Dark Angels (32 page)

“I see them,” said King Charles.

He kissed the child hard on each cheek, and Nellie took the baby and nodded to her mother, who stepped forward to return the babe to his bed, her face expressionless to the nudity of a king. God only knew she had seen worse than naked men. She and Nellie were both from the streets, but Nellie had the wit and youth, saucy beauty and voice like a lark, to bring her up to these high places, and she didn’t forget her mother—ancient by the standards of this age, when it was said a woman was prime at twenty, decaying at four and twenty, old and insufferable at thirty. The streets were hard. One had to be quick-witted, ruthless, and lucky to survive. Nellie was.

Nellie poured another goblet of wine and gave it to the king. He drank it down like water. She sat on his lap. He had long legs with lean thigh muscles, and the sight of them excited her. She wanted to make love again. After a year, she might, just might, love this man, and love was a fragile seed in her world. But she didn’t know him. Her mother before her was a whore. Nellie knew men. But not this one.

“I dreamed the queen had a son the other night. And today, I had an evil thought,” King Charles said. In his mind was the reaction to Buck’s words—that it would be a blessing if the queen was poisoned, God forgive him, never mind the dower she’d brought, the kindness she’d shown, and the loyalty.

“I ain’t a clergyman, sir, but you can confess to me, if you like.”

“The church of Nellie Gwynn. Confession to a naked whore. Appealing, Nellie. You’ll take the bread from priests’ mouths.” He smiled at her, and she was comfortable with and comforted by the lasciviousness in that smile. She’d known such smiles most of her life. Her mother had shown her how to use them to her advantage.

Nell kissed his hand, held it to her breast.

He was unable to make his wine-soaked mind command the hand to caress her. He loved women’s pleasure, loved, always had, always would, their shape, their smell, their softness, the way their minds worked, their loyalty, and then, if crossed, their treachery. Ruthless, colder than any man’s. Life plays the traitor to us all, takes our best hopes and fairest promises and turns them against us, he thought. The only thing to do was make a jest before you became the jest. But he couldn’t jest at his sister dead, his wife barren. A bargain with France, and Minette died. Freedom from his House of Commons’ parsimony and high-handedness thanks to Louis’s coins, but for his sister’s life? No one had told him the true bargain. The coins filled his privy purse, and he felt like Judas. But he’d spend them, wouldn’t he? And bugger Louis in the bargain. Everywhere he fathered sons, except on the queen. Old Rowley, his subjects called him, for his virility. Life demanded its pound of flesh, played out two right real jests before his very eyes, and he, who loved to laugh, could not summon the strength to do so. His eyes closed. His head lolled back. “Two jests, Nellie, on me. The boy is very fair. I can beget sons.”

He laughed, and the actress in her picked up nuance. She put both her arms around him and hugged him, her lust lessening now, a bit of fear in her. Without this man, she was nothing again, plaything to men without the kindness he had. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, vanity, all is vanity—one of her mother’s best customers had been a Fifth Monarchy man, and he would thunder out those words as he finished his pleasure with her mother, before he turned to her.

“Is there a God, Nellie?”

“Oh yes. Come to bed now. Come and play with me.” She touched her cheek to his, then drew back, shocked. There was wet against her cheek from where it had lain against his. A king’s tear. From this man who always smiled. Worth what? A king’s ransom?

“A fine boy. I’ll make him a duke someday, and he can play with my other children.”

In another moment he was snoring. Nellie moved off his lap, called for her mother and the footman, and together, heaving, they managed to get him to the bed. She summoned his Life Guards, who waited downstairs, and they came up and dressed him. They eyed Nellie, naked still, as they dressed him, and she saw the lust in their eyes, enjoyed it with a wicked zest that was part of her spark. They’d never get a piece of her, not while the king desired her, but they could have a look at what pleased a king. They carried him off as tenderly as a babe in their arms, out into the night, back to Whitehall. Nellie went to look in at their son, sleeping in innocence. A future duke, was he? Nellie Gwynn, tart of the stage, mother to a duke.

He talked about two jests. She couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write, but she could count. That made three.

C
HAPTER 17

U
nder the trees, sitting at charming tables built round their trunks, lanterns flickering from branches, Charles’s young court flirted with one another, drinking wine in the dark. Most of them had been children when he was restored to the throne. They remembered the poverty, the want, the shifting—but barely.

Alice had shown Renée the king’s garden house, which his father had built, and the bowling green where Monmouth and his cronies did play many an afternoon. They’d walked the pall-mall court the king had had built. He liked all things of the outside, walking, tennis, fishing, boating, riding horseback, archery, bowls, pall-mall, a game of sticks hitting balls, which he’d made the fashion. They’d strolled along the long canal of water in St. James’s Park nearby, a landscape pool that would do pride to any French palace. Richard was sitting with them, along with Barbara and John Sidney, and Dorothy Brownwell and her Lord Knollys. Gracen was here, and Kit, and Charlie Sedley, and some of his friends.

