The Darling Strumpet (48 page)

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Authors: Gillian Bagwell

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General

BOOK: The Darling Strumpet
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When would Charles come? She longed for the comfort of his arms. He had been hunting at Richmond Park, and though someone had ridden out immediately, it could be hours before he heard the news. And then what? Would he come? Or would she have to bear the pain alone, as she had born so many other pains?
Swift and heavy footsteps sounded outside, the door opened, and Charles rushed across the room, casting off his hat as he took her into his arms.
Nell clung to him and sobbed, and she heard that he, too, was weeping. His hair fell over her face as he cradled her, and the scent of him, the solid familiarity of his arms and body, were a rock of salvation to which she could cling in the heaving ocean of her grief.
 
 
 
THE DAYS PASSED IN BLACKNESS. NELL AWOKE EACH MORNING TO A new shock of pain and loss, a new awareness of raw agony, as if a limb had been lopped off in the night and she woke each day to find herself drenched in blood and straining to make herself whole again. Her body felt heavy, as if she were filled with sand, the slightest movement an overwhelming effort.
Out of the deep pain there began to creep tentacles of anger. Why had Charles insisted that the poor child be sent so far away? Why had she agreed? Why had Savile not done more, why had the doctors failed her child? And a new thought gnawed at her mind. What if his death was more than accident or illness? If someone wished her ill, what better way to strike at her than to take from her her precious baby? Who bore her malice and had the means to plot against her?
Louise.
Nell’s mind fastened on Louise, recently come back from France, and the more she thought, the greater became her certainty. Louise hated her for Charles’s easy affection to her, for the love and admiration the people showed for her, in contrast to the sneering disdain they held for the French interloper. Louise had many friends in France, collected favors owed to her and hoarded them up like apples for a cold winter. What would be easier than for her to induce someone to poison poor Jemmy’s food?
Nell knew it was madness even as she acted, but she could not help herself, was driven onward by white-hot fury. She dressed, summoned her sedan chair, gave orders to be carried to the palace, and made her way to Louise’s apartments, her face a mask of cold vengeance. She would gouge Louise’s eyes from her head, tear the pouting baby lips from her fat face, pull her guts from her belly with bare hands and eat her beating heart.
“Why, Mrs. Nelly!” Louise was surprised to see Nell but rose to greet her.
“You killed him!” Nell shrieked, advancing.
“Killed?” Louise stammered, her maids backing away from Nell as though from a rabid dog. “Killed who?”
“My boy! My Jemmy!” Nell cried. “I know it was you, you venomous bitch!” She rushed at Louise, but her voice had summoned sentries, and hands held her back. She clawed to get free, kicking, scratching, intent on mayhem and death.
“Oh, no!” Louise cried. “No,
mon dieu
! Let her go, I pray you.”
Released, Nell collapsed to the floor, sobs wracking her, and Louise knelt beside her and took her face in her hands.
“Madame, please. Nell. I beg of you, listen to me.” Nell grasped Louise’s arms, but for support now, and listened.
“Yes, we have our differences, you and I, and it is true we do not like each other much. But on my soul, and as a mother, I ask you to believe me. I did not harm your sweet boy. I could not. I tell you truly that if you were to disappear from this earth, I would do all within my power to care for your boy as my own. I swear to you.”
Nell saw the truth in Louise’s eyes. What a fool she had made of herself. It was a ridiculous thought to have had. Why had she not made inquiries, gone the subtle way about things, as any sane person would have done?
“Forgive me, madam.” She struggled to rise, but Louise stayed her.
“There is nothing to forgive. If I thought someone had wanted to harm my boy I would have done the same, I assure you. Nelly, would not things be easier for both of us if we ceased our enmity? Perhaps we shall never love one another, but can we not make a new start?”
“Yes,” Nell murmured. “You are right, and you are kind to understand.”
“Then here,” Louise said, proffering an embroidered silk handkerchief. “Will you not blow your nose, my friend, and have a cup of tea?”
 
WINDSOR. NELL HAD COME TO UNDERSTAND WHY CHARLES LOVED IT. She felt safe, as he did there. Not because of the impenetrable walls or the soldiers who could be stationed to guard the castle against attack. But because Burford House, as it had become known, was her haven, the emblem of Charles’s love for her, the more so now that he had given it to her outright instead of as a leasehold, and encouraged her to assuage her grief by losing herself in decorating the house and making it comfortable and beautiful, a nest where she could live and die, come what might.
Potevine, her London upholsterer, had been busy for weeks with his crew, hanging panels of tapestry, laying carpets, painting and staining and furnishing. Antonio Verrio, the Italian painter who had done so much work on the castle’s restoration over the past few years and was in such high demand, had put off all other work and was even now turning the ceilings into sweeping scenes of nymphs and cherubs.
At the thought of the cherubs, Nell’s heart lurched, Jemmy’s angelic face and chubby baby form drifting once more to her mind. She looked out the window of her bedroom, her soul calmed as always by the sight of the royal parkland rolling off into the distance, the verdant scene giving off a sense of harmony that soothed her. Charles was finding his peace that day in fishing, as he did so frequently that he worried his doctors. He had shrugged them off the day before, despite their tutting that he would fish on a day when a dog would not be abroad.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway and Nell turned with irritation. Why couldn’t she be left to herself for a few minutes?
“Madam.” Bridget’s voice was tentative, strained. “I’m sorry, madam. There’s a messenger just come from town. The Earl of Rochester is dead.”
 
