Dryden was in his usual place by the fire, celebrating his new status as Poet Laureate with his fellow-writers, and was put out by losing the attention of his audience to Penitence.
‘Mrs Hughes, Mrs Hughes, have you read my play?’
‘Mrs Hughes, I’ve a part for you will make your mouth water.’
‘Mrs Hughes,’ said Dryden, ‘like the percipient artist she is, will concern herself only with plays that adhere to the unities.’
But Penitence had spotted an outlandishly dressed figure across the room and was running to it. ‘Aphra. What are you doing here?’
They hugged. Though they lived in the same house, Penitence’s hours and Aphra Behn’s no longer coincided. It had been weeks since they’d had time to do more than greet each other on the stairs.
Aphra tipped her barbarously coloured cap to the back of her head. ‘One has done it. I heard today.’
‘Heard what?’
‘Davenant’s taking my play.’
‘Oh, Aphra.’ It was impossible. It was joyous. She had to blink back tears. ‘I’m so glad. Which one?’
They dragged two stools to the back of the room and sat down to chat. ‘The Forced Marriage.’ Aphra’s mouth gave a moue of pretended disapproval. ‘Not one’s best, but it’s a start.’
‘It’ll run for a week. I’m so proud of you.’
‘How ironic it will be at Duke’s. I so wanted you for the lead.’
‘My dear girl,’ Penitence jerked her head towards the fireplace where Dryden still pontificated, ‘unless it preserved the unities I couldn’t possibly. What are the unities?’
‘Lunacies,’ said Aphra promptly. ‘As if one could write to rule. But, my dear’ – she took Penitence’s hand – ‘should it be a success, well, my brother has found us a little house…’
‘You’re not leaving the Cock and Pie?’
‘We cannot batten on you for ever.’
‘You haven’t battened, you haven’t.’ Penitence’s alarm lifted her voice so that Sedley, always aware of her, turned round to look. ‘Don’t go, Aphra.’ It would be a relief to see the back of Mrs Johnson, but Aphra had brought poetry and intellectual enquiry into the Cock and Pie. ‘What will Benedick do without you?’ MacGregor had taught her son to read, but it was Aphra who’d taught him to love reading.
‘He will visit his honorary aunt every day. As will you. But we are the new women, my dear, and must try for independence.’
Penitence shook her head. ‘It’s hard. You’ll find it so hard.’
Sedley’s scent enveloped them as he leaned over, rolling his eyes. ‘Whose is hard? Don’t quarrel over it, ladies. I can be hard enough for both of you.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Penitence wearily.
Immediately he became vitriolic, turning on Aphra. ‘I hear you’ve been brought to bed of a play, mistress. Surely the infant is not all your own. Who is the father?’
God protect her. Penitence blew a kiss to Aphra and ushered him out, frightened for her friend. Spying for the king and a debtors’ prison had been ease and comfort compared with what faced a woman who was preparing to compete in a world in which every wit and half-wit fancied himself a playwright. God, protect her.
Chapter 6
The trip to the races had been planned as part of a relaxation for the king’s nephew, Prince William of Orange, towards the end of the young Dutch prince’s state visit to England to cement the new alliance between the two countries. After all the formality, Charles thought William would be glad of entertainment, and knew that he would, so actresses had been included in the invitation.
‘And if one of you ladies should relieve the lad of his virginity while you’re about it, the king will not be displeased,’ the Earl of Rochester told the tiring-room, two nights before they were due to go.
Anne Marshall pulled her dress over her head. ‘How old is he?’
‘Nineteen, twenty.’
‘And still a ballocking virgin?’ Dorinda paused in the act of untying her basque strings.
‘My dear Roxolana,’ said Sedley, trying to balance his staff on his nose, ‘the Dutch court does things differently. For one thing – damn it, I’ll never get the trick of it – it’s not a court at all. The Netherlands are a republic, poor flatlanders that they are. Our William may be a prince of the blood, but in that benighted country he’s only a councillor or stadtholder, or whatever dreary titles they give themselves, of one little state. There, I’ve done it. Look at me.’
