The King's Favorite

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Charles watched with growing despair, but as Rochester had long ago observed, he never moved to stop the plots and factions, nor the bribery that fed them. And what, really, could he have done, considering how he himself was still receiving subsidies from Louis?

  Now I watched the bright-colored ribbons weaving around the Maypole, and I thought of how much each ribbon was like one more intrigue for power: slippery as silk in expert hands, yet just as liable, with a single stumble or misstep, to become a tangled, tawdry knot, with Charles trapped and bound tight in the center like the great Maypole itself.

  At last the ribbons were woven as close to the pole as they could go. The music changed to another tune, and the dancers released the stubby ends to flutter in the breeze before clasping hands to skip merrily about their finished handiwork. The crowds cheered and clapped, and here and there people began to dance, too, particularly those who’d begun their celebrating when the taverns had first opened. I leaned from the carriage to watch, delighted by the happy scene.

  “Mrs. Gwyn! Oh, it’s Mrs. Gwyn!” Two giggling young girls called up to me from beyond the ring of royal guards, then curtseyed as soon as they realized they’d caught my eye. “Good day, ma’am.”

  Despite the crudely fashioned wreaths of flowers in their hair, the two were barefoot and ill dressed, their legs and arms jutting like knobby sticks from their gowns. Yet in their bold little faces I could glimpse myself as I’d once been, and I stood in the carriage to wave back at them.

  “A happy May Day to you, too, you little hussies!” I called, making them giggle all the more. I reached into my pocket for two coins (for unlike Charles, I always did carry ready money) and tossed them to the girls. “There now, take that and drink a health to your king.”

  The taller girl deftly caught both coins, passing one to her friend. “Thank’ee, ma’am, thank’ee,” she called. “I wish you was still on th’stage, ma’am, for us t’see you dance your jigs.”

  “Hah!” I exclaimed, though I was pleased to be remembered so. “You must have been a babe in your mam’s arms to have seen me.”

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” the girl replied. “I was ten when you played wit’ Hart, and Lor’; how we all did laugh t’see you prank an’ jig!”

  “I asked Mrs. Gwyn to dance here, you know, but she was too shy to do it,” Charles said, appearing beside me at the window, the long curls of his black wig tossing in the same breeze that ruffled the Maypole’s streams. “I long to see her jigs again myself.”

  “Oh, sir, you know I’m never shy,” I said, laughing. “Leastways, no more shy than you.”

  “Your Majesty!” The girls gasped, and dropped so low they must surely have been on their knees in the street. One by one those around them began bowing and curtseying as well, until the whole street full of people seemed to have sunk low with respectful awe. Their reaction amused me; for though the carriage was unmarked (a conceit of Charles’s), the guards around it, with their red coats and halberds, must surely have betrayed the royal passenger within. But for the sake of the king, I was heartily thankful. Because of the flagging Dutch War and the Test Act, he was not nearly so popular as once he’d been, particularly when he was in Louise’s company.

  Someone tossed me a small posy of red flowers, and with as much of a bow as I could manage while thrust halfway through the carriage window, I presented it with a flourish to Charles.

  “God save the king!” I called with lusty good humor. “And God preserve the Maypole, too!”

  At once the cry was picked up and repeated, rolling like a wave of cheering voices.

  “God save Mrs. Nell, too!” roared a beery bellow, and the others quickly added that, too, to their cheers.

  The king laughed with pleasure and nodded his thanks.

  “May God save you, Nelly, so long as He saves you for me,” he said beside me, low, so only I might hear it, as he slipped his hand into mine. “Where would I be without you, my love?”

  Where, indeed, I wondered, too overwhelmed by my emotion to reply. Throughout the good and the bad, I’d stayed constant to him, always ready to make him smile if that was what he wished, or to do no more than listen. There was even a doggerel ballad being sung in the taverns that said as much of me:

  When the king turns dumpish, she’ll still be jocund

  And chuck the royal chin of Charles ye Second.

