“For Barbara?” Nell asked.
“Barbara?” said Charles. “No, she has houses enough. For you, Nelly, for you.”
Nell could scarcely draw breath to thank him she was so stunned, so she kissed him instead.
“Quite fashionable that area’s become,” Charles said. “And it’s close by the theater but near enough to here that we can see each other easily.”
SOON AFTER THAT PROMISE, NELL SAT HAPPILY IN AN UPPER BOX AT the King’s Playhouse with Peg Hughes, who had joined the company that season. She was Sedley’s mistress, which had made Nell initially leery of her, but she liked Peg’s straightforward humor and even enjoyed watching her onstage. Today they were watching the new tragicomedy The Island Princess, and Nell was in great spirits. She had just moved into her house in Newman’s Row and could hardly believe that she was living in such grandeur.
“It’s got two whole stories,” she told Peg. “Parlor, dining room, kitchen, bedchambers, garden at the back. Only steps from Lincoln’s Inn Fields!”
“And servants?”
“A cookmaid, a maid of all work, and a porter,” Nell said. “Think of that! You’ll have to come and visit.”
“I wish Charlie would take a house for me,” Peg said. “He keeps saying he hasn’t the money. I like him, but I can only wait so long.” Her dark curls bounced as she giggled, and Nell thought she was a pretty wench indeed, and Charlie Sedley had better look sharp if he wasn’t to lose her.
“Look,” Nell said. “There’s Moll Davis down there. She’s looking a bit fat, don’t you think?”
“If you ask me, there’s always a bit of the piglet about her,” Peg said, and they both broke into laughter.
“Why, Mrs. Nelly!” The voice came from the next box, and Nell saw that Sam Pepys was there with his wife.
“Good afternoon, Sam. A pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Pepys. You know Margaret Hughes?”
“Yes, indeed,” Pepys smiled. “It would be hard to forget such a charming face as hers is. Of course,” he hastened to add, “not quite so charming a face as that of Mrs. Pepys, if you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Peg.”
A couple of weeks later Peg came to call, and Nell showed her around the house.
“I can scarce believe it,” she said. “All my life I’ve lived in wretched little dog holes. And now so much room, just for me.” She guided Peg to a window on the upper story that looked out over Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
“That’s the Duke of Buckingham’s house, and the Earl of Sandwich lives there, the Earl of Bristol there, and the Countess of Sunderland there. It’s a bit noisy at night, is the only trouble. Whetstone Park is just there, you see, and of an evening the street is full of bingo boys drinking and roaring.”
“Did you hear about Ned Kynaston?” Peg asked, as they sat down to chocolate and cakes.
“No, what?” Nell asked in alarm at the worried look in Peg’s eyes.
“He was set upon and beaten last night by two or three bravos and was hurt so bad he had to keep his bed today. Will Beeston had to go on in his part with book in hand.”
“Who would have reason to hurt poor Ned?” Nell asked. Peg looked down at her lap, tears welling in her eyes.
“They’re saying it was Sedley did it, because Ned mocked him in his playing of The Heiress, but I’ll not believe it.”
Nell wondered. Sedley was certainly a wild one, but would he go so far as that? She thought of poor Kate Corey spending a night locked up for her mockery of Lady Harvey and Lacy jailed for The Change of Crowns. The highborn might enjoy the playhouse and its pleasures, but there was no question that they thought actors were creatures far below them, to be taught a lesson if they got above their place.
NELL WAS GOING TO CELEBRATE HER NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY BY HAVING Charles to supper at her new house. She surveyed the table, its pewter dishes gleaming in the firelight, and breathed in the scent of pigeon pie and lamb with onions. It was perfect.
Charles arrived by sedan chair, anonymous and unnoticed in the wintry dark.
“Your birthday gift, sweetheart.” He brought a squirming something from beneath his cloak. A little black spaniel puppy, its laughing eyes looking up at Nell as she took him into her arms.
“His name is Tutty.”
“What a little heartbreaker!” she cried. “I’ll cherish his company when I can’t have yours.”
