The Darling Strumpet

by Gillian Bagwell

  “I declare, you grow prettier every day,” Sam Pepys grinned, kissing her cheeks. He held her out at arm’s length to admire her. Her costume for the role of the page boy Angelo consisted of breeches that displayed her calves in their silk stockings, and a neatly cut jacket that did nothing to disguise the fact that she was in truth a girl.

  Pepys cast a glance at Beck Marshall, who was halfway out of her gown, her shoulders and a dangerous amount of bosom bare as she bantered with Rochester and George Etherege.

  Sometime that summer, Nell’s name in the playbill at the theater was transformed from mere Nell Gwynn to Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn. She snorted with derision when Betsy told her about the change, but within, her reaction was more complicated. Though it was the name bestowed on her at birth, she had never been addressed as Eleanor in her life. Eleanor was her mother. There was an element of fear that lurked, too. What would become of Nelly if Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn now inhabited her form?

  Even people at the playhouse treated her differently. Though Nell was sure her conduct had not changed, the other actresses kept more aloof.

  “I fear they hate me,” she confided in Aphra.

  “You great goose,” Aphra chided. “You can have no conception of how winning and cheerful your company is, else you would stop your fretting. You’re a sunny soul who brings light wherever you go. If they stand off, it’s only because they wish they were in your shoes. Sure the king likes you well enough, else he would not send for you. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  Nell was warmed by Aphra’s encouragement, but the one person that could truly bring her comfort, and in whose presence she felt wholly at home, was Rose. Rose was happy these days. Although Rose would never quite say so, Nell thought the rumors that her husband John got his living from highway robbery were probably true. He certainly had more flash than most laboring men. Whatever the case, he was often gone at night, and Nell spent frequent evenings with her sister.

  Summer brought five or six new roles for Nell, and of course the plays already in the repertoire were revived regularly. As Hart had long ago predicted, she now carried almost twenty parts in her head, ready to perform with only a little dusting off.

  Pepys visited Nell backstage one evening in October, burning to tell the latest gossip.

  “The story is all over Whitehall,” he said, plopping himself down beside her at the dressing table. “The king lent Lady Castlemaine the crown jewels to wear in a performance of Horace at court last night. He made for her apartments this morning to collect the jewels and spied a man-John Churchill, they say-coming out of her bedchamber, and far too early for a mere social call it was. The poor man froze at the sight and bowed nearly to the ground. But the king only laughed and said, ‘I forgive you, for I know you do it for your bread!’ ” Pepys laughed nearly till he cried at his own story. “Oh, and did you hear the latest story of your old friend Lord Dorset?”

  “You mean my Charles the Second?” Nell asked archly. Pepys chuckled.

  “Indeed. And your other friend Charles, as well. Sedley, that is. High flown in drink, they stripped off most of their clothes and tore through the streets with their arses bare, singing and shouting, and at last fell to brawling with the watch.”

  The picture of the two Charlies engaged in near-naked horseplay came readily to Nell’s imagination, and brought back vivid memories of the previous summer. She wondered how much Pepys had guessed about the sleeping arrangements in the house in Epsom.

  “No one was wounded, I hope?”

  “Oh, no,” said Pepys. “They were taken up before they could do much damage, and were clapped up all night, but the king took their parts and the Lord Chief Justice hath chid and imprisoned the poor constable, who was only doing his duty.”

  As Nell walked home that evening, her cloak pulled tight against the chill wind, she thought again of Dorset, and she realized that for the first time since the intense pain and shame of the previous summer, she could think of him without bitterness. She had thought that his casting her off was the death of her hopes. But it had not fallen out so. She reigned supreme at the playhouse and as Dorset himself had acknowledged with a rueful smile, she had gone from the bed of an earl to the bed of the king.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE KING’S BEDCHAMBER WAS COZY, THE BLAZING FIRE AND DANCING candlelight driving the shadows into the corners. Nell and Charles were propped against the pillows in the big bed.

  “What was France like?” Nell asked.

