The Vizard Mask (76 page)

Penitence loved Muskett. He was as dependable as he was solid and his humour made him more attractive than many a man with better looks. She had hopes of him and Prue. He was staring straight at the wall. 'The major is an honest card- player, suh. Which is rare for cavalry, suh. And officers. In my experience. Suh.'

'Does your mind ever dwell on the kisses of the gunner's daughter, Muskett?'

'No. Suh.'

'It should.' He turned on Benedick. 'How are we tonight, Major?'

'I don't know how you are, but my bloody head's pounding.'

'Benedick!' Penitence could have killed him. He didn't know

Henry was his father - until Henry was prepared to claim him, she had not considered it right to tell him - and had shown increasing truculence in his presence, but he'd never been outright rude like this. 'The Viscount has been good enough to come here tonight to inform you of the arrangements for your escape.'

'That's what he's come for, is it? Nothing else?' Benedick was gaunt. Physical weakness was presenting his anger as petulance. Shaking, he held on to a chair-back to help himself up. 'I would like to know why the Captain Viscount is helping a rebel escape in the first place. Or perhaps it's a question I should ask my mother. Sir, I demand to defend her honour by calling you out.'

'Do you, by God,' said Henry.

How could I have raised a boy so stupid? He'd adored Rupert, of course. And he was ill. She supposed that as a single woman, much gossiped about, her honour must appear to need defending. Looking at her son, Penitence caught her breath at the resemblance to his father. The candlelight emphasized the hollows of the eyes and the new line down the long cheeks. He's aged. She was so sorry for him. By this ridiculous parade he was attempting to pretend that medieval chivalry still existed when, in fact, he had seen it blown to pieces during that night on Sedgemoor. She knew he had. She'd heard what he raved of in some of his nightmares.

She caught at the Viscount's sleeve and dragged him away to whisper: 'Deal with him gently, Henry.'

'Don't worry that I shall deal with him at all. He's probably a better duellist than I am. He's younger for a start. And as tall. Besides,' he added querulously, 'the little bastard outranks me.'

'Something on the drive, sir,' said Muskett who'd been diplomatically looking out of the window.

Henry went over to put his hand on Benedick's shoulder and force him back into his chair. 'You shall have satisfaction later, Major. Stay out of sight.' He joined Muskett and Penitence at the window.

They could just see over the gatehouse roof to the bottom of the drive, a still, white river under the light of the huge moon. From here Muskett's 'something' looked black and softly rolled, like a slug. But if it was a slug, it was man-size.

'Stay here.' Henry was priming his pistol as he went out. Muskett, who kept one to hand, was seizing his: 'Best stay here, mistress.'

Whose house is it? She took Benedick by the arm and helped him up. 'Time to go back in the hole, I'm afraid.' When he had Muskett to guard him, she allowed him the run of the bedroom - as long as he kept away from the windows.

'No.' Peevishly, he shook her off. 'I want to see what it is.'

He's overtired. How many times had she said that during his childhood? They never changed. 'Benedick,' she said, 'you're weak enough and you're still young enough for your mama to slap you if you don't go back in that room.' And she meant it.

He grinned. She'd forgotten he could. You're your father's son. She helped him through the bedhead then ran to join the two men. They were standing back to back, Muskett with his pistol pointed at the slug, Henry covering the left-hand side of the drive. 'Muskett didn't see the cart drive up, but he heard it go. And he thought he saw a shadow over there.' After a minute he relaxed. 'All right, Sergeant, let's see what they've brought us.'

Penitence already knew. 'Lady Alice's carpet.'

It wasn't just a carpet; as the men jerked at the fringed end it unrolled and the body of an elderly man flopped on to the gravel.

Laboured, noisy breathing told them he wasn't dead or the face, which was ghastly in the moonlight, would have suggested it. As a child Penitence had been made to join her community in filing past the coffin at the funeral of august Puritan preachers, and they had looked like this man; dressed in black with their Bible between their hands.

This man's hands still moved and he smelled rather worse than the dead preachers, but he was of the same ilk. She knew it too well.

'A rebel,' said Henry. 'With congested lungs from the look of it.' He ran his hand over the man's broadcloth black coat.

