Thus, then, began 1671, the twenty-first year of my life. I’d made my glorious return to the playhouse. My grand new house was nearly ready for me to occupy. My son was as fat and happy a babe as could be, and my love was likewise as happy as any monarch, and, of greater importance, thoroughly happy with me. I believed my contentment was complete, and that I could never wish for more.
But, oh, preserve me, I was wrong, as I learned to my sorrow by the end of the year.
Miserably, horribly wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
LONG ACRE, NEAR ST. GILES FIELDS, LONDON February 1671
“Are you warm enough, Mrs. Gwyn?” Master Sir Peter Lely paused behind his easel, his brush in his hand. “I can have the fire built higher if you wish.”
“I’m well enough, well enough,” I said cheerfully, “though I thank’ee for asking. You’ve already built your fire so high, I can almost forget it’s February, and not balmy June. Faith, but this posing is easy work!”
He laughed. “Of all the ladies who’ve sat for me, you must be the first to say so. Most whine and fuss, or even weep, and call me the greatest ogre for making them sit still.”
“Well, now, then that’s where they’ve erred,” I said, taking care to move only my lips and my eyes. “They should lie about, like me, and not sit.”
He laughed again, but he did not disagree. He was the principal painter to the king, a pensioned position at court. In his long career he’d painted everyone of note from my Charles and his father to Cromwell, from great admirals and clerics to highbred whores like Lady Castlemaine. Now, at last, he was to paint me, an honor that nigh stunned me.
Yet still I now laughed merrily with him, to imagine all the highborn ladies whose portraits he’d painted arrayed as scantily as I. Not for me the drifting satin draperies and festoons of false pearls that marked a duchess playing at being Juno, or the martyr’s wheel and waving palms for a pretend St. Catherine, albeit of Whitehall Palace and not old Alexandria. Nor would I have myself shown with sudden coyness, a single roguish nipple bared as if by accident.
No, I’d chosen to worship my own particular deities: Venus herself, and my own namesake, that beauteous ancient Helen of Troy. To honor both of them, I’d dispensed with most every false, masking scrap of cloth, and gleefully instructed Master Lely to paint me as nature had first fashioned me.
I was posed lying naked across a satin-covered daybed, with a classical landscape behind me and a scarlet curtain in the front, as if suddenly drawn to reveal my charms. Only the merest swath of white silk was draped over my privy parts, more to save embarrassment to Master Lely (an older Dutch gentleman, and very distinguished), than to me, I believe, for I was long past such illogical shames. Instead I reveled in the beauty of my body, which Charles assured me had only increased in womanly lushness since our son’s birth. Master Lely was painting two of this pose at once: one for my new house, and one as a birthday gift to the king. Our little son would soon be added to the composition, too, portrayed as an impish, winged Cupid at my side.
“You say you’ve already a place to hang the picture when it’s done, Mrs. Gwyn?” Master Lely murmured. The artist squinted around the edge of the canvas at me, paying more heed to his work than our conversation. “Your bedchamber, perhaps?”
I laughed, scarce remembering to keep still. “Nay, I’ve far better than that! I’ve had the front hall of my house hung all around with looking-glasses, and I mean to hang it there in the middle of them. Everywhere my guests will look, they’ll see me a hundred times over. All of me, all over, every which way.”
I’d caught his attention at last, and even he couldn’t keep from laughing with me. “That I should like to see, madam.”
“Then you shall, sir,” I declared. “The king’s birthday is at the end of May, and my house should finally—finally!—be ready then, if I can only coax those knavish carpenters and plasterers and undertakers and overseers to oblige me by keeping their promises. Then I’ll have the grandest party imaginable, Master Lely, and I’ll invite you, too, as the one respectable gentleman in the lot.”
“I should be honored, madam.” He gave a slight, courteous bow, but his eyes were bright with amusement in his worn, old face. “You’ve told me so much of your taste in appointments that I’d be most curious to see them for myself.”
