by Mary Hooper
Eliza nodded. ‘I believed so. I believed I was loved – but maybe I wasn’t! Maybe my father always resented my presence there.’
‘But if you didn’t know he resented you, then it’s as if he didn’t! I’m sure you had a cheerful time with your brothers – I’ve always longed for brothers. Tell me about them. What are their names?’
‘Richard, Thomas and John,’ Eliza began, now twisting a strand of hair around a strip of rag.
‘And are they like you?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘They’re not. And that’s why,’ she gasped with sudden realisation. ‘They aren’t my brothers, are they? I have no brothers!’
‘They’re your half-brothers. As Rose is my half-sister – and none the less for being that.’ Nell smiled ruefully. ‘It’s said that Ma lay with a whole army of men before having us, so there was no way of telling whose we were.’
‘So my mother …’ Eliza murmured, struggling to work things out as she rolled the hair, ‘… gave birth to Richard, Thomas and John, and Jacob was their father. Then she lay in another man’s bed and bore me.’
‘That’s right,’ Nell said matter-of-factly.
‘So I wonder if he, if Jacob, knew about this cuckoo in his nest as soon as I was born, or if he didn’t learn of it until my mother died?’
‘Maybe there was a deathbed confession.’
Eliza tried to think back to that terrible time just after her mother had fallen into the flood-swollen river. Had her father’s attitude towards her changed after that?
She couldn’t remember. She’d only been eight and it had been hard enough to accept that she had no mother; that she’d never again see that dear, careworn face. She hadn’t really thought about anything else.
Nell poked her to carry on with her hair. ‘Can you remember any man in particular – someone in the village – who was a friend to your mother? Someone who took a special interest in you?’ she asked.
Eliza shook her head slowly. ‘No one at all. And our family moved from south Somersetshire to the north of the county after I was born, anyway.’ She thought on; she could remember Richard talking about their old cottage, describing it, and saying that they’d been very poor then, and she – on the rare occasions when she’d ever thought about it at all – had presumed that they’d got more money from somewhere and gone up in the world, to a better cottage. But perhaps they’d gone solely to get away from him, the man Eliza’s mother had lain with. Her real father.
‘You must make a new life for yourself now,’ Nell said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘You must make up your mind what you want, and think well on how you may get it. As I am doing with His Majesty,’ she added. Her eyes sparkled. ‘I yearn to be invited to court, Eliza, and live amid all that lavishness and luxury and treasure! I want to see the fops and gallants fawning around His Majesty, and the queen and all her ladies-in-waiting in their jewels and fine dresses. I even want to see the king’s mistresses at close hand so I may admire their fashions and their manners and see what I’ve to compete with.’ She patted her head, which was now full of rag curls. ‘Although none of them have got my lovely ringlets!’
Eliza managed a smile.
‘And at least that sort of life is possible for me and you, for we are blessed with – well, perhaps it is immodest of me to say we’ve more than our fair portion of attractiveness – but ’tis certain we have!’
‘I suppose we’re lucky not to be born like poor Susan,’ Eliza said after a moment’s thought. ‘For surely she will never secure a husband.’
‘Susan?’ Nell enquired.
‘Your sister’s poor child with the disfigured face.’
‘Ah!’ Nell said. And then she began laughing, but would not be drawn on why, just said that Eliza might find out one day. Eliza didn’t dwell on this, however, for her mind was set completely on her father – her real father – and she couldn’t sleep again that night, this time for wondering desperately who he might be.
Chapter Thirteen
‘So are you hiding away here as well?’ Jemima asked a week or so later when she and Eliza were alone in the tiring room of the theatre.
Eliza hesitated. ‘Not really. At least, I’m not hiding from my family, as you are.’
‘I asked because you wear a wig, do you not?’ Jemima said delicately. ‘And I wondered why you would want to change your appearance.’
Eliza scratched under her wig. The weather was very hot and the wig made her itch; she was almost sure that whoever had worn it before her had had fleas.
