The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  At court. Oh, aye, I was a grand miss in a silk gown with pearls in my ears and a carriage and driver waiting for me outside in Drury Lane. But everyone at Whitehall knew I was there only because of the king, and that I’d no lasting place among them. I’d no title or income of my own, no living to pass along to my sons. Even my house in Pall Mall wasn’t truly mine, but only granted to me for my use on a lease of fifty years’ length.

  But when I’d skipped out before the candlelights here on this stage, I’d been the queen of them all. Any play with Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn in the cast was sure to have a healthy run of full houses. With a single cocked brow and a flick of my skirts, I’d have the breathless devotion of my audience, from the gallants in the pit to the servants in the highest gallery.

  “You’ve grown beyond us, Nell,” he said with such kindness that it fair broke my heart. “You don’t belong here in the playhouse any longer.”

  “Pish, that’s not true,” I exclaimed. “It cannot be true! Consider how I came back after my first babe was born, to the Conquest of Granada. Remember how everyone howled at my prologue, and laughed so hard at the epilogue, when I rose all bloodied from my coffin to chastise the house? Remember—”

  “Nell,” he said gently. “Does His Majesty know you are here?”

  My cheeks grew hot, as if I’d been caught in a lie. “I wanted to surprise him, Killigrew. I wanted him to come see me here in a new part, and to amuse him like I did in the old times.”

  “But these aren’t the old times, are they?” he said with genuine regret. “We’re neither of us as young as we once were, sweet.”

  That was well enough for him to say, having celebrated his sixtieth year in February. Yet in my heart I knew the difficult truth, that in this world a woman of twenty-two was as of little use as a man of sixty—perhaps less.

  “You never were like the others, Nell,” he continued. “You weren’t just another pretty chit from the tiring-room, to be squirreled up the backstairs by Chiffinch to the king’s bedchamber. You were Nelly Gwyn, and you were special. To the king, you still are.”

  I tried to smile, yet I, who’d believed I could feign anything I set my mind to, could not do it.

  I’d always believed the playhouse would be there for me, like the secure embrace of the family I’d never had as a child. I’d always thought I could come back here whenever I chose. I always believed that the one thing that had set me apart would always be there for me, and now—now it wasn’t.

  “Here,” he said, handing his handkerchief to me. “There’s no shame to a few tears.”

  “I’m not crying, Killigrew,” I said, swiftly rising to my feet, “and damn your eyes, too, if you think I am.”

  He looked up at me, startled. “Ah, Nell, I didn’t mean—”

  “It was a jest, that was all,” I said, my chin high. “If you’d offered me a part, why, I would have tossed it back in your face, easy as you please, and we would have laughed together. Why should I want to return here, anyways?”

  “A jest,” said Killigrew, now smiling with hearty relief as he rose, too, and came to stand beside me. “Yes, that’s it. A jest, Nell, and a good one, too.”

  “Aye, the best.” I glanced around me one last time, realizing I’d likely never return to see this side of the stage. I told myself fiercely that the worst of this meeting had passed. I’d had grand times here, but I’d gain nothing by having regrets over their passing. Better to look forward than behind, to where I was bound rather than where I’d been. “Why should I wish to play another savage princess, I ask you?”

  “Particularly the windy ones of Dryden’s invention,” Killigrew said. “Dear Lord, deliver us both from more of those!”

  Together we laughed at poor Dryden’s expense. Then he took my hand, his expression turning serious and almost paternal.

  “You don’t need us any longer, Nell,” he said again. “At Whitehall, you’re playing your life on a far bigger stage than you’d ever have here. So long as you don’t forget you’ve just that audience of one to please, you’ll always prosper.”

  “Thank’ee, sir,” I said, no longer bothering to keep my tears from him now. “I never—”

  “Hush now, my dear, and let me finish,” he said, and chucked me gently beneath my chin. “You are the king’s favorite, and he loves you well for who you are. So long as you remember that, you’ll always have him. You’ll have him.”

  Of all times, this was the kind I liked the best.

