by Diane Haeger
“I am told they consider the fire God’s revenge, sire, for our burning their fleet last year,” said Clifford, Buckingham’s protégé.
Only once they were all seated around the long, polished oak table was it apparent that the chancellor himself, Clarendon, architect of the move toward peace, and James’s father-in-law, was not among them.
“Where is he?” the king bellowed, without saying his name.
“Lord Clarendon has been sent for, Your Majesty,” said Clifford.
Charles slammed the table. “Well, you are my Privy Council! Advise me!”
“As you know, sire, I believe we should have found what money we needed and attacked again last summer. We needed to show our strength, especially with our losses, and this waiting on the French to help broker a peace for us has shown our weakness. We played right into the very center of it!”
“The Dutch did smell our vulnerability, it seems, and seized upon it,” the king’s brother, the Lord Admiral, carefully concurred, newly returned from surveying the damage.
“Might I remind Your Majesty,” Buckingham slyly added, “that Clarendon was the only one among us to look to the French, and then wage stubbornly for inactivity.”
Charles washed a hand over his face. “The people will be furious with this, after the fire, and the plague, not to mention our previous losses.”
“I am afraid Your Majesty has taken an old friend’s age for wisdom, when it might have better been taken for the senility it clearly is.”
“That will be quite enough, George.” The king shot him a warning stare. Charles had a long history with Clarendon, as he did with Buckingham. Clarendon’s father had faithfully served Charles’s father, and had endeared himself into Charles’s memories, and his life. He had been, in many ways, like the father Charles had lost. Growing into manhood, he had depended upon Clarendon greatly. Yes, he had married his own brother, the Duke of York, to Clarendon’s daughter Anne as a show of support. Charles had loved and trusted the old man, even with his Privy Council set against him.
“I’m only saying, you cannot let him go on when it has cost us so much!”
“Enough! When I wish your further opinion on the matter, I shall ask for it!”
“But Your Majesty must hear the younger voices above the aging chorus! Even if I risk my own standing, it shall be worth England’s safety!”
Charles shot to his feet, his face blazing with sudden fury. “George, I warn you!”
“Someone has got to reason with Your Majesty, and if it takes your oldest and dearest friend to highlight the utter incompetence of an old man who—”
“To the Tower!” Charles cried, his face mottled red with rage.
“You cannot be serious! This is me, your truest friend!”
“Guards! Escort the Duke of Buckingham to the Tower, and keep him there until he has learned to honor his king, and hold his tongue!”
George Villiers did not plead his case further. He only continued to meet the gaze of the man he had helped to escape from London long ago, and to whom he had devoted his life—even if he had done it through politics and manipulation. “You can put me away if it pleases you, but not the truth!” he seethed. “Clarendon’s weakness will bleed through no matter what you do! And at the end of the day, you will realize that not only did I have our best interest at heart, but I had the courage to see it through!” He looked toward the guardsmen, then, with a flourish, turned from the king. “Now, take me where you will, and be done with it. I have shown honor to our sovereign the best way I know how. I’ve nothing further to say.”
Chapter 8
ALL THE PLEASURE OF THE PLAY, THE KING AND MY LADY CASTLEMAINE WERE THERE, AND PRETTY WITTY NELL, AT THE KING’S HOUSE.
—The Diary of Samuel Pepys
AFTER MAY DAY, 1668
JUST after the great May Day celebration, a new play opened at the King’s Theater. John Dryden, the most celebrated playwright in London, had written a comedy, The Maiden Queen, and the role of Florimel was created particularly for Nell. She, not Charles Hart, was to be the star. The role was her largest and most demanding yet, and Nell was plagued with a sudden case of nerves. It was rumored that the Duke of York, and perhaps even the king himself, might well be in the audience for the first performance.
