Exit the Actress (47 page)

“Mistress Gwyn.” It was a statement. Not Ellen.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Slick sweat trickled down my back.

“Yes, that fits,” she said flatly. She was looking down at my slippers—my shell-pink slippers.

“You’ve got to talk to him, Nelly!” Buckingham thundered away in my tiring room—my private tiring room that never seems to be private these days.

I winced as he banged his fist down upon my delicately carved dressing table—it was new, a present from Tom.

“He listens to you. You must make him see sense! He must dissolve this Parliament and call another—one that will grant him proper funds!”

“So tell him that!” I said, exasperated.

He will not listen to me on this matter,” Buckingham snarled. “Get on with it, Nelly! Today!”

Everything is always
today!
with Buckingham. Everything is always
imperative! Urgent!
One grows deaf to his impassioned nagging. He has no sense of subtlety or timing. But then I suppose one who feels utterly entitled to everything has no need of timing. “I can’t speak to him today; he is Touching for the King’s Evil at Greenwich all afternoon.” I shuddered. It was a bizarre and, I am quite sure, ineffectual ritual as the same batch of afflicted sufferers showed up every week.

“Ha!” Buckingham snorted. “As if that cures anyone. If he would charge
for his services, that would be useful at least.” I held my tongue. For once I agreed with Buckingham and have lately mentioned to Charles the possibility of establishing a proper modern hospital instead of this weird enchanted nonsense.

I watched Buckingham pace about the small room like a caged panther. I waited. Eventually he would exhaust himself—although he had been going on for some time. I heard a rustle of skirts and looked up to see both Marshall sisters casually loitering by the open door. I stood and firmly shut it.

“Now,” I said soothingly, “you know what he is like. There is no talking to him until he is ready. I’m sorry,” I said, turning back to my make-up box, hoping that would be the end of it. I was on this afternoon and could not find my new pot of silver eye paint—I suspected the light-fingered Becka Marshall.

“But this is what you are
supposed
to do for me. This is why you are where you are: in his bed instead of mine.”

I ignored the crass remark but took his meaning clearly. He had got me into the king’s bed, and now I am therefore in his service—otherwise, he assumed I would be in
his
bed and at
his
service: not true, but that was not the quarrel to pick today.

I turned and said carefully, “Your cause is a good one, and as far as I can tell it is relatively free of self-interest—surprising for you.” The acclaim he would garner for solving the navy problem would increase his growing popularity with the common people, but I did not mention that.

“Nelly!” he exploded. I held up my hand; I had no time for this today. Buckingham has never been one to see himself clearly, and this afternoon was not the moment to make him do so.

“I care for you a great deal and will help if I can, but I will not push him. You of all people should know that is not wise.” He had evidently forgotten his recent stay in the Tower and could not see that he was balanced on a knife’s edge with the king at the moment—childhood companion or not. He had traded too long on their history of affection, and their fathers’ affection before them, to heed the warning signs. I knew (from Johnny) that he had already dangerously bullied the king’s brother James: trying to force him to sign a request for funds he did not want to sign, and then humiliating him in the council chamber.

“Patience,” I said, putting a placating hand on his arm. He is not ready yet.”

“Well, he should be bloody ready!” he bellowed. “These are the men who are supposed to
die
for him if the need arises. You’d think he’d be able to pull his prick out of my cousin’s cunny long enough to notice that!”

With that, he slammed out of the room, scattering the eavesdropping Marshall sisters like geese. I sighed, stung by his crude remark. In anger or frustration George will say anything. It was no good telling him that it was not a matter of not noticing, but of not knowing how to go about obtaining the funds
and
saving face.

Note
—Hilarious rumour of Johnny Rochester having his clothes and money stolen while he was with a wench, walking home stark naked, only to return (clothed) to find that is was the wench who had stolen the clothes in the first place (and stuffed them into her feather-bed). She ransomed them back to him for a good sum. All was returned and good humour restored. It is said that it was Savile who put her up to it. It sounds like him. Charles never tires of repeating this story. Johnny laughs along. It is good to see them together. Charles loves him so.

Note
—Home in Drury Lane. The rain is leaking though the roof above the window. The paint has almost entirely peeled from the damp walls. It is a strange thing to spend so much time in the royal palaces of this country and then return to my dreary childhood home. As I am hardly here, it hardly matters, I suppose. Mother is rarely home; she has set up a temporary “establishment” at the Cock and Pie tavern. I try my best not to think too much about it and can only hope it never becomes known at court. I have learned to take all her improprieties in stride. A family is a messy, unwieldy thing bounded only by blood and—beneath all the embarrassment—affection.

