“Oh, Mrs. Palmer,” I scoffed. I’d often seen the king and his favorite mistress together. I’d grant that she was as beautiful as everyone said, dressed and bejeweled as richly as any true queen, but she’d also seemed to me to be haughty and shrewish, and unworthy of so glorious a lover. “I’ve heard the king’s lost all interest in her since she’s swelled with his bastard.”
“Mrs. Palmer’s my cousin,” Rochester said, “and I assure you, her grasp of the royal cods has never been tighter.”
I made a small snort of dismissal. The king was laughing with Mrs. Ross now, while the house’s three prettiest girls were blushing before him, as giddy as if they were rank virgins still. “His Majesty deserves better. Besides, Mrs. Palmer’s old.”
“She’s only twenty-one,” he said beside me, “and she’s still the fairest woman in London, as well as the most wanton. Anyone with a mind to see the king does well to see my cousin Barbara first. Faith help me, he’s looking this way!”
The earl dropped back down behind the others and into his chair, and to my surprise grabbed me with him. He pulled me onto his lap, his arm tight around my waist.
“What in blazes are you doing?” I demanded, shoving hard against his chest. Earl or no, I’d box his ears for him for his trouble, and he wouldn’t be the first, nor the last. “Let me go!”
“Stay, stay, I beg you, for a moment,” he said, drawing me closer. “I’m supposed to be at Oxford, and the king will have my head if he finds me here. Come now, lass, help me hide in plain sight!”
Before I could answer, he’d pushed me back into the crook of his arm and was kissing me hard, and no amount of scuffling would make him stop. I’ll grant he kissed better than most whelps his age, but I was in no humor for it, and the first moment I felt him relax, I jerked my mouth free of his.
“You base rogue!” I gasped, pulling my hand free to strike him. “I told you I’m no whore!”
He grabbed my hand and held it, while other men around us laughed and called encouragement to him. His face was flushed, I suppose from kissing me, but his gaze seemed strangely old for his age, as if he’d already seen too much of the world.
“I did not kiss you as a whore, pet,” he said, “but as a friend. You saved me before the king, and I thank you for it.”
“Bah, why should the king care what you do?” I said, and spat on the floor, to show both my contempt for him and to cast away any remainder of his kiss from my lips. “What could you be to him?”
“My father was his last guide from England,” he said softly, “and at the peril of his own freedom and life, led Charles from Cromwell’s men to exile. When my father died, Charles declared himself my guardian, rather like a favorite uncle.”
The earl’s sudden solemnity intrigued me, making me forget my rage, even as I still sat perched upon his thighs. I didn’t doubt his story was true. My own father had likewise been killed in the old king’s service, and besides, Rochester had no reason to lie to me. “If you are so dear to him, then why do you avoid his company? ”
“Because I’d no wish to disappoint him, or risk losing his favor,” he said, and smiled wryly. “I cannot give him any excuse not to call me to court. That’s where my future will lie, in the brightest eye of the world, and not among dry old dons and pederasts. For the king to see me here, tending to my pleasures instead of my studies—that would not do. That wouldn’t do at all.”
“I wish he’d seen me, milord!”
He frowned, turning his head a fraction to look at me askance. “What, you wish you’d been one of those giggling jades he hauled up the stairs?”
I shook my head, determined to make him understand. “My fate will be grander than that. You’ll see. I won’t be here forever. I’ll have a future for myself what’s every bit as bright as yours.”
His smile was indulgent yet skeptical. “A miss with ambition!”
“Aye, and where’s the sin in that?” I demanded. “I can sing and dance and recite by rote any piece you please. And everyone says I’m more than passing fair.”
“That you are,” he said, and as if to prove my words, his hand slid from my waist to cover the budding swell of my breast.
Impatiently I shoved his hand away. “I told you, I’ll not be a common whore, rucking up my skirts against a wall in Covent Garden.”
He laughed, as if he’d been expecting me to rebuff him anyway. “There’s no use saving yourself for His Majesty,” he said, not unkindly. “He’s no taste for virgin flesh, you know.”
