“You need your nourishment for your milk, madam,” she clucked. “He’s got such an appetite, the little lamb.”
Charlie did have an appetite, and though it was unfashionable to do so, Nell nursed him herself rather than giving him over to the care of a wet nurse. She brought the baby along to the playhouse so she could feed him during rehearsals, and Bridget watched over him in the greenroom while she worked. She was determined to make sure he knew he had a mother who loved and cared for him.
THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA PACKED the theater. Nell listened to the buzz of the audience, impatient to make her entrance for the prologue. She knew her costume alone, an outsized cartwheel hat and ridiculously broad belt that mocked the fashions of the French court, would bring down the house. She enjoyed speaking prologues and epilogues more than almost anything else she did onstage. She did not have to put on the character of some dignified and highborn lady, but could be herself, or at least those aspects of herself that audiences most adored and responded to. She was speaking lines written for her, directly to the audience, picking out familiar faces to address. It was during prologues and epilogues that she most truly felt she was loved, and she had missed that love.
At last the musicians stopped, the prompter waved her on, and she entered.
“Nelly!” Cries of her name and cheers rang throughout the house. Yes, she thought, this is where I belong.
The play, pairing Hart and Nell once more, was wildly popular, and the performances stretched into mid-December. Despite her misgivings, Nell was enjoying herself. It felt like she was home again. She bantered backstage with Sam Pepys one afternoon, amused as always by his cheerful humor and lively interest in the life of the playhouse and court.
“The Duke of York simply hates that Mrs. Carwell,” he grinned, using the Anglicized butchery of Louise de Keroualle’s name that had become common.
“Dismal Jimmy?” Nell laughed. “There’s precious little he takes pleasure in.”
“He’ll be a sorry sight at the ball, I’ll warrant,” Pepys chuckled. “Or as it’s to be masked, perhaps he’ll send a servant in his place.”
“What ball?”
“The Christmas ball at court.”
“Oh, of course,” Nell faltered. She felt suddenly sick and wanted only to be alone. She had not been told of any ball, and that meant only one thing. She had not been invited.
On the night of the ball, Nell sat at home with Rose and baby Charlie, listening to the church bells sound the passing hours. The wind whistled, rattling the window casements. The streets outside seemed deserted, and Nell wondered if there was anyone in London who felt as alone as she that night.
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA WAS SUCH A SUCCESS THAT CHARLES ordered a command performance in January. Nell thought how she used to look forward to shows at Whitehall. But her heart was no longer in it, and from her first entrance, the evening confirmed her apprehensions. Her outlandish French costume failed to get the laugh it always did at the playhouse, and even her prologue fell flat.
“This jest was first of the other house’s making,
And, five times tried, has never failed of taking . . .”
But it’s failed this time, and no mistake, she thought as she stamped dejectedly off the stage to change.
The rest of the play went no better. She could not find it in herself to rise to the heights of drama the part required, and felt foolish mouthing Dryden’s bombastic verse.
“. . . As you are noble, sir, protect me then
From the rude outrage of insulting men.”
She noticed Louise giggle and whisper to a neighbor, hiding a smirk behind her fan. Nell had a sudden view of herself as Louise must see her—an upstart oyster wench in tawdry worn-out finery, playing at being a noble lady. A beat too late, she realized that it was her cue and came in with her line just as Hart was going on with his to cover her lapse. She was sure she had never had a more disastrous performance.
A FEW DAYS LATER, NELL SAT AT HOME WITH APHRA. DESPITE THE roaring fire, the parlor was cold, and Nell pulled her shawl tighter about her.
“Truly I don’t know what to do,” she said again.
“If you want my advice, Nell, keep up with your work. Not Conquest or any of these other tragedies—you hate them and they don’t suit you. Get Killigrew to revive All Mistaken. Or let me write something for you. I’d love to, you know.”
Nell turned to Aphra and squeezed her hand. “You’re too good to me.”
