by Priya Parmar
“He will forgive them,” he said in answer to my thoughts. “He will forgive us anything. That is the trouble,” he said, watching the unlikely trio make their way down the drive, the king striding ahead, boisterously pointing out various trees and plants of interest with his gold-tipped walking stick and the startled constables trailing in his wake.
Johnny was right. How well he knows the king. By the time Buckingham, Rupert, and Peg emerged, Sedley and Buckhurst were returned—Sedley with a black eye and Buckhurst limping—and their royal favour restored. They retold the story of their night in jail over luncheon—a lovely outdoor affair, served on long tables covered in cloud-white cloths with roast carp, fresh salad from the garden, and bowls of strawberries with thick country cream. I so much prefer simplicity to the rich court food.
They told of the Sunne Tavern and then the King’s Head and Betsy the serving maid, who challenged them to run the length of the high street naked before she would kiss either of them. This same Betsy who disappeared once they began their drunken, naked serenade outside the tavern. Of the doctor, who shook his cane at them, the tavern keeper, who shooed them away—locking the tavern with their clothes inside—the seamstress, who offered from her window to sew them some clothes, and finally the watch, who chased them and arrested them.
“But they beat you?” I asked, eyeing their injuries.
They looked at each other furtively, as if deciding whether or not to be truthful.
“No,” began Sedley awkwardly, “that was from…” He let his sentence trail off.
“We ran into some trouble with … Betsy,” finished Buckhurst.
“Betsy!” whooped Buckingham. “Don’t tell me she did that!” he said, pointing at Sedley’s black eye.
“The doctor is her uncle,” Buckhurst said, rising to her defence. “And she is much stronger than she looks.”
“Yes,” agreed Sedley solemnly. “Betsy is burly.”
Later
I asked Charles, just before he fell asleep, why he was not wroth with them. This was our private time at the end of the public day. Snug and safe, I could let my thoughts uncurl. The moonlight striped our silk coverlets as he held me close.
“They are wild boys,” he said indulgently. “They are brilliant and extreme and cannot be held to codes of normal behaviour. And besides,” he added thoughtfully, running his long fingers through my sea-horse curls, “I do not care enough to reform them.”
That is him all over, I thought. Charles notices everything but will only exert effort if it interests him.
“Johnny, too?” I asked, sensing that Johnny was special.
“No, Johnny is different. I would move heaven and earth to reform Johnny,” he answered quietly, looking at the moon.
Sunday, October 25—Windsor (rainy)
Moved again. After our unexpected Suffolk publicity we decided to remove to Windsor Castle for some peace. We arrived in time for chapel and all trooped in, still dressed in our travelling clothes—all except Johnny, who never attends church. Rupert and Peg had sent word ahead, and the castle was all in readiness for us—as ready as it can be in its current state of renovation. After a simple supper together we looked over the modifications to the ancient fortress.
“But it must be better, Rupert!” Charles thundered with excitement, racing about the crumbling building and gesticulating vigorously.
Building projects energise him, I remember the queen saying. Charles had returned from his Continental exile inspired by the luxury and efficiency of his cousin King Louis XIV’s grand palaces. His designs for a Long Walk here at Windsor look much like the drawings of Louis’s gardens at Versailles. I love to watch him whip himself into an architectural frenzy. His artless enthusiasm is infectious.
“We must renovate, redecorate, improve, improve, improve! Things can always be better! More beautiful, more modern.”
Charles is obsessed with modernising his residences, his cities—his country, for that matter. Rupert shot Peg a look as if to say, Modernity takes money, but held his tongue.
Rupert showed Charles his experiments with mezzotinting, his newest passion, while Peg and I looked over fabric samples (bright Chinese silk and hand-blocked India chintz), the sketches of the delicate blue-and-white Chinese porcelain bowls (meant for the Yellow Salon), and the drawing of the great golden dinner service he planned to import from France.