His Majesty, it was said, was trying to recover from the devastating attack by the Dutch at Gravesend Harbor, and from having consigned his dearest friend, the Duke of Buckingham, to the Tower for having tried to use the incident against the elderly Clarendon. Theater was a passion of his, but he rarely indulged in past months, and when he did, he went to the rival Duke’s Theater, where his current paramour, Moll Davies, performed. Or at least she would continue to perform until she bore the king’s child, which was rumored to be soon.
It was Moll who had caused Nell to look beyond Charles Hart and to begin considering wealthy candidates that might look her way. She thought of Hart, at this very moment in the next room “rehearsing” alone with Mary Knepp, the actress who was playing her friend. Hart had grown as bored with Nell as she was disgusted by him. Still, business and survival, these were what mattered. And she must think of Rose, and what their lives could return to if she failed. She stood, layered in heavy velvet skirts, made wide by a volume of petticoats. Light from the tiring-room window glinted against the amber fabric, the folds and shadows enriching them the more. The dress had been donated from Lady Argyll’s personal wardrobe. It was the most luxurious thing Nell had ever pressed against her skin. In spite of protests by the more senior actresses, Dryden had seen the valuable dress given to his star. Nothing was to hamper her performance, the playwright insisted. He wished Nell to become Florimel.
Charles Hart came into the ladies’ tiring-room a quarter of an hour later, flushed and distracted. He bent and kissed Nell absently on the back of the neck as she sat applying her own lip paint. “You look lovely, my dear.”
“And you look spent.”
She watched his expression in the mirror’s reflection. He smiled in an overly sweet manner that instantly put her on edge. “Nothing to trouble yourself over. I shall be right beside you as you triumph this afternoon. The whole lot of us are counting on it. The theater is already packed to capacity.”
“But we don’t go on for an hour.”
“Such is their thirst for Mrs. Nelly. That’s what they are calling you now, you know. How far you have managed to come when you started your career in a brothel.”
“I’d no choice, bein’ there, you know that. I was a child made to fetch wine for the patrons. But that was all that place ever got from me.”
“Of course it was,” he said condescendingly. “Now. Do you know your lines?
“Better’n you know yours, I’ll warrant.”
“We shall see.”
“Just don’t try to make me look bad to make yourself look better. Mr. Dryden won’t like it,” Nell said. Then she turned from him and went out of the tiring-room alone.
“I don’t know why we must come to this theater when we have a perfectly clever little play staged over at the Duke’s,” Moll Davies carped.
“This is His Majesty’s theater, my dear,” Arlington responded dryly.
The king added nothing as the royal party paraded between the swiftly parted, deeply bowing throngs of theatergoers stopping to gape and wave. Moll bored him to tears already, and she was far too shrill to keep his mind from comparing her to Barbara. Since the novelty had worn off, there was little reason to keep her around, but for the child she carried. He tried not to notice how garish Moll looked, heavily pregnant, dressed in rusty-orange brocade and mock sleeves, her hair long and loose beneath a little velvet hat. His libido certainly could lead him astray, he thought ruefully. He sank into his chair in the center of his private box and gazed down into the pit at all of the craning necks, faces turned up to see him, flirtatious smiles, bows from dandies and fops, nods from ladies hidden by their vizards, and orange girls plying their trade up and down the nar
row isles. A woman in one of the other boxes lowered her vizard and smiled at him. She looked familiar, but he could not place her. She was too old to have been a dalliance…perhaps it was one of her daughters he had known? It could have been anyone at all.
“That new actress, Nell Gwynne, is starring today, Your Majesty,” Arlington leaned over to remark behind a raised hand. “They say Dryden finds her absolutely fascinating.” He was clearly glorying in his place beside the king, with Buckingham now locked away in the Tower.
Nell Gwynne…why was the sound of it familiar? The old woman was still smiling at him and now clearly trying to suggest something with her eyes. Great God, was she trying to suggest that? She looked old enough to be his own mother!
“I saw her last month in The English Monsieur. She was hilarious. Had half the balcony throwing flowers to her, instead of oranges.”
“Now there’s a switch to note,” Charles chuckled.
