The Vizard Mask (15 page)

At last the beautiful voice said: 'Leave it now. This is for me.'

The strong scent of perfume (Her Ladyship) and cooking (Kinyans) receded and a smell of leather and wine took its place. 'Go.'

She stood back. She had a half-second glimpse of the actor's face as she turned and the door gave way. She felt him lunge, heard a scream, then he was out on the clerestory, swearing lyrically. With his free hand, he felt for the door behind him and slammed it shut.

Penitence would have opened it again, but at that moment a fat hand grasped her collar and dragged her to the top of the stairs.

'He'll be all right,' said Her Ladyship, which was more than Penitence knew.

In the attic a plank had been laid from her side window over the alley to his. Most of the girls were peering back at her out of the actor's room, extending advice and arms to Mary who was crawling precariously over. Dorinda was still in the attic, pushing Mary from her side. The noise from the bottom of the stairs was fading. Kinyans went back to the fray now that he'd seen them safe. Mary was across, being lifted in.

'Now you, Ladyship,' commanded Dorinda.

Her Ladyship shook her head and sank on to the bed. With Dorinda beside her, Penitence made for the front window and looked over. Rioters were running out of the Cock and Pie. One skidded into her view on his back. Job, it seemed, was alive and well and chucking out. She saw half a dozen more men backing into Dog Yard as the actor emerged, his sword snicking at their jerkins, left hand elegantly raised.

There were flares moving to the sound of marching feet over by the Ship steps. The Watch was back with reinforcements. She slumped on to the stone balustrade.

But it wasn't over yet. The rioters on this side of the Yard were making too much noise to know that authority was on its way, and their pride had been pricked by their ejection on the end of a sword.

There were a lot of them, some with clubs. Their cropped heads crowded into a half-circle just out of sword-reach as the actor, his long hair bobbing, swept his sword from side to side in a crouch. Job was wrestling with two; the rest were getting ready to rush forward.

As one woman, Dorinda and Penitence turned to go down and help, but a deep baritone growl from below brought them back to the parapet. The play-actor had been joined by an ally more potent than them both. A frightening figure was standing by his side in the half-circle.

'What you fuckers think you're doing?' asked Mistress Hicks.

More daunting even than Mistress Hicks's anger at the disturbance was Mistress Hicks's attire, which, contrary to local opinion that Mistress Hicks hung upside-down all night from a beam, showed she retired to bed in grubby green lace and curl papers.

A voice shouted: 'Who's this fancy bastard to turn us out of our own bloody cat-house? An' you keep out of this, Ma.'

Mistress Hicks advanced. 'He's my fucking tenant, that's who he is, and he pays his fucking rent, the which is a bloody sight more than I know you do, Rob Whinney, an' you, Abel Smith. An' you, Parky Potter.'

The naming was genius, taking away the mob's anonymity. There was more cursing and club-waving for the look of the thing, but, accepting Mistress Hicks's invitation to fuck off home, the men started to disperse.

Penitence put her head down on the parapet and began to laugh, to weep with laughing. Corporal Forbush and Mistress Hicks. Savers of situations. She drummed her fists on the parapet top.

Below her the play-actor, standing at a loss beside Job, looked up, saw her and shrugged.

Whooping, she sat down and rocked. Lord, when did I last laugh? Did I ever laugh? Dorinda was shaking her, but rape, riot and ridiculousness in one package was too much for her. She went on laughing and then she cried.

Half an hour later everybody gathered in the salon for a Bumpo. Bumpo was a lethally alcoholic concoction of Kinyans's, but at the Cock and Pie the word applied not only to the drink but to the occasions when Her Ladyship gathered her girls to discuss, remonstrate, celebrate, or console.

The salon had suffered. Its mirror and candelabra had been shattered along with most of its chairs, though the few candles Kinyans had lit were not sufficient to show the worst damage to its giltwork. Everyone found seats where they could and sipped the steaming Bumpo in a lassitude of companionship and shock.

Phoebe, Sabina and Francesca had accompanied Her Ladyship over to Mother Hubbard's to enquire after its workers' welfare and see what assistance was needed. They came back, white and sobered, leaving Her Ladyship still there; some of the girls had suffered multiple rape and were in a bad way. 'Could have been us.'

