The Darling Strumpet (33 page)
Read The Darling Strumpet Online
Authors: Gillian Bagwell
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General
“Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived a slattern,
Yet died a princess, acting in Saint Cather’n.”
The crowd roared their approval, clapping and stamping, and Nell curtsied deeply to the royal box, to the pit, to the packed galleries. It was good to be back.
JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH, WAS STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL, NELL thought. There was no doubt he was the king’s son, but the full lips, fair skin, and green eyes were evidence that his mother, Lucy Walter, must have been stunning. He had an engaging charm, and Nell liked him immediately and understood why Charles adored him.
They sat in the house in Newmarket that Charles had taken for her while he was attending the races. She had met Monmouth the previous day and invited him to come to visit. He was less than a year older than she was, and she felt an affinity with him despite the vast difference of their circumstances.
“I lived with my mother in Brussels until I was nine, you know,” Monmouth said, stretching his long legs out before him in their silken stockings.
“Did you know who your father was?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. Of course he had no kingdom then. But my mother always told me my father was King of England, and I told it to my friends. They laughed,” he said, “as well they might, for I ran barefoot in the streets with them and looked more like a beggar than the son of a king, albeit a bastard. I couldn’t even read.”
“Really?” Perhaps this not-quite-prince had more in common with Nell than she had thought.
“Not a word, nor had I need. No school for me, only drudgery at home. My mother was little better than a whore, you know.” He said it abruptly and looked to Nell. What did she read in his eyes? Challenge? Shame? The desire for pity?
“Mine was no different,” she said, and he smiled at her, a shameful secret shared and accepted.
“But still I loved her,” Monmouth continued. “When I was taken from her to be sent to the queen, my grandmother, in Paris to be brought up like a gentleman, I fought like a wolf, and cried to stay with her. The king’s men took me from her by a trick. I didn’t know until later that she had followed and begged to see me. But they kept her away.”
“How monstrous!” Nell cried. “Did they never allow you a visit?”
Monmouth shook his head. “She died. I never saw her more.” Tears glistened in his eyes. Nell felt a rush of maternal affection and pulled him to her, letting his head rest on her shoulder and stroking his hair like a child’s.
Fingers crept onto her bosom. Nell thrust Monmouth away and smacked his hand.
“That’s the last time you’ll do that, or we will not speak again. I love your father, and am for him alone. Do you understand?”
Monmouth nodded sheepishly.
“Good. I would like us to be friends.”
THAT SUMMER, WITH PARLIAMENT DISMISSED, CHARLES AND THE court escaped to Windsor, and he established Nell in a house only steps from the castle gate. The ancient castle with its ponderous walls looked like the Tower, a fortress rather than a home.
“That’s why I like it,” Charles said. “It can be properly garrisoned.” His mouth took on a grim set, and Nell thought of his father, helpless to defend himself as he was handed over to Cromwell’s forces.
“But see,” he said, pointing toward the royal park, “how many new trees are planted now, to replace those destroyed during the war. And how peaceful the gardens here within the walls.”
NELL WAS GLAD TO HAVE ROSE’S COMPANY AGAIN WHEN THE COURT returned to town in September. Her maid Bridget brought them cakes and ale as they sat enjoying the sun in Nell’s little back garden, but Nell took only a bite before pushing her food aside with a grimace.
“What’s the matter?” Rose asked.
“I don’t know. I just don’t seem to have an appetite for it. My belly’s a bit off.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
“A few days. I feel out of sorts.”
Rose looked at Nell searchingly.
“Could it be you’re with child?”
She was a few days late for her courses, and now she came to think about it, her breasts were tender, and everything about her body felt somehow different than ever before. She laughed out loud.
“Of course! What a fool I am!”
“Will the king be happy?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” said Nell. “Oh, yes.”
CHARLES CAUGHT NELL UP IN HIS ARMS AND STROKED HER BELLY AS though he could feel the child within her already.
“He will be beautiful,” he told her. “And with your spirit, he will be loved by all.”
NELL WAS SUPREMELY HAPPY OVER THE NEXT WEEKS. CHARLES’S JOY over the child seemed to bind him more closely to her. He spent most evenings and many nights with her and even conducted business from the little house in Newman’s Row. The French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, seemed taken aback when he arrived as directed from the palace, but bowed low and kissed Nell’s hand, and she strove to put him at his ease. She made small talk with the elegantly dressed Frenchman for a few minutes, but left him and Charles on their own when they got down to the purpose of the meeting, a treaty between England and France against Holland.
Croissy appeared again a few days later, but his mood was somber, and he sorrowfully conveyed the news that Charles’s mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, had died at her house at Colombes, outside Paris.
“She was sixty and had been ill for some time,” Charles told Nell later that evening. “I’ve known it was coming. But I fear for Minette.” His beloved youngest sister had just given birth. “Croissy tells me she’s beside herself with grief, and she’s always been delicate.”
“When did you last see your mother?” Nell asked.
“Four years ago. Don’t think me heartless that I do not weep for her. Try as I might, I cannot think of her without feeling myself back in those long and bitter years when I sometimes had not enough to eat, let alone a crown or a country. She held the purse strings and made things quite difficult. And all my life, it seemed that I could never meet with her approval, never be what she wished.”
“I understand,” Nell said. “All too well.”
BY THE TIME CHRISTMAS CAME, NELL’S SWELLING BELLY MADE HER feel unfit to appear in public, and much of the time she kept to home. But she had frequent visits from Rose, Aphra, Buckingham, Monmouth, Rochester, and friends from the playhouse.
Charles seemed to be hers alone. Barbara had gone from the palace. The queen, apparently resigned to childlessness, had moved to Somerset House. If there were other women, they could not be taking much of his time, as he was so frequently with her.
