The Vizard Mask (92 page)

'You look sixteen.'

She said with indifference: 'I hope your father is well.'

'Ah ha.'

'Ah ha what?'

'Just ah ha. I don't think he wanted to go to Scotland.'

She became interested in a piece of fluff on his coat and flicked it off. 'Indeed.'

Benedick's hands took her shoulders and squared her to face him. 'Mama, I know you promised Prince Rupert never to marry, but do you think he'd have wanted you to remain lonely for the rest of your life?'

'Is that what your father told you?'

'I asked him why you two didn't marry and that's what he said.'

How nice of Henry. And how nice and romantic of their son to believe him, though it left her looking the culprit for the estrangement. Nor could she disabuse the boy. Benedick, your father has good reason to believe your mother a harlot and cannot stomach the thought. Hardly.

Won't you marry him? He's a very fine man, you know.'

'I know he is,' she said. 'But I think you'll find he won't ask me again. The mountain doesn't really go to Mahomet.'

Whether the throne should be occupied by Mary as queen or regent, with William as consort, king or regent, or any combination of the foregoing, was solved by the Prince and Princess of Orange themselves. Mary, still in The Hague, wrote to say she had no wish to rule without her husband.

William, who had held aloof from dictating terms, now explained himself. He esteemed his wife, he said, as much as it was possible for man to esteem woman, but not even from her

would he accept a subordinate place. He did not desire to take any part in English affairs, but if he did consent to do so there was only one part he would play. He must be offered the throne for life, or go back home.

It cleared the air. It was now obvious that William and Mary must be King and Queen; the head of each must appear on the coin of the realm, writs must run in the names of both.

However, to make sure the excesses of previous Stuarts were never perpetrated again, it was thought necessary to set down the fundamental principles of the English constitution. No money to be exacted by the sovereign, no standing army to be kept up in peacetime without permission of Parliament. There must be rights of petition, of electors to choose their representatives freely, to debate, to a pure and merciful administration of justice.

As documents go the one drawn up in a few hours by a committee under the chairmanship of a low-born young barrister named Somers didn't look particularly impressive. But no other country had it.

It was called the Declaration of Rights.

While arrangements for the Coronation went ahead, the little house in St Bride's received another visitor from the court.

Penitence opened the door to a large, fair-wigged clergyman radiating such bounciness that just looking at him was tiring.

'Gilbert Burnet at your service, mistress.' He was a Scot and had an orange ribbon on his hat. 'And begging audience with Mistress Aphra Behn, if you please.'

'Doctor Gilbert Burnet?'

He was delighted. 'Indeed, mistress. I see my fame has preceded me.'

'It has. What do you want?' If this was the man who had assailed Rochester with exhortations to repentance on his death-bed, the Earl had paid for at least some of his vices. Dr Burnet was not someone you'd want at your lowest ebb.

'Mistress Behn will wish to see me.'

'She's ill and she doesn't. I'm not having her pestered for a conversion, and certainly not by someone who called her vile.'

He wasn't disconcerted. 'Whom do I have the honour of addressing? Is it Mistress Peg Hughes? I know these things, d'ye see. And I was a great admirer of Prince Rupert, nor have I heard anything to tarnish the name of his mistress. Apart, of course, that ye lived in sin.' He beamed at her.

Penitence's eyes opened wide. A bubble of amusement, the first in weeks, had to be suppressed.

He was assuring her of his good intentions. 'No, no, Mrs Hughes. I've come on another mission — for the King, not the Lord this time. I have been his right-hand man in exile, I have marched with him from his landing, I have advised, cajoled, argued with and for him, and now I wish him celebrated.'

'Oh, come in.' It was like allowing a pack of panting, piddling, happy puppies into the house. 'But you go when I say you go.'

He lowered his voice in what Penitence suspected he believed to be a whisper. 'Is it the pox the poor soul has?'

'No it isn't. How dare you?'

He was pleased. 'I never believed the story.'

He was a primitive, Penitence decided, whose thoughts slid immediately to his tongue but he radiated a naive goodwill that would have been endearing if there hadn't been so much of it.

