The Perfect Royal Mistress (12 page)

He was being entertained by music and costumed dancers, with Buckingham beside him, when the Duke of Buckingham received word in his ear from a liveried courtier. They spoke rapidly back and forth, but their conversation was masked to the others by the sound of music and raucous laughter. A moment later, he leaned over to the king and drew a hand before his mouth.

“It has happened, Your Majesty. The rumors were true. The Dutch have attacked us at Gravesend Harbor.”

Charles glanced at him, his face going white. “How bad is it, George?”

“Our men are not defending the ships, just as Clarendon advised. Now, they say they haven’t been paid enough to risk life and limb. Our own are mutinying rather than fighting.”

“But Clarendon assured me, since there was talk of peace, that the Dutch—”

“I’ve told you all along he has gotten too long in the tooth for real and delicate negotiation. This is a certifiable disaster, sire!”

Charles bolted from his throne, which caused the music, and the merriment, to come to an abrupt halt. All eyes turned upon their king. A crescendo of worried whispers rose up. But Charles disregarded everything, dashing in long-legged strides from the Great Hall and out into the corridor beyond, the Duke of Buckingham following closely. “Perhaps now you will believe me that I am better suited as chancellor than that dithering old fool!”

A collection of courtiers followed at a discreet pace. Charles groaned. “You did try to warn me. I know you did.”

“And Clarendon now has cost this country greatly.”

They strode more quickly together, nearly at a run now, up a wide flight of stone steps, past a stone balustrade overlooking the gardens, and into an arched corridor with dark, paneled walls. The barrel-chested Duke of Lauderdale huffed while trying to meet their pace, in order to tell the king more. “They’ve taken the
Royal Charles
with absolutely no resistance at all and destroyed the
Royal James,
the
Royal Oak,
and the
Loyal London
in a single attack! The ships were, if you’ll pardon me, sitting ducks. At Clarendon’s obstinate insistence, we refused to man them!”

They were heading for the Privy Council chamber now, Charles’s velvet cloak flying out behind him like a billowing blue sail. “How many souls have been lost?”

“There’s no total yet, sire, but—”

“I should have thought after the fire the Dutch would have shown some modicum of restraint in attacking us here at home!”

“I am told they consider the fire God’s revenge, sire, for our burning their fleet last year,” said Clifford, Buckingham’s protégé.

Only once they were all seated around the long, polished oak table was it apparent that the chancellor himself, Clarendon, architect of the move toward peace, and James’s father-in-law, was not among them.

“Where is he?” the king bellowed, without saying his name.

“Lord Clarendon has been sent for, Your Majesty,” said Clifford.

Charles slammed the table. “Well, you are my Privy Council! Advise me!”

“As you know, sire, I believe we should have found what money we needed and attacked again last summer. We needed to show our strength, especially with our losses, and this waiting on the French to help broker a peace for us has shown our weakness. We played right into the very center of it!”

“The Dutch did smell our vulnerability, it seems, and seized upon it,” the king’s brother, the Lord Admiral, carefully concurred, newly returned from surveying the damage.

“Might I remind Your Majesty,” Buckingham slyly added, “that Clarendon was the only one among us to look to the French, and then wage stubbornly for inactivity.”

Charles washed a hand over his face. “The people will be furious with this, after the fire, and the plague, not to mention our previous losses.”

“I am afraid Your Majesty has taken an old friend’s age for wisdom, when it might have better been taken for the senility it clearly is.”

“That will be quite enough, George.” The king shot him a warning stare. Charles had a long history with Clarendon, as he did with Buckingham. Clarendon’s father had faithfully served Charles’s father, and had endeared himself into Charles’s memories, and his life. He had been, in many ways, like the father Charles had lost. Growing into manhood, he had depended upon Clarendon greatly. Yes, he had married his own brother, the Duke of York, to Clarendon’s daughter Anne as a show of support. Charles had loved and trusted the old man, even with his Privy Council set against him.

“I’m only saying, you cannot let him go on when it has cost us so much!”

“Enough! When I wish your further opinion on the matter, I shall ask for it!”

“But Your Majesty must hear the younger voices above the aging chorus! Even if I risk my own standing, it shall be worth England’s safety!”

Charles shot to his feet, his face blazing with sudden fury. “George, I warn you!”

“Someone has got to reason with Your Majesty, and if it takes your oldest and dearest friend to highlight the utter incompetence of an old man who—”

“To the Tower!” Charles cried, his face mottled red with rage.

“You cannot be serious! This is me, your truest friend!”

“Guards! Escort the Duke of Buckingham to the Tower, and keep him there until he has learned to honor his king, and hold his tongue!”