'Would have been,' said Alania, simpering at the play-actor, 'if it hadn't been for Henry.'

that was his name. Henry King.

'Leaped across the alley, he did,' went on Alania, 'leaped. Then tore up one of Prinks's floorboards to make a bridge for us with his bare hands. His bare hands.'

What else would he use? The man was magical, no doubt, sitting there with his long legs stretched out, his ugly face amused, his good hands, his better-days clothes, but if the girls thought his rescue had been to save them personally, they could think again.

The glimpse of his face as he'd pushed her behind him to confront the men at the foot of the attic stairs had shown love of a fight, some bred-in concept of chivalry which did not exist in her world. He hadn't done it for her, not for any of them.

Glorying in his agility and the odds, murmuring abuse, one hand with a sword, the other gesturing the mob towards him: the picture was framed in her mind. Now and always. Like a good actor, he had provided an image so beautiful to impose on the other pictures of the terrible night that it might even outlast them. She would take it with her when she set out tomorrow.

Her prejudice had gone, to be replaced by that strange recognition she'd felt as they'd sat on the steps of the Cut together. Whatever history had blown him into Dog Yard, he was familiar to her. Underneath the bravado was desperation at his entrapment in the Rookery; she knew, because it had been her own. There was a level on which she understood the man. She wished she'd had time to dress; wrapped in her bedspread she must look typical Cock and Pie; well, not as typical as Alania and Dorinda who were allowing theirs to fall open in the area of the chest and legs, but certainly not respectable.

Her Ladyship came in from the Yard. Unpainted, her fat face looked featureless and, for once, her hair was dishevelled. 'The Watch is rounding them all up for the basket,' she reported. 'Jethro Parker and the drayman are back inside the Ship, poor bastards.'

There was a snuffle from the shadows under the clerestory where the only disconsolate, and biggest, figure of the party sat with its head on its knees, sucking raw knuckles. Penitence regarded it with disfavour, finding in it a scapegoat since the mob, the real villain, had been elemental, as blameworthy as an earthquake. Job, the brothel's physical force, its supposed protector. Much protecting thee did.

She had always considered it disgraceful work for a grown man and now, grown man that he was — and few grew larger than Job — he had failed in it. She'd never forgiven him for 'The Savage'.

Her Ladyship waddled over to the one remaining table, poured a beaker of Bumpo and took it over to her apple-bully. 'Weren't your fault,' she said. 'They was too many.' Wiping his eyes, Job shambled behind her as she walked back to the sofa and sat by her feet, her hand on his head.

Her Ladyship settled herself and looked around her wrecked salon. 'Well,' she said, 'that were a to-do.'

The deliberate litotes released a post-mortem. Though the actor was the hero of the hour, there had been other triumphs. Sabina, Dorinda and Phoebe had scored direct hits with their missiles from the clerestory.

'And what about Prinks with her arrers?' Penitence found herself the centre of the Cock and Pie's respect, which warmed her — Dorinda actually patted her admiringly on the back — even while she knew it would confirm her as one of its own in the eyes of the actor.

He was looking at her. 'O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide,' he said. 'More Mistress Amazon than Mistress Boots, it appears. You come from the Americas, I believe?'

Fanny put a heavy arm round Penitence's shoulders. 'All the way from New England,' she said, and she meant well. 'Right little Puritan when she got here, but we changed all that. One of us now, ain't you, Prinks?'

'I am sure she is,' said the play-actor.

The conversation passed on.

Sir, I am the needlewoman of this establishment. No prostitute, but brought here by circumstance as unfortunate as your own, whatever that may be. She couldn't say it. For one thing she couldn't say it, and for another her pride demanded he have as much percipience with regard to her as she for him.

Anyway, it would hurt the girls. Anyway, come the morning they would never see each other again.

Mistress Hicks's boots clumped on to the  floor. 'Come on, Henry. Take me home. I need me beauty sleep if you don't.'

Without a blink the actor rose to say his farewells, which he did with much hand-kissing and deprecatory shrugging at the applause.

Her Ladyship curtseyed to him and reverted to her best accent. Any time you wish to avail yourself of the courtesy of the house, sir, my girls will be happy to oblige.'

