The Vizard Mask (9 page)

'Favoured, ain't you?' sneered Alania. It took time for Penitence to realize that being permitted to retain her virginity was a favour. Apart from Job and Kinyans, there were no other exemptions from the Cock and Pie's trade. Fourteen- year-old Mary was called on to oblige when the house was busy and even Her Ladyship provided the occasional service to established clients who had special, and painful, requirements.

It was useless for Penitence to point out to the girls that they were being exploited, though she did. 'B-b-better for her that a m-ummm-m-millstone were hanged about her neck.'

'Don't you hang no m-m-millstones round Her Ladyship,' warned Dorinda, repeating what Sabina had said: 'She's been a good mother to us.'

And one day — it was Christmas Day — Penitence was amazed to reflect that, in a sense, it was true.

Phoebe put her head round the door. 'Ain't you coming down to dinner?'

Penitence shook her head. She was reading her Bible.

'There's goose,' wheedled Phoebe, stepping inside, 'and cider meat and mutton sausages, and Kinyans's made his sugar pigs.'

Penitence swallowed. From outside came the chimes of bells celebrating the birth of their churches' Lord.

'Her Ladyship's asking. And Dorinda, she wants you to an' all.' At Penitence's look of disbelief, Phoebe sat herself down on the bed. 'Don't be hard, Prinks. You think Dorry obliges acause she likes it? Any of us like it? There weren't no choice.' She sighed. 'Maybe it's different in the Americas.'

It was. Sin was sin in the Chosen Land. You didn't do it. Well, the Reverend Block had tried, but if you did do it, you certainly didn't excuse it as the only choice. Stonily, Penitence read on.

'Poor old Dorry got done by her granddad when she was four,' mused Phoebe.

'N-n-no.' It was forced out of Penitence. 'She's 1-lying.'

'Her mum used to let him because it kept the old bugger off her.'

'She's 1-1-Iying. She's 1-umm-lying.'

Phoebe shrugged. And the shrug was proof. It was so true that it didn't matter who believed it or didn't.

'Won't you come down?' pleaded Phoebe, patiently.

'I c-cca-ccan't.' Christmas was a heathen festival. Puritans didn't celebrate it.

Phoebe got up,.sighing. 'Don't then.' She looked around the scrubbed, undecorated attic and at the scrubbed, undecorated girl who sat in it, and was moved to drop a kiss on her head. 'Merry Christmas, Prinks.'

Alone, Penitence sat on, unseeing. Was Phoebe right? Did the Cock and Pie girls dislike what they did? Were they not, after all, the separate genus of her teaching, harlotis vulgaris, a garish plant which flourished in ordure? Were they as human but less fortunate than herself?

Ordure was the bed of their trade, but they didn't flourish in it. Most of them had already developed the first stages of syphilis, the weeping ulcers around their private parts which would eventually kill them.

Penitence recalled the times they'd forced details of their professional lives upon her — and saw faces intent on punishing themselves as much as her. She recollected conversations, sentences casually let slip during fittings, which had vouchsafed glimpses into their past. At the time she'd deliberately shut her mind to them as further attempts to appal her; now she allowed it to rove over them, wandering along a dark corridor in which doors gave glimpses into Hell.

Beggary, abandonment, beatings, starvation; for most of the girls there had been the accompaniment of sexual assault so persistent that it made the Reverend Block's attempt on Penitence's virtue appear almost benign. She had been able to fight off one guilt-ridden clergyman, she realized; they'd been subjected to violation by men in that darkly hopeless wolf-pit, the lowest stratum of humanity, where the rays of Christianity, even the basic taboos against incest, hadn't penetrated.

No wonder, then, that to them the Cock and Pie was sanctuary. No wonder the woman who insisted on standards for them and their clients had become an adored commander- in-chief. Any client who flouted Her Ladyship's requirements of behaviour was turned away, however good his money. Unwilling conscripts in a dirty war the girls might be, but now they had at least joined a crack regiment.

It became too dark to read her Bible, even if she'd been reading it in the first place.

Frowning, she got down on to her knees to say her nightly prayers and, for the first time since she'd arrived in it, Penitence included in them one of true charity for the girls of the Cock and Pie.

