The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (17 page)

Nell spent several nights at the palace during the week that followed. She’d receive a message from the king late in the afternoon, then travel to Whitehall by carriage under cover of darkness and be met by Chiffinch in a certain courtyard. She told Eliza that behind a locked door in this courtyard was the secret staircase which she’d climb to spend the night in the king’s private apartments.

She also told Eliza that the king had promised her an apartment of her own, perhaps near to Whitehall Palace, so that he’d easily be able to visit her. Eliza wasn’t sure if this new housing arrangement would extend to her, and didn’t like to ask for fear that it wouldn’t. She’d found things rather dull lately, for Nell wasn’t around much and there was no play currently at the King’s Theatre, nor any rehearsals to attend. She was resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t hear from Aunt Thomasina for several weeks, but hoped daily that she might have word from the singing master at Whitehall about the promised lessons. How she’d have loved to have proper tuition to develop her voice! Sadly, no such message arrived, so Eliza spent her time doing odd jobs at the theatre,
practising her writing, or attending to Nell’s washing and cleaning. She tried not to think too much about Valentine Howard, for it seemed to her that he knew the effect he had on her and enjoyed seeing her discomposed. Besides, what girl in her right mind would spend time thinking about one of the king’s gang of wits? It was more certain than rain that they were all the same …

On Sunday, Nell came back to Lewkenor’s Lane proposing an outing. For a moment, Eliza thought she meant them to go to church and was very surprised, for Nell always had a hundred different reasons why they couldn’t go to Sunday service: they had too much mending, she had an appointment, she’d no clean smocks, she’d promised to call on someone.

But it wasn’t a church service she was suggesting.

‘You asked me about Susan and her carbuncle, did you not?’ she said to Eliza. ‘You suggested that one of the quack doctors might be able to do something for it.’

Eliza nodded.

‘Well, we are going today to see this surgery performed!’

‘On little Susan? Today?’ Eliza gasped, thinking of how scared the child must be.

Nell nodded.

‘But … is it in a doctor’s house or will it be performed at home?’

‘Neither,’ Nell said. ‘The quack who’s doing it is Doctor Daniel and he works outside the coffee house by the Angel and Crown.’

This, to Eliza, didn’t sound very ordered or safe, but not knowing how these things were usually carried
out, she didn’t comment further.

Nell, with her new-found status as king’s mistress, had hired a glossy pink-painted coach pulled by two white horses, and this was employed to take the two girls to the Angel and Crown. It was an enjoyable ride for, far from pulling the curtains across and travelling incognito as did most of the well-to-do, Nell sat full in the window, waving gaily and calling out to those passers-by who recognised her. Eliza waved at people too and enjoyed the trip immensely, for it was the first time she’d been in a private carriage and this one was very grand, the interior being padded with fine upholstery and filled with embroidered cushions.

The two girls arrived by the coffee house at midday to see that a broad stage had been erected on the pavement outside. A crowd of perhaps a hundred persons had gathered and Doctor Daniel, in sombre black suit, cloak and battered top hat, was walking amongst them inviting them to throw money into a bowl.

A board to one side of him read:

See the Amazing Doctor Daniel perform a miracle!
A child whose mother was cursed by a witch and
thus was born grossly disfigured will be cured this day!

On stage, sitting on a kitchen chair, sat Susan, smiling to the crowd with her strange little twisted face.

‘Isn’t she frightened?’ Eliza asked, looking at Susan in surprise. ‘She’ll be having her cheek cut most horribly, surely?’

‘Oh, he may not use the knife,’ Nell said rather
carelessly, looking around her to see who was there.

‘But what will he do, then? Is he going to rub a salve on it, or make her drink a special cordial or something?’

Nell smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’ She patted her side. ‘Take care that no one steals your pocket in this crowd,’ she added.

Nell, Eliza thought, wasn’t taking the matter at all seriously. ‘And is the child’s mother here ready to dress the wound and carry her home?’ she asked, looking for Rose.

‘Oh, no – we’ll take Susan home in the carriage,’ Nell said.

