The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  From Buckingham himself—for the man was far too vain to keep from boasting of his goals and imagined achievements—I heard how he’d become indepensible to the king, who in turn followed all his advice. One day he would claim he’d persuaded the king to have the barren queen kidnapped and sent to a nunnery in France, so as to free him to marry a new, more fertile bride, while on another he’d swear the king was set to name him as the new chancellor.

  It was, in short, one foolishness after another with Buckingham, but because he played it out on so grand a stage, his foolishness could become a peril both to the country and the king. Whenever Buckingham came to my lodgings or tiring-room, or sat beside me at some palace entertainment, I listened as he filled my ears. If there was anything that I deemed of real importance or risk, I relayed it to the king, as I’d begun to see him with increasing frequency. Most times, I simply smiled and let the duke believe I agreed with him.

  For an actress, this was easy enough, though such duplicity could also be seen as my first steps toward being both a courtier and a politician. I thought otherwise. I could not forget the melancholy expression on the king’s face when he’d spoken of how few true friends he had, and for me each scrap of gossip I repeated to the king went toward proving myself worthy of the his trust. Whenever he attended a play, he now came directly to my tiring-room afterward, leaving his attendants outside my door. There I’d entertain him as suited his mood, whether repeating a favorite turn from my part in the play or a new jest, or more seriously what I’d heard from others that might be of use to him. Sometimes I’d do no more than listen, which seemed the rarest pleasure of all for him.

  I know that beyond my door, the rest of the playhouse was certain we were engaged in all manner of licentious sport. Given both our histories, such should have been the case. But though the current of passion always lay rippling beneath even our simplest conversations, we both were for now content to continue as friends rather than lovers. Besides, the king was still amusing himself elsewhere with Moll Davis and several others, and I thought too much of myself to be part of a parade of whoring actresses. I had my whole life before me.

  But Fate was always ready with reminders of how notoriously short life could be. Most scandals at court were small in nature (name-calling, drunkenness, two ladies wearing the same shade of ruby silk at a ball) and insignificant enough to be forgotten and replaced by new ones within the fortnight. Once in a great while, however, there were scandals that shocked even the most jaded courtiers.

  Lady Shrewsbury’s longstanding position as Buckingham’s mistress was one of these. Granted, faithlessness was much the fashion of this court, from the king downward, but the flagrancy with which the duke conducted himself with another peer’s wife was finally considered too much for the Earl of Shrewsbury to ignore.

  A duel of honor was proposed and agreed upon, though the king so hated dueling as to make it virtually illegal. Again, it seemed that all of London knew the thing was to happen, yet no one stopped it. On an icy morning in late January, both parties met near the Barne Elmes. An accomplished duelist, Buckingham swiftly dealt a near-mortal wound to Shrewsbury, while his two seconds killed those of the earl’s outright. The three of them fled into hiding, leaving much blood in the packed snow and lamentation in the town.

  Of course, we at the theatre heard of it nearly as soon as it happened, with my sister Rose (who had wisely traded her highwayman lover for a respectable officer in the army) providing the freshest advices. We all gathered to listen in a hushed circle on the stage. Gallants were always squabbling and fighting, even drawing their swords on occasion over pretended slights in the pit itself, but it was rare for them to outright kill one another like this. Grim-faced, Killigrew decided to shift today’s play, a historical piece that included a gruesome sword battle, and replace it with a something to make the audience laugh instead.

  Sitting with an old coverlet draped over my shoulders against the chill, I’d just begun to paint my eyes when I heard the bustle that always accompanied the king’s arrival. I’d never known him to visit backstage before a play rather than afterward, and I’d barely time to trade the coverlet for the more comely dressing gown that my maid-servant had hastily offered before he fair burst into my tiring-room. My chamber was small, and the king was a large man, now seemingly swelled double with a scarce-contained fury.

  My girl ducked in a terrified curtsey before him, sure he meant to order her to the scaffold, but he only waved her from the room, and she gladly left us.

  “You see Buckingham as much as anyone, Nell,” he said, his mouth so tight with anger I wondered that he could spit out the words. “What do you know of this—this crime of his? Where has he fled? Where is he now? Damn him for doing this to me!”

