Chapter 3

 

Aphra struggled above the rising tide in her own lungs until the early hours of the next morning when her heart stopped.

The sudden quiet of the room magnified the dreadful breathing that had gone before it so that, as they laid her out, the first tweet of a bird waking outside seemed to break through wool.

Penitence pulled Chloe away from the body and sat with her in the window-seat watching the dawn come up over the rooftops behind Aphra's small, overgrown back yard.

'We were lovers,' said Chloe.

'I know.' Phoebe and Sabina. Aphra and Chloe. Her friend might have lost the love of men but in her great need she had found the love of woman.

By mid-morning they had assumed the briskness that goes with the strange comfort of death's arrangements.

'She's left me the house.'

'Good,' said Penitence.

'And George Jenkins is to see to publishing The Widow Ranter and Betterton's to put it on.'

'Good.'

'And she asked me to give you this when she'd gone. She said she hoped it would do.'

'This' was a manuscript written while she could still hold a pen, though its last pages were scarcely legible. It was in novel form, she'd called it Oroonoko, and it was about a slave.

Penitence had to read it twice before she realized it was a masterpiece. The first time she was disappointed; it was coolly written and at the same time fantastically romantic. Aphra had made her slave not one of the poor thousands shipped from Africa to Jamaica, but an educated prince of his African country, Coromantien, in love with a black general's daughter, and betrayed by an English sea-captain to be sold in the slave- market of Surinam.

Once Aphra got her hero to Surinam the descriptions of place and people became sharp. The white men who ran the country, she wrote, were worse than transported criminals. It was the native Indians who lived in the first state of innocence. 'Religion here would but destroy the tranquillity they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach them to know offences of which they have no notion.'

There was the feel of authenticity in the details she gave of the slave trade's organization in Surinam: the quayside sales, the overseers of plantations, the auctions and the shame of it.

Oroonoko harangued his fellow-slaves. 'An ass, or dog, or horse, having done his duty, could lie down in retreat, and rise to work again, and while he did his duty, endure no stripes', Aphra made him say:

But men, villainous, senseless men, such as they, toiled on all the tedious week 'till black Friday; and then

whether they worked or not, whether they were faulty or meriting, they, promiscuously, the innocent with the guilty, suffered the infamous whip.

Of course, Oroonoko's love, Imoinda, arrived in Surinam a slave and the couple were reunited, revolted against their masters, suffered terrible fates. Then she died and then he died, thought Penitence. It was stirring, crowd-pleasing stuff.

It wasn't the tract Penitence had hoped for. It was more: a good story, a blast against the moral savagery of slavery and it was Aphra's testimony against the concept of human beings as property. Oroonoko's subject was a black man, but he was an extension of everything Aphra had ever written about the human soul, male and female: it was about freedom. The first blast of the trumpet.

It will do, Affie. It will do very well.

Attached to the final page of the manuscript was a verse from a poem Aphra had written to the laurel tree:

And after monarchs, poets claim a share As the next worthy thy prized wreaths to wear. Among that number do not me disdain, Me, the most humble of that glorious train.

As a sop, Dean Sprat had a grave dug for Aphra in his Abbey's east cloister. Chloe was prepared to opt for that. 'She's the first female commoner to get into the Abbey on her own merit, Penitence.'

'It's not good enough.' Penitence was angry. Angry at Aphra, for Aphra, with Aphra; she could feel anger lapping against her sanity, fed by the thousand insults thrown at her friend, at all her friends, at herself, all the women who'd made a break for freedom and been brought down by the dogs of male hatred and rolled in their dirt. 'She's to go in Poets' Corner.' It all depended on that. If she could see Aphra resting where she belonged this slopping, rising fury inside her might subside enough not to burst the mental restraint only just holding it back. 'She wrote Oroonoko.'

Then, on the day of the funeral as mourners gathered in Aphra's room, an Abbey messenger knocked at the front door and handed Chloe a letter. It said that Aphra couldn't be buried in the Abbey at all.

In the absence of the Dean, and in the presence of his deputy, we, the Prebendaries of the Chapter, are in agreement that the interment of Mistress Behn in the Abbey is not suitable. Therefore we have sent to her parish church of St Bride's and received back word from its priest that her obsequies may take place there this afternoon.

