The Darling Strumpet (11 page)
Read The Darling Strumpet Online
Authors: Gillian Bagwell
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General
“Lord, what’s happened?”
“Jack,” Nell whispered. “He came for me and I didn’t mean to, but I bit him. So he hurt me.”
“He hit you?” Rose pulled Nell into her arms.
“More than that. He—” Nell couldn’t make herself say the words, but Rose understood her gesture.
“Let me see, honey.” Rose gently examined Nell. “You’re not bleeding, that’s a mercy. Here, this will help.” Tears streaked Rose’s face as she applied salve to Nell’s battered flesh.
“Oh, Nell,” she whispered, “truly I don’t know what to do. It will do you no good to speak to the missus. And if you try to say him nay, it will only make him more determined to have what he wants. Let me see can I think of something.”
THE NEXT DAY WHEN NELL WENT INTO THE TAPROOM, JACK RAKED her with a look of triumph that made her sick to her stomach. She was powerless to stop him, and he knew it. That night he again forced his way into her room and brutalized her, enjoying her fear and pain.
Over the next weeks Nell avoided being on her own and tried not to cross Jack’s path, but there were times when he appeared seemingly from thin air, and she had nowhere to run.
WITH THE CELEBRATIONS OF THE KING’S BIRTHDAY ON THE TWENTY-NINTH of May, Nell was amazed to realize that it had been two years since she had run away and embarked on her new life. She had gained freedom from her mother, as she had set out to do. She was better fed and clothed and she had several regulars whose money she could count on. But she did not like having to submit herself to the use of strangers, and Jack’s visits were now almost nightly. She was always frightened, and despaired of finding a way out of the hell her days and nights had become.
As it happened, an escape presented itself that Nell could not have anticipated. Robbie Duncan noticed the bruises on her arms and throat and the livid blue-yellow patches on the insides of her thighs.
“What happened there?” he asked, his face darkening. “Come, tell me,” he said gently when she didn’t answer.
“It’s Jack,” she whispered, clutching the sheet around her. “Madam’s man. He—he comes to me sometimes, and …” She could not finish the sentence, and could not bring herself to look at him. He squatted on his haunches before her.
“He hurts you? He means to hurt you?”
She nodded.
“He cannot do this to you. I will not allow it,” Robbie exclaimed, springing to his feet, but Nell knew that his slender frame was no match for Jack’s sinewy muscularity.
She shrugged. “But he can. There is nought I can do to stop him.”
Robbie paced and seethed, and finally stood before Nell.
“Come and live with me. He cannot come to you there. I will take care of you.”
Nell was astonished at the proposal, but Robbie was likable enough and, given the choice, she would rather bed one man than many.
So, with a payment from Robbie to Madam Ross for the loss of one of her stable, Nell became his. She packed her few belongings in a sack and moved to Robbie’s room at the Cock and Pie Tavern, at the top of Maypole Alley, only a few streets from the only homes she had known.
CHAPTER SIX
L
IVING WITH ROBBIE, NELL FELT AS IF SHE WERE PLAYING AT BEING a wife. While he was at work at his father’s business in the City during the day, she tidied their room and fetched food from a cookhouse so that she had supper ready for him when he came home, and Robbie told her of his day and any news.
IVING WITH ROBBIE, NELL FELT AS IF SHE WERE PLAYING AT BEING a wife. While he was at work at his father’s business in the City during the day, she tidied their room and fetched food from a cookhouse so that she had supper ready for him when he came home, and Robbie told her of his day and any news.
“The king is to have bearbaiting at Hampton Court for Whitsun-tide, as he did last year. Savagery. That’s one old custom that would have been better left in the past. The playhouses are bad enough. Oh, and Lady Castlemaine is brought to bed of a boy. He’s to be called Charles Palmer and Lord Limerick, as though he were the son of her husband, but no one believes that.”
“Barbara Palmer’s husband had her son christened in the Popish church,” Robbie told Nell a week later over dinner. “But today the king took the child and had him rechristened in the Church of England. He’ll not have his son raised a Papist, bastard or no.”
“And how did Palmer take that?” Nell wondered.
“Not well,” said Robbie, chewing on a beef bone. “He’s broken from his wife at last and gone to France.”
That night, to Nell’s surprise, Robbie went to sleep without touching her. She scarcely knew what to think and lay worrying. Was he tiring of her? Would he cast her out? But in the morning he seemed as usual, and she grew used to the novel idea that a man might not always want to couple.
Being free from Jack’s attentions and serving the needs of many men was a welcome change. Nell’s body healed, and Robbie was gentle with her in bed. But before long, she found that the sameness of her days grew tedious. She missed the companionship of Rose and the other girls, but because she wanted to keep out of Jack’s way and because Robbie did not like her going there, she stayed away from Lewkenor’s Lane.
Rose joined her sometimes for little outings, to watch the river traffic from the bridge, or to walk as far abroad as the countryside of Moorfields or Islington. There was usually something of interest to be seen at Covent Garden—rope dancers, jugglers, or occasionally a display of prize fighting.
One brilliant summer day Nell and Rose set out on a pilgrimage to St. James’s Park, near the palace.