‘I could probably take it off now, for my hair has grown somewhat,’ she said and, suddenly making up her mind, she removed her cap, pulled off the wig and ran her hands over her scalp, fluffing out the short curls. ‘How do I look without it?’ she asked Jemima. ‘Am I like a shorn sheep?’
Jemima shook her head. ‘’Tis very pretty – all over curls like a young boy’s. But tell me why you needed to cut your hair and wear a wig.’
Eliza shook her head from side to side, enjoying the feeling of freedom. ‘I used to wear my hair very long,’ she said, ‘but ’twas my undoing.’
‘How was that?’
‘’Tis a desperate story. By some unfortunate circumstances I … I found myself confined to a prison.’
Jemima opened her blue eyes very wide.
‘I was merely hungry and stole a pasty,’ Eliza filled in hastily. ‘But then I was begging at the prison grille one day and Old Ma Gwyn happened to come by.’ She looked around to make sure Nell wasn’t near. ‘You’ve heard of her?’
Jemima nodded. ‘Nell’s mother – and she’s said to be the madam of a bawdy house.’
‘I didn’t know that then,’ Eliza said. ‘She offered to get me out of prison – and she did, too. She paid good money for me.’
Jemima’s jaw dropped. ‘She wanted you to be a bawd?’
‘Not exactly,’ Eliza said. ‘I had very long black curly hair all down my back, you see – ’twas like seaweed, she said – and she wanted me for a mermaid at the Midsummer Fair.’
Jemima gasped, and then laughed. ‘I am sure you were a very good one.’
‘I was! And Ma Gwyn made a deal of money out of me. After the Fair, though, she sold me to a drunken and moneyed youth who had a wish to sleep with a girl with a silvery tail. It was then that Nell came and took me away.’
‘Who was the youth?’ Jemima asked.
‘Henry Monteagle,’ Eliza said with a shudder.
‘I know him!’ Jemima said immediately. ‘He’s a friend of William’s. A not very nice friend.’
‘And he’s seen me since, here in the theatre, but didn’t know me. So I think perhaps I can come out of my disguise now.’
Jemima looked cast down for a moment. ‘You are lucky that your disguise can be so short-lived. I must stay hidden from my family for the rest of my life.’
‘Is it really as bad as that? Your father will be angry at your elopement, but perhaps he’ll come round in time. Your mother may talk him into being more agreeable.’
Jemima was shaking her head before Eliza had even finished the sentence. ‘My mother is frightened of my father – we all are,’ she said. ‘He has a fierce temper and has vowed to kill William for taking me away. I was set to marry an old cousin of mine, so it’s a matter of the family honour, you see.’
‘An old cousin?’ Eliza asked, picking up on this one word.
‘Cedric is sixty,’ Jemima replied, screwing up her nose with distaste. ‘I was to marry him to ensure that our titles and property stayed within the family. Of course I refused! And then I met William …’ her eyes softened, ‘and he and I fell in love and there was no solution but to run away together.’
‘And will you marry soon?’ Eliza asked.
‘Oh, of course,’ Jemima said. ‘William is making the arrangements and ’twill happen quite shortly. And then we’ll go to the Americas, William will buy some plantations and we’ll live out there very happily for the rest of our lives.’
&nbs
p; ‘And does William … is William very rich that he can buy all these lands?’ Eliza asked, thinking of what Nell had said about him.
‘I believe so – although I, happily, have enough for both of us. I inherit my grandfather’s estate when I am eighteen.’
Eliza nodded. ‘You’re very lucky to have your own fortune,’ she said, thinking privately that she was glad that she had not, for then how could you trust any man – be he father, cousin or lover – and believe that they loved you for yourself, and not your money?
At least, she thought, there was going to be no feuding over her, for without a family name she had little hope of ever being married at all. But she must be someone’s child! Would her father – the man she’d thought of as her father – tell her the truth if she asked him outright? Did he even know the truth? Her thoughts went to and fro, to and fro, wondering how she could find out what she so longed to know, and she finally determined to write to her Aunt Thomasina, her mother’s sister, who might have been told the truth if anyone had. Surely her mother must have confessed to someone whose child she was carrying?