‘He’s more than that,’ said Becky Marshall, quietly.
Rochester shot her a glance. ‘Sometimes, my dear Becky, I wonder where you get your political knowledge. Anyway, our royal young lumpkin’s been a prisoner of the De Witts for years, locked up on a diet of cheese and sermons. Soured his disposition.’
Penitence rolled down her stage stockings carefully, sequinned cast-offs from Gwynn. ‘He must have some importance. Old Rowley’s making a rare fuss of him. I suppose it’s all to celebrate the new alliance.’ She smoothed on her own stockings, slapping Sir George Etherege’s hand as he tried to snap her garter. ‘Stop that.’
‘He’s put your lover’s nose out of joint, I’m afraid,’ said Sedley. ‘The revered royal Rupert was so offended at the state dinner the other night to find his nephew given precedence over him at the table that he stalked out. Positively stalked, my dear. He looked like an offended walking-stick.’ He adjusted the lace of his cuffs. ‘And talking of offence, my dears, I hear that Kynaston gave the epilogue yesterday dressed up as me.’
The actresses busied themselves in finishing their toilet. ‘Only a bit of fun, Sedley dear,’ said Anne Marshall.
‘Of course it was. Of course it was. Did the audience enjoy it?’
‘Oh, he died and then she died,’ said Dorinda, vaguely. She turned the conversation back to the Prince of Orange. ‘Well, I ain’t fucking the young squib,’ she said, ‘I got other fish to fry.’
‘Would that be the noble fish of Oxford, Roxolana my dear?’ asked Rochester, slyly. ‘Twentieth fish of that ilk?’ Dorinda was being strongly courted by Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
‘It would. And his intentions is honourable, and he’s coming with us to Newmarket. Somebody else can swive the Dutcher.’
‘Orange-girl turns down Prince of Orange,’ sighed Rochester. ‘But think on’t. You may be rejecting the future King of England.’
Dorinda stared at him. ‘How’d you make that out?’
‘Well, our own dear queen, poor Portuguese bat, seems to be the one woman in England whom the king can’t impregnate, and brother James has only daughters, the elder of whom may be given to our little Dutchman – I don’t say she will, but she may.’ He shuddered. ‘So, in the natural course of things, we might end up with that constipated young Hollander on the throne, God save us all.’
‘And he died and then she died,’ said Dorinda, again. ‘I’m bored of politics. Let’s go out to dinner.’
* * *
‘We had our differences, ma’am,’ said Prince Rupert of the Earl of Clarendon. ‘Hyde was never my friend, but he was an honest enemy, and a faithful servant of the king. I regret his scapegoating for the mismanagement of the war. No, ma’am, I regret his exile.’
Penitence nodded sagely. ‘But at least we have peace once more.’ Keep the conversation neutral. She had expected there to be a large party, that he’d invited her as part of a quota of pretty women to flaunt at his table, like other courtiers did. But they were ominously alone, facing each other from opposite ends of a long, polished table. She wondered if he would mention his offended departure from the state dinner over the precedence given to the young Prince of Orange, but he didn’t.
‘The Triple Alliance? Long may it last. I fought the Dutch fleet more from duty than conviction. Another honest enemy, Mrs Hughes, and glad I am to have them as ally. The true enemy of England, ma’am, is France. Louis and his Popery. Popery above all. Did I ever recount to you my imprisonment at the hands of Ferdinand III when
I was offered my freedom if I would but convert to Rome?’
This was better. She was ignorant of so much of the European past, and Rupert, who had figured in a great deal of it, linked up history for her. She listened warily as she ate, the slight and occasional Bohemian accent giving his pedantic English a trace of the Oriental. Perhaps he only wants someone to talk to. It would be upsetting to find that he was like all the others and she ended the evening fending off a sexual attack. I should have brought a chaperone after all. He might interpret her lack of one as an invitation. But who could I bring? Dorinda? Mistress Palmer?
The apartments were dark, tucked away in a corner of Whitehall’s vastness overlooking a private garden, and smelled of hounds. A half dozen of them had greeted her entrance and he’d watched her reaction before he commanded them away. ‘You are not frightened, Mrs Hughes,’ he said. ‘That’s good. That’s good.’