Penitence tore up the letter, dragged the weeping Chloe off the open coffin, told Betterton to screw down the lid, and when he'd done, plonked Aphra's pen and inkwell on it. 'All right,' she said, 'who's carrying the damn thing to the Abbey?'

Benedick, Betterton, Neville Payne and young Thomas Creech, a promising poet whom Aphra had befriended, heaved the coffin down the steps to the crepe-clad cart drawn by black-plumed, black-caparisoned horses. Chloe, who had chosen to wear the most peculiar of Aphra's peculiar caps, took her place behind it as chief mourner. The driver assumed a mournful expression, the drummer began beating his muffled skins and they set off.

It was a windy day with occasional scurries of rain. Orange flags and decorations still hanging from some of the balconies flapped sideways and paper rosettes rolled along the streets, making the horses shy, jerking the coffin so that the pen and inkwell fell off and Penitence had to carry them.

While the blowing detritus lodged itself in conduits, the funeral procession picked up the eccentric pieces of humanity that had loved Aphra Behn.

Jacob Tonson, her publisher, emerged from his bookshop, suitably clad in black — he always was. As they passed along the Strand they were joined by a gaggle of actresses who'd been rehearsing at Duke's. Holding on to their hats, skirts lifting, ribbons whipping their faces, they pulled a hobbling John Downes along with them. The proprietor of Will's

Coffee-House standing at his door, wiping his hands on his apron, said: 'Aphra?' and fell in beside Betterton. Sam Bryskett and Dogberry with some of his theatregoing butchers came in from Covent Garden; so did two flower-sellers and a stationer. John Hoyle, coat-collar up, hat down, sneering, lurched into the ranks from the Red Lion, and Rebecca Marshall ran up from her house near Charing Cross, bringing her grocer with her.

Just before Whitehall a small crowd that had gathered round a tree to stare up into its branches fell back as a figure swung down and ran towards the coffin, making the horses swerve. Dressed in a nightshirt, his head wrapped in brown paper tied with string, Aphra's fellow-playwright, Nat Lee, had come from Bedlam. Penitence had visited him in it. He smiled beautifully at her. 'I escaped.' He was shaking with excitement and cold and there were scars on his wrists. 'I've brought Nero for her.'

'Nero?' said Dogberry, nervously. 'That bugger's not coming too, is he?'

'It's his play,' explained Penitence. 'He wants to put a copy in Aphra's grave. I said he could.'

Benedick put his cloak round the madman and the cortege moved off again. Penitence held Nat's hand as he trotted beside her on bare feet. 'I loved her,' he said. 'But I never told her.'

'She knows now.'

At the avenue to Whitehall the gravel became too much for Nat's feet so they perched him on the end of the funeral cart. The crowd at the Holbein Gate gaped as they went through. Windows opened and some of the Palace servants, thinking they were mummers, sent up a cheer. 'Not far wrong, either,' said Betterton, waving his hat.

By the time the procession reached the Great West Door of the Abbey it had grown fifty-odd strong. A Yeoman of the Guard, who was throwing dice in the porch with a tomb- guide, swore when he saw it. 'They never told me there was a burying today. They tell you, Charlie?'

Well there is,' Betterton said in his best grand manner. 'Open the doors, my man.'

'Once we've got her in the hole, they can't shift her,' Becky Marshall was explaining to Sam Bryskett. 'Penitence read the rules that she got from the Dean.'

'They shifted Cromwell,' said Sam.

They watched the Yeoman of the Guard unhook his keys from his belt. He was sorting through them. He was putting one in the enormous lock.

And then a prebendary came round the comer from the entrance to the Cloisters and asked them what they thought they were doing. Within minutes the Yeoman of the Guard had his pike levelled at them, the tomb-guide had been sent running to fetch the rest of the Abbey guard and prebendaries were pouring through the Cloister door, having celebrated the ending of Chapter with a large meal at the house of the Archdeacon who'd partaken freely of his own port.

Benedick put his hand over his mother's mouth and held her arms so that the argument could be left to Thomas Betterton: 'Why may she not, Venerable Sir? The Dean gave his permission.'

'Dean's absent,' said the Archdeacon, flapping his hand in a direction which indicated that the Dean was in the Thames. 'Chapter's decision. No actresses in the Abbey.'

