The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and King Charles II

by Gillian Bagwell

  Nell could not recall later what exactly it was that the girl had said. She knew only that it was charming and funny and that the wench held the audience in the palm of her hand, and that when she had done with her prologue she skipped off the stage to cheers and stamping and whistles. Nell felt she could hardly breathe, choked by a wrenching sense of longing to be able to accomplish such a thing of magic herself.

  The great curtain rose as if by sorcery, revealing the grand hall of a palace. Theo Bird and Marmaduke Watson bustled onto the stage and began their scene. As the play went on, the decorous quiet that had reigned briefly was broken by a steady hum of chatter and laughter, by occasional outbursts of shouting from the top galleries, and by the calls of folk who wanted oranges.

  Nell kept an eye on the play and followed the story as best she could. Charles Hart played a prince whose match with the girl he loved was hindered by his father’s attempts to seduce her for himself. Nell was both entranced and consumed with envy as she watched the golden-haired actress playing Hart’s love.

  Wat Clun played a tough and taciturn soldier—the humorous lieutenant of the title—who somehow ended up drinking a love potion intended for the girl, and the audience roared with laughter at his giddy infatuation with the wicked king. Nell was pleased to see several other actors she knew.

  The king appeared to be enjoying the play immensely, laughing with abandon and clapping his appreciation when actors left the stage after a particularly hilarious scene. But Nell was keenly aware that making a success as an orange seller was what would allow her to keep coming back to this place of enchantment, and zealously made the rounds of the pit.

  The first interval came, and the musicians struck up. Nell gazed at the empty stage and longed to know what it felt like to stand there. Did she dare to try it? Moll had given her permission, so Nell clutched her basket to her and climbed the steps to the stage and surveyed the scene before her. She felt as if she were at the center of the universe. The galleries rose to the ceiling, enwreathing the space, and the sloped floor of the pit made it seem as if its benches were marching toward her. The theater was a swirling sea of movement. The king in his box was not ten paces away. She took a breath and sang out “Oranges! Fine oranges! Who will buy my oranges, fine Seville oranges?”

  The king smiled and beckoned. Nell went to him, her heart in her throat.

  “Will you have an orange, Your Majesty? They’re very sweet.”

  “How could they be otherwise, with such a peddler? I’ll take two.” She held out two oranges, but the king took only one.

  “One for you and one for me,” he said with a wink.

  Nell’s scene with the king had been observed, and as she turned from him and sang her cry again, gentlemen pressed to the foot of the stage. By the end of the interval she had sold almost all that was in her basket.

  WHEN THE PLAY WAS DONE, THE AUDIENCE STRAGGLED OUT, PLEASANTLY exhausted by the long, hot afternoon, and ready for real food and drink. Before Nell went to reckon up with Moll, she stood and looked around the emptying playhouse, breathing in the scent of perfume and the smell of hot wax and oranges and flowers and sweat. She imagined the gaze of hundreds of spectators watching her. Caught up in the fantasy, she dipped in a curtsy and was brought up short as she noticed two gentlemen watching her with amusement. She threw them a smile and scampered off to find Orange Moll, blushing and laughing with delight.

  “YOU’VE DONE RIGHT WELL,” ORANGE MOLL NODDED AS SHE COUNTED Nell’s takings. “Here’s four pigs for you.” She smiled as she put four sixpenny coins into Nell’s hand. “Only three for you!” she said to Rose. “You’ll have to show up your little sister tomorrow, eh?”

  Nell was elated and ravenous. She and Rose went to an eating house and treated themselves to a dinner of fricasseed rabbit followed by apple tart and washed down with good ale.

  The sky glowed pink and orange with the sunset as Nell headed toward the Cock and Pie. Her supreme happiness at the day dimmed when she thought of Robbie, waiting at home.

  He looked up from the table as she entered their room. He was eating cheese and the remainder of the wheat loaf from the previous evening’s meal. Nell thought with a pang that she should have brought him something to eat.

  “I thought you’d have been home before now,” he said. “With my supper.”

