The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (26 page)

They were admitted into Whitehall Palace by an aide. As they were led along a seemingly endless corridor and travelled up and down stairs, Eliza’s eyes, as before, were everywhere: marvelling at the rooms, admiring the furnishings and flowers, seeing how the servants worked, observing the clothes of anyone they saw and continually gasping with amazement at the sheer scale of the place.

Eventually they were shown by an equerry into a salon where the king and queen were seated, the queen surrounded by her ladies and the king by his brown and white spaniels. It looked, Eliza thought, almost like a normal domestic scene – but one vastly scaled up and situated in a palace instead of a cottage.

Nell and Eliza sat down with others already seated on benches waiting to see either His or Her Majesty. There was a milliner, Eliza noted – or at least a woman carrying several hats – and what could have been a seamstress and a haberdasher waiting for the queen, and several dark-suited men of business to see
the king. One of these came up to Nell and kissed her hand effusively several times; Nell told Eliza it was Mr Samuel Pepys from the Admiralty, who was famous for having been first to inform the king of the Great Fire.

The girls waited their turn, Eliza thinking it all so fascinating that she wouldn’t have minded sitting there all day. At one point, the queen, her visitors having spoken and departed, rose to look out of the window to the garden beyond. As she got to her feet her six waiting women, as one, also rose to look out of the same window. When she sat down again and, drawing out her embroidery frame, began to sew, they did likewise. Her every glance was noted by them, her every whim satisfied and, watching her leading such a charmed life, Eliza began to see how a queen might be reluctant to relinquish her position.

At last, the others having departed, it was Nell’s turn to be presented. Smiling broadly, the king indicated that Nell should approach and kiss his hand.

‘Well, have you brought my outfit, Nelly?’ Eliza heard him ask.

Nell shook her head. ‘No, sire. You must be measured and have some fittings first.’

‘And will I look very fearsome when I’m costumed?’

‘You will look very fearsome and be very hot, for the material is thick wool and all over ragged, like the coat of a real …’ her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘… brown bear!’

They conversed some more, but Eliza kept her head low, knowing it was not decorous to look the king in the eye before she’d been acknowledged by him. His attention was exclusively centred on Nell, however,
and it wasn’t until the three of them, together with the dogs, moved into a small and lavishly furnished privy chamber to go over the play script that the king addressed Eliza. She’d been hoping that he might have remembered exactly who she was and mention the promised singing lessons, but although he was polite and charming he didn’t give any indication of ever having seen her before. He spent some time reading the script, and gave some pages to a clerk so that his own speeches could be copied for him, but to Eliza’s embarrassment a lot of the time there was spent in play, with the king tickling Nell or pretending to listen to the baby by putting his ear to her belly. There were several times during this tomfoolery when Eliza could hardly believe what she was hearing: Nell calling the King of England her naughty boy, her Charlie, and the king speaking to his ‘pretty little Nelly’ in a soft and silly voice.

When these interruptions to the reading happened Eliza would busy herself talking to the puppies, or walk around the room and pretend interest in one of the many clocks which were all ticking and chiming in different tones and at different times. She often felt herself going pink with embarrassment, however, and it came as a considerable relief when the king and Nell, after sharing several intimate kisses, said they would retire to another chamber and Eliza was free to go.

Eliza curtsied her way out of the room and, so anxious to be away that she did not wait for an equerry to escort her, found herself she knew not where. She walked for what seemed like a mile along one corridor and down a staircase at the end, but this
led to a blank wall. Retracing her steps, she came back to where she thought she’d started from, but found herself in a completely different part of the palace. There were no servants around to ask directions from and, although several well-dressed people passed, Eliza feared to approach them in case they were of the nobility and she made some ghastly mistake in addressing them.

Up and down stairs she went, along corridors and back again, eventually becoming desperate and almost tearful. How embarrassing, she thought, how shameful, to be discovered there in the morning still wandering about. Resolving then to go down to the kitchens, locate the servants’ quarters and ask them the way, Eliza came towards a double door with a small curtained-off staircase beside it. Her hand was on the curtain to pull it to one side when the double doors suddenly opened and a gaming scene was presented to her: a smoky room, two round tables and several elegantly dressed men and women sitting with neat piles of money in front of them.

