Chapter 5

 

'Proper little maypole,' said Sir Ostyn admiringly as he helped Penitence into his carriage. 'A sight for sore eyes, you are, my 'andsome. Us'll have a tumble together on the way.'

Penitence stood on the step and looked down at him. 'I'm prepared to go in my donkey cart,' she warned him. He'd recovered some of his confidence since the trouncing it had taken at the hands of Nevis. She was glad for him, but not enough to have to put up with being fumbled all the way to Taunton. 'Besides, Prue's coming with us.'

He was not put out. 'Tumble the maid too, if ee like.'

She had dressed carefully in her best and known as she did it that she was inviting trouble. She had so overplayed the coquette for Jeffreys the last time she and the Lord Chief Justice met that he would more than likely wish to bed her after their dinner together tonight.

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.'

Sir George's clerk came in bowing, saying that the court was ready when Sir George was.

To Penitence's relief, he rose. 'Alas, dear madam, this nose must be applied once more to the grindstone.' He walked her to the door. 'God give me the strength to do what must be done and do it quickly. Did you hear the Lord Keeper is dead?'

'No. Poor Lord North.'

'Amen. Were I in the King's sight at this moment the position would be mine. Yet here I drudge among the savages while lesser men conspire against me. Shall I be Lord Keeper, my dear?'

'I know you will.'

He nodded. 'And Lord Chancellor hereafter?'

He is aiming high. 'I wish you success, my lord.'

His farewell kisses on her hand went on up her arm, leaving it chicken-flavoured. 'We shall dine well tonight.'

Oh, help.

Back in court it was hotter than ever. The accused, mostly men, though some women, came in batches of a dozen, manacled and chained from foot to foot, four batches an hour for the rest of the afternoon. Some wore the clothes they'd been captured in, others had gangrenous wounds that added to the fetor of the hall. Sir Ostyn sniffed at a pomander. Penitence put her scented handkerchief to her nose and over it scanned the faces carefully in case one of them should be MacGregor's so changed that she might have difficulty recognizing it.

None of the women was Dorinda.

After a while the faces blended into one, a country face stolid with uniform courage. The reading of the charges became a monotonous formality in which only the names changed. Jeffreys lifted his face from his nosegay, and after the barest of consultations with his two colleagues, said over and over again 'Prisoners at the bar, we find you guilty. Sentenced to death', and closed his eyes until the next batch came up. The court became restive; wigs of barristers clustered together for chats, like fungi, prosecutors laughing with defenders. 'Could've stayed at home, they buggers,' said Sir Ostyn, shifting. 'For all the good they're doing they could've left ut to their clerks.'

Penitence saw that Prue had somehow struggled through to the crowd at the door and beckoned her over, but she was unable to move for the crush and after a while Penitence lost sight of her again.

'not guilty?' With the rest of the court Penitence jerked at the Lord Chief Justice's shout. He seemed to have been dozing himself; with his wig awry he'd only just become sensible to the plea of the man in the dock before him.

Penitence had missed hearing the man's name, but whoever he was he was brave to put forward a plea that would take up Judge George Jeffreys's time.

'Not guilty?' He glared at the offender. 'On what grounds do thee plead not guilty, you viper?'

The prisoner protested that the witnesses appearing against him weren't credible. 'One a Papist, my lord, and one a prostitute . ..'

Thou impudent rebel,' bellowed Jeffreys, 'to reflect on the King's evidence. I see thee, villain, I see thee with the halter round thy neck.'

The accused said he was a good Protestant.

'Protestant?' shouted the Lord Chief Justice. 'You mean Presbyterian. I can smell a Presbyterian at forty mile.'

A character witness for the accused came forward, an immaculate but pitying Tory: 'My lord, this poor creature is on the parish.'

The Lord Chief Justice was pleased to grin. 'Do not trouble yourself,' he assured the witness, 'I will ease the parish of the burden.'

The man was sentenced to death. Jeffreys had got into his stride. He was almost turning up his sleeves. 'Do we have more not guilties, Master Clerk?'

Most extraordinarily, they did. With the example of the sentence pronounced on the Protestant pauper, not to mention on Lady Alice Lisle, there were yet dogged men in the cells of Taunton Castle who believed that they were innocent and that Judge Jeffreys would find them so.

With relief Penitence realized that if the court was to work through today's list it would be sitting far into the night and therefore too late for her to dine with the Chief Justice. It was also too late for her to get home across Sedgemoor before dark.

'Not to worry, my boody,' said Sir Ostyn. 'Your 'andsome lover's arranged it. We'm invited to stay at Sir Roger's. 'Tis more convenient. Prue and all, more's the pity, or we could have shared a bed.' He gestured around the courtroom. 'Wouldn't want to miss tomorrow's show by going back home, would us?'