Moll, who had been listening from the king’s other side, shot him an irritated glance. He chose to ignore it. Finally, the candle lamps rimming the stage were lit and the crowds in the pit, and around him in the various other boxes, broke into thunderous applause.
First onstage was a stout, white-haired man in velvet robes, who acted as the narrator for the prologue. By his presence, the cheers turned to thunderous disapproval and great shouted choruses of “Bring on Nelly!”
Charles bit back a smile and settled against the high-backed gilded chair. This afternoon might shape up to be a bit of fun, after all. As he glanced down again, even the woman with the vizard was shouting for Nell. This girl must be something unique indeed. A moment later, wearing a remarkably elegant dress, her full copper hair cascading down her back, Nell Gwynne took the stage. Before she spoke a single line, the entire crowd erupted in applause, whistles, and catcalls. Brazenly and with a charming smile, she looked directly out at the men before her in the pit. She smiled broadly, blew a kiss, and then turned to her costar, Charles Hart, who was making his own entrance from the other side. They met onstage, joining hands, as a couple intending to marry. The rumor of their real liaison was so rampant that the audience began to chuckle at once.
“As for the first year, according to the laudable custom of new married people, we shall follow one another up into chambers, and down into gardens, and think we shall never have enough of one another. So far ’tis pleasant enough, I hope,” he said loudly.
“But after that, when we begin to live like ’usband and wife, and never come near one another, what then?” she said with a bold wink.
The crowd rewarded Nell by laughing so boisterously that Hart’s next line was completely lost. The king bit back a smile and remembered Nell Gwynne. Of course. How delightfully surprising! The orange seller with the big heart, standing outside after the fire, had become a star. Absolutely marvelous!
“She has only been on the stage for six months and already she has captured London,” said the Earl of Arlington, who leaned forward from his chair behind the king.
“And a number of hearts, I would imagine.”
“It is well known in the theater that she is Charles Hart’s mistress,” said Moll gratingly.
“Fortunate Mr. Hart,” said the king, as the crowd erupted for her once again.
The next hour rushed by in a whirl of laughter, surprise, and delight, and the king was charmed as he had not been for a very long time. As he watched Nell, he could feel her sensuality even with the theater’s length between them. That, combined with her wit, made her positively irresistible to every man present. She was gamine, saucy, and wildly exciting; knowing she was from the darkest streets, he recognized her as a consummate survivor. The King was disarmed.
When Nell took her bows, he leaned casually toward Arlington and lifted a hand across his face to mask his words. “Keep Moll occupied as we leave, and I shall owe you a favor.”
“It would be easier to keep the plague out of London in September.”
“It was not a request, Arlington, no matter how kindly delivered.”
The two men exchanged a glance as Moll Davies clamped onto the king’s forearm and gazed up adoringly at him from his other side.
“I need a moment, lovely. Arlington here shall see you safely to my coach.” He stood, and she stood as well, still holding on fast to his arm.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Nature calling, my lovely girl, is a largely private matter.”
Nell was just coming off the stage, her face glowing with triumph, her skin bathed in perspiration, when she heard a voice break through the shouts of applause. “Nelly! Where are you, love? Un’and me, sir! Nelly Gwynne’s me own daughter, she is! Nelly!”
“Oh, good lord,” said Mrs. Knepp beneath her breath. “I’ve one of those creatures myself to taunt me when I least expect it.”
“As do I,” said Beck Marshall, shaking her head in camaraderie as each unlaced the stays of the other’s tight, high corset. “But I wasn’t ever likely to tell her about the life I’d made here or I’d never have seen a shilling of my own.”
“I didn’t tell her,” said Nell on a sigh. “She smells money like a huntin’ hound.”
“There you are, Nelly! Be a love, then; tell these gents your poor Ma’d only like a word?”
