The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Besides, I’d a sizable crumb of my own to cherish and husband along. Charles had kept his word to me, and early that summer I moved my lodgings to a trim little house in Newman’s Row, on the north side of the open square of land of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was an excellent neighborhood for me, not so far from Drury Lane by Great Queen Street to the King’s Playhouse, and closer still to the Duke’s Playhouse across the Fields on Portugal Row.

  Though mine was a modest place by comparison to what Lady Castlemaine had managed to wring from Charles, it still pleased me immeasurably, being the first house that I could properly call my own. With my sister, Rose (now wedded into respectability to her Captain John Cassels), I happily puttered and planned my new lodgings like any other goodwife, making sure the chimneys drew and the windows latched, and the man who brought my firewood didn’t cheat me.

  At first my neighbors (fat merchants and their families from the City) were scandalized to find me in their midst; an unmarried young woman as head of her own establishment, an actress, and worse, in keeping, too. But before long they realized that the gentleman keeping me was the first gentleman of the realm, and the excitement of having the king’s carriage come driving down their little street soon made them forget their pinchbeck morality.

  But what delighted me was how often Charles came calling, more like a besotted suitor than a wedded king. That summer, he visited me nearly every day, happily trading the formality of Whitehall for the mad airs of my little household. As soon as he’d enter, he’d shed his coat and his waistcoat, and his wig, as well, and come to my table in his shirtsleeves. If the day were warm, we’d take the table outside to the garden, and sit there by the hour, drinking wine and punch and eating pigeon pie and eels caught that morning in the river. With his dogs sprawled beneath the table, we’d laugh and sing and make merry, then repair up the stairs to my bedchamber whenever the spirit caught us. We acted as if we’d not a care in all the world, and there in New-man’s Row, I don’t believe we did.

  When I look back to that summer, I realize it now for the golden time that it was. With Lady Castlemaine as good as done as a mistress and the queen more occupied with her devotions than with the frivolities of the palace, I had Charles as much to myself as I ever would. I was his favorite, his Nelly, and wherever we went, I basked and gloried in his attention. I never looked beyond that morning, that afternoon, that evening. Why should I? I was nineteen, as mad and wild as the sprites I’d always played, and I believed that these merry days would follow one after another forever, like a strand of shining pearls without an end.

  But even the longest string of pearls must finally be linked to its tail to be of any use, a circle if not an ending. By the middle of August, I found I’d lost the fire to dance until the moon set. Instead I was content to sleep and sleep, some days scarce rising from my bed at all, to Charles’s great amusement. My breasts, which had always been round and firm as fruit on the vine, now seemed to ripen and grown rounder still, and more tender, too. It was at last Charles, Old Rowley the sire himself, who finally recognized the signs that I’d chosen to ignore myself.

  One morning as I was drowsing in my bed, he lay beside me and rested his palm across my belly, his fingers easily spanning the cradle of my hips. He looked up at me and smiled. That was all, the warmth of his hand on my skin, and the shared knowledge of what we’d created between us.

  I was already six weeks’ gone with the king’s child, and the joy of my summer was complete.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NEWMAN’S ROW, LONDON April 1670

  There are some women who reach the full zenith of their beauty when they are swollen with a man’s child. Their grace increases with their girth, their skin seems to glow as if with a candle from within, and they achieve that serenity that both poets and apostles praise so highly. It is in honor of these fortunate women that the Papists so venerate the Virgin Mary, and invest motherhood and childbirth with such a holy veil of honor. My old rival Lady Castlemaine was one of these, her tall stature and long legs displaying a pregnant belly to such advantage that she had even had herself painted while carrying one of her numerous children by the king.

  I, however, was not so favored. My pale skin was now always flushed, and my red-gold curls, unruly at best, seemed to double in quantity, until my very hair seemed bound to overwhelm me. But the worst lay below. My small form was so overburdened by the child within my womb that it looked for all the world as if my belly were carrying me, and not the other way round. I suppose it was to be expected, being so slight a woman bred to so large a man as the king, but it made me loath to go abroad, for fear that if I toppled over in the wind, I’d be unable to rise again.

