The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Of course, there were also those courtiers (mostly haughty, virtuous ladies, to no surprise) who considered themselves too much my better to address me, or even to admit to seeing me, their eyes being so consciously overbred as to make the lowly likes of me invisible to them. I didn’t care. They were entitled to do whatever they pleased. I found myself equally entitled to mimic them and their pretentious ways as soon as their stiff backs were turned to me, and thus provide the most uproarious entertainment for Charles and his friends. I could be rebuffed by every marquis and countess in Britain, and yet so long as Charles bid me dance with him, or sit on a stool beside his chair, I’d be happy.

  The most curious part of this, of course, was that the only other person close to my equal at such mocking was Buckingham. I knew that Charles had spoken to him angrily about his influence over Monmouth and the lies about Lucy Walters, and yet once again the duke had apologized with deep contrition, and like any other naughty child had promised better behavior, only to sin again as soon as he could. With me, he was as attentive as ever, jovially calling us the two peas in a pod, a likening that I found more disturbing than pleasing. Why should I wish to share anything with His Duplicitous Grace, let alone the vegetable intimacy of a shining little green pod?

  Thus we soon came to the Christmas holidays that would mark the end of 1668 and the beginning of the New Year, through to the final frivolity, Twelfth Night. These holidays had been banned during Cromwell’s time, and thus were now celebrated with feverish enthusiasm. At the playhouse, we were deep in rehearsals for a new revival of Cataline’s Conspiracy by the old writer Ben Jonson, featuring lavish new costumes and settings costing nearly five hundred pounds, paid for by the king. Yet I still found time to be much at the palace and elsewhere with Charles.

  Who would wish to miss such revelry? There were balls, entertainments, and musical performances almost every night. Greenery from the parks bedecked the Banqueting Hall and other great halls and parlors, and even more wine—claret, sherry, canary, and Rhenish—was drunk than usual. We climbed to the roof of the palace to watch fireworks in the night sky and illuminated barges on the river, and to admire the bonfires set in the streets throughout the city.

  One night the amusement was a troop of acrobats from faraway Florence. A handsome, swarthy lot (even the women were darker than Charles), they preened and pranced about in their bright satin costumes, hung with tiny jingling bells to great effect. They strung their ropes from one tall window in the Banqueting Hall across to the others, dancing over our heads and calling to one another in their brazen lingo. With Charles as our willing interpreter, I asked them to share several of their clever steps with me, and in exchange offered my English versions to them, a merry time.

  Afterward, my face gleaming and my hair frizzled from dancing, I found myself on a bench against the wall to rest and drink a glass of sweet canary. To my surprise, young Monmouth came to sit beside me, bringing with him a small saucer of sweetmeats for us to share.

  “You dance as graceful as a fairy, Nell,” he said, holding the saucer for me to make my choice. I’ll grant that he had elegant manners, for he’d been polished at the French court by his grandmother, the old queen Henrietta Marie. “Those scraping foreign jackanapes can’t hold a candle to you.”

  “Thank’ee, Your Grace.” I plucked the nearest sweet, wickedly licking the dusted sugar from one side. “Though you might not be so quick to call them foreign jackanapes, since you’ve a fair share of jackanapes blood to you, too.”

  He frowned solemnly, reminding me again of how often a comely face is no match for the empty skull behind it. “You mean because Father’s grandmother was from the Italian town called Florence?”

  “I do,” I said cheerfully, so as not to give offense—not that I suspected he’d understand it, anyway, the poor dim lamb. “And she was, leastwise so your father tells me.”

  He nodded, offering no notion of exactly how much he comprehended. He was laboring hard to keep his expression aloof, the way he must believe a duke’s should be. His face was sweeter than Charles’s, with melting dark eyes and rounded cheeks instead of Charles’s heavy-lidded, guarded melancholy, yet still he did all he could to increase the resemblance to his father. His clothes were cut along the same lines (though of much more ostentatious cloth, often shot through with gold or silver thread), his dark beaver hats blocked the same way, and he wore his black, curling hair to echo the long wigs that Charles favored.