  It was early morn, so early that only the faintest light of the new day showed on the horizon, the shadowy pink of the coming dawn tucked beneath the gray horizon of the fading night. I seldom had the curtains of my bedchamber drawn, so I might catch this first glimpse of the sun over my garden wall as I wakened. I’d see it no matter which way I lay, too, reflected over and over again in the polished silver of my bed.

  I should explain about my bed, being as it was the most famous bedstead in all London. Every new guest to my house begged to see it, and then in turn marveled at and described it to those unfortunates who hadn’t, until it seemed the place where I slept and swived had become another wonder of the world.

  Though it was of my own design, with devices of my own choosing, its creation came through the gifted hands of John Coques, the master silversmith to the king and the rest of the royal family. The bedstead had in fact been fashioned of purest silver, from its headboard to its foot, its rails to its posts and crown, and much of it covered with whimsical figures of significance to me. True, I might never have learned to write down the story of my life as a more learned lady might, but my bed told as much of me as an entire volume might of another.

  Oranges, the fruit that first brought me to Charles’s eye, were worked into a bounteous garland that draped every beam. The sweet-faced cherubs on each post were portraits of my own darling boys (who were seldom so angelic in their behavior, but no matter.) Likewise hammered from silver were figures of Charles and me, shown hand in hand as the king and queen of a mythical land of plenty, magically fashioned from our love, with our assorted people celebrating around us. A portrait head of Charles, nearly the size of his own, gazed down upon me to stand guard whilst I slept.

  But as lovely as all this silver idyll might seem, I’d been unable to resist adding a few pokes at the expense of my rivals as well. Prancing overhead on a fine-spun silver wire was a tiny figure of Jacob Hall. Hall was the famously accomplished rope-dancer who’d performed for us at court over our heads in the Banqueting House. He’d likewise performed privately for the Duchess of Cleveland as one of her most notorious lovers (and her most acrobatic, too, for with him she was said to attain the most complicated of Aretino’s postures for coupling). Nor was Louise neglected. I’d had her shown lying in a coffin with an exotic foreign prince, in tribute to her well-known salacious delight in Africans, Turks, and other heathens.

  This great bed of mine was the favorite piece of all my belongings, and the most valuable as well, having cost me more than a thousand pounds of my allowance from the king—and this at a time when a baronet’s entire household could live handsomely for a year on eight hundred! Yet the pleasure I found in waking in it each morning was worth that sum and more, for it not only demonstrated how far I’d risen, but also that I’d excellent taste and discernment to match that of any true-born lady. What peeress could boast of a silver bed, I ask you? And when I could magnify that pleasure immeasurably by having the king wake beside me—ah, no price could be set upon that.

  So it was one morning in late autumn, with the dawn creeping through the last leaves on the trees in my garden, and the frost glittering on the grass almost as brightly as the sunbeams on my silver bed.

  Though I’d awakened first, I had let Charles sleep on, doting fondly upon him as I watched him slumber. He looked younger this way, his face relaxed and free of the cares that hardened his expression by day. Tangled in the bedclothes, his long limbs and body remained lean and well muscled, as fit for a dragoon as for a mona
rch. Lightly I ran my fingertips over the bristle of his close-cropped hair, now more streaked with gray than otherwise, as was the hair that curled across his chest. He refused to be seen before his people without a wig now, fearful that they’d judge him old or infirm, a curious worry to me. At forty-two, he was very nearly double my age now, yet to me he would always be my dearest friend as well as my lover and my king.

  Unable to resist, I kissed him as lightly as I dared on the top of his head. With a snuffling snort, he awoke, rubbing his face against the pillow. He rolled and blankly squinted up at me for an instant, then recognized me and smiled.

  “Good day, sir,” I said, and kissed him more properly on the mouth. “I trust you slept well, with the sweetest of dreams?”

  “I always sleep well in your bed, Nelly,” he said, pulling my small, round body backward into the curve of his chest, and filling his hand companionably with one of my breasts. “But no sweet dreams, so long as I’ve the Dutch to plague me whether I wake or sleep.”

