The Vizard Mask (27 page)

'How many Watch out there?' asked Dorinda.

'I d-didn't notice.'

'You pudden. That's why we're doing this.'

Was it? It had seemed a splendid cause while still a project, but while it was still a project she hadn't known she would feel like this.

Job was barking Dorinda now and the girl swept out for it. '... that mistress of the comic arts, that rose of the Rookery, our own Mademoiselle dorinda.'

Where had Job learned all this? Dorinda, of course. Dorinda and the actor. He'd taken to it like a duck to water. Dorinda was a natural, Job was a natural, the actor was a professional — which left just her.

Reasonably, Penitence looked towards Dorinda as, preening, the girl climbed back down into the attic. 'I can't d-do this.'

'Stop thinking about yourself. Think about the Brysketts.'

Job clambered in. 'They're gatherin',' he reported. 'There's most of the Rookery Watch down there already and word's spreading.'

'We need the ones towards Tottenham Court,' said Dorinda.

'They'll come. Listen to Henry. He'll fetch 'em.'

The actor was explaining theatre, and this play in particular, in case there were those among the audience who'd never even seen a fairground performance. His voice permeated every cranny of the room behind him, just as it was carrying through Dog Yard without strain. If they were to succeed tonight it had to reach down far-away alleys to tickle the ears of bored watchmen and lure them from their posts.

'C-couldn't they smuggle her out through the b-back?' pleaded Penitence, as she'd pleaded times before. Perhaps, even now, this trial was avoidable.

Dorinda tutted. 'All the back windows is boarded fast. Knocking 'em out would make a racket. We been through this. Pull yourself together.'

She couldn't. In a moment she would have to go out on that balcony and begin speaking. This is for the Brysketts. After all it's done we are going to beat the Plague this one time. But it was no good, altruism was not enough. Her legs ended at her thighs; she was standing on stumps. How could she do it without the mask? How could she do it at all?

The actor was in front of her now. 'Breathe.' She breathed, her eyes fixed on his.

'Who are you?'

'I am Beatrice.'

'Are you rich? Beautiful? Witty?'

'Yes.'

'Who am I?'

'Benedick.'

'Do you love me?'

'Yes.'

He extended his hand, palm-upwards. She put her own on it and together they walked out on to the balcony.

They were welcomed by applause so loud it took her by surprise; word that there was to be an entertainment had been carefully filtered through the Rookery grapevine, but she had not expected so many to risk the journey across the roofs to see it. She had underestimated the desperate need for distraction. Not daring to look outwards, she kept her eyes on the actor, heard her cue coming with the same dread with which she'd awaited an inevitable plosive consonant. I'm going to stutter.

Then the actor turned to her in his disguise as Leonato and instead of bowing, as they'd rehearsed, he took her face between his hands. '.. . There are no faces truer than those that are so washed: how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping.' He looked her full in the eyes and kissed her.

How much better. Dorinda was right. Penitence was an irrelevance; Beatrice was waiting to dispel fear, pain, hers, everybody's. For one hour, just one hour, by God, there should be enchantment and Penitence could go hang herself. She heard Beatrice's voice float over the chimney-pots: 'I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?'

When Beatrice said that Benedick would hang upon Claudio like a disease, there was a laugh. A laugh. How long since the Yard had laughed? The actor had worried about this; would lines like 'He is sooner caught than the pestilence' go down well with a Plague-ridden audience? But she had done it. She could do anything.

That there'd had to be a false floor built on to the balcony to give them more height and that every time they moved it juddered like a drum, that when three of them appeared together their elbows jostled, that the audience was getting too involved — during the masked scene Mistress Hicks could be heard shouting from her roof 'It's her, you fucking pudden' — that they had to incline slightly backwards so that their costumes didn't singe against the lanterns ranged along the balcony edge, none of these inconveniences could dint the omnipotence that had come over them all.

