The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  In this group of devil cheaters was Charles, riding as if his very soul depended on the outcome. My gaze found him at once among the others: riding bareheaded in his shirtsleeves and vest, worn breeches, and boots with shining silver spurs. Just as he was the tallest and the strongest among the other gentlemen, so was his horse the greatest of the lot, the kind of raging black mount that required the most seasoned and confident rider.

  I watched Charles now, his white shirt billowing around his sun-browned, lean body as he guided the powerful animal beneath him, so perfectly synchronized to move together that I sighed from the purest poetry of the sight. Only the crashing sounds of the trumpets and drums that celebrated the race’s winner jarred me from my dreamy adoration, and reminded me, sheepish, that I’d no notion of who’d won.

  “That’s your horse that won, isn’t it, Nell? ” Maria asked, far more alert beside me than I. “The chestnut?”

  “Aye, that’s Fleetfoot.” I drew off my wide straw hat and waved it over my head. “Hey, hey, Fleetfoot!”

  “Nelly, here!”

  I shaded my eyes and looked down to where Charles, still on horseback, was calling up to me. “Come down, Nell. You role here is to give the plate to the winner.”

  “But you are the winner, sir,” I protested. “Leastwise, Fleetfoot was. Giving your plate to yourself doesn’t seem proper.”

  “Then you’ll give it to the jockey, along with a buss on the cheek,” he said. “You’ll make him the happiest man in Newmarket, save me. Come, everyone’s waiting.”

  “Now, sir?” I asked uncertainly. I had agreed to this, aye, but the prizes were given on the other side of the course, and beyond the teeming sea of hundreds of half-drunken men. “How? ”

  “With me, Nelly.” He grinned, his teeth very white beneath his mustache, and patted the horse’s neck. “You can ride with me.”

  Now, this struck me as a very poor bargain indeed. I was not daunted by the man (never Charles!) but by the horse beneath him. I’d been perfectly serious with Maria. Horses did frighten me, with their size and power and unpredictability. This was inconceivable to Charles, a natural horseman, and he’d tried repeatedly to teach me to ride. But my dancer’s agility always deserted me, and I was too stiff, too clumsy, too ill at ease to do more than cling pathetically to the horse’s mane, with my legs dangling away from the stirrups in a way that made Charles laugh ungallantly.

  “Come along, Nelly,” he called again, even as that huge black dragon of a horse pranced and steamed and snorted beneath him.

  “Go on, Nell,” Maria urged, misreading my fears. “I’ll be well enough with one of these other gentlemen. You can’t keep His Majesty waiting.”

  Still I hesitated, and at last the king said the single word certain to make me agree. He grinned with pleasant cheer, raised one hand from his reins in salute, and called it out to me.

  “Coward!”

  “Coward?” I gasped with indignation, my fears forgotten in a trice. “Coward? ’Od’s blood, sir, but I’ll coward you!”

  I bunched my skirts to one side in my fist and clambered down the pavilion’s ladder. He wheeled the horse about, making it as easy as possible for me to mount before him. He held out his arm to me and half lifted me across his thighs and the saddle. He circled his arms around me, so I wouldn’t fall, but that was the least of my concerns. I tried to settle myself with my side against his chest, struggling to find a position that was both comfortable and secure; clearly an impossible task. Oh, I’ve seen those paintings, too, with the dreamy lady riding before her noble knight. But I am sure that if the painter had been forced to experience for himself a saddle’s pommel bumping beneath his bum, he would have drawn it otherwise.

  Far too soon, Charles was off, my legs dangling like a broken puppet’s and thumping against the horse’s side, while my skirts fluttered freely up over my garters. Both the horse and Charles smelled ripely from their exertion, with male and equine sweat mingled with damp leather and the woolen blanket beneath the saddle.

  Yet as we crossed the course, slowly cutting through the throngs of men, I forgot my discomfort. The men were cheering and waving their hats and shouting Charles’s name, and I even thought I heard a few garbled snatches of the Old Rowley song being sung. It was as if I were being borne along not on the bumpy neck of a horse, but on the goodwill of all these men, Charles’s subjects. I realized, too, how much he in turn trusted them, to ride among them like this, alone, without guards or attendants, not like an omnipotent ruler, but simply as another man who adored horses as they did.