Spring came, and this year Nell felt a kindred spirit to the lambing ewes and calving cows. On May Day, a line of milkmaids stopped before Nell’s door to dance and she had Bridget distribute coins to them.
“Thank you, ma’m,” they chorused. “Thank you, my lady.”
My lady? Nell thought. It’s only me, only Nell. But she could read awe in their faces and knew that a vast chasm now yawned between her and girls like them.
A WEEK LATER, NELL’S PAINS BEGAN. ROSE, BRIDGET, AND A MIDWIFE attended her, sponging the sweat from her face and body, holding her hand, murmuring their encouragement through the long hours when the torment seemed to go on and on and to be too great to bear. But finally, Nell gave a last push and felt the baby leave her, and a moment later, the afterbirth. The midwife cut the writhing cord and wiped the mucus from the baby’s eyes. It coughed and began to cry.
“A fine and perfect boy,” the midwife said, wrapping the baby in a blanket and laying him in Nell’s arms. She stared in amazement at the tiny wrinkled face, the dark damp curls, the rosebud lips that opened into a toothless cavern and let forth a furious yowl. She brought him to her breast, and thought there had never been anything so miraculous as the little bundle that sucked and cooed and gurgled.
THOUGH THE KING ALREADY HAD THREE SONS BEARING HIS NAME, the baby could not be called other than Charles. So Charles he was, but from the day of his birth he was Charlie to Nell. His father visited that night, and held his newest son proudly.
“He looks just like you,” he said.
“No, just like you.”
“Well. The best of both, let’s hope.”
DURING NELL’S UPSITTING IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING CHARLIE’S BIRTH, a stream of callers came bearing gifts and good wishes for the health and happiness of baby and mother. Peg Hughes had left the stage and Charles Sedley both to become the mistress of the king’s cousin Prince Rupert, and she came with yards of fine French lace for the baby’s gowns.
“Such a beautiful boy, Nell,” she cooed over little Charlie. “And a surety for your future, too,” she added, with a flash of diamond hardness in her azure eyes. “I hope that I may give my Rupert such a sign of my love for him.”
“I am so pleased for you,” Aphra said, when she called a few days later. “But I do hope you’ll get back onstage as soon as you are able. The theater is the poorer for your absence.”
“We’ll see,” Nell said. The world of the theater seemed far off, its importance fallen away since Charlie’s advent. What miraculous changes a baby wrought, she considered, observing her own mother hold her first grandchild, with a look of tenderness Nell had never seen before.
LESS THAN A WEEK AFTER CHARLIE’S BIRTH, CHARLES TOOK LEAVE OF Nell and journeyed toward Dover, where he was to meet his sister. As the Duchess d’Orléans and wife of the French king’s brother, she was representing the French court, and the formal occasion was the signing of the treaty that had been so long in the works. But Nell knew that what gladdened Charles’s heart was the prospect of being reunited with his adored baby sister Minette, whom he had not seen in many years, since she was almost a child.
With the court gone, it was only playhouse friends who visited. Hart came, and as he and Nell sat quietly together, she reflected that it was the first time she had been alone with him since her departure with Dorset.
“I’m happy for you, Nell,” he said. “Happy to see you happy.”
“I am happy,” she said. “But I wish …” It was only as the words left her mouth that she realized what she had been about to say. That some part of her wished it was his child that lay in the cradle nearby, and that it was for his footstep on the stair that she listened. Hart looked away and shook his head.
“It’s for the best, Nelly. I could never have given you all this.” He gestured at the room and its furnishings, the piles of gifts.
“You gave me—everything,” Nell said softly. “The playhouse. Where my life began. And in return …” Her voice caught, and Hart took her hand.
“You gave me your love,” said Hart. “And that was enough.”
“You have it still. You always will.”
“And you mine, my little Nell.”
CHARLES RETURNED FROM DOVER WITH TALES OF BANQUETS AND dancing, hawking and hunting, and especially his joy at seeing his sister. He brought gifts for Nell from Minette—a magnificent necklace of pearl and gold, perfumed gloves of fine soft leather, and a silver cup and rattle for the baby.
“She sends her love, and regrets she could not meet you on this visit,” Charles said. “She longs to meet you and knows you will be great friends.”
“The next time,” Nell said. “I would be honored to meet her.”
But less than a month later, shortly after her return to the French court, Minette died in agonized convulsions. Charles retreated alone to his bedchamber and wept for days. Nell, frightened by the lack of contact, summoned Buckingham.
“He loved her unreasoningly,” Buckingham said. “She was but a baby when the war began, and he knew her only as a sweet and loving child who could do no wrong. And he was not the only one—she was the sweetheart of the French court. It’s well known that her husband forsook her bed and preferred his lover the Chevalier de Lorraine, and that betrayal only made her seem the more virtuous.”
“But what was it killed her?” Nell asked.
“There are rumors of poison, of course, but then there always are. I’m going to France, to thank Louis for his condolences. I’ll sniff around to see what I can learn, but I doubt anything but time will bring Charles to himself. Don’t worry, he’ll soon be back in your arms.”
Charles was back in Nell’s arms within a week, but it was clear that his soul still ached. His humor was supplanted with an air of sadness. Nell did all she could to pet and comfort him, and he found solace in company with her and little Charlie.
“You are my family now,” he told her, bending over the baby’s cradle. “She was the last of my brothers and sisters but James, you know. There were two little girls who died as babies. Little Elizabeth died in captivity during the war, and the bastards told our poor brother Henry she’d died of a broken heart because I’d signed the Covenant. I lost Henry and Mary to smallpox not long after I came back to England. But Minette was the best of us.”
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