With her hair pushed into a boy's cap, she sang Balthazar's song and for the first time looked at her audience. It was dark but the moon was up and the watchmen gathered below carried cressets. It wasn't the watchmen she saw, it was Mistress Palmer sitting on her balcony, Mistress Hicks leaning perilously over her eaves, the empty darkness of Mistress Fairley's window, the two lonely figures in Mother Hubbard's, a child brought from somewhere in the houses behind tied to a chimney-pot so that he wouldn't fall off, the faces ranged along the roof-poles intent on hers, some of them with still- healing plague spots, all white, all thin.

'Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,' she sang to them, and heard Balthazar's voice quaver before she pulled herself together; tears would be self-indulgence; these people deserved the best.

'Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never ...'

The melody was the actor's and as potent as the words. More watchmen coming into the Yard stood still under its spell.

'Sing no more ditties, sing no mo'

Of dumps so dull and heavy . . .'

There was a shift on the cobbles below; two figures, a man and a woman, were quietly passing behind the crowd of watchmen in the direction of the Ship. They'd come then. How brave. She'd almost forgotten the raison d'etre of the entire performance. She saw some of the faces in the windows glance down and sang as she'd never sung before to get their attention back. The Dog Yarders were privy to the secret, but the watchmen must not be distracted, it was vital to keep their gaze riveted on the Cock and Pie's balcony, away from the Ship.

'Then sigh not so, But let them go . ..'

She had the Dog Yarders back now, conspiring with her, knowing what she knew, knowing she knew they knew, part of the mystery in which the group became greater than its constituents. She smiled at them and poured out her blessing:

'And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny nonny.'

She backed into the attic where Dorinda and Job were wiping their eyes. The play-actor took over in his evil guise as Don John, soliloquizing over the hisses his plot to make Claudio believe that Hero was unfaithful, then whipping back into the attic to pull a ridiculous hat over his eyes. The next scene was his and Job's. They'd worried about this one too; it was all very well for Shakespeare to portray his Watch as clownish dolts, he hadn't had to present it to an audience of watchmen.

She listened while she changed. Job's delivery was leaden, not unfitting the part of Verges; the actor was playing Dogberry with a perfect East Anglian accent. He'd studied his fellow-lodgers, the pipe-makers, who came from Suffolk. He was very funny. She heard whoops from the rooftops, but it was drowned by the delight from the cobbles.

'They don't think it's them,' Dorinda said.

They snatched the hats and wigs off the two men as they came in through the window, and replaced them with Claudio's and Leonato's. Job was almost drunk with his success, but the play-actor was groaning for the interval they didn't dare allow themselves. The watchmen could not be permitted time to do a patrol. Her next scene was the crucial one.

Listening at the window she heard Job miss his line. He was beginning to think of their purpose rather than the play. She prompted him. Even Dorinda wavered; it was the actor who held the scene together. As the men came in she swept out to comfort the slandered Hero.

Now it was the love scene, the crux of Master Shakespeare's play and of the Dog Yard plot. She stood at the far end of the balcony looking down along the alley that ran past Mistress Hicks's which tonight was the nave of a church with moonlight falling in splashes on its marble flagstones. The floor resonated as the actor stepped out behind her. 'Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?'

Without turning round she said: 'Yea, and I will weep a while longer.'

Question. Answer. Benedick's voice held surprise as well as compassion, a man amazed at himself. Question. Answer. Their awareness of each other gathered up the magic of the night.

Tell her, for Gawd's sake.' Mistress Palmer's whisper crossed the church, 'tell her you bloody love her', and turned into a puff of relief as Benedick said: 'I do love nothing in the world so well as you — is that not strange?'

It was coming. Below them, round about them, nothing moved, nobody breathed.

'Come, bid me do anything for thee.'

Then she turned, every eye in the world on her, her own registering for one second the scene being enacted at the Ship.

She put out her hand with the Rookery in it. 'Kill Claudio.'

Dog Yard dragged in its breath. Mistress Palmer was peering through her fingers. The child attached to the chimney began to cry. A halberd fell from nerveless fingers on to the cobbles. Nobody stopped watching. Only Beatrice and Benedick were aware, in another life, that a man and a woman were tiptoeing down an alley on their fraught, maze-like route towards Tottenham Court and the country, with a bundle in their arms.