'Damp. Been lying out in the reeds possibly. Somebody doesn't want to hide him any more, and I can't say 1 blame them. What do you think, Muskett?'

'I agree, sir.'

'And what do you think we should do with him?'

'Personally, sir, I'd find the nearest hole in the marsh and throw him in.'

'I agree. Wrap him up again.'

'No.' Every instinct screamed at her to overlook the claim of common humanity and let the men rid her of this bane, to quickly turn her head and be left unburdened. What did you and your like ever do for me? Why should I take in one more male who thinks I'm a whore? Wearily she said: 'Bring him up to the house.'

'Boots, you have trouble enough.'

'I know, but he's a relative of mine. His name's Martin Hughes.'

While Henry and Muskett took the unconscious man to the scullery to strip him of his damp clothes and wash him, Penitence went up to the main north-wing bedroom to find more blankets and some clothes of Rupert's. She opened the panel and helped Benedick out of the secret room, explaining what had happened.

'Did you come up here just now?' he asked. 'I thought I heard somebody moving about the room.'

Penitence looked around uneasily. There was a rule that he wasn't to make a noise until the panel was opened and, knowing the risk to her if he was discovered, he'd carefully obeyed it, though to avoid the worst horrors of claustrophobia he always kept the door behind the panel open.

She looked under the bed and in the cupboards and locked the door behind her before she went downstairs to tell the men. Martin Hughes lay on the scullery table, wrapped in a blanket.

'Shall I search the house, sir?' asked Muskett.

'What's the point?' said Henry, wearily. 'The bloody place has got more ins and out than a weevilled cheese. Get upstairs and guard the boy.' When his sergeant had gone, he turned on

Penitence. 'I want you out of here,' he said. 'Muskett will escort you to Cheynes, that's my place, and you can stay there until we get rid of all these relatives you keep collecting.'

'No. I can't go.' She began preparing a poultice to relieve Martin Hughes's chest; she was fast running out of sheets to tear up.

'Look.' He was getting angry. 'This old spindleshanks was planted in the drive to draw us out of the house while they searched for the boy. They suspect you.'

'No,' she said. 'It was Nevis was in the house.' She heard her voice rise in hysteria and brought herself under control. 'Nevis was in the house. He watches. He's suspected me from the first but as long as he can't find the secret room he has no case. It was Lady Alice who sent... the carpet.'

'Lady Alice Lisle? I thought she'd been arrested.'

'She has. She willed it to me. She saw the family resemblance.'

There was goose grease in a pan in the larder and she fetched it. While it warmed by the fire, Penitence told Henry King what she knew of her mother's story. 'They took her child, me, to the Americas leaving her to starve. Only she didn't. She went to London and opened the Cock and Pie instead.'

'Her Ladyship was your mother?'

She wondered if this confirmed his suspicions. Like mother, like daughter. She slapped goose grease on to lint, lint on to the cloth, and the cloth on to Martin Hughes's bony, hairless chest. His skin was hot and his thin mouth was open to suck in air.

Very well,' said Henry, 'but none of this says you can't get out of the firing line. If you insist on heaping coals on this nasty old bastard's head, leave it to me and Muskett. We'll get him away.'

'There's Dorinda,' she explained, 'I can't leave without knowing what's happened to her.'He was getting angry. He'd never held any brief for Dorinda. Apart from that, Penitence knew he was impatient to take her to bed again before he returned to Bridgwater. 'The wench is dead or in clink. Either way, what could you do?' He was dismissive.

'I'd go to Jeffreys,' she said, unguardedly. 'He'd give her to me.'

'Really? Another admirer?'

She looked up from tying the poultice into place and saw the polite interest fixed on his face, and began to get angry herself. 'Yes, as a matter of fact.'

He nodded. 'You actresses cover a lot of ground.'

'No,' she said. 'We don't. We stay still and men come around us. Being on the stage doesn't necessarily mean a woman's a whore. Being in a brothel doesn't necessarily mean she's a whore.'

'Really?'

