The Vizard Mask (50 page)

She wouldn't have minded learning what a Whig was — the term was being bandied about — but she was unlikely to be enlightened by Parson Fowler who probably wasn't sure himself. She let his thick Middlesex-accented harangue rattle past her, much as she had let the politics of the last years go by, unheeded. Politics were the court, and court life was now only peripheral to her own.

She put her hand over Rupert's and squeezed it to wake him up. Rupert's own form of criticism of the vicar was to fall asleep during his sermons. 'Blwah?' he said.

The parson hunched his shoulders and beamed uncertainly: 'Would Your Royal Highness be so good?'

Rupert stood up and marched across to the side aisle, to the effigy bearing a plaque, 'The Glorious Martyr King Charles the First of blessed Memory', and fetched the silver casket beneath it to the altar rail.

He still looks pale. He'd given her the fright of her life when his old head wound reopened after a strenuous game of tennis. He'd refused a doctor - he had a horror of doctors - and hadn't even wanted her to dress it; 'Too unsightly. Leave it to Peter.'

'I certainly won't,' she'd said. 'It's my job.' He loathed showing weakness in front of her for fear of accentuating their age-difference, but his gratitude for her nursing had been pathetic. He's growing old too quickly. He said he was more content than he'd ever been, and probably he was - his famous anger came rarely nowadays, and had never shown itself to her in any case. But his wars had caught up with him.

He's like me. He's retired hurt.

Rupert lifted the lid of the casket and the vicar poured wine and prayer on to the pickled heart of Sir Nicholas Crispe, Bart, contained within it. She heard the Reverend Boreman muttering. This was too heathenish for him. But Sir Nicholas had written in his will that he wished his heart refreshed with wine on every anniversary of his death, and as he'd been a friend of Rupert's and the builder of the home they lived in, the household was bound to attend. 'Noblesse oblige', Rupert said it was.

'Good vintage is it, Sir Nick?' shouted somebody. It sounded like the Brewster son. Rupert returned to their pew, erect and glowering at the daring. Everybody else called a more decorous 'God bless Sir Nicholas', and they all knelt for final prayers.

It was a spacious church — Sir Nick had built this too — with a pretty ceiling of painted compartments. Into its quiet came the sound of birdsong and Coppy's hammering.

Tranquillity, thought Penitence. But unearned tranquillity. In escaping to the safety of Rupert's protection, she had not imagined how very much it would feel like desertion and how undeserved its peace.

There was a rustle of cassock past her as the vicar sprinted to the door to be ready to shake hands with his congregation; not that anybody would move until Rupert did. With great deliberation the Prince got to his feet and offered her his arm; together, with their household behind, they walked down the nave, every eye upon them. Royalle, Rupert's giant black poodle, followed them out.

Outside in the churchyard they had to pause for more noblesse oblige, nodding kindly to the villagers, enquiring after Mistress Cole's rheumatism and Jem Harper's youngest. Rupert was punctilious about this, though he was held in too much awe to get more than a 'Going on well, sir, thank 'ee kindly'. If she'd been alone, they'd have answered with more enthusiasm and anatomical detail. Jem added, with a nod at Penitence: 'That poultice of Mistress's eased his little cough something wonderful, sir.'

Rupert was gratified. 'Her Ladyship is skilled in these matters.'

Now it was the turn of the local gentry. They were surrounded by men and women like bullocks; the Brewsters bred large. 'Fine morning, Your Royal Highness and mmm .. .'

'Your Ladyship,' prompted Rupert.

'Your Ladyship,' said Squire Brewster, deliberately having trouble getting his tongue round it. 'Hunting tomorrow, Your Highness? Us could be doing with that lymerer of yours.'

Rupert looked at Penitence, who looked stolidly back. 'You may have the lymerer, Sir John, but not me, I fear. Her Ladyship still over-cossets me.' He loved the idea that he was henpecked. 'These women, you know.'

You want to get her trained, Highness. A wife like Lady Brewster, now, she do know her place. Don't 'ee, Betty?'

'Ah well,' said Lady Brewster, managing to invest her sigh with a distinction between a wife and a mistress. 'There 'tis.'

