This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  "But that’s the worst kind! Mark me, he’ll bear watching. I've seen him turn his head and look at you when you weren’t looking!”

  "Mistress Potts,” said Lenore whimsically—for she refused to call her friend by her first name out of deference to her age—-“you do me too much credit. Not all the men I meet are interested in me—some have very satisfactory wives or mistresses at home!”

  Mistress Potts bridled. “Those that won’t heed timely warnings may end up badly!” she said in a tart voice.

  Lenore sighed. She had already ended up badly, by her way of thinking: deserted by her lover, out of touch with her child because charges of being a Royalist and a murderess hung over her head . . . she really did not fear the man in the blue coat, or anyone, for that matter.

  Mistress Potts’s concern for Lenore’s threatened virtue became so obsessive that Lenore was almost relieved when, on the last day of January, the tense city’s—and Mistress potts's—attention was diverted by a public hanging at Tyburn.

  The culprit was a woman who had disposed of her unwanted child by placing it in a large covered pot and taking it to a nearby bakehouse to be baked. When the horrified baker discovered the child, there was a public outcry. Mistress Potts had talked of little else for days. Her child! Imagine doing that to her little baby!

  When Lenore heard about it, she felt physically ill and promptly turned down Mistress Potts’s eager suggestion that they watch the convicted murderess “dance” at the end of a rope at Tyburn. But shy Mistress Potts outwitted Lenore, and asked Lenore to accompany her on an errand to High Holborn, where they stood with a large goggling crowd watching the hanging cart go by. Lenore stared at the dazed, terrified woman and clenched her hands and thought of Lorena. Thank God Lorena was safe with Flora, who would love her and keep her—both because Lorena was Jamie’s and because Flora was Flora. And because Lorena was hers.

  “ ’Tis not too late to reach Tyburn and see her swing if we hire a chair!” cried Mistress Potts, fired by the sight of the condemned woman standing in the cart. “And there’ll be seats for ladies for hire at Tyburn, I’m sure—though the lucky ones will watch from their coaches!”

  “Perhaps she is not guilty,” said Lenore coldly.

  “Nonsense! Who else would place her child in a pot?”

  “Her enemies,” Lenore said soberly. The searing thought had come to her that people believed her a murderess, too! Perhaps this poor woman . . . she could not bear to look at the cart any more and turned away abruptly. “I do not feel well,’ she told Mistress Potts. “You go on to Tyburn— I think I will go back to the George.”

  By the first of February the City seemed calm again— until suddenly the next day the unpaid soldiery quartered near Whitehall blazed into mutiny and stormed Somerset House. There they mounted seven guns and threatened to blow up Parliament. Joined by a mob of seven hundred angry apprentices, they marched through Cheapside until dispersed by cavalry, with some forty jailed.

  On the third of February General Monk’s troops, five thousand strong, marched down Gray’s Inn Road into London.

  Mistress Potts said admiringly that a general who would march his men three hundred miles through snow and ice water could handle anything—even London.

  Her assessment seemed true. Amid a wave of mutinies which seemed to break out spontaneously everywhere, Central Monk calmly took possession of the Tower of London. He ordered the handsome city gates and portcullises destroyed and took up headquarters at the Three Tuns in Guildhall Yard. When he decreed that the present Rump Parliament should not sit later than May 6, the City went wild—for this meant the young King far away in Brussels would soon be restored to his throne. Bonfires lit the streets, all the bells were rung, and amid the clangor and smoke everyone choked and slapped one another on the back and drank the King’s health. Amid a wave of public whippings and executions, General Monk moved into Whitehall, and Tuesday, February 28, was celebrated as a day of public thanksgiving.

  Mistress Potts was jubilant. From a seesawing middle-of-the-roader she had become overnight an ardent Royalist. Wasn’t it wonderful? she beamed. The King would be on his rightful throne again, he’d be coming home—all the way from Brussels!

  Lenore gave her a somber look. That meant Geoffrey would be coming home, too, for she had no doubt he was with the King in Brussels. She knew she should bestir herself to find employment but a strange lethargy possessed her, a feeling of waiting. . . .

