The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Yet as kind as he’d always been to me, I must never forget that he was the king. For the sake of our son, I couldn’t afford to shrink from him now, not with that sweet-faced French chit that Rochester had described still fresh in his thoughts.

  Nor, really, did I wish to. He was the king, aye, but he was also my lover, my dearest sir, and my single closest friend, and his absence while he’d been away had left a frighteningly large hole in my life. The hurt he might cause my body was nothing compared to what he could do to the rest of me if, through this small hesitation, I lost him.

  With a low groan of desire, he filled his hand with my breast. “Come, Nelly, don’t keep me waiting.”

  “No, sir.” I turned round to face him, my arms around his shoulders and my mouth turned up to his, with the breathless show of willingness he’d expect from me. “No, sir, not a moment longer.”

  There was no grand baptism for my son.

  Death comes suddenly, without warning or preparation for those who perish, and worse, for those who must survive the loss and endure. On the second of July, an exhausted courier from the French court threw himself at Charles’s feet. His message was short and unbearably painful: On the twenty-seventh of June, Madame la Duchesse de Orleans—Charles’s dear sister Minette—had taken ill, and after a night of horrifying agony, she had died. Louis’s physicians said she had succumbed at last to her delicacy. Knowing the villainy of her husband Monsieur, everyone else at the French court believed she had been poisoned. No one would ever know for certain.

  The news so shattered Charles that he collapsed and had to be half carried to his bedchamber. There he lay, alone in the dark, overwhelmed by grief for his lost sister. Of his eight brothers and sisters, now only he and his brother James remained, and this loss seemed for him the hardest to bear.

  He did not send for me, nor for the queen, nor any woman. The only gentleman admitted to his melancholy chamber was Lord Rochester. To many others at court who knew the earl only for his rakish ways, he seemed a peculiar companion to offer succor in the king’s affliction. But I had seen the kindness behind His Lordship’s flippant facade, and understood both the king’s choice and his need for the solace that the more private Rochester could bring. And it was His Lordship, too, who noted with sad accuracy how universally Madame was mourned, both in England and in France, and how since her death, dying had been much in fashion.

  With so much gloom and death to trouble my thoughts, I felt it wiser not to wait any longer, and to have my son baptized and his soul given over to God’s care. I’d no wish to tempt cruel Fate, and wait for his royal father and a more ostentatious baptism. On a rainy summer morning, I carried him to the local parish myself. With Rose and her husband to stand as godparents, I saw him christened as Charles Gwyn, son of Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn. The place in the registry for a father’s name was left empty, nor did the rector press me to fill it. He knew my son’s sire. Everyone did.

  And for now, that would be enough.

  Chapter Seventeen

  NEWMAN’S ROW, LONDON September 1670

  There were those who believed that Madame’s death changed Charles forever. They say the lighthearted spirit that had shone so bright during the first decade of his reign was lost with his sister, that his temper became more serious, more determined.

  To me, he did not seem changed so much as grown, the way that any man, humble or highborn, grows with age. He was forty now, a goodly age, and if, with the thoughtfulness that comes with the years, he seemed more willing to rule rather than simply to sit upon his throne, then that was to be expected.

  He took new interest in the details of the government, in how the country’s moneys were spent and by whom. He opened the new session of Parliament in state, a motion that many of the members found disquieting, even threatening, for the impression it gave of the king sitting in mastery of Parliament. He was similarly faulted for taking his seat in the House of Lords. Though this seat was of course his by right and birth, the lords did not like it, feeling much like the chickens with the fox among them. Not that Charles interfered or tried to push his will upon them; rather, it was his presence alone that acted upon their (likely) guilty consciences, and made them suspicious of what might be coming next.

