The Perfect Royal Mistress

by Diane Haeger

  “I haven’t a penny with me,” he said in a flustered tone. “James?”

  The Duke of York’s face went ashen. “I don’t carry money with me. I never have.”

  The men exchanged cautious, darting glances with one another as the king leaned back exploding with a burst of amused laughter. “Oddsfish!” the king said. “How do you men expect me to charm the girl when I cannot even buy her a plate of mutton?”

  Nell bit back a smile as the innkeeper hovered over them, a frown creasing his sweaty brow. “This is surely the poorest company that I ever kept in a tavern!” she said, laughing the wonderful laugh that the theater patrons loved so well, deep and up from her soul. “It’s all right, Charles. I believe I’ve enough of my wages to settle the debt. Although, after today, it could well be the last I have for a while.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Nelly. You’re brilliant onstage,” James earnestly proclaimed. “Everyone knows it was a miserable play, even if it was written by Dryden.”

  “George here will, of course, reimburse you before you lay your head on a pillow this evening,” said the king. Then he leaned over to whisper, “And if I have my way, as king of England, that pillow shall be mine.”

  George and James left the table then.

  Charles took up Nell’s hand, turned it over, and ran the tip of his tongue along the inside of her wrist, as he had done at Newmarket. Then, without warning, he leaned across, pulled her to him, and kissed her deeply.

  “You’ll not be havin’ your way with me as king of England,” Nell said. “But for the man I saw here tonight, I could be very complyin’ indeed.”

  “Then he is the man you shall have.”

  The innkeeper showed them up a creaking set of back stairs to a room overlooking the street, paid for by one of the king’s coachmen, from whom the Duke of York had gone out to fetch coins. Charles closed the door, and pressed Nell against it. She could feel the warmth of his strong fingers through the thin fabric of her bodice. She looked into his eyes as he carefully peeled the fabric of her corset back from her breasts. He touched each with the tip of his tongue, as his arms encircled her again, exploring the contours of her back. It was the first time a man had touched her in that way, with lips, tongue, teeth. The sensation was pure pleasure, and Nell heard herself moan.

  “Shall I stop, Nelly? If so, you’ve got to tell me now, as I’m one man who’ll never force himself on you,” the king declared on a ragged breath.

  “Then I’ll never tell you to stop.”

  He led her to the old creaking bed near the window, as the sounds of clinking glasses and laughter below filled the charged air around them.

  The Indian Emperor played for four days at the King’s Theater, until dwindling ticket sales called an end to Charles Hart’s vendetta. Then a new play was chosen, another drama, called The Surprisal, and once again Nell Gwynne was given the dramatic lead.

  “A pox on him!” Nell ranted in the tiring-room, her face white with rage. “He’s doin’ this to spite me!”

  “At least you’ve got steady work,” offered Richard, not convincingly.

  “And for how long?” Nell shot him an angry stare. “At this rate, I’ll be out on my ear with not even oranges to sell to pay for Rose and Jeddy’s supper!”

  Richard hesitated a moment, looked around, then said, “Ask the king to intercede.”

  “The king?” she said angrily. “What makes you believe I have influence with the king?”

  “I saw you leaving here with His Majesty that day. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “Well…if it’s gossip you’re after, Mary Knepp told me the king is back in bed with Moll Davies, that they were seen yesterday out in His Majesty’s carriage right on the Strand, pretty as you please, and she was so low as to even ’ave brought their bastard, and ’eld ’im up to the window!”

  “And you believe Mrs. Knepp, of all people? You know she’s never forgiven you for being in Charles Hart’s bed before she was.”

  Nell put her face in her hands for a moment. When she looked up again, her expression had softened. So had her tone. “’E ’asn’t called on me again, Richard, and I don’t want to care! ’Twas a moment between us, and ’e took it. ’Twas I who let ’im do it. Foolish, I know, after Buckhurst, but I’ll not be fooled a third time, not even for the king of England.”

  She went on playing the role of Samira the next afternoon.