“It’s not a question of being good to you. You’re a delight onstage and my treasured friend. It would be a joy to write you a good part.”
Alone in bed that night, Nell thought about what Aphra had said. A return to a favorite part or a new one might be just the thing. But could she go back? In this last show, her fellow players had treated her with deference and even awkwardness. She was no longer the girl she had been when she first stepped onto the stage. Nor was she a lady, and she never would be. What was she then? Neither fish nor foul, she thought. Neither fish nor foul.
Rose was practical as usual.
“What do you want, Nell? To be the king’s wife? Impossible. To go back to the stage? You’re no longer at home there, and in any case you could never earn enough from the playhouse to live as you do now. There is no one else you care for, and if there were, how should it fall out? No man of wealth and position would marry you. And no man of our sort either, now. Could you live above a shop and bed the king’s son down on a pallet? No. So where does that leave you? In the king’s bed. And what did I tell you all those years ago? Get the money first. Always.”
CHARLES WAS COMING TO SUPPER FOR NELL’S TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY and was due at any moment. She surveyed the room with satisfaction. The fire crackled in the big fireplace, and she had had the table moved close to the hearth to counter the drafts. It was draped with a snowy damask cloth, and the pewter and glasses gleamed in the firelight. Candles were expensive, and she had waited until the last minute to have Bridget light them, but now they burned in brackets on the walls and on the table itself. The room looked as elegant as she could make it. And if anything was lacking, well, that was part of the point of the evening.
She heard the rumble of carriage wheels in the street below and checked her reflection in the mirror. She had taken special care over her hair and the application of color on her cheeks and lips. The candlelight gave her skin a warm glow, and she was satisfied that she looked her best.
Charles smiled down at her as he embraced her. “You’re looking very handsome tonight, Mrs. Nelly.” He pulled a small flat package from inside his coat.
“A little something in honor of your birthday. But you may not open it until after supper. And before anything else, I wish to see this son of mine.”
Little Charlie wore a fresh white gown and had fortunately managed not to soil it while waiting to make his appearance. Charles took him from Bridget’s arms, and the baby reached up a small fat hand and tried to grasp Charles’s mustache.
“Pluck thy father by the beard, wilt thou?” he laughed. He hefted the child in his arms. “He’s growing fast.”
AS THEY LINGERED OVER WINE, CHARLES WAS IN A GOOD HUMOR. Nell felt that the time had come to make her request, but she was afraid to ask of him so bluntly what she wanted. She found her opening when he picked up the packet he had brought and placed it before her. She hesitated, and then looked him in the face.
“I am most grateful,” she began.
“You haven’t seen what it is yet,” Charles laughed.
“You’re always generous and thoughtful in your gifts, Your Majesty.”
He glanced at her, surprised at her unaccustomed formality.
“You give me beautiful things, and you provide for me this house to live in, and all that it contains.”
“But?” Charles prompted.
“But I never know when your presents will come. I cannot live on silks and jewels, without I pawn them. Your son must be fed and clothed, a
nd I am in constant doubt and anxiety about money.”
Charles was idly turning his wineglass back and forth, watching the play of the firelight upon it. He looked stern, but he frequently looked so when he was merely thoughtful. Go like the bear to the stake or hang an arse, Nell thought.
“This house is cold and drafty. I’m always in fear that your son will take cold. I do not mean to complain. I am most grateful for your protection and kindness. But I cannot go on as I am.”
A sharp gust of wind rattled the shutters and a cold breath of winter made the fire and candles gutter. Nell lifted her head to look at Charles, and his eyes met hers.
“I am your whore, Your Majesty. And whores must be paid.”
Charles looked at her in astonishment for a second, and then broke into hearty laughter.
“’Od’s fish! And so you shall be paid, sweetheart. You’re right. My son must be well cared for, and you must live in comfort. You don’t ask for much, God knows. You shall have a regular allowance. Four thousand pounds a year, let us say. And a better house.”