Rainy day in the country with Charles. He was distressed over a letter from his sister, Minette (well, not Minette to me, but the Princesse
Henriette-Anne, the Duchesse d’Orléans, the Madame of France, married to King Louis’s notoriously mean and effeminate brother Philippe, the Duc d’Orléans, the Monsieur of France).

“He bullies her, beastly man. How can anyone bully my sister? She is an angel. She writes to apologise that in her official letters she is no longer permitted to express affection for me, as her husband has deemed it un-seemly and disloyal.”

“Disloyal to whom?”

“Him, of course. Ridiculous.”

Charles was pacing in front of the fire, waving the letter about as he spoke. The letter was brought by one of the special fleet of couriers Charles employs to ferry secret correspondence betwixt them. The pugs and spaniels, recognising this mood and not wanting to be stepped on, had taken refuge under the sofa. I leaned over to check that Ruby and Scandalous were safely among them. Satisfied, I returned to my reading.

“He believes that before Christmas she arranged the dismissal of his wretched lover—what’s his name, Chevalier de something or other—and now he seeks his petty revenge upon her.”

“De Lorraine, I think. What is he like?” I asked, lowering the script I was hopelessly behind in learning. Rumours about Minette’s vicious husband were legion.

“The Monsieur? He is vain, frivolous, spiteful, vindictive, and possibly the worst husband my mother could have found for her,” he said, dropping wearily onto the sofa and laying his head in my lap, knocking my script to the ground.
Heigh-ho
. “She ought to have married our cousin King Louis, instead of his dreadful brother, but at the time Louis wasn’t interested in her. Like dancing with the bones of holy innocents, I think he said. Very rude.”

“But I thought she and Louis—”

“Oh yes. Later, after she was married, Louis was terribly interested in her, declaring his undying
this
and everlasting
that,
praising her slender frame, exquisite taste, and flawless complexion, on and on. Which of course only enraged her jealous little husband more. Fey Philippe is petty by nature and has been encouraged to wear frilly dresses and face paint and be a silly pastry puff of a man since birth—pettiness and vanity, awful combination. He is not even interested in women and has publicly either mistreated
or ignored my sister since their wedding. Not to imply that he does not privately hound and torment her. She writes that he has daily reports brought to him recording all her activities and correspondence—to whom she speaks, what she reads, where she goes—and so she must be extra cautious when writing to me. Any loyalty to me angers him greatly. Of course she is loyal to me, her own brother. How absurd!”

“Philippe wears dresses?”

“Mmm, two sons can be very dangerous. The Queen Mother, my aunt Anne of Austria, trained one to be an inconsequential, spangled circus bear. That way, Louis can reign unchallenged. God help us should anything ever happen to Louis.”

I did not know what to say to that and so called for Mrs. Chiffinch to bring a collation and the strong coffee Charles favours, hoping to tempt him out of his ill humour.

“Now Minette’s lady-in-waiting, the little la Vallière, is Louis’s mistress, plain but sweet, an excellent horsewoman, if I remember, and Philippe’s dreadful lover—that greasy Chevalier—is returned to court, and Minette is virtually a prisoner at St. Cloud. And I am unable to help.”

“Can your mother not do something? She is, after all, there,” I asked, reaching over him to move the books and clocks—everywhere he goes, Charles brings clocks—out of the way to make room for the coffee tray.

“My mother? My mother firmly believes that those whom God has joined together, let no man … on and on. Totally forgetting that it was not God, but she and my dreadful aunt Anne, who did all the joining together. I doubt God was consulted. Ugh,” he groaned, closing his eyes in disgust.

The subject of his family always leads to noises like that.

“Well, I shall send her something,” I said brightly.

“My mother?”

“No, your sister. Her wicked husband can hardly object to a gift from a common actress in London, can he? What would be the harm? And it may cheer her to know how deeply you worry for her and fondly you think of her. Yes, I shall look for a gift tomorrow. Toady husband be damned.”

Charles threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, Nell, there is truly no one like you.”

He sat up and twined his arms around my waist. I giggled archly,
wiggling deeper into his embrace. By the time Mrs. Chiffinch brought the lemon cakes she found the door locked.

Note
—Together we picked out several lovely gifts for the princess: an inlaid music box, sapphire ear-drops, and several miniatures of Charles’s favourite spaniels, done in oil. Charles wrote a touching letter and tucked it inside the music box. I wrote a brief note, introducing myself and humbly wishing her well.