The Vizard Mask (65 page)

'Then hear it again.' It was all very well for Aphra and Dorinda, newly arrived from London, to be blase about the speech but it had taken time for copies of it to reach Somerset's county town of Taunton, while illiterates — like most of her parishioners here — had to wait until it was read out from the hundreds of Somerset pulpits, as it was in hers today.

Penitence turned her head to estimate how many of her congregation could read and counted four: Mudge Ridge, Sir Ostyn, of course, just, Hurry Yeo, the landlord of the Hoy Arms, and Hurry Yeo's eleven-year-old daughter who went to school in Taunton and whose immortal soul was considered to be imperilled by doing so, not just because it flew in the face of Nature for girls to read but also because she was doing so at a school run by a couple of women Dissenters.

Perhaps I should found a school.

She was the most important person in Athelzoy; therefore it had become her responsibility. Her congregation, her parishioners. The Bishop of Bath and Wells might consider them his but without the wealth Penitence had brought to it the church couldn't support a vicar of its own.

The whole village had been as dormant as a bulb, potentially fertile but unable to flower until it received the requisite warmth and moisture of cash. Long before the Civil War, and certainly since the death of its only son, the Hoy family had lacked money to vitalize Athelzoy's capability to grow. Penitence, unrealizing at first, had brought the first necessary shower by employing some of the villagers as household labourers and groundsmen.

The young people who'd left their homes in search of work came flooding back, irrigating themselves and Hurry Yeo's business by patronizing the Hoy Arms, thereby forcing Hurry to employ a tapster.

Under the guidance of young Mudge Ridge, who'd only needed the capital to turn his own and the Priory's farm into profit-making concerns, Penitence's herd of dairy cattle was improved by the acquisition of a Devon bull. 'And now you'm a dairy farmer you got to have pigs,' said Mudge. Sure enough, within the year two spotted Gloucestershire sows had littered thirty-three hardy piglets which grew up into tasty - and profitable — bacon, chitterlings, puddings and sausages on the waste whey and milk.

But the biggest money-maker of all, and one fast becoming an industry, was teasel-growing.

Penitence had been dubious; she barely knew what teasels were, let alone how to grow them. Or, come to that, what to do with them when grown.

'Let me, let me, Your Ladyship,' Mudge begged. 'You got the soil, over by Sallycombe you got heavy girt clay. Ah pleaded with Old Maister but he were a stubborn old . . . gennulman . . . and couldn't see what I see.'

'I thought they grew teasels at Sallycombe already,' Penitence said. 'The Dissenters, those Hugheses' — my family — 'aren't they teasellers?'

'Piddly liddle plots,' said Mudge, scornfully. 'Could'n grow a bunyan. We, you, got fifty, sixty acre pleadin' for teasel.' Splendid young man that he was, his huge, soil-engrained hands were pumping the air. In another moment he'd shake her. 'Can't ee see what I see?'

Though she let him have his way on twenty of the acres, she couldn't. For two years she couldn't see. The teasels were sown, planted out, weeded with long-bladed, thin spades, then replanted in prepared ridged and furrowed soil, and all Penitence could see was that if it rained too much in June her teasels would be ruined for their purpose, and if she went on paying wages for such intensive labour, she would be ruined. And all for a plant that couldn't be touched with the naked hand, had no scent and reminded her of a stiff-backed, bristle- headed Dogberry.

It wasn't until the following August's harvest that she'd seen Mudge's vision — wagons taking 250,000 teasel-heads along the Sedgemoor track to the clothiers in Taunton, 250,000 teasels for raising the nap on broadcloth, 250,000 so packed on to staffs that they looked like fuzzy loofahs, thirty staffs to a pack, each pack selling at £15.

The next year she'd rented ten acres to Mudge for himself and gave the entire village of Athelzoy employment in planting fifty of her own.

The only people less than pleased with her teasel triumph were the Dissenters who rented the few acres of clay favourable to teasel-growing on Dame Alice Lisle's land. In effect, Penitence's mass production was putting her own great-uncle out of business.

And by this day in early summer, in her church, surrounded by her villagers, the sun coming in coloured dapples through the new rose window dedicated to the memory of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Penitence didn't give a damn for her great-uncle. Serve him right.