“All my residences must have proper place settings,” Charles announced, looking over our shoulders at the drawings. “It is barbaric for more than one man to share a plate. And we must have courses after the French fashion; it is absurd to lay out all the food at once. It gets cold.”
“Sixty guineas?” I asked, just making out the figures at the bottom of the sketch. “For one plate?” To me, it seemed a small fortune.
“Place setting, my dear,” said Rupert kindly. It is very different.
“We must look like a court again,” Charles went on, more to himself than to us. “My father’s court had all this and more, until…”
I held my breath. I saw Peg grip Rupert’s hand. Charles so rarely spoke of how his father lost everything—his plates, his country, his crown, his head.
“Sixty guineas?” Charles said, turning to me and reverting to his light jovial tone. “For you, my little lark, I could not have you eat off anything less.” He swooped down to kiss me. Only I could feel that he was trembling.
When I Begin to Understand the Court
Sunday, November 1, 1668—London, All Souls’ Day (raining)
Ugh! Back in bickering, wrangling London. I have come to crave country quiet, and my patience for the pettiness of Whitehall and all its slithering, shape-shifting intrigues wears thin. The walls, the chairs, the carpets all listen, and agendas abound. Everyone works for someone. Everyone has a price. Who will rise? Who will tumble down? No one falls without a push. I cannot bear such scrutiny. Buckingham and Castlemaine are mortal enemies, even though they are cousins, and even former lovers, some say—hard to picture. They were certainly childhood playmates, but nevertheless they would go to the death now. They grapple and snarl over the king’s affection like wild dogs.
This evening
Tonight Charles offered me a suite of rooms inside the palace (not just a single sleeping chamber but a closet and sitting room as well—a coveted honour), but I do not want them. Charles just laughed at my eccentricity but did not question me as to why I do not want them. He did not want to hear the answer and so did not probe further—always the smoothest road, how like him.
Thinking about it now, I do not know how I would have explained it. To take a room in the palace would be to overreach, and this is not a man to understand overreaching. In truth, I do not want to set myself against the good queen. I do not want to cause unnecessary hurt, and for myself, I need to be able to get away and be apart from this artificial place.
Mrs. Barbara Chiffinch, the queen’s chief seamstress and wife of the increasingly friendly Mr. William Chiffinch (brisk but kind), always comes and helps me to bathe and dress (in the King’s Closet) and then, if the weather is unfit for walking, finds me a hackney—less conspicuous than the royal coach—to take me back to Drury Lane. The king does not understand my reluctance to hang about this viper’s nest of a court, but Mrs. Chiffinch does. She bustles me out quickly and efficiently.
“You’ll get used to it, dear.
They all do. Give it time,” she always says. They all. That is just the trouble: they all. Ruby and the puppy, on the other hand, are quite at home in the palace. They settle down on the large cushions by the fire with four or five of Charles’s many spaniels and are disgruntled when they get uprooted in the morning.
This morning I hurried through the Stone Gallery and met Rose at the King Street Gate, taking care to stay in the shadows as this gate is too near Castlemaine’s apartments for my comfort. I can see her conspicuously white cambric undergarments fluttering away at her window. Why bright white underclothes displayed in public denotes
breeding, I’ll never understand; it would seem to me to indicate the reverse. On her bloated allowance Castlemaine can afford to order some for wearing and some for hanging, ridiculous woman.
