The Vizard Mask Read Online Free PDF Page B

her pipe out of her mouth to spit, 'you dam up your bodies' rivers and when they leak you curse them. He wanted. You didn't. Where is the problem?'
    'It wasn't me then?'
    'No. He wanted Nagret when he came here to preach his religion.'
    'What did Nagret do?'
    'She gave it. She liked him. She said he sweated strong.'
    She was aware of nothing, warned of nothing, except relief that the Reverend Block fornicated wholesale. She was wrapping herself in deerskin, lying down to sleep the sun round in the thick, warm air of Awashonks's lodge. In the morning she would go off with Matoonas and hunt moose.
    But there was no sanctuary. A deputation, led by the Reverend Block himself, had come to get her back.
    'Deliver the person of Penitence Hurd to us, O Awashonks, sachem of Squakheag.' The Reverend Block was speaking with the loud precision that the Puritans used to the Indians on formal occasions.
    From her hiding place behind the rock she could hear the voice as clearly as she had heard it every Sabbath at meeting.
    'She is not here.'
    He wouldn't believe Awashonks. He didn't. 'Deliver her or soldiers shall come and force her from thee. She has transgressed and must be punished.'
    'What have I done?' What had she done? Except refuse you-know-what with the Reverend Block. Matoonas was nudging her to keep quiet.
    The flames of the dancing ground's ceremonial fire were flickering on the Indians' gleaming skin and their beads and were absorbed into the matt clothes of the Puritan embassy. She had known these faces, red and white, all her life but in the upward light of the flames they had become equally monstrous.
    'What do you say she has done?'
    'She is a witch. Her tongue is witness to the Devil. How did the trading post burn down, killing those good people, except by her agency?'
    'No. No. No.'
    no. no. no.
    'Sit up.'
    Penitence sat up. A large shape was blocking the light of dawn that was trying to creep in through the opened shutters of the side window. A hot beaker of milk was being pressed into her hands. 'Drink this.'
    'Now then.' Her Ladyship had put on a mantua which hung straight down to her feet from the prow of her bosom. She sat down on the end of the bed, nearly tipping it. 'Who sent you here?'
    Penitence searched in her bag and brought out her Bible. After the fire, her neighbours had found her grandfather's iron box among the calcified spars and ashes. Inside, among the heat-curled flakes of paper, had been a scrap on which the words 'Yr affct dautr, Margaret Hughes. The Rookery, St Giles-in-the-Fields' were just distinguishable. Below the words was a cross, against which was written: 'Margaret Hughes, her mark'. She opened the book at the beginning of the New Testament and carefully held it for Her Ladyship to see the crumbling pieces arranged on the page.
    'I see. Well, she's dead. Died in the West Indies.'
    Penitence was aware that harlots had been transported to the West Indies by the Commonwealth. The Puritan community in New England had rejoiced and sent letters of praise to Cromwell for cleansing Old England of its sinners. But there was strangeness here. Her Ladyship was lying. The Squakheag, who had developed lying to an art form, had taught her to listen for the nuance that bespoke falsehood and she'd just heard it.
    It may be true she's dead. It is not true about the West Indies. She blinked enquiry at Her Ladyship.
    'A letter,' said Her Ladyship, defiantly. 'Friend of hers out there sent me a letter and wrote she was dead. So she's dead. How old are you?'
    Her Ladyship's face was intimidating. If Penitence hadn't seen the mouth stretched into a smile the night before, she would have thought the heavy, handsome flesh incapable of any expression other than the bitterness that came naturally to it. Her Ladyship's head cocked sideways as if, whatever it was, she didn't believe it. Her pale eyes looked indifferently out through barricades of fat at the omnipresent frailty of mankind.
    'You can speak,' said Her