NELL WAS SO EXCITED SHE COULD SCARCELY KEEP FROM DANCING HER way back to the Cat and Fiddle, and she kept having to stop and wait for Rose’s slower pace.
“He said yes! He said yes!” she cried again.
“I’m happy for you, Nelly, if it’s what you want. But have a care and don’t get your hopes too high.”
“Why?” Nell was suddenly brought to earth. “Do you not think I can be an actress?”
“I think you have the makings to be as good as any I’ve seen,” Rose said. “But many things fall out between the cup and the lip, and I’d not have you disappointed should things not come about as you want.” She looked at Nell, now walking instead of dancing, and hugged her little sister to her.
“Wat would not have said yes did he not think you showed promise. It’s a great compliment to you that he’d take his time to teach you.” Nell’s step was jaunty again, and Rose smiled to see it. “Do you really know that whole scene of Doll Common’s?”
NELL BREEZED INTO THE GREENROOM IN HIGH SPIRITS THE NEXT morning but knew from the moment she entered that something terrible had happened. Kate Corey was sobbing in John Lacy’s arms, and tears streaked Lacy’s face as well. It was rare that Tom Killigrew was at the playhouse early, but he stood with Mohun and Hart, and when they looked up at Nell’s approach their faces were stricken. Her heart stopped in her throat.
“What is it? What’s happened?” she cried.
“Wat Clun,” said Hart, his voice breaking. “He’s murdered.”
THE PLAY WAS LONG OVER, BUT THE ACTORS OF THE KING’S COMPANY remained in the greenroom, unwilling to be alone in their grief. Outside thunder shattered the sky and lightning flashed, and the downpour of rain mirrored the fall of tears.
“On his way home. Accosted by footpads, it would seem. Bound and robbed.” Lacy spoke the words again, as if the repetition would help to give them sense.
“If his wound was not so great, I cannot see how he died,” Kate sobbed.
“With the struggling, they said,” replied Mohun, his face gray. “So that he bled to death.”
Nell thought of Lacy’s warning to Wat about showing his money so carelessly among strangers, and wished she could go back and make him heed. What a senseless loss, to die over a few pounds. Was that the price of a life, then?
THE RAIN WAS STILL LASHING DOWN WHEN HART AND NELL ARRIVED before the door of her lodgings, but rather than hurry off as he usually did, Hart stood silently, his head bowed. Nell thought again of Wat’s great bulk struggling against his bonds and him dying alone and helpless in a ditch.
“A mighty heart he had,” Hart said, and he began to weep, great wrenching sobs. Nell pulled him to her, murmuring love and comfort against his chest, noting how slender he felt in her arms. In all the times he had walked her home that summer, he had never tried to bed her, never asked to come in, never asked her into his lodgings in Henrietta Street nearby, and she had been afraid to wonder about the reasons or to tell him how she felt about him. But tonight was different.
“My Hart,” she said. “My heart. Come.”
IT WAS COLD IN NELL’S ROOM, AND BED WAS THE ONLY PLACE TO KEEP warm. Hart stood in his shirt and breeches, the moonlight falling silvery across his pale skin. Nell went to him. She had been with so many men, but tonight all felt new. He kissed her softly, and unfastened her bodice and skirt. They fell to the floor in a soft pool around her feet. His eyes on hers, he lifted her shift and pulled it off, then kissed her again, and his hands were warm and gentle on her skin as he drew her with him into bed, his dark hair falling over her face as he kissed her throat.
Despite how she had burned for him, she felt shy. But under his touch, she caught fire. She had never been with a man who cared for her pleasure as well as his own. For all the countless men who had spent inside her, she had never come off herself. But tonight she did, her heart and soul seeming to coalesce in a molten pool in the pit of her belly.
After, Hart held her. His tears had stopped and soon his breathing told her he was asleep. Wat’s face came again into Nell’s mind. But despite the horror of his death, with her head upon Hart’s chest and his arms encircling her, Nell felt safe as she had never felt before.
