by Mary Hooper
The king, escorted by just a valet and without his spaniels, arrived almost unseen in a hired hackney carriage with the blinds down, and Nell went out to greet him. He was then taken to Nell’s small dressing room, which had been hastily improved with a Persian rug, mirrors and flowers for the occasion. The king’s bear suit was there, Eliza having brushed up the fur herself – and she had further ensured that there was a costly embroidered dressing-gown for him to change into after his peformance.
Eliza stood in the wings as the candle-studded chandeliers were lit across the stage. She could see, looking out at the audience, that they were wealthier than usual by the continuous flashing and sparkling of the diamonds and precious stones they wore. They were noisier than usual, too, with shrieking, baying and whistling coming continually and from all sides. Somewhere out there, she thought, compressing her lips, was the hated Henry Monteagle. And somewhere, too, Valentine Howard.
‘Have you ever seen the theatre so full?’ Nell said, coming up behind her and breaking into her thoughts.
‘Never! Nor with such a quality audience.’
‘The street outside is blocked with so many carriage and sixes that many people can’t get through. Some have sent their servants to run on ahead and demand that the performance be delayed until they arrive.’ Nell nudged Eliza to look at her. ‘But what do you think of my costume?’
Eliza turned to admire Nell’s outfit which, as she was playing a courtesan, was night attire made of a filmy, gauze-like material, thus ensuring that the men in the audience got a glimpse of her body. It was obvious she was with child, but this plump ripeness suited her. Her hair was loose and flowed in waves down her back, her eyes sparkled, her make-up was vivid.
‘You look very fine,’ Eliza said. ‘When you’re on stage no one will look at anyone else.’
Nell laughed. ‘Brown Bear said he could barely keep his paws off me!’
She looked out to the audience again. ‘If Louise is in here with the court tonight, let’s hope she’s so eaten up with jealousy that she hot-foots it back to France.’
‘She can’t compare with you,’ Eliza said. ‘The king will surely never leave you for her.’
Nell smiled wryly. ‘The king doesn’t leave his mistresses, rather he collects them. One wife and one mistress would be enough for most men, but he’s a king and so has kingly appetites.’
As Nell spoke the group of musicians on stage struck up and began to play the overture. She put her finger to her lips, then blew Eliza a kiss and went towards the back of the stage, to the doorway from where she was to make her first entrance.
As the overture came to a close the narrator of the play came on to speak the prologue, and then Eliza heard a tremendous cheering, stamping and whooping as Nell entered. This tumult went on for over two minutes until Nell began to speak, and then a hush fell. Eliza relaxed; she knew Nell was word-perfect and wouldn’t need any prompting.
The king’s entrance would be in about fifteen minutes, Eliza reckoned, and, musing on the secret stage debut of the King of England, felt a shiver of excitement, not least for the fact that there was to be a big party afterwards in one of the Whitehall banqueting rooms, to which she was invited. Monteagle would be there, of course, and she would utterly cut him dead – but she would, perhaps, get the chance to thank Valentine Howard properly for his gallant actions. She’d been in such a state the other evening that she’d acted a perfect goose; she wanted a chance to put this right, to thank him in a gracious and ladylike manner for his rescue of her. She might not be nobility, she thought, but she could act like it when she had to. As soon as that night’s performance ended she’d go to the theatre costume department and borrow some finery to wear for the party, and some jewellery, and perhaps she’d put her hair up for the occasion, for it was just long enough now …
Her thoughts were running along happily on these lines when suddenly she stiffened in fear, sensing that someone had come through the folds of the back curtain and was standing behind her. A hand appeared and touched her shoulder and she all but let out a startled shriek.
‘Eliza, don’t be afeared,’ Claude Duval whispered. ‘It is only I.’
She stared at him in shock. ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered. She gestured towards the audience. ‘The place is full of parliament men and law-makers. If they get a glimpse of you, forty men will storm the stage and take you in.’ She gave a sudden little gasp. ‘And the king is here, too!’
Claude Duval nodded. ‘I thought so.’ He took her arm. ‘We must be quick, Eliza. I’ve come to say that under no circumstances must the king be allowed to go on stage tonight.’
‘What?’
‘I was in a coffee house a moment ago and heard three men talking,’ Duval said, his voice low and urgent. ‘One told the others that he’d heard there was a plan afoot to take the king.’
Eliza swallowed hard, staring at Duval.
‘He’s going to appear on stage in disguise, yes?’
Eliza nodded dumbly.
‘I don’t know how, but they’re going to take him prisoner. I believe some men are concealed about the theatre and when he’s on stage alone they’ll capture him.’
Eliza began to tremble. ‘Not really? Is it true? But what should I do?’
‘You must tell him not to go on. You must insist that he does not!’
‘But I can’t! He’s already in his bear suit and the queen and all the court are here to see him.’
‘If you don’t, he’ll be captured and they may put someone like Cromwell back in power.’ Duval curled his lip. ‘Gambling and merrymaking and drinking will be banned and the grand profession of highwayman will be impoverished.’
Eliza stood immobile, fully believing Duval’s words but not knowing how to act; longing to ask someone else what to do.
