The Vizard Mask (90 page)

My God. Lady Pascoe too. If James had lost the devotion of this snobbish, fat, honey-cake-making, likeable woman he had lost England.

Into Penitence's memory came Henry's voice: 'You can have a king who's a fool and you can have a king who's a Catholic but if you've got a king who's a fool and a Catholic, sooner or later you're going to have a revolution. And that's when William comes in.'

In her own view James had to go, not because he was Catholic or foolish but because he'd said: 'I know the English. One must not show them at the start that one is afraid of them.'

It was the remark of an alien, someone who not only was afraid of the English but didn't regard himself as one of them. And as Penitence recrossed the moor with a June breeze flipping the willow leaves white side up, ruffling the blue surfaces of the rhines and scenting the air with the smell of bean flowers, she realized it had become vital to her that, if England had to be personified by a monarch, then that monarch must feel for the country what she had come to feel for this area of Somerset. Nationality had nothing to do with it; Rupert, born in Bohemia, had been English to his fingertips. James was English-born and as removed from his people as if he came from the moon.

Mary, she thought. Mary had wept when she'd had to leave England to be married to the House of Orange. Mary will do.

As much as she ever would be, Penitence was now rehabilitated into her community and, even if she was still seen as a threat to wives, she was at least trusted to be part of the same political scene as everyone else, which meant that her neighbours, with a wink and a nod, handed her the leaflets being secretly distributed throughout the country and expected her to pass them on. Who was doing the distributing, nobody was sure, but there was no doubt the pamphlets originated in the Low Countries. Some were anti-Catholic, hysterically so, some anti-James, some pro-William and Mary. All demanded that the King release the bishops from the Tower and make concessions to the established Church.

The most persuasive of the pamphlets was an open letter to the English people written by one Caspar Fagel, Grand Pensionary of Holland, setting out what would happen if Mary was allowed to succeed to her father's throne. It was a calming, reassuring document saying she would not permit the persecution of anybody because of their manner of worship. English Roman Catholics should be allowed the considerable degree of freedom they enjoyed in Holland, as long as they were excluded from both Houses of Parliament and from public employment.

If James isn't a madman, thought Penitence, he'll not only not take exception to what his daughter says, he'll follow her example. But she was beginning to suspect that James was a madman who carried obstinacy to the point of derangement.

It was Sir Ostyn who brought her the next pamphlet one evening: 'Got a mention of your friend in it.'

This had been written by a Dr Gilbert Burnet, a name increasingly appearing on propaganda from the Netherlands. Penitence's eye latched on the words 'Aphra Behn'. 'She's your friend too,' she told Sir Ostyn, taking the paper to the light.

Dr Burnet bewailed the state of England under James and cited as symptomatic of its moral decline that the King encouraged 'such a poet as Mrs Aphra Behn, so abominably vile a woman, who rallies not only all religion but all virtue in so odious and obscene a manner'.

Penitence put the paper to the candle-flame and turned on her neighbour: 'Who the hell is Dr Gilbert Burnet?'

Ostyn loved seeing her riled. 'A fine propounder of liberty, so they tell us. A good friend to the Prince and Princess of Orange and none to your Aphra seemingly.'

'Whose liberty?' She advanced on the man, furious, brushing cindered pieces of paper from her dress. 'Eh, damn you? Whose liberty does he propound?'

Sir Ostyn retreated. 'I'm not speaking agin Mistress Behn, poor soul, but she's strong for the King and she writes danged naughty plays.'

'I don't care if she's strong for the Great Cham of China. She's earning her living. She hasn't had to get married, or whore, or beg, or do anything she doesn't want to do. She doesn't take in laundry and sew. She writes. She doesn't write pious tracts. She writes popular plays. She's good at it. That's what she's chosen to do and just because no woman's earned her bread by doing it before, this B-B-Bumet wants to stop her.' Aphra Behn had entered a race in which the prizes were reserved for male runners. She'd won and kept on winning but, because winning meant fame and 'fame' as applied to women was synonymous with notoriety, an idiot like Burnet was free to call her every dirty name he could lay his tongue to.