THE SHOW WENT ON THE NEXT DAY, AS IT MUST IF THE PLAYHOUSE was to survive. One of Clun’s murderers had been apprehended, an Irishman who refused to give up the names of his accomplices. But the news was little comfort. Wat was gone, and his absence seemed to echo throughout the playhouse.
“He was going to teach me,” Nell said to Hart, watching over his shoulder in the mirror as he wiped the makeup from his face.
John Lacy was nearby, brushing the lint from his coat. “If Wat was going to teach you, then we shall have to do it instead, eh, Charlie?”
“Certainly,” said Hart. “And if you work hard, I’ll put you on in Thomaso. It’s a comedy of Killigrew’s, in two parts. There’s just the role for you, a saucy young doxy. Just a few scenes, so you can get your feet wet.”
“I cannot read,” Nell blurted, ashamed.
“No more did I think you could,” Hart said. “I’ll read your words to you, and you can learn them by repeating them back until you have them down. And for the rest”—he waved his arm to indicate all else that his twenty years upon the stage had taught him—“Lacy and I can teach you.”
“ ‘’ TIS THE HUMOR OF MOST MEN, THEY LOVE DIFFICULTY AND RICHES. Slight them, they are yours forever,’ ” Nell recited.
“Again,” said Hart. “From the gut, and think of your voice bouncing off the back wall of the theater. Remember what a racket you’re fighting against onstage. Just use your orange-selling voice.” That helped, and Nell was proud to get Hart’s smile of approval when she repeated the line.
She ran through her whole first speech again, trying to remember everything at once—to address her lines to the actors onstage and yet keep her face forward so the audience could see her well; to keep her feet planted firm and stand straight; to speak her words clearly and loudly without shouting.
“Good,” said Hart. “Good. You would have done Wat proud.”
NELL WAS NERVOUS ON THE MORNING OF THE FIRST REHEARSAL FOR Thomaso. The stage door keeper, Eddie Gibbs, greeted her as usual, but today she felt different. Today she was entering the playhouse as an actress. She paused a moment outside the greenroom door, her heart pumping in her throat. Much of the cast had already assembled around the big table, and Nell felt curious and appraising glances as she entered. Killigrew was using the play as an opportunity to try the talents of several new girls, and among the established members of the company were the newcomers Elizabeth Weaver, Betty Hall, Betsy Knepp, and the sisters Frances and Elizabeth Davenport, eyeing each other and Anne Marshall, who was playing the lead.
Nell smiled at the group, wondering if the new girls all knew that Hart was her lover, and whether they were predisposed to resent her for it, or whether they perhaps regarded her as safely out of the running for the bigger fish they might be angling for. Hester Davenport, formerly of the Duke’s Company, had just given birth to a son by the Earl of Oxford, with whom she was living in luxury as a wife in all but name.
Nell was grateful to see Kate Corey and slipped into the empty seat next to her.
“You’ll be fine,” Kate whispered to her. “And just you stick with me if any of these cats start to hiss.”
Nell looked at the actresses and thought of the girls at Madam Ross’s jealously guarding their regulars. She was glad that Hart had drilled her in her part so well, and that she had repeated the words to herself in bed each night before she fell asleep so that they now came to her without thinking. When it came to rehearsals, she would not have to worry about her lines and would only have to learn her movements.
Killigrew had written Thomaso during the long closure of the theaters, and it had not yet been performed, so everyone was new to their parts. Killigrew read the script aloud to the assembled cast. He took on each of the characters as he read the play, to Nell’s delight
, and she remembered that he had been an actor himself in the old days. Hart had told her that the boy Killigrew had gotten his start in the theater by going on as a little devil at the Red Bull so that he could see the other plays free. As he read the lines of the mountebank Lopus, she thought she could picture him as a mischievous round-faced lad dressed up with tail and horns. The company laughed heartily at his performance, and Nell yearned to begin rehearsals in earnest.
When Killigrew had done reading, the prompter handed around the sides—each actor’s lines and cues, copied from the precious fair copy that would be kept at the theater and turned into a promptbook. Killigrew appointed rehearsal times for the rest of the week, and the work for the day was over.
