The Vizard Mask (39 page)

And refusing Killigrew meant dismissal from this Eden. Already he'd spoiled it; when he was around she hid herself as well as she could among the other walkers, full of tension until he'd gone. But she still turned up because she couldn't stay away. She raged against the vulnerability which put women like her at the mercy of men like George and Killigrew. But if her body was the only asset she had, why not use it? So the Serpent whispered to Penitence Hurd, and she listened.

The gloss would have tarnished anyway; behind the stage there was overcrowding and frequent ill-temper. Gods and goddesses materializing so wondrously into the light looked ridiculous when seen from under the stage wobbling upwards towards the traps with Percy and Hobbs, the stagehands, sweating and swearing as they pulled the ropes.

However, Penitence's was a true marriage; romance went but love and respect took its place. It satisfied the final remnants of her Puritanism that the illusions against which the likes of the Reverend Block had railed were born out of professionalism and sheer hard work. And talent. Offstage the King's players exemplified all the petty sins — and some not so petty - that human flesh was heir to. On stage they joined the immortals. When she wasn't 'walking', Penitence spent her time in the wings, watching Kynaston, who had been standing beside her seconds before complaining querulously of a draught, transform to greatness, or Lacy bring magnificence to a weakly written speech, or foul-mouthed Knipp reduce an audience to tears with her pathos, or 'Scum' Goodman — a comedian who hadn't earned his nickname lightly — time a line and a wink with the accuracy of a champion archer.

She forgave them their sins and sillinesses offstage for what they did on it. Hart's vanity, for instance, made him ridiculous - Hart thought nobody was greater than Hart - yet watching him as Cyrus, displaying a majesty that could have taught emperors how to behave, she believed him.

She studied him and the other chief players during a performance, listening to inflection and timing, increasing a knowledge she seemed to have been born with — and longed to apply.

Every night she prayed to Thespis, her new Almighty, to give her a part, but Much Ado, always a crowd-puller, was put on three times in the course of three months without any of the actresses in it breaking a leg, or even catching a cold. Only John Downes, the prompter, in his surly way, was helping her dramatic education. He insisted she turn up an hour before each performance so that he could teach her to walk, sit, pick up a glass, wield a fan, project her voice to the gallery, sing. He'd even begun giving her fencing lessons, which mystified her.

'Balance,' he told her, curtly, when she asked why. 'And you'll never play Penthesilea if you can't use a sword.'

'I'll never play Penthesilea anyway,' she said, fishing. 'Nobody here notices me, except you.'

'I'm not bloody surprised,' he said, 'the way you lunge. You're not casting for trout. Now lunge.' She got nothing out of him. He'd been an actor in the days of Charles I. He was as old as Killigrew, but leaner and without the lust. In a rare confidence, he told her he'd once met Shakespeare's brother.

'What was he like? What did he say Shakespeare was like?'

'Couldn't remember much, witless old fart.'Like all actors in the Civil War, Hart among them, he'd fought for the King, receiving a wound that had finished his stage career. But the theatre took care of its own. No actor, however old or decrepit, wandered the streets begging his bread. John more than earned his: he was prompter, he copied out parts, hired walkers, and stagehands, trained them, ordered the meals, and made sure before he went home that the candle-snuffer had put out every flame in the building — including the stove which warmed the back of the auditorium in winter. Penitence doubted if the theatre would have stayed vertical without him. Since his efforts went unremarked, she also doubted whether the pains he was taking to fit her for the stage would bear fruit.

She was wrong. After a performance in May of Flora's Vagaries she came offstage with the other walkers and John put a scrap of paper in her hand: 'All right,' he said, 'I got you to walk like a human being, let's see if you can talk like one.'

'It's a part?'

'It's a line.'

'Oh, John. Thank you.' She read it. '"Pray spare her, Your Majesty.'" She read the cue. 'I speak this to ... King Lear?'

'It ain't Shakespeare's,' said John bitterly. 'Some scribbler's adapted his into a comedy.' He had no high opinion of authors. 'Said he was rescuing the spars of Lear. I didn't know it was shipwrecked.'

In her excitement, Penitence didn't care if the author had put in song and dance - actually, he had. That night the Cock and Pie turned critic as Penitence practised in its salon: 'P-pray spare her, Your Majesty. P-pray spare her, Your Majesty. P- pray spare her, Your Majesty.'