  Those who looked closely saw another unwelcome sign of change, too. Since his Restoration, Charles had been in favor of religious tolerance of all faiths. This was, in theory, an agreeable thing, but to many of his people, the only faith Charles was seen to be protecting was the Romish Catholics, specifically the French Papists. Grumbling English Protestants could point to the number of Papists among the king’s closest family (his late sister, his brother, his sister-in-law, his queen, his mother) as well as his nearest friends (including Lord Arlington and Lady Castlemaine), and wonder why the English king could not put his Anglican subjects before all others.

  There was, perhaps, some merit to their concern. As I came to learn much later, it was at this time that Charles had begun to receive gifts of gold from Louis, exactly as Buckingham had predicted. It was done in great secrecy, with the bearers escorted from the river by Chiffinch up the same backstairs to Charles’s bedchamber that had been used by so many willing slatterns over the years. The money was then scattered and buried in the books of the privy purse and other complicated accounts, and spent without any real reckoning.

  I never knew the exact sums, or what Charles conceded in return. It’s surprising that I even came to learn as much as I did, considering who I was.

  There were plenty of rumors, to be sure. Some said he’d simply agreed never to become allies with the Dutch, but others claimed that he’d sworn to convert to the Roman church and abandon Protestant-ism entirely. Those same evil rumors said he’d even agreed to give over England to Rome, and persecute all those Anglicans who refused to convert with him to the Catholic faith. This was rubbish, of course, hateful, mean-spirited rubbish, for Charles would never agree to such a dreadful fate for his people.

  But while Louis’s gold wasn’t enough to buy all of England outright for the French, it was sufficient to make Charles independent of the whims of Parliament. He no longer needed to request them for funds, to beg them to fund his building projects or his refurbishment of the navy, or even for money to grant a living to me. He was at last free to do as he believed to be right, not what he must.

  Fortified with this new confidence, he also began to make certain changes in his own house. First, he finally broke with Lady Castlemaine, granting her the titles of Duchess of Cleveland, Countess of Southampton, Baroness Nonsuch. These were the last signs of favor she would receive, for he also removed her for good from her lodgings at the palace and to Berkshire House, across from St. James’s Palace, where he could still visit his children without seeing their mother.

  To everyone’s surprise, the next to be sent away was Her Majesty the queen. Finally conceding that no child would ever be born to him from her womb, he had either let her retreat with grace from most of her responsibilities at court to tend to her devotions and to nurse her fading health (if you believed the explanation that Charles himself endorsed), or was finally sent away as a prelude to being officially put aside to make way for another, more fertile queen (the version that Buckingham still insisted was true). Regardless of the reason, she was now likewise gone from the daily bustle of Whitehall and installed (some said entombed) in Somerset House, far down the Strand and overlooking the river.

  So where was I during this tumultuous summer of 1670? For the first time in my life, I allowed myself the luxury of doing next to nothing, which was to say I did a great deal. I dandled my lovely baby and spoiled him as thoroughly as I could. I entertained my old friends from the playhouse, and learned to sing pretty two-part catches with Maria Knight. I played cards with my sister, basset and ombre.

  But most of all, I was with Charles whenever he wished me. My little house was his sanctuary when he wanted to escape the jabbering fault-finding of Parliament or the backbiting of the court.
He came to hold our little son on his lap and smile proudly at every milky bubble he blew. In my company, he could do whatever he pleased, even if it were no more than to doze on the willow chaise in my garden.

  Primarily, he came to me each day and many evenings to forget, in my merry company, his troubles and grief. I made him laugh when he’d feared he’d never be able to laugh again. I took care never to rage like a fury or make demands; he’d had enough of that with Lady Castlemaine. Laughter had always been my greatest gift, and my greatest weapon, too. I knew in time I’d be rewarded, my son and me both, and that there’d be great changes for me at Whitehall.

  In September, they came. Only they weren’t the ones I’d expected, or the ones I’d desired, either.

