The expressions on the men’s faces did nothing to allay Nell’s sudden fear. Buckingham looked grim, Otway shaken, and Savile like a man going to the gallows. And he was dressed for traveling; indeed, the mud-spattered high boots and dusty cloak spoke of hard riding.
Nell pulled herself upright as the trio arrived in front of her. Buckingham stooped to one knee, took her hands in his. Nell willed him not to speak, to turn and go, to leave her in the sunlight, taking away the black fear that clutched her heart.
“Nell, I’m sorry,” Buckingham began, and Nell heard herself crying “No!” even before he continued.
“Jemmy was taken ill. He had a sore leg, which seemed at first no great matter. But he grew rapidly worse. He-he died three nights since.”
Nell found herself senselessly trying to recall what she had been doing three nights ago, as if the knowledge could summon back that time, could give her the power to prevent what had happened, to call Jemmy in from the night and danger to warmth and safety.
She gaped at Buckingham, at Otway, at Savile, hearing as if at a distance her own cries and sobs. The men exchanged agonized and helpless glances, and Savile knelt before her, knelt as one in penance, in supplication, in prayer, the tears cutting clean rivulets through the grime on his cheeks.
“I swear to you I did all that I could.” His voice was urgent, pleading, and he grasped her hands, kissed them, held them to his chest. “I beg of you to believe me. He had the best of doctors. The fever came on of a sudden and consumed him like a fire. By the time it was clear how serious his condition was, there was no time to send word.”
“No,” Nell cried, and again, “No,” as if the word could repel him, could refute the truth she saw in his eyes. She was shaking, couldn’t breathe, was suddenly conscious of her stays binding her and cutting off the breath. She raised her fists to flail at Savile, to beat him away, and then she fell, fainting forward onto him.
NELL LAY ON HER STOMACH, HER FACE PRESSED AGAINST THE PILLOW wet from her tears. She had not known that she could cry so much, that anyone could cry so much. Vast salt oceans had been emptied in service of her grief, and still the tears came. Her head ached and her throat was raw with the sobbing. Her nose ran and yet was so stopped that she could not breathe.
She clutched to her a little shirt that Jemmy had outgrown. His scent clung to it still, and she buried her nose in it, inhaled, as if by smothering herself in his smell she could recall him to her.
Outside her bedroom window, the sun still shone on the beautiful summer evening. The endless day seemed a mockery. Was it possible that all she had felt had passed and that it was still the same day, that night had not yet come to blot out the glaring light? And yet, what difference if and when night came? The night would bring its own terrors, and it would be followed by another day. And another. Endless days and nights, stretching into eternity. Endless pain and sorrow.
She had cried out for little Charlie as soon as she had recovered consciousness, had tried to be brave and comforting for his sake, but in the end could do nothing but hold him to her, telling him over and over that she loved him. He had cried for little Jemmy, but she knew he was also crying for her, that the intensity of her suffering frightened him, and she had been grateful when Rose had taken him gently by the hand and led him off to where they could grieve together.
Bridget sat just outside the door, ready if she should call. Buckingham had been there for hours, with Otway and Savile. Other friends had come, word of the terrible news having spread fast. Even now she could hear low voices outside her door. And yet she felt utterly alone.
For the hundredth time, she pictured little Jemmy in his final moments, fevered, frightened, far from home. Had he called for her? How could she not have heard, even from the distance of Paris?
She rolled onto her back and pressed the pillow into her eyes, wishing for oblivion. For the thousandth time she told herself that she should never have let him go, he was too young, Paris was too far, Savile was not the man to have entrusted him to. Charlie, even at that age, had been more intrepid, stronger, had thrown off her motherly concerns. But her little Jemmy had always been more frail, more fearful. Had he wanted not to go? Had he wished to remain at home, and stifled the plea, not wanting to disappoint, to be thought unmanly? The thought of his gentle eyes, the baby cheeks, and lips set in determination, broke her heart anew. Hot tears came from the place within, and she gave herself up to them once more.
When would Charles come? She longed for the comfort of his arms. He had been hunting at Richmond Park, and though someone had ridden out immediately, it could be hours before he heard the news. And then what? Would he come? Or would she have to bear the pain alone, as she had born so many other pains?
Swift and heavy footsteps sounded outside, the door opened, and Charles rushed across the room, casting off his hat as he took her into his arms.
Nell clung to him and sobbed, and she heard that he, too, was weeping. His hair fell over her face as he cradled her, and the scent of him, the solid familiarity of his arms and body, were a rock of salvation to which she could cling in the heaving ocean of her grief.
THE DAYS PASSED IN BLACKNESS. NELL AWOKE EACH MORNING TO A new shock of pain and loss, a new awareness of raw agony, as if a limb had been lopped off in the night and she woke each day to find herself drenched in blood and straining to make herself whole again. Her body felt heavy, as if she were filled with sand, the slightest movement an overwhelming effort.
Out of the deep pain there began to creep tentacles of anger. Why had Charles insisted that the poor child be sent so far away? Why had she agreed? Why had Savile not done more, why had the doctors failed her child? And a new thought gnawed at her mind. What if his death was more than accident or illness? If someone wished her ill, what better way to strike at her than to take from her her precious baby? Who bore her malice and had the means to plot against her?