He seemed to imagine her the epitome of delicate womanhood. She spared him the knowledge that if you could stand up to an Indian dog pack, you could stand up to anything.
It was the most masculine room she’d ever been in; the space on the walls above the looming furniture was hung with spears, swords and armour. Books were everywhere else. The table was set with exquisite napery, silver and crystal. The food, however, was cold. He apologized. ‘I make them run with it from the kitchens, but they never run fast enough.’
She became apprehensive as the servants cleared the table and left. I liked him. What a pity. He got up to peer out of the casement behind him through which issued the smell of wet autumn leaves. ‘I had hoped we could walk in the garden, but it is too damp.’
Here it comes. She looked around for the inevitable couch, but failed to see one.
He took his place back at the table, the evening sun outlining his wig and the still-athletic spread of his shoulders. ‘Do you know that I have a son, Mrs Hughes?’ he asked.
She did. Charles Sedley had apprised her of the fact as soon as he became aware of the prince’s interest in her. ‘Wouldn’t think the old boy could still raise his banner, would you,’ Sedley had said. ‘But he did. Got the little bastard on some poor Irish chit whose father fought with our Rupert in the war. Tricked the girl into thinking she was marrying him, dirty old devil, and chucked her over once he’d had his way with her.’
Neither the trickery nor the chucking over sounded like the Rupert she knew. But perhaps she didn’t know him. She waited.
He coughed. ‘The boy’s mother had and still has a claim on me. There was a ceremony, which I somewhat foolishly regarded as merely the blessing of an alliance and she as a wedding.’
He leaned forward ‘She was a Catholic, you see.’
Penitence nodded, not seeing at all.
‘She has no complaint of me, and were she here she would tell you so. She has found accommodation that suits her better with my sister, the Electress of Hanover. Our son she has been good enough to leave in my care.’ He paused. ‘I’ve put him down for Eton.’
She had to stop herself smiling.
He was speaking so stiffly now he might have been angry with her. ‘I tell you this so that you will understand, madam, why I am unable to offer you marriage. Had my circumstances been simpler, you would now be receiving such a proposal. You must believe that in all other respects my offer is honourable. Safeguards, permanence, a home I hope you will find not unworthy of you, these things I lay at your feet with all the affection of which my soul is capable.’
Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
‘You have a son, I believe?’ They’d been as quick to pass on the gossip about her as to tell her about him. She nodded. ‘You have my assurance that, should you take me, he would be raised with all the consequence of my own.’
She was silent for so long he said: ‘Is it my age, madam? Am I too old for you?’ It was the first time he’d shown agitation.
‘No. Oh no. Your Highness…’ This formality was ridiculous. She sounded like a Dryden heroine. ‘…I am overwhelmed. And muddled.’
‘I beg you not to answer now,’ he said. ‘For all they think I should be put out to grass, I am a man of the world and did not expect your life to be any less complicated than my own has been. Sir Charles Sedley has been making free with your name, perhaps with your permission, perhaps not. I ask no questions.’
‘Why?’ Somebody had to break through this courtesy and say something real. ‘Why don’t you? You don’t know anything about me.’
‘It is your future that exercises me, not your past.’ He became brisk and rang the small silver bell on the table by his hand for a servant to fetch her cloak. ‘You will need time to consider the matter. I shall not take up any more of it.’
He rose and stalked down the table to hold the great oak chair so that she could get up. He smelled of cologne and camphor. As he kissed her hand, he stayed bending so that he could look into her face. ‘I know by your eyes, madam,’ he said, ‘that should you agree, my honour would be as protected by you as yours by me.’
She saw his eyes and, for the first time, the passion in them. This calculated reserve wasn’t natural to him; he was an impetuous and hot-blooded man. His hand under hers was vibrating. I couldn’t. I wish I could, but I couldn’t.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it would. That’s why I’m not going to do it. Believe me, you have paid me the greatest compliment of my life, sir. But you deserve to be loved. I’m sorry, so sorry, but I don’t love you.’ She wasn’t going to act for him. He deserved the truth.
