The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Hah, did he truly believe I’d back down over such a piddling challenge? I’d a glimpse of his bride’s face behind him, pale and scandalized. I didn’t care. I was only just shy of seventeen, and no dare was too great for me then.

  “Show you, my lord?” I repeated, as full of indignant bluster as any true gallant. “Why, I’ll show you, and let these folk swear as our witness!”

  Struggling to keep in character and not to laugh myself, I flipped up the skirts of my doublet and began to wrestle with the buttons on the fall of my breeches, to the squeals of the ladies and the cheers of the men. But suddenly a man’s hand closed over my wrist to stop me, and even without looking I knew it belonged to the king.

  “You’ve proved yourself, Mrs. Gwyn,” he said softly, his eyes still merry. “There’s no need to display here what’s better discovered in private.”

  Startled, I looked up, my heart racing within my chest. “How, sir, when all of life is lived upon the world’s bright stage? ”

  “A trial, indeed,” he said. “Will you endure it further, and come dance before us one evening at Whitehall?”

  “Oh, aye,” I said in a rush. “ ’Course I will.”

  A few laughed then, believing my lapse into my old speaking to be acting still.

  But the king didn’t. “I am glad,” he said, and nodded. And when he released my hand, I felt an astonishing sense of loss, as if some vital connection had been broken. He was smiling still as he regarded me, but the merriment had left his eyes, replaced by something more quizzical and harder to define.

  Then as swiftly as the moment had come, it was gone, and the king’s expression became once again the same handsome mask the world did see: benevolent, genial, melancholy, and unbreachable.

  He shifted his gaze from me to encompass the others, as well. “But is that not the message of Mr. Dryden’s play? That the duties to the greater whole must supersede the pleasures of the private life? A most honorable message for us all, I’d vow. The queen remarked that part of the play in particular.”

  A polite murmur of agreement ruffled through the crowd. No one would dare question the king now, no matter how ludicrous this declaration might seem. That a king whose life to many seemed devoted to pleasurable excess should embrace a message of duty and restraint seemed at best a contradiction, and at worst, a scandalous lie.

  Yet I understood. In a way, a king is much the same as we actors: our words and actions are determined for us, and our every motion is watched and considered by those we cannot see on the other side of the candle’s lights. If we please, we are cheered. If we don’t, then we’re cursed, faulted, even chased from the very stage that is our home.

  Oh, aye, I understood. And if it seems curious that a bold, mad girl from Coal Yard Alley could find so much in common with the King of England, well, then, so be it. I understood, and I like to think that he did, too, and that—that was all that mattered to me.

  Chapter Nine

  LONDON February 1667

  There are plenty of joyless, pious folk in this world who will damn plays, and blast a playhouse as a place of falsehoods and deception for making people forget the woes of their lives. Yet by my lights, such a deception is only goodness, not evil. Where, I ask you, is the harm in putting aside trouble and care for a few hours? Where is the sin in a witty play that brings laughter, or a solemn one that teaches a much-needed lesson? Where, indeed, and a pox on those pious sober-sides who cannot see the merit in playhouses and plays and the players themselves for the cheer they bring to this gray old world.

  God knows there was little to be cheerful about in London as the new year began. On damp days, the smell of the Great Fire still rose from the burnt timbers that had yet to be pulled down. Although the king himself had pledged the City would rise from the ashes like a very Phoenix-bird, next to nothing had been done. Those without choice lived among the ruins like gypsies, and others who had fled the fire had never returned. While no one could agree as to whether the fire had been caused by French Papists, Dutch spies, or simply God’s wrath, most everyone believed the king and Parliament had been woefully wanting in the aftermath.

  But there were troubles beyond London, too. The war with the Dutch continued to limp along, costing vast sums and achieving nothing. There was no money left in the treasury for supplies, no money to pay the sailors, yet Lady Castlemaine was seen riding in a new carriage through the park with her string of royal bastards, her person sparkling with silver lace and jewels bought at the country’s expense.