  “And a good day to you, too, sir,” I said, rising from my own curtsey to clear some of my scattered belongings from the armchair. “Here, sit, if you please, sit and converse like a civil being.”

  Charles (for so I’d begun to think of him, as less the king, and more the man) ignored the chair. “Surely you’ve heard what he’s done, Nell. Don’t you pretend you haven’t.”

  “The duel with Shrewsbury,” I said. “A sorry, tawdry business.”

  “A sorry, tawdry murder!” he exclaimed. “Buckingham’s one of the best swordsman I’ve ever seen, and the most cunning, too. Shrewsbury must have been no better than a lamb led to slaughter, going against him.”

  “They say His Lordship lives still,” I said, repeating what Rose had told me earlier. “They say he was carried home, and with care, could make a full recovery.”

  “He is run clear through the body from the right breast to the shoulder, and in great agony,” Charles said grimly. “I have that direct from the surgeon, who offered little hope. Buckingham knows his trade. He wanted Shrewsbury dead, damn him back to the black devil that spawned him.”

  “What else could His Lordship do, sir, I ask you?” I patted the back of the chair again, hoping he’d sit. Given the vast difference in our heights (he was more than six feet tall, whilst I was less than five), I preferred it when he sat and narrowed the gap. “Men are ruled jointly by their pride and their cocks, and he was sorely tested in both by his wife.”

  “His wife,” he repeated with boundless disgust. “That creature is the most viperous excuse for a wife I have ever known. Tell me true, Nell, because I’m sure you’ve heard. Did she, in fact, dress as a boy to hold Buckingham’s horse, and watch him slaughter her husband?”

  My eyes widened at that. I’d seen Her Ladyship from afar, brazenly consorting with Buckingham, and had judged her great beauty tainted by the corruption that showed in her face, in the limpid nature of her eyes and the petulance of her mouth. I do not know how better to describe it: If the serpent in the Garden of Eden had taken the shape of a woman before Adam, it could have borne this lady’s face.

  “If she was there to watch, sir, then I haven’t heard of it,” I said. “Though given it’s Lady Shrewsbury, I’d not be surprised.”

  “No,” he said, and finally dropped heavily into the chair beside me. “She is a prodigious slut, the kind of high-bred whore who’d delight in men killing themselves over her. Now she’s as good as murdered her husband, and not a feather of remorse to show for it.”

  I poured a dish of tea and handed it to him. I didn’t have to ask; I knew he’d want it. “Forgive me, sir, but I vow Her Ladyship’s a bane on all respectable whores.”

  “She is, indeed,” he said, taking the tea with a sigh. “Thank you, Nelly. At least I can trust you to have a woman’s gentleness.”

  “You won’t find me demanding fine men be stuck and skewered at my feet, either,” I said, pouring tea for myself, as well. “But that could be it, you know. There’s some queer folk who think that bloodshed and suffering make the perfect sauce for lust. Her Ladyship could be wicked enough to be with the duke now, eager to lick her poor husband’s blood from His Grace’s hands.”

  “Don’t guide my thoug
hts down that path, Nell,” he said, and groaned. “I’ve enough to consider without that, too. What the devil am I to do with Buckingham? ”

  I perched upon the short bench before my dressing table with my tea dish cradled in my hands. “First off, sir, I’d warn Lady Buckingham to be on guard, to make certain the countess does not send her seconds with a challenge to her.”

  “Faith, I’d not thought of that.” Charles grunted, and sipped the tea. “Petticoat duels! Are we all not laughingstock enough with that, too?”

  “My stock is in laughing, sir,” I said, unable to resist so shameless a pun, “but even so, I can find precious little that’s amusing in this. For His Grace to fight such a duel when he knows your beliefs stand against them—”

  “They’re an idle waste of life and blood,” he said, striking his fist on the arm of the chair. “Our noblest families have already lost too many of their sons to war, without them squabbling and slaughtering one another over whores and honor.”

