The Vizard Mask (78 page)

She'd stood a long while in her shift before her pier glass holding up first one robe then another and calculating like a Treasury clerk.

If Henry has deserted me .. . plus more importantly, if he has deserted his son . . . equals me to save Benedick from the gallows.

The man with the authority to free Benedick . . . plus Dorinda and MacGregor if they should so need . .. equals me offering my body to same man in exchange.

She subdued revulsion and in doing it realized that she had achieved true whoredom in looking beyond the act to the reward. I must save my son. The hanging of my son would not be a survivable event. I am my mother's daughter. She whored for her survival: if it proves necessary I shall whore for mine.

In the end she'd chosen the dark blue cotton; it showed up her still-excellent skin.

Sir Ostyn and Penitence didn't arrive at Taunton Castle until eleven o'clock but they had only missed a few minutes of the Assize's first case. Most of the morning had been taken up by the ceremonial attendant on the opening of the Assize. Trumpets had been blown, red carpets laid, nosegays exchanged, speeches given. Everybody who was anybody in Somerset was displaying his or her loyalty to King James by his or her attendance and best clothes.

So crowded was the court that at first Sir Ostyn was refused admission, despite his magistracy. It was Penitence who got them both in by displaying the Lord Chief justice's letter, which so impressed the usher that he flung himself into the courtroom at a crouch and came out dragging two protesting gentry whose places she and Sir Ostyn took.

The first case was Lady Alice Lisle's.

It was like being mummified. The deep sills of the Castle's high windows were filled by spectators who refused the ushers' pleas to descend and who blocked out so much sunlight that candles had to be lit. The heat, the smell, the gloom enclosed Penitence so that she almost panicked, until she was drawn into the drama being enacted at the other end of the long hall where candles illuminated two protagonists like footlights.

Jeffreys was lit while the wigs of the two judges on either side of him merely made grey frames around faces that had disappeared.

And the aged woman in the dock was lit, her white cap and Puritan collar brilliant and sharp-etched.

A disembodied voice was mumbling from the witness box, cut short by the carrying bass of Sir George Jeffreys. 'They block the light. Hold up a candle that we may see his brazen face.'

A candle was held up to reveal a male witness doggedly muttering as tears rolled down his face. Penitence knew him; it was Lady Alice's steward.

'That is all nonsense,' said Sir George. 'Dost thou imagine any man hereabouts so weak as to believe thee?'

'She thought them only Presbyterians, my lord, not rebels. She thought they was mere in danger for preaching.'

Lit from below the Lord Chief Justice's mouth seemed to sprout tusks. For the first time Penitence heard an echo of the Welsh accent he had tried to lose. 'There is not one of those snivelling, lying, canting Presbyterian rascals but, one way or other, had a hand in the late horrid conspiracy and rebellion. I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take note of the horrible carriage of this fellow. A pagan would be ashamed of such villainy.'

'Oh ma dear Lord,' whispered Sir Ostyn to Penitence, 'if he can treat a witness so, what will he do to Lady Alice?'

What would he do to me? She was committing the same crime.

The captain who had found the two rebels hidden in Lady Alice's house was called to give testimony. The prosecutor was redundant; it was the Lord Chief Justice who did the questioning.

What a performance. She hadn't seen a Richard III like it, not even Lacy's. The man posed, varied his tone, sometimes making his audience laugh, lulling it with gentleness, causing it to jump, repelling, attracting, displaying a brilliance of grasp that kept it stunned.

The play - Penitence corrected the thought — the case rested on whether or not, when she gave the two men shelter, Lady Alice had known they were rebels. Lady Alice protested that she had not. Penitence wished she would say so with more emphasis; she had aged since the two of them had last supped a dish of tea together, her head shook and her deafness caused her to cup her hand round her ear. Jeffreys had allowed a court official to stand beside her in the dock to repeat everything that was being said. Penitence wished too that Alice had worn less starkly Puritan dress. But she was proud of her; her neighbour was conducting herself with dignity; her face had the blinking composure of the very old.

Now Jeffreys was summing up — lethally. How could the dame not have known the men were rebels? 'And if she knew,' rang out his wonderful voice, 'neither her age nor her sex are to move you. I charge you, good jurymen, as you will answer at the bar of the Last Judgement, deliver your verdict according to conscience and truth.'