Penitence accepted gratefully and smiled at his perpetual joke that they were lovers. The Pascoes had a splendid house not far away from the Assize Hall in North Street. She even forgave Ostyn's description of men and women on trial for their lives as 'a show' because she too felt the elements of its drama. She had not seen wretches clinging to the dreadful bar of judgement; she had seen actors.

But she could stand no more of it. Tomorrow she would return to the Priory, unsuccessful in her feeble attempt to seduce the chief actor himself, but only too grateful that she had not had to undergo the ordeal of his tiring-room.

Later that night Prue came to her room at the Pascoes' in tears, begging her to plead with Jeffreys for the life of Barnabas Turvey, the young weaver of Chedzoy.

'I love un, oh I love un,' wept Prue, 'I didn't know until I saw un in the dock looking so pale.'

'He was in the dock? Today? Did he plead guilty?' She couldn't remember the name, but there had been so many. 'Prue, I'm so sorry.'

'That bull of Bashing dared sentence un to death. You got to save un, Penitence.' No more 'Your Ladyship'. It was the democratic appeal from one woman to another, implicit in it the reminder that Mudge had saved Benedick.

Penitence told the girl about Jeffreys. 'He said if it were his own brother who'd been proved guilty, he could do nothing. And your Barnabas pleaded guilty.'

Unworthily, she thanked her God that she'd had that conversation with Jeffreys. If she hadn't she knew that, for Prue's sake, she would have had to approach him again tonight.

'He were told to plead.' Prue had managed to persuade a gaoler she knew to let her speak to her beloved through the bars of his cell. 'Deputy prosecutor he said he was, offered un his life if he spoke guilty, all of them their lives. To save time, he said.'

Penitence put the girl into her bed, and climbed in with her. Then he'll keep his life. Some prison, perhaps, and then he'll be free.'

'But they sentenced un to death,' wailed Prue.

'A formality,' said Penitence, believing it. Also she was tired. It had been a long day, one of many long days since her secret room had become occupied. She had so many people to worry about that Prue's weaver came well down the list. She stroked the fair curls off Prue's forehead to persuade her to sleep, and slept herself.

In the morning the girl had gone, and when Penitence, eager to get home, came downstairs to search for her, Lady Pascoe evaded her questions. 'Ah think the maid did see somebody she knows.'

'Who?' Damn the wench. This was no time to be renewing acquaintances.

There was noise and bustle in the street outside, more than usual for such an early hour. Penitence peered through the bottle glass of the Pascoes' dining-room window to see green distortions of figures hurrying past in the direction of the Castle.

'Ah should'n go, my soul,' said Lady Pascoe, "twon't be pretty. They're starting executing.'

Penitence stared at her. 'But they were only sentenced yesterday.' No interval? No appeal? Even the highwayman Swaveley had been given right of appeal.

"Twon't be pretty,' said Lady Pascoe again. Her face was pale. It was said she'd been a Dissenter herself before Sir Roger married her. 'I should'n go.'

Penitence had already gone. The crowd along North Street filtered into the cattle market which was normally held on the green outside the Castle. The crush was so great that Penitence had to ask some people on the steps of a mounting block outside a house if she could stand on it for a moment so that she could look for Prue.

Over the heads of the crowd she saw a covered market place - there was one like it in every town, a slated lichened roof supported on stone pillars to keep the weather off the auctioneer. Militiamen were holding the crowd back from a space in front of it in which stood an empty gibbet and, beside it, a dais which had been set with a red table gleaming with badly applied new paint.

Around and about the square were other spaces where men and women hung with their heads and arms through pillories like still, inelegant statues. In London the crowd would have been pelting them for the joy of throwing things but Taunton had lost its sense of fun. These were the lucky ones from yesterday, the ones who hadn't been sentenced to death. Nobody was looking at them.

Penitence squinted into the early morning sun to make out the design of the yellow flashes on the militia uniforms and saw, with relief, it wasn't the North Somersets'. Henry wouldn't let his men do this.

The attention of the crowd — she had never seen one so quiet — was focused on a cart at the side of the square. A harvest cart, huge, long, rough-wooded, with sloping slatted sides containing a dozen or so men in chains. Around the bottom of the cart, standing on tiptoe so that they could touch the hands of the men through the slats, were women, some screeching, others not. The men were singing.

Within the shade under the market roof, busy shapes were moving. Smoke issued out into the clear air with the sound of bubbling and the smell of tar, reminding Penitence of fences.

She got down from the mounting block, and a man, doffing his cap, took back his place. Run away. Let me run away. But one of the women crying around the cart was Prue Ridge.

It took a while to get to her. People in the crowd were so crammed together and so intent that it was like struggling through a close plantation of saplings. Eventually, she was spewed out in front of the line of militia and had to sidle past their pikes. Edging her way along she stumbled against one of the statue's plinths and automatically apologized. The man's head drooping through the hole in the hinged plank about his neck had its eyes half-open. A large piece of paper pinned to his cap, which still bore the rebel green ribbon, read: 'I am a Monmouth.'