‘Could I wait until the interval and ask Nell to tell him?’
Duval gripped her arms. ‘That may be too late. You must tell the king now, at once.’ He hesitated. ‘Say it’s information from someone you have great faith in.’
‘But who should go on stage in his stead?’
Duval shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter. When the plotters find that they’ve taken the wrong man, they’ll let him go.’ He pressed Eliza’s hands within his own. ‘Go now with all haste and God save the king!’
Eliza, fired by his words, hesitated no longer but went straight to the door of the small dressing room and, being admitted by the king’s valet, immediately sank into a deep curtsy. She was helped to her feet by a bear and found this so ludicrous that she almost burst out laughing. Then she remembered what she’d come for.
‘Sire, I come with a dire warning from someone I trust absolutely,’ she said, her words tumbling over themselves, ‘and although she does not know this news, Mistress Gwyn trusts this person also.’
‘A dire warning now?’ the king said, muffled from inside his bear’s head. ‘I’m just about to go on stage!’
‘It is about that. Sire, I’ve been given information that there’s a plot against you. That if you go on stage you’ll be taken. Kidnapped.’
‘Another plot,’ the king said. He sighed somewhat wearily. ‘So, I’m to be seized from the stage, you say?’
‘Yes, sire. The man who told me this overheard it in a coffee house, and was perfectly sure it was true. He’s just this moment come to tell me of it.’
‘But why didn’t he stay to tell me himself?’
‘Because … because he’s a wanted man,’ Eliza said. She looked up at the king. It was difficult, she thought, from the fixed expression of the bear’s face, to know how much he was affected by the news. ‘I implore you, sire, don’t go on stage tonight!’
There was a moment’s pause and then the king sighed resignedly and removed the head.
‘I will not, then,’ he said. ‘But Nelly will be very disappointed – and so am I.’
He returned straight away to Whitehall and George Dunning was called, told there had been a chang
e of plan and that he’d now be playing Brown Bear – although he wasn’t told why.
The play proceeded. Brown Bear went on stage and, owing to the fact that George Dunning wasn’t as tall as the king, his furry legs bagged somewhat around his ankles. This fact was not lost on Nell, who faltered slightly in the delivery of her lines, while Eliza watched from the wings and waited anxiously for the interval so she could let her know what had happened.
When Nell’s scene finished she left the stage to tumultuous applause, making use of some ingenious new moving scenery which simulated a horse-drawn carriage.
The bear was left alone on stage and he approached the front and addressed the audience in rhyming couplets.
‘A man beneath – on top a bear,
I go to seek my mistress fair.’
The audience laughed heartily, some of them believing that the king was delivering the lines.
‘Is she constant, is she true?
This bear will know, and he’ll tell you.’
Laurence Linkletter, the man playing the bear’s rival, entered at the back of the stage laughing a villain’s laugh.
‘But this is no bear!’ he said to the audience, getting out a gun. ‘I love the courtesan too, and I’ll fire a shot to see him off!’
He took aim and fired, making the ladies in the audience scream, and Brown Bear fell down on cue. Instead of getting up, however, clutching his leg and limping off, he lay writhing on the floor.
Eliza stared at him, puzzled. This wasn’t in the script. This wasn’t right at all.
Linkletter tucked his gun under his arm and went off stage laughing, and the audience applauded and booed and threw orange peel after him.
Eliza waited for Brown Bear to get up and address the audience, but he didn’t. She wondered if he’d forgotten his lines, and hissed from the side of the stage:
‘’Twill take more than a mere shot
To stem the love that this bear’s got.’
But still he didn’t stir. The audience began to catcall for him to move himself, to get up and walk. A slow hand-clap started.
As Eliza stared she saw, with horror, that there was a pool of dark liquid spreading from under his body. Others noticed it too and then there was a general outburst of panic and (from those who thought that the king was playing the bear) much terror. As the curtain was brought down and two dozen people ran on to the stage, Eliza, realising that the plan must have been to kill the king rather than kidnap him, rushed to tell Nell that he was safe.
‘Someone had substituted a real bullet for the dummy one,’ Nell said, coming into the tiring room some time later and addressing the members of the company. ‘Laurence Linkletter had no idea, of course. He’s terrified that he’ll be accused of murder.’
Eliza gasped – as did the rest of the company.
‘He’s dead, then?’ she asked. ‘George Dunning is dead?’
‘He is,’ Nell said soberly. ‘He bled to death before a physician could be called.’
‘And the king?’
‘The king has sent a message to say that he’s perfectly well but will take no more parts in any plays,’ said Nell. ‘What’s more, the party is off. There’ll be no celebrations at Whitehall tonight.’ She turned to Eliza and smiled. ‘I’m to take you to the palace tomorrow, however, where the king wishes to receive you.’
Eliza stared at Nell. ‘Is he … angry at all?’ she asked nervously.
‘Not a bit! He wants to thank you for saving his life. He’ll give you something – a medal of some sort, perhaps. A memento of the occasion.’
Eliza’s face broke into a tremulous smile. ‘It wasn’t really me who saved him, though,’ she said to Nell.