  “Too true, sir.” I could hear the subtle changes in the playhouse noises outside my door, the audience filling the pit, the orange sellers beginning to ply their fruit, the fiddlers tuning their instruments against one another near the back door. It was not long until our time to begin, yet because the king was in here with me, all must wait upon his pleasure. “Even His Grace himself couldn’t deny it.”

  “Of course he couldn’t,” he said. “I have told him, and warned him, and, aye, threatened him, yet he insists on behaving without regard for anything but his own desires. How does this look to my people, that I put any trust in so reckless a man? What am I to do with him after this, Nell?”

  I smiled, knowing what a treacherous marsh such a query could become to me if I did not take care with my words. It was one thing to jest of petticoat duels, but another entirely to be the lowborn actress counseling the king.

  “Tell me, Nelly,” he said, with the melancholy that I glimpsed too often in him. “You’re the only one in London who listens to me honestly, without plotting your own gain.”

  “What could I gain from any of this, sir?” I asked, and I meant it, too. “What could a duel between peers have to do with little Mrs. Gwyn?”

  I fluttered my feet before me, as if to prove my insignificance by way of my cherry-colored, beribboned shoes and clocked thread stockings. If I likewise knew that Charles had a special delight in the smallness of my feet, well, now, then that insignificance was changed to the opposite, wasn’t it?

  “There now, you make my case without effort or guile.” He rested his elbow across his knees, leaning closer to me and to my neat, small feet, too. “Play my advisor, Mrs. Gwyn. Plot my course as my pilot, and tell me what I should do next.”

  I tucked my feet back under my petticoats, smoothing my skirts over my legs. There could indeed be too much of a good thing—or, as in the case of my cherry-colored feet, too much of two little things.

  “But you already know what to do, sir, don’t you?” I asked gently, even tenderly, reading the indecision behind the banter. “Why, I’d wager you’ve known before you even called for your carriage to come here.”

  He studied me closely over the rim of the dish, his eyes so dark beneath their heavy lids as to seem almost black. “Am I as transparent as all that, Nell? ”

  “Hardly, sir,” I said. “Rather you are more wise than you credit yourself, and kinder than is wise.”

  “No riddles, Nell.”

  “I don’t mean it as a riddle, sir.” I turned gracefully on my stool, away from him, and began again the task he’d interrupted, that of painting my face for the coming play. “I meant it as somber truth. You know what you’ll do.”

  I heard him sigh behind me, an unkingly weariness and resignation combined. “Very well, then. I’ll make my displeasure with this duel known throughout the court and London. I’ll tell Her Majesty not to receive Lady Shrewsbury, nor shall I. I’ll appoint a committee of council to discuss how this violent practice can finally be outlawed, and another of surgeons to determine how the seconds met their deaths.”

  I nodded in agreement, making my mouth into a tight-stretched O and holding my lid steady as I rimmed my eye with lampblack. “Likely you’ve decided what to do regarding His Grace, as well.”

  That took a longer moment for him to answer. He wouldn’t have been human (or royal) if such a decision regarding so old a friend as Buckingham had taken less, and this time his sigh was more of a groan.

  “When the duke finally shows himself,” he said, “I’ll have him arrested and confined to the Tower. God knows it won’t be his first visit there, nor will it likely be his last.”

  He didn’t have to explain further. If Shrewsbury died from his wounds, then the duke would be tried in the House of Lords for murder, and he’d enough enemies there that only a pardon from the king would save him. But a royal pardon would be viewed by most of the kingdom (and other countries, too) as a sign of weakness, of favoritism, of Charles choosing a decadent friend over his own oft-stated beliefs and the good of his people. Either way would make for an agonizing decision, and all I could think was how cruelly selfish the duke had been to put the king in such a balance.

  I set my brush down, and turned back to face him. “Oh, sir,” I said softly. “For your sake, I’ll pray most fervently for His Lordship’s recovery.”

  “As will I, sweet.” He smiled, and I thought of how completely he could hide his true feelings from the world. For the first time, he seemed to notice my open dressing gown, and his gaze slipped lower, to the sheer linen of my smock beneath. “What part do you play today? ”

  “Florimell, in Secret Love,” I said, tipping my head coyly to one side and framing it inside my raised, curved arms, a very Florimell pose. “One of your favorites, sir.”