Alice allowed the wine’s expansive mood. She had decided to be hopeful about her conversation with Balmoral. Barbara and John stood up. “Where are you off to?” Alice asked.

“A walk, nothing more,” said John.

“Without chaperone?”

Dorothy stood, but Lord Knollys put his hand on her arm in a proprietary way. “Will you trust me instead?” he asked Alice as if she were the queen.

“And me?” said Gracen, going to stand with Barbara.

“I grant you your walk.” Alice laughed, amused with her grandness, with the fact that her disapproval carried weight. Maybe she’d gain back the old days. To her right, Renée and her lieutenant were talking about this Tamworth of his.

“You don’t like John Sidney?” Dorothy asked Alice when he was in the distance.

“It isn’t the match she should have.”

Dorothy played with a ribbon on one of her full sleeves. A widow, she loved the maids of honor she was given charge of, each and all, no matter how they might tease her and trick her. Girls will be girls, she would say when some mischief happened. And then she loaned the coins or upheld the lie that would keep the girl from dismissal, telling her in her soft lisp, You must beware, you must behave. She had large, protruding eyes and golden hair—falsely golden, Gracen swore—and a heart as soft as goose’s down.

“You saw me last night.” She looked Alice full in the face, her great round eyes begging.

Alice sipped at her wine. “I saw nothing.”

Dorothy leaned forward and kissed her. “I knew you’d say that. I fretted all the day, but the heart of me knew you’d say that. I’m glad you’re back.”

The truth was Dorothy Brownwell had been too lax, especially with Barbara, but Alice would begin to deal with that tomorrow, when she took her place again among the maids of the queen.

Behind them, at another table, revelers had begun to sing, pounding their hands on the table as they sang. It was a soldier’s song.

Who comes here?

A Grenadier.

What do you want?

A Pot of Beer.

Where is your money?

I’ve forgot.

Get you gone home

You drunken sot.

“See what you’ll have to put up with,” Richard said to Renée, and winked. He was off to France again in a day or two for Balmoral.

C
HAPTER 18

October

Clear moon, frost soon. If the moon shows a silver shield, be not afraid to reap your field.

A
lice jerked off gloves, said to the new footman, “Fetch my father at once.” She strode to the fire in his great chamber, putting her hands to it. It was cold out. September’s feast day of Michaelmas, with its roasted goose, its paying of rents, was over. So, almost, was October. All Hallows’ Eve, time of spirits and magic, the ending of the month, was only days away.

Reading his daughter’s mood from her face and the way she stood, Sir Thomas paused in the doorway of the house’s great chamber. So, the moment he’d been dreading was here. But to his surprise, she ran to him, kissed his cheek.

“There’s something you have to know. It’s awful. The king is paying too much attention to Renée. He has spent an hour with her every day of this last week. I’m there, but I might as well not be. You must tell him to stop it, Father. You’re her guardian. You must go to the king and tell him to stop it before there are duels and scandal.”

“What duels?”

“Well, Lieutenant Saylor, of course,” Alice said sharply. “He’s a man of honor.”

“Why the devil would he duel?”

“You’re not listening, Father. Tell the king to find another flirt. Tell him Renée is a respectable girl. Tell him he can’t do this to us again—”

“Us?”

“The queen. He did it with Frances Stewart when he was in love with her. He would come in and talk with her and then take her off to a corner and be kissing her and touching her. Poor Queen Catherine was afraid to enter her own chambers for what she might see. She used to make me do it for her. It was awful. Unendurable. He’s going to make the queen dislike Renée.” And she had plans that Queen Catherine would dower Renée; she’d done it before for other maids of honor. “Tell him to stop.”

“Frances Stewart married a duke. Perhaps Renée will, too.”

“There are no dukes to marry, except Balmoral, and I have him.”

“An earl, then.”

“Father, you must stop this. I thought you of all people would want it stopped.” Isn’t she your sweetheart? Don’t you care? she wanted to say but didn’t.

“It doesn’t hurt a young woman to be admired by the king, Alice. On the contrary, it makes all the bucks of court sit up and take notice.”

That was true. Alice calmed a bit. And King Charles wasn’t one to force his attentions. Renée would simply have to tell him to quit. Only Renée was afraid to do so. I can’t, she’d said. He’s the king. “You must tell the king that his attentions aren’t returned, that Renée doesn’t want them.”

“I must?”

“You’re her guardian. You brought her over. It’s your place.”

Sir Thomas skirted the issue. “Are his attentions unwelcome?”

“Of course they are.”

“Are you certain, Alice?”

“Yes.”

“Has she told you this? Did Mademoiselle de Keroualle tell you with her own words that the king’s attentions were unwelcome?”

“Well, of course she did.”

“Alice…”

“I know they are.”