The Loves of Charles II (117 page)

The audience laughed loud and long.

Many covert glances were thrown at the King in his royal box and pert Nell on the stage. She had had her lord; she had reached her King; but she had not kept her King.

There was no sign on the King’s face to show how he received this piece of impudence. But Nell, intensely aware of him, believed he was displeased.

She went straight to her lodgings that night and wept a little, but not much. She had to show the world a bold front, and the next day she was a merry madcap once more.

“Nelly … the old Nelly … is back,” it was said.

And after a while it was forgotten that she had ever changed. There she was, the maddest and most indiscreet creature who had ever played in the King’s Theater, and the people crowded into the playhouse to see her.

Now and then the King came. Occasionally he sent for Nell. But Moll Davies had her fine house near Whitehall, and had left the stage.

All the actresses talked of Moll’s good fortune, and many wondered why it was that pretty, witty Nell had pleased the King so mildly and Moll had pleased him so much.

The company performed Ben Jonson’s
Cataline.
Lady Castlemaine sent for Mrs. Corey who was playing Sempronia—a most unattractive character—and gave her a sum of money on condition that she would, when playing the part, mimic Lady Castlemaine’s great enemy of the moment, Lady Elizabeth Harvey, whose husband had recently left London for Constantinople as the King’s ambassador.

During the very first performance, when the question was asked, “But what will you do with Sempronia?” Lady Castlemaine leaped to her feet and shouted at the top of her voice, “Send her to Constantinople.”

Lady Harvey was so incensed that she arranged that Mrs. Corey should be sent to prison for the insult. Lady Castlemaine then used all her influence, which was still great, to have her released. And when Mrs. Corey next played the part she was pelted with all manner of obnoxious objects, and men, hired by Lady Elizabeth, snatched oranges from the orange-girl’s baskets to throw at the actors on the stage.

Each night the play was performed there was an uproar between men hired by Lady Elizabeth Harvey and those hired by Lady Castlemaine. It was bad for the play and the actors, but good for business; for the theater was filled each time that play was performed.

Later, Dryden’s
Tyrannic Love; or the Royal Martyr
was produced; and in this Nell played Valeria, daughter of the Emperor Maximin who persecuted St. Catherine. It was a small part in which Nell stabbed herself at the end; then came the epilogue, which was to be her great triumph.

She felt exalted that day. She had escaped from the dismal creature she had become. She had been a fool to harbor such romantic thoughts about a King.

“Nelly, grow up,” she said to herself. “Have done with dreaming. What are you to him—what could you ever be—but a passing fancy?”

She lay dead on the apron stage and when the stretcher-bearers approached with her bier, she leaped suddenly to her feet, crying:

Then she came to the very front of the apron stage—mad Nelly, the most indiscreet of all the actresses, pretty, witty Nell who had won their hearts.

The King, sitting in his box, leaned forward. She felt his approving eyes upon her. She knew that, try as he might, he could not withdraw them, and she believed then that neither Lady Castlemaine nor Moll Davies could have made him turn his eyes from her.

She cried in her high-pitched, mocking tones:

The audience was craning forward to listen as she went on with the lines which were setting some rocking with laughter, while others, fearful of missing Nelly’s words, cried: “Hush!”

She had thrown back her head; her lovely face was animated. Many caught their breath at the exquisite beauty of the dainty little creature as she continued:

The pit roared its approval. Nell permitted herself one look at the royal box. The King was leaning forward; he was clapping heartily; and he was smiling so intimately that Nell knew he would send for her that night.

She felt light-headed with gaiety. She had tried to act a part because she had loved a King. In future she would be herself. Who knew, had he known the real Nelly, Charles might have loved her too.

Charles did send for Nell that night, but secretly. Will Chaffinch came to her lodgings to tell her that His Majesty wished her to visit him by way of the back stairs.

In high good spirits Nell prepared herself for the journey and, very soon after Chaffinch had called at her lodgings, she was mounting the privy stairs to the King’s chamber.

Charles was delighted to see her.

“It is long since we have met, Nell,” said he, “in these intimate surroundings, but I have thought of you often—and with the utmost tenderness.”

Nell’s face softened at the words, even while she thought: Does he mean it? Is this another of those occasions when his desire to be kind triumphs over truth?

But perhaps his greatest charm was that he could make people believe, while they were in his presence, all the kind things he said to them. It was only after they had left him that the doubts crept in.

“Matters of state,” he murmured lightly.

And indeed, he mused, that which had kept him from Nell was indeed a matter of greatest importance to the state. Of late he had been spending his nights with Catherine, his wife.

He had done his duty, he decided with a grimace. He fervently hoped that the exercise would bear fruit.

I must get a legitimate son, he told himself a hundred times a day. Every time he saw his brother James, every time he saw that handsome sprig, young Monmouth, swaggering about the Court eager that none should forget for a moment that he was the King’s son, Charles said to himself: I must get me a son.