'Mistress Behn was a playwright.'

'Same thing,' said the Archdeacon. 'All whores and topers.'

A soberer prebendary stepped in front of him. 'With respect, Archdeacon.' He turned to Betterton. 'My good sir, you must understand our position as keepers of this most holy place. Mistress Behn was an enterprising woman but hardly an ornament to her sex and it was felt she would lie more comfortably in some other resting place.'

The Archdeacon wagged his finger. 'Won't have her in. Put her in St Bride's with other scribblers. Good enough for her.'

'Such playwrights as we honour here,' went on the soberer prebendary, shaking his head at the Abbey's indulgence in giving any of them houseroom, 'wrote to the glory of God, in sacred language, Shakespeare and, um, Chaucer.'

'Have you read the "Wife of Bath" lately?' shouted Becky Marshall.

'Didn't have her in either,' shouted back the Archdeacon, sure of his ground.

The Abbey guard was filing into the space between the funeral party and the West Door, most of them old soldiers who came cheap. Penitence's eyes pleaded with her son and he took his hand off her mouth. 'Keep everybody here,' she told him. 'I'll be back.' She gave him her purse. 'Buy them wine. And get some food for Nat Lee.'

'Where are you going?'

'To see the King.'

She began to run. Apart from the ranks of agitated men round the Abbey door it was surprisingly quiet; over towards the river neither House of Parliament was sitting, and only a few lawyers and their clerks were pausing to stare on their way in and out of Westminster Hall; the whole place was resting after the efforts for the Coronation. It had stopped raining. It was getting dark and the carved, square gatehouse leading to the bridge over the Tyburn ditch had a wet sheen that reflected back the torches in their holders on either side of its passageway.

Then she was out of the Middle Ages and running towards Whitehall. From the suffocation of the Church she ran into the suffocation of Government; she saw it rolling towards her like fog, ready to muffle her in its obfuscation as it had so many petitioners before her. Some sanity returned. They'll never let me near the King; it'll take days. She advanced through the murk towards the light of the Holbein Gate where a gentleman was wearily dismounting from a horse. As he turned he saw her and stopped in mid-stretch. It was the Viscount of Severn and Thames.

After a moment she said: 'I want you to take me to the King.'

And he said: 'They don't usually let you in with a weapon.'

She looked down and saw she was holding Aphra's pen like a dagger. 'I'm burying Aphra in Poets' Corner, you see,' she said reasonably. 'They won't let me, and the King's got to make them.'

He nodded. 'The Buttery first, I think.'

'I want to see the King.'

Carefully, he took the pen away from her. 'You shall have it back later,' he said as she snatched for it. 'And you shall see the King. But the Buttery first.'

They served excellent ale in the Palace Buttery and he made her sit down at one of the tables and drink a frothing pint of it. In between gulps he fed her with morsels of equally excellent bread and cheese. 'When did you last eat?'

She tried to think. 'What day is it?'

'That's what I thought.'

'I must see the King.'

'Finish your ale. He's waiting for us; at least, he's waiting for me. For the Scottish report.'

Some form of normality was returning as she ate, but with it came a lassitude. In a while she'd have to return to the fight and Aphra's unburied coffin and leave this man for the last time.

With Aphra dead, Dorinda dead, her stage career over, her energy gone, there would be no occasion for her to visit London again; she would stay in her backwater, subsumed by its minutiae. One day, perhaps, she would hear that this man had married a young heiress and produced healthy tributaries for the viscountcy of Severn and Thames.

I shall wither. The thought of hearing it withered her now. She hadn't fully realized the fortitude necessary to face life without him, the pressure every minute imposed because he wasn't sharing it with her.

Do I love you that much? She did. Had. Would. They had known each other for, what, twenty-five years? A generation. Literally, a generation of love seeded into them both the moment they'd met. Given the greatest gift life had to offer, greater than talent, greater than pride, certainly greater than wealth, they had left it untended. And that — she saw it now — was true sin. She was a sinner not because she had whored to stay alive but because she hadn't pursued her lover — how beautiful that word was and how dirty they had made it — and not only forced him to see her as she was but open his eyes to the fact that he loved her as much as she loved him. Because you do.

Such waste it had been.

