The Perfect Royal Mistress (54 page)

Danby, the Lord High Treasurer, sat up, the bedcovers falling away from his hairless chest. He was a cautious little man with a pallor pale as death. He had a weak chin, and dark, deep-set eyes that made the contrast all the more ghostly. He came to Louise’s private apartments only when he had seen for himself that the king had gone to Mrs. Gwynne’s house and therefore would make no inferences as to his motives for privately visiting a royal mistress. They were inferences that would have been well justified, considering what he and Louise had been doing with each other this past month. He found Louise to be a sulking, pouting, little pudge of a woman. But her breasts were as large as her appetite for sex, and he was only too willing to oblige her, since the king himself was no longer partaking. They were well matched in most things, particularly in manipulation.

First to go would be Buckingham, next the famous Nell Gwynne.

Buckingham had too much power, and he was too allied with Nell. They agreed something had to be done. Through cold calculation, and ruthlessness, Danby was close to actually vanquishing the powerful duke, supplanting him permanently as councillor closest to the king.

“Will she receive it zen?” Louise now asked without ceremony.

He knew what she meant. “I have counseled him as harshly as I dare against it, madam. His Majesty has now dropped the notion of making Mrs. Gwynne Countess of Plymouth, or Greenwich, as he had planned.”

Louise smiled triumphantly. “
Excellente.
Can you just imagine eet?”

“Well, you needn’t imagine it. Now you alone of the ladies who currently share His Majesty’s life shall have a title, and your son will do so, as well. As of tomorrow morning, the warrant will be signed, and your little boy shall forever be Baron Settrington, Earl of March, Duke of Lennox,
and
Duke of Richmond.”

“Before Castlemaine’s sons?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he stammered, uncertain of the answer, and stunned by the ingratitude.

“My son
must
’ave precedence over ’ers everywhere zay are presented togezzer! So eet must be signed
first!
”

“It is my understanding that the warrant for all the boys is to be signed together tomorrow. Therefore, technically, none of them would take precedence over the other.”

With the new détente between Barbara and the king, the former royal favorite had managed to garner from Charles the promise of the title Duke of Southampton for their ten-year-old son, Charles Fitzroy. Their younger son, Henry, would be created Duke of Grafton. Through pleading and relentless tears, Louise de Kéroualle had managed to attain the same place for her child, far earlier, by his third birthday. “Zat weel not ’appen!” she ruthlessly declared.

There was a knock on the door. Louise closed her ivory silk dressing gown over her breasts. “My son shall be first in
all
sings!”

It did not seem to matter that her lawyer found her as she was, undressed, in the company of a man, smelling of sex, with the king nowhere to be found. The lawyer was French, after all, and well paid by King Louis.

“Deed you bring zem?” she asked, before he had come fully through the bedchamber door.

“The warrant is here, milady.” The lawyer opened a large leather valise as he was conducted into the room and walked toward a carved French writing table.

Danby had been a worthy opponent to Buckingham, but with Louise de Kéroualle, he felt literally out of his league. It was both seductive and frightening.

“
Bon,
” she said coldly. “Sign them. Danby weel be witness.”

Sometimes, when she lay awake, alone, unable to sleep in her grand poster bed with all of its splendor, great carved wooden boys holding candelabra on either side of her headboard, and beside a dressing table covered in brocade, Nell could still see her. She was almost an apparition now, the girl standing before the king with her two rotting oranges, her matted copper locks, and her wide eyes. She was like a ghost, though achingly vivid. Memories of that girl in her soiled dress brought with it the wild, helpless sounds of Coal Yard Alley. The rancid, cloying odors of the narrow streets. The feel of desperation. But she was not that girl any longer. Not tentative, Nor unsure. Privilege had buried that part of herself deep beneath the well of obligation that her life was now. For herself, Nell cared little. There had been only a moment’s pain, like the prick of a needle, learning Louise de Kéroualle was to become titled. Then, when it happened, an acceptance with a smile. She could only imagine the pressure that had been brought to bear on Charles. But for her sons, her sweet boys, they were where she drew the line.

