The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “Now, Nell, now,” Rose coaxed. “Bring the child forth!”

  With my eyes squeezed shut, I marshaled what remained of my dwindled strength and bore down, crying out from the pain and the force of it. At last I felt the babe slide from my body into the midwife’s waiting hands, and the sudden relief that it was done.

  “Well done, madam, well done,” praised the midwife. “What a handsome child!”

  I struggled weakly to see for myself, instinctively reaching out for my babe.

  “A son?” I croaked. “A boy? ”

  “Oh, aye, a boy, and a fine, lusty one, too,” she said with great approval. Carefully she laid the babe on my now-diminished belly, working to sever the final ties between us. I touched him, felt his life, heard his first querulous cry, and let the tears of joy and wonder course from my eyes.

  “He’s the king’s get, Mrs. Gwyn, that’s for certain.” One of the blurred faces had separated and cleared into Mrs. Chiffinch, the wife of the page of Charles’s bedchamber and his most trusted personal servant. I smiled at her approval, for she was there to give official witness to the birth and swear to all propriety surrounding it, so that there’d be no later doubts or questions. “The hair, the color, the little fellow’s size: oh, aye, he’s the king’s, no mistake, and what a brave woman you are to have brought him forth!”

  “Charles,” I whispered. “His name shall be Charles.”

  Mrs. Chiffinch smiled, her eyes disappearing above her rounded cheeks. “Charles it shall be, for what’s more proper than that? He’s His Majesty’s seventh son, madam, a most fortunate sign.”

  I gazed down into my son’s wizened, small face, his little fists trembling in infant impotence and his eyes blinking and squinting as he tried to make sense of this strange new world around him. He might be Charles’s seventh son, but he was my first, and I’d never felt the sweet draw of love as strongly as I did then.

  “My dear little rogue,” I whispered, circling my arms around him. “My own little man!”

  I know that wise women will say it’s not so, but I swear that at that moment my new son smiled at me, and my heart was his.

  “So tell me, Nell,” Lord Rochester said, tapping his long ebony walking stick idly on the floor before his chair. “Do you intend now to play mad mothers, or only mothers driven mad by their wayward offspring?”

  “I’ll play a mad fishmonger if that’s the part Dryden writes for me,” I said cheerfully, my hands looped around my bent knees. “Faith, it’s been so long since I’ve been on the boards at the playhouse, he can set me to the back as a handmaiden and I’d be content.”

  “You content as a handmaiden, Nell?” he asked, his brows arched with incredulity. “I’d not realized that the telling of lies had become part of a lying-in.”

  I laughed, and why shouldn’t I? This was the part of the entire childbirth rigmarole that I liked the best: my lying-in, like every other lady of fashion. It seemed the world would grant me a good month of doing nothing but receiving my guests and the praise and gifts they wished to heap upon me and my new son. The first sennight had not been pleasant, for I’d been so sore and worn by the birth that I could scarce find a comfortable position to lie or sit. I wept copiously, my breasts ached from the binding to stop my milk, and as I healed within, it seemed as if I’d had the last nine months’ worth of courses pressed into a single week.

  But now, as May wound away, I felt more like my old, merry self. I still sat in my bed, true, but I wore a feather-quilted silk bedgown over a new smock trimmed in Belgian lace, with pearls around my throat and my garnets in my ears. My hair was artfully dressed with ribbons each day, and I took care to make sure my tiny feet in their high red Morocco slippers were on display, peeking from beneath the coverlet. I kept the windows to my bedchamber thrown open to gather the spring breezes within, and the flowers sent by my well-wishing friends were arranged in blue and white Dutch porcelain vases along the chimneypiece.

  Best of all was the steady procession of my friends, from the playhouse and from Whitehall. We ate and drank as freely as if my house were an open tavern, and in exchange I gobbled every scrap of gossip and scandal they could offer. If I’d been a gray-bearded holy man in some distant Scottish cave, I couldn’t have felt more deprived of the news of the world, nor as eager to receive it once again.

  I was especially desirous to learn what was happening at Dover between Charles and Minette. Was it the happy reunion they’d both craved? More importantly, was it strictly a pleasure junket, or had the meeting been a mask for the diplomatic intrigue between England and France that I’d feared?

