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

by Gillian Bagwell

  “WE OUGHT TO USE THIS TIME TO TEACH YOU TO READ,” HART URGED Nell. “It will make learning lines much easier for you.” He wrote the letters of the alphabet out for her and taught her the sounds that each should make. But once they were strung together into words, and the words into lines, and the lines into endless pages, the task of deciphering them seemed overwhelming to Nell.

  “You know this word,” Hart urged, pointing at the page. Nell stared at it. It began with one of the two letters that looked like little fat men, their bellies sticking out before them. But which one was it?

  “Bog?” She looked up to him for confirmation.

  “No! Dog. Dog. You just read that same word up here.” He stabbed his finger at the book. Nell turned away in shame and frustration at the irritation in his voice. He sat down beside her and stroked her head.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to grow impatient with you. Remember—when the little fat man is coming onto the stage from the right, he’s a ‘b.’ And when he’s entering from the left, he’s a ‘d.’”

  “Please can we stop for now?” Nell begged. “The letters just jumble together and make my head hurt something fierce.”

  BY THE END OF SEPTEMBER, IT FINALLY SEEMED THAT THE WORST WAS over, and the King’s Company packed up for the trip back to town. A third of the population of London was dead of the plague.

  THE COACH RUMBLED ALONG THE OXFORD ROAD AND PAST TYBURN Tree, and Nell knew she was almost home. The air was oppressive, the muggy afternoon sky clouded over and brooding. As they turned south toward Drury Lane, there was a searing bolt of lightning, and a clap of thunder exploded overhead, seeming to shake the earth itself. Rose started in shock beside Nell, and then laughed self-consciously. But Nell felt uneasy, too, and sensed from the others who rode with her that she was not alone.

  Nell and Rose had given up their lodgings when they went to Oxford, as had Hart, and Nell realized that she had no home. The thought brought with it a stab of longing, a deeply animal instinct to seek someplace safe to burrow.

  “We’ll go to the Cock and Pie for tonight,” Hart said, watching the downpour. “And then see what’s what.”

  As it happened, they took Nell’s old room. She felt somewhat comforted to be back in the same place, and the familiar cracks in the walls and the dusty bubbled windowpanes seemed like old friends. Worn out from the journey, she climbed into bed and was lulled to sleep by the gentle sound of the rain pattering on the roof.

  IT WAS STILL RAINING WHEN NELL WOKE, AND FROM THE BED SHE could see the gray sky and dark clouds. She looked at Hart beside her and ran her fingers over the scratchy stubble of his cheek. He stirred and pulled her closer to him. Nell felt safe as she always did when next to him, but worries about the future crowded into her mind. They were back in London, but what now? How long would Hart continue to support her? How long could he continue? She thought about the other girls who had been in Killigrew’s company. Where were the Davenport sisters, Franki and Betty? Where were Margaret Rutter and Elizabeth Weaver? Had they found a safe port in the storm, or were they on the streets whoring or begging, or were they dead?

  She thought back to those heady days when she had played in The Indian Emperor, reveling in the excitement of being an actress, glorying at sharing the stage with Hart. It had been too good to be true, that brief glimpse into heaven. Ease and happiness were not to be her lot in life. Why should she be different from Rose, who would like as not have to return to whoring, different from her mother, than any other of the thousands upon thousands of women in London, who had no choice but to earn their bread how they could, like it or not? The world was a hard place, and wishing it to be otherwise was a waste of time.

  Hart stirred, and turned toward Nell with drowsy eyes. He saw the worry in her face and pulled her close.

  “What’s amiss, little one?”

  Nell hesitated. She was afraid. Afraid to be too needy, to burden him with her fears.

  “Hmm?” Hart prompted her, and leaned up on an elbow. She noted the faintest spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose, how his cheeks were bronzed from spending so much time outdoors in Oxford.

  “It’s just—I do not know how I will keep myself if the playhouse is not open. Unless I—” She stopped, unwilling to speak out loud what she still did not know if he knew. Unable to face him, she turned away and hugged her knees to her chest. Hart gently pulled her to face him.