  There seemed to be no money left in people’s pockets for plays, either. Though we’d success with Secret Love and several other plays like it that featured Charles and me merrily together, the house was never as full as it had been before the closure for the plague. The king, when he came to us, seemed weary and distracted. Even in the playhouse, the unease and discontent that permeated the city were impossible to forget, like a perilous current that twists beneath the surface of a tranquil sea.

  Yet just as the sea is always changing, so, too, does the rest of the world, whether we wish it so or not. My own little life was no different, and by the end of the summer, everything—everything—I knew and held dear would be changed.

  It was not until March that I was finally summoned to perform for the king, the queen, and the rest of the court at the palace. Such performances were a common practice—individual players were often called to offer songs or dances to help entertain the royal guests after a long supper, and for special occasions, the entire company would be asked for a play or a masque, with courtiers assuming some of the roles. But this was the first time I’d been asked to Whitehall by myself.

  My invitation had come with an intriguing gift from the king: a new costume for my dancing that proved how closely the king had enjoyed (and recalled) my breeches role in Secret Love. Cut from bright purple cloth and richly embroidered, the costume was once again a gentlemen’s dress in miniature, to suit my diminutive form, from the plumed hat to the flannel waistcoat and yellow hose.

  The most notable extravagance of the king’s gift, however, were the breeches, a pair of Rhinegraves such as were favored by the most stylish gentlemen at court. These breeches were a passing French style (though called after the Rhineland, where they’d first been worn) of the time, one that did not last long beyond 1667. Cut fantastically full and unbound at the knee, they flew up over my bare thighs like short petticoats when I danced, so cunningly that I laughed aloud the first time I tried them before a looking-glass.

  But I wasn’t laughing now as I stood waiting in one doorway of the palace’s Banqueting Hall. Master Killigrew had brought me tonight, and now was off arranging with the fiddlers who’d play my jigs, which was, in turn, giving me far too much time to be awed by my surroundings.

  The Banqueting Hall was said to be the grandest chamber in the entire palace, with its tall windows overlooking St. James’s Park and its high ceiling thick with painted pagan gods and goddesses. Because the room was crowded, the windows had been propped open, and the hangings on either side shivered against the walls in the evening breeze. Nowadays the hall was used for all kinds of entertainments and amusements, not just for banqueting, though it had not always been thus. I’d been told that the king’s father had stepped from this same room to his martyrdom at the hands of Cromwell’s executioner; a gloomy, gory memory, to be sure, and one that gave a double edge to all the frivolity that had passed in this hall since the king’s return to the throne.

  I gnawed at a hangnail on my thumb, feeling in my purple suit at once conspicuous and lost among the bustling footmen bringing food and drink from the kitchens. There was no time determined for my dancing; I was expected to wait until it pleased the king for me to perform.

  To my joy, I wasn’t alone for long. Lord Rochester had spotted me quaking in the shadows, and gallantly came to keep company with me.

  “You’ll do splendidly, Nelly,” he assured me. “Besides, most everyone here is already half-drunk, and wo
uldn’t notice if you tumbled on your ass.”

  From the doorway where we stood, I couldn’t see enough to tell if my audience had been drinking or not. Certainly, Rochester had. His face was flushed and his speech just slurry enough to betray him, and I could smell the wine on his breath as he leaned over me. He was often this way now, though whether from joining the hard-drinking gentlemen here at court or because of his marriage, I didn’t know. I’d heard he’d already banished his rich, sweet-faced wife to the country to live with his mother, the poor lass.

  “That’s a comfort, m’lord,” I said wryly. “You do know what to say for encouragement, don’t you?”

  “I do so know what to say, sweetheart,” he said, plainly wounded. “I always do.”

  “Then pray tell me who all these lords and ladies and other pretty pilgrims might be.” Briskly I rubbed my hands over my arms, fighting my anxiety. This might be my first visit to Whitehall, but I didn’t intend for it to be my last, and the more courtiers I recognized, the better. “Some I know from the playhouse. There’s the Duke o’ York, and Buckingham, and Castlemaine, and of course the king and queen.”