She felt a tear drip down the side of her nose and rubbed it, pretending it was an itch. 'How's MacGregor?' she asked.

'He had to stay on. I think he's arranging to give you Scotland. Tell me about Aphra.'

She told him and anger for Aphra re-energized her in the telling. 'Why shouldn't she be commemorated with all the other poets? They've got somebody called Casaubon in there and who was he, I ask you? Did he write for freedom from slavery like Affie did? And Michael Drayton who only wrote one line worth saying, and Thomas Triplet. Who the hell's ever heard of Thomas Triplet? I'll wager those p-p-pprebendar- ies don't know.'

'Let me get this clear. You're trying to bury Aphra Behn in the Abbey's Poets' Corner?'

'Yes. But the prebendaries are trying to stop me.'

He leaned back, fingering his chin. 'Have you tried fucking 'em?'

'Ah.' She shouldn't have lowered her guard. John Downes used to tell her time after time when she was learning to fence. She sighed and stood up. 'Not yet. But it's a thought. Shall we go?'

He took off his cloak and wrapped it around her to protect her from the damp of the courtyards. She could feel desperation emanating out of his flesh into hers. I can't help you, my dear, dear man. Only he could transcend the rules men made for themselves and choose the greater maturity of love.

You have to realize for yourself. It has to matter more than anything else.

The Palace was still in disorder from James's flight; every Dutchman they saw was gloomy and every English servant resentful of the Dutch. The usher taking them to the Royal Apartments complained to Henry as to a fellow-sufferer. 'Won't have his hand kissed, if you believe it. Won't even let us kneel. Won't touch for the King's Evil, just wishes 'em better health and less superstition. And she's everywhere, taking gruel to the poor and checking the accounts. Checking the accounts.'

The Grooms of the Bedchamber were hanging about in the vestibule outside and apologized in advance for the lack of ceremony. 'He says would you suffer him to receive you deshabille, Marquis. He has the cough.'

One of them muttered: 'When ain't he?' They showed no interest in Penitence.

Marquis. Oh well, good luck to him.

King William III of England was crouched over the Bedchamber's fireplace, coughing. He was in his slippers with a shawl round his shoulders. Like the great bed, the red and gold room had been stripped of its hangings and faded marks on the walls showed where they'd been taken down. The windows were open.

'Anthony.' He stretched out a hand but as Henry took it, said quickly: 'No need to kiss it. How was Scotland?'

'Chaos, Your Majesty. But first, may I take the liberty of introducing Mrs Peg Hughes, an old acquaintance of mine? She asks a boon.'

The King turned away from the fire and looked at Penitence. Then he crossed the floor and kissed her hand. 'An old acquaintance of mine as well,' he said slowly. 'I am deeply in her debt. You look well, Mrs Hughes.'

'So do you, Your Majesty.' She hoped she was the only one to be lying. He looked ghastly; she hadn't remembered him as so small. How old was he? Thirty-eight?

'Better than the last time we met.' They still understood each other. A second's worth of amusement touched the pinched, white face and went again. Holding her hand he took her to the window — 'I can't breathe in your London' — leaving the Marquis staring. He gasped some air into his concave little chest. 'Perhaps the Marquis would not understand that then it was also in a bedroom.'

She whispered back. 'I don't think he would. He's not an understanding man.'

Together they looked out on the Thames; the tide was in and to both of them the lap and smell of water brought longings for other waters; she for the streams and rhines of Somerset, he for his canals. 'I would give ten thousand pounds to be in Holland now.'

'You were homesick then.'

'I shall always be homesick. And now I cannot go home.' He'd got the stoop of a pedlar, as if England made a heavy pack.

They stood nodding at each other before he had a fit of coughing and hurried her to the fire, indicating that the Marquis could join them. 'You once did me great service, Mrs Hughes,' he said formally. 'In what may I serve you?'

She explained.

'Aphra Behn?' He connected the name with something disgraceful. 'One of my good Uncle Charles's favourites?'

'Not in that sense. He liked her plays.'

'The woman playwright.' He'd remembered. 'I hear she was bawdy.'

It will be her epitaph. Penitence was overcome by hopelessness. Well, if she couldn't get Aphra buried in the bloody Abbey on Aphra's merits, perhaps she could get her there through her own. 'I want her in Poets' Corner. That's the boon I beg.'

