The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (10 page)

‘Why? So that Henry doesn’t recognise you again, of course. He’ll be fair furious that he’s been done out of his mermaid!’ Nell came closer to Eliza, close enough for Eliza to see that her pretty face was covered in freckles which no amount of whitening could hide. ‘’Tis a pity we can’t do anything about your green eyes,’ she went on, ‘but half the time Henry can’t remember what colour his
own
eyes are, so that’s no matter.’

Eliza sighed. She looked around at her bleak surroundings and felt that she’d have given anything to be back in Somersetshire in her little bedroom. She’d felt safe there.

Nell sat down in front of her on the rag rug. Her hair was free of false curls and ribbons now, and she ran both hands through it and shook her head as if taking pleasure in the freedom. ‘You’re wondering why I’ve got you here, aren’t you?’

Eliza nodded, waiting.

‘To tell the truth it was but a whim,’ Nell said. She shrugged. ‘My ma has caused the ruin of so many young girls, though – girls fresh from the country – and I didn’t want to see it happen to you.’ She smiled at Eliza. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me now that you’ve already turned tricks with a man and are as hot as a sow on heat!’

‘No. No, indeed,’ Eliza stuttered. ‘I’ve never lain with a man.’

‘I thought not,’ Nell said. She smiled at Eliza.
‘’Twas different for me, see. I was drawing ale in a tavern when I was eight and working in Ma’s bawdy house by ten. I took my first tumble when I was twelve.’

Eliza gasped, shocked. The way Nell just came out with such things! And she didn’t appear at all shamed.

‘But besides all that, Henry Monteagle is not the right man to take any girl’s maidenhead.’

‘Why is that?’ Eliza asked timidly.

‘Because he’s a good-for-nothing fop. He affects to be a gentleman but has the manners of a pig farmer.’

Eliza, puzzled, wondered aloud why such a man could have any standing in society.

‘Because’s he’s devilish rich,’ Nell explained, ‘and newly titled since the death of his father. Besides, he’s a friend of the king’s son – of James, the Duke of Monmouth. They study together.’

Eliza shook her head wonderingly. ‘I didn’t think the king and queen had any sons.’

‘Oh, Monmouth is not the queen’s son, but a natural child of the king,’ Nell went on, ‘although no less loved by him for all that. His Majesty enjoys the company of the young men who surround him. He calls them his merry gang – his gang of wits.’ She laughed. ‘Those loved by him can do no wrong. Why, last week Monmouth and his drunken friends pissed on the crowd from the balcony at Whitehall Palace, and the king just laughed. And as for the Earl of Rochester – why, he writes such scurrilous poems that even I blush to read them!’

Eliza stared at her, wide-eyed. Such goings-on were undreamed of in Somersetshire. But were they
all
as bad as that?

‘The friend of Henry Monteagle’s – the one named Valentine,’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Is he as dissolute?’

‘Valentine?’ Nell asked, frowning. ‘Oh, you mean Sir Valentine Howard.’

‘He’s a
sir
?’ Eliza asked. She felt cast-down for a moment, and wondered why, for it could be of little matter to her whether he had a title or no.

Nell looked at her and laughed. ‘I can see where your fancy’s heading,’ she said. ‘And he’s a fine young man and I might try for him myself if I hadn’t set my sights higher.’ She sat down on the bed and began to put her false ringlets and hairpieces carefully into a box. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she went on. ‘I already have one Charles, but would have myself another.’

Eliza looked at her enquiringly.

‘I would have Charles the Second!’ Nell said. ‘Although he would be my Charles the Third – for I’ve already been mistress to Charles Hart and Charles Sackville.’

Eliza stared at her with amazement. Nell was hardly older than her, but obviously had ten times the experience. ‘But I thought –’

‘You thought the king’s mistresses would all be high class!’ Nell kicked off a pink, high-heeled shoe. ‘Oh no, the king will pay court to any shapely body who’ll throw up her petticoats for him.’ She went across to poke the fire again. ‘And he loves play-going and adores actresses, so I think I’ve as good a chance with him as has Mary Davis. Besides,
her
legs are quite fat!’ she added peevishly.

‘And has he … have you and the king …?’ Eliza asked.

‘Not yet!’ Nell said. She smiled at Eliza and her eyes
sparkled. ‘But things grow warm between us!’

‘And so …’ Eliza began, widening her eyes.

Nell nodded. ‘The king has long-term mistresses – high-born ladies who bear his children and receive titles – but he also has other girls, just for fun.’

