This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  Lenore gasped as Nell’s sharp nails raked her face, barely missing her eyes. In anger, she wound her fingers tightly in Nell’s chestnut ringlets and gave her head a sharp bang on the green baize floor. Nell screeched and kicked Lenore’s shins with her square-toed blue shoes. Lenore countered by stamping on Nell’s instep with a punishing yellow heel. Nell bellowed and bit at Lenore. Over and over they rolled on the green baize floor as Lenore tried to avoid the other girl’s sharp teeth.

  Panting, Lenore had her rival pinned down when Killigrew arrived on the scene. He strode through the company, scattering players and tirewomen to right and left, and pulled the contestants apart amid scattered applause and raucous cries of “Encore! Encore!”

  “Since the ladies are willing, perhaps we should incorporate that scene in tonight’s play!” cried one jolly voice.

  Killigrew, who was holding the two women apart, gave the speaker a scathing look. He ignored Lenore’s scratched face and torn costume. “Are ye hurt, Mistress Gwyn?” he asked anxiously, standing Nell on her feet. Lenore, straggling to her feet without assistance, thought wryly that that bleat of worry was for the King’s favorite—Killigrew dared not let Nell come to harm in his theatre.

  Trembling with rage, Nell dashed his arm away. “I’m all right, but my costume is ruined!” She fairly spat the words at Killigrew, reaching up to smooth back her tousled hair—indeed a tuft of that hair, departed from the scalp, was still clutched in Lenore’s fingers. Nell looked down in fury at her shepherdesss gown, sadly dirty and torn. “That wench attacked me!” she shouted at Killigrew.

  “I did not!” cried Lenore, incensed. “ ’Twas she attacked me, for she wants my costume!”

  “The costume was promised to me for next week’s play, and I do not want her appearing in it before I do—’twas given to the company by the Earl of Marford that I might wear it!”

  Killigrew looked pained. “I promise she will wear it only for this performance, Mistress Gwyn. There’s no time to find her a new costume now. The tirewoman—”

  “Devil take the tirewoman!” panted Nell, her face flushed. “She’s not to wear it at all! Do you hear me?” Killigrew bit his lip. Everyone could see that he was warring within himself. The possibility of feeling the King’s displeasure if the current royal favorite was not appeased was very real. He straightened. He had made his decision. Although his face was pale, it was expressionless as he turned to Lenore. “Take off the costume, Mistress Frankford. The tirewoman will find you something else.”

  Lenore gave him a mutinous look. She opened her mouth and checked herself. Killigrew’s decision in these matters was, after all, final.

  “Ye can get your revenge this afternoon in the play, Mistress Lenore!” called a raffish voice after her. “When ye stab her in the second act!”

  Nell sniffed and whirled away, trailing ripped ruffles, and Lenore stalked off to return her torn costume to the Great Wardrobe and to seek a new one.

  The one they found for her was not nearly so nice, nor was there time to make it fit properly. But Lenore knew bitterly that there was no alternative, she would have to wear it.

  That afternoon they played to a packed house. The King was in attendance, Lenore was told excitedly by a passing actress. As the First Music struck up, Lenore, who was dressing in the women’s part of the baize-hung tiring room, looked down contemptuously at the dull gray trunk hose and cheap red doublet they had found for her. Gone were the handsome slashed sleeves. Only the shoes with their high yellow heels remained, for they were her own, but they looked strange with those dull gray trunk hose. Lenore suspected them of deliberately seeking for her a shabby costume in order to pacify jealous Nell and dabbed angrily at her scratched face.

  She rose for a last inspection of herself in the mirror— and that mirror told her that the red doublet clashed with her hair, that the gray trunk hose were too loose and sagged, making her legs appear awkward. She gave the stool on which she’d been sitting a kick that sent it skidding to the far end of the room, and several other actresses who were dressing in the room turned to stare at her. From the far end of the room came a burst of laughter, and Lenore shot an angry look in that direction. There Nell Gwyn was holding court, fluttered over by actresses and tirewomen, who knew she was sleeping with the King and hoped to gain her favor.

