The Vizard Mask (82 page)

From somewhere Penitence produced a shrug. 'The major has seen fit to search my house twice, my lord, with no result. And I protest, my lord. It's hardly likely I'd shelter the enemies of Prince Rupert's nephew.' Remind them of who you are.

But the parchment was going the rounds of the table.

'Not unlike you, only younger, Viscount,' said Sir Ostyn, the fool.

Henry stretched out a hand for it: 'Not as handsome.'

When it reached Penitence she managed a creditable sneer: 'He looks like Hamlet's ghost. Perhaps you should look for him on the ramparts, Major. Except that we have no ramparts.'

'Wonderful. No ramparts.'

'Come, Major,' said Jeffreys. 'You've searched the place and done your duty as you see it. Now let this sweet soul be. I order it.'

For a moment, Penitence thought Nevis would persist; for all his instinct, the man had no perception of how to be graceful even when it was in his interest to be so, but he saw the sense of bowing. 'I'll keep a ring of men round the house nevertheless.'

Kirk slapped him on the back and turned to Jeffreys. 'No harm in that, my lord, just for the night. The man could have hid out in the grounds. Nevis has a nose for these things. It's your safety we think of.'

Over in the dark corner beyond the fireplace the gargoyle gibbered and chattered.

Jeffreys nodded: 'Very well. If it does not interfere with our entertainment, hostess?' It wasn't really a question.

Penitence rose. 'On that matter, sir, I must go and prepare it.' As she passed his chair to go to the stairs, Jeffreys put out a hand and grabbed her arm, pulling her down so that her face was close to his. She smelled the wine and meat on his breath. He'd become amorous. 'Play Desdemona for me. 'Twas when I loved thee first. Dost love me, Peg?'

Who could not?' Keep it playful. 'Will you be my Othello, my lord?'

He whispered: 'A pox on Othello. Green-eyed cur. Give me a kiss. I'd not kill thee on that bed, Peg, except with love.'

She couldn't tolerate being near him. Heat rose out of his big body and enveloped her. She smiled down at him, kissed his sweating cheek and stared into his eyes. 'Until then, my Moor must be more murderous. Who 'tis will surprise you, I think.' This sounds like Dryden at his worst.

She was pulled down further and nearly toppled as his mouth tried for hers and found her chin instead. 'Play Desdemona for me. 'Twas when I loved thee first.'

Lord, how she loathed drunks and their reiteration. But as she scurried along the passageway to her bedroom, she could have sung. She'd thought she might have to manoeuvre the Lord Chief Justice into requesting an excerpt from Othello; instead he'd done it voluntarily. So far so good.

Muskett had found two more looking-glasses and set them on to tables. Her dress, cloak, wig and shoes were laid out on one. On the other was a jar of lampblack, a long piece of bed- curtain and Rupert's best travelling cape lined with scarlet sarcenet. 'The theatre lost a fine dresser when you went into private service, Muskett.'

'Thank you, mistress.' He went outside. With him guarding the door while she changed, it meant that she could open the bed-panel. 'Are you ready? Let me see you.' She studied the head thrust through the hole, kissed it and echoed Sir Nicholas Fenton. 'Wonderful.' Is it? Would it fool Nevis? 'And once you're back in the Netherlands, stay there.' She slammed the panel back in place as the door opened.

It was Henry. Immediately he sat down at the dressing- table. 'Where's the sodding looking-glass? God Almighty, I'm too old for this.' Smearing lampblack on his face, he squinted over at her: 'And so are you. Did my eyes deceive me or did you just now encourage the dishonourable intentions of the gentleman in the ruby flush?'

She was busy before her own glass. 'He's got to be kept sweet. We may need him before this night's out.'

'How?'

'I don't know.' How could she know? 'If Benedick's discovered ... we could plead his connection to Rupert.'

'Boots, the King has just beheaded his own nephew. Jeffreys isn't likely to overlook your son's treachery merely because the boy got on well with Rupert. Or because you tickle his fancy.'

You don't know. She'd got herself out of one of the worst parts of the worst prison in England by selling herself to a man. She'd become an actress by selling herself to another. You don't know what men will do for lust. The heat rising from Jeffreys's body wasn't different from the heat of George, or Killigrew.