  “I’m sorry. I forgot, I was so excited.” She ran to him and kissed him. “Oh, Robbie, you should have seen it. The king and queen were there! And ever so many grand ladies and gentlemen. There were painted scenes on the stage—it began with a great palace that moved and gave way to a street, as real as anything. And look—I’ve two whole shillings!”

  Robbie seemed not angry but sad.

  “I know I’ll lose you to it, Nelly. When you came to me you were but a frightened little thing. But you’ll have no need of me now, and if you’re rubbing shoulders with the gallants of the town, you’ll find me dull company.”

  Nell threw her arms around Robbie, desperate to reassure him.

  “I won’t! Why do you not come tomorrow? Then you’ll see how fine it all is.”

  But Robbie said only, “We’ll see.” And that night it was he who lay awake long after Nell had fallen asleep. He did not come to the playhouse the next day, or the day after, and push came to shove at the end of the week.

  “I still don’t like it,” he said. “And I want you to stop.”

  “No!” Nell cried.

  “Then you’ve a choice to make. You can stay with me and I’ll gladly care for you. Or you can work at the playhouse. But you cannot do both.”

  Nell was agonized at the thought of hurting Robbie. He had taken her in and prevented her from further harm at Jack’s hands. But her heart sank at the thought of endless days with no prospect of change or excitement. The playhouse, though—anything might happen there, and she could not bear to turn her back on its possibilities. So the next day she gathered her things and moved into Rose’s room at the Cat and Fiddle.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WELL, IF IT AIN’T LITTLE NELL!”

  Harry Killigrew’s voice cut through the babble of the playhouse crowd. He lolled on a bench in the pit, flanked by a couple of richly dressed gentlemen Nell hadn’t seen before.

  “Not so little,” commented one of the men, eyeing Nell.

  “Will you not introduce me to your friends, Harry?” Nell asked, meeting the stranger’s gaze.

  “Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, first Earl of Middlesex and sixth Earl of Dorset, is the one drooling at the sight of your bubbies.”

  A lord, and captivated by her. Nell was thrilled.

  “And this”—Henry waved a hand at the other man—“is Sir Charles Sedley. Who, now I look, also appears to be salivating more than is common.”

  Dorset laughed and stretched himself lazily. He was handsome and golden haired, and he reminded Nell of the young lion she had seen once when the menagerie at the Tower was open to the public. Powerful and utterly assured.

  “Damme, but the wench has the finest oranges I’ve ever seen,” he drawled. “They positively set me to hungering.”

  He picked up an orange and rolled it in his hand, squeezing it, then brought it to his nose and inhaled its scent, his eyes never leaving Nell’s. He tossed the orange to Harry, trapped Nell’s hand between his, and pressed sixpence into her palm. The touch of his skin made her heart race. To her annoyance, she felt herself blushing, and she slipped away, Harry’s laughter in her ears.

  That night, Nell remembered the pressure of Dorset’s hand on hers and how his gaze had made her catch her breath and look away. He stirred something within her, and it was clear that she had excited his interest as well, but her experience at Madam Ross’s had taught her that if she succumbed easily, even for a handsome price, he would lose interest and she would forfeit what power she had with him. She determined to keep her head when next she saw him and see what might befall.

  The next day Nell watched Dorset as he stood with one b
ooted foot on a bench, surrounded by Harry, Sedley, and a couple of other young bloods. The cut of his elegant clothes emphasized his well-muscled figure. The other men leaned in to listen to him, crowing with laughter and clapping him on the back. The leader of the pack, that’s what he was, she thought. And yes, one who would relish a chase.

  “So you’re the dimber-damber, then?” she dimpled at him.

  “I’m the what?” he asked, looking her over languidly.

  “Dimber-damber. Top man. King of the thieves. Chief rogue of the crew.”

  Dorset laughed. “Why, I suppose I am. And if I’m king,” he said, tracing a finger down Nell’s throat, “who’s to be my queen?”

  “Only time will tell, my lord,” she said, batting his hand away. “Now, do you mean to buy any oranges of me today or am I to stand here all the afternoon listening to your fiddle-faddle?”