George Villiers did not plead his case further. He only continued to meet the gaze of the man he had helped to escape from London long ago, and to whom he had devoted his life—even if he had done it through politics and manipulation. “You can put me away if it pleases you, but not the truth!” he seethed. “Clarendon’s weakness will bleed through no matter what you do! And at the end of the day, you will realize that not only did I have our best interest at heart, but I had the courage to see it through!” He looked toward the guardsmen, then, with a flourish, turned from the king. “Now, take me where you will, and be done with it. I have shown honor to our sovereign the best way I know how. I’ve nothing further to say.”

Chapter 8

A
LL THE PLEASURE OF THE PLAY, THE
K
ING AND MY
L
ADY
C
ASTLEMAINE WERE THERE, AND PRETTY WITTY
N
ELL, AT THE
K
ING’S HOUSE.

—The Diary of Samuel Pepys

A
FTER
M
AY
D
AY, 1668

J
UST
after the great May Day celebration, a new play opened at the King’s Theater. John Dryden, the most celebrated playwright in London, had written a comedy,
The Maiden Queen,
and the role of Florimel was created particularly for Nell. She, not Charles Hart, was to be the star. The role was her largest and most demanding yet, and Nell was plagued with a sudden case of nerves. It was rumored that the Duke of York, and perhaps even the king himself, might well be in the audience for the first performance.

His Majesty, it was said, was trying to recover from the devastating attack by the Dutch at Gravesend Harbor, and from having consigned his dearest friend, the Duke of Buckingham, to the Tower for having tried to use the incident against the elderly Clarendon. Theater was a passion of his, but he rarely indulged in past months, and when he did, he went to the rival Duke’s Theater, where his current paramour, Moll Davies, performed. Or at least she would continue to perform until she bore the king’s child, which was rumored to be soon.

It was Moll who had caused Nell to look beyond Charles Hart and to begin considering wealthy candidates that might look her way. She thought of Hart, at this very moment in the next room “rehearsing” alone with Mary Knepp, the actress who was playing her friend. Hart had grown as bored with Nell as she was disgusted by him. Still, business and survival, these were what mattered. And she must think of Rose, and what their lives could return to if she failed. She stood, layered in heavy velvet skirts, made wide by a volume of petticoats. Light from the tiring-room window glinted against the amber fabric, the folds and shadows enriching them the more. The dress had been donated from Lady Argyll’s personal wardrobe. It was the most luxurious thing Nell had ever pressed against her skin. In spite of protests by the more senior actresses, Dryden had seen the valuable dress given to his star. Nothing was to hamper her performance, the playwright insisted. He wished Nell to
become
Florimel.

Charles Hart came into the ladies’ tiring-room a quarter of an hour later, flushed and distracted. He bent and kissed Nell absently on the back of the neck as she sat applying her own lip paint. “You look lovely, my dear.”

“And
you
look spent.”

She watched his expression in the mirror’s reflection. He smiled in an overly sweet manner that instantly put her on edge. “Nothing to trouble yourself over. I shall be right beside you as you triumph this afternoon. The whole lot of us are counting on it. The theater is already packed to capacity.”

“But we don’t go on for an hour.”

“Such is their thirst for Mrs. Nelly. That’s what they are calling you now, you know. How far you have managed to come when you started your career in a brothel.”

“I’d no choice, bein’ there, you know that. I was a child made to fetch wine for the patrons. But that was all that place ever got from me.”

“Of course it was,” he said condescendingly. “Now. Do you know your lines?

“Better’n you know yours, I’ll warrant.”

“We shall see.”

“Just don’t try to make me look bad to make yourself look better. Mr. Dryden won’t like it,” Nell said. Then she turned from him and went out of the tiring-room alone.

“I don’t know why we must come to
this
theater when we have a perfectly clever little play staged over at the Duke’s,” Moll Davies carped.

“This is His Majesty’s theater, my dear,” Arlington responded dryly.

The king added nothing as the royal party paraded between the swiftly parted, deeply bowing throngs of theatergoers stopping to gape and wave. Moll bored him to tears already, and she was far too shrill to keep his mind from comparing her to Barbara. Since the novelty had worn off, there was little reason to keep her around, but for the child she carried. He tried not to notice how garish Moll looked, heavily pregnant, dressed in rusty-orange brocade and mock sleeves, her hair long and loose beneath a little velvet hat. His libido certainly could lead him astray, he thought ruefully. He sank into his chair in the center of his private box and gazed down into the pit at all of the craning necks, faces turned up to see him, flirtatious smiles, bows from dandies and fops, nods from ladies hidden by their vizards, and orange girls plying their trade up and down the narrow isles. A woman in one of the other boxes lowered her vizard and smiled at him. She looked familiar, but he could not place her. She was too old to have been a dalliance…perhaps it was one of her daughters he had known? It could have been anyone at all.