  Nell’s costume was a wonder, Lenore noted bitterly. A most unlikely shepherdess’s costume, made of silver gauze and trimmed in tinsel, but beautiful nonetheless. All eyes would be on her indeed!

  Lenore was so angry she hoped she would be able to remember her lines. At least there was one part she was not likely to forget. In the second act—and unrehearsed, for this morning’s dress rehearsal had broken down after Lenore’s fight with Nell, Nell having refused to go on with the rehearsal in a torn costume and Killigrew throwing up his hands and stalking out—Lenore was supposed to give Nell a stab in the chest with a stage dagger. Lenore had used these stage daggers before—the blade would disappear into the hilt at the thrust, but the blow would burst a tiny pouch of sheep’s blood which Nell would wear concealed between her breasts. With a realistic red stain spreading on her bodice, Nell would fall gracefully to the green baize floor—and die dramatically onstage.

  Lenore looked down angrily at her ugly costume. She would give Mistress Nell such a blow as would burst the laces of her shepherdess’s bodice!

  Still furious, she waited by the curtain for her cue and strode onstage. In the blazing candlelight, Nell, in her tinseled silver gauze, looked lustrous.

  “Ho there, varlet!” cried Lenore in a ringing voice to Blakelock, who had hold of Nell’s white arm. “What do you with yon maid?”

  “ Tis naught to you,” cried Blakelock sulkily, with an exaggerated stage gesture.

  Out of the corner of her eye Lenore could see King Charles smiling sardonically from the audience, his gaze all for the lustrous Nell Gwyn, one white hand clutched to her bosom.

  “Unhand the maiden and give her up to me!” cried Lenore furiously, drawing the knife and brandishing it.

  Blakelock pretended to cower and ran away offstage. Nell rushed forward.

  “My savior!” she cried.

  “Nay,” said Lenore grimly, as the plot called for her to do. “Not your savior, but your rival. Tis you who have seduced my lover!” She raised the knife.

  “No, no!” cried Nell, with well-simulated panic. She turned gracefully to run, and Lenore grasped her by the wrist, spun her back and struck straight and true with the fake dagger—and with such force that Nell screamed and staggered backward, landing on the green baize with a thump instead of collapsing gracefully. The little pouch of sheep’s blood hidden between her breasts broke under the assault as planned and stained her bodice red, but Nell did not spread her arms out fetchingly and “die.” Instead she struggled up, her face contorted with pain. “She has killed me!” she shrieked hoarsely. “ ’Twas a real dagger!” Pandemonium reigned in the audience as King Charles leaped to his feet, cavaliers vaulted onstage, actresses and actors came running from everywhere. Killigrew himself rushed onstage in the hubbub and tore from Lenore’s paralyzed hand the dagger she had used on Nell.

  “ ’Tis a stage dagger,” he said with relief, pressing the blade with some force back into the hilt, and Lenore fell back against Ainsley in relief. Her hands were shaking. She had meant to strike Nell—but certainly not to kill her!

  “She has cut me!” cried Nell, giving her bodice an angry rip that exposed the white flesh between her breasts. There indeed was a small cut where the malfunctioning dagger had penetrated through the bodice and pouch and gouged a quarter-inch into her white bosom. “She did it deliberately!” Her voice rose hysterically. “Dismiss her! I demand she be dismissed!”

  Across the heads bent over Nell’s prostrate body, Killigrew gave his frowning royal master a worried look. He took the knife and plunged it into the top of a trestle table onstage. The blade retracted. He tried again. It stuck. “The knife may have been
tampered with,” he muttered.

  “But I am not to blame for that!” cried Lenore. “I but took the knife the scenekeeper gave me!”

  “She attacked me this morning and tore my costume!” shrilled Nell, aggrieved. “How do you know she did not substitute another knife with a rusty blade that would stick?”

  King Charles’s frown deepened.

  Killigrew swallowed. Abruptly he seized Lenore and dragged her, protesting, from the stage. Nell, recumbent and watching, suddenly waved a graceful hand and insisted bravely that she would go on with the performance even though the pain was—here she batted her lashes and pressed a hand dramatically to her bared breast—“almost too much to bear.”