They couldn't get over it. At first they'd watched her in church with fascinated horror, as if at any moment she might strip and dance on the altar, on the principle that actresses would be actresses. And once, when Rupert had been away, the elder Brewster boy tried to kiss her on the principle that mistresses would be mistresses. Now they merely larded their conversation with heavy subtleties. But Lady Brewster, Penitence noticed, was wearing a fair copy of the striped gown which she herself had worn last Easter Sunday, though the short sleeves tended to show the woman's muscles somewhat blue in the October nip and the panniers to emphasize her hips.

At the lych-gate the Brewsters piled into a spanking new open carriage, a replica of the one Rupert had bought in the spring. Bob, their coachman, was raising his eyes at the trouble he'd been put to for a quarter-of-a-mile drive. Penitence helped Mistress Palmer into Rupert's with the other servants and smiled at Lady Brewster: 'It's such a fine day, His Royal Highness and I thought we'd walk home.' It was petty, but wrong-footing the Brewsters was one of life's little triumphs.

With your permission,' said the Reverend Boreman, grimly, 'I shall go and give that bumpkin parson another lesson in Latin.'

'Don't you go hoeing his cabbages again,' warned Penitence. 'It put your back out last time.' They watched him hobble off across the churchyard to the decrepit parsonage.

'He was a good choice, my dear.' She'd been surprised when Rupert had suggested she have a chaplain. Since Rupert had been made Constable of Windsor Castle, his own chaplain was now installed there.

'Do I need one?' she'd asked.

'It is usual for one of your position.'

'I can't get used to being positioned so high.' She hadn't thought her old friend from St Giles would agree, but a heart attack had prompted his retirement away from his old parish and into this less onerous post in the country. It had worked out well. The air was doing him good, and London was near enough for his friends to come and stay at the pleasant little house Rupert had given him on the estate.

Mistress Palmer, too, had fitted in well, assuming a position in the household as Benedick's old nurse, and having her washing done for her.

It had been a dry autumn and their shoes puffed up dust as they walked down the village street, Rupert's hat more often off his head than on it as he doffed to curtseying women and the forelock tugs of the men.

With Royalle trotting beside them, they turned left down Upper Mall where fishing nets made a canopy over their heads along the quay, crossing the creek at High Bridge. Immediately they were in the meadowland that hemmed the Thames.

Four miles away was Charing Cross, but here cows stood up to their hocks in grass and kingcups, warblers sang in the reeds and willows bent over their own reflection in the river. Compleat Angler country. She'd bought a gold-embossed, calfskin-covered copy of the book for Rupert on his last birthday, hoping it would encourage him to do more fishing rather than risk his neck on the hunting field. He'd been delighted with it.

She liked to give him unusual birthday presents; this year's was extra special. She was waiting for the right moment to tell him about it.

The lane turned into enormous wrought-iron gates and became a drive lined with chestnut trees still to reach full maturity. Beyond, in the distance glowed the rose-brick turrets of Awdes with its cupola and winking, oriel windows.

Awdes.

When he'd said he would provide her with a house not unworthy of her, she'd had no idea of the value he put on her. Penitence had expected perhaps a smart little town-house, something like the one Charles had given Nell Gwynn. What she'd got was magnificence; sixty rooms, including one for billiards, an armoury, a tennis court, a dairy, a lake, and an ornamental garden laid out by a Dutch landscaper who'd managed to give it a prospect which included the River Thames.

Awdes was worthy of a queen; Catherine of Braganza had offered for it as her country home and, thwarted, was now building one of her own nearby.

Unasked, the King had driven down from Whitehall to inspect his uncle's love-nest, bringing with him the usual courtiers, among them Sir Charles Sedley who'd been venomous: 'My, my, we must be good in bed to have earned all this.'

'On the contrary, my dear Charles,' she'd hissed back, 'to earn all this we had to be positively wicked in bed.' Take that, you bastard. She'd watched the thrust go home. He tried to smile but she could almost hear his teeth grinding. She'd never prove it but she knew he'd sent the men who'd smeared her with ordure that night as surely as she knew he'd sent the bullies who'd beaten Kynaston. It would make him writhe to reflect that in punishing her he had been the instrument of what must seem to be her great good fortune. That she and Rupert might be happy together would be gall and wormwood to him — not necessarily from sexual jealousy but because he hated and feared others' happiness.