With a start she saw he was watching her. 'Great God Almighty,' he said. 'You'd do it.'

And she would. The thought made her flesh creep, it wiped all colour out of present and future, but if it came to it and Benedick's life was the prize, she would do it.

She could hear her name being shouted from the hall. Her audience awaited her.

'Decus et Dolor,' she said and went out.

Chapter 6

The setting was wonderful. As she'd begun to explain that afternoon what she wanted for the entertainment, the major- domo had patted his nose: 'If there's one thing we know about, dear lady, it's drama. We've seen enough. Leave it to me.' There'd been little time to do anything else and the man had flung himself into the role of theatre manager with abandon.

They'd agreed the stage should be the grassy platform that formed a natural terrace to the south side of the house before sloping down to the yew chessmen, the lawn and the moat. Tonight it looked as if it had been invaded by giant fireflies. Chinese lanterns imported by Rupert through the East India

Company hung from branches and the spears of yew horsemen. Jeffreys's musicians played softly and unseen from the moat edge where lampions hung over the water, showing up the white of its water-lilies and adding their reflections to the moon's bigger one.

On the platform itself had been ranged urns of flowers. The children's sea-shells, collected during an excursion to the coast, formed the reflector of the footlights and the back set was provided by the open french doors to the lit interior of the room in the south wing that had been Rupert's library.

A couch trailing silk shawls and rugs had been set centre back and was causing ribald comment from the members of the audience as they took their seats on the cushioned benches.

Penitence and the major-domo stood in the wings — a curtain hung between the yew Red Queen and one of her pawns. He had his elbows together and was banging his fists, like a child afraid of thunder. 'Listen to the noise. How can you quell them, dear lady? Aren't you quaking?'

She was, but not from stagefright. 'What's your name?'

'Gilbert.'

'Gilbert, I've quelled audiences that make this one look like Puritans at prayer.' Compared with the stinkards in full cry from Charles II's court, these were amateurs.

Down by the moat the musicians were waiting for her signal. She raised an arm, a trumpet blared, the audience on the benches whoo-hoo-ed, and Peg Hughes stepped out before the footlights once again.

Had she gone straight into the serious speeches they'd have goose- and cat-called as a revenge for the disapproval she'd radiated during dinner. She wrong-footed them. She'd pinned her hair into a cap of curls, decoiletaged her basque until it almost showed the nipples, and in Cockney sang them:

'My lodging upon the cold floor is, And wonderful hard is my fare, But that which troubles me more is The fatness of my dear.'

At the familiar song, those who were theatregoers burst into spontaneous applause. 'Nelly,' called Fenton, 'Nelly to the life. Wonderful.'

Penitence strutted, swishing her petticoat and winking at Jeffreys.

'Yet still I cry "O melt, love, And I prithee now melt apace, For thou art the man I should long for If 'twere not for thy grease."'

It brought a laugh at Jeffreys's expense which was dangerous, but it got the rest of the audience on her side to play with. Gradually, teasingly, she led them along the gamut from sauciness to the maudlin, picking up Jeffreys along the way by a heart-rending appeal to him as she sang:

'None ever had so strange an art His passion to convey, Into a list'ning virgin's heart, And steal her soul away.'

It was inviting a cat-call for 'virgin' but each time she took a bow she inched her basque a little higher and they listened more soberly. During Balthazar's song she dared switch her attention for a second. White buttocks pumping up and down behind a yew knight were Sir Nicholas Fenton's on top of a Taunton whore. Her Ladyship wouldn't have let a Cock and Pie girl be so sluttish. On the benches Nevis himself was the only one sober. He sat upright, his head turning from her to the moonlit garden, as if he knew she was up to something. Beyond him she could see he'd ranged his men and Jeffreys's dragoons round the far side of the moat at twenty-five-yard intervals, dark statuary in the moonlight.

Several of them leaned on their pikes, listening, instead of holding them at the slope — but that didn't matter. For the purposes of Muskett's plan, it was what was going to happen in a moment that counted.

She went into Portia's 'The quality of mercy', kneeling and holding out her arms to Jeffreys. And you listen, you pig.

