“Mistress Frankford!” cried Emma rapturously. “They have accepted me at last!”
Lenore stood and smiled at her. “I am glad to hear it.
“Is this your first day?”
Emma nodded blissfully. “But my costume,” she added with a sad shake of her head, “is far too large.”
“Indeed you’re right.” Lenore seized a handful of blue taffety that billowed around Emma’s slender young waist. “We must have the tirewoman stitch it up to fit you.”
“I was afraid to ask,” admitted Emma in her soft voice. 'They all seemed so busy and they turned their heads as I approached. Yet—I was told I must appear in it in half an hour!”
Irritably Lenore looked about for a tirewoman—they all seemed to have disappeared.
“They ignore the newcomers,” she told Emma grimly, “for the regular players do reward them well.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “I-—I did not know,” she faltered. “And I’m afraid I—I have no money.”
“You should not need money. ’Tis their job to see your clothes do not fall off of you onstage!” Lenore marched to the green baize hanging that separated the men’s dressing room from the women’s. “Tirewoman!” she called in a voice that carried. “In here, quickly!”
A woman’s head poked through the curtains. “I am busy,” she whined.
Lenore sighed. “This will not take long,” she said, “but at least the waist must be tucked in and the hem basted up. As you can see, poor Emma will trip if she tries to walk across the stage in a dress so long.”
The tirewoman came through the green baize curtains reluctantly. She was carrying with her a voluminous dress of mulberry satin. “But I’m already promised to shorten the hems on this costume for Mistress Gwyn!” she cried, aggrieved.
“And who is Mistress Gwyn?”
“A new apprentice player—like this one.” The tirewoman bobbed her head at Emma. “I’m told they were both sent over by Master Killigrew this morning.”
Lenore sighed. Actresses came and went in this place as if blown by on a strong wind—and most of them were prostitutes who’d walk out on the arm of any likely patron and return to the theatre when their patrons grew tired of them or—and more frequently—when their patrons’ money ran out! She thought young Emma deserved her chance.
The tirewoman came forward muttering, thumped herself down upon a stool, and made to continue her work on the mulberry satin.
“Mistress Gwyn must wait,” insisted Lenore, “for Emma here is supposed to wear this blue dress onstage in half an hour.”
“Mistress Gwyn does not choose to wait!” rang out an imperious new voice that had in it the tang of the London streets. Lenore turned to face a shapely chestnut-haired girl in a red dress who flounced into the room. She judged the girl to be even younger than Emma, though the hazel eyes that challenged her were infinitely worldlier.
Lenore sighed. “Are you then to appear in this costume onstage?” She indicated the mulberry satin lying on the tirewoman’s lap.
“Certainly—tomorrow!” snapped the girl in the red dress.
“Then it can certainly wait,” said Lenore, and snatched the mulberry satin from the tirewoman’s lap and thrust it upon the newcomer. “For Emma must appear immediately—and she cannot do so attired in a dress big enough for all of us!”
The chestnut-haired girl made a threatening gesture toward Lenore but was distracted by Emma’s eager voice.
“ ’Tis too large because it belonged to a Duchess!”
The new girl looked down at the mulberry satin. “Belonged to—?”
“You heard her,” said Lenore. “A Duchess. Some of them are fat. This one obviously was!”
“We’re fortunate the gentry do give cast-off clothes to the theatre for the players,” chuckled the tirewoman, already at work with her swift needle on the bodice of the blue dress.
“Cast-off!” said the chestnut-haired girl with an affronted look at the mulberry satin she now held in her arms. “And is this gown cast-off, too, pray?”
“They all are,” said Lenore more kindly. Obviously this girl was unused to the ways of the theatre. “Else we’d have no alternative but to wear our own clothes onstage!”
The girl cast the mulberry satin gown from her angrily. “Well, I will not wear cast-offs!” she cried with a curse. “I mean to wear beautiful clothes—all made for me!”