When the judges and jury retired, the court became bedlam. Penitence heard fors and againsts all around her.

'Always for Dissenters, she was.'

'Kindly old besom yet. And wept for the King when he died.'

'She knew they to be rebels though.'

"Course she knew, but hiding hunted deer ain't the same as poaching. 'Tis only womanly. They'll never burn her.'

Penitence turned to Sir Ostyn. 'Burn her? They mean to burn her?'

His piglike face was miserable.

"Tis the punishment, Peg.'

She shook his arm. 'Burn her? For an act of charity?' She had forgotten that Alice's crime was her own, only being able to picture judicial flames scorching up that frail wrinkled body. 'They'd be too ashamed.' The witch-finding bonfires of the Interregnum had produced a reluctance among sophisticated people - and, surely Jeffreys, monster though he was, was a sophisticated monster - to return to such barbarism. This was a new age. For all his faults, Charles had encouraged toleration and science. James could not, he could not put the clock back.

Sir Ostyn hushed her. The court rose as jury and judges came back.

'Yes?'

'My lord,' the chairman of the jury was perplexed and nervous, 'the men Lady Alice was accused of hiding, they'm not convicted yet. What we'd dearly like to know, my lord, is if 'tis treason to hide a man as hasn't yet been proved a rebel?'

'It is all the same,' Jeffreys assured them.

'But we're not sure she did know them to be rebels, my lord.' It took great daring.

In the silence of the court it was possible to hear the bell of St Mary's Tower ring for one o'clock. There had been no adjournment at midday and the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys was shifting on his bench. The chairman of the jury flinched as if wishing to take cover.

'I cannot conceive,' shouted Jeffreys, 'how, in so plain a case, you should even have left the box. If I have not an instant decision, I shall adjourn the case and you shall be locked up all night.'

'See, Peg,' said Sir Ostyn, as jury and judges left the court again, 'this is the pity of ut. I'm frit as he'll have to make an example of the old soul. He's got more to try at Dorchester, more at Exeter, before he do move on to Wells and Bristol. He's got to make an example of un here.'

She didn't understand. 'It's Lady Alice. She's your neighbour.'

An usher was trying to edge along the close-packed row of public seats in which they were sitting. He leaned over and whispered: 'His Chief Lordship asks if Mistress Hughes would wish to take refreshment with him at his chambers in the break.'

No, Mistress Hughes wouldn't. But the respectful glances that were being cast at her by all those within range of the whisper brought her to her senses. Whatever happened to Lady Alice, Penitence had her own neck to think of, and the closer she was to Jeffreys, the less likely that same neck - and Benedick's, and Martin Hughes's, and Dorinda's and MacGregor's - would be subjected to the axe or the rope. She nodded, and got up. 'Give un my regards, mind,' said Sir Ostyn.

Despite the usher clearing the way, it was slow-going through the press to the doors. The noise of conversation and argument stopped as the jury filed back again into its box and the judges to their dais.

Reluctantly, Penitence turned round. The scene was still a stage-set; Jeffreys with his wide, red face and scarlet robes might have emerged, steaming, from a trap door to Hell; Lady Alice a study in dry white and black, her head nodding, her eyes focusing perhaps on memories of her long life or her arthritis, everybody's grandmother.

'Guilty, my lord.'

Jeffreys sentenced her to be burned alive.

'By the Lord, madam,' said Jeffreys, waving a capon leg, 'but it refreshes the eye to rest it on your sweet face. What say you, my lords?'

Justices Wythens and Levinz agreed that it did and got on with eating and drinking at the well-stocked table of the inn next door to the Castle.

Penitence refused all food, but accepted a glass of wine, hoping it would settle her stomach and stop her hand shaking. She drew the Lord Chief Justice to a corner. 'Can nothing be done? Can I do nothing to persuade you?'

Jeffreys frowned. 'You regret Lady Alice, mistress?'

'I do,' she told him.

He said unexpectedly: 'So do I. But 1 am the King's servant and he must be protected. I have pronounced the legal sentence for a traitor, which is what she is.'

