The Vizard Mask (19 page)

'Gone.' The porter nodded. 'Or goin'. Off to the greenams without so much as a tra-la-la or kiss-me-arse. Off to bloody Cupid's Arms, and I wish I was with the bugger.' Peter's disapproval of the lese-majeste turned the man surly: 'Clerk says: you done a copy as ordered?'

'Yes.' Not for the first time, he blessed Penitence Hurd.

'Then he says get over to Whitehall and give it to General Monck. Old George's in charge of you bloody out-parishers now and 'a hell with the lot of you.'

Peter Simkin turned round, dragged the seam of his coat away from his sweating armpits, and had obediently set off west when he realized that he was sobbing, not for the defection of his king, not for the spaces where there should have been familiar faces, but because he was too tired to face the extra detour. He reached the top of Ludgate Hill before he could go no further and hauled himself into the Black Bush to sit on a settle and have a drink while his legs stopped trembling. It was cool inside. The contrast with the sunlight outside made the cavernous interior darker than usual, a shadowed, low-canopied grove of ancient wood and brass fittings. Down the far end, a drawer tapped barrels by candlelight.

Soothed by ale and oysters, Peter Simkin went back into the blinding streets. Not being as familiar with this area as with his usual route, he found no gaps to disturb him. Business seemed as usual, though scaled down; there were fewer people but they hurried by with typical City purposiveness, looking no more worried than they always did. It must be him, transferring his anxiety from St Giles, that overlaid everything with wrongness.

The only reminder of Plague was the occasional glimpse of a burial cart down a side street; red crosses were rare on the main thoroughfares and ceased altogether as the palaces reared up on either side of the Strand. He had no resentment against God, whose son had been an upholder of the poor, for so patently favouring the rich; it worried him that his rector got so het up about it. It was the scheme of things and there you were. He was just sorry, as he passed by great gates, to see that fountains weren't playing and that weeds were untidying the ornamental flower-beds.

That was what was wrong; the glittering thread supplied by the upper classes had been withdrawn from the fabric of London, leaving it workaday stuff. How many times had he disapproved of a group of wonderfully dressed rakes shouldering through the streets or being disgraceful in the coffeehouses, the gilded coaches showering coins and insults? Now they had gone, taking style with them, and he missed them.

His boots puffed up dust. Even under the branches of chestnut trees leaning over the walls it was hot; flies clung tenaciously to his face. The complexities of delivering the Bill in a palace the size of a small English town towered into an enormous problem. He must sit down again, find some shaded grass, before he faced it. But when he turned off, it was to find St James's Park's gates locked against the public for the first time.

A little further south, at the gate to the Privy Garden, Sir John Lawrence, Lord Mayor of London, and George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, waved their hats until the champing, shouting, luggage-encrusted cavalcade and its last trumpet- blowing outrider was out of sight, then became conscious of the silence.

'He had to go,' said Sir John, refuting an accusation nobody had made.

'Should have gone afore,' said the Duke, 'I didn't put him on t'throne to rot of the Plague.'

The Lord Mayor's face twitched — it had developed a tic — as he fought another surge of irritation. God Almighty, Old George wasn't the only one who'd assisted Charles to the throne . .. and he'd held off with his army to make sure the tide was flowing for the Restoration of the monarchy before he did it, and before that he'd been loyal enough to the bastard Cromwell.. . yet to hear him talk . .. The Lord Mayor got himself under control. Fatigue, that's what it was. To do Old George credit, he was prepared to stay and help - the only bugger in the government who was.

They crossed the road and started the tortuous walk through upper Whitehall towards the Duke's residence.

'Was that Castlemaine I saw dressed up in men's clothes?'

The Duke shook his massive head. 'Stewart. Castlemaine's pregnant.'

'Again?' The Lord Mayor's short legs skipped to keep up with the lumbering stride of the Duke. Through the open windows of the Treasury, he could see clerks still at their desks, but a sense of impetus was missing. Elsewhere large rooms were empty. Perhaps, he thought, one should rejoice at the birth of any child in a month when the Bills of Mortality had already recorded 2,050 deaths, if only the little bastard wasn't going to be a charge on the country's finances.

Money was much on Sir John's mind. He said: 'He's subscribed ten thousand pounds for the relief of the City.'

'Oh aye?'

'Only 1 haven't seen any of it yet.'

