“A prince among players,” Buckingham said, obviously quoting something, though I’d no notion exactly what. “Did you know he’s reputed to be the great-grandson of that most venerable bard William Shakespeare?”
“I do not know, Your Grace, nor do I care,” I said solemnly, refilling my goblet from the bottle I’d tucked in the basket beneath my seat. “All that will matter to me about Mr. Hart will be the caliber of his performance.”
The performances on all accounts proved high indeed, or at least high enough for the dull days of February. Soon after, Moll Davies was flaunting a diamond ring given her by the king, the price of which—six hundred pounds—she vulgarly announced to all who’d listen. After that she boasted of being put in keeping by His Majesty, with a furnished house and a coach of her own. But as I’d predicted, her keeping was short-lived, and Charles was quite willing to drop her back to that “cold, cold ground” whence he’d found her.
I’d more satisfaction with Charles Hart. He was a man most splendidly made, tall and well muscled, and while others might call him a prince of players, I’d say he had the carriage of a king, and a cock to match, too. There was a certain rare dignity and nobility to him that many true gentlemen could never achieve by birth alone, and I did enjoy his company for a time. My special delight was for him to keep in costume and play that role for me as well, so that I might swive mighty Alexander one night, and the next a red Indian king.
And in this grim time of wars and plague and fires, I could not see the harm in diverting ourselves with such play-actors, or a bit of playacting ourselves.
Shortly before the solemn season of Lent, we highborn amateurs acted in a special production at Whitehall before the rest of the court. Corneille’s Horace was stripped of its French taint through a new English translation by the clever lady scholar Katherine Philips, and extra dances were added between acts so every little new maid of honor could have her part. As was fit for my beauty and height, I was given the leading role of Camilla, and under—and over, on occasion—the private tutorage of Mr. Hart, I performed my role to perfection, and acclaim, completely outshining all other ladies.
If I were to be entirely honest, I should add that it wasn’t entirely my talent alone that was busily outshining my fellows, but my costume and jewels. As a special favor to me and to show how high I still stood in his favor, Charles had borrowed pieces—diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires—from the Crown Jewels in the Tower for me to wear, to add more splendor to my royal role. I’d heard the value of the whole array set at two hundred thousand pounds, a handsome, glittering figure indeed.
“You are most beautiful tonight, my lady.” The Marquis de Ruvigny smiled beside me as we all waited for the supper to be announced. After that, there would be more dancing, and more opportunities for all of us in costume to preen and strut like the peacocks we were. “I’ve never seen Camilla acted with more fire.”
“Merci, my lord.” The marquis and I had a thorough understanding of one another, and an appreciation, too. I knew he was in London with another draft of a proposed alliance between our two countries, just as he knew that because I was Catholic I’d speak favorably of France to Charles. “Though I should think you must have seen your share of French actresses with more sympathy to your great playwright Corneille than I could ever have.”
He shrugged, his shoulders eloquent like all Frenchmen’s. “Sympathy is not everything, my lady. There is much to be said for possessing the necessary beauty for the role.”
“Also the jewels.” I held my hand out before him, waggling my third finger to show him the ring with the large pigeon’s blood ruby. This was the single piece not from Charles but from his cousin King Louis, as a little reward to me for some piddling service or another, and I’d worn it on purpose tonight so that the ambassador might see it. “Pray be sure to convey my gratitude to His Majesty your king. He has most excellent taste in baubles.”
The marquis bowed and covered the ring and my hand with his. “His Majesty knows the value of both your pleasure, my lady, and of your knowledge. He delights in rewarding you thusly.”
“Monsieur le Marquis,” Charles said, joining us. He glanced pointedly at the other man’s hand on mine, and de Ruvigny immediately withdrew it. “I trust you’ve enjoyed yourself this evening?”
“Your Majesty,” the marquis replied, making a most elegant bow over his bent leg. “The performance was beyond all my greatest expectations, as I was just telling Her Ladyship. How ravishing she looks this night.”