  “Like a sewer filled with vipers,” Charles snorted. “I barely got out of England with my life, you know, after the Battle of Worcester. I was a pauper, dependent for my very food on my cousin kings. And of course it was not only my mouth there was to feed, but my mother, my brothers and sisters, my loyal friends. My beggar’s court.”

  “And Mr. Killigrew was there?” Nell asked, stroking the hair on his belly lazily.

  “He was. And Buckingham, Clarendon, Rochester-the father of Johnny Wilmot, that is. And many other great friends who’d put their lives at risk for me, left home and country behind. And I had not the price of their bread.”

  “What did you do?” Nell asked.

  “We cooled our heels and waited. By God, I hate the French. The Dauphin waited a month before he received me. Precious little cunt. Then had the cheek to turn up his delicate nose at the rags I wore.”

  “You? In rags?” Nell pulled back to look into Charles’s face for a sign that he was jesting.

  “After Worcester, when all was lost, I had to go in disguise. I was fortunate that someone had an ungodly big servant with clothes to give for king and country, but there aren’t many with feet as big as these.”

  He stuck his bare foot out from under the sheet and wiggled his toes. Nell giggled and slid her hand down to his cock.

  “There aren’t many with one of these as big, either.”

  Charles laughed and kissed her. “That’s what they tell me, and who would lie to a king? But not a whoreson could be found with shoes would fit me. I walked in boots too small, slit about the edges to let my toes out, bleeding every step. By the time we reached the coast, my clothes-” He broke off at the sound of a female voice outside the door.

  “Christ! The queen!” He bolted to his feet and Nell scrambled out of bed.

  “Behind there!” He thrust his finger at a tapestry, and Nell darted behind it, snatching up her gown, as she heard the door open.

  “Why, Catherine!” Charles managed a tone of pleased surprise.

  “I came to see if you were feeling better.” The queen’s soft voice was heavily accented, despite her six years in England.

  “Oh, much. Taking my rest, as you see.”

  “Have you a fever?” Nell heard the rustle of skirts, and guessed that the queen must be sitting beside Charles. From her hiding place, she could see the foot of the bed. And then she saw something else that almost made her gasp aloud-one of her shoes lay in plain sight on the floor. The queen must have seen it at the same moment.

  “Oh.”

  “Hmm?” Charles had not seen it yet. Then he did.

  “Ah.”

  There was another rustle as the queen stood. “I will not stay, for fear the pretty fool who owns that little slipper might take cold. I am glad you are well.” The door closed, but Nell still waited.

  “You can come out now, Nelly,” Charles said.

  “Shall I leave?” she asked, emerging.

  “No, no,” he said. “The damage is done. Poor soul, I try not to rub her nose in it. But it’s sweet of you to ask.”

  AFTER THAT NIGHT, EVERYONE WAS MORE CAREFUL. THE QUEEN stayed away from the king’s bedchamber. The king’s attendants took care to ensure that no one entered unannounced, and Charles made sure they knew that this precaution applied to the Countess of Castlemaine. For it was no longer Barbara Palmer but Nell who was his frequent companion at night.

  She grew accustomed to the morning ritual-the arrival of the king’s breakfast, the barber’s
coming to shave him, the attendance of the groom and gentleman of the bedchamber to help him bathe and dress, and the appearance of various ministers to report about the matters requiring his attention.

  After Buckingham and Lady Castlemaine brought down the hated Earl of Clarendon the previous summer, Buckingham had succeeded Clarendon as Charles’s first minister, and he was almost always the first visitor of the day. Nell enjoyed listening to them confer as she ate breakfast in bed. It was fascinating, the variety of subjects in which Charles was interested and over which he had sway.

  “Wren is making great progress on the plans for the new churches,” Buckingham reported one morning, consulting his notes. “He proposes to begin with St. Bride’s and St. Lawrence Jewry, and is ready to show you drawings when convenient.”

  “Excellent,” Charles said, biting into a piece of bread.

  “There is to be a committee meeting on Tangiers tomorrow, again. And the Duke of York has proposals for victualing the navy.”

  “God, yes, the ships must be provisioned, but must I hear the details of every cask of beef and barrel of ale that is put aboard?”