  Each performance was a punishment to endure, each line and the response to it was excruciating. But she would not be chased away. She could not. Eventually, the theater would need a success; they would need to return to comedy. The audience was steadily calling for it.

  Before the sixth and final performance of The Surprisal, Nell sat before a mirror in the bustling tiring-room, having her hair curled into long ringlets by an old woman with heavily veined hands. Other actors dashed back and forth around her chattering, laughing, and in various states of undress, when very suddenly there came a new whirlwind of commotion. Nell glanced in the mirror and saw, behind her, a thin, very elegantly dressed woman with ash blond hair done up with ribbons. She was wearing rich green velvet with white lace ruffles at her collar and cuffs, and Beck Marshall was rising from a chair to greet her. Nell had seen the face once before, fleetingly, as the woman had made her way up to the king’s box to sit beside him.

  “’Tis an honor, my Lady Castlemaine, to have you here,” said Beck, her voice dripping with a solicitous, honeyed tone.

  Nell slowly turned away from the mirror to face the infamous royal mistress.

  She was lovely enough, though a far sight more mature than any woman she could imagine retaining the attentions of King Charles for as many years as she had. She was certainly nothing like Moll Davies. Though it was Lady Castlemaine, not an actress, who bore a title and six acknowledged royal children, she reminded herself. Nell felt a sudden spark of envy as she looked into Barbara Palmer’s smooth, delicately carved face, and her sharp, assessing sea-green eyes.

  “It has been ages,” Castlemaine said to Beck, who appeared to be a close friend. “We’ve come to invite you to dinner after the performance. You must be pleased this ghastly run is over.”

  Nell had heard the gossip that Lady Castlemaine enjoyed the company of actors, and often attended the theater without her royal lover.

  Someone drew up a chair for Lady Castlemaine, who took it without acknowledging the gesture. Her chin was high, and the marble-sized pearl at her throat glittered in the candlelight from the long row of dressing-table mirrors.

  “Since Mrs. Gwynne has returned, it seems we cannot find a success.”

  Suddenly, all eyes were on Nell. In the palpable silence that followed, Lady Castlemaine turned and looked directly at her. Nell was forced to stand and curtsy.

  “Your Ladyship,” she said.

  “So you are the famous Nell Gwynne everyone chatters on about.”

  For a painful heartbeat, Nell thought Lady Castlemaine knew what had happened between herself and the king. She felt the blood drain from her face at the prospect. “I’m probably more infamous at this point than anything else, since things did change ’ere upon my return, and most will tell you, not for the better.”

  Castlemaine studied her for a moment with those assessing green eyes, and Nell saw her mouth twitch slightly. Then she pursed her lips, as if she had smelled something foul. “Self-deprecation can be a useful tool, Mrs. Gwynne. But only when used in careful moderation.”

  “I shall remember that, Your Ladyship. Thank you,” she said, then bobbed a second curtsy.

  She smiled at the show of deference, and Nell saw straight teeth, and then something more: One tooth at the center had a slight chip. A flaw. So the great lady was not so perfect after all. The strain Nell felt at the encounter began to abate as swiftly as a retreating tide, and she felt her sense of self return.

  “I saw you in The Mad Couple last spring. I found you to be quite good.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

&
nbsp; “Very funny.”

  Richard Bell chose this moment to speak. “The Duke Buckingham, and even His Majesty, have told her that, as well. She only needs another comedy here to—”

  He had been anxious to help, but he had gone too far, mentioning the king in connection with an actress. Everyone in the tiring-room could sense it. Nell watched Lady Castlemaine realize, once again, just how pervasive the king’s appetites could be.

  Richard lowered his head at the awkward silence he had created.

  “Ah, well,” said Castlemaine tartly. “His Majesty is a great patron of the theater. But he is also taken up with his children of late, and no longer given to the peculiar plunges into folly he once was.”

  “Five minutes, everyone!” A young man called into the tiring-room, signaling the commencement of the play.

  “Fascinating to have met you, Mrs. Gwynne,” Castlemaine smiled tightly. “I wish you good fortune on the stage today. By the sound of things, you are going to need it.”