  “Oh, a pox on the Dutch.” So it was to be politics and war before love on this morning. I sighed and wriggled closer against him. “What manner of leader refuses to grant peace to his people, and instead insists on a war they cannot win?”

  “A Dutch stadtholder like my nephew William, that’s who,” he grumbled. “As for the ruler who cannot win his own damned war, Nelly, then I must claim that title. I should have been born a poet, like your friend Dryden, instead of a prince, for surely I’ve the poverty for one, and none of the riches required for the other.”

  “You knew this would happen if you tried to fight a war on your own, sir,” I reasoned, for we’d had this same discussion so many times before that I felt I could have stayed asleep and still recited my responses. “You and Louis gambled together that the Dutch would sue for peace first. They didn’t, and you lost your wager, and now you must appeal to the bank for more funds to make recoup your bet.”

  “ ’Od’s fish, Nelly, it’s not so simple as a game of basset!”

  “Lah, sir, and here I thought it was,” I said wryly. “I’ve told you my solution before: send the French back to France, put me back on the stage, and lock up your codpiece. Do those things, and you’ll have money enough for three wars.”

  “Do those things, sweet, and I’ll be as good as a dead man.” He nipped at the side of my neck to make me chuckle, and gave my breast a fond squeeze for good measure. “I tell you, it’s not so easy as that.”

  “Faith, it’s easier, and you know it, too,” I said firmly. “You must recall Parliament, and go to them with your hat in your hand.”

  He didn’t answer, and I understood why. To needs go begging to Parliament again would be as odious to him as a dose of foul physic to a small boy, and likely as rewarding, too.

  “It is your choice, sir,” I said, more gently. “I’m not speaking a word you don’t know for yourself, or that others haven’t told you before me. But if you wish to continue this war on the Dutch, you need money, and the only honest way to find that is to ask Parliament to vote it to you. Either that, or let William dictate the peace.”

  He groaned, a disgruntled sound that I could feel vibrating between us as much as hear. “Next you’ll tell me that by returning the French to France, you mean Louise, too.”

  “I won’t lie to you, sir,” I said. “I’d like to see Carwell included in the general dunnage sent over the Channel, and a good many of your people would agree with me, too.”

  “You know her being here isn’t entirely my choice. I must keep her as proof of my good faith to Louis, to show I mean to keep the treaty.”

  “Good faith doesn’t mean you must fuck her.”

  “With Louis, it does.”

  “With you, sir, it does, too.” I sighed my best dramatic sigh, worthy of one of Dryden’s melancholy heroines. “But it would make your case before Parliament hugely more easy if you weren’t keeping a French Catholic whore at Whitehall.”

  “Nelly, Nelly.” He drew me closer, doubtless intending to distract me, and succeeding, too. “How can my tricksy little sprite be so wise?”

  “Because I am wise, sir,” I said cheerfully, wriggling against his stiffening cock. “Because you know I’m the only one in your whole wicked court who will always speak to you plain and offer you the truth, whether you like it or not.”

  “I like it, sweet,” he said, his voice a husky growl, “because I like you.”

  “Ah, my dearest, darling sir.” I laughed, and shifted my legs apart to accommodate him. “I ask you, who’s the wise one now?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THE STRAND, LONDON May 1673

  The first of May was as clear and sweet a day as any could wish, and the true beginning of spring. My spirits rose as bright as the cloudless sky, and who could blame me for it? May Day was my favorite holiday in all the year, and always had been. This year, as a treat, I rode with Charles in his carriage to see the prodigious Maypole erected at the junction of Drury Lane and the Strand, directly before Somerset House.

