Over the next weeks Nell avoided being on her own and tried not to cross Jack’s path, but there were times when he appeared seemingly from thin air, and she had nowhere to run.
WITH THE CELEBRATIONS OF THE KING’S BIRTHDAY ON THE TWENTY-NINTH of May, Nell was amazed to realize that it had been two years since she had run away and embarked on her new life. She had gained freedom from her mother, as she had set out to do. She was better fed and clothed and she had several regulars whose money she could count on. But she did not like having to submit herself to the use of strangers, and Jack’s visits were now almost nightly. She was always frightened, and despaired of finding a way out of the hell her days and nights had become.
As it happened, an escape presented itself that Nell could not have anticipated. Robbie Duncan noticed the bruises on her arms and throat and the livid blue-yellow patches on the insides of her thighs.
“What happened there?” he asked, his face darkening. “Come, tell me,” he said gently when she didn’t answer.
“It’s Jack,” she whispered, clutching the sheet around her. “Madam’s man. He—he comes to me sometimes, and . . .” She could not finish the sentence, and could not bring herself to look at him. He squatted on his haunches before her.
“He hurts you? He means to hurt you?”
She nodded.
“He cannot do this to you. I will not allow it,” Robbie exclaimed, springing to his feet, but Nell knew that his slender frame was no match for Jack’s sinewy muscularity.
She shrugged. “But he can. There is nought I can do to stop him.”
Robbie paced and seethed, and finally stood before Nell.
“Come and live with me. He cannot come to you there. I will take care of you.”
Nell was astonished at the proposal, but Robbie was likable enough and, given the choice, she would rather bed one man than many.
So, with a payment from Robbie to Madam Ross for the loss of one of her stable, Nell became his. She packed her few belongings in a sack and moved to Robbie’s room at the Cock and Pie Tavern, at the top of Maypole Alley, only a few streets from the only homes she had known.
CHAPTER SIX
LIVING WITH ROBBIE, NELL FELT AS IF SHE WERE PLAYING AT BEING a wife. While he was at work at his father’s business in the City during the day, she tidied their room and fetched food from a cookhouse so that she had supper ready for him when he came home, and Robbie told her of his day and any news.
“The king is to have bearbaiting at Hampton Court for Whitsun-tide, as he did last year. Savagery. That’s one old custom that would have been better left in the past. The playhouses are bad enough. Oh, and Lady Castlemaine is brought to bed of a boy. He’s to be called Charles Palmer and Lord Limerick, as though he were the son of her husband, but no one believes that.”
“Barbara Palmer’s husband had her son christened in the Popish church,” Robbie told Nell a week later over dinner. “But today the king took the child and had him rechristened in the Church of England. He’ll not have his son raised a Papist, bastard or no.”
“And how did Palmer take that?” Nell wondered.
“Not well,” said Robbie, chewing on a beef bone. “He’s broken from his wife at last and gone to France.”
That night, to Nell’s surprise, Robbie went to sleep without touching her. She scarcely knew what to think and lay worrying. Was he tiring of her? Would he cast her out? But in the morning he seemed as usual, and she grew used to the novel idea that a man might not always want to couple.
Being free from Jack’s attentions and serving the needs of many men was a welcome change. Nell’s body healed, and Robbie was gentle with her in bed. But before long, she found that the sameness of her days grew tedious. She missed the companionship of Rose and the other girls, but because she wanted to keep out of Jack’s way and because Robbie did not like her going there, she stayed away from Lewkenor’s Lane.
Rose joined her sometimes for little outings, to watch the river traffic from the bridge, or to walk as far abroad as the countryside of Moorfields or Islington. There was usually something of interest to be seen at Covent Garden—rope dancers, jugglers, or occasionally a display of prize fighting.
One brilliant summer day Nell and Rose set out on a pilgrimage to St. James’s Park, near the palace.
“I hope we’ll see the king,” Nell said.
“Perhaps we will,” Rose said. “Harry says the king has laid out a mint of money making the park fine again and walks out most days.” Harry Killigrew had recently become groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of York.