  I’d been as faithful as any woman can be to the man she loved, and as happy, too, in his company. As Killigrew had noted, I was Charles’s favorite, and there was nothing more I wished in my life than that.

  Until, that is, I learned in July what exactly he’d choose to do for Louise.

  “Have you heard, Nell?” Anne, Lady Southesk, was the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and one of my few true friends among the ladies at court. She’d met me at the very door of the palace, anxiously taking my hands to draw me aside as soon as I’d stepped from my sedan chair. “Has anyone told you?”

  “What is it, my lady?” I demanded, already sharing the worry that showed on her lovely face. “Has anyone told me what? What?”

  Her Ladyship’s mouth puckered at the unpleasant task of telling me now, and it was clear she wished that someone else had reached me first.

  “It’s Carwell,” she said, using the Anglicized version of Louise’s name that was most popular at court, both for ease and derision. “She’s cackling proud as a hen who has laid an egg of gold.”

  “ ’Od’s blood, why?” I asked with disgust. “What can she possibly have done or said to make her so proud?”

  “She has done nothing, except part her legs for His Majesty, and lie still as a corpse beneath him,” said Lady Southesk. She glanced over her shoulder, making certain we’d not be overheard. “It’s what the king has done for her that has everyone talking.”

  I shoved back my lace hood. “He’s granted her more rooms to her lodgings again, hasn’t he?” The question of lodgings here in the palace continued a thorny one between Charles and me. While Louise’s allotment of rooms seemed to spread like mildew in the rain, there never seemed to be any rooms to spare for my use. Rochester maintained that they’d never be given to me, either, on account of my being a commoner; I suspected another reason, that Charles so much enjoyed leaving Whitehall for the pleasures and entertainments of my house, that he was loath to move me beneath his roof and lose his sanctuary in Pall Mall. “I know she’s been whining and wheedling for a grander nursery for her brat. Oh, if the king gave in!”

  “He didn’t,” Her Ladyship said. “At least not about that.”

  “Preserve me, my lady, if you don’t tell me what—”

  “He has ennobled her,” she said, finally spitting out the awful news. “Baroness Petersfield, Countess of Farnham, Duchess of Portsmouth. He’s made her a peeress in her own right.”

  If I’d been struck through the belly with a pike I do not believe I’d have been more shocked or wounded, either. He had always maintained that whatever he’d felt toward Louise had been an obligation to the French king combined with a certain measure of lust. I’d been willing to accept that much as part of Charles, though I’ll admit I’d not liked it. I’d also been willing to concede that he’d given Louise certain favors and garnishment, such as those lodgings at Whitehall, simply because she’d wept and whined like a baby to get them. But for him now to raise her to the peerage and grant her the highest titles possible for a lady in England—faith, I could not believe it, nor would I.

  Without another word, I turned from Lady Southesk and began to run toward the king’s rooms, heedless of how my skirts flapped about my legs or how many people I pushed past in the halls and galleries. I knew the guards at the door to his lodgings, and though they began to block the way to me, I pushed past them, too, and even they knew better than to try to keep me back.

  He was standing in the center of his wardrobe in only his breeches, his arms outstretched on either side while his tiring servants fastened the buttons on the sleeves of his shi
rt. Surprised, he still smiled, so pleased to see me that I let myself dream for the next half second that Lady Southesk had been wrong.

  “Nelly,” he said amiably. “You’re here early.”

  “Or not soon enough, it seems,” I said warmly. “Have you made Carwell a duchess?”

  A different kind of surprise flickered through his eyes, and without a word, I had my answer.

  Still, he pretended to be civil. He motioned to the servants to leave us, finishing his buttoning himself.

  “Don’t lie, sir,” I said furiously. “I don’t deserve to be lied to.”

  “Now, Nelly, don’t,” he began uneasily, wishing to placate me. “There were reasons, good reasons.”

  “Good reasons be damned!” I cried. “You did it, didn’t you? You signed the patents and made her a duchess!”

  “Nelly, Nelly, please,” he said, reaching for me. I knew he’d give anything to stop me, for he hated overwrought scenes like this. I didn’t care; why should I, after this?