  “Where are we going, sir?” I poked my head from the carriage window. Two young rascals, likely apprentices, called to me by name, one pressing his hands over his heart. I grinned and waved (for it was pleasing still to be recognized, even though I’d not appeared on the stage for over six months now) and blew a kiss from my fingertips before I dropped back onto the seat beside the king. “You said we were bound for home, yet this is the Strand, not Queen Street.”

  Charles smiled, pleased with himself to have fooled me. We’d left the Duke’s House after watching a fine play there, and I’d thought we’d return to Newman’s Row for supper. Leastways that was what I’d ordered my cook, but now it seemed he had made other plans for us.

  “I’m surprised you noticed, Nelly,” he teased, “considering how busily you’ve been saluting your gallants.”

  “ ’Od’s blood, sir, don’t be jealous,” I protested. “It’s been so long since I’ve played on the stage, I wonder that they can even recall my face at all.”

  “Pray, why should I be jealous of you?” he said, feigning amazement of his own. “Let them harangue you in the streets instead of me.”

  “They don’t harangue you, sir,” I scoffed. “They never have and they never will, so don’t pretend it’s so just to gain my sympathy.”

  “Sympathy.” He sighed so deeply it was nearly a groan. “I’m always in need of sympathy.”

  “Oh, pish.” I curled up onto my knees on the seat, the better to wag my finger at him. “How could anyone ever deny sympathy to a king who feeds the ducks and pelicans in the park, and speaks kindly to every little child who’s there to do the same? Your people remember Cromwell, that warty old stick, too well ever to scorn you.”

  He chuckled, taking my hand into his to kiss it. “I should send you to Parliament, to tell them the same.”

  “Hah, they’d like that, wouldn’t they?” I cocked my hands on my waist and puffed out my chest, and deepened the timbre of my voice to be ponderous and manly. “All you foolish fellows, you attend here, attend! Pray hearken to Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn, the Member for New-man’s Row, who will inform you precisely how you must act in regards to His Majesty.”

  “Fine, most fine,” he said, laughing. “Except that you’ve named the wrong constituency. ‘Mrs. Gwyn of Pall Mall’ has much the better ring to it.”

  “You’re daft, sir,” I said, giving his arm a playful shove. “I know what I am.”

  “Do you, I wonder?” He leaned forward to be able to see out the window himself. The carriage was slowing, finally coming to halt before a tall brick house, shaded by elms that had just begun to turn for autumn. “That’s a handsome house, almost new built. Have you any notion who lives there?”

  “The Earl o’ Scarsdale,” I said, wondering at these foolish questions. It was a handsome house, all brick, its front divided into four bays and each centered on the first two floors by windows so tall that I could have stepped through them without bowing. It sat at the most fashionable end of Pall Mall, with gardens that backed upon the King’s Gardens at St. James’s Palace (where the Duke of York lived with his wife and daughters) and a view across the park of the jumbled towers and roofs of Whitehall.

  “Everyone knows who lives along here, sir,” I continued, “on account of these new houses that Harry Jermyn’s building being so fine and costly. The next house, there, belongs to Sir William Coventry, and the one across the way is the property of Sir Hugh Cholmley, which you most likely know yourself, sir, so don’t pretend otherwise to me. The whole of London’s come to gawk at one time or another.”

  “They’ll have another reason soon,” he said thoughtfully. “Once it’s known that you live here, then there’ll be no peace about the place.”

  “I?” I stared at him, dumbstruck. “I am to live here, sir? ”

  “If by ‘I’ you mean ‘you,’ then yes,” he said, delighting in my surprise. “It’s yours now, Nelly.”

  I jutted my head and shoulders from the window to see more, still too shocked to be able to accept my great good fortune. “But what of Lord Scarsdale?”

  “Scarsdale was persuaded to give over the lease without much of a fuss,” he said with breezy disregard for the earl. “I thought the house would suit you much better than he, anyway.”

  I gazed up at the great house before me, my mouth agape. To think that I’d risen so high as to live in a house such as this, and more, that Charles loved me well enough to give me such a gift—ah, ah, it was almost too much for me to bear, and tears of wonder and happiness filled my eyes.