  Who better, then, to tell me all I wished to know than my favorite wit and ancient friend Lord Rochester? Rochester and I were neighbors now, at least when he was in London and not in the country at home with his wife and infant daughter at Adderbury. He’d taken lodgings across Lincoln’s Inn Fields from mine, in Portugal Row, in the house besides the Duke’s Playhouse. This was convenient for me, of course, given that I’d already a great many friends in the Duke’s Company as well as my own. But it was also a useful location for the earl to be so near to the theatres, since he’d continued in his weaknesses for actresses as mistresses, and always seemed to have one or another of them wafting about.

  Now, however, I had him to myself, or as much to myself as we each were to anyone. I leaned on my bed in splendorous state, while he had the largest armchair. He was dressed with his usual extravagance, his coat and waistcoat of mottled green brocade, reaching to the middle of his thighs, the cuffs of his linen fluttering over his hands, and his curled and frizzled periwig so lush as to likely require a groom and stable of its own.

  Yet as fine as his costume might be, my friend’s face told another story. I worried for him. He looked worn and spent, his eyes rheumy and nose in constant need of blotting with the lace-edged handkerchief he’d tucked in his sleeve for the purpose.

  Not that it seemed to have slowed his wit. “I’ve heard that Dryden’s planning another assault on the well-worn state of Granada, just as I hear there’s a prime part for you.”

  “There is,” I said, beaming. “He came to read the speeches for me earlier this week. I’m to play Almahide, the Moorish queen, and it’s a devilish fine role.”

  “Oh, indeed, for Dry-den does love his ponderous queens,” he said, making sure I didn’t miss his punning emphasis on the aridity that he’d placed on the playwright’s name, there lately being no love or regard lost between these two gentlemen. Once the earl had been the playwright’s patron, ensuring that the king had named him poet laureate. Since that time, however, they’d squabbled over what separated good poetry from ill, with Dryden speaking more from his heart than was wise to so sharp and fickle a gentleman as Lord Rochester.

  “But that is not all,” he continued. “I hear he’s also planning a droll little prologue for Mrs. Nelly.”

  “He is?” I cried. “You dog! How did you hear of this before I? ”

  He made a gracefully dismissive wave of one hand. “I’ve a source within the playhouse,” he said. “A most charming and delectable source.”

  I gasped with delight, for this was exactly what I’d missed most. “Has Elizabeth finally tumbled for you?”

  “The lovely and lascivious Mrs. Boutell?” He smiled slyly. “Nell, Nell! And here I believed your interest lay only with old Dryden’s Conquest of Granada, not my conquest of Mrs. Boutell. Better that I tell you of how all of this relates to the doings of Dover than my petty affaires de coeur.”

  “Affaires de cock is more true for you, my lord,” I said, leaning forward with excitement. “But what has any of this possibly to do with Dover and the king? ”

  “Much, my dear, and with you, too.” He poured more wine into his glass, the fourth time he’d done so since he’d joined me, and sorry I was to see it, too. I couldn’t miss how the canary quivered in his glass from the unceasing tremor in his hands, a trembling fit more for an elder of seventy than a blade of twenty-four
.

  “You know the king took a small troop of players with him to Dover,” he began, “planning on making an entertainment there for the French grandees dancing attendance on his sister.”

  “I know, I know, I know, and how I wish I’d been among them!”

  “I hear that Nokes took your place well enough,” he said, naming James Nokes, a clever young fellow with a gift like mine for drollery. “The play was The Cautious Coxcomb, and I hear he played Sir Arthur Addell to mocking perfection, wearing a costume with a flopping cartwheel hat to ape the Frenchmen so that even they couldn’t help but laugh. While the king—but ah, you know how he loves such amusements at the expense of the righteous.”

  “I do, and he does.” How much I longed to have been there to prance beside Nokes! “But where do I—”

  “I hear that Dryden’s already contriving a prologue for you to mock the mockery,” he said. “I hear the king himself suggested it.”

  I clasped my hands to my chest. “Truly? Then he has not forgotten me?”

