Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Catherine’s face grew wistful, distant. “When I was a little girl in the convent, a bit younger than you, my friends and I would barter our embroidered cambric handkerchiefs to borrow the milkmaids’ clothes, and slip from the mother’s watchful eye. Mostly we sported in the meadows, but once there was a hiring fair nearby. My friend Anna was hired to milk goats, and a farmer kissed my sleeve and said my lips were the color of a field poppy. When our abbess found out where we’d gone, we lived on bread and water for a week. But she never knew about the kiss. I always wonder if that farmer found another goat girl to replace Anna. She took holy orders a year later. Quite a different career!”

  “Why, Your Majesty, what a surprising creature you are!” Eliza said. “Then you will come?”

  She gave them the smile she used when she was alone, when no one could see her protruding front tooth. “You girls are under my care. I am your duena. I must be there to see no harm comes to you. Now, shall I wear a periwig or tie my hair up under my hat?”

  An hour later, with Hortense watching the corridors, three very loudly dressed dandies and one dignified gentleman in an old-fashioned high beaver hat and gold-tipped sword-stick set out for an evening on the town.

  “If what you say is true, and all men are thus, then never again will I berate my husband for the foibles of his gender,” Catherine said.

  “And his rank,” Eliza said. “As poor men have one shabby suit of clothes, so a rich man will have the choicest raiments, and many of them. I think, Your Majesty, that you must learn to look the other way, as does your husband when your courses come. Since married you must be, then enjoy your hours together, and forget him when you’re apart.”

  Chapter 11

  The World of Men

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED, the play was in its final act, and carriages lined the street and around the corner, waiting for their noble owners.

  “Boy!” Eliza called to a ragamuffin waiting for odd jobs—a penny to hold a horse, a shilling for a more important commission, delivering a love note.

  “Ar, sir?” he said, tugging his lousy hair.

  “How do we get to the tiring rooms?”

  “You pay your two bob six for a pit bench and go round the back when the show’s done.”

  But they didn’t care to go in the theater proper, for fear of attracting attention. The queen’s disguise might not fool the king’s keen eye. “And if we don’t care for the pit?”

  “Well, a box is four shillins . . .”

  “Here, then,” Eliza said, and she pressed four silver coins into his grubby hand. “Take us round back, the way the actors go in, and sit in the box yourself tomorrow.”

  “Oh, very good, sir! But laws, no, sir, begging your pardon, and I’d prefer pork pasties to a box seat, if ’tis all the same to you.” He skipped ahead of them so fast that they thought he was trying to take their coins for nothing, then skidded to a stop at a narrow wooden door. “Through here, if you please, and mind your ’eds.” He lolled against the building-side as they passed through. The queen, last in line, heard him mutter, “Curse me, what a green pack of cullies.” As soon as they were inside he scarpered to Madame Ross’s brothel to arrange his cut should he later manage to lure the naive country fops to her notorious establishment.

  They slipped through darkened hallways until they heard a bustle ahead. All save the leads shared a general tiring room, and those playing servants, soldiers, nuns, and assorted extras lolled and chatted and powdered their noses, waiting for the epilogue that would signal the great influx of admirers.

  “I know the third act was weak,” a voice said archly from across the room, “but even if you can’t bear to watch it, pray, henceforth do me the courtesy to eat an orange, or fondle a doxy to pass the time. Don’t pour salt in my wounds by leaving your seats early.”

  “My Lord Killigrew!” Eliza breathed, and promptly forgot her companions as she minced (quite forgetting to strut, masculine-fashion) to her idol. “I assure you, it is a most excellent play. Which is it? No matter, if it is one of yours, or one you had your hand in. Oh, sir, you do not know how mightily I admire you, how very deeply I respect you!”

  “From desolation to exaltation in an instant. It is too much for my confused humors. Save your flattery for the actresses, lad, and out of my way. I must see if that pricklouse Walter Clun flubs the final speech yet again.”

  But Eliza trailed after him with such a worshipful face that one of the actresses laughed. “Your friend will find his attentions better returned if he compliments Kynaston,” she said, referring to the lovely boy actor who until recently played women’s roles onstage, and still played them offstage. “Killigrew prefers ladies, as much as that sour old dragon can stomach anyone.”