She listened carefully to James's accession speech, giving nods of approval at its repeated reassurance that the King wanted confrontation with nobody. Yes, he affirmed, he was a Roman Catholic, but there need be no concern; on oath he would maintain the Anglican Church and the laws of England. He would not relinquish his own rights, but he would respect the rights of others. 'Just as I have already fought for my country, I shall go on supporting her liberties.'

Beside her, Sir Ostyn also nodded: 'Ah told un when ah wrote to un to go easy. Upset the liberties ah told un and upset trade.'

'I'm sure the King found your advice most valuable,' said Penitence. Sir Ostyn was an idiot. Still, I agree with him. She didn't want riot and revolution now that she was about to increase teasel production and expand her outlets, this time to clothiers in the North of England.

Here, in Athelzoy, she was in a pocket of Toryism which, like the country as a whole, was delighted with James's speech. Sir Ostyn had joined a rush of magistrates, burgesses and merchants to promise King James their loyalty and assure him they would never put up as a member to the House of Commons anyone who had voted for his exclusion.

But elsewhere Somerset's non-agricultural working population consisted for the most part of Dissenters - Baptists, Presbyterians, Puritans, Fifth Monarchists, etc. — to whom James's Papistry was anathema. Families like her grandmother's, the Hugheses, the labourers and artisans of this area, had fought hard for Parliament during the Civil War and, despite Charles's promises of magnanimity on his restoration, had suffered for it ever since. James could proffer them rights of worship until he was black in the face; as far as they were concerned he was a Catholic and therefore Beelzebub. They could cause trouble.

Vicar Lambert finished reading the King's speech in triumph at its happy message and that he'd got most of the words right. 'There, good people,' he said, 'we have now for our Church the word of a king and of a king who was never worse than his word.

Penitence raised her eyebrows; Vicar Lambert wasn't usually so felicitous in his phrases. He must have heard it from somebody else.

'That's a good un,' she heard Sir Ostyn say. 'Good watchword, that 'un.' Sir Ostyn was going to do as well out of King James's reign as he had out of King Charles's.

And Sir Ostyn wanted to marry her.

Partly it was because he lusted after her, but then, Sir Ostyn lusted after anything with a hole in it, but mostly because he wanted the Priory and her fortune. He made no bones about it and took no notice of her refusals. The only good thing about him was that he was no Charles Sedley, thank God; she could keep him at arm's length and he, in turn, kept off other suitors.

At the end of the service he tried to get out of the pew door ahead of her, but she swivelled past his bulk so that she could go down the aisle without him. Her hands gently nudged Ruperta and Tongs ahead of her, conscious that every woman in the congregation was taking note of what the three of them were wearing, and knowing it looked superb.

Out in the churchyard she and the others stood under the stiff branches of its enormous and ancient yew tree while the congregation filed past her. At a lift of Penitence's finger Mary Claymond stepped to one side and waited until Her Ladyship should be ready to talk to her.

Dorinda mimicked her, holding up a hand in papal blessing and bestowing a 'Nunc, nunc' on each one who passed. Aphra had gone into the throes of composition and was staring at the sky, swaying and muttering.

After the villagers had made their curtseys or forelock-tugs they gathered by the lych-gate until Penitence left, watching

Dorinda and Aphra with expectancy. At first they had been so floundered at the visits of Penitence's theatrical friends that they had reacted by deciding they weren't there at all. The clothes, accents, mannerisms had been too strange. When Aphra tried to stimulate a love of literature by quoting poetry at them they were forced to the conclusion that she was mad - an opinion they hadn't changed.

Dorinda they'd put down as Penitence's personal and female jester.

Penitence turned to the waiting girl: 'Mary, I wish you to tell your parents that Mudge Ridge will be calling on them at dusk tomorrow with my blessing.'

Mary gave a bob. 'What bist ee coam vur, Leddyship?'

'He's to ask for your hand, as you well know, Mary Claymond.' She gave the girl a smile. 'I'm told it's a cool hand at pastry.' In the Somerset villages that was the highest praise a girl could expect.

Mary bridled. 'Ah don't know if ah'm willing. Maister Ridge be chapel, not church.'

Penitence was instantly cross. 'It doesn't matter. Haven't you just heard the vicar telling you your king is for tolerance? Do you consider yourself better than your king? I'll have no such nonsense. Mudge is an excellent fellow and you'll be lucky to get him.'