The tirewoman was chuckling as the angry girl flung away. Lenore watched her go—good face, good figure, and fiery—good theatre. “What did you say her name was?” she asked.
“Nell Gwyn,” said the tirewoman, looking up and biting off the thread with her teeth. “And she came to Killigrew well recommended,” she added with a laugh. “By three Baronets and an Earl!”
“Three Baronets!” Emma sighed in envy.
“And an Earl,” Lenore added crisply. “Don’t forget him.”
“She’s a saucy one, is Mistress Nell,” said the tirewoman. “Her mother kept a bawdyhouse in Covent Garden, and Nell was brought up there. Her sister Rose is one of the orange girls. But I think me Mistress Nell may surpass them both!”
Lenore cast a speculative eye after the saucy street wench just flouncing out through the green baize curtains. She was inclined to agree with the tirewoman. Young Mistress Gwyn might make her theatrical debut in new clothes after all!
But the next day she was told Nell Gwyn had demanded new clothing from Thomas Killigrew and had been dismissed even before she could begin her new career— everyone was chuckling over it. Lenore looked down wryly at the shabby creation she was wearing—of much-mended watered taffety. Not that it mattered, she was only wearing it at a rehearsal. For young women were almost fighting to get their chance in the theatre, and Lenore had not yet had a chance to act onstage.
Emma had. She had appeared briefly as a water nymph —once again in a dress too large—and just as she made her entrance the entire dress fell down over one shoulder, showing a great deal of pink and white skin. The audience had roared with laughter, but the incident had served Emma well, for a young Baronet had noticed her and asked her to a coffee house after the performance.
Emma had been so excited that Lenore had felt it necessary to see that she had sufficient coins in her purse to take a hackney coach home in case of need, and that she had not put her right shoe on her left foot or vice versa.
“It is my chance!” cried Emma, enraptured. “A Baronet! And so handsome! Oh, Lenore, do you think—do you think he will like me?”
Lenore surveyed that round, innocent face, the silky young skin, the big sparkling blue eyes turned so appealingly upward. How different was Emma from Mistress Gwyn! “There’s little doubt he will like you,” she said dryly. “The important thing is to be sure you like him.”
“But how could I not? Have you not seen him? So tall and commanding—and such gorgeous clothes!” She touched Lenore’s arm impulsively. “Oh, Lenore, won’t you come with me? I am sure he must know other Baronets!”
Lenore shook her head. “Don’t you know they call me the Iron Virgin?” she quipped. “It is because I do not frequent coffee houses with strange Baronets!”
Emma looked mystified. She took a last look in the mirror, was jostled away from it by another actress, one Lenore recognized as a notorious prostitute, and hurried away. Lenore smiled as she watched her go, and the prostitute, whose name was Floss, turned and gave Lenore a curious look.
“You’re a fool—you know that,” Floss said bluntly. “You could have a Duke with your looks. Is it true you’re saving yourself for the King?”
Lenore laughed and shook her head, but her smile had turned rueful by the time she reached the room she still shared with Mistress Potts at the George. Perhaps she was a fool not to go to coffee houses with the glittering gentlemen who frequented the theatre. Perhaps silly young Emma had the right idea—to go out and find herself a man.
“You work too hard,” said Mistress Potts, observing Lenore’s strained expres
sion.
“No,” sighed Lenore. “I think too much. ’Tis a bad habit that I must somehow learn to break.”
The next day Emma left the theatre for good. She came by at rehearsal time to tell Lenore breathlessly that she had found at last “a noble protector”—her Baronet! And the next week to twirl about displaying the new pink silk dress he had bought for her—it had been stitched up by a seamstress who had at one time worked for the Queen! Emma was breathless. She did not return to the theatre again. Once Lenore saw her riding down Drury Lane in a coach; she was handsomely dressed in rose sarsenet and waved gaily.