  The royal couple sat side by side in tall-backed chairs that were not quite thrones, but grander than anyone else’s. The king was listening patiently to some long-winded tale by the plain little queen, and my heart sank to see it. He was always kind to her like this when she came with him to the playhouse, too. With her at his side, there’d be no special words from the king for me tonight, no request for a more private performance, nor even the chance for me to thank him for my new costume. I wondered why he’d even sent it, if it were to bring so little with it.

  The whole rigmarole of a royal marriage had never made sense to me, anyway, considering how he’d kept Lady Castlemaine as his favorite mistress, and a great many other lesser women besides, direct beneath the queen’s nose. The best I could figure was that the king was too well mannered a gentleman to behave otherwise with his dull little wife, which, in a nonsensical way, made me only admire him the more.

  “Do you really care, Nelly?” The earl was watching me with more shrewdness than I’d thought possible through the drink. “Who is who, and who’s cozening who? Why, I’d thought you’d no interest in petticoat politics.”

  I shrugged, trying to look as if I didn’t. “Not when you or Lord Buckingham are tugging at my traces, no. But if I decide to sort out the players in Whitehall for myself—why, there’s no sin to that.”

  He smiled, and though I knew he wasn’t fooled, he’d let it pass for now. “No sin in that, no, but there’s plenty more behind every cabinet door.”

  “I know that,” I said. “Rank and titles don’t make any folk better nor worse than they’re born to be.”

  “Wise child.” He turned back toward the crowd of courtiers. “Perhaps we should begin with that gouty old fellow with the nose like a spoiled plum. That’s Clarendon, Chancellor of the Exchequer. You’ll never find him at a playhouse. He’s managed to parlay being the king’s boyhood advisor into a peerage, and whatever else he’s been able to scoop from the treasure for himself. But the old fellow’s falling so fast from favor, you needn’t bother remembering him.”

  “Then I won’t,” I said, so promptly that he laughed.

  “Exchequers are generally men it’s good to know, my dear,” he said. “Everything that flows from the king’s pockets to his misses’ must first come from his ministers. Now, there’s a true rarity, there. That tall, elegant lady with the diamonds in her hair: that’s Frances Stewart. A great beauty, a mind with the breadth of a walnut, yet a maidenhead as strong as if it were wrought of iron. The king’s been trying to breach her for years.”

  “Oh, pish,” I said. “Where’s the use in her doing that?”

  “His Majesty would agree with you entirely.” He caught sight of two gentlemen waving to him, and languidly he returned their salute. “That small dark fellow with the eyes like a ferret’s is Sir Charles Sedley, and a wittier gentleman you’ll never meet.”

  “I know Sir Charles from the playhouse.” I also knew him from having been introduced by Rochester himself, but I saw no use in explaining that now. “And that’s Lord Buckhurst, and George Etherege.”

  “You have been studying your rogues,” he said with approval, squinting a bit as he continued to scan the audience. “You should know Buckhurst. You’d break the poor fellow’s heart if you didn’t.”

  “Oh, pish,” I scoffed. Son and heir to the Earl of Dorset, Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst was only twenty-four, but such a well-spoken, wealthy, genial rake that most people who saw his fleshy face and heavy brows assumed him to be much older. When Rochester had brought him backstage, I’d liked him at once, because he’d seemed so completely incapable of being serious.

  “Lord Buckhurst doesn’t have a heart to break,” I continued, tipping my oversized hat in his direction by way of salute. “Or if he did, he mislaid it long ago in some forgotten, low tavern or alehouse.”

  “So cruel, Nelly, so cruel.” Rochester sighed dramatically. “My merry gang serves its purpose to the king. We amuse him when other dull courtiers fail, and in return, we can count on him to keep us out of the Tower, no matter what our mischief.”

  “Mischief’s a sweet word for what they do,” I said incredulously. “Slaughtering some poor tanner in the street—”

  “A tragic mistake of identity,” Rochester explained. “They thought he was a thief. Such accidents happen every night in London.”