Chapter 3

The printing shop in Goat Alley had the blue-black smell of ink mixing with dust, sweat, lye and hot lead that brought back memories of the shed where her grandfather had kept his press. There was no signboard outside; the shop's trade, like most in the Rookery, was illegal.

An apprentice, who was contributing more than his fair share to the sweat, grimaced as Penitence climbed the last steps up to the door of the garret. "Ware stranger, Dada.'

The printer looked up from the screws he was adjusting on the press head. 'Out. Nobody allowed, women especial. Orders taken downstairs.'

Penitence had pared her sentence to the bone - 'Have you work?' — and wobbled only slightly on the 'w'.

The printer advanced on her. 'The wife cleans round here. Out.'

Penitence shook her head. 'I'm a per-per-umm-per—'

'Puritan?' guessed the printer. 'No God-botherers allowed. Out.'

'I'm a per-per-um-per—'

'Peach? Pest? Pushy?' The son was getting the hang of it.

'Pp-printer,' said Penitence. 'Grandfather took me on as a pp-pp—'

'Pox doctor?'

'- prentice,' finished Penitence. 'Also I can umm I can porr- proooumm-proo . . .' Oh, Bartholomew the trade. '. .. pp-proof- read.'

'What you think I do?' asked the apprentice with resentment.

'G-get it wr-rong.' Penitence held out the theatre poster she had taken off a wall in Drury Lane. Apart from giving even unstandardized spelling a bad name, some sentences were upside-down.

The printer followed Penitence's forefinger along the errors, then cuffed his son round the ear. 'No wonder they never paid us.' But to Penitence he brazened it out. 'What's it to you, Goody-boots? Four-line capitals and Roman they wanted, four-line capitals and Roman they got.'

Ezekiel Hurd had been a master printer before he'd been forced out of England by Charles I, and he'd made a profitable sideline from his press in the Americas, teaching Penitence everything he knew. However, if this idiot here wouldn't admit his need for help, she was wasting her time.

They got four-line capitals and p-p-pica,' she said. She was at her best when she was angry.

Out in the alley again, she tapped her hat more firmly over the scarf she'd wound round her ears. She was in one of her

must-leave-the-Cock-and-Pie phases. As the long, cold winter wore on, her contempt for its girls was being replaced by something nearer pity, but her contempt for herself in remaining there was unabated. Kinyans steadily refused to disclose any more information about Margaret Hughes, and she was beginning to lose hope that he ever would.

Broaching that unlicensed Bartholomew of a printer for employment had been an impulse brought on by the familiar smell issuing from his window as she'd passed it on her way back from buying threads at the drapery in St Giles's High Street.

Be not downcast, Pen. All things work for good to them that love God. And standing around here wouldn't buy baby a new bonnet. Her feet were losing feeling, the winter evening setting in. The High Street had been lively with traffic - she could still hear it - but there was none in this alley, no flambeaux either. The cold was one more enemy in its inhabitants' fight for survival and had driven them indoors. She was getting to know her way around the Rookery, but she didn't trust it after dark.

Icicles like the Sword of Damocles hung over her head as she loped past quiet, gimcrack houses where the whiteness of the roofs indicated that if the rooms beneath them were warmed at all the fires were too pitiful to send up warmth to the rafters.

New England's winters had been colder than this, but its houses had been built to withstand them. Matoonas had shown her how to use snowshoes ...

Her mind was in Massachusetts and her body proceeding along Butcher's Cut when two figures barred her way. They had rags tied across the lower halves of their faces. A muffled, very young voice said: 'You know what we want, lady.' Boys, but dangerous boys.

She shifted the basket she was carrying to her left arm and got ready to flip her knife out of its sheath on her right. 'N- no.' Why did I say that? Can I take on two?

Driven to the lie by desperation, she quavered: 'I'm a f-friend of the T-t-tippins.'

One of the boys said: 'Who's the fucking Tippins?' He was advancing.

Strangers, then. Young footpads from outside the area. If they'd been local, they'd have known this was Tippin territory, with only Tippins allowed to rob it.

If it came to it, she could throw her knife into the leg of the biggest and outrun the scrawny, shoeless one. But she'd rather it didn't come to it. She began to back up the Cut, shouting 'Help'.