“Yes, yes,” the king said, and took my hand, or rather claimed it, more precisely. “You’ll excuse me, my lord, but I’ve a matter of some urgency to discuss with Lady Castlemaine myself.”
He hurried me off and through the crowd, courtiers melting from our path like the Red Sea before Moses. On Charles’s arm, I smiled like the benevolent goddess I was supposed to be, while he waited until we were well away from the Frenchman before he spoke.
“So what was de Ruvigny babbling about tonight?” he asked as soon as we’d reached a hallway with a modicum of privacy.
“Babbling is a de Ruvigny specialty, sir,” I said. “You know that as well as I. Mostly he wished me to grovel and thank him yet again for the ring.”
“Ring?” Charles frowned. “What ring is that?”
“Here.” I held my hand out for him to see. “It was part of the last round of gifts from Louis. In return I’m to sway you toward the latest wording of the alliance.”
He bent over my hand, critically studying the ring. “I am endlessly amazed by the amounts my cousin Louis is willing to shower on you, and for what gain?”
“So that I might influence you, of course,” I said. “Do you feel influenced, sir?”
He grunted with disgust. “He should know better. I’m not about to let an impudent jade like you lead me by the nose.”
“Not the nose, perhaps,” I said, letting my hand drift purposely to the front of his breeches. “Hah, mark where Louis’s ring is now!”
He caught my wrist to still my hand. “Take care with de Ruvigny, Barbara. He plays the silly Frenchman, but he’s much more clever than he seems. Take whatever baubles he offers, if it pleases you, but promise him nothing in return.”
I smiled slyly. “Oh, sir, you of all men should know me better than that. It’s little more than another game to me, sir, and you know full well how I like to play.”
“I am serious, Barbara,” he said, and to my surprise he was. “I don’t want your name linked too closely with the French, not now with Parliament meeting over the new bill.”
I understood. With Clarendon’s restraining hand gone, the king had sought once again to ease the sanctions against Catholics and other dissenters by presenting a Bill for Comprehension and Indulgences to Parliament. It had met with instant and vehement opposition, with seemingly all members uniting against it. Fears of popish plots were never far from the minds of most Englishmen, and the rumors that French Catholics had started the Great Fire refused to go away. Not only was Parliament against any new indulgences; they wanted the old laws more strictly enforced. It was not going to be an easy battle for the king.
“Leave the dirtiest of those games to Arlington and Bristol,” he urged me now. “You’ve already damned yourself by your conversion, Barbara, and if you tumble too deep into Louis’s pockets, I may not be able to pull you back out.”
“I swear to you by all that’s holy,” I said, “you won’t have to rescue me.”
“Would that that were always so.” He sighed. “You haven’t shared his bed, have you?”
I wrinkled my nose. “The man stinks like all Frenchmen do.”
“I could wish you’d a better reason than that, but I suppose it must do.” He freed my wrist, letting me continue what I’d started. “He was right about one matter, however. You are ravishing tonight.”
I kissed him by way of thanks, leisurely, though he was already hard in my hand, his breathing quickening.
“La
ter, sweet,” he said. “I must be here to open the dancing.”
“I’ll come to you then,” I said, flicking my tongue against his by way of a promise.
“Wear the jewels, too, before I must send them back to the Tower.” He smiled with anticipation. “Wear all of them. And nothing more.”
By March the king had lost his latest battle with Parliament over religious tolerance. Not only were the old fears of Catholic plots raised again, but once again Buckingham demonstrated his innate ability to say the most foolish thing possible, when he proposed that the crown solve its constant money woes by appropriating funds from the well-lined coffers of the Anglican church. That was more than enough to sink the king’s bill, and under more pressure he felt compelled to issue a proclamation enforcing the limits of the Act of Uniformity, a remnant of the hateful old Clarendon Code.