  “It was generous to show them a caper or two,” he said. “They can tell everyone back home in—in that town of theirs—that they danced with the famous Mrs. Gwyn.”

  “Oh, aye, as if that will carry any water back there,” I said, popping the sweetmeat into my mouth and briskly dusting the sugar from my hands. “Mind you, I don’t speak their cant, but I recognize cursing in any tongue, and guessed we English and our snowy winter and all our low, whoring mothers and grandmothers were being damned and sent to the devil, too.”

  “Then send them to the devil, too!” He flushed and laughed loudly, as if this were the wittiest piece of business ever. “I say, there’s Lady Castlemaine with Arlington again. What are they plotting, I wonder? ”

  I followed his gaze to where this unsavory pair was, in fact, engaged. Though she must be over thirty by now, she was still shockingly beautiful, especial at a distance like this. No one would ever say that of Lord Arlington, whose gaze always seemed cross-eyed on account of the large black plaster he wore across his nose to cover an old sword wound. But while he’d win no prizes at the fair for his face, Arlington was reputed to be the most cunningly learned man in London, able to cozen the prayer book from a saint in five different languages. Charles respected him, if he didn’t entirely trust him, well enough that he’d let Her Grace arrange a profitable marriage between one of her royal bastards and Arlington’s daughter.

  Ah, but there were so many characters for me to learn!

  “I’ll wager they’re talking politics,” I said, watching the pair. “His Majesty says Her Ladyship has a plum in every pie that Lord Arlington bakes.”

  But Monmouth was thinking of other matters. “She’s the most wanton jade at court, you know. Maybe in all London.”

  I raised my brows with amusement, imagining what Charles would say to hear his son speak of Lady Castlemaine so, or how his own wedded wife, a brisk young Scotswoman far his superior in rank and fortune, would box his ears for the same offense. “And how exactly would you know that, Your Grace?”

  “Everyone does,” he said blithely. He set the saucer on the bench beside him, and with considerable deliberation, put his hand on my knee, giving it a mighty squeeze through my skirts. “Everyone.”

  Pointedly I looked down to my knee, then glanced at him, then back to my knee.

  “Well, aye, that’s true about Her Ladyship,” I agreed slowly, “but then Dame Everyone knows a great deal at this court.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve had her, you know.”

  “Have you indeed?” His hand clung to my knee like a limpet on a stone, and about as seductively, too. I knew he’d cut a swath through the younger ladies of the court, the sighing maids of honor who were easily dazzled, but Lady Castlemaine was of a far different rank. I would have heard of it if she’d dabbled in that particular pond. We all would have. Though Charles’s visits to her rooms were precious few these days, even she wasn’t so reckless as to seduce his son.

  But Monmouth’s hand on my knee showed a hope that I’d be more inclined. I wasn’t, not at all, and it was time to end his mooncalf notions of conquest.

  “So you’ve had Her Ladyship,” I said, musing. “Now, I have had your father, who has also had her, while she has had Charles Hart, who has had me. So there you are, round and round the maypole we go.”

  His face knotted with confusion over that, exactly as I’d intended. While he considered, I gently prized his fingers from my knee, turned his hand upright, and slipped mine inside, in the companionable manner of fri
ends, not lovers.

  “You see how it can be in this place, Your Grace,” I whispered, leaning my head close to his so that none would overhear. “Everyone’s so busy having everyone else, that there’s no time left for any thing else.”

  “That’s why Father likes you,” he said grudgingly, concentrating on our clasped hands instead of my face. He’d not moved his fingers at all, leaving them stiff and self-conscious against mine. “He says that’s why you’re not just another miss. Is it true you taught him to bait a hook with a worm for fish? ”

  “I did,” I said, laughing. It was strange to realize we were the same age in years, since in so many ways he seemed a boy, and I much older, if not wiser. “His Majesty wasn’t a very proper fisherman in the beginning, but he did learn. You might be better.”

  “I vow I would. You’d see, too.” At last he gave my fingers an answering squeeze, though his face remained aloof. “I give you leave to call me James, Nell. Jamie, if you wish. That’s what Father calls me.”