“Did ever I say I was?” I asked, though of course that very desire had long been in my heart. “I mean to make all London speak of me, and rise as high as I can in this world. Then the king will seek my company, and the rest of the court besides.”
The earl leaned his face closer to mine, so close his long curls did mingle with my own. “Then let me confide the first lesson of the court, my sweet Nell. If you truly wish to rise to such heights, you must take care to please and favor those who hold the rungs steady beneath your feet as you climb.”
I narrowed my eyes and lightly tapped my forefinger twice across his lips. “I am sorry, milord, but I must disobey your lesson, just as you have disobeyed your tutors. For I mean to continue as I’ve already begun, and please only myself—me, Nelly Gwyn!—and not give so much as a kiss your hand for the rest.”
“Kiss your hand, you say.” He gave an odd little smile, one I’d come to know better in time. “Ah, Nell, in truth, then, there’s little left for me to teach you. You’ve already learned the hardest lesson, haven’t you? If you can but please yourself as you say, then fame shall always be your willing subject, and the court your servant.”
“And so long as you make pretty speeches like that one, milord,” I said, kissing his cheek, “then I vow you’ll find fat success at court, too.”
He laughed at that, and I with him, a careless scrap of wit between us and no more. Why should it be any more? We were much alike, despite the difference in our rank and place, and of the age for such foolishness. The Earl of Rochester was but fourteen, and I scarce more than eleven.
Yet before the year was done, we’d each of us learn that fame came always linked to peril, and bright fortune twined with danger, and as for the true cost of being a favorite of the King of England—ahh, we each learned that lesson soon enough, too.
And so, my friend, shall you . . .
Chapter Two
WESTMINSTER, LONDON August 1662
“I’ll wait here all day if I must,” I declared, leaning over the railing as far as I dared, my bare feet tucked firmly against the sun-warmed wooden slats. “But I’m not leaving until I see the king.”
“Oh, aye, and His Majesty’s perishing to see you, too, Nell.” Beside me, my sister, Rose, rolled her eyes toward the cloudless summer sky. “Besides, we’ll not be going anywhere now, even if you wished it.”
I glanced back over my shoulder at the crush of people pressing behind us. The overlook was packed so close that not even I, slight as I was, could have slipped a path through the crowd back to the street.
I turned back toward the Thames, a far more pleasing prospect. Rose and I had been standing here long before daylight; just south of Westminster, across from Lambeth, yet not so far from the Whitehall stairs that led to the palace. As far as I could see, every window and door that overlooked the river was filled with jostling well-wishers, and even London Bridge in the distance was thick with them. Bright banners and flags fluttered in the breeze, and men and women alike wore ribbons, cockades in their hats, and flowers in their hair, in honor of the king and queen.
Below us, hundreds of vessels clogged the river itself, from the most humble boatman’s skiff to the elegant yachts of great noblemen, and all pressed so close together that a bold rogue could likely hop from one to the other without risking a single dampening drop. Only the narrowest channel had been left clear for the decorated barges slowly to pass, part of the floating pageant that would end with the royal barge. Tr
uly, it seemed that every last soul in London had come out to catch a glimpse of the king’s new bride queen, Catherine of Braganza, and to wish her royal joy.
Everyone, that is, excepting me. I wished no joy at all to that Portugee breeding cow, and I didn’t care who knew it.
“The king’ll see me, Rose,” I declared, “just the same as I’ll see him, even if I must hang by my heels from this very rail to steal his eye away from the queen.”
The circle of men around us—for of course there was a circle of men around Rose and me, there seldom being a time when there wasn’t—clapped their hands and guffawed loudly. Their humor was jubilant, for the taverns had stayed open all the night before. A good many of the men were old friends from Mrs. Ross’s house, and they knew I was always true to my word.
“Hah, that’s a sight I’d pay dear to see, Nelly Gwyn,” shouted one of them. “You hanging topsy-turvy over this rail, with your petticoats turned over your face.”
I placed my hand on the crown of my flat straw hat to keep it from sliding backward, and craned my neck to see which rascal had spoken so, determined to call him out.