‘And you will be of the fun kind?’

Nell laughed. ‘Indeed I will!’

Eliza took off her own dress and hung it from the hook; then, wearing just her undersmock, went outside to use the latrine in the back yard.

She stood outside for a moment, thinking about all that had happened to her. The riotous clamour of London was dying away now and little could be heard but the heavy wooden wheels of carriages turning on the cobbles and the shouts of link boys as they lit the way home for late revellers. A bellman cried eleven of the clock and called that there had been an accident on the river and a woman had drowned, making Eliza think about her poor ma. If
she
hadn’t died she herself wouldn’t be in London now. How strange life was …

When she went back inside, Nell was sprawled on the iron bedstead. She patted the near side.

‘Hop in,’ she said. ‘We’ll top and tail it tonight.’

Eliza went to the other end of the bed and wriggled under the blanket and Nell wished her goodnight. She replied likewise, remembering to thank Nell for her kindly rescue.

‘But what’s going to become of me?’ she couldn’t resist asking. ‘What will I do now?’

‘What do you want to do?’ Nell asked.

‘I want to find my father,’ Eliza said. ‘All I know is that he’s working somewhere in London.’

‘He has money of yours?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s because my stepmother threw me out and I need to appeal to him to allow me home.’

‘Well, then,’ Nell said, ‘you must search for him.’

‘And in the meantime I can stay here with you?’

Nell murmured that she could. ‘I don’t spend many nights here,’ she said, ‘and when I’m elsewhere you can have my bed to yourself and welcome to it. But you must work and earn your keep.’

‘Willingly,’ Eliza said. ‘But what can I do?’

‘You can help me with my clothes and hair – if I’m to rise in the world I must have a maid! And you can work in the theatre as an orange seller.’

Eliza gasped inwardly, but said nothing. Orange sellers: weren’t they just trollops and trulls, girls who’d sell their bodies for a pint of tuppeny ale? Had she been rescued from one man only to be put at the mercy of a whole legion of others?

Chapter Ten

‘
Eliza! Surely it can’t be you? You look such a fine lady!
’

‘
Yes, it is me, Father! I’ve found you at last
.’

‘
But what are you doing here in London, and so far from home?
’

‘
I came to find you, Father. There’s a wrong that you must put right
.’

‘
I will, of course I will. Oh, bless you, my child,’ said her father, breaking down into sobs. And he held out his arms and Eliza ran into them
…

Three days later Eliza lay on the bed in Nell’s lodgings, newly wakened, going over the details of the dream in her head. Since coming to London she’d had several versions of it. They all featured her father, but in one her real mother also appeared, monstrous angry that her daughter had been thrown from the house, and in another her stepmother showed herself, weeping profusely and saying that she bitterly regretted her hasty words to Eliza, whom she now loved as dearly as her own flesh and blood.

I must find my father! Eliza thought fiercely and, the dream having filled her with a new determination, made a vow that she would go to find Mason’s Hall
that very day and make enquiries. Her employment as an orange seller had not yet started, for the King’s Players, the theatre company to which Nell belonged, was currently still in rehearsal. The new play, a comedy by Wycherley, was due to open in a few days.

Sitting up in bed, Eliza caught sight of her reflection in the window and was momentarily shocked. She’d forgotten all about her hair! She’d forgotten that the day after she’d arrived at Nell’s she’d gone to a hair dealer recommended by Nell and her long, lustrous curls had been cut off to within two inches of her scalp.

She’d wept throughout the process, but the dealer had pronounced the hair most excellent and, after weighing and giving her eight shillings for it, said it would make a fine wig for a gentleman.

Nell had shrieked with laughter when Eliza, that same evening, had taken her cap off to reveal her shorn locks. ‘You look as if you’ve been treated for the pox!’ she said, and then, seeing Eliza’s crestfallen face, told her that she’d straight away go to the theatre and borrow a wig for her.

The wig she’d brought back was of short auburn curls and had been made for a boy playing a girl on stage. Pulling it on to Eliza’s head, Nell said that it looked well.

‘And by the time your real hair grows again Henry Monteagle will have forgotten all about the sea creature he bought at the fair.’

‘My hair has always been long,’ Eliza had said wistfully.

‘And ’twill be again!’ Nell said. ‘’Twill grow quicker than a weasel jumps.’ She adjusted the auburn wig so
it reached further down the nape of Eliza’s neck and teased out a curl or two in front of her ears. ‘There,’ she said, standing back to admire her. ‘No one would ever know you for the mermaid. Besides,’ she added, ‘he hardly saw your face.’