  I worked as long as I could, until Killigrew took me aside with a long face and told me I’d grown too large to play mad girls and maiden princesses. At least I was still welcome at court—most welcome, really, for Charles delighted in having me about as the obvious proof of his still-rampant virility.

  Nor did I mind the attention I received for waddling about the palace as I did. At this court, there was no shame to a bastard, especially if that bastard had been fathered by the king. It was also the one sure way to keep Charles’s lasting attention and regard. He was unusually conscientious about his by-blows; he’d provided well for all his children, and he’d rewarded their mothers, too, for their travail. All of Lady Castlemaine’s sons had been made peers, and her daughters given fat dowries and betrothed to other lords. I could dare hope for the same for mine.

  But by the middle of April, I was simply too large and ungainly to dress and appear at the palace. It was up to Charles to come to me, which he did with such regular devotion that some days I openly wept (being in that overwrought state so common in women with child) to see him.

  On one such morning, he came early while I was still abed, with an oversized posy of yellow flowers beneath his arm and a basket of the new-baked buns, marked with sugar crosses, that were my especial favorites. I admired the flowers, giving them to my serving girl to put into a pitcher of water, but I fell upon the buns like a woman famished, eating them directly from the basket beside me on the bed.

  “You do know how to please me, sir,” I said, smiling contentedly with the white sugared icing glistening over my lips. I was in my smock with my hair loose over my shoulders, propped up against a hummock of pillows, with my legs crossed beneath my great belly. I broke away the corner of another bun, and leaned forward to where he sat in the chair beside my bed, to pop the morsel into his mouth. “My dancing days may be done, but my feasting days are in their prime.”

  He laughed, holding my hand steady to kiss my sticky fingers. “You’ll dance again, Nelly. I’ve no doubt of that. You’ll dance on the stage, and on my cock, too. Faith, how I’ve missed lying with you!”

  “And I with you, sir,” I said, and slid my fingers suggestively between his lips. I had missed him, too; that wasn’t base flattery. But though it soured me to think of it, I was certain he’d not been constant to me while I’d been banished to my bed alone. London was too full of pretty, willing sluts of every rank to tempt him.

  He nipped at my fingertips, then turned my hand to kiss the inside of my wrist, there where my heart beat beneath the skin. “By summer, I’ll wager you’ll be as nimble as ever again, for jigs and for swiving.”

  I wrinkled my nose and rested my hand on my belly. “Take care of your words, sir. You’ve given this fellow the notion to dance now.”

  “Show me,” he said softly, and I hiked my smock around my waist. The child within me had grown so great that his (for I was convinced it was a boy, from his size and from his determination to vex me so) motions were apparent through my tight-stretched belly, shifting this way and that. Fascinated, Charles watched, finally laying his hand gently over the moving babe to feel it for himself. “A lively little rogue, I’d say.”

  “He takes after his father,” I said with a sigh. As much as it pleased me to see Charles’s affection for our unbo
rn child, I was so deuced uncomfortable that I’d be much happier when I could finally place the swaddled child onto his lap, instead of holding it wriggling inside mine. “A wanton, willful sprite.”

  “Exactly like you, then,” he said, grinning wickedly.

  “I’ve half a mind to clout you for that, sir, indeed I do.” I reached for another bun, philosophically pulling a fat raisin from the side. “Leastways I’ve not much longer to wait. The midwife says that because the babe’s so large and I so small, my time could come soon.”

  “I’ll be glad when you’re safe delivered,” he said, his expression turning somber. “I fear for you, Nelly, you and our babe both.”

  “Oh, sir, don’t,” I said bravely, though his solicitude touched me. “I’m young and stout and never ill. I’ve every intention of surviving to dance and swive again, just as you say.”