 
 
NELL LAY STARING INTO THE DARK. THE FUNERAL HAD BEEN ALMOST more than she could bear, but at least there had been company there, sound and noise. Now she was alone. Flashes of memory kept flaming into her mind. Rochester’s laugh, as he pulled her on top of him in bed, crying “Come, the dragon upon St. George now!” The feel of his hands on her breasts, his fingers on her nipples squeezing fiery desire into her. His lazy smile at her from the pit as she met his eyes during some prologue delivered long ago. The sneer that tried but could not quite cover the pain that lay beneath.
And now he was gone. Poor Johnny. A satyr, a wizard, a scholar, a dangerous hellion, and a lost little boy. All perished from the earth. And gone to where? To somewhere he had found peace, Nell hoped. She tried to pray. But gave up. Surely any god who could hold his place in the heavens would laugh at any prayer from a whore for the soul of a libertine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
 
 
T
HROUGHOUT THE FALL AND WINTER, THE DRUMBEATS OF TROUBLE grew louder again. There were increasingly strident calls for Charles to exclude his brother James from the succession, and after an exhausting series of skirmishes with Shaftesbury and his party, and with a new infusion of money from France, he prorogued Parliament in January and announced that the new Parliament would be summoned in March in Oxford, that bastion of royalist support that had been his father’s headquarters during the war.
Oxford welcomed the king with open arms, and Nell’s spirits were buoyed to see the cheering crowds that lined the roads as the royal cavalcade entered the town and to hear the cries of “God save the king!” and the bells ringing in celebration. People pressed forward, straining for a glimpse of the king. One burly man, waving his hat in the air, bellowed, “Let the king live, and the devil hang up all Roundheads!”
At Nell’s side, Charles smiled broadly, leaning out the window to wave, and she had a vision of him as a ship in full sail with the wind at his back, not battling head down into a storm as he had done for so long.
Shaftesbury blustered into town and holed up at Balliol College. With his arrival, and the anticipation of the renewed fight over the Exclusion Bill, came restive crowds of partisans. Proponents of both sides stalked the town, wearing the red ribbons of the royalist Tories or the violet of the rebellious Whiggamors. Shouting matches and scuffles broke out. The Duke of Monmouth moved through the streets in a sedan chair, preceded by a band of ruffians with leaden flails, daring anyone to make trouble. Louise came, and set up a rival camp to Nell’s.
Oxford took on a carnival atmosphere. Ballad singers and the sellers of broadsheets drew raucous crowds, pressing to buy the latest parody, which presented Nell and Louise as battling little dogs, Tutty and Snapshort, snarling and tussling over the favors of the king and trying who should wield the greater influence. Nell laughed it off when Buckingham read it to her.
“You know I have never tried to meddle in all that, which is why Charles finds my company a pleasure instead of a burden. That broadsheet that was put around lately got it right:
“All matters of state from her soul she does hate
And leaves to the politic bitches.
The whore’s in the right, for ’tis her delight
To be scratching just where it itches.”
 
Charles was determined to enjoy himself in the fortnight before Parliament met. Nell accompanied him hawking on Burford Downs, and to the racing—the contest for the King’s Plate had been moved from Newmarket. Many of Charles’s racehorses had been brought there, and gentlemen from around the country had sent theirs. The players of the Theatre Royal descended, and put on
Tamerlaine the Great
at Christ Church. Charles strode into the great hall with Nell on one arm and Louise on the other.
As Nell’s coach made its way back to her lodgings after the play, its progress became slower and she could hear the voices of an angry crowd.
“Here, give way!” The coachman’s raised voice was hoarse with anger, tinged with a note of panic. The shouts grew louder and closer, and the coach lurched to a halt.
“Whore!”
“Filthy jade!”
“Get you back to France, you impertinent Popish piece!”
Nell thrust aside the leather covering from the window and ducked back, just missing a hurled piece of what smelled to be dog shit.
They think I’m Louise, she realized. And they’ll kill me without realizing their mistake. She stood so that she could lean her head and shoulders out the narrow window of the coach and raised her voice to be heard above the mob.
“Pray, good people, be civil! I am the Protestant whore!”
After a moment of confused babble, a laugh went up, and then a cheer.
“It’s Nelly! Our lass! Make way!”
Nell waved, smiling, as the crowds parted to let her pass, and the coach lurched forward. She found she was shaking and hoped despite herself that Louise had arrived safely back from the theater.
 
 
 
CHARLES OPENED PARLIAMENT ON THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH. The Commons convened at the Geometry School, and that night he returned to Nell with a grimly smug smile on his face.

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