She watched them together now: little Charles, almost four, and little James, not even two, playing with Louise’s son, the Duke of Richmond, on the vast, sloping lawns behind Greenwich Palace. They were led in it all by Jeddy, who was treated by Nell and Charles as one of her own children. Life was carefree for all of them. None of them knew the weight of obligation or disappointment. Certainly not of hunger or even shame. Nell sat beneath a fluttering white canopy at the crest of the great rolling lawn surrounded by Louise de Kéroualle; Monmouth’s pregnant wife, Anne; Castlemaine’s eldest daughter, Lady Anne Palmer, who was nearly fourteen; and Rose. Behind them were the French ambassador, the dukes of York and Lauderdale, Rochester, and Sedley.

The king was beside Danby, speaking in hushed tones.

Nell looked away, shaking her head. She despised the Lord High Treasurer. He took Louise’s side in all things, and nearly rid the court of the Duke of Buckingham. Her dear Lord Buck was all but invisible at court these days, and she was quite certain Danby meant for her to be next. He remarked openly and often about Nell’s humble beginnings, and she knew it was he who fought ruthlessly against any elevation for her or her children. Watching him whisper to the king, Nell grew angrier by the moment. Charles was laughing; Danby was leaning in toward him, whispering. She shot to her feet; the children were laughing, running. The summer breeze blew. Her eldest son was near enough, though. He would hear her. So would everyone else.

“Charles! Come ’ere, ye little bastard!”

A stunned silence fell hard through the collected courtiers. In spite of Nell’s flair for the theatrical, it had been such an ungracious thing to say, and she had meant it that way exactly. Full impact, and she felt the king’s eyes upon her immediately. Her heart was in her throat as her eldest son came toward her so dutifully that she felt certain her heart would break. But with a singleness of purpose, she blocked out everything else. “That’s it, you little bastard, come on to your ma!”

The king was beside her then, his hand tight on her arm. “Why the devil do you call our son something so vile? And in front of all these people?”

“Well, sire, I’ve no other title for ’im,” she calmly replied.

Nell watched him glance around uncomfortably. The children stood in a group, ringing his legs. No one beneath the canopy behind them spoke. She waited for the anger, steeled herself against it. But it did not come. Their young sons were both near now, looking up, watching silently with Jeddy between them. The king bent down to his boys, smiled, tousled their hair, then glanced back at Nell. There was not a courtier present who did not hang heavily on what either of them might say next.

“You and everyone else will call them my sons, Nell, for they both are that, and have been acknowledged as such.”

“Aimless bastard sons without title or direction. A fear for ’er offspring a certain Weeping Willow shall not need suffer.”

He lowered his voice. “Nell, I bid you—”

“They’re my life, Charlie,” she said now in the same low voice as he. “Blood is thicker than water. Don’t make me choose between blood and love, for I cannot know any longer where that choice would take me!”

Two months to the day afterward, Charles II’s eldest son by Nell Gwynne was created Baron Headington, Earl of Burford. Their second son, James, with his father’s eyes and his mother’s copper curls, became Lord Beauclerk. After seven years, Nell had learned to fight and win.

The victory had gained her more than she ever could have dreamed for two sons of a commoner from the harsh London slums. Yet, like every good thing in Nell’s life, this hard-won victory had come at a price. Just when Nell’s star at the court of Charles II seemed at its brightest, another star began to ascend beside her.

On Christmas Day 1675, another ship from Paris landed on the English shore. Emerging in a swirl of ermine and black velvet was the celebrated writer and adventuress Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin. All of London was set on its ear at the news. Particularly the king. The court, and all of London, was rife with gossip, since Hortense had been an adolescent infatuation while he was in exile, and the first woman the king had ever wanted to marry.

Chapter 34

W
HY DOST THOU ABUSE THE AGE SO
? M
ETHINKS IT’S AS PRETTY AN HONEST, DRINKING, WHORING AGE AS A MAN WOULD WISH TO LIVE IN.

—The Earl of Rochester

1676 TO 1677

B
UCKINGHAM
, having been relegated the year before to his country estates by Lord Danby’s manipulation, was suddenly summoned back to court by the king. The two old friends spent time hunting and walking in the park with the king’s ever-growing pack of spaniels. Charles walked more slowly than once he had, and Buckingham, slightly gray now, and far less dynamic, followed. Between them was still the fact that Buckingham had spoken out of turn with Parliament. It was the incident that Danby had used most fully against him. Now the king was obliged to find an apology.