  “Mrs. Gwyn, you’ve just given the king another son,” he said. “How could he forget you? I’ve heard he speaks of you to all who’ll listen, boasting of this new babe, and your wit and cunning beauty. They say that even Madame la duchesse is sending you gifts for the babe. Silver cups, coral rattles, amber beads, those sorts of gimcracks.”

  “She is!” I fell back against my pillows, overwhelmed with joy. I didn’t give a fig for the gifts (very well, not much of a fig), but for the acknowledgment. Charles must have spoken most highly of me and us and our child for his sister to have recognized me in this way. “Oh, my lord, that is rare news!”

  “You can’t do better in Charles’s eyes than to have Madame’s blessing,” he said, using the common title for Charles’s sister Minette. “He trusts her judgment in everything, perhaps more than is wise.”

  “Her judgment.” Of a sudden I remembered my fears for the real reason for this little journey, the old doubts planted by Buckingham. “Tell me, my lord. Have you heard any whispers of private meetings in Dover, between the king and his sister and the French ambassadors? ”

  “Why, the usual tedious ones, I suppose,” he said, frowning a bit as he racked his memory. “There’s much discussion of a new treaty between England and France that will cut into the Dutch influence at sea. Louis wants the Nether-lands, while Charles wants the Nether-waters.”

  He smiled, waiting for me to applaud that dreadful jest, but I was too anxious to flatter him over so pitiful an effort. “There’s no talk of Louis sending money to Charles?”

  “Sweet faith, no,” he said, with such amazement that I knew it to be true. “Wherever did you hear that?”

  “Buckingham,” I began. “He told me that—”

  “Nelly, sweet, darling Nelly,” he said with a groan. “Haven’t we settled this before? Buckingham would tell you there were curling-tailed wild apes in the towers of Westminster if he thought it would serve him. I’ve never known a man so adept at taking the merest wisp of a fact and breathing and puffing it into a great, raging conflagration. If Arlington told you, I’d believe it, but not Buckingham.”

  I felt suddenly foolish for my worries. “So there is no plot between the king and his sister? ”

  “I’d not go so far as that,” he hedged, “for I never know such things for certain. But I do know that Charles is far too wise to trust such secrets to a braggart like Buckingham, nor would Madame confide in him, either. Especially not Madame. Did you know that before she was wed to Louis’s brother, Buckingham tried to seduce her? ”

  “You’re daft,” I scoffed, laughing, for that sounded preposterous even for ten-year-old tattle. “The king would never permit that.”

  “I’m not sure he ever learned of it, else Buckingham would have found himself in the Tower again, and without a pardon, too.” He paused, musing. “Madame is so unlike her brother, you know. A pale, frail lady. It’s a curious bond between her and Charles; he loves her more dear than any other, yet she is the one woman he can never possess.”

  “My lord, she’s his sister,” I said, for once truly shocked. “To lie with her in such supreme wickedness—he never could do that.”

  “Nor am I saying he would,” he said mildly. “Only that his attachment to her, and hers to him, goes beyond that of ordinary sisters and brothers.”

  “Then pray do not speak of it again,” I said. “It—it’s not right.”

  “No, it’s not.” He sighed and tapped his walking stick lightly on the floor between his legs. “I spoke of it only to show the power she has over him, and thus, by having her now as your ally, that you have, as well.”

  I nodded, agreeing and accepting. Faith, how complicated these court intrigues were!

  He lifted the end of the stick, barely enough to point the tip at me. “You’ve done well for yourself, pet. But you should make as much of this as you can, whilst you can. When Charles returns, he must be made to give you proper lodgings in the palace.”

  “But I like my house,” I protested. “I like to be away from the court, and so does the king.”

  “Keep the house, Nell, but demand rooms at the palace, as well,” he advised. “Castlemaine will be leaving hers soon enough. Stake your claim. Mark your territory, like the fine little cat that you are, before some other chit pushes forward to steal what’s yours by rights.”

