The Vizard Mask (8 page)

The Cock and Pie's threshold, like the Ship's further along, led out on to stone setts which formed a platform running along the high, north side of the Yard and was served by steps. In more ways than one, everything went downhill from here. The Yard itself formed a sink.

With the glory of the Ship hidden from her view unless she leaned out, and unable to see the Cock and Pie's daunting but dignified frontage, her impression was dire. Down and diagonally across from her, the arches of what had once been a decent stable-block were barricaded by criss-crossed planks of wood, though people lived inside - she could see smoke emerging from a decrepit chimney. Next to that, and nearer, was the Buildings, actually one building shared by twelve families, a rectangle of rendered wattle-and-daub which an apologetic mason had ornamented with a castellated top and Italianate, though rusting, balconies. Its bravery was accentuated by lines of Mistress Palmer's washing hanging from the crenellations.

The far west side of Penitence's view was blocked by a high, thin, wooden loft which she knew, from slighting references by the Cock and Pie girls, to be Mother Hubbard's, a brothel which had set itself up in imitation of the Cock and Pie to take local trade or, as Alania had put it with a sniff, 'oblige a billy-goat if it paid 'em tuppence'.

Wherever there was a space between the houses, somebody had filled it with another, so that habitations no wider than nine feet across squeezed in at crazy angles with their roofs and upper storeys tipping frighteningly over the Yard, shading it from all but determined, midday sun. Had the tiny alleys leading into it been wider they would only have been repositories for more detritus and sewage than they were already.

The few persons in evidence were as unprepossessing as the place; pale children with heads shaven against lice so that it was impossible to sex them, since their rags gave no clue. The front
^N
of a vat opened to reveal itself as the home of a man without legs - Penitence later learned that the Yard, in its jolly way, knew him as 'Footloose'. With considerable expertise he hauled himself into a bucket on wheels and propelled himself off for what she assumed would be the day's begging.

Somewhere in the east a church bell began to chime. The sound was taken up by St Giles's on the west, then by the towers and steeples with which the view of London bristled. The call to Anglican prayer had no effect on Dog Yard, but it reminded Penitence what day it was.

Bartholomew, 'tis the Sabbath. Whether she go or stay must be put off until tomorrow. Today was the Lord's. Singing Psalm 121, she took her black Bible out of her satchel, sat herself down on her bed and began to read.

She was still reading and singing two hours later when the Cock and Pie began to stir.

Dorinda came into the attic, yawning, with a bodice in her hands and threw it on the bed. 'Give this a mend, will you.'

Penitence put her forefinger on her place and looked up. ' 'Tis the Ssa-Sa-Ssabbath.' She returned to the Bible.

'What if it is the Sa-Sa-Sabbath? Get my ballocking mending done.'

Penitence continued to read.

'You're a crophead,' said Dorinda, creeping towards the bed. 'You're a ballocking Leveller, that's what you are. Let's see your crophead.'

She snatched off Penitence's cap. Penitence snatched it back, and kicked. Dorinda gave a return kick and grabbed handfuls of Penitence's short, fair hair. They fell on the floor, fighting.

'Whose dog's dead?' demanded Phoebe from the door.

Dorinda rolled away, jerking a finger from between Penitence's teeth. 'She's a ballocking Sunday saint and she won't do my ballocking mending. I'm going to tell Her Ladyship of her, and then I'm going to darken her ballocking daylights.'

Phoebe and Sabina between them restrained Penitence from pursuit, and sat her down. 'See,' said Phoebe, gently, 'we need mending Sundays. Most of our gentlemen, they spend Sundays pummelling pulpits and tomorrow they'll come back wanting quiff badder than ever. Be a good fubsey, eh?'

Panting, Penitence looked at Phoebe's kindly face and saw she was older than the others, perhaps no more than twenty- four, but ageing rapidly. She shook her head. "Tis the Ssa-Sab- bath.'

'See,' went on Phoebe, 'it was rare good of Her Ladyship to take you in like she done. Especial if you ain't to be one of the game. Afore, she sent out the mending. Now she's letting you at it. Roof over your head, good pan and peck twice a day. Can't ask more than that, eh, Sabby?'

'That you can't,' said Sabina. 'Don't you go crossing Her Ladyship, Pen. She's a terror when crossed, Her Ladyship. Ain't she, Pheeb?'

Still persuasive, Phoebe patted Penitence's hand. 'And don't you mind Dorinda. She's jealous at Her Ladyship favouring you. Loves Her Ladyship, does Dorinda.'