Leaving the churchyard Penitence paused for a second beside a tiny new headstone which simply read: Royalle, ad 1671-1684. She'd had to fight the diocese to get the dog buried in the churchyard, but she'd won. Rupert would have been pleased.

As they walked Aphra said: 'One never learned Zummerzet, but do I gather that child just now isn't willing to marry Mudge?'

'Of course she is,' snapped Penitence. 'She's just playing bashful. It will be a splendid match for her. And Mudge could do with a good dairymaid for a wife.'

'No impediment for true minds there, then,' said Aphra, idly.

Penitence looked at her suspiciously. Was I overbearing with

Mary Claymond? No. It would be a good marriage for them both.

A May breeze touched the candles of the chestnut beside the duckpond, and sent a shower of tiny white and pink petals on to the water. Ruperta and Tongs, who had sustained adult dignity through the long church service, were being urged by Sir Ostyn to climb the tree after a squirrel's drey he said he'd spotted — and didn't need asking twice.

'Really, Ostyn,' said Penitence, lifting Tongs down from his back and brushing down the child's bottle-green velvet jacket, 'they'll get their clothes dirty.'

'Nothin' wrong with a peck of dirt. They don't want to grow up namby-pamby Lunnon ladies. They want to be strong, Zummerset maids. Eh, my boodies? Want to come hunting along of I?'

'Yes, please, sir,' answered Ruperta immediately, and Tongs echoed her a second or two later. Penitence looked at them with pride. Springs and summers spent in Somerset had put roses in their cheeks, and flesh on Tongs's delicate bones. Nothing namby-pamby about either. Ruperta took after her father in having no physical fear at all but Tongs was the one with courage; she had to overcome terror, and did, every time she mounted a horse.

They reached the Hoy Arms where Hurry was waiting with the tankard of ale Penitence had ordered him to have ready for Sir Ostyn before they resumed the walk back to the Priory and dinner.

Dorinda looked over towards the market square. 'That poor bugger called you a doxy again?'

Civilization had come to Athelzoy in the form of a proper pillory with its articulated yoke that fitted over neck and wrists, instead of the whipping post and rings which had adorned the village in the old days.

Today, as more often than not, the offender stuck in it was Martin Hughes. She noticed with satisfaction that the man's thin lips were compressed tight in the martyrdom of real pain. The height of the pillory was designed to put maximum strain on the spine.

'He has been sentenced for condemning the King's coronation,' she pointed out. It was partly true but Sir Ostyn's attention wouldn't have been attracted to the offence if Penitence hadn't complained of it.

Great-uncle or not, Penitence's patience with the man had run out. The fact that she was cornering the market in teasels had turned his insistence on holding her up as an example of Satan profiting from sin into persecution. Every Sunday he came to Athelzoy to preach against her.

His thin black figure haunted her, just as she had been haunted and persecuted by the Reverend Block back in Massachusetts. Three months ago, when he was preaching in Taunton's Parade, he'd glimpsed her and pointed her out to the crowd as 'that harlot actress, mistress of the dead dragon prince'.

But this time the malevolent forces of Puritanism had mistaken their prey. I'm not poor and frightened any more. This time her friends weren't Indians but powerful admirers, like Sir Ostyn Edwards, JP. This time the hare had turned round and bitten the dogs, and it was the shade of the Reverend Block whose head and hands pawed through the pillory yoke as well as Martin Hughes's.

Watching the scene from the doorway of the Hoy Arms while Sir Ostyn downed his tankard, she muttered to Aphra and Dorinda: 'That'll teach him to accuse me of wallowing in the fruits of sin.'

'Let's face it, though,' said Dorinda, 'the bastard's right. You are.'

It was meant as a you-and-I-remember-when, a reminder of war from one survivor to another, but it rumbled at the foundations of a structure Penitence had worked hard to build. Without Dorinda and without Martin Hughes Penitence could — and would — have forgotten that she'd ever been anything but a woman of good standing.

She turned away sharply to continue the walk.

She always suggested this walk to her visitors on Sundays; it took her to the village, her village, past her bean- and wheatfields to the view over the sedgemoors where her black,

Devon cattle grazed the marsh meadows and where, in the distance, hung the flat, mauve cloud that was her teasel crop.