  “Or he did until your sex came to the stage,” an actor said to her, lounging in no more than a dangerously short shift. “With such a glut of breasts and thighs shaking at one, I almost find them to pall myself. Almost.” He winked at Catherine. “Looking for anyone in particular?” he asked.

  “We’re just waiting for our friend,” Zabby said.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, “though once the rabble comes in, you’d best move aside for the paying customers. Beck Marshall lacks a keeper at the moment, and bidding gets hotter by the day.”

  Hoots, whistles, and applause met their ears—if Clun forgot his lines, the audience didn’t notice—and almost at once the tiring room was full to a press, first with the actors and actresses, and a moment later, the half-gentlemen and lesser lords from the rowdy pit. Younger sons, students, penniless wits, and moneyed idiots poured in to pester and praise their favorite actresses, to comment on the play, to exchange gossip. Most of them crowded around a dark-haired beauty in a spectacular headdress of egret feathers.

  Feeling awkward, sure they’d be exposed at any moment, Zabby, Beth, and Catherine remained clustered tight near the wall.

  “He’ll read it!” Eliza shouted a moment later from across the room. “He likes the story line and I recited the prologue and he says I’ve a rare wit and a clever turn of phrase!” The crowd gave her amused looks, but she was all oblivious. “Let us celebrate. Odam’s Ordinary, or Harrison’s?” She’d heard gentlemen talk about those restaurants, though she’d never eaten in one.

  “You’re hopelessly out of date,” said a voice at their elbow, and a plump, bright-eyed fellow with a massive curled wig set slightly askew insinuated himself into their cluster. “Charles Sedley, at your service. Sir Charles, if you insist, but not if you’re paying. I am hopelessly poor, today at any event, but amusing enough to earn my keep. You gentlemen are obviously new to London, and need a guide. Buckhurst!” he called over his shoulder. “Come meet my new friends, Mister Someone, Mister Someone Else, and Sir I’ve Already Forgotten. They propose to let us drink to their healths all the livelong night.”

  “I’m game as a gamecock,” Buckhurst replied, putting an arm around Zabby and Beth. “Where do they propose to take us?”

  “They proposed Odam’s, for apparently they want their tripes in a twist from his rancid oysters, but I think we’d do better at the Legge or the King’s Head.”

  “Where is the King’s Head?” asked Catherine, intrigued at the thought of eating in an establishment of that name.

  Buckhurst and Sedley exchanged glances, deciding who should take such an easy jest. Sedley looked at his pocketwatch. “At this hour, I’d say buried to the nose in Lady Castlemaine’s . . .”

  Catherine turned deep scarlet, but fortunately the two libertines were too amused with each other to notice. Beth squeezed her queen’s hand. “Do you want to go home?’ she whispered.

  “No,” Catherine replied, controlling herself. “I came to see what it is like to be a man. I will not shrink from it.”

  “Eh, what’s that the parson said?”

  “He’s a kinsman by marriage, from Italy,” Zabby said. “He doesn’t speak English.”

  “Well, then, let’s away and show your solemn friend how an Englis
hman disports himself. Though I hear in carnal appetites the Italians are no slugabeds.” Sedley elbowed his sovereign queen sharply in the ribs, took Eliza by the shoulder, and led them out of the theater.

  The lad was back to holding up the building when they exited, and he grabbed Eliza by the coat. “Oi, gotchervirgin.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “At Mother Ross’s. She says she has a peach plucked just for you, fresh from her mother’s teat not more than twelve years ago. Only twenty pound for a maidenhead, fifty if you all want a go.” He looked at the men dubiously. “There’s more of you’n a minute ago. Might cost extra.” He scratched his head. He’d never done math at such fantastic sums, pence and ha’pence being his usual lucre. “Hundred pound for the lot of you!” he said, holding out his filthy digits to strike the bargain then and there.