  “A pox on your please, and your thank you, too!” I flew at him, striking him hard with my fists upon his chest. “From the start, I have been as loyal, as dear, a friend to you as you shall ever, ever have in all your life. Yet this is how you scorn my trust, and humiliate me in the face of my friendship?”

  He caught my wrists to stop my blows, unbearably easy for him given my small stature. “This has nothing to do with friendship, Nelly.”

  I twisted and fought in his grasp. “No, it doesn’t, for no true friend would ever dare treat another with such carelessness!”

  “Please, Nelly, please,” he begged. “Pray calm yourself, so we can talk.”

  “Why, sir, why?” I cried. “So you might wound me again?”

  “I’d never wish to hurt you, sweetheart,” he said contritely. “That’s never been my aim in any of this.”

  “You’ve a fine way of showing it, haven’t you?”

  At last I pulled free, rubbing my wrists where he’d held me as I backed away. It was as if the same poisonous distrust that was tearing apart the government and the court had now likewise seeped into the rare friendship I’d so treasured with the king. I was perilously close to tears, yet I refused to be like Louise and weep before him, even if I’d mean every hot tear.

  “Oh, sir,” I whispered through my misery. “I believed you loved me as I loved you, and, oh, how I’ve loved you! But now I see how wrong I’ve been. God save me, how wrong.”

  And before I could shame myself further, I fled.

  For the next few days, I kept to myself in my house, with only my sister Rose and my sons for company and comfort. I’d no wish to see the king. Though he wrote to me several times a day, I sent the letters back to him unopened and unread. I was in no humor for him or for the court, or for the trial of relating the details of our row for the titillation of others, and I’d especially no wish to hear Louise gloat and preen over her new titles.

  Instead, I walked beneath the nodding trees in my little garden, reciting my former plays to myself to weary my head, and order my thoughts from returning and worrying my sorrows. For some curious reason, I took special comfort in my old role as the mad girl Florimell from Secret Love, and found myself returning to it again and again. Perhaps it was her carefree spirit that made me see the folly in my own life, or reminded me how best to use raillery to deflate my enemies. Or perhaps I found some kindred comfort in how Florimell had learned to guard her heart so well against the faithlessness of men.

  No matter, no matter. But on the eighth day, when the king himself and four of his dogs appeared at the small arched door in my garden wall, I let them in.

  He bowed before me, solemnly gallant while the dogs rolled and snuffled on the lawn, and drank sloppily from my birdbath. “I’ve missed you, Nelly.”

  I rose from my curtsey, my skirts sweeping the grass. “I’ve missed you, too, sir.”

  He nodded, yet to smile. “My life is wicked dull without you in it.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and I was. Hah, Louise make him laugh?

  Absently he touched the center button on the front of his coat, twisting the thread-wrapped disc between his fingers. “I’ve spoken to Hewitt about the leasehold on this house.”

  Hewitt was George Hewitt, the king’s agent for property and estates. It was a fortuitous sign of Mr. Hewitt mentioned, and thus I now was the one who nodded, by way of encouragement.

  “It’s to be yours soon,” he said. “Free under the Crown.”

  “Considering how much time I spent for free beneath the Crown, sir,” I said wryly, “and on top of it, too, this seems only fair. But I thank’ee for it. For myself and my sons, I thank’ee.”

  He smiled crookedly, and I almost expected him to tip his head to one side like one of his dogs. “I have missed you, Nelly.”

  I took a deep breath, daring mightily. “What of a title for me, sir?”

  “I must judge the temper of the people,” he said carefully. “Would Countess of Plymouth suit?”

  I gasped, pressing my hands to my cheeks. “Oh, sir!”

  His smile widened, his relief palpable. “Have the patent prepared, then. We’ll have it sealed later. But come back to me, mind?”

  “I will, sir,” I said, slipping into his arms as if I’d never left them. “Oh, sir, I will.”

