The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  And also like my mother, whatever beauty she may once have possessed had long ago fled her weathered cheeks. But unlike my poor mother, Mrs. Meggs’s face had sharpened with age, her gaze so keen beneath her ruffled white cap that I felt it rake over me with the same unwavering appraisal with which she was judging the fruit in her hand.

  “G’day, Mrs. Meggs,” I began. “My name’s Nelly Gwyn, and Master Killigrew said I—”

  “Oh, I know who you are, girl, an’ what you’re about.” She tipped her head back, her mouth slightly ajar, the strings of her cap dangling down over her wattles, and all the better to look down her nose at me. “You’re Helena Gwyn’s youngest brat, an’ you’re here because you want a place with me. With me.”

  “Aye, I do.” I squared my hands at my waist, unwilling to let myself be daunted by her. “And you’ll want me, too, if you know your trade.”

  “Will I, now?” She frowned, skeptical. “And why’s that? You’re fair enough to please the gentlemen, aye, but the baskets are heavy, an’ you’re a little scrap o’ a thing.”

  “If you know my mam,” I countered, “then you know I couldn’t’ve lived so long as I have if I weren’t strong as a she-ox, no matter what my size.”

  She sniffed, not believing. “You’ve spent the last year in keeping. Don’t tell me you haven’t, because everyone knows it. Once a girl’s got the taste for that sort o’ easy life, she won’t give it up easy. I can’t have you sniffing about for your next berth while you’re working for me.”

  “That’s why I want this place,” I said, hoping blunt honesty would serve me best. “So’s I won’t have to lie with a man for coin again unless I wish it.”

  “Hah, My Lady High an’ Mighty, are we?” She cackled with amusement that I didn’t share. “Too fine to ask a man to pay, are we? ”

  “I’m not shamed by what I’ve done,” I said firmly, for this, too, was the truth, “and I’ll not swear that I won’t do it again. But I won’t be common about it or myself, and the man must be to my liking. Which is why I want an honest place like this, and the wages with it.”

  “May God deliver me from overnice whores!” She cast her gaze up toward the stairs slanting over her head, then lowered it back at me, with such fearful menace in her eyes that I felt sure she’d next hurl the lemon in her hand at me. “Mark what I say, Nell Gwyn. I’ve worked hard to get the license to sell goods in this playhouse, an’ I won’t have any plump little squabs like you poking your fingers into my plum, trying to spoil everything with your nicety. No whoring unless it pleases you—hah!”

  She tossed the lemon into the first basket and began briskly sorting again, concentrating on the fruit instead of me. “My girls work six days a week. I decide if you stay, an’ I turn you out if you don’t suit. You’re to be here at the playhouse when the doors open at noon, an’ stay until the stage is empty at evening, else I’ll turn you out. You sell what I give you—oranges, lemons, sweetmeats, nuts—an’ not so much as a single, stinkin’ pea from outside, either, else I’ll turn you out for trying to cheat me. I’ll give you a basket to deck with vines or ribbons as you please, an’ I ’spect you to carry it smart on your arm. No dragging it about behind you like a dray horse. We work every day the playhouse is open, meaning you’ll work six days, with your Sabbath free. I don’t pay wages, but on Saturday, the last day o’ the week, I’ll pay out to you one-sixth o’ what you take. Fair is fair.”

  I nodded, though it didn’t seem fair at all. That I’d labor for her for five days, and only for myself on one! But to find my way into the playhouse, to see and hear the plays and players, and the fine folk and even the king himself in the boxes—that would make it worth those five days’ toil for Mrs. Meggs.

  But still she wasn’t done. “You must always be as merry as can be, with a cheery smile for all, no matter what manner of rascals or rogues or dirty apprentices they may be. An’ if you decide to go back to whoring, an’ you take any o’ these brave fellows outside to the alley to tickle his cods and give a quick bob for a coin or two, then you’re to give me half o’ what you take. I’ll hear of it if you don’t, an’ turn you out for a cheat.”

  And that, finally, was beyond my bearing.