  But in truth I was afraid. I’d every right to be. Childbirth was a perilous journey for mothers and babes alike, and I’d seen too many of both who’d died not to take my coming trial seriously. I’d already made the usual precautions. I’d had my will prepared, and signed it with a shaky cipher. While Rose and my mother had delighted in ordering the new babe’s linens, I’d grimly ordered a new winding sheet for myself, too, in case I perished. I’d dictated a letter to my unborn child, commending him to his father the king and to God, if that should be my only blessing. I’d even paid dearly for a true eaglestone, claimed from that bird’s nest, to place beneath my bedstead and help ease my pains.

  But because my role as Charles’s mistress was to amuse him, not to give him the sorrows of a wife, I told him none of this, nor did he ask it. I simply smiled as winsomely as I could, as if I’d no further care than to please him.

  “Brave lass,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek, his lips as sugary as my own. “I only hope you can bear to wait until I’m returned from Dover.”

  “Dover?” I asked with surprise. “Why ever would you go to Dover, sir?”

  “Why, to see Minette, of course.” He smiled as if this were the most natural thing in all the world, but I knew him so well I could tell he wasn’t giving the entire truth to me, and my uneasiness grew. “D’Orleans has finally agreed to let my sister come to England to visit me, if I’ll make the journey to Dover to meet here there, and not carry her back with me to London. God knows I wish I could.”

  “When will you go, sir?” I asked, though I suppose I already knew. The posy, the sweet buns, the show of concern—all had been leading to this moment.

  “As soon as all can be arranged,” he said. “Most likely early May.”

  “In May.” Suddenly chilled, I pulled the sheet up to cover myself, keeping my hands protectively around my belly and my child. Journeys and meetings like this one were no small event to royalty. Likely Charles had known of this for weeks, even months, especially since it involved his sainted sister.

  “Nelly, Nelly, pray, don’t be sad,” he said, taking my hand back into his. “You said yourself you could slip your babe any day now.”

  “I could, aye.” I’d no right to expect him to dance attendance on me in childbed. Not even the most righteous of husbands were expected to do that. “Or I could wait until June. No midwife’s reckoning is perfect.”

  But he was thinking, instead, of his sister. “Do you know, I’ve not seen Minette for nearly ten years? ” he marveled. “Ten years! Ten years she’s been mired on French soil on account of that overbearing blaggard of a husband.”

  “Then it’s well past time the painted old cocksucker let loose her reins,” I said, exactly what Charles himself wished to declare aloud. I’d long heard naught but ill of Madame’s husband, from Charles and Buckingham and everyone else who’d had the misfortune to meet the man. The loathsome Monsieur was a bullying catamite who made a great show of maintaining his marital rights to his wife, even as he spent his nights amongst his twittering male lovers. “I know how you’ve missed Her Highness.”

  “She understands me like no one else, Nelly,” he said with the fervency he reserved for this sister. “It’s not just the sweetness of her nature, or her wit, or the natural bond between sister and brother. She was the last of my father’s children, you see, the last of us born before—before everything changed for us. I cannot begin to explain it.”

  No, I thought sadly, he couldn’t. Minette was his sister, and I understood the bond with sisters. I’d Rose, hadn’t I? But his ties to Minette went beyond blood. There were times when I was certain that Charles and I were so much of a mind and a humor that we couldn’t help but be lovers, no matter what Fate had planned for us. Yet when he spoke of what had happened to him and his family so long ago, during the wars and even earlier, I felt as if we scarce knew one another at all. If he was so close to this English princess raised and wed in the French court, a woman as renowned for her learning and delicacy as for her sheer beauty, then where did that leave me? Where could it leave me?

  He sighed, unaware of my thoughts. “It’s a pity you cannot come with me to meet her, Nelly. She’d like you, and you her.”

  “Aye, sir,” I said faintly, not so sure of that at all.

