The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and King Charles II

by Gillian Bagwell

  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 opened 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.

  With the court gone, it was only playhouse friends who visited. Hart came, and as he and Nell sat quietly together, she reflected that it was the first time she had been alone with him since her departure with Dorset.

  “I’m happy for you, Nell,” he said. “Happy to see you happy.”

  “I am happy,” she said. “But I wish . . .” It was only as the words left her mouth that she realized what she had been about to say. That some part of her wished it was his child that lay in the cradle nearby, and that it was for his footstep on the stair that she listened. Hart looked away and shook his head.

  “It’s for the best, Nelly. I could never have given you all this.” He gestured at the room and its furnishings, the piles of gifts.

  “You gave me—everything,” Nell said softly. “The playhouse. Where my life began. And in return . . .” Her voice caught, and Hart took her hand.

  “You gave me your love,” said Hart. “And that was enough.”

  “You have it still. You always will.”

  “And you mine, my little Nell.”

  CHARLES RETURNED FROM DOVER WITH TALES OF BANQUETS AND dancing, hawking and hunting, and especially his joy at seeing his sister. He brought gifts for Nell from Minette—a magnificent necklace of pearl and gold, perfumed gloves of fine soft leather, and a silver cup and rattle for the baby.

  “She sends her love, and regrets she could not meet you on this visit,” Charles said. “She longs to meet you and knows you will be great friends.”

  “The next time,” Nell said. “I would be honored to meet her.”

  But less than a month later, shortly after her return to the French court, Minette died in ag
onized convulsions. Charles retreated alone to his bedchamber and wept for days. Nell, frightened by the lack of contact, summoned Buckingham.

  “He loved her unreasoningly,” Buckingham said. “She was but a baby when the war began, and he knew her only as a sweet and loving child who could do no wrong. And he was not the only one—she was the sweetheart of the French court. It’s well known that her husband forsook her bed and preferred his lover the Chevalier de Lorraine, and that betrayal only made her seem the more virtuous.”

  “But what was it killed her?” Nell asked.

  “There are rumors of poison, of course, but then there always are. I’m going to France, to thank Louis for his condolences. I’ll sniff around to see what I can learn, but I doubt anything but time will bring Charles to himself. Don’t worry, he’ll soon be back in your arms.”

  Charles was back in Nell’s arms within a week, but it was clear that his soul still ached. His humor was supplanted with an air of sadness. Nell did all she could to pet and comfort him, and he found solace in company with her and little Charlie.

  “You are my family now,” he told her, bending over the baby’s cradle. “She was the last of my brothers and sisters but James, you know. There were two little girls who died as babies. Little Elizabeth died in captivity during the war, and the bastards told our poor brother Henry she’d died of a broken heart because I’d signed the Covenant. I lost Henry and Mary to smallpox not long after I came back to England. But Minette was the best of us.”

  CHARLES SOUGHT THE SERENITY OF WINDSOR, AND NELL WAS JUST recovered enough from little Charlie’s birth to accompany him. But only a day or two after their arrival, she was disturbed to hear shouts from the street outside her house. Rushing to the window, she saw a scene below that looked like the opening of Romeo and Juliet. Liveried servants, some in the red of the king’s household and some in the green of Prince Rupert’s, were engaged in battle. Fists and kicking feet were flying, but two of the combatants had drawn knives. The young king’s man faced off with a lad in green, while two or three others from each side tried to keep them apart. It looked for a moment as if they would succeed, and the fight was all over. But suddenly Prince Rupert’s man called out, “And a whore, to boot!”

  The king’s servant broke free from the grasp of his fellows, rushed at the other lad, and, to Nell’s horror, thrust his dagger into his belly. The boy staggered with the impact and looked down in disbelief at the bloom of blood darkening his livery. Then he fell, dropping to the dirt like a rag doll.

  “A surgeon! A surgeon!” The cry went up from the servants in the street. Below, the front door of Nell’s house flew open. Her page went pelting toward the castle, while Joe, her porter, helped a bawling crowd of liveried servants carry the wounded lad into the house.

  Nell ran down the stairs, her stomach heaving in fear. The boy lay on the floor of the hallway, his blood already pooling on the planks, his face a sickly white. He wasn’t moving. Joe straightened up and shook his head.

  “I’m afraid he’s dead, madam.”

  “Dear God.” Nell felt her knees give way and just managed to slump onto a chair. “Send someone to Prince Rupert’s house.”

  THAT EVENING NELL LAY IN HER BED, HER HEAD STILL REELING FROM the shock of the fight and the murder. Bridget came in with her supper.

  “I’m not hungry,” Nell said.

  “You have to eat, madam,” Bridget said, setting out a bowl of broth and some bread. “Awful though it is, you’re still here, and you have to care for yourself for the sake of the baby, if nothing else.”

  Nell knew she was right, and reluctantly sipped a spoonful of soup. It tasted good, and the warmth was comforting.

  “Did they find out who he was? Why they were fighting?” Bridget didn’t answer immediately, but busied herself tending the fire. “Bridget?”

  “Yes, madam.” Bridget spoke reluctantly. “He was the brother of that player friend of yours, Mrs. Peg Hughes.”

  “Oh, no!” Nell cried. Poor Peg. “But what was the cause of such a terrible fight?”