Sabina nodded. 'More than a mother to us, Her Ladyship's been.'

Penitence stared at her, wondering what their real mothers could have been like.

'Dorry's bark's worse than her bite,' said Phoebe, 'and she obliged a lively 'un last night, didn't she, Sabby? A robe-ripper.'

'Thank Gawd I didn't get him.' Sabina spoke with feeling.

Dorinda's bark might not have been as bad as her bark, but her teethmarks were still hurting Penitence's shoulder, as much as Phoebe's and Sabina's converse was offending her ears. She shook her head once more.' 'Tis the Ssab-Ssabbath.'

Sighing at the retribution soon to fall on her, the two girls left the attic hand in hand.

Penitence adjusted her cap and dress, rubbed her shoulder, returned to her Bible and braced her courage against Her Ladyship's wrath.

It didn't come. Later, Dorinda poked her head round the door: 'Her Ladyship says no work, no food.' Her tone spoke satisfaction, but her dark eyes showed disappointment at the mildness of Penitence's sentence.

While going hungry allowed Penitence pleasure in being martyred for righteousness, it was hardship for a girl with a good appetite. Still, as Phoebe had pointed out, it was also hardship for the brothel not to have its mending done. On the one hand, Penitence did not want to contribute to the practice of licentiousness; on the other she would soon have spent two nights under this roof and her Puritan ethics demanded she pay for them.

I'll mend her Bartholomew bodice on the morrow. Then I shall

go-

Bui on the morrow there was other mending than Dorinda's to do, and there came a heavy fall of rain flecked with snow which battered on the roof and poured down the steps outside into the blocked plughole that was the Yard. Looking out, Penitence imagined herself splashing through it with nowhere to go. She was hungry and the smell of Kinyans's beef hare was already wafting through the damp air of the attic.

She felt trapped and aggrieved. Thee must help a bit, Lord.

As she and Kinyans cleared after dinner, he said: 'Shall I tell ye about Margaret Hughes?'

She spun round. He'd been indulging in a bonalay of his own concocting, 'to keep me feet warm'. It made them unsteady. He was winking at her and tapping the side of his nose.

'That had ye. Don't know everything, Miss Prinkum-Prankum, but Kinyans do. Old Kinyans do come from Somerset too. Died in the West Indies? So did my arse. Want to know—'

'One more word, Kinyans.'

Her Ladyship stood in the doorway, jewelled in purple, with her face painted for the night to come, but beneath the cupid's bow she'd drawn round her mouth her lips were thin, and colour gave out at her eyes, which were blank. For all its heat, the kitchen fell chill on its two occupants.

Her bulk on its tiny feet moved forward, and Kinyans retreated before her fat, upraised finger.

'One more word,' she said again, 'ever.'

'I weren't going to—'

'Ever.' She went out.

Penitence, by winking and making encouraging noises, tried to reanimate Kinyans into conspiracy, but the old man had sobered and didn't speak again.

Questions kept interrupting Penitence's prayers as she knelt by her bed that night. Kinyans had now made two references to Somerset. His accent reminded her of home, where many of the settlers, like her own family, had originated from the West Country, that hotbed of Nonconformity. Had her aunt come to London with him and Her Ladyship? He'd indicated that she had not died in the West Indies. Had she died at all?

Her imagination dwelled on an Aunt Margaret grown so rich that an envious Ladyship was keeping her niece from her out of malice. Or was she in prison? Hanged? Did Her Ladyship, out of pity, shield her from shame?

Neither case seemed likely, yet the idea that her aunt was alive rooted itself in Penitence's lonely soul, wildly bringing hope at the same time that it dismayed her with the knowledge that the only key to Margaret Hughes's whereabouts was held by the Cock and Pie. The next day it began to snow. Winter had come early.

So Penitence Hurd stayed on at the Cock and Pie and made everyone's life a misery.

Each girl coming to the attic for a fitting at her hands endured a biblical warning with it. It wasn't easy with a stutter and a mouth full of pins, but Penitence had rationalized her dependence on the brothel as a mission. If the Lord had marooned her on this island of evil, it was for His purpose.

Alania got Isaiah, 'O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments.'

The inseparable Phoebe and Sabina got the Beatitudes, while Dorinda, Penitence's bete noire, got Kings II, Chapter 9 — the death of Jezebel.