Nell was to be at the rehearsal the next morning, and she was so elated at being finally counted among the company’s actresses that she didn’t even mind selling oranges during the afternoon’s performance of The General, a tragedy that she found dull. Dorset and Sedley were there, apparently enjoying the play more by making sport of it than by watching it, and she bantered happily with them during the interval.
“What a bacon-faced fool that general is,” Sedley said. “ ‘My rival do but possess her,’ says he. Why, pox, what is there more to be had of a woman than the possessing her?” Though Nell’s interest in Dorset had dimmed to no more than a slight flicker since Hart had become her lover, Sedley’s remark reminded her that she had promised herself not to put herself too much in Dorset’s company, so she gave a fullthroated cry of “Oranges! Fine oranges!” and turned her back on the laughing duo.
WHEN THE DAY OF THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THOMASO CAME, IT seemed very strange to Nell to listen to the buzz and laughter of the audience from the women’s tiring room instead of being in the thick of things with her basket of oranges. But it was a feeling she could happily get used to, she thought. She thanked the tire-woman, Rachel Brown, for lacing her bodice, and checked her reflection in the mirror. She loved the gold-colored dress that she wore as Paulina, and turned this way and that to admire it. Its skirt fell in heavy folds, and she felt like she stood in the center of some great blooming flower.
“Here, a little more red to your cheeks,” Kate Corey said, helping her. “Just so. Now don’t forget to piss afore you go on. That was the mistake I made the first day I went onstage. Oliver’s skull is right back there.”
“Oliver’s skull?”
Kate indicated the chamber pot tucked behind a screen, and Nell giggled in delight at the thought that Cromwell’s hated name had come to mean a lowly pisspot.
Nell’s first scene was the second scene of the play, and when she and Betty Hall made their entrance as the courtesans Paulina and Saretta, in their wildly colorful gowns and accoutrements, she was electrified by the feeling of all eyes turned upon her.
“ ‘Would the army were drawn into garrison,’” Betty lamented. “ ‘I long for some fresh lovers to dress our house.’ ”
Their wry bantering commentary on the foibles of men was well calculated to get the crowd in a laughing mood at the start of the play, and by a few lines into the scene, describing ladies whose beauty was made up of cosmetics and accessories, Nell could feel that the audience was primed and with her.
“ ‘Death,’ ” she trilled. “ ‘They’ll make love to petticoats! One that never goes to bed all, nor sleeps in a whole skin, one whose teeth, eyes, and hair rest all night in a box, and her chamber lies strewed with her loose members, high shoes, false back and breasts, while he hugs a dismembered carcass!’ ” The audience howled, and Nell felt the scene was over entirely too soon.
She thrilled as she took her bow before the packed house and to the applause that continued to resound as she left the stage. Lacy swept her into a bear hug and kissed her on both cheeks.
“Look at her glow,” he laughed, turning to Hart and Mick Mohun. “Ready for more already, she is.”
“And so she should be,” Mohun agreed. “Well done, Nell.”
She blushed happily at the praise as Hart swept her off her feet.
“You were the best of the new girls,” he said, kissing her before setting her down. “No question. You’ve got true presence and a great gift for comedy. And Killigrew’s agreed—we’ll put you on in The Siege of Urbin next. You’ll have four or five quite nice little comic scenes that will let you stretch your wings a bit.”
“I’M REALLY TO WEAR THESE, AM I?” NELL ASKED HART, HOLDING UP the breeches that were part of her costume as Malina, a girl who disguises herself as a boy.
“You are. And I don’t know whether I’ll be more proud that those sleek little legs of yours are mine to touch, or ready to kill anyone for looking at them.”
Nell loved playing in The Siege of Urbin even more than she liked Thomaso. She had the second-largest female role, after Anne Marshall as Celestina, and their first scene opened the play. Later, disguised as a young man, she flirted outrageously with Betty Davenport as Clara, and her terrified reaction when Hart as the Duke drew his sword against her always got shouts of laughter.