  “So everything that I might do to better myself is a cheat to you,” I said tartly, my temper beginning to bubble and steam. “And everything that you might do against me is fair play?”

  She nodded, still not bothering to lift her gaze away from her fruit sorting. “Aye, that’s the measure of it. To my girls, I’m the lord an’ master an’ magistrate, too. An’ if you can’t abide by my laws, then I’ll be taking those clothes back.”

  I stepped closer, born to danger by my fury. “What if Master Killigrew were to invite me to join his players, and become one of them on the stage?”

  She snorted like a cornered sow. “No orange girl’s ever become a player, nor is one like to, either.”

  “Mark you, I’ll be the first,” I declared with ringing confidence in myself, and why shouldn’t I?

  “You a player?” she scoffed with disdain. “Master Killigrew takes all his actresses from fallen gentry, not street leavings like you. You’re more like to jump to the moon than up to them boards.”

  I raised my chin a fraction higher, and in my mind I added her to that ever-growing parcel of doubting Thomases that I meant to disprove. “Then what if I were to sell one o’ your scurvy oranges to some rich gentleman, and he was so grateful and pleased that he took me away, and into keeping again? ”

  “Rich or poor, if he first spied you when you was working for me, then I’ll be taking my share o’ what that rich fellow gives you.”

  “What if he was some great lord?” I demanded warmly. “An earl, or a duke? ”

  “All men’s cocks are the same once they drop their breeches,” she said with bawdy house logic. “I’d still come claim my share.”

  “Even from His Majesty?” I asked, my voice rising higher as my passions held sway over my senses. “What if I tossed an orange to the king, and he liked me, and—and set me in the very palace in place o’ Castlemaine? Would you come thumping on the door of the front door of Whitehall itself, demanding your blessed share? ”

  She straightened, the better to look down on me, and then laughed aloud. “Nell Gwyn, if you can con so slippery a rascal as His Majesty, why, then I shall be the first to cheer for you, and call you the boldest little slut I’ve ever seen.”

  I laughed with her, too, in spite of my anger. But while she laughed at me and my audacity, I in turn was laughing at her, imagining with pleasing detail how I could do my best to make her words true, and a righteous dish for her to eat. Though I’d bartered my maidenhead to Mr. Duncan, my heart was still my own to offer, and I’d yet to find any other man more handsome, more gallant, more worthy, than the King of England himself.

  I was likewise still young enough to believe in such fancies. While my time in keeping had not made me any taller (hah, if only so much time upon my back would accomplish that!), my womanly beauty had blossomed into full flower, fair enough to catch and beguile any man’s eye. I was certain that my face and form, combined with my wit, would soon be enough to carry me from the pit to the stage itself, and even higher after that. Every common tattler knew that the king’s devotion to the theatre was grounded upon the pretty women he found there, and just as widely known that his marriage to the foreign princess hadn’t lessened his roaming ways in the least.

  Playhouses are always homes to dreams and dreamers. And if a cat might look at a king (as Dick Whittington’s cat did prove), then who would dare say that an orange girl like me might not find her place in her king’s affection?

  Chapter Five

  THEATRE ROYAL, LONDON September 1663

  After several months at the playhouse, I’d earned my place among the first of the orange girls. I worked hard, for I was determined to be equal to my elegant new surroundings. Nothing had been spared in the appointments of the Theatre Royal, from the polished
brass of the chandeliers overhead, to the gilding on the faces of the boxes, to the green baize coverings on the benches in the pit. I’d heard more than two thousand pounds had been spent, far more (as priggish sorts were quick to announce) than the cost of building churches. Proudly Master Killigrew claimed his new playhouse was every bit as fine as those to be found in Paris, and dazzled as I was by such splendor, I believed it.

  I studied the dress and manners of the fine ladies in the boxes, and aped them as best I could. I’d taken to pinning my blue gown close to my waist and low over my breasts, to offer a more pleasing show of my small, neat person, and I’d begun to dress my ringlets higher on either side of my face. I took more care to be clean in my person, and to brush the dirt from the streets from my petticoats and shoes before I came to work. But the easy banter and quick rejoinders to the gallants among the audience, the true stock in trade of the best orange girls—ahh, that had come as easy to me as the summer rain, and as naturally, too.