  “You will not have to sell yourself, honey. I have yet some money put by, thank God. Wheresoever I go, you will go, too. If you wish it. You’ll not lack for food or drink or a roof over your head, or shoes for your pretty little feet.”

  Nell burst into tears, angry at herself for the loss of control, for such transparent terror and dependence. But she was grateful. And held tight to Hart.

  THE NEXT DAY, NELL AND ROSE SOUGHT OUT THEIR MOTHER. THE DAY was cold, and Nell pulled her cloak close around her as they neared the Golden Fleece. Only a few tipplers sat within, and Eleanor was nowhere in sight. Nell felt a clutch of fear at her stomach, then saw her mother ascending through the open hatch from the cellar, a keg in her arms.

  “Mam!”

  Eleanor turned at the sound of Nell’s voice. At the sight of her daughters, her face crumpled and she began to weep, slumping to the floor.

  “I thought I’d never see you more.”

  Nell rushed to her mother and buried her face in her skirt. Eleanor’s hands stroked her hair. Five years of buried pain surged to the surface, and Nell sobbed like a small child.

  “We’re back,” Rose said. “We’re all together now.”

  LONDON WAS CHANGED. THE GHOSTS OF THOSE WHO WERE GONE walked the streets, hovered in the shadows, drew breath through the breaths of the living. Nell had gone to buy shoes to replace the pair she had worn since the previous year, now split and ragged. She found a used pair in fine condition at a stall, but the thought struck her that they might have belonged to some girl dead of the plague, and she left without buying them and headed back to Drury Lane.

  The mounds of earth heaped over the graves and plague pits were still raw and grassless. Like new scars, Nell thought, as she hurried by the churchyard of St. Giles. This parish had been one of the hardest hit, and the ground around the church was an ugly welter of trenches and heaps, damp greeny brown stains marring the walls of the church, dirt spilling out through the churchyard fence, as though the dead had been packed in so tightly that the bounds of the churchyard could not hold them, and a hand or knee might burst through the blanket of sod.

  An ancient and evil smell of rot rose from the soil, and Nell pinched her nostrils closed and covered her mouth with her hand as she hurried by. Night was coming on, and she quickened her pace, loath to be out of doors when dark engulfed the remaining light in the autumn sky.

  The weather was growing colder. That was a blessing, as it seemed to lessen the effect of the plague. But Nell dreaded the darkness of winter, when the sun came up late and sank again too soon. Her spirits ebbed with the daylight, and she felt hemmed in and fearful in the gray bleakness. Christmas came, and the New Year. Nell was glad to see the back of 1665. It had begun promisingly enough, to be sure, but it had grown poor and meager soon enough. Surely next year would bring better.

  It began auspiciously. The king and court returned to Hampton Court. It was not London, but it was a step closer. Barbara Palmer had another baby by the king, and it was said the queen was finally with child.

  Then came the news that France had declared war against England. Nell wished that both nations would go to the devil, if their warring delayed the long-awaited opening of the theaters.

  The end of January brought a violent storm. Heavy rain battered the town, and the winds ripped tiles and bricks from their places, toppled chimneys, and wrought destruction among the ships and boats in the river, tearing vessels loose from their moorings and driving them against each other and blowing one ship completely over, so that its keel rose from the water like the fin of a grea
t fish.

  The spirit of the country mirrored the ravages of the storm when word came that the queen had miscarried.

  ON CANDLEMAS, THE SECOND DAY OF FEBRUARY, CAME NELL’S BIRTHDAY, and with it the glad news that the court had returned to London.

  “It won’t be long now before we can open again,” Hart assured her. “I met with Killigrew, Lacy, and Mohun today, and we’ve decided to use this idle time to make some improvements to the playhouse. We’ll widen the stage, add some room for storage. God knows we need it, and we’ll not get such a chance again.”