“Oh, but I haven’t told you the best!” I exclaimed. “Only this week I’ve found a glazier who will mark every pane in every window with an E and a G. That’s for my name, you see, for Eleanor and for Gwyn.”
“I do see, madam,” he said absently, frowning, I suppose, at some painterly nicety. “That’s most original.”
“It is,” I said with no small satisfaction. I might not be able either to read or write beyond making my mark at the bottom of tradesman’s duns, but I recognized my own initials, and took great pride in the cipher they made. If Charles could have his CR for Carolus Rex stamped on everything he touched, why, then, so would I have my EG engraved upon my silver spoons and plate, painted on the doors of my carriage and my sedan chair, and embroidered on my smocks and pillowbeers. “I’ll be sure to send you the invitation when I’ve set the specific—”
“Nell, Nell, my darling Nell,” called Lord Rochester as he paraded grandly into the studio with Sir Charles Sedley with him, as jolly a pair of rogues as ever can be imagined. “How does the Venus of Drury Lane? ”
“My lord, Sir Charles!” Forgetting my careful pose, I scrambled upright on the daybed to wave gaily in greeting. “Oh, how vastly glad I am that you remembered to join me today!”
Belatedly, Master Lely’s servant, a heavyset Dutchman, came puffing and huffing into the studio. “His Lordship, the Earl of Rochester comes, sir. Also Sir Charles Sedley, sir.”
“Aye, they do,” I said, laughing, “and as often as they can contrive it, too, whether with duchesses, whores, or linkboys, ’tis all the same to them.”
Sir Charles widened his eyes with mock alarm, touching his cheek with the tips of his gloved fingers, even as he freely ogled my charms. “Why, Mrs. Nell, how you shock me.”
“Yes, Nell, such rubbish you talk,” Lord Rochester said mildly, helping himself to the wine that Sir Peter kept for the visitors to his studio. “You know it’s only purest jealousy that makes you speak so.”
“A pox on your foolish jealousy, you lying knaves,” I said, laughing still. I sat up on my knees, smoothing my unbound hair behind my ears so it rippled down my back. I gave no thought to my unclothed state before them. Though I hadn’t lain with either of them (nor would I, despite how often it was whispered that I had), they’d both seen me often enough disrobed in the playhouse’s tiring-room as well as in my own chambers. “Here, be civil gentlemen for once in your wicked lives, and keep my company.”
“Madam, if you please,” Master Lely said wearily. “I should like to continue our session whilst the light still favors us.”
Contritely, I dropped back into my pose on the daybed, readjusting the length of white silk back over my hips. “There now, you dogs, see what you’ve done. If this picture is to be done in time for His Majesty’s birthday, then I must obey, and do exactly as Master Lely bids.”
“If Master Lely can make you obey, my dear,” said Sir Charles, flipping back the skirts of his coat as he sat on a nearby bench, “then he has accomplished something that no other mortal man has been able to do.”
“Hush, Sedley, and don’t lose sight of our purpose,” the earl said. I knew from the spark in his eyes that what was coming next would be a rich jest indeed. “We’ve espoused a noble cause, Nell, and we can’t let ourselves be deterred.”
“It’s not only noble, but tragic, too, or at least it has that very potential, if we do not act at once.” Sir Charles nodded solemnly, his hand over his breast. “We have sworn to save the dildos from the farmers.”
I burst out laughing, as can be perfectly understood, earning a scolding stare from Sir Peter.
I recomposed my expression as best I
could. “Dildos, Sir Charles? From farmers?”
“It’s not a subject for mirth, Nell,” Rochester said, shaking his head as he stared dolefully at the dregs of the wine left in his now-empty goblet. “We are in perfect earnest. A select shipment of fine leather dildos from Italy was recently confiscated in this very port, and is being held by the farmers as lewd and prohibited goods.”
“Farmers being customs officers,” explained Sir Charles. “Base Philistines who are threatening to burn these most noble devices.”