  Yet on this warm autumn day, I’d be tested in a new way, one I’d scarce anticipated, though welcomed with gladness in my heart.

  I stood in the narrow walkway twixt the stage and the audience’s benches in the pit, my willow basket of oranges resting ready on my hip. It was not long past noon in the playhouse, and the sunlight that shone through the cupola overhead was still locked in a tight circle over the pit. While the candles (wax, not smoky tallow; Master Killigrew insisted on the best for his playhouse) in their brass censers along the front of the stage and in the cressets along the walls had been lighted, their flames were still new, without the heat they’d give off later as the hours passed. Though we girls were ready at our stations with the promptness Mrs. Meggs demanded, in turn there were as yet few customers to buy our goods.

  For now the only ones in the pit were servants sent to hold seats for gentlemen still at supper with their ladies; these laughed and jostled with one another and with us, but knew enough to keep their masters’ purses drawn tight. The noisy gallants and town critics who were our best customers would come later, too, after they’d drunk their courage, while the few women who trailed through the pit were gaudy drabs intent on assignations. They kept their black vizards over their faces and their gazes away from us, not from modesty (for they had none), but because we were their rivals. For the privilege of jostling one another here in the pit, these worthies would pay half a crown admission, no mean sum by any standards.

  The boxes above were likewise empty and would remain so for at least another hour, for the gentry and nobles refused to take their seats until after the first speeches had begun. A box cost four shillings, though I’d heard it whispered that Master Killigrew let many of highborn acquaintance take their seats for free.

  Such was not true for the lesser seats, those in the upper gallery costing only a shilling. The province of footmen and honest citizens like my Mr. Duncan, the gallery held little interest for us orange girls. Why should it, when these men were in general sober and dull, and far too mindful of their purses to pay Mrs. Meggs’s extravagant prices?

  We knew our trade came mostly from the sparks in the pit and the boxes. Until they deigned to show themselves, we had little of note to do, except to stand as so much flesh-and-blood decoration to the playhouse.

  “I’ve heard we’re to be graced today,” Rose said beside me as she shifted her basket from one hip to the other. At my begging, Mrs. Meggs had taken on my sister, too, and together we’d become known as the merriest pair of orange girls in the playhouse. “Most grandly graced, at that.”

  “Grace this, oh, aye, grace that,” I said with a little flip of my hand. “Full o’ riddles and rubbish, Rose, that’s what you are.”

  She arched a single black-painted brow at me, as if to reinforce exactly how much more she knew than I. “If what I say is rubbish, Nell, then it’s royal rubbish.”

  “Royal?” I repeated, skeptical, as was wise to be with my sister. “How would you know royal from rubbish?”

  “I would when I’ve heard it from one of His Majesty’s own private gentlemen,” she said with supreme confidence. “He’d know.”

  “One of the king’s private gentlemen?” I repeated, pouncing on this chance to be superior to her. “I’ll grant that you’re most familiar with every private part o’ a man, Rose. But not even you can hear what the gentlemen o’ the court are saying today, not with you here and them all in the country.”

  It was the king’s habit to retreat from Whitehall and London’s heat each summer, and to take his queen and favored courtiers with him to the cooler countryside, visiting the great houses of his noblemen along the way; a progress, I’d learned it was called.

  While the playhouse’s boxes had been filled with plenty of other wealthy folk who remained in town, I’d heard from the actresses and other orange girls that the whole temper of the playhouse would change as soon as the king once again returned and took his place in the royal box. I could scarce wait for that time. I’d been listening so eagerly for news of the royal progress that I couldn’t believe Rose would have heard first, and so in my way, I’d told her.

  “You couldn’t know of the king’s return before the rest of us, Rose,” I said. “You can’t know of it.”

  “But I do.” She smiled, sure she’d bested me. “Late last night, after you’d left, I was standing outside Master Killigrew’s rooms, and heard him receive a messenger sent by his son. He said he’d be returning to London with the king this morning, and that, God willing, both he and the king would be here for today’s performance.”