For the first time he smiled, and she saw the man who’d fought for a lost cause before. ‘An honest woman,’ he said, ‘and worth waiting for.’
As he took her through the maze of corridors and courtyards to his coach – odd that she hadn’t minded him knowing her address when she’d kept it from Sedley – she babbled mollifications. ‘I am enjoying earning my own living, you see. I value my independence.’
He had no idea what she meant. An independent woman was a contradiction in terms. ‘I shall wait to hear from you. God bless you.’
She waved, then flopped back on to the buttoned leather seat. Well, well, Penitence Hurd. You have come up in the world. Instantly, she was ashamed at her gratification. She must guard against being impressed by titles. It didn’t matter that he was a prince of the blood; what mattered was that he was a good man.
A good man? Prince Robber? Devil Rupert? Scourge of the Puritan cause? If she’d accepted him the shades of her grandparents wouldn’t know which to bewail the more – her living in sin, or her living in sin with the most feared royalist general of the Civil War.
Speak as you find, she told them, cheerfully. My mother would approve.
When Charles Sedley had offered to set her up he’d made no mention of Benedick. His proposal was a transaction: ‘And a thousand pound cash when we tire of each other.’ It wasn’t her Sedley wanted in any case. He merely liked the idea of a trophy, a pretty head on the wall of his vanity. ‘Actress, Drury Lane, c. 1670.’
Rupert had offered her his life.
Bless him, she thought, and yawned. It had been an emotional day. But Benedick’s going to Westminster, not Eton.
* * *
To get to Newmarket in good time meant leaving London at three in the morning. Penitence and Dorinda spent the night with the Marshalls in their small house near Temple Bar so that the coach coming to collect them all need make only one stop. Knipp’s husband had refused to let her come.
Dorinda was wild with excitement and nerves – it was her first inclusion in a royal party – and varied between If-only-Her-Ladyship-could-see-me-now and Suppose-they-know-I-was-on-the-game.
‘They think we’re all on the game,’ Becky Marshall told her, and repeated the Awful Warning of Elizabeth Farley.
‘I know, don’t I?’ Dorinda said. ‘Knipp’s already told me. “Don’t sell yourself cheap.” An’ I won’t. Trust me, them days is over. Asides, Aubrey’s intentions is honourable.’
To find any friend of Charles’s capable of honourable intentions was a novelty, and the sight of the earl’s beery face as he hauled Dorinda into his own coach when they joined the royal cavalcade at Whitehall made Penitence doubt it. In the general redistribution she found herself in another coach, alone with Sedley, who had a hangover. She went straight to the attack. ‘You’ve been making free with my name, it appears,’ she said. ‘You know we’re not on those terms, and I’ll not have it said that we are.’
‘Oh God,’ he moaned, ‘wait ’til my head’s smaller. I can’t stomach Puritans at this hour of the morning.’
‘And you’re not coupling with them at nights either,’ she said, but he’d already fallen asleep.
As the mother of a child she didn’t keep secret, she was in no position to go around posing as a virgin. But neither would she have it bruited about that she was anybody’s for the asking. So far she’d been spared, but if once her reputation went she’d be carrion. The court wits would tear her apart.
They hymned faithlessness in wonderful live-for-the-moment sonnets to their beloveds, but woe to the girl they persuaded, then tired of. Within days, details of how she performed in bed were distributed round town with exact descriptions of her pudenda.
If she tired of them first the savagery was frightening. Rochester had hounded a mistress who’d thrown him over with:
While she whines like a dog-drawn bitch;
Loathed and despised, kicked out of town,
Into some dirty hole alone,
To chew her cud of misery
And know she owes it all to me.
And may no woman better thrive,
That dares profane the cunt I swive.
For an actress to be out of their company meant professional oblivion; to be in it was dangerous. Every minute she was with the court, Penitence was aware of the depth beneath the high wire she balanced on. But if it was frightening, it was exhilarating. With their style, their careless erudition and their wealth they made life a brilliant feast at which the trick, for their guests, was to avoid the poisoned chalice.
The Vizard Mask Page 36