My encounters with Castlemaine are now cutting and brief. She takes great pains to point out any outward signs of my low breeding: my loud laugh, my tendency to run, my love for the guitar (a base instrument), even my Protestantism—she being recently baptised a Catholic (no coincidence that this is the unofficial religion of the half-French royal family). Last week when I dashed into the Banqueting Hall without waiting for Watkins, the footman, to open the door (he is nearly blind and takes an age, but he served the old king and is therefore guaranteed a place for life), she made sure that all and sundry heard of my rough-hewn behaviour. What she did not know was that I had to be at the theatre at two; it was after one, and I could not find Ruby. Damn her refinement. If my dog is lost, I will bloody well go running after her. Castlemaine’s own illustrious pedigree does not help her on the road to good manners, I have noticed—nor does her new religion. The king just finds it annoying. He finds most things about her annoying—or so he tells me—except her children. For them, he has endless patience and affection. I can understand it. They exhibit none of their mother’s imperious behaviour and seem sweetly tempered. Mighty Castlemaine’s power is said to be on the wane, and the court can smell blood. There is much talk of who the father of this child might be, and King Charles is not on the list of likely candidates—Charles Hart unfortunately is, as is, remarkably, Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer; Wycherly, the playwright; and, most likely of all, Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans.
Rose was waiting for me, and we made our way across Pall Mall to the stationers and then on to St. Olave’s in Hart Street. We chatted of this and that: she has begun work in Hatton Garden, at the King’s Theatre Nursery for apprentice actors and actresses.
“John does not approve, but it is lovely to spend the day with the children, helping them learn their lines, to stage fight, to make up, to dance—all of it.”
Hart kindly arranged this place for Rose, and she is clearly enjoying it. His affection for my family has never wavered.
“John has agreed that I stay on, until, of course, we have some children of our own,” Rose chattered on.
This steady life of house and husband and the prospect of children clearly suits her. I squeezed her hand in sisterly affection.
“I am happy you are settled,” I said firmly, thinking of my own far-less-ordered life.
“You will be, too,” she said gently. “I am sure everything feels strange now, but it will settle, Ellen,” she said confidently, guessing my fears.
We arrived at the solid squat building and made our way into the dimness. It was curiously comforting to kneel there, in the small stone church, to hear the familiar words and just feel the ordinariness of it all. I peeked at the people around me: bakers, clerks, grocers, and their wives and children—nobody of particular note. Nobody of interest, of merit, of quality, I could hear Castlemaine saying in my head. How untrue, I thought. These people have great merit. They are what are good and real and grounded about this country. They certainly lead better lives than the loose, rambunctious court.
“Ellen!” Rose hissed beside me.
Dutifully, I lowered my head and, closing my eyes, enjoyed the ordinariness.
Note—Since our return to London I still have not seen her. The queen. At the end of the service, when we were asked to pray for the safety of the royal family, I squeezed my eyes shut and said a fervent prayer for the queen: that she might bear healthy children, that she might find happiness. I am too selfish a woman to pray that her husband might truly be faithful to her. Above all, I prayed that she might forgive me. Perhaps no one has told her? Perhaps she does not yet know of my betrayal. If only it could remain so.
November 4, later—Whitehall
This afternoon the clouds broke briefly, and Charles and I seized the moment to go walking in the Privy Gardens. The great chestnut trees were bathed in weak November sunshine, and the damp air had the fresh feeling of renewal after days of rain. Crunching along the gravel pathways, we came upon Arlington and Buckingham seated on a secluded bench tucked into a corner of the high box hedge. I felt Charles tense beside me, his body tightening like a drawn bow.
“Plotting?” Charles said easily, his expression belying none of his unease. Arlington and Buckingham’s obsession with earl of Clarendon’s unlikely return to power irritates Charles—the poor old man has been dishonoured, dismissed, and driven out of the country: What more can Buckingham want?
“Discussing,” Buckingham said casually, half rising to offer a sloppy courtly bow. “We were just saying—”
“No, no,” Charles said, uncharacteristically interrupting him. “It is not a day to discuss, but a day to enjoy. Good afternoon to you both.” He moved off, leaving Buckingham staring after him agape.
“My dear,” I began, once we were out of earshot. “Why did you…?”
“I had no wish to hear it,” he said gruffly, quickening his pace. I was trotting to keep up. “I do not need to hear again how my brother is not sufficiently vitriolic about his father-in-law for their liking. They are nothing short of ghoulish over that old man, and his daughter Anne, however much she eats, is married to my brother and it is enough.”