'Poets' Corner?'

'The South Transept. In Westminster Abbey.'

'Ach, Westminster Abbey.' The King turned to the Marquis. 'You missed a comedy there, Anthony. The Coronation was virtually a Popish ceremony. In my shirt to the waist, kneeling I was. It was very draughty. And too much music.'

'Sire,' said Penitence, sharply, 'my friend lies unburied outside the West Door. Give me permission to inter her in the South Transept.'

'Ask me for something else.'

'What?' She'd rescued this little Dutchman from ignominy. Damn it, she'd held his head while he was sick.

'Ask me for anything else. Ask me for Devonshire. Ask me for a duchy. Ask me for jewels, for the hand of this Marquis in marriage. You shall have them all.'

'But I don't want any of these things. I want the little bit of earth my friend has deserved.'

'No, you don't.' He sat back down in his chair. His face had become impassive. 'Mrs Hughes, you are asking me to interfere with the Church of England. My uncle lost his throne for that and I will not follow him. I told you once that the overriding principle of my life is to oppose the advance of France, and that I cannot do if I am fighting the Church of my own realm. No.'

'Thank you, Your Majesty.' She swept him her best theatre curtsey and turned to go, but the Marquis's hand reached out and gripped her arm.

'Your Majesty,' he said, 'the Abbey is a Royal Peculiar.'

William Ill's face remained expressionless. Penitence didn't like it any more. 'It is peculiar certainly. In what way Royal?'

'It means that it is under the jurisdiction of no bishop nor archbishop, only the King's. It is the sovereign's free chapel and exempt from any ecclesiastical jurisdiction but the sovereign's.'

'Therefore?'

The Marquis turned to Penitence. The grave's dug?'

'Yes.'

'And you think that once the coffin's in they won't move it?'

'Yes.'

'Therefore, Your Majesty, you have the right to give permission for a subject ...' He raised an eyebrow at Penitence. '... fifty subjects to enter your own Abbey. What they do when they get there is something else again.'

'It will cause trouble, Anthony.'

William, you must get used to trouble. You're in England now.'

Coughing, the King went to his table, scribbled some lines on a piece of paper, came back and gave it to Penitence. 'There.'

She didn't say thank you. The paper wasn't that big.

'Show Mrs Hughes out, if you would be so good, Marquis. Then return. We have to deal with Scotland.'

She went out frontwards and without a word. In the vestibule the Marquis handed her Aphra's pen from where he'd put it on a table.

She was numbed by the ingratitude of kings. 'I should have left him without his breeches.'

'Good God, not him as well!'

'Oh, Henry,' she said. 'When are you going to let yourself off the hook?' and left him staring after her.

Penitence had a stitch in her side by the time she reached Westminster and paused to catch her breath. Across the square the coffin lay surrounded by flares on the green in front of the Abbey. Nat Lee was sitting on it; beside him was a hogshead of wine from which he was refilling beakers with a ladle. With their capacity for enjoying any occasion, the players had turned the cortege into a party. The funeral cart and horses had gone, but the drummer had stayed and been joined by a fiddler and some of the mourners were dancing, Benedick with one of the actresses — it looked like Elizabeth Barry — Dogberry with Becky Marshall, Payne with Chloe. Passers-by, mostly beggars and street-walkers, had come up to sample Nat's generosity.

Further off the prebendaries had gathered by the entrance to the Cloisters in a watchful, disapproving group, though Penitence glimpsed a leather bottle doing the rounds there as well. The Archdeacon, who was showing a tendency to lie down, had been propped against a mounting block.

The only people who weren't enjoying themselves were the string of Abbey Yeomen disconsolately guarding the West Door.

Penitence was relieved; no soldiers or constables had been called in; the City of Westminster was administered by the Abbey and the Dean and Chapter were careful to guard its rights without outside help.

In that moment the scene resembled a beach, the invader's camp lit by flickering lights, the defenders standing with their backs against the towering cliff of the West Front covered with the barnacles and roots of its elaborate carving. The battle-lines were drawn, old enemies, the Arts versus the Church.

Such solid ranks against her, so untroubled by doubt or amusement, so certain of others' sin.

Such a rag-tag army, her side. Tipsy entertainers, beggars, writers, a gibbering escapee from Bedlam, publicans, whores.