  “Save the virgins for the connoisseurs,” Sedley said. “Give me a good fatty piece of mutton that knows what it’s about. But Mother Ross’s sounds like as good a place as any to start the evening. What say you, flesh before supper? Lead on, lad!”

  They picked up a few others as they staggered away, those who found no favor from their actress of choice, others with a keen ear for the clink of another’s full purse. Catherine looked around, amazed, as the men accosted a flower-seller, plucking at her skirts but making recompense with the purchase of a pennyworth of dried heather. They were like hounds off a leash, without a master, doing what they would without fear of consequence. And these were supposed gentlemen. She recognized some of them, those on the periphery of the court who came to see and be seen, but rarely contributed wit or wisdom. They had scraped and bowed before her, impeccable of etiquette, making a leg to their queen as if she were an object of worship. And now they cried bawdery to every female they passed, shouted ribald abuse to a frail old couple traveling homeward in a coach. One scooped up a stone and hurled it at the cloudy glass of some respectable citizen’s house.

  And this not even full night-time, Catherine thought. She could understand a bit more license under cloak of darkness, or perhaps on a festival day, but this was just an ordinary Thursday, ordinary men . . . Did they all have the beast in them? She began to feel herself fortunate that her husband was at least truly a gentleman, unfailingly courteous, never rough, moderately discreet. If a common man could behave thus, what might not a king do? He might have a seraglio, or entertain himself by burning down villages.

  Beth, feeling safe in her disguise, watched it all without surprise. A habitué of the court, she had seen every manner of vice and depravation, knew that the cleverest minds used their knowledge of Latin to quote lewd epigrams and the bravest swordsmen used their skills not to defend their country but to kill a man over a minor slight of honor. People no longer shocked her. She was just innocent enough to believe that, despite the ready example the world held out to her, there might still be one good man, who would love her alone, tenderly. “Yes,” she told the queen, “all men are surely alike.” But she held a private caveat: except for my man, my Harry.

  Eliza had one arm around Zabby’s shoulders and she whispered commentary as she ate it all up for future plays. “The infamous Madam Ross’s brothel. See how it appears no more than a house-front, when untold wonders of debauchery parade inside. There, the sign of the oyster, by which you know it. Zabby-heart, I do not think there’s another female in court who’s seen the inside. ’Tis not so fine as Madame Cresswell’s, they say, being of a more boisterous character, but of wide fame nonetheless. Don’t you feel like an intrepid explorer?”

  But Zabby just felt debased. The theater had been bad enough—loud, stinking, false. What was to Eliza a miracle of man’s contrivance was to Zabby a gaudy, ugly mockery of nature. The actresses’ faces were ghastly, painted flat chalk white as though the very skin had lost its soul, and their manner was even more contrived than that of the court ladies. She did not like this world of forced, loud laughter, pretended sentiment obscenely coupled with the most mercenary ambition, the play of desire and conquer, resist and acquiesce, that had no joy in it.

  But she did not condemn it. It was another aspect of mankind, and what was man but a part of nature, subject to natural laws? She’d never seen people behave thiswise on Barbados, but unless all London suffered from some mass sickness—a miasma in the vapor or an ill humor in the water—all that she had seen must be contained in every human soul, and therefore must be studied.

  So she watched Mother Ross’s quick, appraising eye as they all entered her stew; saw the flash of coin the lad palmed and pocketed; sniffed the air for that same scent that lingered on the queen’s sheets, magnified; spied the quickly composed countenances of the bevy of girls who, like any others, had their bread to earn.

  Mother Ross greeted Sedley and Buckhurst like the old friends they were and clapped her hands smartly together. An elfin girl with loose ginger hair brought a bottle and glasses on a lacquered tray and deftly served them, not spilling a drop even as she danced away from opportunistic gropes. When Sedley, catching her mid-pour, managed to handle her hip familiarly, she kept her composure long enough to finish the job, snatched up a little knife from a tray of apples, and with a dart like a heron’s strike snipped off one of his silver buttons.

  She tossed it in the air, laughing, then slipped it into the recesses of her skirt. “I get silver for every feel, gold for a taste,” she said tartly, “and those who steal from me get robbed in return.”