'Oh aye.'

'The Queen Mother, the Duchess of York, Prince Rupert, they've given. But the King ... he means well, we know ... it's just that we haven't actually had it.'

The Duke said: 'Castlemaine lost nigh on a thousand pound at basset last night', and he wasn't changing the subject.

Sir John used several words to describe the King's mistress without finding one adequate. A thousand pounds from what, ultimately, was public money, when the sailors who'd fought the Dutch still hadn't been paid, when he himself was at his wits' end as to how the shut-up were to be fed, the sick nursed, the dead buried.

'Some spark left a right little poem on her chamber door t'other night,' the Duke was saying. 'How'd it go? ... "Why by her must we be plucked, because she is by Caesar fucked?" . .. Some farrago like that.' His chuckles brought back a hollow echo from the emptiness of the Tennis Court. Very fit, I thought it, very fit.'

You would, thought Sir John. In your own way you're as vulgar as she is. Lord Jesus, what have we come to that such a thing can be posted in a royal palace? And the Queen in occupancy a few yards away?

'But t'lad's our king.'

Sir John looked up at the big man sharply. Who'd suggested he shouldn't be? Upstarts might shuffle kings around as it suited them, change this one, chop the head off that one, but Lawrences stayed loyal regardless.

At the entrance to Albemarle's apartments he wondered if the Duchess was to be inflicted on him. He didn't feel up to Xanthippes today. But their progress through the suite to the Duke's office was mercifully unimpeded by Lady Monck.

'Now then, Lord Mayor, distribution of relief.' Seated among the Duke's heavy furniture, sipping on over-sweet malmsey, they discussed it.

Sir John, by right of office, would administer the City itself; the Duke to take over the out-parishes. The pest rate levy that had been ordered would depend on how many people in each parish were left untouched by the Plague to pay it. 'Then there'll be private gifts and subscriptions from other cities.' The Duke looked hard at the Lord Mayor. 'Thee'll be expecting thy share of that for the City I don't doubt.'

'The major part, certainly,' said John.

'Aye, but dost thee know thy City's population?'

He didn't. Estimates varied. 'Half a million? A million? Bigger than out-parishes' at any rate.'

'Is it now? Is it? Look at this.' The Duke produced a rough map of the City and out-parishes. He drew a ring round the City making a solid central block surrounded by a ragged fringe.

'It's still bigger,' said Sir John.

'So it do look, but thee needs a soldier's eye. Watch now.' He drew a grid of equal-sized squares over the whole area. 'Thee counts t'squares over t'City, then count t'squares left outside.'

The City had twenty-seven squares, the outlying area twenty-eight. 'I tell thee, Lord Mayor, there's as big a mass of people outside as in.'

Sir John was devastated; he'd had no idea London had spread so wide. Nor was it any use to say, as he was tempted, that the City's population was more concentrated; he knew the overcrowding of the out-parishes.

He felt the now-familiar anger seize him. 'I know what you're asking and I won't do it. Bloody foreigners, swarming in from the country to live like rats, nobody asked them.'

'Aye, but they're not foreigners, are they? They're English men and women as couldn't find work elsewhere, and thy City was glad enough of their labour in t'good times.'

Damn the man and his soldier's eye and damn, damn the Plague. Into Sir John's own eye came the picture of the monument which he'd hoped would have been erected to himself. He'd have dearly liked future ages to know that John William Lawrence's mayoralty had left London more wonderful than it had found it. Now it would be remembered as the Plague Year. He made the bravest decision of his life. 'I shall consult my Aldermen,' he said, 'but you may take it that only money raised in the City will be spent there.'

'God will reward thee, John,' said the Duke, quietly.

'He'd better,' said Sir John.

The Duke's steward came in: 'The parish clerk of St Giles- in-the-Fields is here, my lord, with his Bill. I have baked it, my lord.'

The Duke rose. 'I suppose I'd better be acquainted.' He turned to the Lord Mayor. 'Any road, he's t'lad who's swallowing most of the funds. Do thee like to see him, John?'

'I'd like to see him in Hell,' said the Lord Mayor, sincerely, 'I'd like to see him buried alive in one of his own pits. I'd like to see him screaming on the rack. Him and his whole damned parish.'