  “Jamie it is,” I said. “Thank’ee, Jamie.”

  “My pleasure, Mistress Gwyn.” He rose and bowed. I watched him go, reaching for another of the sweetmeats he’d left behind. I was glad he’d felt in need of a friend, for faith, in that palace, I felt the need, too. He should have felt naught but contentment in his life, yet there was an air of constant disastisfaction to him, of always yearning for more, that I feared would keep him from lasting happiness.

  “Nelly, Nelly,” Lord Buckingham said, appearing from next to nowhere in his usual way. “Don’t you know how to please young James!”

  “Fishing, Your Grace,” I said. I felt as if I’d be betraying Monmouth to tell Buckingham more. “That was all we spoke of. Fishing.”

  He winked slyly. “Can’t I guess what you used as bait.”

  “ ’Od’s blood, but you do make everything come out tawdry,” I said tartly. “I offered him my friendship. That was all. Not that you’d understand.”

  “That’s powerfully clever of you, Nell,” he said, more of a real compliment than I’d ever expected from him. “Give the whelp his head; let him believe he’s the master.”

  “The only master’s His Majesty, Your Grace,” I said staunchly, watching Monmouth make his way through the crowd. “God willing, he’ll be so for a good long while, too.”

  “Oh yes, God save the king and all that, but even the bishops advise us to look toward our places in the afterlife.” He puffed out his cheeks to make them fuller, like Monmouth’s, and put on the younger duke’s stiff-mannered voice. “God save the king, which should be me, by rights, and Lucy Walters.”

  “Enough, George,” Charles said, coming from behind to join us. “I do recall warning you more than once in that regard.”

  Without the slightest show of guilt or remorse at having been caught, Buckingham only bowed with an extravagant flourish and a charming, world-weary smile.

  “Your Majesty,” he murmured, “Mrs. Gwyn. Pray excuse me, if you will.”

  He sauntered away toward Lady Castlemaine and Lord Arlington, a dark knot of deceitful wickedness if ever there was one.

  “He’s incorrigible,” Charles said with a sigh.

  “He’s a false, cocksure, son of a dog-and-bitch whoremonger,” I said, fuming. “He tries to tar everything with his own foul stench.”

  Charles slipped his arm around my waist, meaning to calm me, I suppose, though the duke had set me well beyond calming.

  “What was he saying to you, Nelly?” he asked. “What of Jamie?”

  “The usual rubbish, sir,” I said. “He wants to make me his tool, and I’ll not have it.”

  “That’s my lass,” he said, nodding with approval. He glanced back to Buckingham, his expression hardening. “I saw you with Jamie, too.”

  “Aye,” I said, laying my little hand over Charles’s at my waist. “We spoke of fishing.”

  “Fishing.” He sighed again. “I hope he has more of a gift for it than I had.”

  That made me smile at last. “He has to, sir.”

  “He does indeed.” Yet Charles didn’t smile. “Will you be there to steady him? Could I ask you that, Nelly?”

  “Of course, sir,” I said, slipping my fingers into Charles’s hand the way I’d done with his son. “You need not even ask it.”

  “My dear Nelly.” The old sorrow was there again as he, too, watched his son across the room. “I only pray he’ll never need that knowledge to fish for his own supper.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  NEWMARKET, SUFFOLK April 1669

  “Can you see them yet, Maria?” I asked, leaning over the railing of the beribboned pavilion for my first glimpse of the horses. “Can you see them? ”

  “Show some patience, Nell,” Maria said, though she also leaned over the railing, holding her flat-brimmed hat to keep it from blowing away.

  Maria Knight was an old acquaintance of mine, a singer who’d begun in taverns and risen much like me, to sing in playhouses and by invitation at the palace. Blessed with the sweet voice of an angel and a face to match, she’d also passed a giddy fortnight in the king’s bed, but that was so long ago as to be as nothing to me now.