  “Rochester had his clothes taken the other day while he was tiffing some Covent Garden nun,” Buckingham smiled. “Perhaps news more to your liking?”

  “More entertaining, at any rate,” Charles said, wiping coffee from his mustache. “Did he get them back?”

  “The clothes, yes,” said Buckingham. “They were found stuffed into a mattress. His gold, however, was gone.”

  “Poor Johnny,” Charles said. “Never learns, does he? What else?”

  “Only the usual wranglings. My Lady Castlemaine-”

  “Oh, spare me!” Charles cried.

  But though Charles was spared the telling of Lady Castlemaine’s complaint on that morning, it was played out very publicly, to the delight of the town, and Nell found herself on the battlefield.

  After an absence of a few weeks from the stage, she was to speak the prologue and epilogue to Ben Jonson’s Catiline His Conspiracy. On the afternoon of the first performance, she strode forward onto the apron of the stage. Her Amazon costume, a short feathered skirt and Roman sandals, with a diaphanous drapery that bared most of one breast and some of the other, was greeted with whoops. She raised her short sword in salute, and addressed the packed house.

  “Since you expect a prologue, we submit!”

  When she came to the end of her speech, she bowed, thus baring both breasts in their entirety, and made her exit to cheers. Lacy was in the wings, and she stood with him to watch the play. Kate Corey, in all her Roman finery as Sempronia, sailed onto the stage. Her initial speech was getting laughs much bigger than usual, and Nell cocked a curious ear.

  “Why on earth is she lisping like that?” she whispered to Lacy. He listened, a quizzical expression on his face.

  “By God,” he gasped. “She’s doing Lady Harvey.”

  “What?”

  “Lady Elizabeth Harvey. Her husband’s the ambassador to Turkey. Her cousin’s the Lord Chamberlain. That’s her to the life.”

  The audience had obviously also recognized who Kate was personating, for they were roaring with laughter. Nell and Lacy watched in silence. Kate pursed her lips in a way that made Nell think of a thoughtful duck, and rolled her eyes dreadfully. She appeared to be enjoying her own performance immensely, and with every knowing cackle from the pit, her mannerisms became more pronounced and her lisp more ridiculous.

  “Hang virtue! Where there ith no blood tith vithe,

  And in him thauthineth!”

  “WHAT A DEVIL IS SHE UP TO?” LACY ASKED. “SHE’S GETTING LAUGHS, so no harm, I suppose, but it’s damned odd.”

  “A new attack on an old part?” Betsy Knepp asked when Kate came giggling into the tiring room.

  “Just a little jest,” Kate shrugged. “Lady Castlemaine has fallen out with Lady Harvey and paid me to lampoon her.”

  “You take your life into your hands, girl,” Betsy said, shaking her head.

  The response from the audience grew more uproarious in Kate’s subsequent scenes, but the other shoe seemed to drop at the end of the climactic conspiracy scene just after she left the stage.

  Young Theo Bird as Sanga turned to Nicholas Burt, as Cicero, and asked, “ ‘But what’ll you do with Sempronia?’ ”

  Burt drew his breath to answer, but before he could speak, a lisping voice rang from the house, “Thend her to Conthtantinople!”

  It was Lady Castlemaine who had shouted out the answer. She stood in her box, triumphant, as the auditorium dissolved into pandemonium-howls of laughter, raucous shouts approving and disapproving the improvisation, the pounding of walking sticks, nuts and apple cores sailing through the air.

  The final act was interrupted repeatedly by cheers, catcalls, and further remonstrances from the audience, but the extent of the reaction to the performance did not become clear until the following day.

  “Kate Corey has been arrested for her little mockery yesterday,” Michael Mohun fumed to the assembled company. “Lady Harvey went crying to her cousin the Earl of Manchester, and he went straight to the king. So now we shall have to put on something else tomorrow, unless we can get this sorted out by then.”

  “But why did Lady Castlemaine want to mock Lady Harvey, anyway?” Nell whispered to Betsy. Betsy raised her eyebrows significantly.

  “A lovers’ quarrel, so I hear. Apparently Castlemaine took comfort in Lady Harvey’s arms when the king was in a rage over her going to bed to Ralph Montagu.”