‘But I don’t think that …’ Nell’s voice faded and she mouthed the word Duval, ‘ … will want to go to the palace. And besides, I’m sure he has all the jewels he needs.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eliza sat on a window seat in the music room of Whitehall Palace looking outside. She’d never, she thought, seen such a garden before: a formal arrangement of four beds crossed and edged with box hedging and enclosing cobbles, pebbles and stones in decorative patterns. In the middle of each bed stood a pyramid structure covered in ivy, and the whole was surrounded by a succession of lime trees set at the same distance from each other.
A breeze was blowing and the leaves from the lime trees were spinning off and swirling across the garden so that, staring out, Eliza was reminded of autumn days on the Quantock Hills at home. Days when she’d chased her brothers and sisters through knee-high bronze leaves and they’d rolled over and over down the hills and fallen into heaps of damp bracken at the valley floor. But all those days, she thought now, those golden days when she’d considered herself so happy, had been a delusion. She’d merely been tolerated in that family. No one had really loved her. Her every memory of those days was a counterfeit one.
She opened her hand. In her palm was an emerald, a stone as dark and lustrous as the glossy ivy outside. It had been given to her by the king, and after he’d bestowed it he’d taken both her hands in his and told her that he owed his throne to such loyal citizens as herself; that she was truly a child of his kingdom. The whole of this happening, so momentous for Eliza, had taken perhaps forty-five seconds, for there were around eighty other people in the presence chamber, all with seemingly urgent business that His Majesty had to attend to. Whilst she’d been waiting, a furious row had broken out over who was next in line: a group who’d come from the Admiralty to talk about the ordering of some new ships, or a party of architects bearing an exquisite model of what was possibly going to be the new St Paul’s Cathedral.
As she’d waited her turn, Eliza had studied everyone surreptitiously. Spies were everywhere; Nell had told her that. And Duval, too, had said that there were always plots against the throne. Which of the men here, then – or the women – were not all that they appeared to be? There were rumours that Monmouth, denied the throne because of his illegitimacy, might seize it by force. Was it he who’d plotted to have the king killed on stage?
Looking now at the glowing emerald she held, she wondered what she should do with it. Have it made into a pendant? Hang it from a silver bracelet? Have it fashioned into a ring? Keep it for ever, that was certain.
‘What are you doing here?’ A child of about eight had come into the music room. She was dressed in a heavy brocade gown and waistcoat embroidered in gold thread; a perfect miniature of the type of dresses worn at court by the fashionable ladies.
‘I’m here to have singing instruction,’ Eliza said, for the king, after giving her the emerald, had remembered his promise that she should have lessons with his daughter. ‘The king said that I should come,’ she added, speaking somewhat shyly, for although the child was perhaps half her own age, it was obvious from her dress and bearing that she was one of the royal children. To show that this was understood, Eliza got down from the window seat and curtsied to her.
The child continued to regard her coldly.
‘Are you Anne?’ Eliza ventured as she rose.
‘No, I’m not!’ came the immediate and indignant reply. ‘I am Charlotte Fitzroy, Countess of Lichfield.’
Eliza thought swiftly; she was the third child of Barbara Castlemaine, then, so was about seven years old.
‘And I don’t have my singing lessons with just anyone. I won’t even have Anne or Mary in with me so I certainly won’t have you.’
‘Well, I … His Majesty … that is –’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘I’m Eliza. Eliza Rose.’
‘You have a funny voice. Where do you come from?’
‘Originally, I come from Somersetshire.’
‘You have a gown which is very out of fashion.’
Eliza didn’t reply.
‘And your hair is not in style,’ the child went on. ‘Since Louise de Keroualle joined the court we all have our hair done the French way.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not conve
rsant with what hairstyles are being worn at court,’ Eliza said, trying to sound as polite as possible.
‘So if you’re not at court where do you come from?’
‘I’m with the King’s Theatre Company,’ Eliza replied.
‘Mon Dieu!’ The child took a step backwards. ‘You’re an actress?’
‘Not exactly,’ Eliza began. ‘Not at all!’ she amended, too late, for Charlotte had turned to clip-clop away on her silver leather mules.
Eliza resumed her place on the window seat, wondering what to do next. It appeared that the longed-for singing lessons were still to be denied her – how she hated being so dependent on the whims of others! Now, should she stay and wait for the music master, or make a dignified exit? If so, there was the ever-present problem of just how she was going to locate that exit. So perhaps she’d just sit on the window seat a little longer and enjoy the view.
Nell found her there half an hour later.
‘Do you know there are four music rooms in the palace!’ she said. ‘I’ve looked into each one of them for you, and this was the last. Have you had your lesson?’
Eliza, laughing a little, told her that she hadn’t, and also the reason why.
‘I presume that dear little Mistress Charlotte met the singing master on his way in and told him not to attend on me.’
‘She’s a spoilt miss – she knows full well that she’s the king’s favourite child.’ Nell frowned a little. ‘I hope my baby is a girl, for the king greatly favours his daughters. He hands out titles to them like sweetmeats.’