  In the two-minute encounter, Nell had met the infamous Lady Castlemaine, an aging beauty apparently clever, or ruthless, enough to have won back the king. If she were ever to come upon His Majesty again, Nell would consider herself warned.

  Chapter 15

  ALL THAT IS AND SHALL BE, AND ALL THE PAST, IS HIS

  —Sophocles

  THERE was blood, dripping, oozing, washing across everything. It became tears, hot and salty. They fell into his eyes so that he could not see, but it was there, on his lips, the gritty taste of blood, the king’s blood, sprayed outward from the neck, and Charles’s ears were full of the weeping. It surrounded him until the sound became a roar, became unbearable. “No! No! Don’t kill him! You cannot kill him!”

  Charles bolted upright, his face awash in perspiration, and his heart slamming so hard he could not catch his breath. It was a moment before he could see his own bed, the collection of spaniels at his feet. It had only been a dream…the same dream as always. The girl beside him was, incredibly, still asleep, thank God, as he had no idea who she was. Nor did he wish to. Another procurement of William Chiffinch, a young body to help him forget that he loved no one and no one loved him. The vivid dream so close in his mind brought a rush of bile to his throat. It was all so pathetic at this hour of the night: the women, the idleness, and, with it, the pervasive sense of loneliness that never quite went away. Lines of the satirist, the Earl of Rochester, came to mind: Nor are his high desires above his strength; his sceptre and his prick are of a length. Cruel words, but true. It was why Rochester thrived at court. Charles rose and tossed on a dressing gown. Still, the naked girl on the bed did not stir. Chiffinch’s rooms were beside the king’s bedchamber. One slight rap on the door and Chiffinch would have his wife rouse the girl, see her dressed, and on her way.

  In bare feet and an untied dressing gown, he paused to knock on Chiffinch’s door, then he continued on down the paneled corridor to the queen’s private apartments at the other end of the Long Gallery, with its view over the river and ceiling painted over a century before by Holbein. On nights like these, though few and far between, he wished Catherine’s rooms were nearer. He must be near to something good and kind, even if he did not love her as he should.

  Catherine’s lady, Maria Mariano, a homely Portuguese matron, met him at the door in her white cap, nightdress, and hastily tied dressing gown, her inky hair long on her shoulders.

  “The queen has long ago retired, Your—”

  Charles raised a hand, stopping her. “I wish only to look in on her for a moment.”

  He brushed past her and crossed through two sitting rooms to the queen’s bedchamber. Catherine slept like a corpse, her pale skin hidden by a high lace collar, her dark hair bound into a linen nightcap, and her hands joined upon her breast. He sank into Maria’s chair beside the bed. His wife was not beautiful or enticing, but her kindness had always been the draw for him to try and feel something for her. After a moment, she opened her eyes. “You’ve had the dream again, haven’t you?” she asked him in English, thickly accented with her own Portuguese.

  He took her hand tenderly. She did not know the details of his recurring dream; she knew only that it was a disturbing one. She knew it was likely about the former king’s murder because once, when they were newly married, he had thrown water from the ewer and basin on himself and rubbed himself nearly raw, asking her all the while if she could still see blood on his skin.

  “I’m all right. I just needed to see you,” he said quietly.

  “I wish you could speak of it, Charles. If not with me, then with someone.”

  “Perhaps one day.”

  He could see how frail and tired she looked, suffering, he knew, every herb and tincture possible to try to become pregnant. He had been wrong to come here seeking the kind of comfort she was not capable of giving him. After another moment, he leaned over and pressed a kiss onto her forehead in the shadowy twilight.

  “Would you like to stay?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

  “You rest. It will be morning soon,” he soothed her, watching her face soften with relief. “Perhaps we can walk together later.”

  “Only if you do not walk so quickly, as is your custom with others. I am never quite as quick at anything as the others.”

  He knew what she meant. They both knew. “You’ve been a good wife, Catherine.”

  “I have not done my duty to you, the one for which we married.”