That same afternoon the tiring room was filled with people coming and going. Aphra Behn had not managed to get enough funding for her play so it had been withdrawn at the last moment. Now a meeting had been called and actors and actresses were demanding money for attending rehearsals – as were the scene-painters, seamstresses, dressers and all other behind-the-scenes workers.
In the midst of all this, Mary Davis was lying full length on a chaise longue at one end of the tiring room. She was wearing a loose muslin gown, cut very low and designed so that it would best show off a heart-shaped locket which she said was a gift from the king. Nell, similarly attired in a long silk wrap with two lustrous strands of pearls sent by an admirer, was lounging at the other end of the room. Both of them, Eliza noted with some amusement, were talking animatedly to their own select circle and appeared not to be in the least aware of each other. Some refreshments had been sent for and, after they had been consumed, a little black-skinned messenger boy in a turban and velvet suit appeared with a letter who, after bowing uncertainly in several directions, was called over to Mary. After speaking to him in a low voice, Mary swung herself upright, then prised off the seal to read it.
‘I shall read this to everyone,’ she called over to Nell. ‘Unless, Mistress Gwyn, you wish to –’
‘No, by all means,’ Nell said, ‘for I’ve never found it necessary to read! In fact, I think reading dulls a woman’s brain.’
‘Ah, those who cannot read oft say that,’ Mary retaliated. She held the paper aloft and, after glancing swiftly at it, said, ‘It asks for all those who have a charge against Aphra Behn to submit their requests for payment to her accountant in the Strand.’
There was a general groan at this, for no one had much confidence that they would ever receive their money.
Mary crumpled the letter and tucked it under the bolster cushion. ‘So those of us who know our numbers and can reckon as well as read, are at an advantage,’ she said, looking down her nose at Nell.
‘I can reckon,’ Nell said quickly. ‘I can reckon within moments what a man’s worth!’
There was laughter at this. Eliza, though, was wondering why, when Aphra Behn had been at the theatre only that morning, she hadn’t delivered this message to the Company verbally instead of going to the expense of having it written and delivered by messenger. This led her to question if, despite Mary’s boasting, she couldn’t read after all – or alternatively, whether she’d read the message and decided to keep its real contents to herself.
As people drifted in and out of the theatre bearing gossip, scandal and general news about what was happening in the City, Eliza reflected that even when the theatre was closed it was an exciting place to be. Sitting in the tiring room helping Jemima sew beads on a costume, she heard about a case being brought between two noblemen for defamation of character, about what Barbara Castlemaine, the king’s mistress, was wearing that day, of a duel fought, a highwayman caught and how the queen still wasn’t with child. She also heard of a new hairstyle just arrived from Paris which consisted of twisting the hair aloft with coloured ribbons to match one’s gown, and resolved to try this on Nell.
At five o’clock Mary Davis arose from the chaise longue, saying she couldn’t sit around gossiping for a moment longer as she had – here she glanced at Nell – a very important engagement for that evening.
Nell, deep in conversation with a wardrobe mistress about costumes for a possible new role, affected not to see her departure. Eliza jumped up, however, and swiftly moved to where Mary had been sitting. Pretending to plump up the cushion, she obtained the letter which had been delivered and tucked it into her sleeve. Going outside to the yard she unfolded it and read:
From Will Chiffinch, Keeper of the Closet
To all ladies of the King’s Players
I am commanded by His Gracious Majesty King
Charles II
To invite you to a musical evening and reception
at Foxhall New Spring Garden
This evening at 9.00 pm
‘Are we going?’ Nell asked Eliza in mock amazement a little later. ‘Of course we’re going! And won’t little Mistress Bitchington get a surprise when she sees me there.’
‘Will you tell the other girls?’
Nell shook her head. ‘We’ll tell Jemima, but I don’t want anyone else competing for the king’s attentions. As it is I expect Will Chiffinch has asked the girls from the Duke’s Theatre.’