Nothing happened, except that the buildings around her became more silent, as if huddling away from trouble. The youths were coming at her. Carefully, she stood up on a step to give herself the advantage of height, rapping the knife in her hand on the door behind her and shouting 'Help' again.

Nobody, nothing. She was on her own.

No, she wasn't. From some way behind came an unsteady thump of footsteps and a voice making anticipatory 'Oh ho' noises.

She turned to see whose it was, and slipped on the ice of the step.

Her spine jarred but instinct rolled her over as the boys grasped her ankles and she kicked, crawling in the direction of the newcomer, her head raised like a deer with a wolf on its hindquarters — and saw, coming towards her, the gentleman.

For all her fright, she classed him immediately. More to the point she saw he was on her side. And he was big.

The grip on her legs relaxed. Above her, the gentleman waveringly faced her attackers, smiling as if he loved them: 'How now, you secret, black and midnight bastards,' he said. 'That's not nice. Don't do it.'

Without taking his eyes off her attackers, he proffered a hand to Penitence and she hauled herself up by it.

The youths had stepped back. She saw their eyes calculate ratios of cudgels to the half-drawn sword in the gentleman's scabbard, lengths, heights, needs and possibilities, and come to a conclusion. They ran.

She let go the hand and, despite the pain in her coccyx, sat down on the steps to relieve her shaking legs. The gentleman was having a lovely time, shouting, 'Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither', after the retreating backs, bowing to the heads which, now they weren't needed, had emerged from windows. He returned to Penitence and swept off his hat. 'At your service, mistress. Are you hurt?'

She shook her head and hoped he'd go away now. She hated fusses. She was grateful for the rescue but he didn't have to be loud about it.

'Does this happen often?' From under his cloak he produced a leather bottle and offered it to her. She shook her head. It smelled of liquor. So did he. He took a swig himself. 'What did those noblemen want?'

Wearily, she pointed down at her boots.

He studied them. 'Why?'

How rude. They'd seen better days, but they were solid Massachusetts boots, and desirable in a district where half the population went barefoot. And his own were nothing to write home about. She knew now why she'd assessed him as a gentleman. In her community it was not a title of respect; it applied to the despised representatives sent out to the Massachusetts Bay colony to represent the English government. From her few glimpses of them on visits to Boston and from her grandfather's unflattering descriptions, she had built up a picture of braggadocio and here it was. In spades. Everything about the man had flourish, his cloak trailed over his shoulder and on to the ground, his sword bobbed with the swing of his legs, his wide hat boasted an outrageous feather and performed a parabola when he twirled it off to bow.

Also, he was drunk. She was about to get up, but he bumped down on the step beside her. 'Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,' he said companionably. He took another drink from his bottle. 'And how you can't trust any of the buggers.'

Embarrassed, still shaken, nervous of his peculiarity and his swearing — even at that early moment, Penitence caught the contrapuntal moan of hurt underneath the gibberish, and relaxed in recognition. Miserable men had no harm in them. He was impersonal with the self-absorption of drunkenness; she was an incident he'd happened on, nothing more.

He wagged his finger at her: 'Put not your trust in princes, madam. Well, possibly Rupert. But the next time a king asks you a favour ...'

She smiled placatorily and stood up.

'No, no,' he scrambled unsteadily to his feet, 'here wast thou bay'd, brave heart; here didst thou fall: and here thy hunters may still be lurking about. We go together.' He took another swig, replaced the bottle beneath his cloak and offered his arm. Feeling a fool, she took it.

Their progress was erratic and noisy: he sang all the way.

As they were approaching Dog Yard, he stopped. 'I am lost in this forest, fair maid. Tell me which of its palaces is the Cock and . . .' he squinted at some writing on the back of his hand.'.. . the Cock and Pea?'

There was giggling from above their heads where the girls of Mother Hubbard's establishment were leaning out of their back window. 'Pie, darling,' said one of them, 'Cock and Pie. And we'd oblige you better. For free.' From the way she was ogling, she meant it.

Penitence couldn't think why. Admitted, the man had panache, but he was ugly. His overlarge nose, which the cold had turned red, contrasted with a livid, pockmarked face, his eyes were baggy and he was definitely down on his luck. There was a split in his doeskin boots, the edge of the cloak was ragged where it dragged on the ground and his hat, like her boots, had seen better days, but not recently.