At the next pillory along — 'A Monmouth I will love' — Penitence avoided seeing the face of the girl by passing behind her and saw her back instead. Flies had landed on the blood oozing through the slashes in what had been a flowered cotton dress. An older woman was trying to fan them away with her cap and muttering over and over in a monotone: 'Don't fret, maid, don't fret.' But her eyes, too, were on the cart.

Once again, the scene had been designed for theatre; the placing of the statues, the raised podium, the crowd, but in true theatre there were no flies. This, then, was the epilogue to the virtuoso performance she had witnessed yesterday by the white-wigged, scarlet-robed actor on his bench. He gestured and spoke his lines - and the flesh of lesser men and women was torn open and real blood ran out of it.

There was nowhere she less wanted to go than towards the cart but the soldier guarding it made no move to stop her reluctant approach towards Prue. Behind the cart, down a side road, she glimpsed horses and the uniform of dragoons, ready in case of trouble.

Just then the executioner climbed up on to the dais from the shadows of the market and shouted: 'Next.' Two militia let down the rear gate of the cart and one of the men in it was made to descend. The singing of the remainder grew louder as he was shuffled towards the dais.

'Come away, Prue.' Penitence took her by her arm.

The girl's other hand was through the slats of the cart, clutching the hem of a young man's coat. She turned to Penitence, dazed. 'They promised his life,' she said. 'You said as he'd be saved.'

Some of the men in the cart were wounded but all were singing. Penitence looked up at Prue's lover and saw a white face that had been nice-looking only a few weeks before. He's so young. Barnabas Turvey's splendid throat moved as he shouted the hymn. His eyes, looking down at Prue, were agonized.

There was an involuntary sound from the crowd as if it were trying to gasp for the man from the cart, now being hauled up by three hangman's assistants on a rope thrown over the gibbet arm, his legs kicking in the air. They'd undressed him down to his breeches and taken off his chains. The executioner in his black leather hood watched from the dais, inclining his head slightly at the movements and scratching his armpit, like someone having to make a fine judgement.

As the kicking became feebler he nodded and his assistants eased the rope until the hanged man's feet touched the ground, then caught him as he buckled, and lifted the half- conscious body on to the table.

Penitence later remembered that she was surprised the table wasn't red any more. Somebody had thrown a bucket over it and washed the paint away ready for its next glistening coat.

Two assistants knelt, holding the hanged man's legs. The third took the arms and bent them back so that the ribs formed a ridge above the hollow of the man's belly. At another nod from the executioner, the breeches were pulled off.

The singing above Penitence grew louder to cover the screams. She buried her head against Prue's shoulder but heard the rip of the knife, the slap of entrails as they were thrown into a bucket, then the chopping — sounds she'd heard a hundred times in the kitchen back in Massachusetts as her grandmother quartered a chicken.

She had heard of people being hanged, drawn and quartered but the true enormity of what it entailed had not crossed her mind. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. She cowered before the sacrilege of God-fearing men who dared to take to pieces such a communicating, perpetuating, functioning miracle as another man's body.

'Next.'

'Wait on,' came an aggrieved voice from the shadows under the roof, 'brine bucket's full. We'm filling another.' But the cart tail was already being lowered and another man taken to the gibbet. Two more and it would be Barnabas Turvey's turn.

'Missus.'

She looked up. The boy was kneeling down so that he could speak through the slats. Her tears blurred her view of his face. It could have been Benedick's.

'If you've pity, missus, take her from here.'

She sobbed and nodded. His manacled hands were gently peeling Prue's fingers from his coat, and with all her strength Penitence tugged the girl away. They heard his voice call: 'Lord bless thee, Prue, and tell un I died a Monmouth.'

In Fore Street, amazingly, a brightly dressed man approached her and doffed his cap as if he and she lived in a normal world.

'Sir George's major-domo, dear lady,' he said, and said it again. With her arm around Prue she looked beyond him, unhearing.

.. I see what it is, dear lady, you fear for your provisions. It's often so, but we bring our own, and a staff.'

'What?' she said.

'Have no fear. It will all be arranged. Sir George enjoys his little surprise visits, but in my experience the lady likes some warning to pretty herself.'

What?' she said.

'Mistress.' The man was becoming agitated and officious. 'Your attention would be appreciated. The Lord Chief Justice intends to surprise you for supper this night. He was pleased to say that, since Mahomet would not attend on the mountain, the mountain must come to Mahomet.'

'What mountain?'

It was only as she and Prue walked the ten miles home across the moor that she became collected enough to understand that the Lord Chief Justice of England had asked himself to the Priory for dinner.

'Will he come, Muskett?'