She had to leap at his arm to stop him giving Aphra's hand a vigorous shake. 'Is it the gout, Mistress Behn? I'm heartily sorry. My granny died of it. But I'm unconscionable glad to meet ye. There's some of your pieces, though not all, have given me pleasure. I'm a bonny writer myself and I know one when I see one.'

It was one of Aphra's good days and she was amused. 'In what can I serve you, Dr Burnet?'

'Serve your King, mistress, serve your King. I'm here to give ye a commission, which I'm pleased to do since I see from the state of your hoose that you've fallen on hard times.' He shot his cuffs in admiration of himself. 'I've criticized ye, I know, though for your own good, but I need ye to write a coronation ode for our new King Billy, a panegyric surpassing the one ye penned for the unworthy James.'

Penitence was triumphant. Whatever could be said against this man, he wasn't unintelligent; he'd hobnobbed with crowned heads all over Europe, he'd written histories, his prose style was that of a considerable journalist - and he'd come to a woman, a despised woman, to set the seal on William's victory. Oh, Aphra, the whirligig of time certainly brings in its revenges.

'D'ye see, ma'am, I'll be frank.' Do you mean you haven't been? 'Our new king has every virtue but that of pleasing the masses. He has a cold way. I've had to speak tae the man and he took it ill, but you're a crowd-pleaser, Mistress Aphra, they'll listen to ye. Will ye laud great Caesar as he should be lauded? Ye'll be well rewarded.'

Aphra was charming but immediately Penitence knew she wouldn't do it. Her eyes showed anguish but she wasn't going to do it: 'Dear Dr Bumet, one recognizes the Princess Mary and her right to succeed, but not her husband's. The breeze that wafts o'er the cheering crowds leaves me unpitied, on the forsaken, barren shore to sigh with echo and the murmuring wind.'

Burnet worked on it. 'Ye'll not do it?'

'No.'

He was a tenacious man and by the time they got rid of him, Aphra was gasping for air, as if Burnet had used up the room's supply. Tears dripped down her cheeks. 'The first commission one has ever refused.'

'I can call him back. Affie, are you sure? He'll be a good thing, William, I think. There's been no killing, no war, it must be the most peaceful revolution the world's ever seen.'

Aphra's shoulders heaved with the effort to speak. 'He's a usurper. One doesn't pass kings back and forth like lumps of sugar. Good or bad, James is one's king.'

You stupid female. Penitence's anger surprised herself. The divine right of kings is over and the right of people is beginning. She had to turn away. Why couldn't the woman apply some of her romanticism to a concept greater than drawing a sword to fight for a man because he had a crown on his head?

Behind her, puffs of breath managed to shape themselves into a sentence. 'One is not a whore, Penitence.'

And I am. That was why she was so angry. Of all them who had battled to enter some other profession than prostitution, only Aphra hadn't failed. The theatre had beckoned her generation of women and they'd run through the doors, clutching such talent as they had in the hope of using it for the first time in a way that didn't involve dependence on a man's bed. It had been too difficult; Nelly, Dorinda, Knipp, the Marshalls, herself, all of them, had been forced back into the market as mistresses or, what was little different in terms of sale, wives.

Only Aphra had never sold her flesh. She'd chosen her men badly, but she'd chosen them out of love pure and simple. And now the same independence that had performed the miracle of earning her own living had rejected the accolade which belonged not just to her but to her weaker sisters who'd reached for it.

The Whigs aren't going to forgive you, Aphra. They'd stamp on her memory until it disappeared into the mud they'd spent years preparing for it. And neither will I.

Unforgiving, Penitence went on nursing her friend through agonies so resembling a drawn-out drowning that even Chloe prayed for her beloved to die, and on the last day went to Westminster Abbey.

'Wait there,' she told the hackney coach driver.

She'd never liked the Abbey much. Its enormous, marble- plaqued, gold-encrusted walls held less sanctity in her view than the parish church of Athelzoy. In the first place you had to pay threepence a head to get in, except for services. And inside lurked the official tomb guides, waiting to be tipped for intoning the Abbey's history. It was too close to Whitehall Palace, too far from God. If it had been left to her, Rupert would have been interred at Hammersmith. As it was, they hadn't let her into Henry VII's chapel to see him buried.

At the huge house in Dean's Yard, she made short shrift of the servants who tried to tell her Dean Sprat was resting from his efforts expended during the coronation of William and Mary four days before. 'He will see me.' It was a command.