NELL WATCHED HAPPILY AS CHARLES ATE. IT WAS WONDERFUL TO SIT with him in her home, truly alone for the first time. She smiled, thinking about the night before them. With the security of her own house, she had decided she would no longer use the little lemon rind cups or sponges soaked in vinegar that had prevented unwanted conception, and she hoped that tonight Charles would give her the start of a baby.
After supper, she led him to the bedroom. Her maid, Bridget, had folded the linens into chests and scattered them with dried lavender, and the bedding gave off a pungent, honeylike smell. Taking Charles into her bed like this, with only one candle burning in the small chamber and the sounds of the street outside, was so different from spending the night in the palace, knowing that attendants lay in the next room and would burst in at dawn. It felt like he was truly her lover. And it was so much more peaceful without those infernal clocks and dogs, Nell thought, drifting off to sleep curled against her king.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NELL WAS NOT HAPPY WITH TYRANNICK LOVE. SHE HAD BARELY been onstage over the past few months and had been longing to return, but this was another of Dryden’s grand tragedies, and Valeria was the kind of serious role that always made her feel awkward. Worse, the play centered around the life of Saint Catherine and was intended as a tribute to Queen Catherine. Nell couldn’t help but wonder how the queen would feel about watching her onstage, knowing how frequently the king was in her bed. And Hart, Lacy, and Mohun were wrangling with the painter Isaac Fuller about his commission to paint the elaborate scenery.
She arrived at the theater for a rehearsal a few days before the play was to open to find the greenroom abuzz. What new calamity had befallen now? she wondered.
“The queen has miscarried again,” Beck Marshall hissed at her. “The king’s pet fox jumped on her bed and frighted her half to death.” Poor queen, Nell thought. And poor Charles, his hopes for an heir disappointed once more.
“Will the play go on?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Beck said. “I reckon we’ll find out soon enough.”
THE PLAY DID GO ON. AND DESPITE HER MISGIVINGS, NELL THOUGHT that the first night was going well. The house was packed, with the king, queen, and half the court there, and they sat rapt while angelic Peg Hughes as Saint Catherine ascended in her bed past Isaac Fuller’s painted clouds to heaven.
The play drew to its close. Nell stabbed herself and died her best stage death. She lay there trying not to breathe visibly and looking forward to the epilogue that Dryden had written for her. Hart stepped forward and declaimed the solemn final speech of the play.
“Let to the winds your golden eagles fly,
Your trumpets sound a bloodless victory:
Our arms no more let Aquileia fear
But to her gates our peaceful ensigns bear
While I mix cypress with my myrtle wreath:
Joy for your life, and mourn Valeria’s death.”
A funereal silence filled the theater, and Richard Bell as the lead centurion bent to lift Nell’s lifeless body. But up she popped and cried, “ ‘Hold, are you mad, you damned confounded dog? I am to rise, and speak the epilogue!’” A wave of laughter went up.
She skipped forward onto the apron, and continued.
“I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye:
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frighted, I’ll be civil,
I’m what I was, a little harmless devil.
For after death, we sprites have just such natures
We had, for all the world, when human creatures;
And therefore I, that was an actre
ss here
Plays all my tricks in hell, a goblin there.
Gallants, look to’t, you say there are no sprites,
But I’ll come dance about your beds at nights…”
This was so much better than tragedy! Nell grinned with delight as she cried out the final lines of her speech.
“Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived a slattern,
Yet died a princess, acting in Saint Cather’n.”
The crowd roared their approval, clapping and stamping, and Nell curtsied deeply to the royal box, to the pit, to the packed galleries. It was good to be back.
JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH, WAS STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL, NELL thought. There was no doubt he was the king’s son, but the full lips, fair skin, and green eyes were evidence that his mother, Lucy Walter, must have been stunning. He had an engaging charm, and Nell liked him immediately and understood why Charles adored him.
They sat in the house in Newmarket that Charles had taken for her while he was attending the races. She had met Monmouth the previous day and invited him to come to visit. He was less than a year older than she was, and she felt an affinity with him despite the vast difference of their circumstances.
