The Perfect Royal Mistress (24 page)

“Your Ladyship,” she said.

“So you are the famous Nell Gwynne everyone chatters on about.”

For a painful heartbeat, Nell thought Lady Castlemaine knew what had happened between herself and the king. She felt the blood drain from her face at the prospect. “I’m probably more infamous at this point than anything else, since things did change ’ere upon my return, and most will tell you, not for the better.”

Castlemaine studied her for a moment with those assessing green eyes, and Nell saw her mouth twitch slightly. Then she pursed her lips, as if she had smelled something foul. “Self-deprecation can be a useful tool, Mrs. Gwynne. But only when used in careful moderation.”

“I shall remember that, Your Ladyship. Thank you,” she said, then bobbed a second curtsy.

She smiled at the show of deference, and Nell saw straight teeth, and then something more: One tooth at the center had a slight chip. A flaw. So the great lady was not so perfect after all. The strain Nell felt at the encounter began to abate as swiftly as a retreating tide, and she felt her sense of self return.

“I saw you in
The Mad Couple
last spring. I found you to be quite good.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“Very funny.”

Richard Bell chose this moment to speak. “The Duke Buckingham, and even His Majesty, have told her that, as well. She only needs another comedy here to—”

He had been anxious to help, but he had gone too far, mentioning the king in connection with an actress. Everyone in the tiring-room could sense it. Nell watched Lady Castlemaine realize, once again, just how pervasive the king’s appetites could be.

Richard lowered his head at the awkward silence he had created.

“Ah, well,” said Castlemaine tartly. “His Majesty is a great patron of the theater. But he is also taken up with his children of late, and no longer given to the peculiar plunges into folly he once was.”

“Five minutes, everyone!” A young man called into the tiring-room, signaling the commencement of the play.

“Fascinating to have met you, Mrs. Gwynne,” Castlemaine smiled tightly. “I wish you good fortune on the stage today. By the sound of things, you are going to need it.”

In the two-minute encounter, Nell had met the infamous Lady Castlemaine, an aging beauty apparently clever, or ruthless, enough to have won back the king. If she were ever to come upon His Majesty again, Nell would consider herself warned.

Chapter 15

A
LL THAT IS AND SHALL BE
, A
ND ALL THE PAST, IS HIS

—Sophocles

T
HERE
was blood, dripping, oozing, washing across everything. It became tears, hot and salty. They fell into his eyes so that he could not see, but it was there, on his lips, the gritty taste of blood, the king’s blood, sprayed outward from the neck, and Charles’s ears were full of the weeping. It surrounded him until the sound became a roar, became unbearable. “No!
No!
Don’t kill him! You cannot kill him!”

Charles bolted upright, his face awash in perspiration, and his heart slamming so hard he could not catch his breath. It was a moment before he could see his own bed, the collection of spaniels at his feet. It had only been a dream…the same dream as always. The girl beside him was, incredibly, still asleep, thank God, as he had no idea who she was. Nor did he wish to. Another procurement of William Chiffinch, a young body to help him forget that he loved no one and no one loved him. The vivid dream so close in his mind brought a rush of bile to his throat. It was all so pathetic at this hour of the night: the women, the idleness, and, with it, the pervasive sense of loneliness that never quite went away. Lines of the satirist, the Earl of Rochester, came to mind:
Nor are his high desires above his strength; his sceptre and his prick are of a length.
Cruel words, but true. It was why Rochester thrived at court. Charles rose and tossed on a dressing gown. Still, the naked girl on the bed did not stir. Chiffinch’s rooms were beside the king’s bedchamber. One slight rap on the door and Chiffinch would have his wife rouse the girl, see her dressed, and on her way.

In bare feet and an untied dressing gown, he paused to knock on Chiffinch’s door, then he continued on down the paneled corridor to the queen’s private apartments at the other end of the Long Gallery, with its view over the river and ceiling painted over a century before by Holbein. On nights like these, though few and far between, he wished Catherine’s rooms were nearer. He must be near to something good and kind, even if he did not love her as he should.

Catherine’s lady, Maria Mariano, a homely Portuguese matron, met him at the door in her white cap, nightdress, and hastily tied dressing gown, her inky hair long on her shoulders.