Peter Simkin, waiting with his head bared, fingering his hat, saw a small man rush past him who, he thought — near-fainting with the heat as he was, he couldn't be sure — wore the necklace and insignia of the City of London. The Lord Mayor, if it was the Lord Mayor, seemed to be shaking his fist at him.

Like most windows in the Rookery, the actor's was unglazed, a square wooden frame inset with shutters through which woodworm supplied ventilation. The shutters punctuated his moods, slamming to when she enraged him, nudging open to show he'd forgiven her, remaining closed when he was sick of her, bursting outwards for a fresh start.

Today was a fresh start. 'Today' he said, 'I have a good idea.'

Not another one.

Today he'd acquired a recorder. 'We will sing the phrase.'

She was amazed by his persistence. She had long given up hope for improvement; the lessons were an end in themselves. We might just as well play chess.

At the first note, the girls below popped their heads into view. 'Singing now, is it?' And, from Dorinda: 'Pen likes singing to her gentlemen, don't you, Pen?'

'I c-cc-can't.'

'You can.' The shutters would slam to any moment, she knew. Quickly, she weighed embarrassment against another stifling day with nothing to do. She opened her mouth .. .

He kept trying to get her to look at him. 'Look at me. See how my lips move.' But she wouldn't. Like most stutterers she avoided the face she addressed, unable to bear the grimace that reflected her own. She b-urred and p-urred to his right shoulder.

'What you two doing?' Penitence was in the process of sending a near-perfect b-urr across the alley to the pitch of middle C. She unpuckered her lips and looked down.

The new watchman, a former butcher's assistant, was regarding the two of them with suspicion. The Plague had taken Soper two days ago. Watchmen, in the Yard's view, were either knaves or fools and this, Soper's replacement, was promising on both counts. He used his powers under the Plague laws with tyrannous attention to detail. Yesterday he'd wanted Mistress Palmer prosecuted on the grounds that her washing hanging on the pulley line between the Buildings and the Stables' chimney was 'agin promulgation'. It had taken the intervention of Apothecary Boghurst to convince him it posed no threat of infection.

Irritated, the actor removed the recorder and sent down a 'What?' which would have pierced a sensitive man like a shard of glass.

The watchman remained unpierced. 'Blowing kisses. Agin promulgation.'

The actor raised his eyes and waved the man away. 'Again. B-urr.'

'B-b-bbu-umm-b.' Her face was in tics of self-consciousness.

The actor growled. 'You see what you've done to her, you bacon-faced buffle? Go away.'

'Don't you call me a buffle.' The watchman was indignant. 'This is agin promulgation this is and I'll report you to the magistrate.'

'Do it.' The actor hammered on his window-sill. 'But go. This lady must have calm.'

'I know what the Cock and Pie is. That's a lady, I'm a Dutchman.'

The recorder was laid down on the table, very slowly. 'No,' said the actor, 'you're not a Dutchman, you're a pig-eared, dough-brained, privy-stinking dogbolt and you will apologize. You ... you Dogberry.'

'I'm going to report this.' The watchman lumbered off.

The actor scratched his chin. 'Dogberry,' he said, 'Dogberry, Dogberry, Dogberry.' His chair scraped back and he vanished into the shadows of his room.

He shouldn't swear. But it was nice of him. Is it worth it?

He was back, with a book in his hand. 'Listen to me, Boots. There's an actor in Paris with a stutter like yours. He's one of Moliere's company, Jean Bejart.' He was looking at her intently. He was having another idea. 'But when he is on the stage his speech is perfect. Perfect absolutely.'

She nodded with tired indulgence and he became cross. 'For God's sake, when Jean is himself he stutters: when he's someone else he doesn't.'

She understood what he said; she just couldn't see its application.

He threw the book and she caught it, looked at it, then dropped it when she saw what it was. 'It's a play.'

'A play, yes. It doesn't explode.'

It can injure the soul. The childhood-engrained horror of the conjuring, mocking, delusive mummery that was theatre was strong in her.

She was puzzling him: 'You read, don't you? I've seen you read.'

The Bible. The B-Bb-umm-B ...' Did he think harlots read the Bible? Didn't he know it was the Bible? How could he persist in understanding her so little when she knew him so well? 'The B-Bbb ...' Let me tell him. This one word, Lord. I beg you. 'B-By-Bb-umm . . .'

'God Almighty,' he said, 'do you want to stay in a brothel for ever? Read it.' He slammed his shutters.