  He heard that faintness, and smiled at it. “I mean it, sweet. I’ve written much of you to her, and she likes what I’ve written. She likes that you make me laugh.”

  “I can make you do many things, sir,” I said, more wistfully than I wanted. “Whatever pleases you.”

  “You know me too well, Nelly.” He laughed, as if to prove it. “As much as I wish to see my sister, I’ll miss the time apart from you, even if it’s only a fortnight. Not even Louis could make his wretched brother grant us more.”

  “Louis?” I asked, surprised by the nonsense that went on among these royal folk. “It took word from the French king for your sister to be permitted to England?”

  “It did,” he said, amused. “If Louis hadn’t stepped into this, I don’t think his brother would have finally agreed. A strange lot of cousins, aren’t we?”

  Suddenly I remembered that night with Buckingham in the gallery, and the tales of a plot that I hadn’t believed, of Charles and Minette and Louis, of my king choosing the French king’s gold over his own country, and how Charles hadn’t denied it, either.

  I remembered how often in the last months the French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, had pursued Charles from Whitehall here to this little house, determined to meet with him even if it had been in my parlor. I’d imitated the ambassador’s fussiness afterward, mincing about the room with my wrists arched and Charles’s wig sitting crookedly on my head, and made Charles laugh so hard that tears had streamed down his cheeks. A target for my raillery; that was all the Frenchman had meant to me. But now—now I wondered if I’d only been willfully blind.

  And I thought of how Charles’s temper had seemed to improve so much these last weeks. Selfishly I’d believed my pregnancy had brought him that happiness. Now I realized that it was more likely due to this plan to see Minette. But was it only a simple visit between brother and sister, or something more complicated? Were Buckingham’s whispers finally grown into ominous fact?

  “Are you unwell, sweet?” Charles asked with concern, rising briskly from his chair to lean over me. “You’re pale. Is it the babe? Is it time? ”

  Frightened, I seized his face in my hands, drawing him closer to me so he couldn’t look away. “Please, sir, please, tell me you’ll do what’s right!”

  “Of course I will, Nelly,” he said, sitting beside me on the bed to take me into his arms, holding me like a child against his shoulder. “You can trust me, sweet. You know that. Now hush, hush, no more of this. It’s not good for you to be so troubled.”

  But I shook my head, unable to find any comfort in his words. “It’s not just me, sir, but for England and the English and Protestants and—”

  “For everything, Nell,” he said, his voice firm and deep with conviction. “I vow I’ll do what’s best for it all.”

  He held me like that, and I closed my e
yes and told myself to believe him. He was the king; he was my Charles, the father of my child. I must trust him to do what was right, and avoid the wrongs that would bring disaster to England.

  Yet still I prayed with all my heart that he knew the difference.

  “Bear down, madam, bear down,” the midwife urged. “You’re almost done. Another good push and your labor will be done.”

  “ ’Od’s blood,” I gasped. “You’ve been promising that to me this last hour!”

  Again I wrestled with a new wave of pain. I was sure I must by now be torn asunder, sure that my only release would come with my own death. In the stifling, sealed room, I could glimpse the faces of the other women gathered around me, their faces washed yellow by the firelight and made blurry by my suffering. I’d always liked an audience; were they here now to witness my child’s entrance or my last scene?

  “Heed her, Nell.” Rose’s face came sharply into focus before me, her hand gripping mine. Beside her wept my mother, though I could not say whether her tears came from fear for me or from her drinking too deeply of the sherry wine I’d laid out for the midwife and her attendants.

  “The babe has crowned,” Rose continued, “a thatch of black, curling hair. One more push, and you’ll see for yourself, and all this will be done.”

  Black, curling hair, I thought feverishly, black hair like Charles’s. I’d please him. I’d give him what he wanted. As soon as he returned from Dover, he’d see what I’d done for him. I felt the first swell of another pain and braced myself against its onslaught.