  “Go on!” I exclaimed. “Master Killigrew’s said naught of it to us!”

  “And why should he? We’re only orange girls. He needn’t tell us anything.”

  “But for certain he’d tell the players, wouldn’t he? So they’d not be surprised and fumble their parts?”

  Rose shrugged with unconcern. “You know how His Majesty don’t like a fuss made over him. Mind how he’d come through the front door of Mrs. Ross’s, same as any other gentleman. Likely he’d rather surprise everyone here at the playhouse, without any ceremony.”

  Still I shook my head. “The only proof you have is Harry Killigrew’s word, and there’s not a soul in this playhouse what doesn’t call him Lying Harry, on account of him never speaking five true words in a string together.”

  All of which was most grievously true, or at least as true as can be said of any such prodigious liar. The actresses had been free enough with their judgment. Harry was Master Killigrew’s son by his first wife, and though he was by now a man full-grown, nearing thirty years in age and Groom of the Bedchamber to the king, he was still regarded as a happy rogue without care or conscience. To hear the actresses talk, he had bedded most of them by now (and with indifferent skill, it seemed), and regarded the playhouse as his own private harem. He was, in short, exactly the sort of rascal I’d least wish upon my sister, and to my sorrow, exactly the sort she’d choose.

  “Even Master Killigrew calls him a liar,” I said, the final note to my argument, “and Harry’s his own spawn.”

  “Nell Gwyn!” Rose made a great, false show of amazement. “You’ve never so much as met the gentleman, to call him names such as that!”

  “Neither have you, Rose, to come to his defense,” I said. “Least, I hope you haven’t.”

  Rose smiled coyly, rocking her basket back and forth against her hip. “Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven’t,” she said, “not that it’s your—”

  “God’s faith, but you’re a pair of lazy sluts!” called an exasperated gentleman behind us. “Here, Nelly, here! I vow I’ll perish from hunger before you finish your tattle!”

  At once I swung about. “You’ll not close t’starving, Sir Robert, not with a belly so fine as yours,” I answered as I made my way to where he sat. “I vow it’s round as a cannonball, and twice the size.”

  “Come, Nelly, and judge for yourself.” He swung aside the skirts of his doublet, his fingers spread with genuine pr
ide on either side of his large belly. “Learn the make of a real man, Nelly. No callow whip-ling there!”

  I knew this game for what it was. I was one of Sir Robert’s favorites, or rather he was of mine, always paying me double for my fruit. Because I grinned at him, he preened beneath my teasing and the laughter of those about him, with no insults meant or taken, not even when I laid my palm lightly on his offering.

  “Oh, Sir Robert, it’s just as you say,” I exclaimed, squeaking my voice upward and rolling my eyes in feigned wonder as the others around us roared their amusement. “So large, so firm! How proud your lady wife must be, t’have grown such a prize in her kitchen garden!”

  “A prize, Nelly, aye, a prize,” he boomed, grasping my little hand by the wrist. “Have you ever felt the like, I ask you? ”

  His wide, ruddy face had flushed a deeper hue, and I could guess what manly vegetable he’d ask me to judge next. Instead I deftly turned my hand and slipped free, seizing one of the oranges from my basket.

  “And pray, sir, have you ever tasted the like of my oranges?” I asked, tossing the fruit lightly before me. “Sweet, sweet, and chosen special just for you.”

  He laughed, and wagged his finger at me. “You’re a cunning little creature, Nelly,” he said with admiration. “Too cunning for me, anyways.”

  Still laughing, he reached into his purse for the coins to pay me, and added a small folded missive, closed with his seal. “Mark that this goes to my nymph in the tiring-room. On with you now; don’t keep my lass waiting.”

  He pressed another coin atop the note to hasten my steps, and I tucked it all into my pocket. Mistress Meggs would see only her share of the orange’s price—no more, nor less—but the rest had been intended for me, and I meant to keep it. I dipped a hasty curtsey and hurried away toward the back of the stage and the players’ tiring-rooms, one for men and the smaller for the women.