“But pray consider how divine that bonfire would be, Sedley,” the earl said, musing as he filled his goblet again. “Why, all of London would turn their noses to the air to breathe in the delectable fragrance of spending gigs, like infidels do their incense.”
“But the dildos are still virgins, Rochester,” Sir Charles explained patiently. “That’s the real tragedy, and why we must rescue them from the farmers’ warehouse.”
“Truly?” I asked through my laughter, though I was already certain they would. It was exactly the sort of prime bawdy prank that they warmed to, and the sort, too, that would delight the king later in the telling. As much as Rochester swore he loved above all things to be in the country with his wife and his children, he could no more resist this manner of witty tomfoolery with his friends here in London than he could pass by a bottle of canary, as his trembling hands and pallorous face could too well attest. “You’ll dare beard the farmers in their lair? ”
“We will,” Sir Charles vowed. “This very night, if it can be arranged. We’d ask you along, Nell, to represent the ladies, but I fear the risks will be too great. For poor Signor Dildo to burn and sputter without ever having brought one lady to pleasure—oh, such a sorrowful waste.”
“A lamentable one, especially to the ladies of the court,” Rochester agreed, and slyly looked back to me before he began to recite:
That pattern of virtue Her Grace of Cleveland
Has swallowed more pricks than the ocean has sand;
But by rubbing and scrubbing so large does she grow,
She is fit for nothing but Signor Dildo.
“Oh, my lord, but that is hugely fine!” I whooped with delight and clapped my hands, for surely such amusing poetry was worth a moment’s broken pose—especially when it skewered my old rival. I heard an indignant sigh of disapproval from Sir Peter behind me (for the Duchess of Cleveland had long been one of his favorite subjects, even before she had been made Countess of Castlemaine and was no better than plain Mrs. Palmer), but I cared not. “Is there more? Come, come, speak it out!”
“Of course there’s more,” Sir Charles said happily. “Rochester’s muse never stops at a single verse. Why, he must have told me at least a dozen others in the carriage alone.”
“I’ve twenty so far,” the earl said, not modest in the least. “Which is not to say I won’t write more, so inspired am I by this noble subject.”
“Have you writ one of Carwell?” I demanded eagerly. “I should like to hear that one.”
“Have a care, Nell,” warned Sir Charles, “else he’ll include you, too.”
“Oh, fah, as if His Lordship hasn’t already put me in a score of his foul verses,” I scoffed, unperturbed. I knew Rochester far too well to be offended when he had writ me into his satires before, for he did it more with the teasing naughtiness of an errant schoolboy than with any real malice. Besides, I was in truth no better than the earl in regard to such genial mockery. The laughter to be earned by a jest was everything. The only difference between us was that he wrote his pieces whilst I acted them, with much the same amusing results.
“Or mayhap he’s already written me into these lines, as well,” I continued, happy to tease along. “Have you, my lord? Not, of course, that I’ve any need of this Italian fellow, not with His Majesty in my bed, but since when has the truth interfered with your poetry? Am I to be in your poem, too, along with the good signor? ”
“What signor, Sedley?” asked the king, appearing seemingly from nowhere, as he did on occasion, with no ceremony beyond a half-dozen of his little flop-eared dogs trotting around him, and Sir Peter’s servant again hurrying to follow. “Who’s this Italian fellow consorting with Nelly? ”
We all rose at once so we could bow as was proper, though it’s precious difficult to curtsey with any grace while naked. Not that Charles objected at all. Far from it: he came directly to me, raising me by my hand as if I were the queen herself to kiss first my fingers and then my mouth.
“Forgive me, Sir Peter, if I haven’t yet admired your work on the easel,” he said, smiling down at me, “but I am too distracted by this beauteous example of nature’s art at her most perfect.”