Yet even this concession failed to calm the restlessness in London. On Easter Monday, a day that should have passed in peaceable reflection, bands of apprentices and other wild young men rioted and turned upon the brothels of Moorfields, setting fire to some and pulling down others, and pelting the hapless inmates with filth when they ran out to escape in scandalous undress. From fear that this mayhem might signal something more ominous, alarms were sounded with trumpet and drums, and armed soldiers poured into the streets to quell the confusion.
This should have been no more than a passing wonder, a scrap of inspiration for the libertine pen of my cousin Rochester, and soon forgotten after that. But some other nameless author blew his fetid breath onto the tale, and made it burst into fresh flame, and then dragged my good name unbidden into the middle of the whole reeking mess.
An ill-printed pamphlet, The Poor Whore’s Petition, appeared from nowhere, like the ugliest of toadstools sprung up through the grass. Though pretending to have been written by the women abused by the rioting apprentices, it was clearly the work of a person familiar with me and my habits. Calling me one of their fellows and appealing to me by name with coarse flattery as the “most eminent, illustrious, serene, and eminent lady of pleasure,” this so-called petition sought my protection in the name of Venus, “that Great Goddess whom we all adore.”
In the manner of such vulgar publications, it was of course signed by no one, yet read by everyone. Charles and my other friends agreed that it was a most grievous, scurrilous piece of claptrap, but also advised me to let it pass unremarked, and beneath my notice.
But worse was to come, and that—that!—I could not bear.
“Have you seen this?” I slapped the new pamphlet on the king’s desk. “I know you preach Christian tolerance and a blind eye, but this, sir, I cannot stomach.”
“More of the same?” Cautiously Charles opened the pamphlet and began to read aloud. “ ‘The gracious answer of the most Illustrious Lady of Pleasure Countess of Castlemaine’—oh, hell.”
“That’s as good a description as any,” I said, seething with rage. “It’s supposed to be my answer to that last pamphlet. Read on, sir, read on! Clearly it’s written by someone who knows me, for there’s perfect descriptions of my gowns and my jewels, and my lodgings, too. Mark what they say of me, and the children—our children—too.”
I came to stand behind him, pointing out the most offensive lines over his shoulder as I read more aloud. “ ‘We have cum privilegio always (without our husband) satisfied ourselves with the delights of Venus; and in our husband’s absence have had numerous offspring (who are bountifully and nobly provided for).’ Oh, sir, this cannot be tolerated It cannot be borne!!”
“But it’s even worse here, Barbara,” he said, and now I heard the anger in his voice, too. “It’s a mockery of my Bill of Indulgences. It says you’ll suppress the Protestant nonconformists, but harbor all Catholics because they believe that ‘venereal pleasure, accompanied with looseness, debauchery, and prophaneness are not such heinous crimes and crying sins.’ ”
I jabbed my finger at the page. “It blames Catholics again for setting the fire, and it says that those same apprentices who tore down the brothels are really the first Catholic Frenchmen come to lead an invasion.”
Abruptly he shoved the pamphlet away and rose from the desk, too agitated to remain still.
“This goes too far,” he said, striding back and forth across the room with long, furious steps. “This shames not only you, Barbara, but the crown, and the government, and all churches, of every faith. And I refuse to be libeled and bullied by faceless cowards who hide behind a printing press to spew their venomous discontent upon this country!”
I watched him pace, feeling as if the worst heat of my anger had somehow transferred to him. Reading the pamphlet again in his presence, speaking the hateful words aloud, had troubled me in a new way.
“How many will believe that I am in fact the author?” I asked unhappily. “What if those same apprentices who destroyed the Moorfields brothels seek me as their next victim?”
“So long as you and the children stay here in the palace,” he said, “you will be safe. I guarantee it.”
“But what of my house in King Street?” I was not a cowardly woman, or one who frightened easily, yet I’d not forgotten the time in the park when I’d been accosted by the disguised gentlemen. As terrifying as that had been, it would be as nothing compared to a vengeful mob determined to treat me ill. “My palace lodgings aren’t my home. What if the same—”
“You will be safe, Barbara,” he said, coming to take me in his arms. “You shall never be made to suffer on account of me. You have my word.”