  “And why Constantinople?” Nell pressed.

  “Why, because both ladies got the king to send their husbands far away, so they could do as they pleased. But their intrigue soured, as these things do. I fear me Kate has got herself in deeper than she knew.”

  NELL SPENT THAT NIGHT WITH CHARLES. SHE DID NOT DARE RAISE the subject of the arrest of her fellow player, but it lay heavy on her mind. It was Charles who mentioned the play, saying that he would be at the next day’s performance.

  “But I thought-” Nell stopped. This could be dangerous territory.

  “No, no, it’s all settled. It’s a command performance, in fact, and I’m looking forward to it immensely.”

  It seemed that Charles was not the only one eagerly anticipating the afternoon’s entertainment. The theater doors opened at noon to a mob of patrons, and when Nell made her entrance for the prologue, she had rarely seen the theater as crowded. The seats in the pit were full, and men stood shoulder to shoulder in the aisles. The upper galleries seethed with bodies. She curtsied to Charles in the royal box, with Barbara Palmer preening at his side, and waited for the hubbub to subside before she spoke her prologue. When she had finished her speech and made her exit, she found the entire cast watching from the wings.

  “I’ve heard murmurs that Lady Harvey has got people in the house today to cause trouble,” Lacy said. “Have a care.”

  Kate Corey appeared none the worse for her time in jail. She made her entrance to loud cheers, and if anything, her mimicry of Lady Harvey was even more pronounced than in the first performance.

  “‘There are three competitorth,’” she lisped broadly. “‘Caiuth Antoniuth, Publiuth Galba…’”

  The audience howled in glee as she continued the list of Romans with their “S”-laden names.

  “ ‘Luthiuth Cathiuth Longinuth, Quintuth Cornifithius, Caiuth Lithiniuth’ ”-Kate paused masterfully before finishing-“ ‘and that talker, Thithero.’ ”

  The level of excitement and tension in the house mounted as the play progressed to the scene into which Barbara had thrown her verbal gauntlet during the previous day’s performance. Kate fought the rising tide of voices, almost shouting to make herself heard above a chorus of hisses, but she carried gamely on.

  She swept offstage at the conclusion of her scene, leaving Nicholas Burt and Theo Bird. They seemed to visibly brace themselves as they came to the infamous line.

  “ ‘But what’ll you do with Semproni
a?’” A fusillade of oranges pelted the stage, hitting the actors, smashing against the scenery, rolling back down to the audience. Theo ducked an orange and tried again to speak, but jeering shouts and stamping rose to such a level that he and the other actors gave up, held their places in silence until they could make themselves heard, and then simply got through to the end as quickly as they could.

  “Don’t go out,” Hart said, as Nell stood ready to make her entrance for the epilogue. “Let’s just end it.”

  In the tiring room afterward, Kate looked shaken but defiant.

  “It was worth it,” she claimed, stripping off her gown. “Lady Castlemaine was so happy about yesterday that she got the king to let me out and spent all the morning with me coaching me to better mock Lady Harvey. And paid me twice what she had before, knowing that we should have a bigger audience for the jest today.”

  “Lady Castlemaine’s still got quite a hold on the royal cods, apparently,” Beck Marshall said, with a sidelong glance at Nell, “despite rumors to the contrary.”

  BUT BARBARA’S HOLD WAS WEAKENING. CHARLES MADE NO SECRET OF his exasperation with her, and during his breakfast briefings, he vented his growing exasperation with her political machinations, extravagant spending, constant requests for money, and endless parade of lovers.

  “I’ve had enough,” Charles announced to Nell soon after the New Year. “ ‘Madam,’ I told her, ‘All that I ask of you for your own sake is, live so for the future as to make the least noise you can, and I care not who you love.’ ”

  “What did she say?” Nell asked.

  “She threw a clock at me. But she’ll be out of the palace within a fortnight. Don’t worry for her,” he said, seeing the look on Nell’s face. “She and the children are well provided for. And while I’m thinking of it, Buckingham tells me there’s a pretty little house available at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”