“I lived with my mother in Brussels until I was nine, you know,” Monmouth said, stretching his long legs out before him in their silken stockings.
“Did you know who your father was?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. Of course he had no kingdom then. But my mother always told me my father was King of England, and I told it to my friends. They laughed,” he said, “as well they might, for I ran barefoot in the streets with them and looked more like a beggar than the son of a king, albeit a bastard. I couldn’t even read.”
“Really?” Perhaps this not-quite-prince had more in common with Nell than she had thought.
“Not a word, nor had I need. No school for me, only drudgery at home. My mother was little better than a whore, you know.” He said it abruptly and looked to Nell. What did she read in his eyes? Challenge? Shame? The desire for pity?
“Mine was no different,” she said, and he smiled at her, a shameful secret shared and accepted.
“But still I loved her,” Monmouth continued. “When I was taken from her to be sent to the queen, my grandmother, in Paris to be brought up like a gentleman, I fought like a wolf, and cried to stay with her. The king’s men took me from her by a trick. I didn’t know until later that she had followed and begged to see me. But they kept her away.”
“How monstrous!” Nell cried. “Did they never allow you a visit?”
Monmouth shook his head. “She died. I never saw her more.” Tears glistened in his eyes. Nell felt a rush of maternal affection and pulled him to her, letting his head rest on her shoulder and stroking his hair like a child’s.
Fingers crept onto her bosom. Nell thrust Monmouth away and smacked his hand.
“That’s the last time you’ll do that, or we will not speak again. I love your father, and am for him alone. Do you understand?”
Monmouth nodded sheepishly.
“Good. I would like us to be friends.”
THAT SUMMER, WITH PARLIAMENT DISMISSED, CHARLES AND THE court escaped to Windsor, and he established Nell in a house only steps from the castle gate. The ancient castle with its ponderous walls looked like the Tower, a fortress rather than a home.
“That’s why I like it,” Charles said. “It can be properly garrisoned.” His mouth took on a grim set, and Nell thought of his father, helpless to defend himself as he was handed over to Cromwell’s forces.
“But see,” he said, pointing toward the royal park, “how many new trees are planted now, to replace those destroyed during the war. And how peaceful the gardens here within the walls.”
NELL WAS GLAD TO HAVE ROSE’S COMPANY AGAIN WHEN THE COURT returned to town in September. Her maid Bridget brought them cakes and ale as they sat enjoying the sun in Nell’s little back garden, but Nell took only a bite before pushing her food aside with a grimace.
“What’s the matter?” Rose asked.
“I don’t know. I just don’t seem to have an appetite for it. My belly’s a bit off.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
“A few days. I feel out of sorts.”
Rose looked at Nell searchingly.
“Could it be you’re with child?”
She was a few days late for her courses, and now she came to think about it, her breasts were tender, and everything about her body felt somehow different than ever before. She laughed out loud.
“Of course! What a fool I am!”
“Will the king be happy?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” said Nell. “Oh, yes.”
CHARLES CAUGHT NELL UP IN HIS ARMS AND STROKED HER BELLY AS though he could feel the child within her already.
“He will be beautiful,” he told her. “And with your spirit, he will be loved by all.”
NELL WAS SUPREMELY HAPPY OVER THE NEXT WEEKS. CHARLES’S JOY over the child seemed to bind him more closely to her. He spent most evenings and many nights with her and even conducted business from the little house in Newman’s Row. The French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, seemed taken aback when he arrived as directed from the palace, but bowed low and kissed Nell’s hand, and she strove to put him at his ease. She made small talk with the elegantly dressed Frenchman for a few minutes, but left him and Charles on their own when they got down to the purpose of the meeting, a treaty between England and France against Holland.
Croissy appeared again a few days later, but his mood was somber, and he sorrowfully conveyed the news that Charles’s mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, had died at her house at Colombes, outside Paris.
