Exit the Actress (55 page)

“Now, kick your legs and move your arms like this—that’s it!” he cheered, as I began to gently propel myself through the water with Molly on one side and Charles on the other. The three of us splashed about happily and then lay on the sunstriped lawn to dry. I can swim!

“Is that safe?” I asked him tentatively. He was lying on his back, enjoying the golden summer evening light. “For a woman, I mean.”

“Well, you’re a woman and you’re safe,” he answered without opening his eyes.

“Suppose a woman were in a more
delicate
condition?”

“And what kind of condition might that be?” he asked softly, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at me.

The queen is in residence, and I just can’t stay in the castle—well,
won’t
is a better word.
Refuse
is an even better word. Barbara Castlemaine and her brood are also lodged in the castle while Nunsuch is being renovated (again), another excellent reason to live here. This house is matchbox charming and set back on a quiet lane. Charles has hired a full staff, including two coachman, cook, cook-maid, housekeeper, housemaid, lady’s maid, scullery maid, laundry-maid, porter, two footmen, kitchen gardener, flower gardener, and errand boy. The Larks stayed in London to supervise the decoration and look after the animals; Jezebel got up to all kinds of wickedness and has had a family. Grandfather and Mr. Lark have had to build a larger shed for them.

This house is tall but slim and will not hold such a large staff, so I have packed some of them off to London to help ready the house in Newman’s Row, which is
still
under renovation and showing no sins of being finished anytime soon. Charles drew up wonderful plans for modernising the kitchens, widening the stairway, raising the door frames, breaking through walls
to combine small rooms into larger ones and even installing an indoor water closet, but I fear that we will never see the end of the construction and I will be doomed to live forever in a cloud of sawdust. We have
still
not chosen colours or furnishings for any of the reception rooms, despite Mrs. Lark’s pestering. I want green (verdant and peaceful), and she wants gold (ornate and gaudy); we are at an impasse. Grandfather and Mr. Lark are enjoying the building process enormously and spend hours poring over the plans and debating at length all the technical logistics of this wild endeavour.

Meanwhile, without the distraction of the stage, I am growing increasingly restless. I understand that Charles is determined that I should not overdo it, but at this rate I will have nothing
to
do. With the exception of his obsessive but warranted care of the queen during her many unsuccessful pregnancies, I have never heard of his expressing such vivid concern when his women are with child, and this is his ninth child! He has not even been to my bed in the last week, saying I need my rest. I hope there are no court beauties up there luring him back at night.

The queen just left. I read these words and cannot quite believe them.

Tonight:

At eleven o’clock, after Charles had returned to the castle, Jerome arrived with a note from the queen requesting a brief audience. Stunned, I quickly agreed. She arrived within a few minutes, leaving me little time to remove all traces of Charles from the sitting room: his books, maps, boots, clocks, and his velvet hat with the crimson plume…

“Your Majesty.” I curtsied deeply. She was smaller than I remembered.

“Mrs. Gwyn,” she said, refusing the proffered chair, her back willow-wand straight. “I understand you are carrying my husband’s child.”

I nodded, startled by her directness and moved by her great courage.

“And will you be seeking … placement?” Her voice had lost none of its rich Portuguese lilt.

“At court?” In spite of myself, I giggled at the ludicrous thought.

She smiled at my response, visibly relaxing. “It is rumoured that you have requested a place in my household, and after a royal birth…. It has happened … before.” Her mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. In a gesture of impulsive sweetness, she reached out, taking my hand in her own. “I knew it to be false, but I wanted to be sure. It did not sound like you. While you have caused me tremendous hurt, Ellen”—she paused, searching for the right words—“you have never been cruel.”

I squeezed her tiny hand. “Your Majesty…” How to ask forgiveness? She shook her head, my unspoken apology running off her like a raindrop. Her eyes met mine in absolute understanding. She left without another word, lightly climbing into the waiting coach.

I will not tell anyone of her visit. I know she would prefer it, and I very much want to please this brave little woman.

I have just returned from a tense walk with Charles through Home Park, which is rapidly returning to its pre-war beauty, I am told. It was a walk with a specific purpose, I discovered soon after we set out.

“Hmmm.” Charles uncharacteristically cleared his throat. “As you will not be returning to the stage—”

“What?”

“Ellen, you must see that it is impossible to be the mother of my natural child and an
actress,
” he said tersely, his eyes focusing somewhere above my head.

“Charles, I was an actress when you met me, an actress when you took me into your bed, and I am still an actress now that I am carrying your child.” I felt panic rising in my throat. I had been down this utterly dependent, unhappy, landmarkless road before.

“You must not upset yourself, my darling. As I said, it is impossible and not worth arguing over … especially now, when—”

“It would make me unhappy,” I said bluntly, stopping on the path and sitting heavily down in the cold grass. “Is that not worth arguing over?”

“What is it?” he asked, looking down at me in alarm. “Are you ill? Do you have pain?”

“I am
unhappy
. I just told you. Weren’t you listening?”