  One night later that month, I promised to make up a table of cards with Lady Southesk. Our usual group was gathered in the king’s rooms at Whitehall: at the far end of the chamber, I could see both Rochester (new returned from a stint in the country, with his health for now improved) and Buckhurst engaging in some sort of nonsense before a laughing group of peers, and Charles was not far away, either, conversing with the queen. Lady Southesk waved at me from the table she’d secured near an open window, a rarity even in the summer, for the queen feared night air. I was hurrying to join Her Ladyship, weaving my way among the other tables and chairs, when Louise de Kéroualle, the new Duchess of Portsmouth, thrust her ivory fan out into my path to stop me.

  “Mrs. Nelly,” she said with unpleasant familiarity that sat ill in her heavy accent. “You’re grown quite rich in your dress, I see.”

  From her this was not a compliment, and I made only the barest breath of a curtsey. I began to move past her, but she’d not finished, looking me up and down with all the subtlety of the greenest player.

  “Why, woman,” she said, raising her voice as if to cry out her heavy-handed wit. “You’re dressed fine enough to be queen!”

  “Quite right, madam,” I said serenely as I sailed past her. “Just as you are whore enough to be duchess.”

  Oh, aye, I thought as the laughter swelled around me at Louise’s expense. What a fine thing indeed it was to be back at court!

  In September, the Duke of York achieved his most fervent wish: a beautiful princess as his bride, Mary Beatrice of Modena. Not only was she tall and graceful, educated and pious, and well connected to the best royal families in Europe; she was also only fifteen, much to the forty-year-old duke’s notorious tastes for young virgins. Charles’s satisfaction with the match was more forthright: a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, her dowry was splendidly plumped by yet another subsidy from King Louis. For that, Charles had overlooked her Catholicism, and in fairness, there really weren’t any suitable Protestant princesses to be had anywhere in Europe. The marriage between the Duke and Mary Beatrice took place by proxy in Italy in September, with the bride making her slow journey toward England over the next two months.

  But even before she arrived at Dover, Mary Beatrice had incurred the bitterest hatred of Protestant England. Urged on by Shaftesbury and his faction, Parliament protested her as the “daughter of the Pope” that they felt had been foisted upon them instead of a sturdy, fertile, Protestant princess to bear an equally sturdy male Protestant heir to the throne. York was faulted for agreeing to the marriage, while Charles was doubly blamed for suggesting it and giving it his blessing.

  There was more troubling talk, too. Once
again it was whispered that Charles was planning to divorce his barren queen and marry again for an heir—something I knew he’d never do. But now a new twist had appeared. Charles’s first illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, was being suggested as a possible heir. A confirmed Protestant, Monmouth was well connected through his wealthy wife, and bore enough of a resemblance to his father to be an agreeable successor. He was handsome, athletic, and sat his horse well in parades. No one seemed to notice or care that he was dull-witted and plodding. No one, that is, except for Charles, who firmly resisted this notion, too. His brother was his heir, by God’s will and England’s rights, and no mere whim of a mortal man would change his mind.

  But as I stood with Charles on the roof of my house one night in late November, I did wonder his true thoughts. The night was cold, turning our words and breath to small clouds before our faces, and to me the air already smelled like snow. There was no moon nor stars.

  Yet as we looked out over London, the countless bonfires in the streets seemed to light the night as bright as day.

  “They were there last night, too,” he said, pointing across the rooftops, “though I do believe there are more tonight. What a welcome for that poor young lady!”

  Beside him I shivered, cold even inside my fur-lined cloak. “Bonfires, and His Grace snorting and pawing to take her maidenhead,” I said wryly. “Faith, what a sad welcome for her, indeed!”

  “At least if she’s in my brother’s bed, she won’t see the effigies.”

  “Effigies?” I asked. “They’re burning effigies, too?”

  “Oh yes,” he said grimly. “I hear they’re carried about the streets on sticks first, great ugly things of straw with oakum for hair and chestnuts for eyes, and to be certain, no one mistakes their purpose; they have placards tied round their heads. Some are even daubed in pitch, so as to make a more satisfying hellish hiss when they’re tossed into the bonfires.”