  But Charles misread my silence. “You do like it, Nelly, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sir, how could I not?” I popped back inside the carriage, letting him see my tears as I curled onto his lap to lavish kisses upon his face. “ ’Tis perfection. Aye, and so are you, sir. You, my dearest sir, are my own perfection.”

  “You exaggerate, sweet,” he said gruffly, even as he pulled me closer. “But I’ll accept it. Because it’s you, Nelly, I’ll accept it.”

  I didn’t move to occupy Scarsdale’s house at once. Although it was only a few years old, there were many things I wished to change, improvements I wanted to have done to suit me. With His Majesty’s credit behind me, I chose to let the undertakers work without me underfoot. But because Charles was still impatient to have me and our son closer to the palace and to him, in August I removed myself to another house in Pall Mall, formerly occupied by Thomas Sydenham, a physician of considerable fashion.

  This was not so grand a residence as my new one, to be sure, but still another rung higher than Newman’s Row, and new built, too. It seemed that since the Great Fire had destroyed so much that was old, the whole city had gone mad for new building and development. There were plenty of folk who fussed and complained that, before long, there’d not be a scrap of grassy field left within a mile of the river. I didn’t join them. Having spent so much of my childhood in houses that were sad and ramshackle with decay, I found the clean, fresh scent of a carpenter’s shavings and a plaster’s lime to be sweeter than any perfume, and could scarce wait for my elegant new home to be ready.

  But Charles had been right about how many folk would come to ogle this handsome brick-and-stone proof of his affection and regard. Even though I’d not move my belongings to the larger house until the New Year, it was already known as mine, and Lord Scarsdale’s ownership forgotten. For every person who thought I’d done well for myself, there seemed a score of others who envied me, and despised me as being unworthy of both the king and his generosity. In Parliament and at Whitehall, I was derided for being the boldest jade who dared aspire above her natural station. The birth of my little Charles combined with my new house was not only damned for being impudent, but dangerous to the very state.

  I knew all of this, as did Charles. Together we could laugh away most of these sour fault-finders, and ignore the rest. But sometimes the cruel words did find their mark with me, and the sting was grievous hard to brush away.

  Thus one morning in early autumn, my lady’s maid, Poll, stood before me in my bedchamber. Her plain country face twisted with as much anguish as if I’d held her upside down by her heels from my window, rather than asked her to read the broadsheet she held clutched in her hands.

  “Go
on,” I said. “Read it.”

  “Oh, madam, I cannot,” she wailed. “ ’Tis too cruel, to you and to His Majesty. I cannot do it!”

  “Aye, you can,” I said, my patience with the girl beginning to fray. In most ways she was a perfect servant, trustworthy and honest and full of industry. But her loyalty could take curious twists when she sought to protect me, and this was one such occasion.

  “That’s why I hired you, Poll,” I said, striving to be more kindly, “because you can read better than a barrister. As for this Mr. Marvell being so barbarous hateful to me and His Majesty, why, it’s only words he’s flung my way. If he’d a cudgel in his lily-white hand, then I’d a right to worry, but otherwise, I doubt there’s any new slander he could hurl at me that I’ve not heard before. Now come, read it.”

  “Very well, madam,” she said, her voice still a-tremble with emotion. “If I must.”

  I braced myself, composing my face to receive the worst. The more favor the king showed me, the more libels and slanders I’d have to weather. I’d heard of this Andrew Marvell before from my friend John Dryden, among others. Though Marvell considered himself a poet as well as a member of Parliament, he was no wit, but a priggish old Puritan who’d tutored Cromwell’s nephews at Eton. How could such a man have any love for me?

  At last Poll took a deep breath and began to read:

  And now behold a Common Drab become

  The glorious Mate for th’English Monarch’s Bum.

  Nor was it long before the Artful Slut