The Vizard Mask (37 page)

The usual teams of men with buckets of water, long-handled fire-hooks and hand-squirts tried dealing with outbreaks as they occurred and then gave up. The only way to fight a fire of these proportions was by wholesale demolition of the houses in its path, and Sir Thomas Bludworth was too concerned about the compensation which would have to be paid to give the order which would have saved London.

By the sunny, blowy, Sunday morning, crowds of frightened Londoners were evacuating their homes, flinging their goods into boats moored along the north bank, clambering down the steps to the waterside. Some people stayed in their houses until those, too, caught fire, and then ran in panic. Bewildered pigeons remaining overlong on the rooftops before taking flight fell with singed wings as the flames whipped a hundred feet into the air.

Refugees, Aphra Behn and her family among them, abandoned the City in terror. Some swam the river, others silted up at the gates or queued to cross the mercifully unburned Bridge. The price of a cart went up to £40.

Not until Monday, when the King and his brother James, Duke of York, took charge, was there any decisive action.

By then Aphra and the Johnsons were safely ensconced at the Cock and Pie and, like the rest of the Rookery, had a grandstand view of London as it burned to death.

Smuts stung their eyes, but they couldn't look away from the corona of near-invisible flame that shimmered above the City. Smoke streamed from it over the countryside like the hair of a giant hag. More appalling even than the sight was the noise, the huge, self-satisfied roar of fire punctuated by the crash of avalanching buildings, the percussion of explosions that shook the balcony they stood on as seamen, drafted in from the dockyards, began the systematic destruction of whole streets with gunpowder.

The history, oh, the history,' cried Aphra.

Penitence was remembering her walks with Peter Simkin through the carved gateways into the Middle Ages. His ghost, like Aphra, would weep for the streets that had seen Chaucer's pilgrims set off for Canterbury, and cheered Elizabeth's coronation procession.

There were no tears in her eyes. Aphra's brother, like some of the Rookery men, had gone to help the evacuation and came back with the news that, though five-sixths of the City was lost, nobody had yet reported a death.

'And Newgate?' she asked him.

'Gutted.'

Cleansed. The past of a city was burning, much of it as filthy as her own in it had been. The condemned cell was cauterized by flame. She and London, the two of them, could start again.

She put her arm round the weeping Aphra and went on watching the holocaust.

'Good,' she whispered.

Chapter 4

Riding yard alley led from the Strand end of Catherine Street and was surprisingly narrow. 'Is this it?' asked Penitence, dubiously.

'I know, don't I?' said Dorinda. 'It's the back way in. The front's off Drury Lane, though it ain't much wider. But wait 'til you get inside.'

She led the way, picking up her skirts to avoid a dead cat just visible in the shadows cast by a thin, wintry sun. They followed. 'One went to the old Cockpit, of course,' said Aphra, stung by Dorinda's familiarity with the surroundings, 'but one's been too occupied since they built this one.'

You tell him that,' sneered Dorinda, over her shoulder. '"One's so sorry, Sir Tom, but prison's kept one so busy.'"

'Stop it,' said Penitence, automatically. Dorinda's persistent carping at Aphra Behn made home life wearing, and life at the Cock and Pie was wearing enough. The place was nearly as full as it had been in the days of Her Ladyship. The attics were the home of the Johnsons, MacGregor had moved into Job's old room to be near his press, which was in the kitchen, and Mistress Palmer now carried on her laundry business from the scullery, because of the proximity of the well.

It was paradise compared with Newgate, but on the days when Benedick was teething, and the press was thumping, and MacGregor was shouting at Peter Johnson because he wouldn't help when there was printing work to be done — not that there was much — and Dorinda was tormenting Aphra who was trying to write, and Mrs Johnson had eluded their vigilance and slipped down to the Ship for a bottle, and she didn't know where the next meal for them all was to come from ...

'He is already aware of it,' said Aphra, with dignity. 'I wrote to him at the time. One is well acquainted with Sir Thomas.'

She's nervous or she wouldn't be answering back. Usually Aphra was patient with Dorinda.

Penitence was herself nervous. She had been subjected to Puritan teaching for too long to feel easy about entering the temple of sin which they were now approaching.

'Didn't get you out, though, did he?' Dorinda stopped before a dusty green doorway and addressed the hulking figure lounging in it: 'These are friends of mine, Jacko.'