She left the stage. Dogberry and Verges were on again. She fell on to her bed. Dorinda was shaking her. 'Did they do it?'

'They did it.' The second's glimpse was on the retina of her eyes; she could see, would always see, the naked body of a little girl being lowered by its parents to a couple standing in the street below. She began to sob; the emotions she had called up had opened her to the pity and terror of the world.

'Don't you bloody give way,' said Dorinda, snivelling. 'They ain't out the wood yet. They got a long way to go.'

They'll get there.' The Brysketts' friends, whoever they were, had to get there, wherever it was, with the one tiny brand they had plucked from the burning. Thought of them stayed in her mind as Beatrice and Benedick teased each other to the last.

They swore that you were almost sick for me.'

'They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.'

There was still no hue and cry. They must have reached the outskirts by now. There would be a wagon filled with straw, Sam Bryskett had said.

'Come,' said Benedick, 'I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.'

She spoke her last lines: 'I would not deny you; but, by this last day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.'

'Peace! I will stop your mouth.' They kissed.

Dog Yard gave a sigh of utter satisfaction. The applause began as, joined hands held high, they backed into the attic. Stamping feet dislodged tiles from the Buildings' roof, roars came up from the Yard where over thirty watchmen pounded halberd hilts on to cobbles; bandages, kettles, chamber pots waved from the windows in lieu of programmes. A voice from the crowd demanded: 'Encore, encore.' Mistress Hicks was heard to answer: 'Never mind about "encore", make the buggers do it again.'

They went out again to bow and bow. Dorinda and Job drew more applause as they squeezed in beside them. Adoration poured at them, between them, and was poured back by them into the shared experience. She had never known love like this, never known love at all until now. If she leaped high the wheat would grow; she had all that was glorious here, in her fingers.

Back in the attic at last she hugged Dorinda and Job as they hugged each other. In the mutual congratulations one voice was silent, Benedick's.

Instead, a haggard and displeased actor was looking at her.

'You lost concentration,' he said. 'After "Kill Claudio" Beatrice was gone.'

He was ruining something as near perfection as she would ever reach. 'She w-wasn't.'

'Oh yes she was.'

She said: 'Th-thumm-they liked it anyw-way.'

'Th-they liked it anyway,' he mimicked. 'They like anything. They don't know acting from their arse. You gave them short

change.'

Surprisingly, Dorinda came to her aid: '1 thought she was ballocking good', and got turned on for her pains.

'One performance and you're an expert? She was good to "Kill Claudio", then she was bad.'

'We got the job done anyhow,' sulked Dorinda.

He spoke very clearly. 'The job, my dear girl, is the play. If those people had been discovered, if the child had been put back into the pest-house, we'd still have given the best we know.' He swung round to Penitence. 'Understand that or you are no actress.'

The palace of Messina had been broken into shards. She wanted to hurt him back so badly that she managed: '1 d-don't want to be a b-bl-bloody actress. P-pretending to be s-some- body else. It's no job for a g-g-grown woman. N-nor a g-g- grown man neither.'

'It's a step up from being a whore.' He nodded to his cast, jumped up on her side sill and swung himself back into his room.

Chapter 11

The fires burning in the streets outside every twelfth house were adding to the heat and overriding with disinfectant the smells of summer from St Giles's rectory garden.

'You mean to tell me, Master Boreman, that you know nothing of this?'

'I know now, Master Flesher,' said the Reverend Boreman, tiredly, 'because you have been so good as to tell me. At length. I did not know before.'

The inquisition turned its attention on the other occupant of the rectory drawing-room. 'Nor you, Master Boghurst?'

'It is hardly likely that Sam Bryskett would have informed me of an intention to break the law, if indeed such was his intention.' The apothecary spoke with his usual precision, but Flogger Flesher detected evasion.

'Your disapproval of the shutting-up law is well known, sir.'