The Vizard Mask (38 page)

His voice brushed all three women before him, like a broom, and piled them up at the exit where Jacko held open the door. Sir Thomas pushed up Aphra's sleeve and ran his moustache along her forearm, making pecking noises. 'Your play may be worthy of you, madam, but the last we had by a damned woman ran one night. Too damned virtuous. A play needs balls, madam, balls, and women don't have 'em, thank God. Return to your husband, madam. I wish you good-day.'

The door slammed behind them and they trudged back up the alley. Penitence put her arm round Aphra's shoulders and found Dorinda's arm already there. 'Did you tell him Buckingham and Rochester were your patrons?' It was stretching things a bit; since the gift of money that had liberated them from Newgate, they had heard nothing from the noble lords. The aristocracy had mostly retreated to the country away from the dismal ruin of London where detritus still lay so thick it had raised the ground level by four feet.

'Yes,' said Aphra, miserably.

'I'll give him balls,' said Dorinda. The entire Cock and Pie had been depending on Aphra's play. 'Wish I'd twisted his off when I had the chance.'

Penitence shot her a look over Aphra's head. 'You didn't.'

'Had to,' said Dorinda, 'or it was goodbye oranges. He's got droit . . . droit something over every quim in the house. King's warrant, he calls it.'

They were back in winter with a dead cat in a dirty alley

and worry gnawing their stomachs, to say nothing of hunger. If I shave the remains off the lamb bone and boil it with the last of the carrots we can have soup. Aphra stopped. 'Dorinda.' 'Yes, Affie?'

'Can you smuggle me into the play this afternoon?' 'You're not going back?'

'One is not living off Penitence's charity for ever ...' 'I took yours quick enough.'

Aphra was trembling with desperation. 'I don't know what else to do.' She straightened herself up. 'One's talent lies with the pen, that I know. It's the only recourse one has. I shall go back today. I shall go back tomorrow. I shall go back the day after. Whenever there is a play, one will be there watching it. I'm going to see what the public wants and what it doesn't. And if testicles are the order of the day, testicles it shall be.' She dashed tears from her eyes. 'With knobs on.'

'Hey you.' The shout came from behind them where John had emerged from the theatre door. 'You. Where you going?' 'Home,' shouted back Penitence coldly. 'Back here on the chap of two and we'll practise moving. I'm not having my walkers tramping the stage like woodcutters.' The door slammed. He'd gone. 'Walkers?'

'Spear-carriers.' Dorinda was torn between pleasure and envy. 'Ladies-in-waiting. Them as don't speak. Divers attendants.' 'Oh.'

'There's a turnaround,' said Dorinda. 'We come here to sell Aphra's play and you get the ballocking work.' 'Oh.'

They hurried to catch up with Aphra who, deaf to everything but her own misery, had reached the mouth of the alley and was turning in the wrong direction. They took her arms and piloted her north. She looked up at them ferociously. 'With knobs on,' she said.

The ill wind which had fanned flames across the City brought prosperity to the untouched West End. Masons, bricklayers, wagoners, carpenters, architects came in from the four quarters of England needing accommodation and provisioning.

Even the Rookery profited from the boom; there was work for those prepared to do it, and plentiful pockets to be picked by those who weren't. Houses which had been empty of humans and rats filled up again.

Penitence was tempted to turf MacGregor out of Job's and Kinyans's room, put him in what had been Phoebe's, and rent the vacated space. She was stopped by a warning from the Reverend Boreman on one of her visits to St Giles's to pick up a text for printing. She had fallen into the habit of asking his advice, though not necessarily taking it.

'Bring strangers into the Cock and Pie? Are you mad, girl?'

'Sam Bryskett's renting to a pair of tilers from Bedford,' she said, 'at a guinea a week. What's mad in a guinea a week?'

'Sam Bryskett hasn't got an illegal press in his kitchen.'

She still found it difficult to grasp the concept of censorship. 'If I may point out, sir, you use it.'

'You're cheaper than the others.'

'Nobody's b-bothered me yet.'

The Reverend Boreman shook his finger at her. 'They haven't bothered you, my girl, because the country's at peace and you're printing nothing inflammatory. But times change. And they change fast.'