I smiled back, then winked broadly. “I do thank’ee, sir, for that sweet-smelling shovelful, steaming fresh from the stables. What have you been about, sir, to try to bury me with that, eh? ”
He tipped back his head and laughed at being caught out, his teeth white beneath his black mustache. The other gentlemen laughed, too, more from relief than from amusement. My bold words weren’t so grave a risk as they seemed, for I knew my Charles as well as any woman in his realm. He’d promised to come to me here in Sir Peter’s studio two hours ago, as he did for most every sitting. He was at heart such a punctual man, always checking his pocket watch against church bells and clocks (he’d seven in his bedchamber alone), that I’d guessed that being so late would be gnawing and worrying at his conscience. I’d guessed, and I’d been right, too.
“So what’s the wench’s name, sir?” I asked coyly, my hands on my hips and my fingers drumming on my bare flesh. “Was she so very fair that you’d squander two hours of your Nelly time with her? ”
I didn’t really expect him to answer, and he didn’t, instead stepping away from the truth as neatly as a dancing master might.
“As I recall, Nelly,” he said, admonishing me with a raised forefinger, “I’d asked you first the name of this Italian rogue you’re taking to your bed. Don’t deny it, now. I could hear Sedley and Rochester both speaking of a signor when I was on the stairs.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth, while Sir Charles and the earl laughed so hard, I wondered that they could stand upright.
“Oh, sir,” I managed to say at last. “We were not speaking of any man from Italy, but of dildos.”
Charles’s brows rose with disbelief. “Dildos, Nelly? ”
“Aye, dildos, Your Majesty,” Rochester said with a small fillip of his fingers. “The fine leather ones, such as are crafted in Florence. They have inspired me to write a new poem, sir.”
“It’s hugely fine, too, sir,” I said, finally slipping my smock over my head. “How we have been laughing, sir!”
“I can see that,” Charles said, looking from me to the earl and back again. “I should put you both in motley, you know, and make you my fools.”
But just as I’d guessed earlier that his conscience had plagued him over being late, now I saw how he wasn’t sharing our amusement, and further, that there seemed a cloud of sadness to his face. Swiftly I slipped my fingers into his, and nodded to the others. “My lord, I find I must speak to His Majesty alone. Might I beg your indulgence for a few moments?”
“If you wish it, Nell,” the earl said, emptying his goblet for the final time, “then so shall it be. By your leave, sir, if you please.”
“Granted.” Charles waited until they’d backed from the room, and Sir Peter, too, had left, before he looked back to me. “Now what troubles you, sweet, that needs such privacy to discuss? What’s amiss? ”
“Better I should ask that of you, sir,” I said softly, drawing him to sit on the daybed beside me. “What’s amiss, eh? ”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing, Nell.”
“Oh, pish,” I said. “Now, tell me, sir. Please.”
He sighed disconsolately, then pulled off his hat and tossed it to the seat beside him. “Before coming here, I was with my brother’s wife at St. James’s, poor lady.”
&nb
sp; “She must be near her time now, isn’t she?” The Duchess of York was heavily pregnant with her eighth child. Only two had survived infancy: the Lady Mary of York, who was fair and full of charm, and the Lady Anne, who was her sister’s opposite, plain and dull with an unfortunate weeping squint. But what mattered far more was that these two young girls were, after their father the duke, Charles’s only heirs to the throne of England. With the queen barren, we all now prayed that this latest issue from the duchess would prove to be the son the country so desperately needed.
He nodded. “The midwives say she could give birth at any time now. I know it will sound foolish to speak aloud, but I’d let myself believe my sister somehow blessed the conception of this child, and that this one—this one would at last be a boy for my family.”
“That’s not foolish, sir, not at all.” I curled my arm around his for comfort. “Women know such matters, and if Her Grace says the child was conceived during that last visit to Dover, and with Madame’s blessing, then it must be so.”
“It must be so,” he repeated sadly, the way he was whenever speaking of his sister. “So am I wrong to wish my sister would reach down from heaven and give ease to the duchess and her babe?”
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