In the next weeks, as many copies of the pamphlet that could be found were taken in and destroyed. The press that had printed it was closed and shuttered. The identity of the true author remained a mystery, but since he’d been frightened into not writing more in a similar vein, I suppose that the goal of his silence, too, had been accomplished.
And in a most public display of his regard for me, and to prove how little he cared for my Catholic beliefs, the king then settled a pension of nearly five thousand pounds on me, and purchased Berkshire House in my name: a handsome, spacious property of great size and elegance that backed on the park and overlooked St. James’s Fields and Pall Mall. Its cost was more than four thousand pounds and according to Bab May the grant for its purchase had been squeezed from customs duties.
I didn’t particularly care how Charles had arranged the finances. In a house so large, and directly across from St. James’s Palace, I would be safe, as he had promised, and in May I moved into my new home with my three youngest children. I’d already sent the older two, Anne, seven, and Charles, five, to be schooled in Paris, where the quality of genteel education was thought to be better, and where they’d be removed from the distraction of having their schoolmates link them to me.
There were many at court who believed such a generous gift from the king was intended as a sure farewell, a sign that he was ending our connection and putting me aside. I knew otherwise; he continued to come to me each day, and lingered as long as he could, and I often still did frequent my lodgings in Whitehall. Though our passion did not burn with the same bright fire that it had in the past, our friendship had been tempered by the flames and made stronger over time, and I never doubted I’d a place in his heart.
But the most advantageous feature of Berkshire House lay in its proximity to St. James’s Palace, the home of the Yorks. As the two brothers had grown closer, both in their family and their sympathy with the Roman faith, this would become the location where decisions were made and policies determined, much as my old house had been earlier.
I already knew from de Ruvigny that Charles was considering another, secret alliance with France, one that would, if revealed, undermine the Protestant Triple Alliance made earlier this year. And I also knew that in return for the funds and military support that Charles so desperately needed to keep England afloat, Louis would insist on a condition requiring Charles to convert to Catholicism himself and deliver England back to the Holy Mother Church.
In the plainest of language, Charles had decided to sell his soul, and if such a treaty ever became known to Anglican England, he would lose his throne faster than his father had.
Perhaps because I did know of such dangerous intrigues, I could step back from the court. Perhaps because I’d felt so threatened by the Whore’s Petition; perhaps because, at twenty-seven, I’d learned more of the value of patience; perhaps because I simply understood how momentous this time could be for England, I was willing to withdraw for a while from the busiest scheming of Buckingham, Arlington, and the rest of the court. When pressed, I gave as my excuse the outfitting of my new house, and the education of my children, both good and valid reasons, and true as well.
The world was shifting, and once again I’d made sure I’d be at its core.
Pinning my hair back into place, I glanced from the window of Charles Hart’s tiring room. A carriage had drawn to the back door: a common enough occurrence, given the number of gentlemen who delighted in recruiting their mistresses from the theatre’s stage. But though this carriage was purposefully plain, I recognized it, just as I recognized the horses and the driver.
Noting my interest, Hart came to stand behind me as he pulled his shirt over his handsome head. “That’s for Nell,” he said disdainfully. “The third time this week, and she always goes to him.”
“To the king, you mean.” I’d known that when the polish had begun to wear dull on Moll Davies, the king had looked to another actress, one who specialized not in drama but in comedic roles. Nell Gwyn was beguiling rather than beautiful, small and round in her person with ringlets so tight they bounced when she walked. When she walked, indeed: mostly she pranced on her toes, like a small spirited pony. She was quick as blazes, always ready with a retort or clever rebuttal, which was, I knew, why Charles had taken such interest in her. What I hadn’t realized was how much.
“She goes to the king that often?” I asked Hart, keeping my voice idle and slightly bored, as if it really was beneath my notice. “He sends the carriage every time?”
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