Tired as she was from the long walk home, Penitence paced the main bedroom because she couldn't keep still. After what she had witnessed in Taunton's market square that morning she could not look on her son where he sat by the window without seeing his body torn apart as the bodies of the men on the cart had been torn apart. She couldn't even rejoice that Martin Hughes was better. What was the point of his old carcase recovering if it too was to be quartered? He lay on the bed, the panel behind his head open in case they needed to use it quickly, and grumbled at Prue who was feeding him gruel because now and then she fell into a trance and stared at the spoon with sightless eyes.

I want Henry. She was as helpless now as she had been on that day in the Rookery when he'd rescued her from her attackers. Mentally she crawled as she had then, a deer writhing from the dogs on its back.

'He'll come, missus,' said Muskett.

She was unreasonable in her panic. 'What if he does? He can't get Benedick away with the house full of Jeffreys' men. He'll miss the tide.'

There's other tides.'

Muskett was a rock, but she was unnerved by the sense that a destroyer was approaching her house with hastening, predestined steps. We'll be betrayed. The risk increased every second. They'd been lucky not to be betrayed before. And now, since the horror displayed outside the Castle today, who wouldn't scruple to tell the authorities that she was hiding a Dissenting rebel? After all, Lady Alice, held in higher esteem and greater affection than she was, had been betrayed, sold to the authorities by a woman in return for a husband who'd been arrested after Sedgemoor. How much easier to betray the former mistress of Prince Rupert and her canting uncle. Even those who'd originally given the old man shelter hadn't liked him enough to go on giving it. She didn't blame them. I don't like him much myself.

He was grumbling again that Prue was withholding the next mouthful. It was the voice that had called damnation on her head a hundred times.

'Shut your noise,' she snapped at him.

She wouldn't care if he were captured, she wouldn't care if she were. It was Benedick that concerned her, only and totally her son.

He was also grumbling. 'Mother, find me a sword and I can shift for myself. I'll make for the coast on my own.'

'You shut your noise as well,' she told him. Still weak, in a countryside overrun with royalist troops, he'd be picked up in a day. Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling from the power of the dog. How exactly the psalmist had known her situation. Would Henry come? How would it help if he came? I just want him here. He was her deus ex machina. He'd delivered her from her enemies before, though then the enemies were simple robbers, not the ranged forces of the State.

'Sit down, missus.' Muskett's square hands took hers and led her to the window-sill. 'You can watch for His Lordship and tell us what Judge Jeffreys plans for tonight. See if us can work out a plan of our own.'

She hated to think what plans Jeffreys had for tonight. She tried hard to recall what his major-domo had told her. 'He's sending over his own household that travels with him to prepare the house and the dinner. A small affair, with a few friends.'

Ah now. That's the way to go. Sneak the major down the north-wing stairs, like, when they're at table.'

'It'd be terribly dangerous,' she said. 'Jeffreys' staff is large and I know he has a detachment of dragoons to guard him wherever he goes. They'll station men at the gatehouse to stop comings — and goings.'

'A idea, though.' Muskett licked his finger and drew a line on the glass. 'Keep that un for later. What then?'

'Well, then I suppose I provide the entertainment. Jeffreys wants me to sing. And, oh that's right, he wants me to do some Shakespeare.'

'Play-acting?'

'A soliloquy or two perhaps.'

'And where'll you do that, missus?'

She'd got his drift. The years passed her back to another time of horror, when another child had needed to be rescued. 'Oh, Muskett. We did it once. Your master and I. We lured the watchmen away from their posts.'

"That's the way to go.' Muskett never smiled; everything he said was straightfaced, but she could tell he was pleased by the way he drew another, longer line on the glass. 'Put up a stage round the back. Away from the gatehouse, like. You and the captain do your luring. I'll get the major across the moat and away to the captain's yacht quick as a ferret.'

Penitence said quietly: 'And the other gentleman?' She jerked her head towards the bed and Martin Hughes.

'No,' said Muskett firmly.

She didn't blame him. The old man was too old, too ill and definitely too unpredictable to make such a journey, especially at the speed at which Muskett and Benedick would have to travel. Well, she'd think of what to do with him when the crippling load of Benedick's danger was lifted off her shoulders.

Muskett turned to Benedick. Tine actor, the captain. You ought to see him, Major.'

'I'm not so bad myself,' said Penitence. The preciousness of the moments on the Cock and Pie balcony when she'd played Beatrice to Henry's Benedick were back with her. The horror of the Plague had eroded over the years; the memories strongest now were of human courage. She could recall in perfect detail the scene on the roofs opposite as she'd sung Balthazar's song: Mistress Palmer's face, Mistress Hicks's, the child attached to the chimney. They made her braver.

'For the visage mask of actors do but hide the skull of sin,' shouted a voice from the bed. One of Martin Hughes's set responses had been stimulated by the word 'actor'.