The park, with its blooming flowers and trees, seemed a paradise to Nell, and a world away from the dark land of nightmare where she had last been with Nick and the other boys on the night of the king’s return.
“Look!” cried Rose, clutching Nell’s arm.
Not fifty paces from where they stood, King Charles strode along in earnest conversation with some puffing minister who struggled to match his pace, the royal retinue straggling along behind. Nell watched, entranced.
“He’s even more handsome than I remembered him.”
“He is that,” Rose agreed. A bevy of ladies strolled in the king’s wake, decked in summer finery. The breeze caught their gowns and made Nell think of ships in full sail.
“Look, it’s Lady Castlemaine!” cried Nell. “I wonder where’s her baby?”
“Why, ladies like that don’t care for their own kinchins, but leave them to nurses. That’s why she can look so fine so soon after birthing.”
“Look at that blue gown,” Nell sighed. “Why, now it appears gold!”
“Changeable silk,” Rose said. “You’d have to lay out a month’s earnings to pay for that. But look at the patches now—those are cunning and would be easy enough to fashion.” Many of the ladies’ faces were adorned with small black patches in the shapes of stars, moons, suns, and animals.
“That’s the high kick, that is,” Rose said.
“I think it looks silly,” said Nell. “Besides, they’re like to itch most fearsome. I’d scratch them off in a minute.” She looked with longing at the pretty gloves, though, in a rainbow of shades of soft leather, and at the ladies’ full-brimmed hats with ribbons rippling from them.
The weather was so fine and Nell’s spirits so high, she didn’t want the rare day of pleasure to end.
“Let’s not go back yet,” she pleaded. “I’ve heard tell there’s an Italian puppet show at Covent Garden that would make a dog laugh. And I’ve a month’s mind for some cherries.”
So it was evening before she climbed the stairs to Robbie’s room, with the guilty recollection that the tuppence he had given her to buy candles had been spent during the day’s outing.
“You spent it!” Robbie cried. “And what are we to use for light?”
“It’s not so dark,” Nell pleaded. “I’ll get candles tomorrow.”
“I’ll get the candles myself,” he fumed, yanking the door open. “Since I cannot trust you to do as you’re told.”
Nell lay awake that night, chafing with resentment. It was only tuppence, after all, and the first money she had spent on herself since moving in with Robbie.
In the morning she strode into the taproom of the Cock and Pie downstairs. Cath, the barmaid, looked up from the jug she was washing and took in Nell’s stormy face.
“You’ve a bee in your bonnet, I see.”
“Are you hiring?” Nell demanded. Cath laughed.
“Unhappy with Robbie, are you?”
“I’ve no money to spend but what he gives me and I cannot do anything but what he tells me,” Nell fretted. “I spend my days alone and I’m so bored I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Best think twice afore you leave,” Cath cautioned. “Bored and fed is better than free and hungry.”
Nell slumped onto the stool opposite Cath.
“You’re right. I’ve nowhere to go. But please, to keep me from jumping in the river, have you no shred of gossip or
excitement to share?”
“Well, that I do, now you mention it,” Cath smiled. “Mr. Killigrew is to build his playhouse just across the road.”
AS SOON AS THE GROUND WAS THAWED, THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE theater were laid in the old Rider’s Yard. Now walls covered the framing, and acres of heavy oak planking and dark and gleaming hardwood disappeared into the maw of the growing theater. Each day Nell watched carpenters, masons, woodcarvers, and plasterworkers come and go, their tools slung in bags on their backs.
One summer day when the laborers had stopped work for their midday meal and were gathered outside to eat, sitting atop piles of lumber or leaning against the theater’s wall, she slipped in at the back door. Skeletal frames of timber stood in the hush of the midday sunlight that filtered through chinks in the unfinished ceiling. A mist of sawdust blanketed the rough-hewn floors.