Eliza, startled, pulled aside the curtain and began to go down the staircase as quickly as she could, but a person who’d come out of the room gave a shout, then ran down several steps and caught hold of her arm. She turned in alarm to see who it was – and stared straight into the leering face of Henry Monteagle.

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Hold!’ Henry Monteagle came closer so that he was breathing into her face. ‘Where are you going, my pretty one?’ He gave a sudden, harsh laugh. ‘Or more to the point, where have you
been?
’

Eliza did not reply, for her heart had started to hammer with fright and she needed to calm herself before she spoke.

‘Answer me! You’ve been bedroom-visiting, I’ll be bound. Have you been attending on the Duke of Monmouth, perhaps?’

‘I have not,’ Eliza replied after a moment, in as haughty a voice as she could muster.

‘Then why are you wandering around here? You’ve had an assignation with someone, haven’t you?’

He was, Eliza thought, such an objectionable oaf that she saw no reason to explain her movements. She tried to prise his fingers from her arm.

‘Where I’ve been is nothing to do with you, sire,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘Kindly let me go.’

He gave a drunken oath. ‘You’re mighty high for a street wench! Because that’s what you are, isn’t it?’

‘I am not, sire.’

‘I’ve seen you before, though.’ Monteagle screwed up his face, trying to remember. ‘In some bawdy house
or other, I’ll be bound. Or … or at the theatre.’ He looked at her through narrowed eyes, swaying slightly on his feet. ‘Yes, you’re an orange girl, aren’t you?’

Eliza didn’t reply.

‘Nothing but a pox-ridden orange girl tricked up to look half-decent!’

She flushed at the distaste in his voice. ‘Then please don’t detain me, sire, for fear I should contaminate you in some way.’

Monteagle, looking astonished at the boldness of this reply, took her other wrist and pulled her close. ‘How dare you speak to me that way, when I’m a nobleman and you’re nothing but a whore. Repeat after me,
I am a whore
.’

Eliza’s throat closed up with terror.

‘Say it!’ he urged drunkenly and, holding both of Eliza’s wrists in one hand, he reached to his belt for a small knife. He began cutting off the little glass buttons on her bodice one by one. ‘
I am a whore
. Say it! And then I’ll give you some whore’s work to do.’

Eliza struggled, but his grip was strong and his knee was pushing hard against her thigh. She tried to scream, but so terrified was she that the noise came out as little more than a high-pitched sigh.

‘Tell me …’ he urged as another button fell to the staircase.

‘But I’m not,’ she croaked. ‘Oh, please don’t … please don’t …’

As the fifth button fell to the floor, Eliza found her voice from somewhere and, gathering her breath, let out a scream. As this echoed around the bare stairwell, Monteagle lifted the knife to her neck.

‘Do that again,’ he said, ‘and I’ll cut your whore’s throat …’

There was the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Eliza heard, ‘Monteagle! Hey, Henry!’ and Valentine Howard leapt down the last three steps to land beside them. ‘What’s happening here?’

‘What’s happening is that I’m teaching this bawd a lesson,’ Monteagle said, his voice slurred. He glanced at his friend. ‘Have you ever heard of an orange girl who didn’t want to do business, Val?’

The other shrugged. ‘Maybe she has
other
business.’

Eliza looked from one youth to the other, icy with fear and scared to move in case it provoked Monteagle further.

‘Wha’ do you mean?’ said Monteagle.

‘Her other business, to be precise, is an appointment with me,’ said Valentine Howard.

‘With you? This whore is yours?’

Valentine flicked a glance towards Eliza which told her not to speak. ‘She is. We had an arrangement to meet on the stairs but I was on a winning streak and forgot the time.’

Monteagle put his knife back in his belt and stepped back, looking her up and down with such disgust it was as if she’d fallen into a cow turd.

‘By all means take her if you must,’ he said. ‘Although there are fairer whores who are certainly more willing than this one.’

Valentine didn’t reply to this, but put his arm under Eliza’s elbow and began to guide her down the stairs. Reaching a door at the bottom, he opened this and they went through a small hallway, through an outside door and into a courtyard where there were several
sedan chairs and carriages waiting.

Eliza, shaking all over, found she couldn’t speak – not even to thank the man who’d saved her.

