Winsor, Kathleen (40 page)

She
knew well enough herself that she was ill-suited to play the Egyptian queen—the
part might much better have gone to Anne Marshall—but the idea had been Tom
Killigrew's and in her black wig with her eyes elongated by black pencil, a
sleeveless sequin-spotted vest which just covered her breasts and a thin
scarlet silk skirt slit to the knees in front, she had attracted an overflowing
house for the past week and a half. Most productions were limited to three or
four days, because so small a part of the London population attended plays, but
some of the young men had been back four or five times to see this Cleopatra.
They were used to a woman's breasts being displayed in public, but not her hips
and buttocks and legs. Every time she walked onto the stage there were whistles
and murmurs and the most unabashed comments, but the boxes had been noticeably
empty and the ladies were said to have protested they could not tolerate so
lewd and immodest a display.

Amber
more than half expected trouble and was prepared for it, but though the
atmosphere was undoubtedly tense, everything went as usual until the last scene
of the last act. Then, as she stood waiting at the side of the stage for her
cue to go on, both Beck and Anne Marshall came to stand beside her, Beck on her
right, Anne slightly in back. Amber gave Beck a careless glance but continued
to watch the stage where the men—in their great plumed headdresses which told
an audience that this was tragedy being performed—were deciding Cleopatra's
fate.

"Well,
madame," said Beck. "Let me offer my congratulations. You've
progressed mightily, they tell me—to be kept by only one man now."

Amber
looked at her sharply, and then said with an air of profound boredom:
"Lord, madame, you should see your 'pothecary. I swear you're turned quite
green."

At
that instant a pin pricked her from behind and she gave an angry start, but
before she had time to say anything Mohun came off the stage, scowled, and
muttered at them to go on. With Beck on one side and Mary Knepp on the other
Amber walked out, proclaiming in a loud clear voice:

"My
desolation does begin to make

A better life.
'Tis paltry to be Caesar..."

But
for the commotion in the audience, the last scene progressed smoothly—through
Cleopatra's dialogue with Caesar, her decision to end her life, the trial
suicide of Iras, and then Cleopatra's own seizure of the papier-mache asp,
which she addressed in full dramatic tones:

"With thy
sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate

Of life at once
untie; poor venomous fool..."

While
Beck, as the faithful serving-woman who could not bear her mistress's death,
ran distractedly about the stage, Amber applied the asp beneath her vest and
heard a young man down in Fop Corner remark, "I've seen this six times.
That viper should be weaned by now."

She
clenched her teeth and shut her eyes as in a sudden spasm of pain. But she did
not take her tragic parts very seriously and had to resist the inclination to
laugh.

After
standing motionless for a long moment she began to turn slowly in her death
agony. Halfway around, she was arrested by a sudden barking shout of laughter
from nearby. And then the sound was repeated from hundreds of throats. It swept
on up through the boxes to the galleries beneath the roof, growing ever louder
and nosier as it rose, until it seemed to fill the theatre and to come from all
sides at once, hammering against her with an almost physical force.

Instinctively
conscious that the laughter was directed at her, Amber swung quickly about,
putting her hand to the back of her skirt. And though she half expected to find
it torn open, she felt there instead a piece of cardboard and ripped it off,
sailing it furiously across the stage. Beneath and before and above her she saw
a blur of faces, a seemingly endless vista of opened mouths, and at the same
instant the apprentices began to beat their cudgels and stamp their feet and a
roaring chant went up:

"My tail's

For sale.

Half-a-crown

Will lay me
down!"

Half-crown
pieces had begun to ring upon the stage and Amber felt them pelting her
sharply, hitting her from every side. The men were climbing onto their benches,
shouting at the top of their lungs; the ladies had put on their masks but were
shaking with laughter; from top to bottom the theatre was a bedlam of noise and
confusion—though not more than forty seconds had passed since Amber's unlucky
turn.

"You
lousy bitch!" Amber ground the words through her clenched teeth.
"I'll break your head for this!"

With
a hysterical titter Beck started off the stage at a run and, just as the
curtains swished frantically together, Amber went after her as fast as she
could go, yelling, "Come back here, you damned coward!"

Anne,
waiting in the wings, stuck out a foot to trip her, but Amber jumped over it, gave
Anne a backhand swipe that sent her staggering, and rushed on. Flying down the
narrow dark hallway Beck turned to look back just as she reached the
tiring-room, gave a shriek when she saw how close her pursuer was, and dashing
in slammed the door. But before she could throw the bolt Amber had burst
against it, shoved it open, and with a violent push was inside. In one movement
she flung the bolt herself and turned to grapple with Beck.

Clawing
and biting, screaming and kicking and pounding at each other with their fists,
they rocked and swayed from one side of the room to the other. Their flimsy
costumes were soon torn to shreds; their wigs came off and the black eye-paint
smeared their faces; bloody scratches appeared on cheeks and arms and breasts. But
for the time they were engrossed in rage, unfeeling, unhearing, unseeing.

Outside
a crowd had gathered and was pounding at the door, clamouring to be let in.
Scroggs moved straddlelegged after them, keeping just out of reach of thrashing
arms and legs, cheering and shouting for Madame St. Clare. Once, when she came
too close, Beck gave her a vicious kick in the belly that knocked her into a
breathless groaning quivering heap on the floor.

At
last Amber locked one leg behind Beck's knee and they went down together,
clasped as tight as lovers, rolling over and over with first one on top and
then the other. Amber's nose was streaming and her throat was beginning to feel
raw from the blood she had swallowed, but at last she got astride Beck and
pummelled her head and face with her fists while Beck fought her off with teeth
and clawing nails. Thus they were when Scroggs opened the door and half-a-dozen
men rushed in to drag them apart, hauling Amber off and pulling Beck away in
another direction. Both women collapsed from sudden nervous exhaustion, and
neither protested at the interference. Beck began to cry hysterically, babbling
an incoherent stream of accusations and curses.