She thought of the industry which men devoted to seducing women and the industry with which they then defamed them. She thought of Aphra, traduced for earning her own bread. She thought of Dorinda made a laughing-stock for believing a man loved her. The man before her stood for the entire genus of exploiters. 'Really,' she agreed. 'She becomes a whore later, when she's left holding the baby and is put in Newgate for debt. That's when she becomes a whore. And when she's trying to earn a living for them both and a man says she can't unless she sleeps with him. That's when she becomes a whore.'

Twenty years' resentment fed her fury; it had the bit between its teeth and was unstoppable. The exhilaration of hearing the truth come out of her mouth at last was like a trumpet to a battle-charger; it went the faster. She let Martin Hughes's body flop back on to the table so that she could lean over it and shout at the man opposite, the enemy. 'And if Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys wants to tumble her in return for letting her friend free, then it's a small price to pay because she's used to being the whore you made her.' She screamed the words.

Then she was sorry. It was no time go into all this when she was overburdened and overfrightened and they were both too tired. I love you. I only ever loved you.

But it was too late now.

He bowed. 'Obviously I cannot help you, madam. May I suggest you bring back some of your staff to protect you and yours.'

She had to call Muskett down to carry the old man upstairs. She could hear the spurts of gravel as Henry's horse took the drive at a gallop. As she was lighting Muskett through the door of the bedroom, the eyes of the sick man over his shoulder opened and focused on her. 'Jezebel,' he said. It was automatic, a response to any woman not buttoned to the neck. He probably wasn't even aware he'd made it. Why am I doing this?

And as she threaded the skinny old body through the hole in the bedhead to Muskett on the other side, Benedick chose to protest: 'It's bad enough in that hole without having to share it with the likes of him.'

Wearily, she fetched bedding, climbed through the panel and helped Muskett make the old man comfortable. Then she climbed out again.

'That's your great-great-uncle,' she said. 'That' - she pointed to the drive — 'was your father. And that,' as hard as she could she hit her son across his face, 'is for growing up like them. Now I'm going to bed.'

Most of the casual labour which Penitence had used in previous years to harvest her teasels had come from Somerset's Dissenting male population, a large proportion of which had either been killed in the Monmouth rising or now lay in prison awaiting trial.

Even augmented by such labourers as her neighbours could spare, only eighteen men filed into her courtyard at dawn to receive their harvesting instructions.

Penitence looked from them to the early morning mist hanging over the marshes and wondered if the heatwave would last long enough for so few to harvest so much before the rains came. Already wiseacres in the village were prophesying storm, and the air was becoming heavy. The Levels had gone quiet as if heat was squashing the life out of them.

Waterfowl kept to the shade of the reeds. The only sound was a persistent hum of insects and the unexpected buzz past the ear by a dragonfly.

She looked back to the men. They were waiting to be given the teasel knives and the blood-summoning, sinew-stiffening speech which, by tradition, Mudge had always delivered to them before they went out to the fields.

'Do your best and do it quickly,' she told them clearly. What do they expect in this heat? St Crispin Crispian's? 'There'll be a bonus for any man who can finish his three acres first.'

The incentive put a sparkle in the men's eye that Shakespeare couldn't have produced and they shuffled past her table in goodwill as she handed out the teasel knives which were always kept in a locked case in the hall cupboard. These were expensive, being especially made for teasel-cutting; small, lethally sharp blades which fitted inside the curve of a man's forefinger so that in using them a teasel-harvester's gloved hand looked as if it was picking the bristled heads rather than cutting them.

Impatient but true to her duty as lady of the manor she asked after the men's families and gave back news of her own. Yes, thank you, Miss Ruperta and Miss Tongs were well and she hoped they would be returning soon, once the Assize was over. How are the little ones? Please hurry and go. Yes, thank you, she was managing quite well with Sergeant Muskett and Prue to look after her.

If the teasels bring in enough profit, perhaps I can buy Benedick's pardon. Perhaps, if Dorinda and MacGregor were alive, she could buy theirs. It was being said that Lord Grey, one of Monmouth's few aristocratic lieutenants, had already been allowed to purchase the King's forgiveness with £7,000 and the betrayal of all his former comrades. Even from the sale of Elizabeth of Bohemia's necklace — half of which belonged to Ruperta in any case — she could not hope to raise such a sum. But then Benedick, being younger and less well-born, would not fetch so much as Lord Grey.