“The queen has long ago retired, Your—”

Charles raised a hand, stopping her. “I wish only to look in on her for a moment.”

He brushed past her and crossed through two sitting rooms to the queen’s bedchamber. Catherine slept like a corpse, her pale skin hidden by a high lace collar, her dark hair bound into a linen nightcap, and her hands joined upon her breast. He sank into Maria’s chair beside the bed. His wife was not beautiful or enticing, but her kindness had always been the draw for him to try and feel something for her. After a moment, she opened her eyes. “You’ve had the dream again, haven’t you?” she asked him in English, thickly accented with her own Portuguese.

He took her hand tenderly. She did not know the details of his recurring dream; she knew only that it was a disturbing one. She knew it was likely about the former king’s murder because once, when they were newly married, he had thrown water from the ewer and basin on himself and rubbed himself nearly raw, asking her all the while if she could still see blood on his skin.

“I’m all right. I just needed to see you,” he said quietly.

“I wish you could speak of it, Charles. If not with me, then with someone.”

“Perhaps one day.”

He could see how frail and tired she looked, suffering, he knew, every herb and tincture possible to try to become pregnant. He had been wrong to come here seeking the kind of comfort she was not capable of giving him. After another moment, he leaned over and pressed a kiss onto her forehead in the shadowy twilight.

“Would you like to stay?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

“You rest. It will be morning soon,” he soothed her, watching her face soften with relief. “Perhaps we can walk together later.”

“Only if you do not walk so quickly, as is your custom with others. I am never quite as quick at anything as the others.”

He knew what she meant. They both knew. “You’ve been a good wife, Catherine.”

“I have not done my duty to you, the one for which we married.”

Charles gently placed her hand back atop her other hand, which had remained on her chest. “You have been a comfort to me. That’s a duty in itself, and in it I have been well pleased.”

She smiled softly, and he could see her eyelids begin to close once again. Lingering a moment more, he pressed a kiss onto her cheek, then quietly left the queen’s bedchamber. This was not the answer for him, nor was she. He would go on looking elsewhere until he found it. But Catherine was safe with him—she would always be—and Charles was glad of it.

John Dryden stood in the innermost sanctum, the royal bedchamber at Hampton Court, early the next morning, facing the king, who was being ceremoniously dressed before a collection of ambassadors, courtiers, and servants in front of a trio of floor-to-ceiling Flemish tapestries. The room was vast and grand, with a great poster bed and high crimson-velvet tester dominant behind it. The chairs were cushioned in plush crimson, and the cabinets gleamed with royal silver. He had been summoned there by the Duke of Buckingham, and he had expected to be received in the presence chamber, honor enough for a well-known yet modest London playwright. Being permitted here, into this inner sanctum, to watch the king’s rituals, was a suspiciously high honor to be now accorded.

“Has Your Majesty had an opportunity to read the play you requested be written?” he asked, once he was brought forward.

“I have read it.”

“And does the outcome please you, sire?”

“The role of Jacinta is written perfectly. She will be brilliant at it.”

“It was my hope Your Majesty would find it so.”

“And I wish to see
An Evening’s Love
performed here at court first, to be certain of the outcome. With Mrs. Gwynne in the lead role. After what happened with the dramas, I should not wish her to take any unnecessary chances.”

Dryden bowed to the king. “It is understood, Your Majesty.”

“Can you see it arranged with all the players, Killigrew, Hart, and the rest?”

Dryden tried to gauge the king’s wish before he responded. “Of course, I shall command her to Hampton Court, along with the other players. And we would all expect Mrs. Gwynne to be honored by the invitation to perform for Your Majesty here.”

There was a little silence. A cough, and the echo, in the cavernous, vaulted bedchamber.

“And yet you are the playwright,” the king went on, sounding oddly tentative. “Perhaps you would implore her with something more than her duty to her king. I do not wish her to come here simply at my command, Dryden.”

“An alternative is to be my own notion, then?”

“There must be an element of desire on her part, or it will be pointless to me.”

There was irritation in his voice. Dryden bowed deeply. “But you are the great king of England, sire. Attending you would be any young lady’s desire.”

Charles swatted the air, bored with flattery. “It is a good thing you are a better playwright than you are a sycophant, or I might never see Mrs. Gwynne again,” he said.