  With their towering height bedecked with bright ribbon streamers, Maypoles held fond significance for Charles, as well. During Cromwell’s time, they’d been one of the most visible causalities of the grim Puritan rule, hacked to bits and burned in righteous bonfires. Likewise, they’d been one of the first symbols of merriment to be restored with Charles’s return to power, and this same Maypole had helped to celebrate his entry into the city in 1660. The pole itself was so tall and so unwieldy that it required a dozen sturdy, skilled sailors, under the direction of the Duke of York, to hoist it into place. As they toiled, the swelling crowds cheered their efforts and a band of fiddlers played, while the dancers impatiently waited in their white smocks and shirts and fussed with their ribbons and garlands to pass the time.

  “You could show them all the proper way to dance, Nelly,” Charles said as we watched the pretty scene before us over the heads of the guards around the carriage. “I can picture you perfectly among them, dressed in white with your hair loose over your shoulders.”

  “Dare me, sir, and I’ll join them,” I said, already half inclined to hop from the carriage in my finery. “I know how to duck and bob so as to weave the ribbons round the pole in an artful pattern, and the steps to do it, too. I danced them myself when I was a girl in Drury Lane.”

  “I’d wager you’d still be the nimblest dancer of them all,” he said, endearingly loyal. “I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how.”

  “I haven’t.” I smiled as I watched the dancers, remembering how excited I’d been, the smallest lass there in a borrowed smock, among the older girls and boys. “Though since those days, my tastes have expanded to include another kind of pole as well.”

  Charles laughed and covered my knee with his hand. “You’ll have to show me later,” he teased, “especially the part about weaving the ribbons around the pole of your choosing.”

  I winked slyly beneath the wide brim of my hat, letting him guess the rest. For all that he grinned, he looked old and worn to me in the bright sunlight that came through the carriage’s window. The long lines on either side of his mouth were carved deeper with care, and his eyes shadowed with a sadness that never seemed to ease. I was thankful that he’d find some relief here today, at a celebration that was so purely pagan that he’d no need to consider whether a Maypole was Anglican or Catholic, belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope in Rome.

  It had been a wretched long spring. After Christmas, Charles had finally abandoned his hope of dictating a peace with William of Orange, and with no other choice but to continue the war, he’d recalled Parliament. With their pride still bruised at having been prorogued, the members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords came charging back to London in a fine stew of hostility.

  Upon meeting in February, their first target was Charles’s beloved Act of Indulgence. No matter how he tried to defend it and his own actions, Parliament insisted he’d issued the act without the right to d
o so, and accused him of tampering with penal laws. Whether or not this was true did not matter. Before Parliament would vote Charles his money for the war he required, he was forced to withdraw the act and all its provisions. In return, they doled out seventy thousand pounds to maintain the war: a handsome, useful sum, aye, but given at a dreadful cost to Charles’s authority.

  Yet worse followed. Parliament continued its fury against the threat of popery, and remained bent on reminding the king not to tread the same ill-favored path of challenging them that had led to his father’s misfortunes. In March they passed the Test Act, requiring all holders of public office to take regular communion in the Church of England and swear various oaths about their beliefs that would be untenable to any true Catholics.

  To Charles, the Test Act was loathsome and divisive, and its effects struck painfully close to home. His own brother the Duke of York was forced to resign as Lord High Admiral of the navy, and likewise Lord Clifford resigned his post as Lord Treasurer. It was also the final blow for the Duchess of Cleveland, who was forced to give up her last posts at court and retreat with her string of royal bastards. Alas, Louise remained untouched, a citizen of France and therefore exempt from the act.

  But the Test Act did far more to Charles’s government than merely purging it of Catholics. It made everyone suspicious of everyone else, too watchful of one another’s actions for the slightest hints of disloyalty, and weakening the whole of the government with distrust. Once Clifford had been driven from office, two distinct factions had appeared: one led by the new-made Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Danby, a group that supported a strong king and a traditional Anglican church, while the other, centered around the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Shaftesbury, favored the supremacy of Parliament.

  Both the French and the Dutch observed these diverse parties with glee, and through their ambassadors and agents, fed the growing dissent for their own gain. Outrageous bribes were freely offered, and accepted, too, by anyone in the court or council who’d hold out his open-palmed hand.