  What surprised me the most, however, was how often I heard my own name shouted, too, as if I were taking my bow in the playhouse. A good many of these men must also attend the King’s Theatre, to recognize me, and twisting about in Charles’s arms, I did my best to wave in return.

  At last we reached the winning horse and jockey, and a small group of waiting race officials. Eager hands helped me from Charles’s horse to the ground, and someone else thrust a heavy silver plate into my grasp. The jockey stood beside the winning horse, with a pair of grooms holding the animal’s head. The jockey was even smaller on foot than he’d seemed on the back of the horse, not much larger than I, and blushing so furiously he could scarce lift his gaze from his boots to look at me.

  Charles heartily shook the jockey’s hand and clapped him on his sweaty back. I put the plate into his hands, hoping in his nervousness he didn’t drop it, and kissed him first on one cheek, then the other, while the crowd around me roared. A small girl thrust a posy of early flowers—primrose, daisy, lady’s smock—into my hands. I pulled one of the blooms free and tucked it into the winning horse’s bridle, and would have kissed him, too, if I’d more courage. But I was as unable to resist winning over this audience as every other, and as all watched me, I tossed my hat off into the crowd and danced a quick little jig that made them all shout their approval.

  Laughing at my boldness, Charles scooped me up and set me back on his horse before he swung himself up into the saddle. With the cheers to buoy me, I scarce felt either the fear or the discomfort now, and I was giddy still when we reached Charles’s quarters.

  “Come to my chambers with me, Nelly,” he said when I began to leave for my own lodgings. “I wish to speak to you.”

  I nodded, unsure of what would follow, and let him lead me up the staircase to his rooms. I sat cross-legged on the edge of his bed with the bouquet of flowers in my lap while servants flurried about him, pulling off his soiled clothes, washing his body with scented cloths, draping a dressing gown over his nakedness. I’d still not grown accustomed to so much tending by servants; for the most part, I’d rather do all such little tasks by myself, for myself, but then I was not a king.

  At last they left us, bowing from the room, and I toppled backward on the bed—invitingly, I thought.

  But for once, Charles had other matters on his mind. “You know, Cromwell banned racing because he believed the meets were used to plan seditious plots,” he said. “After watching you today, I believe the old villain might have been right.”

  “Oh, a pox on your seditions,” I said, lazily turning my head to watch him. “How could I be this seditious when I’m not even sure what that means?”

  “It means you’re plotting rebellion against me,” he said, coming to sit on the bed to one side of me. He wore a black brocaille dressing gown with nothing beneath it, his bare chest most distracting to me. “I shouldn’t consider it a compliment.”

  “I shouldn’t consider it because it’s not true,” I said. “You know that, sir. I’m the most loyal of all your subjects, and completely, absolutely your servant in every way.”

  “I know,” he said softly, and the way he smiled down on me proved that he did. “Of all the lot of them, I think you are my truest friend.”

  “Oh, sir.” Tears swelled in my eyes, a rarity with me, and I could say no more. “Oh, sir.”

  It wasn’t just that I’d been struck dumb from joyful surpris
e, though that was part of it. There were so many limits to loving a king. There could never be any lasting promises of devotion, or a future shared beyond tonight’s pleasures. I could harbor no expectations, nor make any demands of him. Just as I could lie with him in perfect wanton abandon, without restraint or physical restriction, yet could never call him by his Christian name, so, too, I knew I should keep the walls set high around my heart. At best, I would always be one among many in his inconstant world. Likewise, I understood the bitterest irony of my lot: that I, who earned my bread by playing lovers, could never love or expect to receive love in return.

  But I’d not counted on Charles himself. He’d offered no grand assault on my heart, no impassioned declarations or cunning, calculated gifts. Rather, he’d demolished my defenses stone by stone, with kindness and trust, but most of all with the laughter we shared, and that had bound me to him as surely as the heaviest chains. I knew better than to speak of love between us, or to expect to hear it. Such love had no place in a royal court, nor in my playhouse, either.

