The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “Hart, why are you tarrying here with this young person?” he asked with the world-weary air that many fine gentlemen affected. “Have you no better use for your time than this? Go on, hussy, away with you. We’ve no place for you here.”

  “F’give me, sir, but you do.” If I’d learned anything from my life, it was not to be easily put off. He didn’t recognize me from Mr. Duncan, which was well enough by me. I wished to be judged on my own worth, not on that of my protector. “I can be your next great actress, if you’ll but give me the chance.”

  “You?” He stared at me with bemused disbelief. “An imp, a sprite, scarce more than a suckling morsel?”

  “Aye, me,” I said eagerly, my hands square at my waist. “I’ll do whatever I must to please you.”

  “Oh, I’m certain of that,” Master Killigrew said dryly. “Yet what, pray, do you know of acting, of the stage? ”

  “I know how to amuse them what wishes to be amused,” I said. “The rest I can learn.”

  He drummed his hand lightly against his cheek, the light glinting off the thick golden ring he wore on his smallest finger. “The King’s Company’s not meant to be a dame school, miss.”

  “Every playhouse is a school for actresses,” I said promptly, for I’d anticipated this particular objection. “There’s no such thing as a seasoned actress in London, on account of never being allowed before His Majesty come back to us, who must learn the trade together.”

  “Hah, Killigrew, she has you there.” Mr. Hart laughed and clapped his hands with such enthusiasm that I knew in his eyes, I’d earned my chance. “She has the presence and the courage.”

  “I have a speech ready, sirs,” I said, my eagerness fair bubbling over. Swearing to Mr. Duncan that The Slighted Maid was my favorite play, I’d begged him to take me to every performance so I could study Mrs. Betterton, and learn her speech in the second act. I’d always been blessed with a quick ear, and by practice later I’d learned the part well enough to recite it now. “To show, sirs.”

  “What a presumptuous creature it is,” Master Killigrew grumbled. “What role would you dare claim? A queen, an empress, a goddess come down from on high?”

  “Aurelia,” I said, “from The Slighted Maid.”

  He frowned at me, but I saw I’d sparked his interest, too. “That’s not a true trial. You could have practiced one speech for all your short life. Players in this company must learn their pieces in a day, perhaps two.”

  “Then let her read another.” With surpassing grace, Mr. Hart clambered down from the stage to stand beside me, making my cause his own. “I’ll read it with her, so you can judge her the same as any other.”

  “She’s a child, Hart,” Master Killigrew protested, “not yet fit for the stage, let alone the tiring-room.”

  “I’m thirteen, sir,” I said firmly, “and more than wise enough in what this wicked world can show, and that includes your stage and tiring-room, too.”

  “I wouldn’t think of wagering against you, my dear.” Mr. Hart winked at me slyly, as if this all were but a huge jest between us. “I’ll give her a script and a quarter hour to read and prepare it, and—”

  “To read it, sir!” I exclaimed with boundless dismay. Reading was a rare, scholarly skill in Coal Yard Alley; not one woman I’d known could do it, including me. “Oh, sir, if you’ll but read to me first, so I—”

  “You can’t read, can you?” Master Killigrew regarded me like a tabby who’d just snared the littlest mouse. “I thought as much.”

  “Perhaps a place as a dancer, then,” Mr. Hart suggested. “She has a cunning small foot.”

  “Oh, yes!” I hoisted my petticoats for them to see, pointing my toe the better to display my ankles. “It don’t take reading to dance, and I can—”

  “Come back tomorrow, and ask for Mrs. Meggs,” Master Killigrew said, already beginning to turn away. “She’ll tell you if you’re fit to sell for her.”

  “As an orange girl?” I’d dared hope for better. “Oh, please, dear, dear sir—”

  “Now I can place you.” He swung back around, bending down to study me. “That ‘dear, dear sir’: I’ve heard that before, haven’t I? I’ve seen you before.”

  “Perhaps, sir, but I—”

  “Perhaps, indeed,” he said. “You’re Duncan’s little chit, aren’t you?”

  I let my petticoats fall. “I know Mr. Duncan, aye.”