Amber
lay stretched out flat on a couch, Hart's cloak flung over her, and now while
Scroggs sopped at the blood and muttered her fierce congratulations she began
to feel the sting and smart of her wounds. Her nose was numb and seemed to have
swollen immensely and one eye was beginning to close.

Faintly
she heard Killigrew's loud angry voice: "—the laughing stock of all the
town, you damned jades! I'll never dare show this play again! Both of you are
suspended for two weeks—no, three weeks, by God! I'll have some discipline
among you impudent players or know the reason why! And you can pay the cost of
replacing your costumes—"

The
voice went on but Amber's eyes were closed and she refused to listen. She was
only relieved that Rex, who held his commission in his Majesty's regiment of
Horse Guards, had been on duty at the Palace that day.

Still,
when she came back at the end of her enforced vacation she found that though
the other women probably liked her no better and envied her no less, she had
been accepted as one of them. There was tension and amusement in the
tiring-room the first day that she and Beck met face to face, but they merely
looked at each other for a moment, then nodded and exchanged cool greetings.

A
few days later Scroggs slyly gave Amber a new blue-velvet miniver-lined hood
which some countess had just presented to
the wardrobe. Blue was not Amber's
colour and she knew it. "Thanks a million, Scroggs," she said.
"But I think Beck should have it. It matches her gown."

Beck,
standing only a few feet away and pulling on a stocking, heard her. She glanced
around in surprise. "Why should I have it? My part's but a small
one." Killigrew persisted in his punishment, and neither of them had yet
been put into the roles they had played before.

"It's
as big as mine," insisted Amber. "And anyway I've got a new petticoat
to wear."

Still
skeptical, Beck took it and thanked her.

In
the comedy that day they played two frivolous girls, close friends, and halfway
through the first act each suddenly discovered toward the other a new warmth
which grew quickly into liking. At the end of the act everyone was astonished
to see them coming off the stage arm in arm laughing gaily. After that they
were as good friends as most women, and Beck even flirted sometimes with
Captain Morgan when he came to the tiring-room—though she knew as well as Amber
that nothing would ever come of it. It was merely a gesture of good will.

Charles
II was married to the Infanta Catherine of Portugal two years after his
Restoration.

She
had been decided upon by Charles and Chancellor Hyde —now Earl of Clarendon—very
shortly after his return; the delay in the wedding had been political, designed
to coerce a larger dowry from desperate little Portugal, just recently free but
still menaced by Spain. In the end the Portuguese paid a high price for
marrying English sea-power: they gave 300,000 pounds; the right of trade with
all Portuguese colonies; and two of their most prized possessions, Tangier and
Bombay.

The
Earl of Sandwich had been sent to Portugal with a fleet to escort the princess
back to England, but Charles could not leave London until he had prorogued
Parliament, and that was several days after she had arrived at Portsmouth. But
once it was dismissed he set out immediately and rode through the night. He
arrived there early the next afternoon and went first to his own apartments to
change his clothes.

Charles
sat down and his barber lathered his face, then began to swipe across it with
swift clean strokes of a sharp-edged razor. There were black circles beneath
his eyes but he looked happy and alert, and somewhat amused, for the room was
full of courtiers and he knew that the same thought was in every head.

They
were wondering what kind of husband he was going to make, how this marriage
would affect the status of each of
them, and whether or not he really would,
as he had said, keep no mistresses once he was married. For his own part he was
glad to be away from London and the melancholy Barbara, who had sulked and
pouted and cried for weeks past, though she bragged to acquaintances that she
was going to lie-in of her second child at Hampton Court, while the King was
spending his honeymoon there.

Now
Charles glanced up at Buckingham who stood beside him, stroking the head of a
little brown-and-black spaniel. Buckingham had been there for some time and had
already seen the Infanta.

"Well?"

"Well,"
said the Duke.

Charles
laughed. "I think you're jealous, my lord." Buckingham's wife was a
plain, plump little woman with odd, slanted eyes and a large turned-up nose.
When the barber was finished the King got up and submitted to being dressed.
"Well—for the honour of the nation I only hope I'm not put to the
consummation tonight. I haven't had two hours rest in the past thirty-four, and
I'm afraid matters would go off somewhat sleepily."

Dressed
at last he slapped his hat onto his head and strode rapidly from the room, a
pack of his spaniels running at his heels, a pack of courtiers following after
them. The Infanta, he had been told, had caught a cold and been sent to bed;
and that was where he found her, sitting propped against white silk pillows
embroidered with the Stuart coat-of-arms, wearing a dressing-gown of pale pink
satin with belled wrist-length sleeves. He paused in the doorway, bowing, and
saw her eyes staring at him wide and half-frightened, her fingers twisting the
counterpane nervously.

She
was surrounded on all sides by her attendants, banked two or three deep about
the bed as though for her protection. There were half-a-dozen long-robed
priests, their tonsured heads shining, their eyes measuring and skeptical.
There were the Countesses of Penalva and Ponteval, her Majesty's chaperons, two
ugly, muddy-skinned, punctilious old women. And the six maids-of-honour, young
but just as dark, sallow, and hideous to the eye of an Englishman. Instead of
the sweeping, graceful low-cut gowns then in fashion, they were without
exception dressed in stiff-bodiced, old-fashioned farthingales which had not
been worn in England for thirty years. If they had breasts they were so tightly
cased as to appear perfectly flat, and their skirts jutted out from the waist
on either side like shelves that swung and teetered clumsily whenever they
moved.