  March was a month of heavy rains, and on March 20 the swollen Thames overflowed its banks. Lenore fought her way home to the George against a strong east wind. They were rowing boats down King Street, she noted. She came in wet and shivering, to find Mistress Potts leaning back in the common room, filling the whole of a chair with her girth and toasting her square-toed shoes at the hearth. She waved a letter at Lenore and told her in an excited whisper that the soldiers in Dunkirk were drinking the King’s health openly in the streets!

  Glumly, Lenore tossed off her wet cloak and warmed herself by the fire. She hoped the King would come soon, for her money was running low. When she had arrived in London, she had had nearly enough for passage money for herself and Lorena, but now she would have to find a way to earn more. Somehow she had expected this change from commonwealth to monarchy to come overnight—with Cromwell dead, the King would immediately be restored to his throne. But the political machinations had dragged on for a long time.

  It was some comfort that elections were at last being held and amnesty discussed. The two official newspapers had hastily changed their names; then there were rumors of a riot in York. But just when things finally seemed to be settling down, Lambert—who everyone felt was capable of raising a revolt—escaped from the Tower. Lenore had it from Mistress Potts that a lady had smuggled a silk ladder into Lambert’s cell and he had made it down the wall into a waiting barge—while the girl, who’d received a hundred pounds for her efforts, had crawled into the prisoner’s bed attired in his nightcap—and so they had found her in the morning! Mistress Potts tittered at this, but Lenore wondered uneasily what would happen to the audacious girl, who was now in custody.

  The City was tense now. Chains had been set up, and three regiments stood guard. By Good Friday it was learned that Lambert had been cornered in a house in Westminster and escaped in a coach wearing a woman’s dress and a mask. But on Easter Sunday he and the troops who had risen with him were defeated, and Lambert was once again a prisoner.

  Lenore’s interest quickened when late in April there was an attempt to reopen London’s closed theatres—but this move was quickly stopped by the Council of State as being premature. Lenore, thinking sadly of Monty and his dedicated troupe of players, agreed with Mistress Potts that it was too bad—and joined her in watching Lambert brought by in a coach with two of his officers on his way again to the Tower. Lenore shivered as she watched them pass; it was sad to be a prisoner.

  The new Parliament assembled, and on May 1 England was again declared a monarchy. That night was bright as day, for London was lit by bonfires end to end. Maypoles (which had been forbidden under Puritan rule) were set up everywhere—even the King’s flag was hoisted atop a maypole in Deal, where the fleet lay at anchor, and the castle guns fired a lusty salute.

  Not till May 4 at Breda did the young King hear the news. He was champing at the bit when the following Tuesday he was again proclaimed at Whitehall. Amid much pageantry, with the sheriffs in scarlet and the Lord Mayor in crimson velvet gown and hood, a joyful procession wended through the streets to the Old Exchange. Everywhere was the King proclaimed. The fourth time was in Cheapside, where Lenore and Mistress Potts stood in a great crush of people. All the bells in the city began to ring, and the shouting around them grew so loud that they could not even hear Bow bells rung. Mistress Potts lost her heel and limped home with Lenore as the proclamation was read at the Old Exchange. They reached the George as the guns from the Tower fired a salute. That night was lit with bonfires and no one could sleep f
or the merry clanging of bells.

  It has happened, thought Lenore. It has really happened. The King will set sail at last. And . . . Geoffrey will accompany him. Her violet eyes grew dark at the thought, and an involuntary shiver went through her. Geoffrey would be coming home . . . she would see him again. She knew it.

  It seemed almost anticlimactic when Mistress Potts received a letter saying her stepsister had died in Oxford and left her a fustian blanket and a down bolster. She read the letter aloud dramatically, standing in the common room of the George.

  “Will you go to Oxford to the funeral?” asked Lenore soberly.

  Mistress Potts looked up and shook her head. “Nay, we’ve not seen each other for years—but the fustian blanket and bolster were my mother’s, and we made a pact that she could use them whilst she lived, but I was to have them on her death. Besides, I wouldn’t want to miss the King’s return to London—oh!” She sounded disappointed. “I missed this part! It says here that when the King was proclaimed at Oxford on Thursday, the conduit ran claret for hours! The Mayor gave away hundreds of bottles of wine, and barrels of beer were set up in the streets—and a hundred dozen loaves were given to the poor!”