  “You know him, and he knows you, and keeps you, too.” He shook his head, and his finger, too, for extra emphasis. “I’ll not have you anywhere near my company. I owe Duncan too much money to let him think I’ve stolen away his whore. Go now, away with you.”

  “But if you told him—”

  “Pert little hussies like you are as common as sparrows to me, miss, but a City draper who’s willing to spin out my credit so I might dress my players is worth more than a sultan’s ransom,” he said firmly. “A word of advice, miss, whether you accept it or not: Be done with one protector before you ask me to take you under the wing of this company. Now be gone—off, off!”

  “I’m afraid you must go, my dear,” said Mr. Hart, his handsome face long and solemn. “There’s no challenge to this argument.”

  As devastated as I was, I understood, and knew I’d never persuade them otherwise. It would be the same sorry tale at the other theatre, for Mr. Duncan supplied them with cloth for costumes, as well. Gold shall always win out with men, and most women, too. At least Master Killigrew had been honest, and not played me along for a fool. But if I tried to break with Mr. Duncan before he was ready to part with me, then I’d earn only his ill will, and no welcome here, no matter how much suited to the stage I might be. There was little help for it: I must stay where I was, or return to Mrs. Ross’s house and toil there alongside my mother and sister. And that—that I’d no wish to do.

  But I refused to blubber my frustration before these two gentlemen, or weep from bitterness. I’d not give them that satisfaction, and instead I dipped as low and respectful a curtsey as I could muster, then looked about me for my wayward sister Rose.

  “I’ll go for now, sirs,” I said, “and I’ll wish you a good day, too. But mind you, in time, I’ll return. I’ll return, and you’ll thank the silver stars in the sky above when I do.”

  Carefully I considered the little wicker basket of cherries in my lap. The sweetest were usually the darkest ones, glossy and hard, with the curving stems still sprouting from the top. As a special treat on this sunny June day, Mr. Duncan had hired a boat and brought me down the river to Greenwich. We’d walked about the paths, and then, because I’d begged it, he’d brought me here to the cherry gardens, to sit on this bench overlooking the water.

  It being Sunday, the river was dotted with pleasure craft, from the bright banners and sails that belonged to the yachts of fine gentlemen to the tiny skiffs with a single oarsman and a line for fish. There were more martial vessels on the river that day, too, boats from His Majesty’s navy whose sides bristled with the silent snouts of long guns jutting through the ports. In every street and tavern, men spoke of a new war with the Dutch, blustering and boasting as if each of them would be the ones to seize the glory, rather than the soldiers whose trade it was to spill their blood. In those days, before I knew better, I spared little thought for wars or politics, and so long as no fat Hollander surprised me with a pike or musket on the stairs, I thought I wouldn’t, either.

  To my relief, Mr. Duncan seemed to have no more concern for the coming war than I. But for all that the sun was bright and warm and the cherries bobbed like jewels from the trees around us, on this June afternoon he seemed in a peculiar humor toward me, distant and spleeny in a fashion that robbed the pleasure from the day. This grieved me mightily, not because I’d such regard for Mr. Duncan’s humor, but because I never could bear to have anyone displeased by my company. It went against my very nature. In one more effort to jolly him (which, in truth, I’d been attempting since he’d fetched me to the river that morning), I plucked
a fat cherry by the stem, dangling it in the air before me as I rose from the bench.

  “I’ll wager I can toss it in the air, sir, and catch it still in my mouth,” I announced, waggling the cherry over my head. “Will you lay a penny what says I can’t, sir, to make it sporting?”

  “Nell, please.” He glanced uneasily from side to side as others slowed to watch me, he being as loath to garner such attention as I was eager to draw it. “Sit, sit, and eat your cherries like a Christian.”

  But I would not be put off. “Only a penny, sir,” I coaxed with a small flourish of my petticoats. “A penny! That is all.”

  “A penny for the pretty lass isn’t a sin,” called a plump gentleman with his plumper wife beside him. “Faith, it’s not.”

  Mr. Duncan’s cheeks puffed beneath his wide-brimmed hat, and his face grew as red as the cherry. “Nell.”