Penitence scanned the scrawled sheet he'd given her, a blast against the authorities for still ignoring conditions in suburbs like St Giles which had given rise to the Plague. "'... The debauched who build their piazzas while the poor have not even clean water to drink.'" She looked up. 'And this isn't inflammatory, I suppose?'

The rector was pleased. 'Pray God it is. Pray God they put me on trial that I may denounce them to their faces.' He frowned. 'You have my assurance, Penitence, that they would never learn from me who printed it.'

She knew they wouldn't. They wouldn't put him on trial either. Who among the powerful cared for a poor rector's tantrums over clean water?

'You look tired, child. Is it too much cavorting at the theatre?'

Cavorting. This idea of the public's that theatre life was an endless Lucullan banquet. She got up to go and changed the subject: 'Do you think it was the Papists who set the Great Fire? Everyone says so.'

'I wouldn't put anything past those idolators,' said the Reverend Boreman, 'but I don't think so. Not the Papists, nor the Dutch.' He smiled at her. 'Not even the Puritans.'

He's changed. In the old days he would have said it was God's punishment. He's lost certainty. The Plague had taken everyone's certainty.

Waving goodbye to her from his gate, the Reverend Boreman remembered the dumb creature who had challenged him at this very gate two years before. Such a change. For the better? She would think so, he thought; she had gained comeliness, she walked and talked with elegance. Yet at what cost. No face as young as hers should have eyes so old.

She had returned to prostitution. Having taken the first step down the slippery slope in Newgate, it had been easier to take the second, though it had left her even more burdened with guilt because this time she hadn't had to take it.

Mrs Compton, one of the walkers, had come into the ladies' back foyer where Penitence was changing into her attendant's costume for Secret Love. 'He's asking for you, dear.'

There was only one 'He' at the King's Theatre. The other women looked at her in commiseration as she finished dressing and left the room with resolve and good intentions. I shan't. It stopped with George. I won't. If he dismisses me, so much the worse, but I won't go back to that.

She paused outside the door to Killigrew's office. Damn the man. It's not as if he's paying me. Walkers, she'd found to her dismay, were expected to do their stage work for the experience and the meal they were given after the performance. She knocked.

Sir Thomas was sitting at his desk in a loose robe, what looked like a furry nightcap with earflaps, and a temper. 'And what is this, miss?' He had a playbill in his hand.

Oh God. 'A friend of mine p-prints them, sir. A good printer and cheap.'

'And licensed, I have no doubt?'

'Not entirely, sir. But they are only handbills, not p-posters.' She gave him the same persuasion she had given John the prompter, who in tum had persuaded the actor Hart, who, as one of the theatre's shareholders, had commissioned them: 'Ten shillings a ream and a well-written text. Master Hart was pleased to say they have put up attendances.'

'Master Hart was, was he? And should His Majesty find out that his own theatre is using an unlicensed press, will Master Hart be equally pleased to be sent to the Tower?'

She hung her head. Damn. Damn. It had been a nice little commission and the only one they had at the moment. That and Dorinda's oranges were keeping the Cock and Pie eating, but only just.

'What's your name?'

'Penitence Hurd, sir. I'm a walker.'

'And a pretty little walker, too.'

She looked up, alarmed. Killigrew's eyes were on the bill, but she wished she were wearing her old high-necked dress. She'd had to shut her ears to the Puritan voices that shrieked in her mind the first time she had tottered on stage in high heels and trailing decollete best silk - one thing, Sir Tom insisted that even his walkers be finely robed. The thrill of being on stage at all, part of that entrancing charade, the startling seduction of seeing herself in the looking-glass, painted, large- eyed, foreign, the applause, all these things had drowned out the mental chorus of disapproval - after all she was supposed to be a Persian lady and perhaps Persian ladies displayed the swell of their bosoms — but it still made her uncomfortable to be in costume offstage, and Killigrew's tone just then had plunged the low cut of her basque several inches lower.

'It's well done, I admit,' said Killigrew. 'Who wrote it?'

The purpose of handbills was to extol the forthcoming production and Aphra made hers so mouth-watering they were frequently better than the plays themselves. Would it profit Aphra if she told him, or not? 'I'm not sure, sir.'

'You little minx.' Killigrew had become skittish. 'Is this printer your lover?'

'I have no lover, sir.'

'But you would wish him to keep his commission?'