'We should have left him in the marsh,' Penitence said to Muskett. She was feeling better.

The sergeant paid her no attention. He was regarding the old man with interest. 'Isn't there a play where there's a blackamoor masked?'

'Othello? He's not played in a mask any more. We use lampblack. As a matter of fact...'

She stared at the sergeant. He'd just spat liberally on his finger and wiped a large smear across the entire window. He bent down to put his impassive face directly opposite hers. 'That's the way to go, missus.'

They had a few minutes to discuss the way before Judge Jeffreys's major-domo arrived at the head of a procession of carts bringing provisions and staff.

 Followed by Major Nevis with Sir Ostyn Edwards and a warrant to search the house. Followed by the Rt Hon. Viscount of Severn and Thames. Followed by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir George Jeffreys and friends.

Nevis's men searched the house again under the apologetic aegis of Sir Ostyn Edwards. 'Proper sorry I be, Peg, but some bugger says old Martin Hughes is hiding hereabouts. Ah told that danged Nevis as you'd as soon shelter Old Nick. "Her's had him put in the stocks afore now," I toiu '.in but would he listen?'

They stood in the hall, watching cupboards emptied, soot brought down the chimney, bayonets inserted between the stones of the wall to see if any could be dislodged. 'Proper pig of a man, and I told un,' said Sir Ostyn, 'but 'tis the military makes the law now. Of course, who he's after is the rebel Hurd. Bagged all the others, Wade, Ffoulkes and Goodenough, but not Hurd. Last seen being carried off the field in this direction, seemingly.'

Penitence's hands clenched. The magistrate, puzzled, took one of them in his to comfort her and exclaimed at its coldness. He cocked a lashless eye at her face. 'Bain't seen any such animal, have thee, Peg?'

'No,' she said, and he nodded in relief.

I should be indignant. She should be protesting at Nevis's suspicions but she had to concentrate so hard on suppressing panic that she had no energy left for even spurious rage.

A crash and shouts from upstairs told her that Nevis's instinct had again led him to concentrate his search on the main north-wing bedroom. She ran upstairs, followed by Sir Ostyn.

Muskett, shouting, was being restrained by two of Nevis's men. If possible the room was in even worse condition than it had been after Nevis's previous search. The sliver of looking- glass had been ground under somebody's boot, every drawer lay scattered, the bed had been stripped down to its frame and her newly mended mattress once more torn open. The crash had been caused by the tester which had given way under the weight of one of Nevis's soldiers as he crawled into the space between it and the ceiling of the room. The bedhead, however, was still untouched.

Now she was angry. Or panicked. Or both. She strode to the bed and pulled the soldier off it. For good measure she kicked him. Then she turned on Nevis. 'By what right do you do this again? I would remind you I am a loyal subject of King James and his late cousin's good friend. I shall inform the King of your repeated vandalism, and complain to the Lord Chief Justice when he dines here tonight.'

'And so I will too.' Considering his previous reduction at Nevis's hands, Sir Ostyn was showing courage.

Nevis was not impressed. She wondered what would impress

Nevis. His face was not unpleasant but it was unmemorable. Away from him, when she tried to recall it, she couldn't bring it to mind because it was unrepresentative of the animosity she felt streaming from the soul behind it. There was no way to reach the man because he took no sustenance from people around him, apparently desiring nobody's goodwill but his own, following some route he had set for himself. She had impeded him; set up a block between him and the man he was hunting down. But he had the antennae of an ant, and like an ant would find a way up, round, down or across to his goal without ceasing, until he was squashed.

He terrified her.

He looked straight at her. 'He's here. I fucking know he's here. And I'm going to find him.'

'Don't you swear to a lady, you varmint,' shouted Sir Ostyn, nostrils gaping. 'Ah'm going to speak to your colonel about this behavin' of yours ...'

'Three,' said Nevis. He wasn't looking at the magistrate. He looked at Penitence. 'One. Hurd. Two. Martin Hughes. And now a man called Mudge Ridge. Three.'

She swallowed. 'What about them?'

'I've questioned a lot of people, lady. And people answer my questions when I ask them.'

She could imagine his method of questioning.

'Witnesses saw Hurd being carried in this direction. Witnesses saw a cart containing the man Hughes coming in this direction. And now, after a break-out at Ilchester gaol, the man Ridge, your bailiff, madam, is seen. By witnesses. Coming in this direction. Today.' His voice was flat; he used pauses as emphasis. He turned on the magistrate: 'Coincidence?'

'Certainly 'tis,' said Sir Ostyn stoutly.

'No.' His voice held the certainty of the world. 'There's a hidden room in this house. I'm having mallets fetched and I'm going to reduce these fucking walls to rubble 'til I find it.'

'Not tonight, my dear man,' said a voice from the doorway. 'What a mess. Like a hen-house. But this is still the best bedroom in the house. Whatever you're going to do, it'll have to wait until tomorrow.'