  “Oh, very well, sir,” I said with a sigh that made my makeshift audience chuckle. “I won’t beggar your purse, but do the trick for nothing.”

  Before he could stop me, I tossed the cherry high, watching its crimson skin hang bright against the blue sky. I leaned back, my hand on the crown of my hat to keep it from slipping off. I opened my mouth and caught the cherry between my teeth, neat as could be.

  My audience clapped and cheered with appreciation. I made a curtsey in modest acknowledgment, then smoothed my skirts and returned to Mr. Duncan’s side on the bench to eat my high-flying cherry.

  “How you provoke me, Nell!” His voice was taut with indignation as the others went on their way. “Must you always make a frivolous game of my wishes for you?”

  “Once that was what you liked of me, sir.” Unperturbed, I nibbled on the cherry, heedless of the juice that stained my lips and fingers. He might not have approved, but I’d pleased my larger audience, and thus was content. “I’ve not changed from what I was, sir, not one whit.”

  He sucked in his breath, even as his gaze dropped to my mouth, watching my teeth work the sweet flesh free of the stone. In the time I’d belonged to him, I’d come to know him better than he realized. Better, for certain, than he knew me.

  “That is true,” he muttered at last. “That is all true.”

  “Aye, sir, it is.” I turned my head to spit away the sticky stone, a dainty arc into the grass, then rubbed my stained fingertips over my lips as I smiled at him. “Dear, dear sir. I’m the same Nell what you plucked from Covent Garden.”

  “More truth,” he said, and I knew from the gruffness in his voice and the glisten of sweat beneath his nose that I’d once again been forgiven. “My Nell.”

  I slid my finger across my cherry-reddened lip to touch the tip of my tongue. “Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,” I said softly, borrowing the cry of girls who sold cherries from pails in the street, as I leaned forward to kiss him. “Full and fair ones, come and—”

  “I’m to marry,” he said abruptly. “Next week. I’m to marry, and I—I must be done with you.”

  “You’re to marry?” I repeated, amazed but not distraught. In truth, I’d been expecting him to end our little arrangement almost as soon as it had begun. Yet I was curious. In all Mr. Duncan’s whining confidences and self-pitying, he’d never once mentioned a woman of his own class, let alone a betrothed. “You, sir? Who?”

  “Her name doesn’t matter,” he said hurriedly. “Suffice that she is a gentlewoman of beauty and reputation who has agreed to honor me with her hand.”

  “Beauty, my eye,” I scoffed, and gave his chest a playful shove. “More likely you was so caught by the spell of her purse that you forgot to look up to her face at all.”

  “She has the beauty fit for a wife,” he said, so doggedly that I almost pitied him.

  “Meaning she has all the airs of a breeding sow, and no more,” I said shrewdly. “Your father found her for you, didn’t he? He’s the one making you wed, I’ll wager.”

  “I intended to tell you earlier, Nell,” he said, avoiding my questions. “I meant to—”

  “I keep everything what you’ve given me.” I was still thirteen, yet needful of gaining what I could to survive. “And you pay my lodgings over the Cock and Pie until I can settle myself somewhere else.”

  “Your clothes and your lodgings paid until month’s end,” he said slowly, grudging me even that little, the miser. “So long as you agree to keep yourself apart from me and my affairs.”

  “Oh, I can swear to that ready enough.” I folded my arms over my chest, aware of how easy it would be for me to make him simmer and stew. “Though I won’t vow the same about your bride. What shall she say when I call on her, I wonder? What will she do when I tell her how dear you’ve been to me? ”

  His mouth fell open, his dismay so clear that I almost laughed before him. Lord, how his father must despair of him ever making a proper trader!

  “She cannot know of you!” he sputtered. “She must not know! I beg you, Nell, by all that’s right and holy, you must never—”

  “Oh, hush, dear sir, be easy,” I said gently, and for the last time I pressed my fingers over his lips. My sister Rose would jeer at me for being softhearted, but I hadn’t the nature to make the poor man suffer more. He had been my first protector, as generous as anyone had ever been to me, and for that much, I would not squeeze him. “I’ll ask only one thing from you, sir, before we part: that you tell Master Thomas Killigrew that I am free. That is all I wish from you. ’Tis all, sir, and no more.”