Helena Gwynne, as usual, was drunk. Her dress was stained with mud, food, and perspiration, as if she had fallen into the street on her way to the theater. Quite likely she had. Stout and ungainly, Helena grabbed onto the doorjamb to steady herself. Her eyes were bloodshot. Nell felt her heart seize. She had not seen her mother in nearly three months. The urge to say she had never seen the woman before in her life was overwhelming. She was embarrassed by her, afraid of her, and felt far more shame in her company than anything close to affection. “’Tis all right, William,” she nodded. The men who stood guard after the shows, in order to protect the girls, lifted their brows in surprise.
Helena smiled a gap-toothed smile, and ran the back of her hand across her face as the two men turned to leave. “My, don’t you look ever the lady! Such is the stage life, I suppose; magic at turnin’ a sow’s ear like you into a right proper silk purse for an ’our or two.”
The other actresses went to one of the dressing tables to give Nell a moment of privacy. Nell lowered her voice. “What do you want, Ma?”
“Actually, I’d ’ave thought to see you in one of these plays by now, properlike. I’d ’ave thought you’d ’ave bought me a seat.”
“You don’t care about the theater, or me. So what do you want?”
She shrugged. “Only a penny or two, then, hmm? ’Tis all.”
Nell went to her handbag and pulled out two coins. Before she could say anything, they were interrupted by the shouts of Richard Bell. “The king comes! The king is coming here!”
Nell did not believe it—for how unlikely such a thing seemed!—but she could take no chances with her mother. Pressing the coins into Helena’s hand, she led her to the back door personally to be rid of her swiftly. As those around her stood, only to fall into deep curtsies, Nell turned and saw him in the doorway. This close, she saw that he was handsome, and so amazingly tall. Tall…great God in His heaven, it is…
She quickly dropped into a low curtsy herself.
“Mrs. Gwynne, your performance was most entertaining.”
Oh, ballocks, smile, you fool! a silent voice urged. Smile like you couldn’t care a whit! She looked up and managed a disarming smile. “So long as Your Majesty ’as found it so,” she said, as though she had been speaking to him all of her life, “I shall do my best to disregard the critics, should they not find the same favor in my performance.”
Charles indicated that all present should rise. Then he replied, “I am told they are as fond of you as the audience is.”
“’Tis not a fact I know of, and one should never indulge in speculation, Your Majesty. The opportunity for disappointment is too vast.” Charles smiled at that, straight white teeth shimmering in the lamplight, and
she was flooded with memories of that day, well over a year ago now, in front of the theater. So that is how Rose made it out of the gaol! Of course it was him! Who else? In her mind, Nell saw him as he had been that day, the simple costume, his unadorned head, the lack of jewelry or ornamentation. There had been nothing of the pampered royal about that man, with the two-day growth of beard, the bloodshot eyes, and look of shock on his face, she thought now. That day, they had both been someone else. It was a dark time in London’s history that oddly linked them.
“It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gwynne.”
“But of course we’ve met, you know, Your Majesty,” she said.
“So we have,” returned the king. “But in circumstances somewhat divergent from these. May I say, you have changed, and charmingly so.”
“And you are exactly ’ow I remember you, but now with the wig.”
“And how is your sister?”
“She is well, sire, very well, thanks to a mysterious intervention of kindness.”
In the doorway suddenly stood a man with auburn hair and youthful blue eyes. Nell remembered him at once. Seeing the king before he saw Nell, the man lowered himself into a courtly and proper bow, sweeping his plumed hat before himself.
“Your Majesty.”
“It has been a while, Buckhurst,” said the King. “How is your mother?”
“She is well, Your Majesty, thank you. Completely recovered from her ague.”
Both men, named for the previous King Charles, looked at Nell then.
“Lord Buckhurst,” said the king with a slight and bemused smile. “May I present London’s newest sensation, the lovely and talented Mrs. Gwynne.”
He was ever the gentleman about meeting her as an orange girl, silent and discreet. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gwynne.”
Nell nodded. “The pleasure’s mine, Lord Buckhurst.”
“You were magnificent just now. I find I never laughed so hard at anything.”