It was Jeffreys's major-domo, a willowy, middle-aged man in primrose brocade who kept cupping his face in his hands. He carried the Lord Chief Justice's authority but, more effectually, his concerns were so trivial that it was as if his limp fingers had snuffed out a lighted fuse. Neither Sir Ostyn nor Major Nevis could cope with him. Nevis gave Penitence a last look: 'I'm putting such a ring round this house tonight as a mouse won't get out. And tomorrow the walls come down.'

When he'd gone, her legs gave way and she sat down on the bed to gather herself for the next fight. The major-domo had already set his minions on cleaning up the room. 'We'll need our mattress, and our sheets .. . We'll cover the tester with a curtain.'

'This is my bedroom,' she told him.

The major-domo's eyes opened wide: 'If Sir George stays, we'll need the best bedroom.'

'Why would he be staying?'

'Dear lady,' the major-domo wriggled his shoulders, 'if you don't know I'm sure I don't.' He plucked at his chain of office. 'We'll need a place to change after our day in court, regardless, so a bedroom we must have.'

'Not this one.'

He flung out his arms and huffed, but gave way. 'Oh. Very well.' He chose the bedroom next door instead.

She had a horror of Jeffreys's arrival that was not only fear of its complications in getting Benedick away. Until this morning, she had thought of the man as a bully and tyrant, but nevertheless as faintly amusing in his delight at his prowess, an over-acting actor. Since the trial of Lady Alice and the sights and sounds of Taunton's market square the man had grown monstrous to her. She had seen the reality of his sentences, heard it, smelled it, known that he wouldn't scruple to apply it to her own son.

I beg you, God. Don't let him come.

She was thrown into another panic as the major-domo ordered the hall table to be set for dinner. 'Why not the dining-room?' she asked. The gargoyle's orifices had been unstopped to allow the two men in the secret room to breathe now that the door had to be shut on them. Every time she passed it she fancied she heard muttering.

Too small, dear lady,' said the major-domo immediately.

'How many people are coming for Heaven's sake?'

The major-domo's hands pressed together under his cheek, like a child sleeping. He had the most meaningless set of gestures she'd ever seen. 'It depends what mood we're in. I've known us bring near a hundred.' He caught sight of her face, and showed his first bit of compassion. 'If you're worried for your supplies, dear lady, we've brought all with us.' He spoke no less than the truth. His people were already setting out epergnes and cutlery produced from green baize bags.

A little of Penitence's self-respect as a householder came back. 'I have my own silver. We will use that.'

'We only like the best, dear lady.'

'I have the best.'

Rupert's silver, brought with her from Awdes, opened the major-domo's eyes. 'Madam. Why didn't you say? From then on he treated her more courteously, which was a mixed blessing in that he tended to consult her on every point, which in turn meant that, in order not to seem on intimate terms with Muskett, she had to dismiss that invaluable sergeant from the bedroom.

She employed the age that followed in dressing meticulously and employing every artifice and paint she could think of to make her face less haggard. Every few minutes she went to the window to look for Henry. He's not coming. It's useless. She watched the sun set and the moon rise. She watched Nevis throw a cordon round the far side of the moat and heard the frogs in the marsh begin their monotonous, bellowing courtship. She lit candles and went back to her mirror because fear had brought out beads of sweat on her top lip. She looked passable. She reminded herself of every ageing actress's rule: Keep your back to the light.

The smell of the night grasses in the marsh was being subdued by the smells coming from the kitchen where she could hear Jeffreys's French cooks shouting at each other. The major-domo himself had taken the rest of his staff out to the grounds where, after consultation with her, the entertainment was to be held.

Prue had been sent to stay the night at the vicar's house in the village. She had wanted to stay and Penitence had wanted to keep her, but as soon as Nevis and his men had arrived at the house the memory of the night she'd almost been raped had rendered her incapable of doing anything but tremble. Penitence missed her.

The rest of the house was quiet. She heard a creak on the tiny flight of steps that led to the passage between the hall and the solar. It did that sometimes. When she went out to check that nobody was outside the room, the corridor was empty.

Returning, she opened the bedhead panel and pushed the door behind it. 'Are you all right?' Stale aii carr.e out at her.

It was Benedick's voice. 'The old man won't scop praying.'

'Stop up the holes.'

'Then we can't breathe.'

Damn the mm. Why had she taken him in? What had Puritans ever done for her except threaten her life, and now that of her son? She said quite seriously: 'Smother him if you have to.'

She heard her son give a grunt of amusement. 'Is he here yet?'

'No,' she said. 'Jeffreys isn't either.'

'I meant Jeffreys.' 'Oh.'

'I'm sorry I called the Viscount out.' Bless him, he's trying to please. 'I can see that you wouldn't want me to kill him. If he is my father.'

'I do know, Benedick,' she said coldly.