Aphra would have approved.

So, now she came to think of it, had Jesus.

It went out of control, like wars do - unexpectedly. A ghostly line of small white surplices issued from round the comer on invisible feet, snaking towards the West Door. It was time for Evening Service. Automatically, one of the Yeomen of the Guard unlocked the door and opened it to allow the choir entrance, showing the candle-illuminated interior of the nave.

Penitence began to cross the road.

Nat Lee stood up on Aphra's coffin, shrieking and pointing at the light. Somebody's trained voice shouted 'Decus et Dolor!' and Aphra's army went into the attack.

By the time Penitence had got to the green, the coffin had gone, borne up like a battering ram on many shoulders; she thought she saw her son's among them.

'Decus et Dolor!' Elizabeth Barry was beating back a Yeoman trying to bar its way with her heavily loaded pocket, two more actresses and Chloe, Aphra's cap over one ear, had jumped on another and were clinging round his neck.

Penitence ran to join the battle. So did the prebendaries, two of them trying to restrain Nat Lee who was hammering a third of the group with its own bottle.

The coffin's rush had got it through the door, but the pallbearers had been forced to put it down and Betterton, Creech and Payne had their backs to it, swords out, defending its position against a contingent of guards.

It was amazing how many weapons the Abbey held. Such prebendaries as weren't armed already were wrenching halberds from the fists of statuary warriors and throwing funerary vases. But the armoury was open to all; Rebecca Marshall was standing on the bent back of a street-walker and reaching up for a lance holding regimental colours. Dogberry had grabbed a candle-holder from the Chapel of St George and was wielding it like a pike.

The noise went up a hundred feet to the vaulted roof, whipped across tombs to echo back off the gilded figures of saints. Grimacing faces ducked and shouted behind the calm of marble effigies.

All masks were off. Penitence had expected the hatred of the Church, but what amazed her was the ferocity of her friends, as if Aphra was just a rallying point for a hundred years of condemnation. Some pent-up element was loose in the Abbey,- licence against censure, restriction against liberty, the acceptable against the possible, both sides were released in the pagan joy of hitting. The original cause of the fight was forgotten.

The choir, escaped from the Master, had relapsed into boys who were joining in with yells in high trebles. One had butted Sam Bryskett's stomach and another was impartially biting a prebendary's leg. She jumped on to the coffin and heard her own voice ridiculously shouting: 'On, on, you noblest English. To Poets' Corner.'

There was an answering roar and she was tipped off as beggars and Betterton, yelling more Shakespearean war-cries, swept Aphra towards the choir. But the forces of the Church rallied half-way up the nave and, with the gates of the Henry VII Chapel forming a backdrop, pressed the coffin back to the side door to the Cloisters.

Penitence's head had hit a pillar and she'd lost interest for a moment, until she heard the rasp of a sword and saw the soberer prebendary advancing on her, glaring. 'On guard, whore.'

The man's mad. But so was she. She crouched in the position John Downes had taught her with her left hand quirked out and Aphra's pen upraised. The soberer prebendary lunged and his sword-tip slashed her sleeve, scratching her arm as she parried with half a pen. 'God damn it,' she shouted, 'you're not supposed to do that.'

No appreciation of theatre, this man, a killer. Oh my God, he is. The man's eyes gleamed. There was froth at his mouth. He wasn't going to stop when the curtain came down. She dodged behind a sarcophagus. After all she'd been through she was going to die in a farce. There was blood on her hand as she raised it to protect herself. He was about to lunge for her chest.

Another figure stepped in front of her. 'That's not very nice' said a voice to her opponent. It had said the same thing to her other opponents.

She collapsed on to the sarcophagus. The soberer prebendary didn't like the change but was out of control and didn't mind who he killed. 'Whoremonger,' he screamed.

'Oh, really,' said the Marquis of Severn and Thames, crossly, 'I haven't got time for this.' He pressed the man back between the pillars of the triforium into the shadows. She heard a clang and they came out again, the Marquis clutching the soberer prebendary by the collar, pulling him towards Penitence. 'Mrs Mahomet, I presume?'

Tears were falling down her face as her gratitude for the man streamed upwards in prayer. He'd come when, if his jealousy had been stronger than his care for her, he would have stayed away. His presence was an acknowledgement. He'd let himself off the hook.

