The Vizard Mask

'Penitence Hurd and the Plague arrived in London on the same day. Penitence was eighteen and carried a beaded satchel. The Plague travelled by fur-lined carriage and was old as sin...' Penitence, a Puritan from the Americas, arrives in London with nothing but a great many prejudices, a Bible, and the last known address of her aunt, Margaret. The address turns out to be a brothel in one of London's least salubrious quarters: St Giles-in-the-Fields. At first the lawlessness and squalor confirm all her prejudices. Yet there's humanity too, and Pen's beliefs are shaken. When she meets Aphra Benn, the eccentric playwright and spy for the king, she is inspired to become an actress and fight, like Aphra, to live her life free of men's control. But soon she is embroiled in the tarnished glitter of Charles II's court, with its vicious rakes and sexual intrigue, where the idea of an independent woman is a contradiction in...