Here was a perverse state of affairs. He had many healthy children, sons among them, growing up in beauty to manhood, many of them bearing the stamp of his features—and all bastards. There was scarcely one of his mistresses who had not borne a child which she swore was his. Od’s fish, I am a worthy stallion, he thought. Yet, in my legitimate bed I am sterile—or Catherine is. Poor Catherine! She yearns for a child equally with me. Why in the name of all that’s holy should our efforts meet with no success?

And it was a great burden to follow the call of duty, to spend long hours of the night with Catherine—cloying, clinging Catherine—when superb creatures such as Barbara, charmingly pretty dolls such as Moll Davies, and exquisitely lovely sprites, such as this little Nelly, had but to be brought at his command.

When he had seen Nell on the stage this day, rising from her bier, looking the very embodiment of charm and wit and all that was fascinating and amusing, he had determined to evade his duty that night.

“My dear wife,” he had said to Catherine, “I shall retire early this evening. I feel unwell.”

She was startled, that good wife of his. He was never ill. There was not another at Court who enjoyed his rude health. In the game of tennis he excelled all others; and if he spent his afternoons in the theater and his evenings in amusing the ladies, his mornings were often devoted to swimming, fishing, or sailing. His laziness was of the mind—never of the body. He slept little, declaring that the hours a man spent in unconsciousness were lost hours; he had not yet had such a feast of the good things life had to offer that he could afford to waste long periods of his life in sleep. He merely disliked what he called “that foolish, idle, impertinent thing called business,” and much preferred to take “his usual physic at tennis” or on horseback.

Mayhap he had been unwise to make the excuse of ill health. Catherine was all solicitude. She was a simple soul, who yet had much to learn of him; and he was his most foolish self in that he could not bring himself to say—as my lord Buckingham would have told his wife, or my lord Rochester his—that he needed an occasional escape from her company; he must tell his lies for, if he did not, he would hurt her, and to see her hurt would spoil his pleasure; and that was one thing he could not endure—the spoiling of his pleasure.

When they next met she would smother him with her concern and he would have to feign a headache or pain somewhere, and remember the exact position of the pain. He might even have to endure a posset of her making since the dear simple creature was ever eager to display her wifely devotion.

But enough of that—here was Nell, risen from her bier, prettier than ever, her eyes sparkling with wit and good humor.

This little Nelly grows on me, pondered the King; and lifting from the bed one of the many spaniels which were always in his bedchamber, he embraced her warmly; and Nell with delight gave herself up to that embrace.

They made love. They dozed, and they awakened to find Will Chaffinch’s wife at their bedside.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty! I pray you awake. The Queen comes this way. She brings a posset for you.”

“Out of sight, Nelly!” said the King.

Nell whisked out of bed and, naked as she was, hid herself behind the hangings.

Catherine entered the room just as Nell was hidden; she approached the bed, her long and beautiful hair hanging about her shoulders, her plain face anxious.

“I could not sleep,” she said. “I could do naught but think of you in pain.”

The King took her hand as she sat on the bed and looked at him anxiously.

“Oh,” he said, “the pain is to be deplored, only because it disturbed your slumbers. It has gone. In fact I have forgotten where it was.”

“I very much rejoice. I have brought this dose. I am sure it will bring immediate relief should you need it.”

Nell, listening, thought: here are the King and Queen of England, and he treats her in the same charmingly courteous way in which he treats his harlots.

“And you,” he was saying, “should be resting in your bed at this hour. I shall be the one who has to bring you doses if you wander thus in your night attire.”

“And you would,” she said. “I know it. You have the kindest heart in the world.”

“I pray you do not have such high opinions of me. I deserve them not.”

“Charles … I will stay beside you this night …”

There was a sudden silence and, unable to stop herself, Nell moved the hangings and looked through the opening she had made.

She saw that one of the King’s spaniels had leaped onto the bed and was bringing Nell’s tiny slipper in his mouth and laying it there as though offering it to Queen Catherine.

Nell, in that quick glance, took in the scene—the King’s discomfiture, the Queen’s face scarlet with humiliation.

The Queen quickly recovered her dignity. She was no longer the same inexperienced woman who had swooned when she had come face-to-face with Barbara Castlemaine, and the odious woman had kissed her hand.

She said abruptly: “I will not stay. The pretty fool who owns that little slipper might take cold.”

The King said nothing. Nell heard the door close.

Nell came slowly back to the bed. The King was gently stroking the ears of the little spaniel who had betrayed them. He stared moodily before him as Nell got in beside him.

He turned to her ruefully. “There are many strange things happening in the world,” he said. “Many women are kind to me; but I am a King, and it pays to be kind to kings, so that presents little mystery. But there is one
mystery I have been unable to solve: Why does that good and virtuous woman who is my Queen love me?”