Actually, of course, he'd won; he'd deprived her of something she valued higher than the luxury she now enjoyed — her independence. Though she'd rather be stretched on the rack than let him know it, Sir Charles and his thugs had pushed the price of independence so high that she'd been forced to abandon it. Thanks to him, she was back on the game - what else was being the mistress of a man you didn't love but prostitution? That the man was rich and noble just made it more successful whoring, the height of harlotry. From sleeping with a Newgate gaoler to sleeping with a prince of the realm — what success. In the eyes of the world she'd reached the pinnacle of prostitution, only second to the great Castlemaine and Gwynn. Even now brothel-keepers might be pointing her out as an example to their young, ambitious whores: 'You too can become a Peg Hughes.'

I tried, my dears, she told them, ' tried to earn an honest living. They wouldn't let me. They smeared dog-shit on my teeth.

'You're very pale, my dear. You're not too tired?' Rupert was looking down at her with concern.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. 'Rupert, you're the only one who doesn't make me feel like a trollop.'

Those damned Brewsters.' He hated the reminder that the two of them weren't married.

'It wasn't the Brewsters. And I don't mind, you know I don't.' The wedding ceremony was mostly hypocrisy, anyway; society's seal on a trade agreement. That's what Aphra Behn's been saying all these years in her plays. An heiress sold into a loveless marriage by her parents was no less a hapless whore than one forced into an alliance with a protector through harsh circumstance. For the thousandth time Penitence felt a rush of admiration for Aphra, still fighting out in the world where they rolled women in crap, still refusing to surrender.

Arm in arm, she and Rupert turned to skirt the parkland where red deer stood beneath the palisaded oaks. 'You're sure you're not too tired?'

'I'm not decrepit yet, my dear.'

She was glad to take her opportunity. 'Indeed you're not. I have proof that you are not. I'm pregnant.'

He went white with pleasure. 'My dear, oh my dear, my dear.'

When they got to the river path she made him sit down on the bench. He looked quite shaky. He made her sit down, too. 'We should not have walked so far. I hoped for this.'

She'd known he had. 'You didn't say.'

'It would not have been gentlemanly.'

She kissed him. 'Happy birthday for December.'

'Is that when he'll be born?'

'No, not until the spring. But it's this year's present.'

'By God, I'm not that old, am I? Let's run. No, not run. Let's drive to Eton this afternoon and tell the boys they're to have a brother. The world must be informed.'

'Or a sister.'

He turned that idea over as they walked on; it was new to him. 'A girl, by God. Let's hope she takes after her mother.'

It was a pleasure to give him such intense pleasure, but underneath the velvet contentment he'd wrapped her in remained the old discomfort; unearned, unearned. Once she'd tried to tell him how she felt: 'I wish you wouldn't give me so much, Rupert. I'm just as happy with less.'They were in bed at the time and he was playful: 'Would I were richer and could give you more.'

She'd held him off. 'You see, I earned my own living. It wasn't a good living, but I earned it by my own effort. All this ...' She waved her hand around at the lovely Jacobean bedroom.'... I haven't earned it.'

'You make me happy.'

She knew she did, but that was almost fortuitous, none of her doing; an accident that her particular blend of looks and personality magnetized him. For the security he'd given her, making him happy was the least she could do.

But never to know again the satisfaction of earning money for herself and Benedick through printing, or through her skill as an actress ... to be kept instead of keeping ... there were times when she felt the panic of claustrophobia. If she tried to explain this to him he would become distressed and say she'd feel differently if they were married. Which she wouldn't. Marriage, with its loss of individual legal identity for women, would be worse.

So she'd left the subject and kissed him and let him get on with making love to her, delighting his man-of-the-world sense of chivalry by simulating a climax - as Dorinda had told her how to do — just as he came to his.

And there lay her deepest guilt: she couldn't love him like a lover. She had to grit her teeth to respond to his advances, and got through them on gratitude alone. She was cheating him, although he didn't know it, and the fact that he didn't know it made her an even greater cheat. When her periods stopped and she'd realized she was pregnant, she didn't feel she was carrying a child so much as a recompense.

Driving down to Windsor in the carriage that afternoon, Rupert said: 'Will you still go to the theatre next week?'