'She is so old.' Penitence took a deep breath. 'There are neighbours,' she said meaningfully, 'perhaps even one's friends, who have become innocently, maybe foolishly, embroiled in the .. . the rebellion. If one appealed to you for mercy on them ... one's gratitude, my lord, would be undying.'

Their eyes met. She knew her timing was wrong; the proper moment to offer him her services would be tonight, after he'd dined well. But the dreadful sentence had added Lady Alice to Penitence's list as another brand that must — this time literally — be plucked from the burning. She could think of nothing else. Subtlety and craft deserted her with the picture of that harmless old body tied to a stake flickering constantly in her brain. It could be Dorinda's. It could be Benedick's.

'Mistress.' He was no fool. His yellow-streaked eyes held a warning. 'It is to be hoped you have no such neighbours or friends. Should they be my own brother, I would pronounce guilty men guilty. The King was most grievously endangered. Blood must form such a moat around him as nobody shall cross again.' His red face approached hers. She could smell sweat and the dust of his wig. 'However lovely the supplicant, she should make no difference to the sentence. Whether or not it is carried out rests with the King.' He winked. 'In that matter, mistress, I shall always be your friend.'

He began ushering her back to the table. 'As for Lady Alice, I have ordered her to be given pen, paper and ink and told her to employ them well.'

'She can appeal to the King, you mean?'

'She knows what I mean. It is out of my hands.'

Penitence felt better. There was no doubt that with any other judge than Jeffreys Lady Alice would have been found not guilty. But as the man saw it, he was doing his job. At least, he'd enough humanity to advise Alice to appeal. James would surely show clemency. And she herself now knew where she stood; Jeffreys had indicated clearly that he could not be bribed to alter a decision by money or fair words, but that, after he'd made it, his influence with the King might yet be employed — for a consideration.

He was waiting for her reaction. Aphra's words on Jeffreys came back to her: You can't have too many friends in that class. She feared the man but in her circumstances she could not afford him as an enemy. She employed her best stage smile; she wasn't an actress for nothing.

He was delighted. 'This lady,' he announced to his fellow- judges, 'is an oasis for us travellers in this benighted desert. Let us drink of her. She shall sing to us, pour her song like nectar over our parched souls.' Their apathetic response irritated him. 'If some of us have souls.' He turned to her. 'Do we dine together tonight, my dear?'

Oh God. 'I fear you may be too laboured, my lord.'

Too laboured? I would say we are too laboured. We are lighting such a candle of justicial labour as shall never be put out. Some thirteen hundred rebels yet to try and I vow we'll have sentenced them all within the month if it kills us which, what with constant travel, the smell of rogue ever in our nostrils, and plagued by the stone, it may well.'

He was using the royal 'we' since his companions looked fit and well. He didn't. His hands clenched occasionally and he winced from pain. The usher had told Penitence that Sir George's valet had told him that the great judge suffered terrible from the stone. 'Pissed sixty-three stones on the journey to Taunton. Sixty-three.'

The amount he was drinking — 'On doctors' orders, madam, doctors' orders' — was adding a purple tinge to his face. 'We shall see how many we can try before the day ends. And Lord send they plead guilty. If all the dogs plead not guilty we shall be trying them till Doomsday. We must attempt the blandishment of the King's mercy offered to them if they plead guilty to save precious time.'

Justice Wythens, a dry little man, shifted in his chair. 'I would challenge the legality of offering men an inducement to plead guilty.'

'Would you? Would you?' Sir George Jeffreys leaned forward.

Justice Wythens of the King's Bench leaned back. 'In view of the fact that some will be sentenced to death just the same ...'

'Presbyterians,' shouted Jeffreys. 'These are no men but Presbyterian dogs who bared their teeth against their king. There's no promise binding to such as they. I tell you, we make an example here and now or stand condemned ourselves of failure of duty to our country.'

The other two judges rose. 'Time for a whiff of tobacco before we return to the pillory,' said Levinz. 'Excuse me, my dear.'

To be alone with the Lord Chief Justice was alarming; sick or not, the man radiated appetite: 'And when do you sing for me, Peg? I shall never be too laboured for thee.' He was reaching for her hand.

'There is an entertainment planned by the burgesses for tomorrow night, my lord.'

'Pox to it. A hall with draughts and tinny trumpets, I know them, I know them. In London I was given an invitation to your house.'