  Charles gently placed her hand back atop her other hand, which had remained on her chest. “You have been a comfort to me. That’s a duty in itself, and in it I have been well pleased.”

  She smiled softly, and he could see her eyelids begin to close once again. Lingering a moment more, he pressed a kiss onto her cheek, then quietly left the queen’s bedchamber. This was not the answer for him, nor was she. He would go on looking elsewhere until he found it. But Catherine was safe with him—she would always be—and Charles was glad of it.

  John Dryden stood in the innermost sanctum, the royal bedchamber at Hampton Court, early the next morning, facing the king, who was being ceremoniously dressed before a collection of ambassadors, courtiers, and servants in front of a trio of floor-to-ceiling Flemish tapestries. The room was vast and grand, with a great poster bed and high crimson-velvet tester dominant behind it. The chairs were cushioned in plush crimson, and the cabinets gleamed with royal silver. He had been summoned there by the Duke of Buckingham, and he had expected to be received in the presence chamber, honor enough for a well-known yet modest London playwright. Being permitted here, into this inner sanctum, to watch the king’s rituals, was a suspiciously high honor to be now accorded.

  “Has Your Majesty had an opportunity to read the play you requested be written?” he asked, once he was brought forward.

  “I have read it.”

  “And does the outcome please you, sire?”

  “The role of Jacinta is written perfectly. She will be brilliant at it.”

  “It was my hope Your Majesty would find it so.”

  “And I wish to see An Evening’s Love performed here at court first, to be certain of the outcome. With Mrs. Gwynne in the lead role. After what happened with the dramas, I should not wish her to take any unnecessary chances.”

  Dryden bowed to the king. “It is understood, Your Majesty.”

  “Can you see it arranged with all the players, Killigrew, Hart, and the rest?”

  Dryden tried to gauge the king’s wish before he responded. “Of course, I shall command her to Hampton Court, along with the other players. And we would all expect Mrs. Gwynne to be honored by the invitation to perform for Your Majesty here.”

  There was a little silence. A cough, and the echo, in the cavernous, vaulted bedchamber.

  “And yet you are the playwright,” the king went on, sounding oddly tentative. “Perhaps you would implore her with something more than her duty to her king. I do not wish her to come here simply at my command, Dryden.”

 
“An alternative is to be my own notion, then?”

  “There must be an element of desire on her part, or it will be pointless to me.”

  There was irritation in his voice. Dryden bowed deeply. “But you are the great king of England, sire. Attending you would be any young lady’s desire.”

  Charles swatted the air, bored with flattery. “It is a good thing you are a better playwright than you are a sycophant, or I might never see Mrs. Gwynne again,” he said.

  In one of the coaches sent to London by the king, Nell, Beck Marshall, Rose, and Jeddy clattered along down the long gravel pathway to the massive palace of Hampton Court. The summer day was warm and fragrant. The sky was full of birds, and the emerald-green route, with the vast palace before them, was more grand than anything Nell could have imagined. The royal summer home was a grand Tudor compound of red brick and stone, dating to the days of Henry VIII. A line of shiny lacquered coaches, bearing the other actors, scenery, props, and costumes, followed them. Nell sat quietly inside the coach as they moved beneath an arched porte cochere and the coachman pulled them to a swaying stop. She had not wanted to come, but in the end she had been given no choice in the matter. It was the King’s Theater of which she was a part, Thomas Killigrew, the manager, had advised her, and it was at the king’s pleasure they would all perform here. Her only requirement, in return, was that her sister and Jeddy accompany her as wardrobe mistress and companion.

  She exchanged an encouraging little smile with Jeddy just after she was helped down by a royal footman in red-and-gold livery. Then she stood waiting for him to emerge amid the commotion of all the other coaches coming to a stop behind them. Two performances, and they would be on their way back to London. That was part of the arrangement. She could tolerate that, and shine, she had decided. With any luck, a new paramour would be beside him as the king watched her perform. She would take her bows and be on her way back to London with her pride and her heart fully intact.