“I hope we’ll see the king,” Nell said.
“Perhaps we will,” Rose said. “Harry says the king has laid out a mint of money making the park fine again and walks out most days.” Harry Killigrew had recently become groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of York.
The park, with its blooming flowers and trees, seemed a paradise to Nell, and a world away from the dark land of nightmare where she had last been with Nick and the other boys on the night of the king’s return.
“Look!” cried Rose, clutching Nell’s arm.
Not fifty paces from where they stood, King Charles strode along in earnest conversation with some puffing minister who struggled to match his pace, the royal retinue straggling along behind. Nell watched, entranced.
“He’s even more handsome than I remembered him.”
“He is that,” Rose agreed. A bevy of ladies strolled in the king’s wake, decked in summer finery. The breeze caught their gowns and made Nell think of ships in full sail.
“Look, it’s Lady Castlemaine!” cried Nell. “I wonder where’s her baby?”
“Why, ladies like that don’t care for their own kinchins, but leave them to nurses. That’s why she can look so fine so soon after birthing.”
“Look at that blue gown,” Nell sighed. “Why, now it appears gold!”
“Changeable silk,” Rose said. “You’d have to lay out a month’s earnings to pay for that. But look at the patches now—those are cunning and would be easy enough to fashion.” Many of the ladies’ faces were adorned with small black patches in the shapes of stars, moons, suns, and animals.
“That’s the high kick, that is,” Rose said.
“I think it looks silly,” said Nell. “Besides, they’re like to itch most fearsome. I’d scratch them off in a minute.” She looked with longing at the pretty gloves, though, in a rainbow of shades of soft leather, and at the ladies’ full-brimmed hats with ribbons rippling from them.
The weather was so fine and Nell’s spirits so high, she didn’t want the rare day of pleasure to end.
“Let’s not go back yet,” she pleaded. “I’ve heard tell there’s an Italian puppet show at Covent Garden that would make a dog laugh. And I’ve a month’s mind for some cherries.”
So it was evening before she climbed the stairs to Robbie’s room, with the guilty recollection that the tuppence he had given her to buy candles had been spent during the day’s outing.
“You spent it!” Robbie cried. “And what are we to use for light?”
“It’s not so dark,” Nell pleaded. “I’ll get candles tomorrow.”
“I’ll get the candles myself,” he fumed, yanking the door open. “Since I cannot trust you to do as you’re told.”
Nell lay awake that night, chafing with resentment. It was only tuppence, after all, and the first money she had spent on herself since moving in with Robbie.
In the morning she strode into the taproom of the Cock and Pie downstairs. Cath, the barmaid, looked up from the jug she was washing and took in Nell’s stormy face.
“You’ve a bee in your bonnet, I see.”
“Are you hiring?” Nell demanded. Cath laughed.
“Unhappy with Robbie, are you?”
“I’ve no money to spend but what he gives me and I cannot do anything but what he tells me,” Nell fretted. “I spend my days alone and I’m so bored I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Best think twice afore you leave,” Cath cautioned. “Bored and fed is better than free and hungry.”
Nell slumped onto the stool opposite Cath.
“You’re right. I’ve nowhere to go. But please, to keep me from jumping in the river, have you no shred of gossip or excitement to share?”
“Well, that I do, now you mention it,” Cath smiled. “Mr. Killigrew is to build his playhouse just across the road.”
AS SOON AS THE GROUND WAS THAWED, THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE theater were laid in the old Rider’s Yard. Now walls covered the framing, and acres of heavy oak planking and dark and gleaming hardwood disappeared into the maw of the growing theater. Each day Nell watched carpenters, masons, woodcarvers, and plasterworkers come and go, their tools slung in bags on their backs.
One summer day when the laborers had stopped work for their midday meal and were gathered outside to eat, sitting atop piles of lumber or leaning against the theater’s wall, she slipped in at the back door. Skeletal frames of timber stood in the hush of the midday sunlight that filtered through chinks in the unfinished ceiling. A mist of sawdust blanketed the rough-hewn floors.
Nell made her way through a doorway in a wall that was not yet built, and realized that she must be standing upon the stage. She crept silently forward, hardly daring to breathe. The center of the space was a soaring emptiness. Like a cathedral, she thought. Galleries for spectators lined the walls. She wondered what it would be like to stand on that stage before an audience, and thought of how Lady Castlemaine had surveyed the crowds before Whitehall on the night of the king’s return. She snapped open an imaginary fan and swished it languidly before her, her head held high, her chin tilted coquettishly.
“Lud, Your Majesty,” she trilled, batting her eyelashes, and gave the invisible king a pouting smile.
A harsh bark of laughter and the sound of clapping startled Nell so much that she almost cried out. A figure stumped toward her from the shadows at the back of the theater. It was a grizzled old man in a loose shirt and pantaloons, with a long pigtail, and Nell was amazed to see that he was missing the lower part of his left leg and walked on a wooden peg.
“I meant no harm,” Nell began. “I’ll go.”
“Don’t go on my account,” the old man said with a grin. “I was enjoying it. And any road, I’m just a harmless old carpenter.”
“You look like a sailor,” Nell said, staring at his weather-beaten face.
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