  Lenore thought Nell’s whole performance over what was scarcely more than a scratch too much to bear. She could hear the cheers and applause that greeted this popular suggestion and looked back to see Nell being helped to her feet by half the gentlemen from the pit. She wondered if Nell could not have stabbed herself with a hatpin to draw attention to herself, but Killigrew brushed this suggestion aside as he dragged her along.

  “I saw ye fighting with her this morning,” he said grimly. “This is a theatre—not an arena. God’s breath! The two of ye could get me hanged!”

  “ ’Twas not I who started the fight this morning—” began Lenore, but Killigrew thrust her from him.

  “I care not who started it!” he bellowed. “Get ye gone! Ye are dismissed!”

  Lenore stared back at him, her eyes wide and accusing. Then she turned on her heel and stalked back to the tiring room to change into her street clothes. She knew there was no use arguing with Killigrew.

  Nell had won.

  Gilbert was standing by the door as Lenore, dressed in her own clothes and carrying a tapestry square that contained her belongings, emerged upon Vere Street into a thick, soupy fog. She started as his scarred face loomed up before her and would have brushed past him, but he stepped forward like a disembodied ghost and barred her way.

  “I hear ye have been dismissed, Lenore.”

  Lenore paused in mid-stride. How could he have known so soon? Word could not be about yet.

  “So it was you. . . .” she said bitterly.

  His triumphant smile told her everything. Somehow Gilbert had arranged for the daggers to be switched—the wonder was that she had not killed Nell with that malfunctioning dagger! For a moment Lenore stood there indecisively. She wanted to run back and tell Killigrew that she had deliberately been given the wrong knife. But she knew it would make no difference, had seen it on Killigrew’s set face as he dragged her offstage. Killigrew was looking to his own job, his own future; he had placated Nell by dismissing her, he would not take her back now—perhaps she could try later.

  In the meantime there was Gilbert to be dealt with. Gilbert, who bent close to her. Shrouded in fog, they seemed to be alone in the world, and his voice held a strange wistful caress. “Ye can still turn to me, Lenore—I would protect you.”

  “Protect me? Protect me?” she cried on such a note of wild derision that she could see him wince. Her eyes narrowed. Gilbert had arranged her downfall, but she still had the power to make him suffer. “What did you do to Lally, Gilbert?” she shot at him. “That she left you so suddenly?”

  “Lally?” Caught off guard, Gilbert gaped at her, his handsome scarred face made almost ridiculous by surprise.

  “Was it the same thing that made ‘Mother’ Moseley bar you from her brothel?”

  Gilbert paled.

  Lenore laughed scornfully. “Did you think I would not know? But we players hear everything backstage! We know who sleeps with the King—and who does not. And who is thrown downstairs at ‘Mother’ Moseley’s for . . . why did she have you thrown downstairs, Gilbert? Because of what you did to her best girl, Gertrude?”

  “Gertrude is a whore,” panted Gilbert. “What could it matter what I did to her?”

  “Gossip has it poor Gertrude—now that she’s up and about again—has promised to ease a dagger between your ribs if you return. Do you always wear out your welcome, Gilbert? Was it so in Oxford? What tale would Lally tell me, Gilbert, if I were to see her again?”

  “We quarreled,” he grated. “Nothing more.”

  "I've no doubt you quarreled,” said Lenore relentlessly. “I could see plain evidence of the arguments she lost on her bruised face!”

  “ ‘Twas impossible not to quarrel with her!” he burst out. “She’d no thought of anyone but Ned!”

  It was probably true, but Lenore, smarting from her unfair dismissal, was hardly in a charitable mood with the man who had caused it. “One cannot blame Lally for preferring a better man,” she sighed.

  Gilbert seized her arm vengefully. “You will end up at ‘Mother’ Moseley’s yourself before long,” he hissed, “where you’ll be glad enough of my favors—or anyone else’s who has the price! Geoffrey knew you for what you were!”

  At that mention of Geoffrey, Lenore’s face paled. “What did you say?” she asked menacingly.

