The Perfect Royal Mistress (4 page)

After dinner, the king walked with friends through the outer gallery and past the old tiltyard of Henry VIII. On the path that led to the privy gardens, the Earl of Arlington approached. Charles waited as he bowed.

“I have found what Your Majesty desires to know.”

“Then tell me.”

“It seems that Eleanor Gwynne, the orange seller who calls herself Nell, is from quite a—shall we call it—
colorful
family. Her mother is a whore plying her trade on Pudding Lane. Her father is dead, and her only sister is in the Newgate gaol. Nell refuses to ply the family trade, which brought her to Orange Moll.”

“Bring me a petition to release her sister.”

“Your Majesty must know that Rose Gwynne is there for theft.”

“It is my wish that she be released, and so she shall be. Once you have organized that, you are to give Rose Gwynne one hundred pounds, which she is to be instructed keenly by you, personally, to share with her sister, Nell, that the two of them might get their lives in order. Is that clear?”

Once again, Arlington bowed deeply. “Crystal clear, Your Majesty.”

Near midnight, Barbara Palmer rolled onto her back, her bare, fleshy body glistening with a sheen of perspiration, and began to laugh. The canopy above them was blue silk. The tapestry curtains were closed.

“Was I that dreadful?” the young man asked, his dark brown eyes as wide and discerning as his father’s, but without the jaded depth of difficult experiences, and years.

James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was perfectly sculpted, taut, and deliciously olive skinned, Charles’s Medici blood dominating in his eldest son’s veins, as it did his own. But Monmouth, unlike his father, was an abysmal lover, still as quick and unskilled as a colt.

“Not dreadful,” Barbara sighed. Apparently, in this past month, she had taught him nothing. It all seemed pathetically comical. “Just a dreadful bore, I’m afraid.”

“Well, thank you very much indeed for that!” he said as he bolted from the bed and bent to retrieve his silk pants.

“Oh, now, my dear Jamie,” she began, trying hard to stifle what she knew was a cruel-sounding laugh. “To succeed in this world, one must be as realistic about one’s strengths as one’s weaknesses. Did the king never teach you that?”

“My father has taught me nothing about how to be a king because he does not believe his bastard son will ever be one.”

She went to him then, her hands moved tautly down along his hips as she pressed her moist lips to his ear. “But do
you
believe it? You are his only heir!”

“His bastard son. Only Catherine’s children can be heirs.”

“Well, the little Portuguese does not have any children, does she?”

“You know my father wishes his brother to be king if Catherine remains barren.”

“James is a Catholic. Protestant England will never stand for that.”

Monmouth turned around and embraced his father’s principal mistress, their bare bodies still warm and wet. “I appreciate your wanting to help me, my Lady Castlemaine, but—”

“Oh, for the love of God! Since we have rutted like this more than a few times, can you not see your way clear to address me informally? Or am I too old and motherly for such consideration?”

“You are a goddess! There is nothing old about you!” he reassured her enthusiastically, enough to make her smile.

“Then heed my advice. As the Duke of Buckingham dares to scheme against me, so do I scheme against the king’s brother with you for your place. It is what we at this court do.”

In the prison between Newgate and Ludgate, just beside the river, a cell door opened with a low squeal. It was past two in the morning and the tormented sounds, the cries and pleadings, were quieted. The lone sound echoed down the long, stone corridor as a guardsman in a soiled uniform, holding a flickering lantern, along with a tall man in an expensive black cloak, entered the cell.

“Rose Gwynne?”

“Who wants to know?” came a weak but defiant voice from a straw mat on the stained and refuse-strewn floor.

“Are ye she or no’?” the guard gruffly pressed, holding the lantern higher.

Rose looked from one face to the next, dream soaked and defensive. She feared a trick. It was not uncommon for guards to steal into a woman’s cell in the wee hours, to do with her things she would have no power against which to defend herself. But the presence of the other man, well dressed, recoiling from the odors, as he placed a silver pomander to his nose, told her clearly he was not of this foul, hopeless plate.

“I am,” she finally replied.

Rose saw the well-dressed man nod. “You’re to come with me,” the guard announced.

“I’ll not, ’til I know why!”

The two men exchanged a glance.

“You’re being released,” the guard declared.

“Released? I’m ’ere for the rest of my life, and you well know it!”

“I haven’t the inclination to tarry with you, girl. I say you’re free to go. Unless, of course, ye’re inclined to remain as you fancy the accommodations,” he cackled, and then began to bark out a rheumy cough.