‘I’m sorry I had to refer to you in that manner,’ he said, ‘but it was all I could think of at the time and it seemed the quickest way.’

‘I … I …’ Eliza began, but could go no further.

‘You must take my sedan home.’

Eliza drew in a deep, shaky breath.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Then we’ll speak of it another time.’ He whistled to a sedan, handed her in, and – though afterwards Eliza knew she must have imagined it – seemed to drop the lightest of kisses on to her head. He told the carriers to take Eliza wherever she wanted.

‘And now I must get back to my game,’ he said, and without another glance turned on his heel and went back in through the same door.

Eliza gave directions to one of the carriers and then sank back on to the cushions, feeling infinitely weary. She wanted to give way to tears, but longed first of all for the privacy of her own room to go over everything that had happened. Mostly she wanted to think about Valentine Howard, muse on what he’d done for her and why. Had that really been a kiss on her forehead? No, surely not …

The carriers ran the short distance to Pall Mall with Eliza anticipating the sweet safety of her own bed every step of the way. On reaching Nell’s house, however, she was appalled to see that there were three people at the front door engaged in a heated conversation. Alighting from the sedan and pulling her cloak tightly around her so that the torn bodice
wouldn’t show, she saw that these were Mrs Pearce, recently engaged by Nell as cook–housekeeper, Nell’s sister Rose, and Old Ma Gwyn.

If she’d seen who was there a moment before, she would have asked the sedan carriers to take her round to the back door of the house, but Ma Gwyn, who was resplendent in the rag-market’s finest, had already noticed her and was calling her name.

‘It’s Little Eliza!’ she said, describing her so despite the fact that Eliza was a foot taller than herself. ‘Ah, Eliza will take our part and tell Mistress Impudence who we are!’

‘Well, thank the Lord,’ Rose said to Eliza. ‘For since we arrived we’ve had nothing but gross language and insults from madam here!’

Mrs Pearce, who was built almost as sturdily as Ma Gwyn but was markedly more refined, her stout shape contained in a well-fitting corset and her pale linen dress and apron spotlessly clean, appealed to Eliza.

‘These two
ladies
,’ she said, indicating she thought them anything but, ‘say they are mother and sister to Mistress Gwyn and wish to come into the house.’

Eliza stared at the three of them, bemused. She felt very strange: weary and tearful and all over cold, as if she was suffering from an ague.

‘Tell ’er!’ Ma Gwyn cried, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘Tell ’er who we are. An’ you can tell her it was me what rescued you with me own money from Clink prison!’ She looked Eliza up and down. ‘Though to see you now done up like a French dog, a person would never know it.’

‘Our Nell said we was to come round any time and
take a jar,’ Rose said. ‘And that’s just what we’re doing!’

‘Or tryin’ ter do!’ said Ma Gwyn.

‘
Are
these ladies related to Mistress Gwyn?’ Mrs Pearce asked Eliza.

‘They are,’ Eliza replied, nodding. ‘But Nell isn’t home at the moment,’ she said to Ma.

‘No matter, my girl,’ said Ma. ‘I daresay her beer and her whisky is at home!’

There was a tug at Eliza’s skirt and she looked down to see Susan. Susan with her carbuncle firmly in place.

‘I got four pence on the way over!’ she said, slipping it into her mother’s hand. ‘Four pence and a toffee apple.’

‘Good on yer, girl.’ Rose pocketed the four pence and looked at her daughter with pride. ‘There’s not a pissing place about the City that my Susan hasn’t begged in.’

‘Good heavens,’ Mrs Pearce said faintly.

Susan looked up at the house and found she had to step backwards to see it all properly. ‘Does our Nell live ’ere on all these floors?’ she said, astounded.

‘Yers, she does,’ Ma Gwyn replied proudly.

‘But how did she get such a place?’

No one answered this.

Mrs Pearce coughed delicately. ‘So these ladies are related to Mistress Gwyn – but should I really let them in?’ she asked Eliza.

Eliza shrugged. She didn’t know and much less cared. ‘Please could I leave it to you to decide,’ she said to Mrs Pearce and, pushing through the little group, she went to her room and climbed on to her
bed. Instead of mulling over all that had happened and trying to make sense of things, though, she pulled the blanket over her head and fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.