Nell also relished the opportunity to work with Michael Mohun and Nicholas Burt, always learning as she watched and played with them, and grateful for their compliments and words of advice.
Looking over at Hart at supper one evening after the play, she laughed to remember how she had been jealous of him and Anne Marshall. She adored him with her soul, and he had never given her a moment’s reason to think that he did not feel the same.
THE END OF THE YEAR WAS ALMOST COME, AND SOON IT WOULD BE 1665. Nell and Hart had stayed up late and come to Tower Hill to get a good view of the comet that had illuminated the sky for several nights. They stood together in the dark, looking heavenward. There was a chill wind biting, and clouds scudded across the icy face of the moon, waxing toward fullness.
“There!” Hart cried.
“Oh!” Nell sighed. “Magnificent.”
The comet shone bright, trailing a sparkle of stars in its wake. It must be a harbinger of glorious things to come, Nell thought. This year had been one of supreme happiness, and the coming year promised more joy, with Hart at her side and her first leading role.
“When will the comet come again?” she whispered.
“Not until you and I are long gone from this earth, sweeting,” Hart said into her ear, holding her close. “So look well upon it, that we may always hold this moment in our hearts.”
NELL WAS SO CAUGHT UP IN THE EXCITEMENT OF THE PLAYHOUSE that she cared little for what was happening in the world beyond. But it was becoming impossible to ignore the talk of war with the Dutch that was looming on the horizon. Many of the scenekeepers at the playhouse were sailors, like Dicky One-Shank, and Nell found a knot of them gathered in angry discussion outside the stage door one morning.
“What’s happened?” she asked Dicky.
“The press-gangs are out,” he said, “and they’ve taken up Bill Edwards and John Gilbert.”
“Press-gangs?” Nell asked, looking in confusion at the agitated faces around her “What’s that?” A babble of voices broke out in explanation.
“The king is readying for war, and needs sailors to build up the navy,” said Matt Kempton, a young red-headed giant. “And if he cannot get enough sailors who are willing, he gets them any way he can. The press-gangs pluck men off the street and press them into service, whether they will or no.”
“But that’s terrible!” Nell said. “Is there nothing to be done?”
“Nothing, once they’ve been taken off by force,” Dicky said. “The only thing is to avoid capture in the first place.”
JOHN DRYDEN’S NEW PLAY, THE INDIAN EMPEROR, WAS A GRAND TRAGEDY in verse. The part of Cydaria, a noble lady, was far more challenging than Nell’s first two roles, and she needed much training before she would be ready. Lacy was undertaking her lessons in carriage and movement.
“Slow down,” he exhorted her. “Cydaria has no need to hurry and bustle like that. And don’t fidget and shift when you’re not speaking. Stand
straight and proud. Stillness draws more eyes and lends more regal grace than any movement.”
And though she would not dance in this play, Lacy was looking further ahead.
“You’ll need the dancing soon enough. And when you do, you’ll not want to have it all to learn on top of your words and everything else.”
So he worked with her daily, teaching her court dances, from the stately pavane to the lively galliard and coranto. Nell was surprised at the delicacy and liveliness with which he moved.
“You have to think yourself light,” he explained. “Picture yourself like a puppet, your head suspended by a thread dropping down from heaven. That’s it. You’ve got it now.”
Nell had far more lines than she’d had in her previous parts. Hart read them to her and she repeated them back until she had them pat. He was astonished at how quickly she learned the words. She heeded his advice and repeated them over to herself whenever she could.
“You’ll need that discipline,” Hart said. “You may need to keep a score of parts in your head so that you can perform with not much more than a run-through.”
“A score of parts?” Nell asked, horrified.
“Easily, if you do well. I know forty or more.”
REMEMBERING THE WORDS WAS ONE THING. UNDERSTANDING THEM was quite another. With a frequency she found embarrassing, Nell had to ask Hart to explain the meaning of a word or a whole string of words—each of which she understood on its own, but which when put together seemed incomprehensible.
“What does it mean, ‘My feeble hopes in her deserts are lost?’”
The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and King Charles II Page 12