It was time. Somewhere in one of the upper windows, Henry had been waiting for his cue. From the far side of the house came screams and shouts. Somebody loosed off a musket, one or two on the benches sprang up groping for their swords.

Round the corner of the house, pursued by Muskett with a clapperboard, capered a tall figure dressed in stuffed pantaloons, full-sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed hat with a feather so drooped that it curled under its owner's nose. Its face was black and its codpiece was the size of a plum pudding from which stuck an enormous dildo. It was a clown straight from the Harlequinade out of Scaramouche via the Mysteries and, automatically, the benches laughed.

One of the sentries, a sergeant, was apologizing to Kirk. 'Gave us a start, sir. Black face an' all, came rushing out at us like and Davis let off a shot. Thought it was the Devil, sir.'

Kirk was still laughing, it was Nevis who snarled: 'Get back to your post and stay there.'

The black-faced clown fell on its knees at Jeffreys's feet:

'Is it the law? When he knocks on the door?

For poor old Nick? Merely showing his dick,

In the cause of farce? To get shot in the arse?'

The Lord Chief Justice twitched the clown's hat off. He'd been put out when he arrived to find Henry in situ, regarding him as a rival, but now he collapsed with laughter. 'The man shall suffer the utmost rigour of the law, Viscount.'

Penitence retired to the wings to unpin her hair while the major-domo draped Desdemona's cloak around her. As she brushed out her hair, Henry joined her. Muskett helped him change, put Othello's cloak around him and exchanged the hat for a turban made of Penitence's green brocade bed-curtain pinned with a brooch of brilliants that Rupert had given her after the birth of Ruperta.

Henry said: 'All right, Muskett, get back to the bedroom and stay there. Major Nevis may try to search it again. From the sight of him he's unimpressed by our hostess's display.'

He didn't look at Penitence as he added: 'Though she seems to have seduced the rest.'

'Oh for God's sake,' she said, irritably, 'I'm lulling them.'

'Is that what Her Ladyship called it? Go and get on the bed. Let's finish the farce.'

'Decus et Dolor' she said, but he wouldn't answer.

The french doors to Rupert's study had been closed. After a minute they opened, revealing the bed and, this time, Desdemona in her nightgown and her hair down, singing her willow song. There were no bed-jokes now. As she finished and lay down to sleep the garden was quiet except for a nightingale singing in the woods behind and, again, the Lord Chief Justice's sobs.

I did lull them. Why are you always jealous?

She heard him pad on to the terrace and begin pacing as he went into the great soliloquy from Scene ii of the last act. It was a long time since he'd been on a stage, but the emotion he shared with the man he was playing added a vibrancy to his Othello that even Betterton wasn't capable of. She realized how much he hid from her by humour. I'm so sorry. Why don't you believe I love you? Perhaps he did but, like Othello, like all men, he was incapable of understanding that a woman could be sensual and faithful at the same time. If she felt passion she must be passionate. If passionate she could not be faithful. Eve, she thought. It's all the fault of Eve.

How had the two of them evolved from Beatrice and Benedick to Desdemona and Othello? Whatever he thought she had done, however many men he thought she'd had, why couldn't he accept it and take what happiness they possessed now? Men were such egotists, such exclusivists. They had to possess things to love them.

'Yet I'll not shed her blood,

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster.

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.

Put out the light and then put out the light.'

Henry, I'm so sorry. Until now she hadn't penetrated how deeply she'd tormented his soul.

It was too late to change her interpretation of Desdemona as a sensual woman. It was the way she had played her when Rupert had brought him to the theatre. He'd stood in the doorway at King's and seen her abandoning herself to love in Hart's arms.

I was acting then. You must know I'm not acting now.

When he woke Desdemona, she put out her arms and pulled him down on her like a woman used to making love the moment her man came to bed. She heard the hiss of Jeffreys's breath. So did he, and dragged away so that she was thrown back down with her hair across her face.

As she pleaded for her life, she stroked his face. As Desdemona and as Penitence she tried to show how much she loved him.

'Think on your sins,' he commanded. Remember the Cock and Pie.

'They are loves I bear to you.' I do remember. I lived twenty years on the memory. Don't leave me.