I giggled. It was true. Anne, a plain plumpish sort of woman, never stops eating. We spoke no more about it and continued wandering in the chilly autumn afternoon.
PALAIS, D’ORLÉANS, PARIS
TO MY BELOVED BROTHER, HIS MAJESTY KING CHARLES II
FROM PRINCESSE HENRIETTE-ANNE, DUCHESSE D’ORLÉANS, THE MADAME OF FRANCE
6 NOVEMBRE 1668
Chéri,
A disturbing rumour has reached me. Have you borrowed eight thousand pounds from your banker in order to acquire Berkshire House for Lady Castlemaine? That is a vast sum, and I would imagine it of greater use elsewhere. Has she not several estates already, as well as prominent rooms in each of your residences? I understood your affections to be shifting to Mistress Gwyn of the Theatre Royal, an unsuitable but less-expensive choice. From what I understand Mistress Gwyn’s popularity and graceful bearing overcome her insufficient birth. Lady Castlemaine has given you five children and does deserve to live in considerable comfort—but this degree seems excessive, dearest, when your treasury is so depleted and your debts so numerous.
Affectionately and always your,
Minette
Note—The building at Versailles moves at an astonishing pace. There are plans for a Galerie de Glace—beautiful beyond belief.
Une autre note—Does it not strike you as indelicate for Lady Castlemaine to want to live in her former adversary’s home? Clarendon served you well, and his estate should not be handed over to his enemies. I have seen him since his arrival to France and know that he mourns the loss of Berkshire House greatly. Must she gloat so? It is unseemly in one so intimately connected with your house.
For Mrs. Ellen Gwyn, Theatre Royal, London
My dearest Ellen,
Well, the rumours have filtered to us in deepest Oxfordshire. If it is true, and given your undoubted power to charm and your appealing loveliness, I have no doubt that it is, then I hope it brings you joy. It has not been a conventional life for you, my dearest, but then that is too muted for your capacity for living. He is, I believe, despite his terrible reputation, a thoughtful ruler, and I am sure a thoughtful man. I can only hope that he understands what he has found in you.
With fondest love,
Grandfather
Note—Your great-aunt has bid me to remind you to cross your ankles when you are seated, remember not to swing your arms when you walk, do not bite your fingernails, and to please change your underclothes at least twice a week. I have no doubt that further instructions shall follow.
When I Learn Not to Play Court Games
LONDON GAZETTE
Sunday, November 8, 1668
Most Des
ervedly Called London’s Best and Brilliant Broadsheet
The Social Notebook
Volume 332
Ambrose Pink’s social observations du jour
Darlings!
C’est incroyable! C’est impossible! The royal maw of Whitehall has swallowed up yet another of our lovely songbirds of the stage. None other than our own orange-girl wonder, Nell Gwyn, the delicate, dancing darling of the Theatre Royal. With a light tread and a whisper of satin, she goes into the mist, into the mystery, into the golden realm. Alas, alack. She goes.
But wait, wait! Quoi? She does not mean to trade the high-stakes glamour of the stage for the comforts of the royal bed? We are not forsaken, my dears. Like the first footprints in new snow, intrepid Nell leads the way. Trust our girl to find her own path. Ah, balance restored, my pets. We shall not lose her after all.
À bientôt, dearests,
Ever your eyes and ears,
Ambrose Pink, Esq.
Tuesday (sunny and warm)
Delicate darling, my foot. Damn Ambrose Pink. Now she must know—not that she reads the gossip pages, but someone in her viper’s nest of ladies will make sure to tell her. It would be folly to think otherwise. I can never hope for her favour or goodwill, I can only hope that she knew my regard to be true, even if my friendship proved false. A friend does not do what I have done. I can feel the long fingers of shame curling around my heart.