A bony-wristed young hand emerged out of the panel, felt about and found her hand. 'It'd be like that Oedipus fellow. Killing your father, I mean.'

'Not quite,' she said. Eton education had done little to instil the full implication of Greek tragedy into her son. 'Oh, Benedick. I don't know if Muskett's plan will work. I don't know if he'll come. The grounds are full of soldiers.'

'I'm a bother, aren't I?'

She was transported back twenty years. Who'd said that and nearly broken her heart in saying it? Job. Her Ladyship's poor, brave Job. It's an omen. Job had died. Benedick would die.

She cradled her son's hand against her cheek.

'For God's sake, Boots, what's going on?' The Viscount had to bend his head to get through the door.

She had wanted him to come so much and been so afraid that he wouldn't that she was disconcerted now that he had. 'Where have you been?'

'Busy.' He looked down at her without warmth. 'So, from the looks of things, have you. What have you been doing, selling tickets?'

While she was telling him, Muskett came marching into the room. 'Lights of Lord Jeffreys' retinue seen on the causeway, suh.'

The Viscount walked to the window. 'We could evade that old tub of lard and any of his people. It's Nevis who worries me. Why's he here tonight of all nights?'

'I think it's because Mudge Ridge has escaped. They think he's heading this way. And Nevis only wants an excuse. Henry, he knows Benedick is here. I don't know how he knows, but he knows. He's talking about battering down walls tomorrow.'

'So we've got to get the boy away tonight.'

'Muskett's got a plan,' Penitence said. Tell him, Muskett.'

She watched his face as Muskett told him, committing it to memory in case the desperate, autumnal sadness that had settled on her was a true foreboding of loss. His nose was still too big; he wasn't handsome at all yet she only had to look at him to want him. She saw his eyebrows go up. 'Othello? I know the words but ...' He turned to Penitence. 'I've never played Othello in my life.'

'Oh yes, you have,' she said, and if she knew anything she knew this: 'You've played him for the last twenty years.' He was taken aback. She stood up: 'I must go. Will you do it?'

Instead of answering, he looked at Muskett. 'Think up this little gem all by yourself, did you, you bugger?'

'Suh,' rapped out Muskett. The old carpet gentleman gave us the idea, suh.'

His master nodded. 'Thank him for me.'

Penitence went downstairs to greet the Lord Chief Justice.

As Penitence, standing at the gatehouse, swept her curtsey, Jeffreys's major-domo muttered at the sight of his master: 'We've got the stone bad again. My, look at us. Want to piss. Can't piss. Think we can booze it away. There'll be tears before bedtime.'

Judge Jeffreys had come prepared for a Bacchanalia. He'd brought nearly forty people with him, only a few of them respectable like Sir William Portman, the local Member of Parliament, and his wife, and Sir Ostyn, who'd invited himself. They already looked as if they regretted coming.

The rest were soldiers such as Colonel Kirk of the Tangier Regiment, who was joined by Nevis and Lieutenant Jones, and Assize luminaries like the Prosecutor and Deputy Clerk, or lesser courtiers who'd travelled down from London — Penitence recognized a couple of the fops who'd attended her farewell performance at the Duke's.

Kirk greeted her with over-familiarity. 'We remember the old days, don't we, mistress?' As if they'd slept together. In fact, it was his sister, Mai, a fervent theatregoer, who'd known her. She'd been a maid of honour at court — a title she lost by sleeping with James when he was the Duke of York. Now that Penitence came to think of it, Mai had also slept with Monmouth himself. It was thanks to her that Kirk got his first commission. Monmouth had given it to him. Apart from long eye-teeth which gave him a wolf's smile, Kirk radiated amiability where Nevis didn't but it was from Kirk that the Lambs had gained their reputation for terror. He had two women hanging on to his arm who, from the look of them, had been trawled from the stews of Taunton. There were more attached to some of the other male guests. All of them were drunk.

Their behaviour, even as they stepped down from their coaches, showed an expectation of later sexual activity — with whom seemed unimportant.

Do they think I'm a trollop? The insult, she felt, was to Rupert and Rupert's house. By the time dinner was half-way through she felt more offence than fear and from her end of the table - she'd had to fight the major-domo, who'd wanted her next to Jeffreys, to take her place at the head of her table - was inhibiting her guests' worst excesses with an expression of hauteur that might have caused Elizabeth Tudor to wonder if she was using the right knife.

She had no help from Henry. Half-way down the right- hand side of the table, he was absorbed in eating and staring down the cleavage of a dark-haired female who sat between him and Nevis and who appeared willing that he should. His was the only head not turned in the direction of the Lord Chief Justice at the other end of the table from hers.

Penitence knew she was inhibiting an orgy, but only just. Soon most of the guests, including Jeffreys if he kept drinking as he was, would be out of control.