  “It is.” He smiled, and began reciting a line from the play. “ ‘Our only happiness must be to have one mind, and one will, my Florimell. ’ ”

  I chuckled, and put on my merriest face to reply as Florimell: “ ‘One mind if thou wilt, but prithee let us have two wills; for I find one will be little enough for me alone.’ ”

  “One mind, and one will, and one of my favorites, aye,” he said with satisfaction, “and one with my favorite one in it, as well.”

  He set the tea dish on the table beside him, and at last rose to leave. I rose, too, as was proper, and he bent to kiss me, with fondness and pleasure, his hand skipping inside my dressing gown to slide at leisure from my waist and over my hip. I let him caress me once more, relishing the warmth of his hand through the linen. Yet still I eased free and spun away from him, a stepping dance that made it seem as if by art and accident, and no deliberate plan.

  Another time, and he would have laughed. Another time, and he would have gathered me up into his arms to kiss and tickle my throat, and make me laugh, too. But this time he only let me go, watching me with such sadness that I could have wept for him.

  “Away with you, Nelly, before Killigrew wants my head for keeping you overlong,” he said. “All I ask is that you make me laugh. Today, of all others, make me laugh.”

  I did, too. It was likely the only good that came to him from that sorry day.

  The Earl of Shrewsbury lingered for another two months, wasting away in trembling agony from his wounds. He was said to drift in and out of wakefulness with the sole purpose of cursing his wife, and who could blame him? That lady, for her part, had so little regard for her mortal soul as to keep from the side of her dying husband, and instead openly pine for her murderous lover in the Tower.

  But Buckingham’s imprisonment was unseasonably brief, as was always the case with him. The king’s committee of surgeons met over Shrewsbury’s body and determined his cause of death to have been not his wounds, but a morbidity of the liver caused by excessive drink. With no true crime, Buckingham was pardoned and released back into the embrace of the unrepentant widow. The king claimed to be satisfied, and made a show of forgiving his oldest friend once again.

  No
one was fooled by any of it.

  I learned of what happened next from Tom Killigrew, who was as shocked by it as I. Soon after Buckingham’s deliverance, he informed his wife and duchess that Lady Shrewsbury would be coming to take up residence at Buckingham House. Outraged, Her Grace declared she’d not share her home with such a sinful woman. Buckingham cheerfully admitted that he was not surprised by her stance, and promptly sent her away in her carriage to her father’s house before welcoming his mistress in her stead.

  If ever any single event reflected the selfish arrogance of the Duke of Buckingham, then this sorry business was it. The king himself would not speak of any of it, a true sign of how deeply he’d been wounded by one he’d trusted.

  Yet we in the King’s Company had, through our parts, the freedom to speak more freely than the king himself. In February we staged The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma, writ fresh by Robert Howard. It was not a play to make an audience laugh, but to talk and think, and that they surely did. The story was drawn from history itself, of a Spanish duke who tried to barter his daughter’s virtue for favor with their king, a monarch infamous for his many mistresses. Because the duke’s plans are foiled by the daughter’s resolve and he is ruined, I gladly (if boldly) agreed to the role of the daughter, though such solemn castings were not to my taste or talents. Buckingham’s desires for me with Charles were widely known by now, as were my refusals, which added a piquant underpinning to the entire performance.

  There were many in the audience the first night who feared we intended to fault our own king with this play, and who were made uncomfortable by it. But to me it was clear we meant to criticize Buckingham, not Charles, and the fact that the king applauded our efforts showed that he understood, as well. I heard that Buckingham watched the play with an unchanging eye, as if bored or indifferent. I hope that within he quaked and trembled, to see his faults presented before his master and the friend he treated so wrongly.

  I know it must sound ill of me, faulting a man like the duke, who’d been born so much higher than I. There was no denying that he could be charming and clever and a score of other qualities, but he’d not one honorable bone in his entire noble body, and I realized anew the peril of falling into his lures. My loyalty and my friendship belonged to the king, not the duke. I resolved to keep clear of Buckingham, neither his friend nor his enemy nor his pawn, no matter how hard he pursued me.