“Is that you, Tom Crum, speaking such to me?” I asked, raising my voice so all could hear me over the din of so many boisterous drunkards. “Show yourself, you dog! Does your good wife know you’re keeping such low company as this? ”
“I’ll lift you high on my shoulders, Nelly,” offered another man, jostling forward and doffing his tattered felt hat to me. “So’s you can spy the king proper.”
“Oh, aye, Jemmy Brown, you mean so you can see what you’re craving with your long nose up my skirts!” Laughing, I shoved him hard away with both my palms flat upon his chest, and he toppled backward among his cronies like a new-felled sapling.
I turned back to my sister and leaned my elbows again on the rail.
“No wonder the king’s taking his leisure this morn,” I scoffed, “with only this silly bunch of sots to welcome him.”
Rose looked toward the heavens, as if I were beyond bearing for the simple sin of being twelve, whilst she was fifteen. “I wouldn’t be acting so common yourself, Nell, not if you’ve still an eye for a fine gentleman like Mr. Duncan.”
“Oh, Mr. Duncan likes me exactly as I am, Rose,” I said with confidence. “He wouldn’t keep coming to Mrs. Ross’s if he didn’t.”
“He won’t if you don’t offer him something in return soon.” My sister nodded sagely and smoothed the scarlet silk kerchief tied round her shoulders, as if to remind me yet again of how generous her last gentleman had been to her. “If you don’t, there’s plenty of other pretty jades who will.”
I turned back toward the river, hiding my face behind the broad brim of my hat. I didn’t wish to quarrel about Mr. Duncan with Rose; in truth I didn’t even want to think of him, not today. It wasn’t that I disliked him, because I didn’t. I liked him fine. This Mr. Duncan was a merchant from the City, a draper like his father and his grandfather and a score of other Duncans before him. That didn’t quite make him the gentleman that Rose had said (already I’d learned those fine distinctions of rank), but he was a good sight better than the highwaymen and cutpurses that she often counted among her custom. Ten years my senior, Mr. Duncan was pink faced and round cheeked and shy as a country dairymaid, and whenever I perched upon his knee at Mrs. Ross’s, he whined so piteously about the unfairness of his father and the demands of his lot that he seemed even younger than I.
Yet Mr. Duncan was kind, and he’d been most generous to me; the sweet pink ribbons that laced my hat today had come from his shop. I knew I could do far, far worse than a rich draper from the City, and besides, I was equally certain he’d never strike or beat me.
But he’d never be His Majesty, not by half, and today belonged to the king. My king.
“How much longer before the royal barge will come, I wonder? ” I asked impatiently, leaning farther over the rail to gaze past the latest pageant barge before us and down the river. “I’ve seen my fill of this foolishness. How many more shabby sea nymphs and Neptunes with false beards must we bear? ”
“It’s all part of the entertainment devised by the City of London to honor Their Majesties,” Rose said with breezy assurance, enough to drive me to madness. “It’s called the Aqua Triumphalis, the Triumph of the River, and the mayor’s company won’t be hurrying things along just to please you. The pageant must develop in its own course.”
“What a pack of rubbish, Rose.” I was always suspicious of anything that Rose heard and then repeated by rote. “I ask you, when did a poor whore like you begin speaking Romish Latin? ”
“I learned it from those footmen from Whitehall who were with us last night,” she said primly, pleased to have more information than I. “Each of the twelve City companies has sponsored a barge with a different theme, and three pageants at Chelsea and Lambeth and Fox-hall, and two drolls of sailors and watermen who’ll dance and sing, and—”
“And enough, Rose,” I said, clapping my hand firmly over her mouth to stop her spew. “Enough. I’ve had my fill of watching these tawdry barges without having to hear you cry them all like so many cans of milk, and I’ve—”
“The queen comes!” shouted a boy who’d climbed high on a window gable to serve as the lookout for us crowded below. “Her Majesty comes—there!”