'I'd leave out the praying bit,' said Dorinda. 'Just spare her.'

'Why does it begin with a "p"?' moaned Penitence. 'Why? Why?' Benedick, tottering over the floor towards her, fell over and she picked him up. 'Your mama wanted to earn you some money, yes she did, and she can't say the first word right, no she can't.''You said all them words lovely that night on the balcony,' said Mistress Palmer.

'And will again,' said Aphra. They all looked at her, unused to hearing her stern. 'You were rescuing the Brysketts' child that night, Penitence. Next week you will be rescuing your own.'

Breathe. 'Pray spare her, Your Majesty,' said Penitence.

The Cock and Pie applauded.

For the first two acts of The English King - her line came in the third — Penitence was more aware of the audience than at any time so far; walkers were generally kept at a distance from it at the back of the set. She had, in any case, been too occupied with her own moves and in watching the actors, to concern herself with how they were being received, relying on John's dictum: 'If they don't throw things, it's a success.'

Now, because for the space of five words its attention would be on her, she became alive to the creature beyond the chandeliers and footlights.

Dr Rhodes, the author who had been good enough to rescue Shakespeare and his Lear, had paid Killigrew to put the play on and packed the benches with friends and admirers, most of them new to the theatre. Penitence, peering through the curtain before it went up, saw the pit full of citizens dressed in Sunday best, gaping at the prostitutes in their vizard masks who hoped to be mistaken for young ladies, and the young ladies in their masks giggling with their beaux and hoping they wouldn't be.

The musicians behind their spiked rail were tuning up just below the stage. Dorinda strolled the benches, selling her oranges. The lemonade girl had lit the chandelier in her kiosk beside the entrance door and was doing brisk business, though not as brisk as her rival selling hot Burgundian. Servants who were saving seats for their masters were romping and quarrelling. Aphra was in one of the boxes, now such an accepted part of theatre furniture she no longer had to hide.

A hand pulled Penitence away. 'Get off,' said John Downes, wrathfully, 'that's unprofessional.'

'It looks a good quiet house.'

He was gloomy. 'Don't wager on it. The court's back at Whitehall.'

'Do you think the King will come?'

'Not for this hocus. But the young buggers who attend him might. Your friend's bill could fetch 'em.' Aphra, with gritted teeth, had written a description of the play that could have dragged in a Puritan.

Waiting behind the prompt door with her fellow-walkers and Nelly Gwynn, who was playing Cordelia, Penitence practised her breathing and the technique of metamorphosis she had used as a child to escape from the restrictions of home and fly as an eagle upriver to the Indian camp.

The chatter from the auditorium fell away, the violins and trumpets muted to a hum. She altered herself to her part, thinking herself smaller, a little thing, admiring, adoring the mistress whose sisters treated her so wickedly. It didn't work as effectively as usual; that she was to speak into that maw out front obtruded itself around the edges. It came to her that, if she was to be an actress at all, part of her would have to be in touch with that space and respond to it.

Lacy, who was playing the King, finished the prologue.

'Here we go, my cockies, Decus et Dolor,' said Gwynn and they were on.

The author's claque was polite, enjoying Gwynn's pert performance, and the juggler, and the spirits rising through the traps, and the thunder. Penitence silently emoted for all she was worth.

It wasn't until Act II, Scene ii that noise from the pit obtruded itself on her notice. Loud, careless voices were asking where they should sit, demanding that citizens move up, shouting whoo-hoo at Dorinda and the masks. 'They're here,' breathed Mrs Warner, next to Penitence. 'Damn 'em.'

It was one of Lacy's big scenes — bravely he ranted on as protests came up from the musicians' pit and a heavily powdered face adorned with patches appeared between two footlights, its periwig raised at the front in a pile of curls like a hat. 'Peep-bo.' Cheered by his friends, the fop heaved his thin, be-ribboned body on to the apron, arranged himself and took snuff. 'Can see now.'

'Well, we can't,' shouted a stout citizen.