Then grimmer news reached her. Emma’s Baronet had passed her along—to the notorious Lord Wilsingame. Lenore frowned at the news. One of the more vicious young peers who had come to London to seek the new King’s favor, Wilsingame had rented a handsome house perched in the mid-section of London Bridge and had gathered around him wild young men of like kidney. There he gave roistering parties and there he was said to have installed his mad sister, whose screams rent the night. It was said she had several times attacked her serving-women, for often their screams were blended with hers. Lenore thought grimly of Emma, so young, so childlike, with her wide, believing blue eyes . . . Emma, who had yearned not for honest marriage but for “a noble protector.”
She determined to learn how Emma fared. Twice she made her way onto the narrow dangerous coachway that threaded between the tall houses that rose up on both sides of the bridge itself. The buildings overhung the street and leaned out precipitately over the River Thames, and several times Lenore walked through short dark tunnels on the bridge where the buildings met above her head. There were shops here, too, on London Bridge, and twice Lenore fell back hurriedly from the narrow street into an open Shop doorway to dodge onrushing horses, for a coach going by filled the street—the bridge was so crowded with houses it was not wide enough for two coaches to pass!
This narrow press of houses and shops spanning the Thames seemed to her somehow menacing—to Emma, so full of young dreams. It was with foreboding that she banged the great boar’s head knocker of Lord Wilsingame’s tall, narrow house. A surly manservant stuck out his head and told her that Emma was not at home.
Lenore came back a week later and was told by the same servant that Emma had departed London for the country. Used by Wilsingame and thrown away, thought Lenore bitterly. She regretted that she had not seen Emma before she left, but she hoped poor foolish Emma had gone back to the pleasant country town from which she had come and would find herself there some stout country lad and forget her brief unfortunate venture in sinful London. She thought back to her friend Lally, who had been used, discarded, and she too had disappeared without a goodbye.
It was spring before Lenore got her first part in a play— and then because both the leading man and leading lady were sick (having drunk too deeply of the royal malmsey the night before), the play was cancelled and another put in its place. It was scheduled again—and once more postponed because Killigrew had promised Lady Castlemaine that its first performance would be played before the King, and the King had gone to Sandwich to join Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese Infanta. Twice did he marry his Portuguese Princess—once by Roman Catholic rites, and once by the English service—and great wealth did she bring with her: Bombay and Tangier, and two million cruzados. But in London the players tittered when they learned that Lady Castlemaine had been appointed one of the young Queen’s ladies in waiting!
Since being sworn in as a royal player, Lenore had glimpsed the King only in the middle distance, from back-stage, on those occasions when he attended a play. She’d seen his dark, saturnine countenance often split into a wolfish smile at some particularly broad remark onstage. Nor had it escaped her that there were always bewigged, besatined, and beauteous ladies about him—and most often next to him she glimpsed beautiful imperious Lady Castlemaine, to whom all deferred. Lenore found herself rather sorry for the young Queen, pitted against such a determined beauty.
Although it had been promised speedily, Lenore’s royal pardon had not yet come through and she debated trying to gain another audience with the King, but reluctantly put the thought from her. If she saw him again at close quarters, dark, aggressive, virile . . . she might well become one of that perfumed, handsomely dressed group of doxies, patrician and otherwise, who swarmed about him. It was something she wished to avoid. Not because of conscience or fear that such an alliance might endanger her reputation—indeed in lascivious London being bedded by the King would only enhance her reputation! But because something strong and deep within her rebelled at the thought.
She had been Geoffrey’s mistress without a qualm, but ... she had loved Geoffrey. She did not love the King, she only found him physically attractive. If she became his mistress, she would be no better than that high-born strumpet, Lady Castlemaine!
But the slowness of her royal pardon bothered her, and when the play that had been deferred was finally rescheduled for private showing at Whitehall before King and Court, she determined to find a way to speak to the King again about her pardon.