We all turned as one, craning our necks to spy the royal barge for ourselves. It was still no more than a bright blur in the distance, but already the cheering began anew like the roar of a great fierce forest beast. My gaze never left the barge as it crept closer, and by the time the blur had sorted itself into figures, my eyes stung from the effort of watching so closely, and my heart thumped painfully in my breast from excitement.
In perfect honesty, I don’t know what I expected of the new queen. I’d never before seen a real one. How could I? There hadn’t been a queen on the throne of England in my lifetime, and more, not since 1644, when Queen Henrietta Marie had fled for France and away from Cromwell’s men.
But whatever I’d imagined, the small figure in the center of the royal barge couldn’t have been anyone’s notion of a proper queen. She sat beneath a canopy to shield her from the worst of the sun while still permitting her new people to gape at her, in a high-backed chair to signify her throne with her ladies sitting on low stools at a respectful distance. Her gown and petticoats were rich, the gold threads glittering in the sunlight, and strands of pearls were draped around her throat and through her hair. But she might have been a graven saint fashioned for Romish worship for all the joy or animation that she showed, her body rigid, her expression fixed, her little hands clutching like claws on the arms of her chair.
“Why, she’s not fair at all,” Rose said beside me, her disappointment clear. “She looks like a doll made of tallow, and a plain one at that.”
“She looks sour tempered, too,” I added. “No bride should look so spleeny.”
“That’s because she was a twenty-four-year-old virgin,” Rose said firmly. “It goes against nature, keeping from a man’s cock like that.”
“That’s because she’s from Portugal,” I sniffed with contempt. I’d expected little from the queen, and thus didn’t share my sister’s disappointment now. No princess could ever be worthy of my splendid king. “Those people don’t place any merit in a woman’s pleasure.”
Rose sniffed. “Mam swears that waiting too long to lie with a man makes a woman shrivel and wizen inside like an old pippin, and barren besides.”
“Not with the king for her husband,” I said with gloom and envy. “No woman would be barren with him; he’s that great a man. Think of all the bastards he’s already sired! Likely he filled her belly on their wedding night. Likely she’s already swelling with a royal brat.”
“Then why the devil’s she look so wretched?” Rose asked. “No, I vow it was her overripe maidenhead what made her so peevish, like milk what turns sour past its time. Mind how you’re almost thirteen, Nell.”
“I mind,” I
said tartly. “But I think it’s more that this queen’s ill-favored by birth.”
Those around us didn’t agree. Instead they roared their welcome, their adoration, their very love, for this stiff little queen, pressing Rose and me closer against the railing, and hurling tribute flowers over our heads toward the water as the barge inched closer.
“Here, now, give us room, give us air,” I ordered crossly, using my elbows and my heels to help plead my case. “We were here first, anyway. Mark her face, Rose, as she comes closer. Her eyes are staring like a dead pig’s. I vow she looks terrified of us. Of us, her people!”
“Why, we English are the bravest and kindest folk under God’s merciful heaven,” Rose said indignantly. “If she’s to be our queen, then why should she be frightened by us? ”
“If I were queen, I should love my people above all things.” I held my head with regal assurance, grandly imagining myself in Queen Catherine’s place. “I’d bless them and cherish them, and grant them every favor it was in my honor to give. What I’d give to have them all gazing at me like this! Why, I’d drink as deep as I could of their cheering and huzzahs, yet never would I be sated.”
Not that Rose cared. “Ooh, Nell, see her slippers, there, peeking out from under her skirts? They must be covered with jewels, to sparkle like that.”
I leaned farther over the rail to look for myself, and as I did, I likewise glimpsed my own little feet. Bare and rough and dirty, they were as unworthy as could be of a queen’s jeweled slippers, and a sobering reminder that I did not want of my own low place in great London.
“The king!” cried the boy from his vantage on the gable. “The king!”
The barge crept along the river and now we could see His Majesty, too, sitting far to one side of the queen to let her have her fair share of attention as a bride, and where he’d been hidden by the canopy from our view. At once we all doffed our hats and bowed or made our curtseys as was respectful and proper, dropping low in ragged unison.
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