  She’d come down from London here to Newmarket to watch the horses run in the spring meetings, the same as Charles and I, and by my invitation had come to sit beside me now in Charles’s small viewing pavilion on top of the hill, overlooking the course. The gentlemen were all busy below with the horses and jockeys, and though there were perhaps a thousand more crowded about on the grass to watch, none of the true ladies would be seen sitting with me. Thus I was mightily glad of Maria’s company, for herself and for good cheer.

  “You know how long it takes to get a skittish nag into line,” Maria continued. “It must take ten times as long to settle a string of horses before a race. I cannot imagine how the grooms do it.”

  “Better they do it than I,” I said, squinting up into the afternoon sky. Even beneath the pavilion’s striped awning, the sun was bright and warm, and because I was so fair with my red-gold hair, I had to take care not to burn or turn spotty. “Whenever His Majesty takes me through the stables, I never leave his side, I’m that terrified of the horses. Huge snorting beasts! They’d trample me if they could, I know it.”

  Maria laughed. “How His Majesty must tease you, delighting in horses as he does.”

  “Oh, he does, he does,” I assured her merrily. Like all the Stuarts, Charles loved his horses nearly as much as he did his dogs. One of his first projects upon his Restoration had been to bring back the sport of horse racing that the Protectorate had banned and refurbish the royal stables, at the royal sum of eight hundred pounds. Charles had told me once that in the royal mews he’d fifty coursers and sixty hunters, and that he spent close to two thousand pounds a year feeding them straw and hay.

  He journeyed here to Newmarket three times a year for the races, staying three weeks or so each visit. As a new country retreat, he’d recently bought Audley End, the nearby house of the Earl of Suffolk, for fifty thousand pounds. If there were any further proof needed of how much he loved Newmarket, he was also improving a new, small palace, designed by Christopher Wren, in the town of Newmarket itself, with another house across the street for my use.

  Now, I know that this was exactly the sort of expense that made the grim-faced men in Parliament grumble and draw their purse strings tight, and urge the king to retrench and economize for the good of the country. There were many, too, who argued that such vast sums might be better spent rebuilding the neighborhoods in London still in charry ruins from the fire, and that Christopher Wren might likewise be more usefully employed there, than in contriving houses for horse racing.

  Yet I could not agree. Anyone who watched Charles ride, masterfully taking his horses leaping over fences and brooks, would realize that there could be no greater symbol of the English crown than the king astride a handsome steed, and so I told them, too.

  But that was not precisely the mount I’d in mind n
ow as I winked at Maria. “He teases me for being a land-bound plodder, aye, until I remind him that I can tame any frothing charger if I set my mind to it, and that generally pulls him to a halt.”

  “ ‘A foaming charger!’ ” repeated Maria with her gurgling laugh. “Tell me, Nelly, are you a jockey with a light touch with the whip and spurs, or do you ride your stallion hard and fast? ”

  I whooped at that, rocking back against my chair as I held my sides with laughter. “Oh, Maria, pray, don’t begin! Don’t! One of the favorite horses in the royal stud is called Old Rowley, and Rochester sang me the wickedest new song last week, about the loves of Old Rowley.”

  “Are you in it?” asked Maria archly. “A trim little mare named Nelly? ”

  “Maria, there are so many verses, with so many mares, that likely you are in it somewhere as well,” I said. “Oh, I wish I could recall it now! You’re sure to hear the song, anyway, for His Majesty was so taken with it that he sings it day and night, in that rumbling flat voice of his, until—oh, the trumpets and drums, Maria! Here come the horses!”

  I jumped from my chair, the better to see. The score of horses came thundering toward us, their riders crouched close to the animals’ necks, urging them on. The races were long, four miles, and the horses were nearly spent by the time they’d come so close to the finish, their muscled flanks flecked with sweat, driven by emotion and will to win. As always, I’d wagered a small sum on Charles’s horse to make the race more interesting, and now I added my bellowed encouragement to those that roared around us, all urging our favorites onward.

  Yet as thrilling as the race’s ending was, my gaze wandered from the finish to the horses running alongside the course. While the steeds in the race were ridden by jockeys, the most accomplished (and most reckless) of the gentlemen present would display their own talent by riding alongside the course, cheering and shouting like wild red savages in this race beside a race.