“She was sixty and had been ill for some time,” Charles told Nell later that evening. “I’ve known it was coming. But I fear for Minette.” His beloved youngest sister had just given birth. “Croissy tells me she’s beside herself with grief, and she’s always been delicate.”
“When did you last see your mother?” Nell asked.
“Four years ago. Don’t think me heartless that I do not weep for her. Try as I might, I cannot think of her without feeling myself back in those long and bitter years when I sometimes had not enough to eat, let alone a crown or a country. She held the purse strings and made things quite difficult. And all my life, it seemed that I could never meet with her approval, never be what she wished.”
“I understand,” Nell said. “All too well.”
BY THE TIME CHRISTMAS CAME, NELL’S SWELLING BELLY MADE HER feel unfit to appear in public, and much of the time she kept to home. But she had frequent visits from Rose, Aphra, Buckingham, Monmouth, Rochester, and friends from the playhouse.
Charles seemed to be hers alone. Barbara had gone from the palace. The queen, apparently resigned to childlessness, had moved to Somerset House. If there were other women, they could not be taking much of his time, as he was so frequently with her.
Spring came, and this year Nell felt a kindred spirit to the lambing ewes and calving cows. On May Day, a line of milkmaids stopped before Nell’s door to dance and she had Bridget distribute coins to them.
“Thank you, ma’m,” they chorused. “Thank you, my lady.”
My lady? Nell thought. It’s only me, only Nell. But she could read awe in their faces and knew that a vast chasm now yawned between her and girls like them.
A WEEK LATER, NELL’S PAINS BEGAN. ROSE, BRIDGET, AND A MIDWIFE attended her, sponging the sweat from her face and body, holding her hand, murmuring their encouragement through the long hours when the torment seemed to go on and on and to be too great to bear. But finally, Nell gave a last push and felt the baby leave her, and a moment later, the afterbirth. The midwife cut the writhing cord and wiped the mucus from the baby’s eyes. It coughed and began to cry.
“A fine and perfect boy,” the midwife said, wrapping the baby in a blanket and laying him in Nell’s arms. She stared in amazement at the tiny wrinkled face, the dark damp curls, the rosebud lips that ope
ned into a toothless cavern and let forth a furious yowl. She brought him to her breast, and thought there had never been anything so miraculous as the little bundle that sucked and cooed and gurgled.
THOUGH THE KING ALREADY HAD THREE SONS BEARING HIS NAME, the baby could not be called other than Charles. So Charles he was, but from the day of his birth he was Charlie to Nell. His father visited that night, and held his newest son proudly.
“He looks just like you,” he said.
“No, just like you.”
“Well. The best of both, let’s hope.”
DURING NELL’S UPSITTING IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING CHARLIE’S BIRTH, a stream of callers came bearing gifts and good wishes for the health and happiness of baby and mother. Peg Hughes had left the stage and Charles Sedley both to become the mistress of the king’s cousin Prince Rupert, and she came with yards of fine French lace for the baby’s gowns.
“Such a beautiful boy, Nell,” she cooed over little Charlie. “And a surety for your future, too,” she added, with a flash of diamond hardness in her azure eyes. “I hope that I may give my Rupert such a sign of my love for him.”
“I am so pleased for you,” Aphra said, when she called a few days later. “But I do hope you’ll get back onstage as soon as you are able. The theater is the poorer for your absence.”
“We’ll see,” Nell said. The world of the theater seemed far off, its importance fallen away since Charlie’s advent. What miraculous changes a baby wrought, she considered, observing her own mother hold her first grandchild, with a look of tenderness Nell had never seen before.
LESS THAN A WEEK AFTER CHARLIE’S BIRTH, CHARLES TOOK LEAVE OF Nell and journeyed toward Dover, where he was to meet his sister. As the Duchess d’Orléans and wife of the French king’s brother, she was representing the French court, and the formal occasion was the signing of the treaty that had been so long in the works. But Nell knew that what gladdened Charles’s heart was the prospect of being reunited with his adored baby sister Minette, whom he had not seen in many years, since she was almost a child.
The Darling Strumpet Page 22