Eliza frowned. ‘Who is Will Chiffinch?’
Nell’s eyes gleamed. ‘A gentleman I’m hoping to see a lot more of soon.’
Eliza, puzzled, said she couldn’t think what she meant.
‘Will Chiffinch is a procurer for King Charles,’ Nell explained. ‘He arranges for girls to be smuggled into the palace for His Majesty’s pleasure.’
‘Really?’ said Eliza, blushing and reflecting that she was still not used to Nell’s frank way with words.
Nell nodded. ‘’Tis said that there’s a special back-staircase in Whitehall built just for that purpose.’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘But you and I must go down to Tower Hill market straight away.’
‘To buy something special to wear?’
Nell shook her head. ‘We’ll visit the costume department for that, for I’ve a notion that we should appear in disguise. No, I was thinking of going to buy something special for Mary.’
‘For Mary?’ Eliza asked, startled. ‘But why?’
Nell smiled. ‘You wait and see.’
It was a good walk from the theatre in Bridge Street through New Gate and around the City walls to Tower Hill, but Nell kept up such a constant stream of chatter about the king and his current mistresses that it didn’t seem at all wearisome to Eliza. The people on the streets, too, were so varied and their conditions so different – lame beggars, masked ladies, street-sellers, music men with their monkeys, city merchants, farmers come to sell their wares – that Eliza was constantly amused and diverted from thinking about her aching feet.
Arriving at Tower Hill and first of all marvelling at the size and antiquity of the great Tower of London, they crossed on to a long, grassy bank where a motley collection of stalls and sideshows was erected. Each of these was supplied with its own montebank or quack doctor, shouting their wares and extolling the merits of the product they were there to sell.
Eliza gazed around, bewildered.
‘I am ninety-eight years of age and yet by taking my Elixir Vitae am as strong as anyone of forty!’ shouted one.
‘There is no disease under the sun which I cannot cure! In certain circumstances I can even revive the dead!’
‘I’ve saved arms, legs, toes and fingers from being cut off when they have been ordered for amputation the vulgar way!’
‘I sell a true and certain prolonger of life and can make the deaf to hear and the blind to see!’
‘What is it you want here?
’ Eliza asked Nell, stunned by the multitude of promises and declarations of genius going on all around her. Only once before had she seen a montebank – at a hiring fair in Stoke Courcey, but he’d only sold pills for ague and headache.
‘I don’t seek to bring someone back from the dead,’ Nell said, ‘but something more modest altogether. Come,’ she said, taking Eliza’s arm, ‘let’s walk down the length of them and you must read their bills and tell me what they say.’ She looked at Eliza mischievously. ‘I’ll tell you now that I’m looking for a purge.’
‘But why?’
‘You’ll see soon.’
‘For Mary?’
Nell just smiled. ‘And it must be but a small amount which can easily be put into liquid undetected.’
And so they walked through the stalls, with Eliza reading their posters and blackboards.
‘A powder for the greensickness,’ she read out. ‘An infusion for three-day ague. A water for sore eyes. An elixir for gravel in the urine … ’
Nell shook her head and moved on.
‘Friendly pills, being a tincture of the sun, giving relief and comfort to those ladies who have dull complexions …’
‘I make the hair to fall out where it is growing in unnatural places, and make it grow again where it is too little …’
‘I’ve cured a man whose body was swollen so big that his clothes would not come together, and drawn from him a worm of four yards long …’
The two girls shrieked in horror as she read this last.
‘I set artificial teeth and can cure the deaf and dumb. I also cure the hare-shotten and cut out carbuncles.’
‘Cut out carbuncles!’ Eliza repeated, stopping in front of the poster. ‘Couldn’t Susan come here and be changed?’
Nell burst out laughing and Eliza looked at her in surprise, for it seemed a strange thing to be laughing about.
‘Is it not a sad affliction?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we tell Susan that it is possible that she can be made well?’
Nell pulled at Eliza’s arm to come away. ‘These montebanks are not capable of doing one quarter of all they profess to do.’