Nell hardly dared ask, but, flush with her success so far, ventured on.
“Oh, Charles, I know the perfect house. Just down Pall Mall, with a great garden at the back, that abuts the park.”
Charles laughed again and came around the table to take Nell into his arms.
“Very well,” he said. “It shall be so. And now, won’t you open your birthday present?”
Nell did, and it took her breath away—a heavy rope of shimmering pearls. She was even more stunned when Buckingham told her the next day that Charles had paid four thousand pounds for them, and she knew she would never have had the courage to ask for a house if she had known what an extravagant treasure lay in the little packet.
THE HOUSE WAS A WONDER. ALL THE MORNING NELL HAD KEPT WALKING from one room to another, scarcely able to believe that it was hers for life, as Charles had said. It sat smugly on the west end of Pall Mall, its brick façade rising tall and proud three stories above the street. And seventeen fireplaces! She would no longer have to worry about little Charlie catching cold or bundle herself against the winter drafts.
She went again to the window of her bedroom and marveled at the view—St. James’s Park, the palace, the river. The garden was filled with fruit trees, barren now, but before long they would be laden with blossoms, sweetening the house with their scent.
“WHY,” CHARLES RAGED, “MUST MY BROTHER BE THE GREATEST blockhead in England?” Nell, weary of the tirade, which had broken out at intervals throughout the week, varied only by the pitch of the king’s irritation, could only shake her head.
The Duke of York’s wife, Anne, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, had died suddenly. Though outwardly the court was hushed in seemly mourning, behind closed doors there was urgent whispered speculation about who the duke would marry.
“It’s the perfect chance to counter the people’s fear of his being a Papist,” Charles continued. “Every Protestant lady in England is making sheep’s eyes at him, and he has no thought beyond that squinting, pale-faced trollop Catherine Sedley!”
Nell winced at the cruelty of the comment. The duke’s mistress, Charles Sedley’s sixteen-year-old daughter, was not a beauty, but Nell could not help remembering her as the shy little girl who had visited the house in Epsom one afternoon during her riotous summer there with the two Charlies.
“I swear by my soul,” Charles ranted, “his mistresses are so plain, I vow his confessors must give them to him as penance.”
“He could not marry Catherine Sedley, I suppose?” Nell asked.
“No!” Charles shouted. “He must marry well. A lady of unquestionable virtue and most certainly not a Roman Catholic. Someone who could be queen if—” He faltered to a stop, his face red, and Nell saw the despair and sadness behind the anger. “Someone who could be queen if he is king. For it may come to that in the end.”
SHORTLY AFTER THE DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF YORK, BUCKINGHAM’S mistress Anna Maria gave birth to his child, and the king stood as godfather as the baby was christened in Westminster Abbey. Despite the child’s bastardy, Buckingham bestowed on him one of his own hereditary titles, Earl of Coventry. Nell wondered if Monmouth believed a precedent had been set.
At the reception following the christening, Nell thought she had never seen Buckingham so happy, and Anna Maria glowed as she hovered over the tiny earl in his gilded cradle. Nell congratulated them sincerely, and resolved that if Anna Maria could accept that Buckingham had a wife, and yet live contentedly with him, she would make her mind up to be as happy with Charles and to put away her fears and discontents.
BY MAY NELL’S GARDEN WAS ADRIFT IN CLOUDS OF WHITE AND PINK blossoms, and from her bedroom windows she could see signs of spring—nesting sparrows, flowers sprouting in the green grass of the park, the bright flash of butterflies’ wings. She felt a quickening of life within her, too, and knew that she was with child again.
Charles was jubilant at the news. Nell felt a twinge of sadness that as much as he adored his children, it was becoming apparent that the next king would be no son of his. It had been a year and a half since the queen had miscarried for the fourth time. She was now thirty-two, and there had been no word or even rumor of another pregnancy. Nell’s new baby would be Charles’s eleventh child, but none were legitimate, and Nell sensed his growing worry that his brother might succeed him, and what it would mean to the country.