  Then had come this moment, all the sweeter for being so unexpected. For Charles to call me his friend, to declare such a fine, fine sentiment to me—to me—ah, I’d never even dreamed of hearing such words.

  “Don’t cry, sweet,” he said gruffly. “I meant to please you.”

  “You did, sir,” I whispered, letting the tears slip unchecked from my eyes. “Please me, that is. For you are and have been my dearest, dearest friend in all this world.”

  “I am glad,” he said, and though he smiled, I saw the discomfort flicker behind his dark eyes. “But I’ve slighted you, sweet. I’ve kept you too much to myself.”

  “How’s that?” Anxiously I searched his face, not understanding. Did he really believe himself at fault, or had I been the one who’d sinned, by speaking too much? “I’d keep you entirely to myself, sir, if I could. I wouldn’t wish for less.”

  Idly he took up the posy from where it lay on the bed beside me, running his fingertips over the flowers’ petals. “What did Killigrew do when you grew more popular with the rascals in the pit?”

  “He gave me better parts,” I said cautiously. “Bigger roles, with more lines. But I do not see how—”

  “My people like you, Nell,” he said. “The grooms, the jockeys, the cartmen, the footmen, and the drovers. They like you for the same reasons I do: your honesty, your generosity, your wit.”

  “They don’t like me for how I sit a horse.” I’d hoped he’d laugh.

  He didn’t. “I’m serious, Nelly.”

  “So am I,” I said. “They like me because I’m Protestant and won’t coax you to Rome by way of your cock.”

  “True,” he said, smiling. “Though the bishops might phrase it differently.”

  “It would mean the same,” I said firmly. “And I’m not too proud to remember that I’m the daughter of a soldier and a whore, and that I came from Coal Yard Alley. And they like you, sir, for liking me for what I am, despite that selfsame beginning of mine.”

  “True, all true.” He leaned down to kiss me, upside down, so that his mustache tickled my chin and made me chuckle. “Is it any wonder that I like you as much as I do? ”

  I raised my chin toward his and smiled. “None, sir.”

  “Then there’s no wonder, either, that I wish to keep you with me as much as possible? ”

  Happily, I shook my head, and reached up to draw him down upon me, but he shook his head and sat back.

  “Let me finish, Nelly. I’m heeding Killigrew and giving you a bigger role.” He drew one of the flowers from the posy, and slowly began to trail it along my face, my throat, my shoulders. “My own country lass. The days we’ve spent together at Bagnigge and here—you’ve made me happy, Nelly, as happy as I can ever remember.”

  He teased the flower lower, over my breasts. “And I don’t want to give that up.”

  “Nor do I, sir.” I’d not even realized there was a question of that, and my heart lurched.

  “Good.” He smiled, raising the flower up to his nose to smell its scent. “When we return to London, I want you to move to a house, where I can come to you when we both please. Something fine, of your choosing. No more of this low skulking over taverns. You’d like that, yes? ”

  “Oh, sir, a thousand times yes,” I whispered. I could scarce believe my good fortune. It was not only the house he offered, but what such an offer meant. Everyone knew of Lady Castlemaine’s house in King Street, the dinners she hosted there for Charles and his friends, the way he used her parlor and dining room as a less formal version of Whitehall itself. Politicians met there, and ambassadors from other countries would first call at King Street, knowing Charles would likely be there instead of Whitehall.

  For years, Her Ladyship had been his hostess, his partner, a witty surrogate queen, and now—now I would be, too. This was what he was offering me, and not just a tidy pile of mortar and bricks.

  “I’m making a number of changes, Nelly,” he said with deceptive mildness, as if the changes he meant were as unimportant as ordering a different wine. He pulled another daisy from the posy and, one by one, he began to drop the flowers around me, the white petals like snow. “Lady Castlemaine will soon be made a duchess.”

  I caught my breath. Titles granted like this were not honors so much as farewells, a reward offered for leaving the king’s bed without an unseemly fuss. Could I be destined to take her place? My head seemed to spin with dizzying possibilities.