'Never knew you stammered, maid,' said Sir Ostyn, and made Penitence so cross she showed him the door without offering him refreshment.

Damn them. Just as she was beginning to think that for William to topple James would be an advance for freedom. She could tell what would happen. They'd bring in this new ruler in the name of freedom and out would go the freedom of women like Aphra Behn.

In October the Prince of Orange declared his intention to come to England with an army to see 'a free and lawful parliament assembled as soon as possible'.

In his declaration distributed all over England, William listed the violations of his wife's kingdom by 'evil counsellors'. Parliament had been set aside, judges replaced by time-servers, an avowed Papist was on the High Commission to which the Church of England had been entrusted. Every borough had been told it must vote for the repeal of the Test Acts or have its franchises taken away. For no crime but that of proffering a petition to their sovereign, fathers of the Church had been imprisoned.

'Therefore it is that we have thought fit to go over to England and to carry with us a force sufficient, by the blessing of God, to defend us from the violence of those evil counsellers.'

Immediately James realized his danger he changed tack, putting back in power men he'd deprived of it, returning charters to boroughs, issuing a proclamation in which he solemnly promised to protect the Church of England.

But it was too late. Loyal Cavaliers had been forced to make their choice. James's volte-face merely confirmed that here was a king who would only obey his country's constitution under threat.

More and more letters poured over to The Hague assuring William of the support of great men when he landed.

James's one ally was the wind. It blew from the west, keeping William's ships in their Dutch harbours. In the streets of London apprentices gathered to stare up at the weathercocks on church spires and whistle the wind round to the opposite quarter. The tune they whistled was 'Lillibullero'.

At Athelzoy a late harvest was gathered in. The last sheaf in the cornfields was raced for with cries of 'A nek! A nek!' and placed on top of the loaded cart. After gleaning, Michaelmas geese and poultry were put out in the fields to work over the stubble. After that it was time to gather the small scented Rusticoat apples which in the Levels were known as 'jayzees' and cart them to the mill in the Ridges' farmyard.

On November the 1st, as Penitence watched the cider pony tramping patiently round the stone trough turning the crushing wheel until the pulp was the right consistency, she was startled by Prue's yell of triumph:' 'Tis changed, look.'

'What's changed?'

Prue was pointing to where her washing hung on the line. The breeze which had been blowing the smell of apples on to it had fallen, then picked up unexpectedly cold.

'Wind's changed to the east. Now he'll come. Now he'll give that danged James what for.'

A week later the Prince of Orange landed in Torbay in Devon at the head of a large force, much of it formed by English exiles.

The King and his army marched to Salisbury to block his son-in-law's advance. The country waited, expecting to hear of the great battle in the West which would decide whether England was to be ruled by a Catholic king or his Protestant daughter.

But there wasn't one. Instead each day brought news of powerful men abandoning James and crossing the no-man's- land between his army and William's to join the Protestant cause.

Here was no repeat of the Monmouth affair with William attracting only the underprivileged and downtrodden to his banner. This time the ground had been carefully prepared; he'd waited until he was invited by some of the greatest names in the land, with secret promises of support from many others.

The first to leave James was Lord Colchester, next the son of the Earl of Bedford. After them it was the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, a man previously loyal to James and who had helped to put down the Monmouth rebellion but was unable to stomach the King's treatment of his Church. Next the commander of James's garrison at Plymouth, the Earl of Bath, made his escape and put himself, his troops and his fortress under the Prince of Orange's command. Then came Sir William Portman, the most influential Tory in the West of England and one of the men who had captured Monmouth.

Slowly the two armies approached each other but it was as if James's proceeded down a steep hill and his men were tumbling away from him. It didn't help that the King was suffering violent nosebleeds and his men kept seeing blood on his face.

They brought him the news that Lord Churchill, his greatest general, was missing from his quarters. Churchill had left behind a letter. In it he said he owed everything to the King but he was a Protestant and he could not draw his sword against the Protestant cause. He had gone over to the Prince of Orange.