'How's the orange business, Dorry?' By borrowing the necessary money from Sam Bryskett and employing the Tippins to put the fear of God into the then incumbent, Dorinda had bought the orange concession at the King's Theatre and was doing well with it. Such food as appeared on the table at the Cock and Pie came mainly from her small profits.

'Shockin'. Let us pass, then.'

'Can't be did,' said Jacko. 'You're all right, but Sir Tom's give orders. Your friends stay outside. They're rehearsing in there.'

Dorinda's tone sweetened: 'Jacko, my little quiffer, if you don't let us in I'll have to tell Sir Tom as I saw you scratch your neck three times when you was admitting yesterday.'

'You wouldn't.'

'I ballocking would.'

The doorman sighed. 'Pass, friends.'

Inside the theatre they were in a dark corridor with many doors. Aphra was curious: 'Why shouldn't he scratch?'

'He's paid to take admittance money,' said Dorinda. 'Every time he scratches his neck he slips a sixpence down the back of his jacket.'

Penitence's nose was twitching. If she'd been a dog she would have been casting about. She stumbled through the gloom after Dorinda, almost stepping on the girl's heels. Overriding prejudice, turning it into excitement, was this vibration, this wonderful smell, at once strange and at the same time wooing her.

And then she was there. She stood in the doorway to the pit. To her right, rows of empty benches, raked at an angle of fifteen degrees, led in darkness to the steeper rake of the amphitheatre. Above that were the boxes - she got the impression of gilt leather.

Dorinda guided Aphra towards Sir Thomas Killigrew's office, but Penitence fell on to a bench and stayed there, her hands gripping it.

Ahead and slightly above there was light and men's voices, figures moving. She was enveloped in a smell compounded of orange peel, baize, fish-glue, old scent, tobacco and dust. She fixed her eyes on the light and the stage came into focus.

The front of it made an apron. On that, further back, was the proscenium arch formed by two great golden statues of Neptune on marble pedestals. Its top was a frieze of clouds and nymphs and cherubs that seemed to hold up swathes of red velvet curtain, the tasselled ends of which hung down behind the sea-gods. In the centre of the frieze the royal arms blazed in gold and silver.

Her eye was drawn further into the square of light. It was a forest. Not a forest with wolverines or elk or undergrowth. Here all was clear and sharp. It was a dryads' forest; she couldn't see them but she knew they were there, hiding among the flat, painted trees which stretched back in cunning perspective to a far-off grove. It didn't seem odd that its sunlight came from banks of chandeliers. From that moment she was lost. The god of this temple asked for her soul and she gave it. A thousand whispered screams reminded her that this was the Devil's chapel, the pit of artifice. But it was the artifice that transfixed her. The light which fell so lovingly on these glades had never fallen on sea or land, but it had coloured the most beautiful of her dreams. Outside, a million miles away, it was grey winter; here, encapsulated in a frame, was summer, and it always would be.

The hair stood on her neck. She knew this place as she had known Henry King. The essence of the man was here, or he had carried the essence of theatre in himself. She'd been in exile from this sumptuousness, this unbearable delight of childhood. Like a turtle sensing the sea, she yearned towards it.

Here and there a few people on the benches read by tapers. Above the stage a man was knocking at the curtain mechanism with a hammer while below, in a fenced-off part of the pit, a violin tuned up.

Voices came and went from the flats at the side of the stage, somebody was swearing. Penitence didn't notice them any more than birdcalls or a breeze rustling in the leaves of a true forest; they fitted. She wasn't even surprised that an actor on stage was speaking dearly familiar lines: 'Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you ...'

Penitence's lips moved in synchronization. '. .. And though you know my inwardness and love is very much unto the prince and Claudio, yet, by mine honour ... is that bloody woman here yet?'

A head popped out from behind a flat. 'No she ain't.'

Happily, Penitence settled herself to watch this new play.

The actor flung out his arms. 'Where is the Athanasian slut? How can I make love to a bloody vacuum? You read it, John.'

'I haven't got time,' said John's head, crossly, 'I've got—'

'Then find somebody who has. Why should I waste my breath if the harlots who pose as actresses in this ballum rancum can't be bothered—'

'All right, all right,' grumbled John's head. Its body joined it as it limped to the front, peering, and called to the prone figure of a woman on the bench behind Penitence: 'Knipp, you wouldn't...?'