Louise.
Nell’s mind fastened on Louise, recently come back from France, and the more she thought, the greater became her certainty. Louise hated her for Charles’s easy affection to her, for the love and admiration the people showed for her, in contrast to the sneering disdain they held for the French interloper. Louise had many friends in France, collected favors owed to her and hoarded them up like apples for a cold winter. What would be easier than for her to induce someone to poison poor Jemmy’s food?
Nell knew it was madness even as she acted, but she could not help herself, was driven onward by white-hot fury. She dressed, summoned her sedan chair, gave orders to be carried to the palace, and made her way to Louise’s apartments, her face a mask of cold vengeance. She would gouge Louise’s eyes from her head, tear the pouting baby lips from her fat face, pull her guts from her belly with bare hands and eat her beating heart.
“Why, Mrs. Nelly!” Louise was surprised to see Nell but rose to greet her.
“You killed him!” Nell shrieked, advancing.
“Killed?” Louise stammered, her maids backing away from Nell as though from a rabid dog. “Killed who?”
“My boy! My Jemmy!” Nell cried. “I know it was you, you venomous bitch!” She rushed at Louise, but her voice had summoned sentries, and hands held her back. She clawed to get free, kicking, scratching, intent on mayhem and death.
“Oh, no!” Louise cried. “No, mon dieu! Let her go, I pray you.”
Released, Nell collapsed to the floor, sobs wracking her, and Louise knelt beside her and took her face in her hands.
“Madame, please. Nell. I beg of you, listen to me.” Nell grasped Louise’s arms, but for support now, and listened.
“Yes, we have our differences, you and I, and it is true we do not like each other much. But on my soul, and as a mother, I ask you to believe me. I did not harm your sweet boy. I could not. I tell you truly that if you were to disappear from this earth, I would do all within my power to care for your boy as my own. I swear to you.”
Nell saw the truth in Louise’s eyes. Wh
at a fool she had made of herself. It was a ridiculous thought to have had. Why had she not made inquiries, gone the subtle way about things, as any sane person would have done?
“Forgive me, madam.” She struggled to rise, but Louise stayed her.
“There is nothing to forgive. If I thought someone had wanted to harm my boy I would have done the same, I assure you. Nelly, would not things be easier for both of us if we ceased our enmity? Perhaps we shall never love one another, but can we not make a new start?”
“Yes,” Nell murmured. “You are right, and you are kind to understand.”
“Then here,” Louise said, proffering an embroidered silk handkerchief. “Will you not blow your nose, my friend, and have a cup of tea?”
WINDSOR. NELL HAD COME TO UNDERSTAND WHY CHARLES LOVED IT. She felt safe, as he did there. Not because of the impenetrable walls or the soldiers who could be stationed to guard the castle against attack. But because Burford House, as it had become known, was her haven, the emblem of Charles’s love for her, the more so now that he had given it to her outright instead of as a leasehold, and encouraged her to assuage her grief by losing herself in decorating the house and making it comfortable and beautiful, a nest where she could live and die, come what might.
Potevine, her London upholsterer, had been busy for weeks with his crew, hanging panels of tapestry, laying carpets, painting and staining and furnishing. Antonio Verrio, the Italian painter who had done so much work on the castle’s restoration over the past few years and was in such high demand, had put off all other work and was even now turning the ceilings into sweeping scenes of nymphs and cherubs.
At the thought of the cherubs, Nell’s heart lurched, Jemmy’s angelic face and chubby baby form drifting once more to her mind. She looked out the window of her bedroom, her soul calmed as always by the sight of the royal parkland rolling off into the distance, the verdant scene giving off a sense of harmony that soothed her. Charles was finding his peace that day in fishing, as he did so frequently that he worried his doctors. He had shrugged them off the day before, despite their tutting that he would fish on a day when a dog would not be abroad.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway and Nell turned with irritation. Why couldn’t she be left to herself for a few minutes?
“Madam.” Bridget’s voice was tentative, strained. “I’m sorry, madam. There’s a messenger just come from town. The Earl of Rochester is dead.”
NELL LAY STARING INTO THE DARK. THE FUNERAL HAD BEEN ALMOST more than she could bear, but at least there had been company there, sound and noise. Now she was alone. Flashes of memory kept flaming into her mind. Rochester’s laugh, as he pulled her on top of him in bed, crying “Come, the dragon upon St. George now!” The feel of his hands on her breasts, his fingers on her nipples squeezing fiery desire into her. His lazy smile at her from the pit as she met his eyes during some prologue delivered long ago. The sneer that tried but could not quite cover the pain that lay beneath.