  “I say he knew you for a whore!” shouted Gilbert, driven too far. “Why do you think he did not bring you to Oxford sooner?”

  He saw the effect Geoffrey’s name had on her, and a terrible light flashed in his eyes. He would give this insolent wench something to think about! “Did you not know Geoffrey’s wife had died in France before your lying in? He learnt it on one of his journeys. Geoffrey could have wed you—but he would not.”

  Agony burst over her.

  “It is a lie!” she cried fiercely.

  “Not so,” he gloated, enjoying her disarray. “All in Oxford knew of it—all but you.”

  Was that what they had been whispering that day she had gone with Gilbert and Lally to a play in a barn near Oxford? Those voices in the audience behind her that had been so suddenly hushed as she was recognized?

  “It isn’t true,” she whispered.

  He laughed scornfully. “Believe what you will. Geoffrey told me he would never wed you. Know you not why he was absent so often? He was seeking a rich bride to buy him a pardon!” He watched in triumph the shattering effect these lies had on her and smiled in demonic satisfaction as her face broke up.

  “Geoffrey knew you for a whore,” he taunted, raking the raw wound. “He had promised me that when he tired of you, I might have you.” His sneering face loomed toward her eerily in the fog. “What think you of that, Mistress Chastity?”

  For answer she brought up her knee and struck him in the groin. Gilbert gave a sharp barking cry and went down into the mist. At her feet he rolled on the cobbles, doubled up in agony, clawing at the hem of her skirt.

  Ashen-faced, Lenore stared down at his writhing body, shrouded by the thick white fog. Her mind reeled. Considered her a whore . . . seeking a rich bride . . . his wife already dead in France . . . Gilbert was Geoffrey’s cousin; he would have known if Letiche had died . . . and it was reasonable that he would tell her now to make her suffer. And she was suffering.

  Oh God, she had thought Geoffrey had left her because of the child, but if he had been lying to her all along, if he had really meant to turn her over to Gilbert when he tired of her . . . ! She stared down at Gilbert’s recumbent form without seeing him. She was seeing instead a bright vista of hell wavering at her through the fog, and the awfulness of that picture blurred her sight.

  She stepped over the body of the satin-clad dandy who writhed and moaned on the cobbles and stumbled away into the fog. Somehow she made it home to the Spur.

  Twice in the soupy fog she crashed into passersby, receiving a curse for her awkwardness. And once she blundered into a lamppost. She would not have cared if she had tumbled into the Thames and the dark waters had closed over her head. For she moved through a darkness of the soul that was absolute.

  And when she climbed the wooden stairs to her room and barred the door, she fell upon the bed with great sobs wracking her body. Geoffrey had never loved her, never .. . she had been a toy, a plaything to be used and thrown awa
y.

  Rocking in an agony of the spirit, she faced it all that night in the darkness of her small room. The white moon rose and waned and still she lay there, filled with grief and pain. The next day she did not go back to the theatre to try to get her job back. She did not go out; she did not eat or sleep. It was a full week before she could command herself to go back to the theatre. She wandered in listlessly and asked to speak to Killigrew.

  He kept her waiting, but at last he saw her. The waiting was no hardship to Lenore; she did not care how long she sat there. Killigrew was startled at the sight of her. She was thinner, pale, her hair unkempt, her dark-fringed violet eyes great gashes in a lovely face grown suddenly ethereal. She told him she had been ill, and he believed it —she looked ill enough now.

  But—he would not consent to take her back. He was firm about that. She had been dismissed by the Lord Chamberlain.

  He was relieved at the way she took it—apathetically. She did not seem to care. He wondered uneasily what had happened to this blazing beauty whose fire had put all the other actresses in the shade. Had his dismissal . . . ? No, surely not; he put the thought aside. Still he felt guilty, for in his secret heart he had considered Lenore the most beautiful of all the young women who had trod the boards in his theatre, and he would have cast her in leading roles long before this had it not been for the enmity of Nell Gwyn.

  Killigrew coughed. She could, he suggested, work as an orange girl. Lenore, who cared little what she did or where she went, agreed at once.

  “Orange Moll will show ye the way,” he told her.