  Nell finally let herself believe that the theaters would be open again soon when she went with Hart to inspect the progress of the work a couple of weeks later. Everything was in chaos and dirt, but it cheered her mightily, for out of the sawdust and plaster would emerge a bigger and more elegant stage, on which she would soon be acting.

  “Nelly!” The familiar gravelly voice rang out from the stage as Dicky One-Shank stumped toward Nell.

  “Dicky! I’ve thought of you often. How happy I am to see you well!”

  “Aye, I’m aboveground and breathing, and that’s enough in these times, we may say. I’m pleased to see you, pigsnie.” He pinched Nell’s cheek and then turned to Hart. “And right pleased to see you, too, sir, and looking forward to the pleasure of watching you act again.”

  “I’m going to act again, too!” Nell cried. “In The Humorous Lieutenant ! Remember? It played the day this theater opened.”

  “I remember it well.” Dicky nodded. “And it’ll be better than ever with you in it, sweeting.”

  NELL WAS OVERJOYED TO BEGIN REHEARSALS FOR THE HUMOROUS Lieutenant and to be gathered once more at the playhouse with the other members of the company, with work before them.

  “It seems an age since last we were here,” Kate Corey said.

  “It has been an age,” Nell said. “Truly, I never thought I’d play again.”

  “Nor I,” agreed Betsy Knepp.

  “Look how fine all is here now,” Beck Marshall marveled. “I like this bigger stage, and it’s so much better now everything is not all jumbled together in here with us.”

  Sunshine flooded the greenroom, and the other actresses seemed to share Nell’s high spirits. Talk turned to the latest gossip from court.

  “They say Lady Castlemaine’s newest baby looks as much like the king as if he’d spit him out of his mouth,” Betsy said.

  “That’s five babies in five years she’s had,” laughed Kate. “The king’s obviously not put off by a breeding woman.”

  “No,” said Beck. “But he treats her like a mere wife. Visits her before breakfast and then goes off to see the beauteous Frances Stuart, I hear.”

  “And the queen?” Nell asked.

  “Keeps her mouth shut and prays for a baby of her own, I warrant,” Betsy said.

  MAY TWENTY-NINTH, THE KING’S BIRTHDAY AND THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY of his return, was marked as it was each year with a day of public celebration. But that happy day was followed by a tremendous four-day battle at sea with the Dutch. The first wild reports of a great English victory were soon contradicted by the somber news of a terrible defeat, with appalling loss of ships and men. Then came panicked rumors that the French were about to invade England. With no standing army and the navy woefully inadequate to defend against such a breach, hundreds of foot soldiers set sail from Blackwall to join the battle, and the navy began to press men into service once more.

  “It’s not right,” Dicky One-Shank growled. “The press-gangs are seizing men off the streets. Laborers, merchants, artisans, men with no fitness for the sea, shipped against their will. They’ve not even been paid the press money they’re due. How are their families to live?” Nell pitied the poor men and their families, and despaired at the knowledge that the war would further delay the opening of the playhouse.

  Spring turned to high summer. There had been no rain since winter. The unpaved streets cracked and the hot wind threw up choking clouds of dust. Rain barrels and troughs went dry. The marshy slopes of the river turned from mud to baked clay. And as the weather grew hotter, the specter of the plague loomed. Nell knew well that the king would not reopen the theaters now, with the risk of contagion so great, and fought down her rising fears of what would become of her.

  With Lammas Day, July passed into August. The plague had not erupted into the terror that it had been the previous summer, but the threat of it hung in the air.

  The sun was barely up on the morning of Sunday, the second of September, when Nell and Hart were awakened by a clamorous alarm of bells. A knot of people gathered in the street below, fingers pointed east. Hart opened the window.

  “What’s amiss?” he called.

  “A great fire,” a man shouted back. “Near Fish Street.”

  “That’s a long way off,” Hart said, turning back to Nell. “Near two miles. No need to fear, I think.”

  But by late morning, plumes of smoke billowed into the eastern sky and cast a pall over the sun. Nell and Hart went across the road to the theater and found Lacy, Mohun, and others of the company gathered there.