Playing Whitehall was very popular with the players, who were poorly paid and almost always in debt. Low in the social scale (for the players were listed even below the royal rat-killers) they often sneaked their handsome stage costumes out of the theatre’s tiring rooms and wore them about the City. Though the actors wore swords, considering that the mark of a gentleman, they were never accepted as equals by the gentry. Lenore, as an actress, felt this less than the men, for a pretty woman could command her own respect. But she knew that at the King’s private theatre at Whitehall, the players supped well and drank deep of sack and claret and beer. This was to be an important performance, and there would be understudies for all the parts, for the show must indeed go on.
Lenore was as excited as the rest by the prospect of opening in a new play at Whitehall—perhaps more so, for this royal performance would mark her debut on the boards. Her part, though small, was a good one—that of a girl who disguised herself as a boy to spy on her unfaithful lover, and Ainsley had said that if she succeeded in this part (which meant, she knew, if the King was pleased with her performance), it could mean advancement for her. She had two costumes for the role: a full-skirted peach satin in which she would appear in the last act, and an olive-green doublet and tight trunk hose and peaked hat for her masquerade as a man in the second act.
Opening night came at last. The players were all assembled in a chattering fluid group at Whitehall, and back-stage Lenore repeated her lines to herself over and over— she must not forget them, this was her chance to impress the King and perhaps gain another audience to press for her royal pardon!
Through the curtains, from backstage, she watched the play proceed, the actors warmed with malmsey and delivering their lines in ringing tones, the actresses bowing so low their bare breasts almost slipped from their low-cut bodices, their skin creamy and golden in the light of the huge chandeliers with their hundreds of candles.
Past the players she could see King Charles in a huge black periwig, his glossy black curls spilling over onto the froth of Alençon lace at his throat, frosty against his purple velvets. He was leaning back at his ease, knees crossed nonchalantly. Beside him, a sultry beauty in mauve satin, lounged Lady Castlemaine, waving a delicate ivory fan. Around them were grouped the courtiers, wearing black patches on their faces and taking snuff from enamelled boxes, and the ladies-in-waiting, dressed elegantly in the French fashion which Charles admired. But nowhere was the young Queen to be seen. Lenore had heard backstage that the Queen had pleaded a “headache” and gone to her chambers—it was rumored that she and Lady Castlemaine were waging a pitched battle for the King and that Lady Castlemaine was winning.
Lenore gave the reckless beauty beside the King a sardonic look; it was her opinion that Lady Castlemaine would stop at nothing to hold her place on the royal lap. She smiled dangerously to herself, a smile that boded ill for the lady in mauve satin.
That hot look in the King’s eyes when he had looked at her that day when he had promised her a royal pardon could be summoned up again! Perhaps the young Queen could not take him from Lady Castlemaine, but the self-assured flirt from Twainmere had no doubt that she could do it if she put her mind to it!
And perhaps she would have a try for him, after all! It was something she would decide as she played her part before him tonight.
“Are you ready?” hissed Blakelock. “Hurry, you’ll miss your cue!” He gave her a solid push that propelled her through the curtains and onto the stage.
Lenore, who’d hardly been following the dialogue as she toyed with dreams of becoming a royal courtesan, realized belatedly that her cue had indeed been given. She rushed onstage, propelled by Blakelock’s push, wearing the long tight stockings and bright smile her part required—a smile she flashed directly at the King.
But Lenore got no chance to play her “breeches part” that night at Whitehall, for as she rushed onstage her foot slipped on a greasy spot on the floor and she fell headlong, almost knocking over the leading man and sliding half across the stage. Everybody laughed at such clumsiness, and Lenore’s face was red as she tried to spring up—only to sink wincing to the floor again, for her painful ankle would not support her weight. The play was held up as Ainsley and several others hurried out to help her offstage.
Biting her lips to keep from crying out as she limped away on Ainsley’s arm, Lenore met the mocking gaze of Lady Castlemaine above her lazily wielded ivory fan. Behind the fan she thought Lady Castlemaine might be laughing. The King looked thoughtfully at the greasy spot at the edge of the stage where Lenore had slipped, and his dark gaze narrowed as he turned to consider his beautiful, amused mistress; then he shrugged. He was after all accustomed to having women fight over him.
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