'No, I bloody wouldn't.' Knipp didn't look up from her script. 'I've got to learn Sabina by this afternoon, so cock off.'

John raised his eyes to Heaven, then cast them hopelessly round the silent figures on the other benches, finally coming to rest on Penitence. 'Here, you.'

Penitence looked around her.

'You. In the cap. Can you read?' 'Me?'

'Oh, for God's sake. You. Can you read? Then come up here.'

It was inevitable; fitting. She was going up the steps. She was under the lights. John grabbed her arm and led her to where the actor had sat himself down, his head on his knees, his arms over his head. 'Now then, dear,' John said, as if she were a baby but directing his look, which was venomous, at the hunched figure on the floor. 'That gentleman there is an actor, believe it or not.' A book was pushed into her hands. 'If he ever stands up I want you to read to him all the little words that come after the name Beat. See here? Beat. When it comes to the name Bene, he'll talk. All right, dear? All right, Kynaston?' He went away.

Kynaston sighed and stood up. He was tall with fine-boned head and hands. His hair, which was his own, hung in a beautiful wave over his eyes and he pushed it back. 'Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?'

By the mercy of God nobody was looking at her. Even so she stuttered. 'Yea, and I w-w-will w-weep a w-while longer.'

Kynaston covered his eyes. Why?' he asked. 'Why me?' But he kept on. 'I will not desire that.. .'

Put the mask on. You can join the cavalry. 'You have no reason. I do it f-freely.'

Kynaston was concentrating on his moves and not looking at her, so gradually she improved. I can do this. There was a 'p' coming up in a couple of lines. Breathe. 'It were as possible for me to say ...' Did it. '... but believe me not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.'

Her voice became stronger as it hit the stride Henry King had taught her; she could hear it issue out into the auditorium and thought how nice it sounded.

Kynaston, too, was gathering momentum. 'Come, bid me do anything for thee.'

She gave it what she'd given it on the balcony of the Cock and Pie. 'Kill Claudio.'

'Ha, not for the wide world.' He was a very different Benedick from Henry King, but he was feeding the same anger.

'O! that I were a man,' hissed Beatrice. 'O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.'

'Hear me, Beatrice ...'

She rampaged into the 'Princes and counties!' speech without a single misplaced 'p', then Benedick had turned back into Kynaston who was kissing her hand, bidding her farewell and saying: Very nice, my dear, thank you. You can go back now.'

As she shambled back into exile, she heard him tell John: 'Get her to do something about that walk. She moves like a bloody horse.'

The man above the stage was still hammering, the violin still tuning up. But it had all changed. Taking her seat again, she thought she heard Knipp hiss: 'He wanted a read-through, dear, not a bloody audition', but when she looked round the actress's eyes were fixed on her book.

Then Dogberry, Verges and Sexton came on for the discovery scene and the Dogberry was so funny she gave a yelp before she could clap her hands over her mouth. From then on he played to her, until Dorinda tapped her on the shoulder and she had to follow, still looking back, out into the corridor. 'It's not what I expected,' she babbled, 'and yet it is. Oh, Dorry, I've had such a lovely time.'

To her surprise, Dorinda kissed her. 'Ain't been able to say that in a bit, have you?'

No. In the minutes, hours, she'd been here she'd been given a childhood, somebody else's childhood, full of presents and wonder.

Aphra ain't though.'

She came back to earth. 'Won't he take her play?'

'Won't even read it. The old gut-fucker's pretending he's never met her before. I reckon he's ashamed he got her into the spying business and then wouldn't help her.' Aphra in trouble had become one of Dorinda's own.

A rich, deep voice rolled out of an open door. 'Madam, plays I have got. What I lack are audiences. D'ye know how many attended The Slighted Maid yesterday, even with the damned masque?'

A large fat man with a brutal jaw was sweeping a twittering Aphra out into the corridor. 'Two hundred and four. Two paltry hundred - most of those with their knuckles brushing the ground — and four. Twenty-one pounds and ninepence, madam. From which rent will take five pounds fourteen shillings leaving fifteen pounds six shillings and ninepence for running costs, not to mention actors who insist on being paid even though they couldn't make a goose hiss. Don't talk to me of new plays, madam. We're having to recoup with Much Ado tomorrow. Thank God for Shakespeare, I say.'