'My dear Mrs Hughes, how nice to meet you again. In what may I serve?' The attractive young man who'd procured Aphra's and her release from Newgate when he was chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham had expanded into overweight middle age. He'd shown agile footwork to keep his position at all under the new reign: he'd collaborated too much with the old one.

Like his abbey, Thomas Sprat had been too close to the centre of power for his soul's good. The eyes that had once been amused were careful. Assessor's eyes.

'I should like you to come with me. Aphra Behn is dying.' Penitence watched the name resurrect the mad, bad days when it had been less important to serve God than create a good aphorism, when he'd helped Buckingham write and perform The Rehearsal, when he'd wiled away the nights on Aphra's milk punch and discussion of rhyme versus blank verse. 'She's asking for you.'

In the place of the stately dean was a young man, vastly daring: 'Then I'll come.' He regretted it, because Penitence made the hackney's driver go like Jehu. 'Mrs Hughes, is this pace necessary?'

'Yes.'

She and Chloe sat on the stairs while he administered the sacraments; they could hear the whistle of Aphra's breath as she dragged it in to speak, but her voice, like his, was a murmur. 'He's got to allow it,' said Chloe. 'He must.'

There were tears in Dean Sprat's eyes when he emerged, but also anxiety. 'She wants to be buried in Poets' Comer,' he said.

'I know,' said Penitence. 'What did you tell her?'

'I told her "Yes". At that moment what else could I do? Death was looking at me. But. ..'

'That's all right then,' said Penitence, firmly.

'Mrs Hughes, it is not all right. I must excuse myself from a commitment when it was merely a word to ease a dying woman.'

'Why?'

'It was not a promise. How could it be? The decision as to who should or should not be buried in the Abbey is not mine alone. The Chapter, let me tell you, will not allow it.'

Why?'

'Mrs Hughes, the days of King Charles are over; the Protestant wind is blowing with an almost Puritan vigour and will find our friend a less ... shall we say, less worthy figure than those of us who understand these things.'

'Well, I don't understand these things,' said Penitence. 'She's going to be buried in the Abbey with the other poets. That's what she wanted. That's what you promised. That's what she's getting.'

The Dean had recovered his poise; before her eyes he was ageing back into the pompous cleric. 'Do not make me regret I came, Mrs Hughes. I did it from sentiment for times past. For one thing, Poets' Corner is not a place for women and never will be, despite Mrs Behn's magnificent effrontery. To put her alongside Shakespeare's memorial? Spenser? She goes too far.' He was justifying himself by whipping up indignation, but Penitence's was the product of a lifetime. He backed away from her, fumbling for the door-latch.

'P-ppoets Corner, Sprat. She's going to Pp-pp-oets' Corner.'

Chapter 3

Aphra struggled above the rising tide in her own lungs until the early hours of the next morning when her heart stopped.

The sudden quiet of the room magnified the dreadful breathing that had gone before it so that, as they laid her out, the first tweet of a bird waking outside seemed to break through wool.

Penitence pulled Chloe away from the body and sat with her in the window-seat watching the dawn come up over the rooftops behind Aphra's small, overgrown back yard.

'We were lovers,' said Chloe.

'I know.' Phoebe and Sabina. Aphra and Chloe. Her friend might have lost the love of men but in her great need she had found the love of woman.

By mid-morning they had assumed the briskness that goes with the strange comfort of death's arrangements.

'She's left me the house.'

'Good,' said Penitence.

'And George Jenkins is to see to publishing The Widow Ranter and Betterton's to put it on.'

'Good.'

'And she asked me to give you this when she'd gone. She said she hoped it would do.'

'This' was a manuscript written while she could still hold a pen, though its last pages were scarcely legible. It was in novel form, she'd called it Oroonoko, and it was about a slave.

Penitence had to read it twice before she realized it was a masterpiece. The first time she was disappointed; it was coolly written and at the same time fantastically romantic. Aphra had made her slave not one of the poor thousands shipped from Africa to Jamaica, but an educated prince of his African country, Coromantien, in love with a black general's daughter, and betrayed by an English sea-captain to be sold in the slave- market of Surinam.