'Then blurt to you, sirrah.' Wavering, the fop turned to the cast: 'Continue. Oop, no, wait. Got to get the others up.' Things went downhill from there. More beautifully clad drunks joined their friend. They dragged King Lear's throne to the side of the stage and sat on it. They shouted for 'Nelly, give us a song', and took against Goneril and Regan. When Becky Marshall, in villainess's make-up as Goneril, came on, they booed. She was joined by Regan (Anne Marshall), also heavily browed. 'Oh Gawd,' said a fop, 'there's two of 'em.'

Gwynn had her bottom pinched, and kicked backwards at the offender without faltering in her line. One of the fops was sick and a fight broke out as a citizen tried to drag him off the stage.

Heroically, the King's cast continued to play as if their audience was hanging on every word.

Her line was coming up. 'The job, my dear girl,' said a voice from long ago, 'is the play.' Breathe. There were people out there who'd paid for their seats and deserved the best.

Lear was castigating Cordelia. It was time to save her. She ran forward on cue ... a fop put out his foot and tripped her. She slid along on her front to King Lear and ended up with her head on his toes.

Amid the laughter in which even the author's claque joined, she lifted up her face to Lacy's glare. 'Pray save her, Your Majesty,' she said. It had been a short theatrical career. As the King spurned her entreaty she limped back to her place, resisting the temptation to kill the fop and then herself.

Understandings were cleared up, Edgar and Cordelia were paired off. King Lear and his daughter, reunited, pirouetted happily forward to face the jeers of the fops and the counter- cheers of the citizens.

Gwynn, perhaps the only one capable of quietening the house, was sent out to give the epilogue.

Behind the curtain Lacy's eyes scanned the assembled walkers and stopped on Penitence. He looked grim. 'Is she one of yours, John?'

John Downes came on stage. 'Yes.'

'I won't be fallen on. Forfeit her.'

'She's not on salary, Lacy.'

'No? Well, she is now. Put her down for ten shillings a week. And forfeit her five.'

In June she had a small speaking part in an adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's Vatentinian, an even smaller one three nights later as another Persian lady in Cambyses. She was a page in The Death of Richard II, and Ursula in yet another Much Ado.

In the kitchen printing works at the Cock and Pie, while MacGregor set the type - Penitence didn't do it any longer in case it stained her fingers, confining herself to the guillotine — and Aphra rolled the ink and Dorinda operated the press's lever and Mistress Palmer sang in toneless song to her washboard in the scullery next door, each tiny role was analysed until it squeaked.

'I detect malice in Ursula. Do you think I should give her malice?'

'You should give her some peace,' said Dorinda, 'I'm sick of the cow.'

'She's only there to get sent on errands, Penitence,' said Aphra.

'She's still a person. What do you think, MacGregor?'

'I like her fine. I wonder, now, should we have some italics here?' Aphra joined him to ponder it. Her handbills were the only work the Vulture Press had. Other unlicensed presses had come in from the provinces to fill the vacuum left by the Plague. And even the handbill business was diminishing as Killigrew cut more and more of his theatre's costs.

Penitence slammed the guillotine handle down, and the knife cut a badly angled line into the sheets, sending strips on to the floor where Benedick was playing, tethered by a washing-line because of the well's proximity. 'I'm sorry to bore you,' she said, pettishly, 'but somebody's got to tell me if I'm doing it right.'

There were plenty of people to tell her if she did it wrong.

Knipp, the Marshalls and the others were quick with their disapproval if she didn't cue them exactly right or if she put more into her part than was necessary, thereby distracting from their own. Even the good-tempered Gwynn was forced to reprimand her: 'Don't overdo it, ducky. They come to see me, not you.'

The rest of the time she acted into what seemed a vacuum. She tried to tell herself and the others that her eye was on the £1 a week a top actress earned, and to an extent it was, but the spur that goaded her was the frenzy to express something within her which had woken on the balcony of the Cock and Pie when the people on the rooftops had been moved by one impulse — hers.

That night she had experienced control; she had used magic as a projectile, she had been the gyrating stoat bringing the birds closer. She had tasted power after a lifetime of powerless- ness and she wanted, she lusted, to taste it again.

Then Hart told her she was to play Desdemona. She was so astounded she almost argued him out of it. 'But she's the heroine.' They had just come offstage after the last curtain of The Indian Emperor and Hart's large painted eyes were tired. 'Thank you for telling me, dear. Of course she's the heroine, or she was when I played her in the old days. What you do with her remains to be seen. Now run away and learn the words. We go on in a month.'