  I ducked my chin, studying him with unease. “What do you know? What have you heard? ”

  “Only that the king was much taken with a maid of honor in his sister’s household,” he said, a forced lightness to his voice that was more worrisome than anything he was saying. “A plump, sugary sweetmeat of a girl named Louise de Kéroualle, they say, of some noble old French line. There’s likely naught more to it than that, for Old Rowley sniffs fresh mares on every breeze. But still, it’s best to be aware and advised. Ah, is this your new whelp, then?”

  The nursemaid had appeared to stand at the door, presenting little Charles for admiration, the way she did by my orders for every visitor. He’d proved sturdy and handsome, though so very dark that no one could question his father. Now he stared out at Rochester from beneath the point lace of his bonnet, his expression scowling, stern, and cross, as babies often are.

  “What a fine fellow,” Rochester said, beaming at my son with far more interest and doting indulgence than I’d ever expected of him. He held his finger up to brush his cheek, and grinned when the child pursed his lips in response. “I left my lady wife with child again in the country. Please God that this time she bears me a son and heir that’s even half so fine as yours.”

  I held my arms up to the nurse, who passed the babe to me. He was wrapped and swaddled, as was proper to ensure the straightness of his limbs and back, a neat-wrapped bundle for me to rest in my lap. Better to think of him than to worry over some highborn French miss, I told myself fiercely. I’d borne the king’s son, hadn’t I? I gazed down at the solemn little face before me, and felt the pride and love swell in my breast.

  “There’s your true treasure, Nelly,” Rochester said softly beside me. “There’s your future.”

  “I know, my lord, I know,” I said happily. “What a joy to have been blessed with such a jewel of a son.”

  “I meant his value to the king.” Now there was no sentiment at all to his voice, only cold, hard, heartless reason. “As long as you have Charles’s son in your possession, you have power over him.”

  Instinctively, I held my little boy close to my chest, so tightly he whimpered with surprise. “I love him for who he is, my lord, just as I care for his father.”

  “Love,” Rochester said with weary, sorrowful disgust. “Better to guard that babe as if your life depended on him, Nell, because a day may come when he will be the only card you have left to play.”

  Charles came to me the same day he returned from Dover. Proudly I led him by the hand to show him his son, asleep in his cradle as the sweet June sun dappled the floor around him.

  �
�You did well, sweet,” he whispered, instantly as besotted as I. “What a fine, handsome lad!”

  “The servants say they’ve never seen a babe with a sweeter temper,” I said, which would have been boasting had I not been a mother. “Only the wet nurse complains of his lustiness at suck.”

  “She complains? ” he asked slyly.

  I chuckled softly. “To me, sir,” I said. “I doubt she would to you.”

  “Women seldom do.” He slipped his hands around my newly narrowed waist. “We must have him baptized, with a gathering afterward. So fine a boy must be celebrated, eh? ”

  “Thank you, sir.” I rested my head back against his shoulder, more pleased than I could say to have him once again in London with me. “You approve of him being called Charles?”

  “He is my son,” he said grandly. “He’s entitled to share my name.”

  “And mine, too, being a bastard,” I said, wryly if not wisely. I hoped he’d ennoble our son as he’d done his other bastards, with a name and title of his own. “Master Charles Gwyn is all he’s a right to claim.”

  “He shouldn’t be ashamed of that combination,” he said with careful mildness, pointedly ignoring my broad hint. “There’s plenty of other children brought before God with less.”

  I answered nothing, acquiescing with my silence. I’d not let it go, of course. My son deserved no less than had been granted to Castlemaine’s brats, and I meant to see that the king agreed. But for now, I’d be content with this baptism he proposed. With highborn friends of the king’s choosing to act as our son’s godparents and a festive gathering afterward that would be noted by all at court, it would be start enough for now.

  But on this afternoon, Charles had other beginnings on his mind.

  “I’ve missed you, Nelly,” he said, his hands sliding from my waist over my hips. “It’s been too long.”

  He pulled me back so I could feel his hard, demanding cock press against my bum. I’d missed him, too. It had been a long time since he’d last had me, two months before the birth and three weeks since, yet still I wasn’t sure if that were time enough for me. He slipped his hand forward, covering and fondling my quim, and instead of the eagerness I’d always felt before at such a caress, I felt my body tense with dread that it might still be too soon.