'Yes, sir.' He was wandering the room, fingering his chin. Penitence became uneasily aware of the couch on the other side of the room. Its velvet was rubbed and well used.

'The question is, how could I persuade His Majesty to overlook this matter, should it come to his attention.'

'It's unlikely to, sir, unless you tell him.' You pig. Killigrew wasn't afraid of the King. He'd supplied women to Charles in exile. His rudeness in the royal presence was legendary. He'd once threatened the King that he'd dig up Cromwell's bones 'because no one else is taking care of the kingdom'.

'Then perhaps it is myself who should be persuaded.' He sat down on the couch, as she'd dreaded his doing. He even patted it. 'Come here, little maid, and give old Sir Tom a kiss.'

He was old, over fifty, and fat. She could see a roll of his belly protruding from the bottom of his shirt and overhanging the band of his breeches. I can't. On the other hand, she'd had to pay half a crown to Apothecary Boghurst to treat Benedick's croup, which still wasn't better. 'Keep him warm,' the apothecary had said, disregarding the fact that the tax on coal had gone up to pay for the rebuilding of London. 'Give him honey mixed in white wine. Build up his appetite.' As it was, the meals she ate four times a week at the theatre had to last her seven days.

Killigrew's jowls tightened. 'Do you want to keep the damned commission or don't you?'

'Yes.' But still she held back. This wouldn't be like the last time, with George. She didn't have to. Somehow they could survive if she didn't. But it would mean leaving this wonderful place she had discovered, permanent exile in the grind of every day. She made her decision. What does it matter? I'm spoiled goods anyway.

She went and sat down beside him and he flung her backwards.

'He was like a dog,' she told Dorinda dully, as they walked home through the freezing fog after the performance. 'I didn't have to do anything or say anything. He just.. . rutted.'

'He is a dog,' said Dorinda. 'He's marking out his ballocking territory. Most like he won't trouble you again. He'll find another tree to cock his leg against. Did it take long?'

'It seemed like it.' Afterwards, he'd told her to hurry and straighten herself or she'd miss curtain-up. 'It probably wasn't.'

That's the best sort,' said Dorinda, 'the quick ones. The times I've laid there saying "Ooh" and "Ah" and "You're a stallion, my lord" and wondering what the hour is.' She patted Penitence's arm. 'Look on the bright side. You got your flowers, so he ain't planted any little Killigrews. And you kept the commission. That's good, in't it?'

'Oh yes,' said Penitence, 'I'm getting to be a good whore.'

Penitence had slept with Keeper George because she needed to survive Newgate and get out. She slept with Killigrew because she needed to stay in the theatre in order to act.

How long she had wanted to become an actress she couldn't say; possibly always. Perhaps that was what had first attracted her to the Indians to whom acting was second nature; desire to transcend herself had given her the imagination to turn into an eagle, anything she wanted.

Distorted by Puritan teaching, suppressed, the seed germinated when Henry King had tossed her the vizard mask, sprouted into life when she'd set foot on the balcony of the Cock and Pie as Beatrice. Now only Benedick was more important.

At King's she found herself in an environment as natural to her as the Massachusetts forest and if that made her a creature of the Devil, then she was sorry, but she couldn't help it.

Besides, the summonses to Killigrew's room were mercifully infrequent. It was only if she happened to attract his attention that Sir Thomas remembered his droit de seigneur and exercised it. Mostly he forgot her. He was rarely around in any case, being much at court indulging in political and sexual activity and pursuing his vendetta against his great rival, Davenant, who managed the only other playhouse in London, the Duke of York's. The day-to-day running of the King's Theatre was left to its greatest male actors, Lacy, Kynaston and Hart.

And George had tempered the wind to the shorn lamb by making its breath so terrible in her encounters with him that rio blast would ever be so chill again. By contrast, the few minutes on the couch with Killigrew were easy — disgusting, debasing, but easy.

Her grip on moral certainty was weakening. She had been assured the theatre was a sink of iniquity and found it wasn't. True, the players' lives, with only a few exceptions, were immoral by Puritan standards but there was none of the hypocrisy that Puritan standards inevitably entailed. Above all, they were players: they laughed at what was serious, they turned things upside-down, they made a game out of hardship, they were brave, they had style, they reminded her of Henry King. As she had known him, she knew them. Even though they ignored her, in some other existence she had breathed the air they breathed.