Nell made her way through a doorway in a wall that was not yet built, and realized that she must be standing upon the stage. She crept silently forward, hardly daring to breathe. The center of the space was a soaring emptiness. Like a cathedral, she thought. Galleries for spectators lined the walls. She wondered what it would be like to stand on that stage before an audience, and thought of how Lady Castlemaine had surveyed the crowds before Whitehall on the night of the king’s return. She snapped open an imaginary fan and swished it languidly before her, her head held high, her chin tilted coquettishly.
“Lud, Your Majesty,” she trilled, batting her eyelashes, and gave the invisible king a pouting smile.
A harsh bark of laughter and the sound of clapping startled Nell so much that she almost cried out. A figure stumped toward her from the shadows at the back of the theater. It was a grizzled old man in a loose shirt and pantaloons, with a long pigtail, and Nell was amazed to see that he was missing the lower part of his left leg and walked on a wooden peg.
“I meant no harm,” Nell began. “I’ll go.”
“Don’t go on my account,” the old man said with a grin. “I was enjoying it. And any road, I’m just a harmless old carpenter.”
“You look like a sailor,” Nell said, staring at his weather-beaten face.
“And so I have been, since before I’d a beard to my face. But I’m too old for that now, and happy to have a berth ashore. A playhouse is much like a ship, you know—canvas, ropes, rigging—and needs a crew just as a ship does.”
“I wish I could work at the playhouse.”
The old sailor squinted at Nell and tapped a finger alongside his nose.
“And mayhap you can. I hear the king has ordered that from now it’s only women are to act the parts of women.”
“No boys?” Nell asked.
“No boys. Not in petticoats, leastways. The Duke’s Company sent little Moll Davis onto the stage but a month or two ago. A pretty little thing she is, and much cried up, too. About your years, I’d think.”
Nell had been so cut off from her theater friends that she had not heard that bit of news. She felt a surge of jealousy toward pretty little Moll Davis.
“How came she to be in the Duke’s Company?”
“I don’t know,” the old man shrugged. “But if there’s call for one actress, there’ll be call for more, as sure as eggs be eggs.”
“What’s your name?” Nell asked.
“Richard Tarbutton is the one my old mam gave me. But my mates call me Dicky One-Shank.”
“I’m Nell. Nell Gwynn.”
“Nell Gwynn,” said Dicky One-Shank, his blue eyes disappearing in the weathered folds of his face as he smiled. “I’ll remember that.”
“HE SAID THERE ARE TO BE NO MORE BOYS PLAYING WOMEN’S PARTS, but only girls,” Nell excitedly told Robbie that night over supper. “Actresses.” She said the word reverently.
“Actresses!” Robbie spat, throwing down a chicken bone. “Whores, more like. The only reason for putting women on the stage, mabbed up like slatterns, is so that men can look on them with lust.” He snorted again, tore a hunk of bread from the loaf, and furiously sopped it in the gravy on his plate.
Nell thought, but did not say, that he had had no objection to looking on her with lust when she was at Madam Ross’s place. He seemed to have little sense of humor these days, and more and more she did not speak what was in her mind for fear of rousing his irritation.
THE DAYS SHORTENED INTO WINTER DARKNESS, AND THE THAMES froze again. Nell and Rose walked onto the deep and shadowy ice, encrusted with sludgy snow, but Nell lacked the joy she had felt the previous winter. And Rose was downcast.
“Is summat amiss?” Nell asked, and was surprised to see tears in Rose’s eyes.
“Harry’s got married. Lady Mary Savage.”
“Oh.” Nell hardly knew what to say. Of course Rose knew as well as she did that gentlemen like Harry would never marry girls like them, however much they enjoyed their sport and company. But knowing didn’t stop the hurting.
“Hard luck, that is,” she ventured. Rose nodded, turning her head aside and wiping away tears.
“I was a fool to let myself care for him as I did,” Rose said.
“No,” said Nell. “You can’t help how you feel, Rose, any more than you can stop the rain from falling. He don’t deserve you anyway. You’ll soon find someone that treats you far better, I warrant.”
Rose tried to smile, and hugged Nell to her.
“Oh, sweet girl, what would I do without you?”