  “Then what of that blasphemous sermon they offered up at the Cock?” I asked. “You must try your best to disturb that badger’s den, yet they did. Dancing naked on the balcony, pissing down on passersby, miming that they’re sodomites—”

  “It was the drink, Nelly, not them,” he assured me, though I could tell from his expression he’d regretted not being party to their wild ways. “No one deserves the Tower for drink. You see the merit of snugging up to the king. It could have saved their necks.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t that I disapproved—I’d seen far worse than that, and besides, I’d scarce the right to judge anyone else—but I still could be amazed that gentlemen of such breeding could wallow so low for their sport.

  I turned back to those before us. “Who’s that plump partridge in the yellow wig, close as a tick to the king?”

  “That’s one of the French ambassadors,” he said. “He’s here to bow and scrape before the king, but mostly to report all he overhears at keyholes and privies back to his master, King Louis. He also bribes Castlemaine, with the ridiculous hope that she’ll lead the king to the Roman Church by way of her honeypot. She won’t, of course, not our Barbara. Playing his whore has earned her far more from the king than she’d ever make as his nun.”

  Again my gaze returned to the king. The queen had finished her story and was concentrating on the pudding before her, carving marks in the glossy, sweet surface with the bowl of her spoon. The king sat back in his tall-backed chair, resting his chin on his hand, entirely lost, it seemed to me, in lonely thought.

  Lightly I stroked the sleeve of my new purple costume. I thought I’d known what would be expected in return for such a gift, and I’d been willing to grant at least part of that price, too. But now I wasn’t so sure, of either the gift or the giver.

  “Does no one wish to please the king for the sake of His Majesty’s own happiness?” I asked softly. “Does everyone in this palace act only from what he might gain or garner in return?”

  “This is court, Nelly, not a nursery for innocents. Everything’s for gain, and nothing’s for free, not even for the king himself.” Rochester regarded me curiously. “What manner of palaver is this from you, Nelly? What has become of that bold little jade who struts about the stage of the King’s Theatre, proclaiming she needs no one but herself?”

  “She’s here,” I said, drawing myself up so swift and straight that I quivered from the effort. I’d not meant to give away so much, especially not to Rochester. Friend
or not, he couldn’t help spilling every secret told to him faster than a cracked pitcher leaks new ale. “I’m here, m’lord, and I’ll damn your eyes if you dare forget it.”

  “That’s my Nelly,” he said, giving me a sly, sidelong wink. “You’ll have to be sharp if you wish to paddle among these Philistines tonight. They mean to test you, my dear.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How, m’lord?”

  He smiled. “There is a certain actress in the Duke’s Company that has caught the king’s fancy.”

  “It’s Moll Davis, isn’t it?” I gasped with genuine outrage. It seems as if I’d always known Moll, or leastways for as long as we’d both been actresses. But where I never pretended to be more than I was, she put on more false airs than an out-of-tune viol, claiming to be the bastard daughter to the Earl of Berkshire.

  “It is,” His Lordship said, with the happy look of a boy who’d stirred a nest of bees with a stick. “Buckingham told me that the Howards are actually owning her blood, even as they push her into his bed. What better employment for a by-blow daughter than improving the family’s fortunes by swiving the king? ”

  “Oh, that cow-faced slut!” I sputtered. “The scurvy, howling bitch! Everything she does on the stage of any worth she’s filched clean from me—from me, m’lord! And now to hear that the king is taken in by her cunning, slatternly ways!”

  “Why should it matter to you which willing sluts the king takes to his bed?” he asked. “There have already been more than you can count, and doubtless double that will follow in the future. Unless all your protestations to me have been barbarously false, and you wish to take your own turn ministering to the royal staff?”

  “I don’t,” I said flatly. “That is, not like that, and not—not now. But I’d rather be wanted than not, and certainly wanted more than a cross-eyed harlot like Moll. How can I keep my pride, and not wish it?”