  “I hate to say it, madam, but it was you and Mrs. Peg.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, madam. Somehow the king’s lads and Prince Rupert’s lads got to arguing over who was the most handsome, you or Mrs. Peg. And that was the cause of all.”

  “Oh, no.” It couldn’t be. Nell thought of the boy’s pale face, his head lolling to the side, smeared with blood. What a waste. What a senseless waste.

  The next day Nell dictated a note to Peg Hughes, expressing her condolences, but the circumstances scarce seemed real. Could young men truly work themselves into a murderous rage over the respective charms of two actresses? The death of young Hughes hung over Nell, and she was relieved when the court left Windsor in the autumn to return to town.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHE’S HERE,” SOMEONE HISSED, AND NELL TURNED, WITH THE REST of the gathered company, to the doors of the Banqueting House. The newcomer had paused with exquisite timing so that she was framed in the doorway. Her gown, of cloth of gold, embroidered with pearls and jewels, caught and reflected the light of the candles so that it seemed to shimmer with fire, and she stood as some fairy queen stepping from the realm of the shadows. Dark ringlets cascaded over her white shoulders and reposed on the luxurious curve of her bosom, thrust high by the tightly laced bodice. From her tiny waist the skirt of her gown billowed gracefully, swaying slightly in a breath of warm evening breeze.

  Her face was doll-like, Nell thought. Luminous dark eyes with lush lashes and arching brows. A delicate flush over the rounded cheeks, pouting lips that managed to be simultaneously sensual and childlike, inviting thoughts of acts which seemed both promised and forbidden.

  Nell glanced to the dais where Charles sat, and felt a twinge in her heart. His lips curved into a catlike smile as he watched the girl, who now curtsied to the floor, casting her eyes demurely down and then raising them to meet his eyes. The look in his eyes—hot, predatory—sent a cold wave through Nell’s stomach.

  The interloper was making similar impressions around the room. The queen sat silently, but the compression of her lips and the hovering presence of her ladies gave an unmistakable aura of tension. Barbara Palmer stood still but visibly agitated, her nostrils flaring and her eyes afire. Her little black boy, Mustapha, dutifully flapped his large fan of blue ostrich feathers toward her, but she slapped him away, and he retreated awkwardly, as if trying to become invisible.

  “LOUISE DE KEROUALLE,” BUCKINGHAM HAD TOLD NELL EARLIER. “She was one of Minette’s ladies. Louis insisted I bring her back, said her presence might console Charles for the loss of his sister.” He’d caught Nell’s sharp glance. “No need to worry. She’s famously a virgin, and on the hunt for a noble husband.”

  CHARLES STOOD AND WENT FORWARD TO MEET LOUISE, STILL PROSTRATED in a pool of gold silk, and extended his hand. She brought his ring to her mouth and kissed it. As her lips met the stone she raised her eyes, fixing him for a fleeting second with a bold and inviting glance, and then looked down again, as if the king’s power had overwhelmed her.

  Virgin, my arse, Nell thought. Or if so, she’s been in training for her debut. Nell was glad that Charles’s voluminous petticoat breeches hid the hardness she was sure was there. It would have been too humiliating to have to be made so unmistakably aware of his reaction to this French baggage.

  She glanced around. The eyes of every man present were focused intently on Louise.

  “SHE MAY TURN THE KING’S HEAD FOR A FEW WEEKS, BUT SHE’LL NOT last,” Buckingham predicted over supper at Nell’s house a few days later. “Wenches are like fruits—only dear at their first coming in; their price falls apace after. She’s already made herself heartily disliked. Even the queen and Barbara are united in their mutual hatred of her.”

  “Now there’s an unholy alliance” Rochester grinned.

  “Besides, he dotes on little Charlie,” Buckingham said. “That strengthens your hand. Charles has never
abandoned the mother of one of his children.” Except poor Lucy Walter, Nell thought. Dying desperate and alone in Paris, denied even the chance to see her royal son.

  NELL FOUND HERSELF FRETTING WITH WORRY ABOUT LOUISE DE KEROUALLE. She was the talk of the court. Her beauty, her ancient and noble lineage, her fierce defense of her virginity until a suitable match should present itself, and of course her connection with the tragic and beloved Minette all made her fascinating.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Nell said to Rose one evening. “Killigrew and Dryden keep trying to tempt me back to the stage, and mayhap I should go.”

  “I think it’s an excellent idea,” Rose agreed. “It will give you something to occupy your time, and you won’t look as if you’re just waiting for the king’s attention. What’s the part?”

  Nell made a face. “Queen Almahide. Virtuous and stuffy. I hate these tragedies so. And the damned thing has two parts to it, each of them endless. But at least Dryden’s agreed to write me an amusing prologue.”

  So Nell set to work, hiring young Anne Reeves, a newcomer to the playhouse, to help her learn her innumerable lines. Dryden had written the part of Almahide’s servant, Esperanza, just for Anne, and Nell guessed that the wench either was or would shortly become his mistress. But she was a smart and likable girl, happy to have the work, and gratifyingly in awe of Nell, so they got on well.

  “You’re perfect in that scene now,” Anne said after Nell repeated back her speech once more.

  “Good. I don’t think my head can hold any more today. And I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

  Rose was at the house that afternoon, and the three girls ate supper in the kitchen, with baby Charlie cooing in a basket next to Nell. The main rooms of the house were drafty, but the kitchen was cozy, and the homey surroundings and unpretentious company cheered Nell. Bridget fussed at her to eat more.