  Lenore thought sardonically that Mistress Potts was wishing her stepsister had died last week so she could have attended both the funeral and the festivities in Oxford at the same time. Oxford . . . she had tried to keep that town of honey-colored spires and wrenching memories from her thoughts.

  Channel gales postponed the King’s embarkation, but at last on May 22 the sun burst through, and at four o’clock the following day the fleet set sail and anchored at Dover two days later at dawn. The young King went down on his knees on the beach and while the shore guns fired in salute, he thanked God for bringing him safely home again.

  And then began the triumphant march to London—from Dover Castle to Canterbury, from Rochester to St. George’s Fields, where the Lord Mayor of London waited, and on across London Bridge through cheering, tapestry-hung streets, toward Whitehall.

  Lenore, standing in her threadbare mended finery in the crush of the Strand, watched them pass and thought of Worcester, of those who had gone and those who would return.

  The kettledrum and five trumpets were passing now, the noise deafening. And now the Lifeguards, and more trumpets. Lenore had eluded Mistress Potts, who had intended to view the procession near London Bridge. If she should see Geoffrey ride by, she thought she might burst into tears and . . . that would require explanations.

  Now the City Marshal, the City Waits, and all the City officers were filing by, splendidly garbed, now the red-robed sheriffs and the aldermen—complete with liveried footmen, heralds, maces. Now the Lord Mayor with sword upraised— and with him General Monk and the Duke of Buckingham.

  Lenore took a deep, ragged breath and felt her heart must stop. Geoffrey should be somewhere among the group about the King. She stood on tiptoe and clawed her way forward to get a better view, for the crowd had gone wild, waving scarves and cheering and screaming. That sudden outburst had to mean the King had come into view.

  Ah, now she could see him. It was the King, flanked by the Duke of York and the Duke of Gloucester. The King, his trim, athletic figure clothed in a dark suit of cloth, his hat waving with scarlet plumes. Lenore studied him somberly as he passed. She had seen him once before, charging across the field at Worcester, his black curls flying, a flash of a diamonds at his chest. Frantically her eyes searched among the King’s close friends, riding by. That tall man in the wide-brimmed hat, could that be Geoffrey? The light was shining in her eyes. No—he was blond. Perhaps the man in rich blue velvet riding between a cavalier in scarlet and one in gold-emboidered satin, she could not see him—ah, there he was looking around; it was a handsome face, but it was not Geoffrey’s.

  One by one she watched them ride by, until there were no more to see. For seven long hours she had stood on her high heels in the Strand watching the procession. Now at last she settled back from tiptoe to stand flat upon the sidewalk. Many cavaliers had returned with the King but—Geoffrey was not among them.

  She turned away with an ache in her throat, not waiting to see the six hundred men of the City Companies ride by with their footmen. She had seen enough.

  He must be dead, then, she thought sadly. For if he were alive, Geoffrey would have returned to London with the King. Perhaps he had never made it to France after all. . . .

  Through tapestry-hung streets, past people giddy with and staggering from wine, a sad Lenore made her way back to the George. She found Mistress Potts waiting for her.

  "Where’ve ye been?” she demanded of Lenore. “I’ve been afraid ye’d miss the party!”

  “Party?”

  “All London will have a party this night!” declared Mistress Potts. “ ’Twill be a sight to see!”

  And London did have a party. It went on for three days and three nights. Mistress Potts urged a mask on Lenore and they went out into the streets together, trailing by innumerable bonfires, seeing innumerable effigies of Cromwell burned. Everywhere, there were barrels of beer and wine, wine, wine—one foreign envoy kept a fountain of wine spurting before his very door.

  Numbed, Lenore allowed herself to be dragged through these revels by energetic Mistress Potts. But when the festivities dragged to an end—mainly through the exhaustion of the participants—she sat in her lonely room with her head in her hands and at last admitted to herself how much she had been counting on seeing Geoffrey again, that it was the real reason she had lingered in London all this time.