ONE MORNING IN FEBRUARY, NELL AND ROBBIE WERE AWOKEN EARLY by a pounding at their door. Jane, breathless and red faced, rushed in past Robbie.
“Oh, Nell! Rose has been taken up for theft!” She choked out her story between sobs. “The shoulder clappers came at dawn. They had a gentry cove with them claimed she’d pinched his larum.”
“Oh, no,” Nell gasped. The punishment for the theft of something as valuable as a pocket watch was the gallows.
Nell was so terrified she could not think, but Robbie was cooler.
“Where stands the matter now? What’s been done?”
“Madam’s gone to Whitehall to see can Harry help.”
“And Rose?”
“Clapped up in Newgate.”
Newgate. The name alone evoked darkness and despair. Nell knew that debtors rotted there in misery for years, as her father had languished in prison in Oxford. And all London knew of the regular pageant of death, when condemned prisoners were led from the prison to be driven in carts through jeering crowds and pelted with offal on their way to Tyburn Tree, the enormous three-sided gallows that could accommodate twenty-four nooses, and the resultant twenty-four swinging corpses.
“I must go to her!” Nell cried.
“No,” Robbie said harshly. “You can do her no good.”
But Nell would not be deterred.
“’Tis no place for a girl,” Robbie said, grim faced, shoving his hat onto his head.
“No, and no more is it a place for Rose than it is for me,” Nell retorted, stamping with impatience to be gone. Robbie had no answer to that, and they set off, Nell racing along in front of him.
The winter morning sky was leaden gray, the wind blew bitter cold, and a light shower of snow fell icy wet.
When they arrived at the gates of the prison, Nell’s stomach tightened with fear. The ponderous stone walls towered before her, broken only by narrow slits. The enormous ironclad portals led into a cobbled courtyard, crowded with the morning’s desperate traffic—prisoners in irons shuffling through the doors that led into the depths of the prison; guards and soldiers, grim and armed; the usual London rabble of beggars and urchins; legions of wives, lovers, mothers, sisters, and friends. A foul stench permeated the air, a noxious mixture of human and animal waste, vomit, blood, rotting food, and the unmistakable odor of death. A grizzled guard stopped them.
“If she was shopped this morning, trial might be tomorrow,” the guard shrugged when Robbie explained their errand. “Or mayhap the day after. No way of knowing.”
Robbie turned away, but Nell stayed where she
was.
“Can I not see her?” she asked.
“That thou cannot.” The guard ran a tongue over his chapped lips and wiped his nose with the back of a dirty hand. Nell stared at him with hatred, taking in the broken and rotten teeth, the rough stubble on the heavy cheeks, the purple nose running in the cold air. She darted past him through the door. She was young and fast, but his stride and his reach were much longer than hers. He grabbed her by the hair and flung her down. She scrambled to her feet and, in a rage of humiliation and helplessness, ran at the man before Robbie could stop her. Disbelief and growing annoyance on his face, the guard caught her and held her from him at arm’s length. He shook her hard, then lifted her so that her face was close to his. She smelled beer and onions and felt the moist warmth of his breath.
“Get yer arse out of here. And don’t come back, unless you want summat worse.” He dropped her, and she cried out as she landed on the cobblestones. All the fight gone out of her, Nell wanted only to flee before she shamed herself by crying. Robbie, gray faced and silent, helped her to her feet.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Nell knew he was angry and nodded without meeting his eyes, hot tears falling onto her cheeks.
“We’ll go to Madam Ross’s,” Robbie said shortly. “You can wait until there’s news.”
At Lewkenor’s Lane, Nell was relieved beyond measure that Ned was presiding over the bar and Jack was gone. The girls were gathered in the taproom like a flock of unsettled chickens, some crying, some railing against the cully who had turned Rose in, some taking a morbid enjoyment in the dramatic prospect of the execution of one of their own. They squawked and fluttered at the sight of Nell and Robbie.
“Nell!” Jane cried. “Whatever’s happened to you?”
“Nothing,” said Nell. “We tried to see Rose, is all, and the bandog flung me out on my breech.”
The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and King Charles II Page 8