As Rose staggered to standing, he spat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Come on, then! Be quick about it. I fancy a bit of a lie-down meself before dawn sometime.”

Rose lingered near the door with the small opening covered by a rusty iron grate. “But I don’t understand…why?”

It was then that the well-dressed man spoke. “Consider it a gift, young woman, and make the most of what you do from here on out.”

Ten minutes later, Nell Gwynne’s older sister, in a soiled shift and cloth shoes, was shown the street. As the great iron door closed mysteriously behind her, her hand was heavy with a shockingly large number of coins. She looked down a long, cobbled street that was silent and full of shadows. It was the middle of the night and a thick fog rolled around her ankles and made her shiver. She coughed, then drew in a trembling breath, the first fresh air she had breathed in over a year.

Chapter 2

T
HEN ENTER
N
ELLY ONTO THE PUBLIC STAGE.

—James Shirley,
The Lady of Pleasure

F
IVE
weeks after London’s fire, the King’s Theater reopened amid a sudden autumn cold so frigid that it froze the Thames. Notices were posted, and handbills were given out announcing that the king’s players would be performing Thomas Killigrew’s own play
Siege of Urban.
Admittance to the pit would be free of charge by His Majesty’s command. It was said the sovereign hoped to bring a bit of joy to his beleaguered subjects with a rousing comedy.

Nell stood outside the theater in the cool gray air, a basket of plump oranges at her elbow. She was wearing an olive-green dress. It was almost new, even a bit stylish, with an attached, ruched, pannier skirt made of pink floral cotton to the middle of her calves, and puffed half sleeves. It had been offered to her by one of the other orange girls for ten pence. It had been almost a month, yet Nell still could not quite believe her sudden and mysterious good fortune.

The dress was only the smallest part of that.

The memory of waking with a great start, hearing the door handle click. Casting off her blanket, she had fumbled for the long wooden stick she kept beneath the mattress for the nights when Helena Gwynne brought home more than a hangover. But it was not Helena. It was Rose. Rose! Standing in the pale light cast from the corridor, looking like a ghost and an angel at the same time. Rose, who was meant to die in the Newgate gaol. It had been a miracle. But her sister had come back changed, weakened by the ordeal. She had a stubborn cough now, and her face was no longer that of a girl, but of a hardened young woman. Nell was committed to caring for Rose forever now that she was back, and helping her recover her health, no matter what it took.

“Well, don’t
you
look fine today,” Orange Moll proclaimed.

The declaration brought Nell back to the front of the theater, where a throng of people was pushing past her to get in. Orange Moll stood before her in the cold, gray noonday, a blue shawl closed over her swelling bosom, and a large basket brimming with fruit slung over her own arm and resting against her ample hip.

“I’ve a new dress,” Nell smiled.

“So I see. And ’tis a stroke of good fortune, too. I’ve lost one of my best inside girls. Just this mornin’, in fact. Ran off to marry a linkboy, a pox on ’em both!” She shook her head. Her hair was dark and frizzled, hanging onto her shoulders. Her eyes were shrewd, her face wrinkled and painted. “She needs replacin’, and in your new dress you ’appen to fit the part. If you’d fancy a turn at it, that is.”

An inside girl. Their baskets were full, not just with oranges, but a bounty of delectable lemons, apples, and sweetmeats. They were the clever ones who bantered with the theatergoers, the girls who made the real tips, the girls who glimpsed the other side of London life. Money. Dresses. Jewelry.

“Oh, yes! Yes, if you please!”

Nell’s open smile made Moll flinch. Her expression was suddenly full of warning. “Now, ye’ll ’ave to learn quick if you mean to make a proper livin’ at it. Banter with the patrons, and a little flirtation comes to no ’arm. The more they fancy you, the more they buy, and the better they tip. Just never let me see ye cross the line. Not at least in a public way. What ye do on your own time’s your own business, but ’ere at the king’s house I’ve a reputation to maintain.”

Nell caught her breath. “I understand.”

Since Rose had found her way out of the Newgate gaol, they had been achingly careful with their precious windfall. Now, perhaps they could think of a larger room, something with a bed big enough for both of them.

Orange Moll, whose real name was Mary Meggs, took Nell’s basket of oranges and replaced it with her own full, lush basket. “Ye’ll be workin’ the pit. ’Tis no fine walk in the park, I’ll warn ye. The lot of ’em can be loud and boorish, and the fops won’t want to give ye the time o’ day for the attention it takes from
them.
Those pretty little boys, with their noses in the air, can be a mean lot. But I’ve heard ye, Nell, and I believe ye’ll hold your own.”