She reduced Mary, the skivvy, to such hysterics with a selection from the Epistle to the Romans on the carnally minded that Her Ladyship, in a fury, paid one of her rare visits to the attic. 'I'll not have a chit like you bothering my girls.'Her hand clamped the scruff of Penitence's neck, dragged her to the front window and lifted her on to the balcony, forcing her to look over the parapet. 'See down there?'

They had all been down to see it. Dawn had revealed a pile of clothes bunched against the Ship's steps which had not been there when night fell, more detritus the wind had blown into the sink of Dog Yard, human detritus — a woman clutching a baby, both dead.

They were still there, decently covered by one of Mistress Bryskett's sheets and surrounded by Dog Yarders awaiting the arrival of the parish coffiner. The Searcher was just rising from her knees by the bodies.

Her Ladyship called down to Mistress Palmer: 'What she say done it?' Nobody questioned the Searcher directly.

Mistress Palmer looked up, flapping her crossed arms against her sides to keep warm.'Quinsies, she says.'

'And my aunt's my uncle,' scoffed Her Ladyship. 'Anyone know 'em?'

Mistress Palmer shook her head. 'Not from round here.'

Then suppose you get my sheets done,' suggested Her Ladyship.

Without a word spoken, and glimpsed as it was through snow, Mistress Palmer's expression managed to convey that Her Ladyship should try drying sheets in this weather, that if circumstances were different she, Mistress Palmer, wouldn't demean herself washing for a brothel, whatever airs it gave itself, and that once Her Ladyship had got them, Her Ladyship could stuff them up her fundament. Nevertheless, she returned to the Buildings where her window steamed droplets into the freezing air.

'Quinsies,' spat Her Ladyship again, releasing Penitence's neck. 'And cold. And no work. And nowhere to go.'

The coffiners had arrived, two men carrying a pine box on a hand-cart. The edges of the unknown woman's skirt stuck to the ice when they lifted her body, and they jerked it to get them free. The baby was a foetal-shaped ball as they dropped it into the coffin on to its mother.

Tears froze on Penitence's eyelids. Lord, Thee sees each sparrow that falls.

'And weak,' whispered Her Ladyship. In her blue-mauve mottled face her eyes were dry. She turned them on Penitence. 'See?' Penitence nodded.

At the door her Ladyship looked back. 'And leave pestering Kinyans about your aunt. She's dead.'

Dorinda swaggered in: 'She beat you?' Penitence picked up her sewing, a flowered muslin gown for Francesca, feeling for the needle with her frozen, mittened fingers. 'She should've,' said Dorinda. 'She's good at it. Beats her clients, does Her Ladyship. Beats the Bishop.'

At last she'd got her response. Penitence looked up, amazed.

Dorinda grinned. 'Didn't know that, did you, you prinking crophead. You don't know nothing. He likes it, don't he. Brings him to the brim.'

There was much Penitence didn't know; unwillingly, she was learning. Shocking her became a pastime, the harlots' revenge on her piety. They insisted on enlightening her as to what 'obliging' entailed. The revelations were dreadful. 'Don't you pray at me, Prinks,' said Fanny — Kinyans's name for Penitence had been generally adopted — 'I got enough praying last night. My gentleman likes praying while he's poking.'

She tried to shut her ears against the stream of professional secrets poured into them, tried not to show her nausea at the undreamed-of variations on the sexual act demanded by the girls' clients; the fulders, the rancums, the pissers, the floggers, the Athanasians, the fumblers, suckers, rippers, fugoists — insight into human frailty at its most contorted was laid before her. With detail.

The one thing the girls did not divulge was the clients' names. 'We got our honour,' Alania told her loftily. Some, Penitence knew, protected their identity by remaining masked, even while abandoning all other apparel; she had seen for herself on 'The Savage' night that others did not. Whether these reverend gentlemen could relax in the knowledge that their mutual sinning inhibited each from denouncing the others to their parishioners, Penitence did not enquire. She didn't want to know.

At first she had rammed her bed against her door each night in fear that Her Ladyship should send one of these appalling men up to her attic. But this didn't happen, and the girls resented what they regarded as nepotism.

'Living off our backs, you are,' complained Dorinda. 'Just because Her Ladyship knew your ballocking aunt.'

In fact, Penitence more than paid for her keep. In the Puritan tradition, careless work was an offence against the Lord and Penitence could no more sew a crooked seam than she could fly. Cock and Pie couture was now in better order than it had been in the days when sewing had to be sent out to jobbing needlewomen, yet by and large its girls remained unappreciative. They were jealous of what appeared to be her special standing with Her Ladyship, who was their nurse, provider, instructress, adviser and confessor.