James retreated back to London and on the way his other son- in-law, the stupid, amiable Prince George, husband of Princess Anne, rode off to join his brother-in-law in the Dutch camp.

Back at Whitehall the King was greeted by the news that Princess Anne herself, with her great friend, Sarah, the wife of Lord Churchill, had stolen away in a hackney coach.

The King wept. 'God help me! My own children have forsaken me.'

As William's army moved slowly but inexorably up through the West towards London, two of its members broke away and rode across the Somerset Levels to call at Athelzoy Priory where they were received with much celebration by the household and its children.

The mistress of the house, however, was absent. 'Gone up to London' Mistress Palmer told Benedick and MacGregor. 'Had a letter from a friend of that Aphry Behn's. She's dying, poor soul.'

Penitence drew back the curtains to look out on to St Bride's: 'Who's Dr Gilbert Burnet, incidentally?'

Behind her, Aphra sucked in enough breath to reply. 'One of the great and good. Or an outlaw and a rabid Whig. Depending on your point of view. He was supposed to have converted Rochester. On his death-bed. Heard his confession.'

'That must have been worth hearing.' Penitence crossed back to the bed. 'Can you shift over while I straighten this bit?'

With difficulty, grunting with pain, Aphra hotched to one side of the bed while Penitence made the other. 'Yes. Burnet wrote an improving tract on it. Poor Rochester. Promise, Penitence, promise, promise, promise. No divines wanting to save my soul at the end.'

'Don't talk about ending. You've got years yet.' Her reassurance fell into a room where most of the guests had departed. Otway, discovered dead in his garret; Buckingham dead in a lonely Yorkshire farmhouse, bewailing that he had been a shame and a disgrace; Nell Gwynn dead; John Hoyle on trial for buggery; Becky Marshall, defeated, married to a wealthy grocer.

Now the hostess was making her own agonized, protracted departure from the room where she had listened and written and administered milk punch and where she now lay in bed. The old Aphra was in the voice and eyes, the rest had twisted, as if her bones had been in a fire. Most appalling were her hands, claws with fingers aligned sideways from the huge knuckle of the thumb. At forty-eight, she had suddenly passed from her prime to senescence in a matter of months.

'Hardly, dear.' She smiled. 'One would have liked to end up in the Abbey with the other poets, but they're not likely to let a woman in.'

As Penitence tidied up the room she noticed many of its ornaments were missing. She's pawned them.

An untidy young woman came rushing in. 'I overslept. Did you manage to sleep at all, my poor dear? No, Mistress Hughes, we don't like our pillows like that. Like this.'

The young woman's name was Chloe and it was with some reluctance that she had allowed Penitence to take her place at Aphra's bedside while she herself got some much-needed sleep. Even now, Penitence suspected, she would try to ban her from the house if it wasn't for the money Penitence had given her to buy medicine and nourishing food.

The girl fussed about, establishing her prior right, pouring out the medicine, putting paper, pen and ink to Aphra's hand as if they were as necessary as the physick. With it all, she was careful not to touch her. Last evening, on her arrival, Penitence had tried to embrace her friend but, at her wince, stood back. Obviously the slightest pressure was painful, yet seeing her manoeuvre herself was awful.

At last they made her ready to face the day. 'Is there any movement outside?' she asked. 'What do you think is happening? Penitence, do go and find out what's to do with the poor King.'

Nothing loth, Penitence put on her cloak; 'And wax,' said Chloe sharply. 'It eases Aphra's hands to put them in warm wax. A pound of best beeswax from Partridge's up by the 'Change.'

As Penitence left the room, Aphra Behn scooped up her pen, holding it between her hands to write.

There was less traffic in Fleet Street than she'd ever seen before and when she turned down towards Blackfriars to look upriver she could see smoke smudging the sky towards Whitehall. Its smitch was in the air along with something else — a London unsure of itself, lacking the usual chestnut-vendors and the warm, Christmas smell of their popping pans, half its shops shut, none of the usual people doing the usual things, apprentices gathering ready to riot, women shouting questions from first-floor windows, be-wigged men to be seen in discussing groups through the archways to the Inns of Court.