And now he was gone. Poor Johnny. A satyr, a wizard, a scholar, a dangerous hellion, and a lost little boy. All perished from the earth. And gone to where? To somewhere he had found peace, Nell hoped. She tried to pray. But gave up. Surely any god who could hold his place in the heavens would laugh at any prayer from a whore for the soul of a libertine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THROUGHOUT THE FALL AND WINTER, THE DRUMBEATS OF TROUBLE grew louder again. There were increasingly strident calls for Charles to exclude his brother James from the succession, and after an exhausting series of skirmishes with Shaftesbury and his party, and with a new infusion of money from France, he prorogued Parliament in January and announced that the new Parliament would be summoned in March in Oxford, that bastion of royalist support that had been his father’s headquarters during the war.
Oxford welcomed the king with open arms, and Nell’s spirits were buoyed to see the cheering crowds that lined the roads as the royal cavalcade entered the town and to hear the cries of “God save the king!” and the bells ringing in celebration. People pressed forward, straining for a glimpse of the king. One burly man, waving his hat in the air, bellowed, “Let the king live, and the devil hang up all Roundheads!”
At Nell’s side, Charles smiled broadly, leaning out the window to wave, and she had a vision of him as a ship in full sail with the wind at his back, not battling head down into a storm as he had done for so long.
Shaftesbury blustered into town and holed up at Balliol College. With his arrival, and the anticipation of the renewed fight over the Exclusion Bill, came restive crowds of partisans. Proponents of both sides stalked the town, wearing the red ribbons of the royalist Tories or the violet of the rebellious Whiggamors. Shouting matches and scuffles broke out. The Duke of Monmouth moved through the streets in a sedan chair, preceded by a band of ruffians with leaden flails, daring anyone to make trouble. Louise came, and set up a rival camp to Nell’s.
Oxford took on a carnival atmosphere. Ballad singers and the sellers of broadsheets drew raucous crowds, pressing to buy the latest parody, which presented Nell and Louise as battling little dogs, Tutty and Snapshort, snarling and tussling over the favors of the king and trying who should wield the greater influence. Nell laughed it off when Buckingham read it to her.
“You know I have never tried to meddle in all that, which is why Charles finds my company a pleasure instead of a burden. That broadsheet that was put around lately got it right:
“All matters of state from her soul she does hate
And leaves to the politic bitches.
The whore’s in the right, for ’tis her delight
To be scratching just where it itches.”
Charles was determined to enjoy himself in the fortnight before Parliament met. Nell accompanied him hawking on Burford Downs, and to the racing-the contest for the King’s Plate had been moved from Newmarket. Many of Charles’s racehorses had been brought there, and gentlemen from around the country had sent theirs. The players of the Theatre Royal descended, and put on Tamerlaine the Great at Christ Church. Charles strode into the great hall with Nell on one arm and Louise on the other.
As Nell’s coach made its way back to her lodgings after the play, its progress became slower and she could hear the voices of an angry crowd.
“Here, give way!” The coachman’s raised voice was hoarse with anger, tinged with a note of panic. The shouts grew louder and closer, and the coach lurched to a halt.
“Whore!”
“Filthy jade!”
“Get you back to France, you impertinent Popish piece!”
Nell thrust aside the leather covering from the window and ducked back, just missing a hurled piece of what smelled to be dog shit.
They think I’m Louise, she realized. And they’ll kill me without realizing their mistake. She stood so that she could lean her head and shoulders out the narrow window of the coach and raised her voice to be heard above the mob.
“Pray, good people, be civil! I am the Protestant whore!”
After a moment of confused babble, a laugh went up, and then a cheer.
“It’s Nelly! Our lass! Make way!”
Nell waved, smiling, as the crowds parted to let her pass, and the coach lurched forward. She found she was shaking and hoped despite herself that Louise had arrived safely back from the theater.
CHARLES OPENED PARLIAMENT ON THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH. The Commons convened at the Geometry School, and that night he returned to Nell with a grimly smug smile on his face.
“How did it go?” she ventured.
“Splendidly. They set up a caterwauling-‘No Papist! No York!’ Shaftesbury had the audacity to demand that Monmouth be made legitimate. I met their cries with what is only the truth-that the legitimacy of the crown is their only guarantee of freedom. But I assured them that though James would succeed me, he would be king in name only.”
Nell was astonished and looked closely at Charles’s guarded face.
“And do you mean to make it so?”
A week later came the day appointed for the introduction of the third Exclusion Bill. Charles walked to the convening of the House of Lords in Christ Church Hall. Behind him by a few paces followed a sedan chair, with no occupant visible. The king took his place among the Lords and ordered that the members of the Commons be called from where they had gathered at the Sheldonian Theatre. Then he retired to a back room.
There was a gasp as the first members passed through the narrow entrance into the hall, and curses and shoves as the first ranks of them staggered to a halt where they stood and those behind stumbled on the steps. The king sat enthroned, resplendent in full regalia-velvet and ermine robe, crowned and armed with his truncheonlike gold scepter. The members had no choice now but to come forward into the room and to bow before their monarch. The silence roared.
The king spoke.
“All the world may see to what a point we are come, that we are not like to have a good end when the divisions at the beginning are such. You had better have one king than five hundred.” Not a button could have dropped but the sound of it would have echoed in the room.
“Lord Chancellor.” Charles’s voice rose, as that of a commander on the battlefield. “I hereby command you that this Parliament is now dissolved.”
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