Eliza had shaken her head. ‘No. It was the notion of lying with a mermaid that intrigued him.’

‘And it could have been any mermaid!’ Nell said.

Eliza smiled. ‘Is he still railing at your mother?’

Nell nodded. ‘Yes, but ’tis no matter,’ she said. ‘Ma’s used to dealing with the likes of him.’

With the money from her hair, Eliza had visited the rag fair in Cheapside and purchased two sets of clothes: a brown linen skirt and waistcoat for every day, and a flower-printed gown for Sundays. The Sunday gown reminded her of the one Elinor had worn in Clink, and now, as Eliza lay on the bed in Nell’s room, she wondered to herself where her friend was and how she was faring on the seas. She sighed as she thought of her, for she still missed Elinor very much. She determined that, even though it wasn’t Sunday, she’d put on her new gown when she went to seek out her father, and maybe the wearing of it would bring her luck.

There was a sudden noise downstairs in the house and a pattering on the stairs, and a moment or two later Nell’s face appeared round the door. ‘Not still abed?’ she asked. ‘What a lazy goose it is!’

Eliza smiled. She’d not seen Nell the night before, for she’d stayed at Charles Hart’s house after attending a private party. She was still wearing the clothes she’d borrowed for it from the theatre costume department: a fine embroidered cambric gown in
primrose yellow, with a blue velvet cloak lined in the same colour.

Nell now slipped off the cloak and took a leap and a skip on to the bed to sit beside Eliza. ‘What do you think – the king was at the party!’ she said excitedly. ‘And we danced together and he held my hand very tightly and asked me when I was next appearing on stage.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said next week in the new musical entertainment, and if I knew he was in the audience I would be dancing especially for him.’

Eliza looked at her, enthralled. ‘And then …?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Then he said he would come to the tiring room after the play and maybe ask me to do a very
special
jig!’ Nell gave a sudden scream of joy. ‘He desires me – I know he does! He tires of Castlemaine at last.’

‘Which is Castlemaine?’ Eliza asked, for Nell spoke of so many people with so many titles that she often felt completely confused.

‘His mistress: Lady Barbara Castlemaine. She had no title at the start; she was plain Mistress Palmer – so he titled her Lady Castlemaine and then made her a duchess. Now I hear that she’s demanding to be a countess. She’s borne him children, of course – but then so have many others.’

‘But what will you do about Charles Hart?’

‘Oh, a pox on Charles Hart!’ Nell said carelessly. ‘If the king wants me then
he’ll
have to step down.’

‘But tell me more about the king. Did he look very regal? What did he wear?’ Eliza asked eagerly. ‘Does he sit on a throne?’

‘He wore a purple satin suit with gold lace at the neck,’ Nell said, ‘and had an ermine-lined cape which he flung over his shoulder like a cavalier. But there wasn’t a throne in the room so he couldn’t sit upon it.’

‘And is he very handsome?’

‘He’s the king,’ Nell said, looking astonished at the question, ‘of course he is. He’s tall and dark of skin, has a long, curling moustache and all his hair is his own – it’s so long and wavy that he doesn’t need a wig. He’s most elegant and cultured,’ she went on, lifting her nose into the air in pretend hauteur, ‘and can speak in French whenever he chooses.’

‘And do you speak French to him?’ Eliza asked, wide-eyed.

Nell laughed. ‘I can say
oui
when the time comes,’ she said. ‘That will be all that’s needed.’

On entering the City later that morning, Eliza discovered that Mason’s Hall, where all practitioners of that trade were required to be registered, had been burned down in the Great Fire and had not yet been rebuilt. She was told that there were records being kept at Guildhall of all registered masons, but finding the right room there was difficult enough, and then she couldn’t find the appropriate person and he couldn’t find the proper register, so the fond father/daughter scenario which she’d visualised still seemed a long way off. The only way forward was for a note to be left at Guildhall for her father in case he called there, but though Eliza could read quite well, she couldn’t write much beyond her name, so a letter setting out her precise circumstances and how she came to be in London was quite beyond her. A clerk,
sensing her dilemma, suggested that she might leave her address and also one of her precious silver shillings with him so that a messenger could be sent to Lewkenor’s Lane to inform her when and if he appeared. Eliza thought a moment about this, wondering what would happen if the messenger should fail to find the right house, or came for her when she was out, or simply took the shilling and ran away with it, but finally decided it was the only thing she could do.