He looked down at her. 'Have you ever thought of taking up a quiet pursuit? The army? Gun-running? Something contemplative?'

She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. 'I love you, Henry,' she said.

'That's all very well, but every time I have to come and rescue you I offend some king or another. William was put out that I cut him short to come and get you out of trouble — yet again. We're running out of kings.'

'Never mind,' she said. 'This time you get to keep me.'

'Do I?'

'Yes,' she said, 'you do.' She looked into his face. What had done it she didn't know but something in him had won a battle over something else; his love had overcome the whatever-it-was — jealousy, masculine pride — that had kept him from surrendering to it until now. He was amused but rueful. After all, if one thing wins another is defeated. She knew it was the better part of him that had gained the victory but he had yet to be persuaded. Well, she had the rest of her life in which to persuade him. It was a nice thought.

He said, peering at her arm, then at the tomb, 'Do you know you're bleeding over Lady Jane Clifford?' He helped her to her feet and supported her as they went towards the noise that had transferred itself to beyond the Cloister door which stood open amid a litter of broken urns.

As they made their way towards it, the Archdeacon staggered in from the western end holding his head. The wreckage of his abbey sobered him. 'Sacrilege!'

Henry bowed and introduced himself without letting go of the prebendary's collar. 'This lady is entrusted with a letter from His Majesty, who has now sent me to express his disquiet at this business. Show him, Boots.' He regarded the paper Penitence produced from her sleeve. It was indecipherable with blood. 'Ah. Well. Perhaps you would permit me to tell you what it says.'

He was rescuing her. It would have been impossible to succeed without male authority in this bastion of maleness. Still, if she could only get Aphra honoured as she should be honoured, the female sex would have won a victory. And you'd have liked Henry, Affie.

What it says,' he was saying pointedly, 'is that the King expects the Chapter of Westminster Abbey to honour the promise of its Dean and bury Mistress Behn in the South Transept.'

'Does it?' asked the Archdeacon.

Did it? She hadn't read it, but she was damned sure it didn't.

'It does,' said Henry. 'Perhaps you would inform the Chapter.'

'Don't do it, Archdeacon,' yelled the soberer prebendary. 'The King can't dictate to us.'

Penitence was sick of him. 'Yes he can.'

Henry placed his sword-tip against the prebendary's spine and bowed to the Archdeacon. 'Lead the way.'

The battle in the Cloisters was going badly for Aphra's side. The Church had brought in reinforcements in the shape of beadles and adult choristers. The street-walkers and beggars had wisely disappeared. The actresses were inflicting damage, though running out of ammunition; nearly all the men had been forced to surrender. Creech and Benedick still struggled with three Yeomen and John Downes, panting with age, was fencing beautifully with a beadle. Betterton's sword, however, lay at his feet as he displayed open palms to two muskets aimed at him and Dogberry. Payne had been wounded in the leg. Sam Bryskett's arms were being held behind his back by assorted prebendaries.

The most interesting situation was Nat Lee's. His brown paper hat had unravelled and hung in folds round his head which was the only part of him to be seen, the rest being down the hole dug for Aphra, and he was flinging up stones and earth at anyone trying to get near him. He looked like an angry rabbit.

'Pax,' shouted the Archdeacon. He didn't have the voice.

Henry did. 'pax.'

All bodies stilled, all heads turned. After one look, Nat Lee scrabbled on.

The Marquis gestured to the Archdeacon. 'Your scene, Venerable Sir.'

The Archdeacon rose to it: 'Bury the bloody woman,' he said, 'King's orders.'

There were protests from the Church's army.

And one from Aphra's. 'She's going in P-pp-poets' Corner.'

But at this the enemy ranks raised their weapons again with a chorus of 'No'. The Archdeacon shook his head: 'Here or nowhere.' The soberer prebendary said: 'Over my dead body.'

The Marquis rescued him just in time by standing between him and those from the theatre prepared to take the man up on his offer. 'Look around you, Boots,' he pleaded. 'If you go on somebody's going to get killed.'