Penitence, turned away, heard his 'You are too good, madam, but I am rewarded enough to have been of service'. He offered his landlady his arm. 'Come to your sleep, Titania.'

When they'd gone, Dorinda said: 'Gawd, I could eat him.'

Her Ladyship looked at her sharply. 'Don't you make no mistake, my girl, he despises us.'

'He don't,' protested Alania. 'He rescued us. Chatted lovely and all.'

'He's a proper nobleman, doing his noblesse obleedge, and God bless him for it. But he still despises us.'

She knows. How does she know?

The brothel-keeper was ushering her brood to bed. 'Come on, now. Ma Hicks ain't the only one needing beauty sleep.' She looked around: 'Where's Mary? She ain't had her Bumpo.'

A search discovered the skivvy to be absent.

'Last I saw her was when we got her over to Ma Hicks's,' said Sabina. 'She was a trouble on that plank. I thought she'd fall.'

They went out into Dog Yard where constables stood guard over a group of now-quiet rioters waiting in hobbles to be marched off.

'Where were you when we needed you?' demanded Her Ladyship. 'And who's going to pay for my damage?'

The constable she addressed shrugged.

'You seen my skivvy?'

Just then they all saw her, emerging from Mistress Hicks's, staggering so that for a moment they thought she was drunk. She appeared to have gone blind, feeling the air with the palms of her hands as if it were a wall.

'Mary.'

She turned towards them and fell down.

A constable held Her Ladyship back. 'Careful.' Another went over to the figure on the ground and gently lifted the top of the shift with his halberd. He crossed himself. 'God help us, look at them rings. She's got it right enough.'

Carefully manoeuvring their halberds under Mary's armpits, they lifted her to the Cock and Pie and slid her inside its door.

Within the hour, the shutting-up of the Cock and Pie and Mistress Hicks's, with all their inhabitants, had begun.

Chapter 6

It was the poor's plague. Like a river obeying gravity in always finding the lowest ground, the Plague observed social laws and did not bother the rich. Approaching the grounds of great houses occupied by few people, it washed back and set off once more along the streets of overcrowded tenements.

Trickling out from St Giles's, it avoided the meadows that lay north and west, and followed the lines of population down Holborn, through Drury Lane, into St Clement Danes at the City's western gate, into the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields which, at the end of its long arm, included the royal palace of Whitehall.

On its way along Chancery Lane it passed Lincoln's Inn only to find that the students, lawyers and barristers had been too quick for it, discharging the readings and fleeing elsewhere, leaving servants in charge. The Plague killed the porter at the gates, and proceeded on its way towards the City.

'Item,' wrote Peter Simkin, 'a board for the carrying of the dead: 3s.

'Item. To Harry Weedon, smith, for 108 locks for shutting up: £3 11s.

'Item. Pails for the carrying of water to shut up persons: 5s 9d.

'Item. To Mr Mann for links and candles for the night bearers: £2.

'Item. Shrouds ...'

His quill jolted as the Reverend Boreman loomed over his shoulder. 'What do the damned bearers want links for?' The apothecary was with him.

'If there's no reply, Rector' said Peter Simkin, not looking up. He was badly behind.

'No reply to what?' snapped the Reverend Boreman.

'No reply from a plague-house' explained William Boghurst. 'It's becoming all too frequent. There's no reply to the bearers' call at night so they have to enter. It usually means all the occupants are dead.'

'That's why links and candles. Order of the Examiner,' added Peter Simkin, still writing.

'Is it,' said the Reverend Boreman, flatly. 'Let us hope the Examiner pays for it.' The still-living needed the parish's funds, not the dead.

It was cool in the little vaulted vestry; he'd brought the apothecary in here because it was the only place that was, apart from the church itself — and there the huffing and grunting and creaking and counting from the bell tower as John Gere pulled at the sally got on his nerves. The bell got on his nerves. Tolls for dead men, dead women, dead children. It was tolling away his parish.

At first, when the deep, clear, regular strokes of the passing bell had rung out, men out in the streets had removed their hats in time-honoured courtesy to the dead, but as June came in it had begun to toll nearly all day. On the second of June it was joined in its insistence by the bell of St Martin-in-the-Fields and, further away, that of St Clement Danes, so that men got tired of putting their hats on and off and no longer bothered.