He set his mouth in a grim line and did not respond.

Note
—Again! He left after supper again! I wore my new creamy silk
gown—very
décolleté
and meant to be irresistible, but obviously isn’t as he left without even going upstairs! He said he would not be able to overcome the temptation if he slept here. “Why are you so busy overcoming temptation?” I asked him, settling onto his lap.

“Your health, my love,” he said lightly, setting me down in an armchair and moving across the room. “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, pulling the door shut behind him.

Rubbish my health! I will ask Teddy what is going on. He and Tom arrive tomorrow to entertain the court.

“Nope, no one, just you,” Teddy said, leaning back in the midday sun. We were seated in the garden amongst the last of the fragrant summer roses.

“No one?” Ruby rolled over in my lap for her afternoon sleep.

“Be careful, she is getting so fat,” Teddy observed, frowning at my pudgy dog. “If you keep feeding her—”

“Teddy! There is truly no one who has caught his eye? Frances? Is she back?” I feared Frances’s hold on him.

“No! She is off with her lumpy husband, twittering away in other pastures, thank God.” Frances irritates Teddy as well. “Honestly, just the queen.”

“And no one is trying to catch his eye?” I asked hopefully.

Teddy looked at me disdainfully and did not bother even to answer that.

“Right, sorry.” This court is stacked ten deep with pretty young women hurling themselves at the king.

“They’ve been imitating you, this last crop. Some wear their hair like you, some wear breeches, some laugh overloudly.” I pinched him at that. “What? You do! But when you do it, it is genuine and enchanting, and we love it and he loves it. I meant to tell you, Jemimah Sandwich said a couple of the latest bunch even tried to tint their hair red—came out a kind of awful carroty orange. Too bad.”

“So what is he doing when he is not with me? I can’t be there all the time, and since we came to Windsor I haven’t had the energy to be there
at all.” I leaned forward in my garden chair, eager to pry information out of my observant friend.

“Do? Tennis, swimming, riding, a lot of hunting lately, but I suspect he told you that. The poor gamekeepers are going to have to go by night and kidnap stags from other forests and bring them here so the king can hunt them—he’s killed so many. Jemimah says she will never eat venison again after this season, she’s had so much of it. Oh, and his children are about and he has been much with them—but I expect he told you that, too.”

I nodded. “Castlemaine around much?” I asked, attempting to sound casual. I knew it was she who had been spreading rumours of my request for a place in the queen’s household.

“Barbara doesn’t really interest him anymore; only her children interest him. I know she wormed her way back in by perpetually renovating her houses and making them uninhabitable construction zones, but of course he sees through that,” Teddy said, stretching out his long legs. “I think she frankly gets on his nerves at this point, and she is loud and vulgar and is losing her looks at a terrifying rate. I give you permission to shoot me should I ever get that fat,” he pronounced, closing his eyes.

I giggled and smelled the fading roses and watched the dying summer butterflies swirl around my friend.

Teddy just left to head up to the castle dressed in all his masculine finery—his feminine finery is far more
de luxe,
but he does what he can. I am feeling too sleepy to go. If there is no one else charming him, then why does he not sleep here?

I did not attend the evening of cards in James York’s suite last night—yet another evening I was too exhausted to attend. Too exhausted and too puffy. It feels as if I shall never leave this house again. Teddy says that Hart
has arrived to be with Castlemaine, and I find the whole affair too incongrously bothersome to witness. To bring her new lover, who is my old lover, to her old lover’s house—while I, his new lover, am here—ludicrous.

In any case I was too irritated to see anyone. A note arrived from Charles this morning and has left me feeling on edge all day. Jerome gave me a rueful smile as he handed me the little envelope with the great gold seal. I asked Lucy, the new chambermaid, to take him through to the kitchen for some breakfast and sat down to read.

A contract, then? If I am to receive a salary, he must believe that I am for hire, and if I am for hire, then I am a … No. I am
not
for hire. Gifts, yes. Salary, no. King or no king.

A draft for a staggering sum arrived this afternoon along with a curt note from Mr. May, all inside a hideously gaudy envelope with a fat ornate seal. I
find him an insubstantial yet sourish sort of person and am well aware that he favours Castlemaine, regardless of her dismissal in this ridiculous horse race for the king’s heart. She plays on his love of finery and wild, risky living and plies him with extravagant compliments and hints of undreamed of favours yet to come—absurd. All the while she has her sly fingers in the Privy Purse. Castlemaine is a mother five times over and ought to let go of her vixeny, compulsive flirting. It is unbecoming.

I have decided to put the whole matter out of my head for the moment, as I can see there will be no changing Charles’s mind at present, nor any reason for me to give ground. In fact, I’ve a good mind to write to Tom and ensure my billing for the autumn season.

Note
—Teddy says the rumours have begun. My absence has been noticed, and everyone can guess the cause.

Rose is here visiting me while her husband is away in the Cinque Ports in Jemmy Monmouth’s bloated retinue, and this morning she and I sat in my cheery yellow closet sketching designs for new dresses.