  That was all, and for me then, that was everything.

  I returned to Master Killigrew’s playhouse in the autumn of 1663. It was not long past the summer, after my thirteenth birthday, and not long, either, after the new playhouse of the King’s Company had opened its doors and shown its first play in May.

  The King’s House, or the Theatre Royal, as it became more grandly called, was situated between Drury Lane and Bridges Street, beside Vinegar Lane, and its instant popularity that summer soon made the humble address the most popular resort in London. For every performance, the boxes were filled with people of quality, with the benches above and below crowded with lesser sorts. People came not only to watch the players, but also to be amused by the other mischief that happened apart from the stage: the squabbles between the foppish young lords, the shouted comments from the wits in the boxes, and the various amorous assignations that took place in every shadowy corner. There could be no more diverting, nor exciting, place for an eager young creature like me in all the town.

  Master Killigrew remembered me at once when I called again, and he smiled as he scanned the letter Mr. Duncan had written for me to show, by way of an introduction. Alas, he likewise remembered that I’d no experience as a player, and worse, that I hadn’t the skill to read the player’s roles. This time there was no sign of Mr. Hart, my champion when I’d visited earlier. Without him to plead for me, I was declared fit only for work as one of the girls who sold oranges.

  It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but it was far more agreeable than any other place open to such as me. When Mr. Duncan’s generosity had come to an end, I’d shifted my lodgings, and was now sharing a bed with my sister at the Cat and Fiddle in Lewkenor’s Lane. I’d missed Rose, and I was glad of her company again.

  But I could feel myself beginning to slip backward. Lewkenor’s Lane had always been a haven for thieves, drunkards, and other assorted Bridewell birds, and the Cat and Fiddle was a house that lodged many of Mrs. Ross’s girls, and all the usual temptations with them. Rose and I had generously (perhaps too generously, but then that was my nature, and always would be) celebrated my return with old friends, and had soon exhausted what few coins I’d kept from Mr. Duncan. To keep my pocket jingling, I’d begun to sell bits of clothing and other goods he’d given me, a resource that was briskly coming to an end. I’d no desire to return to Mrs. Ross’s employ or another like it, or to crying fish or fruit in the street in all weathers, either. Thus an orange girl I would become, and grateful I was to Master Killigrew for the offer, too. I was told to
come back on the day following, to meet Mrs. Meggs, before the playhouse opened, and given a bundle of the clothes worn by the orange girls.

  The next morning, I donned my new clothes with a troubled mind. They were agreeable enough—a plain blue stuff gown over a smock, and a kerchief to tuck about my neck—though clearly meant for a girl far larger than I. Yet still I couldn’t tamp my unease. Giving a new girl borrowed finery in place of her own dress, then whisking all away to leave her naked, was a favorite trick of whoremongers to bind girls to their brothels.

  Now, worrying that I’d be made prisoner of the Theatre Royal must seem a half-wit’s fear, I’m sure, but then I knew this Mrs. Meggs. She was an old acquaintance of my mother’s, a boon companion from the bawdy houses and taverns around Covent Garden. While my poor mother’s fortunes had sunk, this woman’s had risen like the morning dawn, or at least as much of the dawn as an old bawd like her could see. She’d earned a reputation for close dealing and cozening fine gentlemen (who called her Orange Moll, a whorish-sounding name if ever there was one), and the proof lay here in the confidences she’d garnered from Master Killigrew. I was wise to look after myself around her, for truly, who else would?

  I found Mrs. Meggs in the small, slanting space beneath the playhouse stairs, her particular stronghold. She was rooting through baskets of fruit, critically appraising the oranges and lemons piled around her feet: one basket to be kept and sold later that day, the other discarded as unworthy, too full of rot and damned to be returned to the vendor who’d dared offer it.

  “Mrs. Meggs?” My voice rose in uncertain question, though I’d no doubt it was she.

  “Eh?” She jerked upright, squinting fiercely, with a lemon grasped in her hand. I guessed her to be of the same age as my mother, no more than thirty-five, yet sturdy and stout as a hogshead of Jamaica molasses.