it. She was desperate; she

didn't know how to support herself, let alone a child. She was ashamed and frightened. Badly she wanted Her Ladyship, except that the thought that she was following her mother's path down to Hell loaded her with such depression that she had moved into the fog which was only now beginning to disperse.

Her one advantage had been that she was among the sinners of the Old World rather than the saints of the New who would have cast her out, as they had her mother. The Rookery didn't give a damn that she was unmarried; most of its mothers were unmarried. Indeed, it made her more one of their own, and, with the occasional nudge and wink, it supported her in a way for which she was to be grateful to the end of her days.

Now, regarding the mirror in her lap, she found that she could tolerate the memory of the actor. She could hardly blame him for giving way that night to a passion against which she herself had been helpless, and of which she had been as much an instigator as he was. And as for his persistence in thinking her a prostitute ... well, he'd had plenty to go on, and she'd never been able to tell him she wasn't. And I am now, anyway.

She remained still for so long that MacGregor took up the looking-glass and opened it. 'Ah, Master King,' he said, to the portrait inside, 'I wonder what's happened to you, laddie. I liked ye fine. You gave us joy.'

'Some of us more than others,' said Dorinda, tartly.

Joy. But perhaps MacGregor was right to use the word. Her very speech was the actor's gift. Like her son.

One day she might even forgive him.

MacGregor bit the edge. 'Fine siller,' he said. 'Aye, the bauble will fetch a good penny or two.'

Aphra Behn stretched out a limp hand. 'May I?' She looked at the portrait and her eyes widened. 'Did you say "King"?'

She knows him. Suddenly Penitence could bear no more discussion of the man. She hadn't got over him that much. Find out later.

She took the mirror and handed it across to Dorinda. 'Sell it.' She could trust Dorry to get the best price, whereas though MacGregor was better than he used to be and turning out to be a good printer, his money still tended to transmute itself into ale.