  Mistress Potts did not know the reason for Lenore’s despondency, but she tried to cheer her. She brought daily bulletins of the athletic young King’s doings. On Sunday he had played his favorite game—tennis; now he had taken up river bathing and every evening went with the Duke of York as far as Battersea or Barn Elms to swim.

  When she learned that on a Saturday the King had touched six hundred people for “the Evil,” Mistress Potts hurried to the Banqueting House on Monday to be touched. She returned with a white ribbon bearing an angel in gold which the King himself had placed around her neck. There’d been two hundred and fifty people there, and she urged Lenore to procure a ticket from the Royal Surgeon in Covent Garden—though, she added regretfully, there’d been such a crush that ’twould only be done on Fridays now.

  Lenore was roused to hysterical laughter. As if a King’s touch could excise the evil which had so long beset her! But she listened to the gossip that garrulous Mistress Potts had brought back from the Banqueting House—that not only the King but his brothers were hot in pursuit of beautiful Barbara Villiers—and she a married woman, wed to Roger Palmer! Mistress Potts was thrilled. Lenore said dryly that royalty was seldom not in hot pursuit, and Mistress Potts tittered inordinately.

  But Mistress Potts’s talk of the King’s touch alleviating evil had set Lenore thinking. It was said that all those who had helped the King during the days of his defeat and exile were hastening to London to claim rewards—and that he was giving them rewards with a lavish hand. Of course, she had never really done anything for the King, but . . . was she not known as the Angel of Worcester? And had she not suffered for it?

  She took a walk to think about that, and as she passed the Queen’s Head Inn she was hard put to avoid a limping man who stumbled on the cobbles and nearly plummeted into her. Instinctively she put out a hand to help him and as he regained his footing and turned to thank her, she realized that she was looking into the face of Montmorency Hogue, the head of the company of strolling players for whom for so long she had been the “advance man.”

  “Monty!” she gasped, and hugged him.

  Monty Hogue, who was older and thinner than she remembered him, his face lined and weathered, was almost knocked off balance again by this onslaught.

  “Mistress Lenore!” he cried. “I’d ne’er thought to see your face again!”

  “Nor I yours, Monty! Word had it you’d been transported, that all the troupe h
ad been. How come you to London?”

  “ 'Tis a long story,” he said, and she saw that his cheeks were sunken and sallow; whatever his experiences, they had aged him. “We might have been let off with a light sentence, but I've a sharp tongue in my head, and I flayed the magistrate with it. We were transported right enough. The rest were sent to Barbados, but I was shipped to Virginia, where I was indentured to an elderly planter. He’d a mind for frivolity, and at supper I would entertain his guests with recitations. He was so pleased with me that when he decided to return to England he brought me with him. He died of bad food on the journey, but when his will was read, he had freed me of my indenture and left me fifty pounds to boot!”

  “Then you’re staying in London, Monty?”

  "Nay, I was even now on my way to take a stage westward. I’m for Stratford, where I hope to assemble a troupe of strolling players again. And you, mistress, how do you fare?”

  Ah, how she wished he would ask her to go with him. “I fare well enough, Monty,” she said soberly. And then, with hesitation she asked, “Will you be needing an advance man, Monty?”

  He gave her a look of sympathy, but he shook his head emphatically. “Nay, Mistress Lenore, that I will not. England is changing for the better, now that the King is restored to his throne. There’ll be no need of advance men making clandestine arrangements to hold a play. We’ll wander about the country with our cart and hold our plays in any likely place. ’Twill be like the old days when the old King reigned!”

  She felt rebuffed. And yet—why should Monty go to the expense of using an advance man if he did not need one? “I wish you well, Monty.” She smiled at him.

  “I know that.” He wrung her hand, his own thin and bony. It somehow hurt her heart to see how old he had become. Transportation had changed him, it had erased the youth from that buoyant young-old face, and now—like a dry leaf—he was blowing to the west. If she had thought he would rally her as he had once done, his twinkling eyes and merry manner urging her to his bed, she was mistaken. Wryly she asked herself if she had hoped to be asked to go along as his mistress, mending the costumes for the troupe—and perchance mending her own heart as well.