She had managed to turn the conversation away from sexual badinage, only to have it concentrate on the day's trials, which, as it turned out, were grosser. Jeffreys was boasting. 'She was pleading for him to be handed over unmutilated. And I said to the woman, "Certainly, madam, since you plead so eloquently, you shall have what part of his body you love best and I shall direct the Sheriff accordingly."'

Sir Nicholas Fenton, whom Penitence remembered from Charles II's court, laughed inordinately and patted the Chief Justice's hand: 'Wonderful, my lord. Give her the prick. Give 'em all the bloody prick. How many today, my lord?'

Sir George's mouth emerged black and glistening from his wine cup, leaving Penitence with the impression that he had been drinking blood. 'Two hundred and seventy-two.'

The Deputy Prosecutor stretched. 'A number to go down in the annals as never has been, never will again be tried in one day.'

'Two hundred and seventy-two,' quavered Sir Nicholas. 'Wonderful, wonderful.'

Colonel Kirk shouted: 'What of the Maids, my lord? When do you try the Maids?'

Penitence stopped pretending to eat and listened. She had hoped to appeal to Jeffreys to order the children's release. Poor Mrs Yeo traipsed over the moor every day to visit her daughter in Taunton prison.

The Lord Chief Justice drew himself up. Kirk had overstepped the mark. 'They shall stay where they are. I am not in the business of trying schoolgirls.'

'Schoolgirls. Bloody wonderful.'

'Nevertheless, my lord,' persisted Kirk, 'they'll fetch a pretty penny. I hope you'll remind the King to reward his soldiery with some of the profit.'

Jeffreys shrugged. 'The judiciary as well as the soldiery need reward. But let their canting families buy them out as they will. It's no business of mine.'

Penitence turned to Sir William Portman who, seated on her right, was looking increasingly uncomfortable. 'What can he mean? What's to happen to the girls?'

Lady Portman leaned across her husband: 'It's rumoured that they'll stay in gaol until their parents buy them out. They're to be given to the Queen's maids of honour for the profit.'

'Maids to maids,' said Penitence, 'I see.'

'Shshh,' said Lady Portman, warning her to lower her voice, but Sir Nicholas Fenton took up the phrase. 'Maids to maids. Wonderful.'

What have I to do with these people? She could not bear that they were here in her hall, not just for the danger they posed but for their butcher-shop souls. Behind Jeffreys's head hung Rupert's portrait and she imagined it reproached her. He had given her this house and she had desecrated it with these vulgar people, even, God help her, with the physical joy she'd found in bed with another man.

The clarity of this beautiful room was being drowned by the profane conversations and the languorous tunes now played by the Lord Chief Justice's musicians in a corner by the stairhead. The great, pure line of its shape was confused by the bowls of flowers and resined torches in their sconces with which the major-domo had seen fit to decorate it, overcoming its elusive scent of incense.

The only indigenous thing that was in accord with the swine at her trough was the north-east gargoyle. It gibbered at her, trying to attract her attention, and theirs. She could swear she heard the thing whispering.

The sight of the table itself made her gag; she'd not seen such food in weeks. There was too much meat, too few sallets. Blood and fat oozed, glistening, out of the baron of beef, the mound of pickled pigs' feet ('our favourite' according to the major-domo) had been knocked so that trotters rolled between the dishes, the fried sweetbreads and liver of veal overflowed their rich, dark red sauce.

'Not eating, dear madam?' boomed Jeffreys down the table at her.

'I have no stomach for it.'

Strangely, he understood. 'My 'domo tells me you were disquieted by Jack Ketch's work in the market this morning.'

'Yes,' she said. The rest of the table had gone quiet.

'Regrettable, regrettable.' Gravy and wine dripped on his chin. 'But an example had to be made here, now, at the start, though the tender heart of a lady cannot see it. Tender heart.' He lingered over the thought as if he'd eat it. Then he shook his lace cuffs at her. 'But I promise you, madam, there'll be sound sense to show mercy in other towns of the Assize, now the point is made.'

'And a sound profit.' There was absolute silence. What are you doing? She couldn't believe she'd said it. You may need this man.

Jeffreys's little eyes became smaller. He wasn't pleased but he allowed himself to be diverted by Sir Nicholas Fenton's guffaw: 'Sound profit. Wonderful.'

Kirk brought attention back to her. 'Talking of profit, my second-in-command suspects Mistress Hughes of kidnapping rebels that she may claim the reward. He says three such have been seen near the precincts. One of them Hurd, no less.' He was joking; he didn't believe it. She'd seen him arguing with Nevis.

'Kidnapper. Wonderful.'

What's this? What's this?' Jeffreys had picked up a scent.

'I've extracted a description of Hurd's likeness from some of the rebels he commanded.' Nevis was delving down the side of his boot. He was producing a piece of parchment. 'He was seen being carried off the field in this direction.'

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.