  Nell was annoyed with herself that she was allowing Dorset to fascinate her, but she could not stop herself from thinking about him.

  “What do you think of him?” she asked Rose one evening as they walked home. Rose blew out her cheeks and shook her head.

  “A hellcat, born and bred. I swear I don’t understand these gents. Harry Killigrew says Dorset and Sedley have just done a translation of a French tragedy that brings tears to his eyes for the beauty and grace of the poetry, and yet the pair of them near caused a riot the other night.”

  “Really?” Nell giggled. “What happened?”

  “They were with Tom Ogle at the Cock Inn, drunk as dogs, and stood on the balcony, singing lewd verses. A crowd began to gather, and at length they stripped off their clothes, and Dorset and Ogle began to strike lascivious postures. When the people below cried out to them to behave decently, Sedley pissed on their heads. The folk in the street were so enraged that they started throwing stones, Harry said, and near tore down the house.”

  Nell laughed, picturing Dorset and Sedley’s antics, and Rose looked at her sharply.

  “You’d do better to keep clear of that one, Nell, is my opinion. He’ll bring you nothing but hurt.”

  THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT WAS A ROARING SUCCESS, AND PLAYED day after day. After the first performance, it was John Lacy instead of Walter Clun who played the lieutenant, and as funny as Wat had been, Lacy was even better. Nell never tired of watching him in the part, marveling at his transformation as the love potion took effect and the rangy, slow-moving lieutenant, inflamed with giddy passion, capered about the stage, long arms and legs a-spraddle with the ungainly appearance of a chicken in flight, howling, “Oh, King, that thou knew’st I loved thee, how I lov’d thee!”

  Nell learned that the girl playing Celia, Hart’s lover in the play, was Anne Marshall, who had played Desdemona at the Vere Street theater, thus becoming the first woman to act on an English stage. Nell admired Anne’s blue eyes and porcelain skin, and wondered how she had been lucky enough to become an actress. She also wondered if the onstage love between Demetrius and Celia carried over into real life. She thought again of Charles Hart and Anne Marshall sitting together on the afternoon of the first performance. They had seemed comfortable, companionable. Because they were lovers? Or because they were not?

  Nell watched Hart day after day, always finding something new to admire in his performance as the prince. Her feelings for him, she realized, were far more profound and confusing than the carnal rush of blood that Dorset induced in her. She held her breath as she awaited Hart’s entrance, felt her heart quicken as he appeared. She loved the quick grace of his lean body, the play of his shoulders under his soldier’s coat of red, the fall of his dark hair tied into a club at the back of his neck.

  In his first scene, he stood silently by while the actor playing the king rhapsodized about him—“This nature, that in one look carries more fire and fierceness than all your masters in their lives. . . .”

  There was an intense stillness within him, his eyes deep wells of emotion, and she found it impossible to look at anyone else when he was on the stage.

  She mouthed Celia’s lines along with Anne Marshall: “‘Now he speaks! O, I could dwell upon that tongue forever.’”

  Her skin broke out in gooseflesh at his deep growl of a voice—“‘. . . this face, this beauty, this heart, where all my hopes are locked’”—and she wished it was she that he crushed in his embrace for a last kiss as he cried, “‘I must have one farewell more.’”

  She thought he was the essence of perfection in a man—impassioned, witty, assured, but tempered with soulfulness—and by the tenth consecutive day that The Humorous Lieutenant was played, she found that she could think of little else but him. She lingered in the greenroom after the performance, bantering with Wat Clun and young Theo Bird as she settled with Moll and put her wares away, but her entire body was alert and listening for the sound of Hart’s voice. When there was no longer any pretext for her to remain, she dragged herself home, thinking of Celia’s words—“It was a kind of death, sir, I suffered in your absence.”

  As she lay in bed his voice echoed in her head, and his image seemed printed on the inside of her eyelids. She slept fitfully, seeing his dark eyes in her dreams, her skin burning with his imagined touch.

  She had never felt this way before, and it was all at once exciting and frightening and painful. She longed to speak to him, though she did not know what she wanted to say. She wanted to be caressed by him, to be devoured by him like tinder in a raging fire. She had taken many men to her bed as a matter of business, and had spent many nights in Robbie’s arms. But she had never ached with desire, had never been consumed by thoughts of a man as she was now.