THE TERRACE AT THE BACK OF NELL’S GARDEN OVERLOOKED ST. JAMES’S Park, and she could see Charles approaching, in conversation with a dour figure in black. John Evelyn, Charles’s fellow enthusiast in scientific inquiry, always radiated disapproval, no matter how pleasant Nell tried to be to him. He bowed stiffly as the king stopped at the foot of the garden wall.
“Will you come to supper tonight?” Nell asked.
“I will,” Charles said. “Kiss Charlie for me and tell him his da will see him soon. It’s been too many days since I’ve held my bonny boy.”
“And too many days since you’ve held his bonny mother,” Nell teased.
“I’ll soon put that right.” Nell leaned over the wall to receive a kiss from Charles. Evelyn looked pained.
“’Fore God, you’re positively glowing,” Charles said, stepping back to look at her. “I think I’ll have Lely paint you, so I can admire you even when you’re not with me.”
Nell watched Charles and Evelyn walk on and realized that they were headed for Barbara Palmer’s house. But that put no fear into her now. Charles had told her, almost with relief, she thought, that Barbara was now Dryden’s mistress. Bound perhaps by their long history or their children, Charles and Barbara had settled into an amicable truce, but the fire of passion had burned out.
NELL LOUNGED AGAINST A PILE OF PILLOWS, NAKED BUT FOR A GOSSAMER piece of white silk draped across her lap and her hair flowing over her shoulders. She had been sitting so for an hour, and could not stop herself from moving her head to release the tension. Sir Peter Lely looked up from his canvas.
“Not much longer today. It’s coming splendidly.”
“I should hope so. Why, Charles!”
Lely stood and bowed as the king entered and advanced, grinning, to examine the canvas and then the original posed before him.
“Gorgeous. Both of them.”
Nell laughed. She didn’t know whether Charles meant both her and the portrait, or both of her breasts, grown fuller and rounder in her pregnancy, but she was happy all the same. Charles tossed his hat onto a table, helped himself to a glass of wine, and straddled a stool.
“Where’s the little one?” he wanted to know. Charlie was to be in the painting, as a little cherub.
“We do not need him today, Your Majesty,” said Lely. “When I have Mrs. Nelly well set, then I will paint him in. Too tiring for a baby to sit still for so long.”
“And for me!” Nell said.
“Here,” said Charles. “Revive your flagging spirits.” He squatted and tilted his winegl
ass to her lips. A drop splashed onto her nipple, and he put his mouth to her breast and sucked it clean.
“I think I’ll hang the picture in the Banqueting House,” he said. “So it will be the first thing that foreign ambassadors see when they present themselves.”
Nell giggled. “So you’d share me with them, then?”
“Share, no. Let them have a peek, so they can envy what I’ve got, yes.”
IN AUGUST, BUCKINGHAM AND ANNA MARIA’S LITTLE SON DIED SUDDENLY. Under her veil, Anna Maria’s face was a mask of devastation, and Buckingham’s pallor stood out from his clothes of solid black. The little earl was laid to rest in the Villiers family vault in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey, as the stones echoed with Anna Maria’s sobs. Nell ached for her and longed to get home to hold little Charlie in her arms and know that he was safe. She would not survive such a loss, she thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHARLES LOVED HIS SOJOURNS TO NEWMARKET, WHICH HAD become regular excursions each spring and fall, and Nell loved to be with him there. He was so much more relaxed than in town. He lived for the races, and went early each morning to consult with his trainers and jockeys about how his beloved horses were coming on and to be sure that the great sleek animals were being fed their particular mix of soaked bread and eggs. During the day he delighted in strolling the town, chatting to whoever approached him, jesting with blacksmiths and dairymaids as easily as he did with dukes and earls.
The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and King Charles II Page 24