  “And how much for your virtue, pretty Nell?”

  She gave him a piquant wink and said, “I have no virtue, sir, but if you mean my maidenhead, why, you couldn’t afford that treasure.” She looked at the others, her gaze lingering curiously on the queen and her maids. “Perhaps you fellows could form a pool, and I’ll draw straws for the lucky winner.” She laughed again and sauntered off, swinging her narrow hips. Her body looked all of thirteen years old, but her eyes were as cynical as Mother Ross’s.

  “Now, who for you, good sirs?” Mother Ross asked her regulars, adding in a very audible aside to the disguised ladies, “Something special for you, I warrant, not the usual rem in re, eh? Enjoy your cordial. I’ll not be a minute heaving these rakes atop our scullery maid, the poverty-struck popinjays.”

  Like customers at the Royal Exchange, the men picked out their beauties. Sedley chose a buxom blonde dressed as a milkmaid, with short skirts and tight stomacher and no shift at all. Buckhurst, of a mind for something exotic, picked an ebony wench who Mother Ross had discovered at the docks and dressed in rabbit furs dyed with leopard spots.

  When the others had been disposed of, the bawd turned her attention to the newcomers. Her bright eye confirmed what the lad had said—wealthy, green sons of country squires on their first trip to London, aping the mode of men about town. Cubs of a bumpkin, she quoted to herself, licked into genteel form. Desperate to appear civilized, they would buy anything if told it was fashionable, financed by Papa’s good turnip crop. And Madame Ross knew exactly what to sell them.

  She sidled closer and looked up at Eliza, evidently the leader of the rubes, and therefore, in her vast experience, keeper of the fattest purse. “I have a treat for you, a rare pastry, soft and buttery, a bun as yet untorn. Are you in the mood for a delicious little morsel, noble sir?” It never hurt to flatter the yeomanry with a grant of rank. “She’s virgin and clean, I trow, natural daughter of a nobleman who left her to my tender care. She’s been like a daughter to me, but even a daughter must earn her keep when she comes of age. What say you, sir? Do you fancy the taste of ginger? She’s sharp, but if there’s ever a one to tame her, it’s a strapping buck like yourself. Or perhaps another of these gentlemen? Her honor is yours for . . .” She reckoned up their clothes, their lace, their swords, and said with confidence, “Fifty pounds!”

  The girls looked at each other uncertainly. They all wanted to leave now, slip out while their companions were otherwise occupied (and occupying) and make their way back to Whitehall.

  Mother Ross wond
ered if they’d not been to a brothel before. Now, there’s an idea, she thought. Country outposts of my establishment.

  “Perhaps you’d care to step into my private chamber, and I’ll show the lady, the young lady, the child, the infant, in.” She ushered them into a room hung with deep crimson, flames flickering perilously near the loose material. “I’ll bring her in, but no sampling, mind, not without payment upfront.” She was suddenly businesslike. “Many gentlemen have been asking after her. If you don’t seal the bargain tonight, like as not the duke himself will be after her.” Which particular duke, she did not say, but implied with a significant nod that it might be the notorious Buckingham himself, or perhaps even the king’s brother, the Duke of York.

  A moment later the red-haired serving girl slipped in and leaned against a chair back. “Well?” she asked, staring at them each in turn. “Which is it to be?”

  “Are you the one she is selling?” the queen asked, forgetting to pitch her voice like a man’s.

  “No one’s sellin’ me . . . sir,” she said with a little smirk. “Only a small part of me.” She slanted her eyes provocatively. “Very small. So, who’s the lucky gentle . . . person, eh?”

  The disguised ladies looked from one to the other, torn between mirth and disgust.

  “Do you mean,” Eliza asked, “that woman would actually sell the . . . honor . . . of a child your age?”

  “I’m old enough,” she said, puffing out a chest that was barely there. She was in fact nearly fifteen, but her slight, lissome form helped her pass for the child so many customers favored.

  “Oh, blessed Mary, we must save her,” the queen said.

  Eliza sighed. “What is your name?”

  “Nelly Gwynn,” she said.

  “And do you want to work here? Would you rather do something else?”