  “That is but the beginning, sweet,” he said softly. “I’m weary of letting Parliament rule me, instead of my ruling England. They will not agree, I am sure, but that will change, too. How I live, how I rule, whom I trust and whom I don’t.”

  “Tell me more,” I begged with excitement. “Tell me everything!”

  “I can’t,” he said sadly, but with a finality that warned me not to beg further. “It’s too soon. But you must trust me, Nelly, that it will all be for the better. For you, for me, for England.”

  And when he kissed me, I believed him.

  Alone, I sat to one side of the playhouse stage, watching the others rehearse their scene. I was eager for my turn and gave no care to how the other players kept apart from me, from respect or shyness or envy; it could have been any of those. I’d been so rapt with Charles that Killigrew hadn’t given me a fresh part since January, when I’d done the revival of The Sisters. It was now May, four months later, but the wait had been worth my while.

  Mr. Dryden had written a splendid new play, Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr, with an equally splendid role for me as Valeria, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Maximin. True, it was a grand tragedy, a history piece full of speeches and heroics instead of my usual comedy, but so well written that I knew it would be hugely popular. I even had the good fortune of stabbing myself to death on stage, dying in a great spurt of pig’s blood. Murders, suicides, and martyrdoms always played well with audiences, who relished the sight of such edifying gore. A saint as well-known as Catherine of Alexandria, and the name saint of the queen, would only help our profits the more.

  While I waited, I repeated my lines silently to myself to make sure I knew them. My memory had always been good; one or two readings by another to me was generally enough for the words to stick in my ears. This new play reminded me of my first speaking part in another of Mr. Dryden’s plays, The Indian Emperor, where I’d also portrayed a royal daughter. Only five years before, yet when I considered how far I’d come in those five years, it might have been a lifetime.

  The scene ended, and I rose and lifted my head to a regal angle, ready to make my entrance. But instead Killigrew came toward me, clearing his throat in a self-conscious way that should have been a warning to me of what was to come.

  “I’m sorry, Nell, but we’re going to move ahead to the next scene,” he said. “We’ll come back to yours in a bit.”

  “ ’Od’s faith, Killigrew,” I said, more disappointed than angry. “You’ve always said before that we
must practice the acts in orders, so we learn to judge our timing and costumes.”

  “That’s the preferred manner, yes,” he said, and shook his head. “But there’s little use in continuing without Mr. Hart to play his role opposite you.”

  “He’s not here?” I don’t know why I asked. I knew where he must be, and so did everyone else.

  “Mr. Hart remains in his room.” Killigrew shrugged, to indicate that there was nothing more to be said or done. “He is, ah, engaged.”

  “You mean he’s oiling the notch of a certain lady countess.” I sighed with resignation; there would be no refusing Lady Castlemaine. “Poor Hart! I trust he’s taken his physic today. I only wish Her Ladyship would not feel the itch during our rehearsals.”

  Killigrew made a slight, droll bow of acknowledgment, and too late I realized how the other members of the company had fallen silent or dawdled where they were to eavesdrop on our conversation.

  “Agreed, Nell, agreed,” he said. “And how interesting to consider that Mr. Hart has made much the same observations of His Majesty and you. Ahh, Dryden, come to watch the rehearsals, have you? ”

  He turned toward the playwright and away from me, pointedly leaving me alone to stew however I wanted. Yet all I did was fold my arms over my chest and listen quietly. I’d remain placid, unconcerned, and I would not give them the satisfaction of behaving in a foolish, impassioned tumult, shrieking and breaking crockery. That, along with Charles Hart, I’d leave to Lady Castlemaine.

  “I’ve the announcements for the play.” Mr. Dryden opened his leather case and pulled out the proofs from the printer’s, and carefully spread the oversized sheets on a nearby table. “They were ready sooner than I’d expected. If there’s no error, the fellow said he’d run them tonight.”

  I looked over Mr. Killigrew’s shoulder and made the proper murmurs of approval, along with the others. It was the usual gibberish to me, with some lines bigger, some smaller, but which was which I couldn’t say. I did recognize my own name—Lord Rochester had taught me that one afternoon, more for his own amusement than to teach me—by the shapes of the letters, but nothing more.