  And she found herself increasingly anxious as each day passed. She had never seen Hart’s eye upon her, and he had not spoken to her. Perhaps he had not noticed her, did not remember her. How awful it would be, to speak to this god and receive a cold and unknowing stare in response. Yet it would be absurd to ask someone to introduce her to him when they daily worked within feet of each other. And that course would be fraught with even worse peril—what if he remembered her well, as a child whore, beneath his dignity to converse with now? In any case, her feelings were far too tender to expose. She felt ashamed and helpless and hopeless.

  And then a miracle happened. One evening when Rose had felt unwell and gone home immediately after the play was done, Nell was putting her basket in the little storage cubby, when someone behind her asked, “And how is Nelly today?”

  She turned, her insides contracting at the sound of his voice. Charles Hart, only a few feet away, smiling down at her. She had just been thinking of him, as she was always thinking of him now, and the surprise of him so solidly and suddenly there deprived her of all composure. The intensity of his dark eyes so close was almost more than she could bear.

  “I’m very well,” she stammered. “I’m Nell.” She blushed at the idiocy of the remark, and Hart laughed good-naturedly.

  “I know. And I’m Charles.” Nell tried desperately to think of something to say and was relieved when he spoke again.

  “Do you like it here at the playhouse, then?”

  “Yes,” Nell gulped. “It’s—I didn’t know it would be so—so grand.”

  Hart nodded at her as he turned to leave.

  “Mr. Hart!” Nell continued in a rush. “I watch you every day. I think you’re wonderful. I thank you for—I thank you.”

  Hart smiled gently. “I thank you, Nelly. See you tomorrow.”

  And he was gone. Nell exhaled heavily and leaned against the wall, giddy and light-headed. He did know who she was. He knew her name. He had spoken to her. She giggled at the joy of it and raced home, whooping, to tell Rose.

  ONCE THE ICE HAD BEEN BROKEN, NELL FOUND IT EASIER TO SPEAK to Charles Hart, though she still held him in awe. She chatted more easily with the other actors she had met before, and was pleased that they remembered her.

  “Look at you—our little wench is all grown up!” Wat Clun cried when he first saw her backstage.

  “Co
uld I watch a rehearsal again?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know why not,” he said, “but best to ask Lacy. He and Hart and Mohun have the daily running of the company, you know.”

  “To be sure you may,” said Lacy, to Nell’s joy. “Come tomorrow. We’ll be getting The Committee back on its feet.”

  Nell arrived at the theater at ten the next morning. It was the first time she had been there so early, when there was no one there but the actors and other playhouse people. With the bright morning light spilling through the windows of the greenroom, it felt homey and peaceful, and a completely different place than in the bustle just before a performance.

  Beck Marshall, the darker-haired sister of Anne, who had spoken the prologue to The Humorous Lieutenant, sat at a table with a roll of papers before her, brow furrowed and lips moving as she muttered lines to herself. She glanced up as Nell came in and, though Beck said nothing, Nell saw appraisal and annoyance in her eyes.

  Lacy, Wat, and other actors were already on the stage, so Nell took a seat in the pit near Hart. From the confidence with which the actors walked through their movements and spoke their lines, it was apparent that they knew the play already. Only occasionally did one of them call “Line!” and the prompter read out what they were to say.

  Nell laughed in delight at Lacy’s personification of the well-meaning but intensely obtuse Irish footman named Teague.

  “It’s one of John’s best parts,” Hart whispered to her. “Never fails to bring down the house.”

  Just as good as Lacy was Katherine Corey, the round-faced actress playing the overbearing rattle-mouth Mrs. Day. Nell had seen her only in smaller parts, and backstage, and had immediately been drawn to her sunny good humor and infectious laugh. This role allowed Katherine to make gloriously comic use of her ringing voice and ferocious energy. Nell observed her closely, trying to determine what made her performance so hilarious, and watched that afternoon’s show with a newly analytical eye.