She looked around and saw that her years of accumulated fury at women's wrongs had sent her sufficiently insane to believe she could right them, reducing her and Aphra and Aphra's friends into fools. Colours which had illumined the last few minutes muted into the grey shadows of a stone passageway where bruised and tattered misfits stood in the grip of eternal authority.

I'm proud of them. They couldn't win. Would never win. It was only because they had spent their lives in illusion that they had even dared to try. Henry was right. The play was over; the audience hadn't appreciated it - to the point where it was prepared to kill them. Already she and Neville Payne were bleeding, nearly all the others hurt.

'Boots,' said the Marquis, 'you've got her this far. Settle for it. Learn to compromise, for God's sake.'

She looked at him. He was proffering medicine that he'd already had to take. Even now he wasn't reconciled to her past; he never would be. He had compromised with it to gain their future. In her turn she would have to overcome her resentment of his resentment. She would have to compromise, not just over Aphra, but over the rest of her life. Well, there were worst fates than a compromise. England itself had just made one. Extremists had held back from killing each other for the first time and instead had agreed to put on the throne that narrow-chested, coughing little Dutchman. William, the compromise king. If England could do it, she could. Actually, she was too tired to do anything else.

She nodded.

Eventually they found the coffin skewed under a pew in the Chapel of St Faith. Creech's shoulder was dislocated so they needed another pallbearer. Penitence wanted it to be the soberer prebendary but he'd been sick and gone home.

The Marquis went into earnest consultation with the Archdeacon, receiving assurances, paying out moneys. The Abbey's chief organist was sent for and came gladly - Purcell had been fond of Aphra.

Elizabeth Barry tore a piece off her already torn petticoat and bandaged Penitence's wound, then together they wandered into the South Transept to look at the memorials of Poets' Corner until everything was ready. 'Who's Thomas Triplet?' Barry asked.

'I've no idea.'

'I'm glad Affie's not going in with him.' Idly drawing a moustache on Abraham Cowley with a finger that had been dipped in Aphra's inkwell, she said: 'Chloe says Affie left you The Widow Ranter.'

'Yes.'

'It's a wonderful part.'

You're too young. The girl was beautiful; she'd only been sixteen or so when she'd become Rochester's mistress. He'd taught her how to act and made a fine job of it according to Betterton who'd told Penitence: 'Next to you, she's the best Desdemona I've ever seen.'

No. It's me who's too old. Penitence said: 'You can play her if you like.'

Barry twirled round. 'Can I?'

'Yes. This was my last performance. I'm getting married.'

The funeral party had gathered itself and put Chloe's hat on straight. They lifted Nat Lee out of the grave so that Aphra could be put into it. He cried on Betterton's shoulder all the way through the interment.

The wind of Purcell's Te Deum reached them even here, in this far, dark corner, and the choristers sang like angels. 'I heard a voice from heaven,' declaimed the Archdeacon, 'saying unto me, Write; Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; from hencefourth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours.'

They sprinkled the Abbey's dust on to the coffin and held Nat Lee back from following it. Since there were no gravediggers, Creech and Dogberry filled in the hole and when the earth was level there was a rush of prebendaries to help them tamp it down.

The churchmen went first and one by one the mourners followed until only the Marquis and Benedick and Penitence were left. The son winked at his parents and ran to catch up with the retreating form of Elizabeth Barry.

Penitence looked down at the earth. 'People will tread on her,' she said.

Henry took her good arm and led her back into the nave where a prebendary was snuffing the candles. She turned towards the Henry VII Chapel. 'I ought to go and say goodbye to Rupert.'

He tightened his grip. 'You've said goodbye to him.'

She considered. 'I have, haven't I? I'm going to marry you.'

'Wait until you're asked, woman.'Together they stood in the great doorway, looking at the green where Aphra's army was finishing the wine. They saw John Hoyle emerge from the direction of the Abbey Arms and rejoin it. 'He deserted.'

Henry said: 'If the King hears I lied about his permission, I'm not likely to get my ambassadorship.'

'Did you want it?'

'Not really. I thought I'd settle down and spend the rest of my old age in Somerset.'

She put her hand on his. 'I thought I would too. We've done enough. We'll leave the rest to William and Mary. Theirs should be a sensible reign.'

As they crossed the road to join the revelling mourners, he said: 'But duller.'

'Oh yes,' said Penitence. 'Thank God. Much, much duller.'