  “It began in a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane,” Lacy said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “Whole streets of houses are gone—three hundred already, they reckon. St. Magnus’s Church has burned, and the flames have spread to houses on the bridge.”

  “Worse than that,” said Killigrew, coming in. “The winds are whipping it on. It’s got to Thames Street.”

  “Christ,” said Hart. “All those warehouses . . .”

  “Standing cheek by jowl, and packed full of pitch, oil, wine, brandy,” Mohun said.

  “Aye,” said Killigrew. “It’s like the fires of hell.”

  Fear clutched at Nell’s heart. What if the theater should burn? What then?

  “What will they do?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “The king has given orders to blow up houses in the fire’s path, to create a break. It’s the only way to hope to stop it leaping from building to building.”

  “And us?”

  “Wait and see,” Killigrew said.

  But by afternoon, the fire was worse. More and more people of the company came to the theater, and all the news was that the fire was burning rapidly westward.

  “Folk who removed their goods this morning in hopes of safety have removed again,” Rose said.

  “They say it was the French that set the fire to burning,” said young Richard Baxter, one of the scenekeepers. “And now they’ve started another, further east.”

  Night came, and from the street Nell could see that the eastern sky burned orange. She and Rose went down to the river and saw a flaming arc of fire a mile long, a vibrant golden corona shading upward into angry red. The whole of the City was engulfed in flames, and smoke clouded the night sky. The river was crowded with every kind of vessel. Boats crammed with people and laden with furniture, chests, barrels, musical instruments, and animals collided with jetsam that floated in the black water. Showers of hot ash and flaming bits of debris rained from the sky, hissing as they hit the river. Even at this distance, Nell could hear the roar and crackle of the fire. The horror of what was happening seemed in odd contrast to the beauty of the summer night, with the moon hanging bright in the balmy sky.

  She tried to tell herself that all would be well, that surely the fire would be stopped before it reached Drury Lane. The magnitude of its destruction was too awful to face, and, exhausted, she went to sleep curled on a pile of cloaks in a corner of the greenroom, comforted by the rise and fall of voices nearby. She woke after a few hours to find the theater was crowded with more people, not only actors and others from the playhouse, but their friends and families with nowhere to go. A sound like thunder reverberated in the distance, followed shortly by a second explosion.

  “What was that?” she asked Hart.

  “They’re blowing up houses in Tower Street.”

  “Tower Street? But that’s east of Pudding Lane. Has
the fire changed course?”

  Hart shook his head. “It’s burning in all directions now. The Duke of York is patrolling the City with guardsmen, trying to keep some kind of order. I’m going out to see if I can get more news or be of any use.” He was buttoning up a buff coat, and the sight of him armoring himself with the thickly padded suede made Nell realize what peril he could be facing.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous.” His face was grim.

  “I care not what happens to me if anything happens to you or to the playhouse,” Nell pleaded. “If there’s aught I can do I must do it.”

  Hart shook his head in exasperation. “Then at least put on some boots and breeches. You’ll go up like a haystack if a cinder lands on your skirts.”

  NELL HURRIED BEHIND HART DOWN THE SOUTHEASTWARD CURVE of Drury Lane and Wych Street, fighting through the heaving crowds that streamed in the opposite direction, carrying with them what they could in carts and barrows and on their backs. Panicked people and animals shrieked, brayed, and shouted as they struggled their way westward.

  The churchyard of St. Clement Danes was mobbed, its portico stacked with barrels and furniture. Hart stopped short as they came abreast of the church, where they had an unobstructed view down Fleet Street. Nell cried out in terror. A wall of flame spread over the eastern horizon as far as she could see, angry tongues lashing the sky. The fire was roaring toward them. A torrent of embers bounced and skipped along the ground like a river of fire. A pigeon shot past, its singed wings working furiously. The street seemed to be seething, and Nell realized with a shudder of revulsion that the movement was hundreds of rats scurrying away from the fire. Hart pulled her flat against a wall to prevent her from being run over by a wagon.