Eliza looked at her in dismay, visualising tears and upsets and maybe blood all over the pristine embroidered cushions, but Nell said no more.

Doctor Daniel, on regaining the platform, removed his top hat and bowed low to his audience. As he did so, they – unlike those at the theatre, Eliza thought – fell to a respectful silence. The doctor moved to stand behind Susan and placed one hand on her head.

‘Cursed by a malevolent witch, this child has been hideously disfigured from the moment she was born! I will now attempt – with necromancy and my incredible medical skills – to lift the spell and cure her. Those of you in the audience who suffer likewise, are hare-shotten or have other disfigurements, may book a private audience with me afterwards at a cost of one shilling.’

There was a murmur from several of the audience.

‘You need not be hasty, my friends!’ the doctor said. ‘See first what can be achieved at my hands, and then judge whether you wish to avail yourself of
my services.’

Doctor Daniel now moved to stand before Susan and covered them both with a vast black cloak. He screamed, ‘Curse, begone!’ and the cloak fluttered, as if he was passing his hands across the girl’s face. Then he stood motionless for several moments while the audience waited, rapt with anticipation.

When he whisked the cloak away and staggered to one side of the stage, seemingly exhausted, a new Susan was revealed, smiling at the audience with a perfectly formed face. There was absolutely no trace of the carbuncle.

The crowd gasped and Eliza’s own mouth dropped in amazement. She hadn’t really thought that Doctor Daniel would be able to do it. And certainly not instantly. She’d thought – as was usual with these things – that he’d send Susan home with some salve, saying that she must be patient and that it would work within a few weeks.

This, though, was beyond all expectation.

‘That is excellent!’ Eliza gasped to Nell. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it! How does he do such things?’

Nell shrugged, smiling. ‘He said by necromancy and sympathetic magic, did he not?’

‘You may come and inspect this child at your leisure,’ Doctor Daniel boomed, ‘and, finding no trace of her former affliction, I will leave it to your discretion as to how much you think my performance is worth.’

He stood beside Susan, holding out the bowl again, and the audience began to file past, shaking their heads in wonder and dropping in a coin or two.

‘It
is
a miracle!’ Eliza said in the carriage going home,
staring at Susan as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘It is the most wonderful cure I’ve ever seen.’

‘Do you think so?’ Susan said pertly.

‘Don’t you? Have you yet seen yourself in a mirror? Why, your face is very prettily shaped now. There’s no trace at all of the growth.’ To Eliza’s bewilderment Nell and Susan just exchanged amused glances. ‘Your Aunt Nell must look to her laurels,’ she went on, ‘for I believe you’ll be a great beauty when you’re grown!’

Nell began laughing.

‘What?’ Eliza asked. ‘’Tis true!’

‘Will you show her, Susan?’ Nell said.

Susan turned away, hiding her face for a moment. When she looked back at them, her cheek was once again disfigured by the monstrous carbuncle.

‘No!’ Eliza cried out in disbelief. ‘’Tis horrible! It cannot be.’

Nell and Susan laughed so hard they could barely speak.

‘You’re right, it cannot be,’ Nell said eventually, through giggles. ‘’Tis but a trick – a stuck-on plaister. Ma had it made for her.’

‘’Tis for me to go a-begging with,’ Susan explained. ‘And then, every few months, I arrange with one of the quack doctors that he should cure me, and we go half and half on the day’s takings.’

Eliza was speechless, but, reflecting on the matter later, decided that it was probably no worse than the subterfuges she’d used in prison to beg money, and that, indeed, in London one had to make one’s way however one could.

Chapter Sixteen

Now that Eliza had noticed Jemima’s stomach, she couldn’t stop herself from sneaking a glance at it at every opportunity. Even though Jemima always laced herself tightly into her gown and wore a loose jacket or smock, the bulge of her belly was quite discernible. She was with child, Eliza was certain of it. Either that or she had some malignant disease which had caused her to swell up.

She wished someone else would notice, but Jemima was such a reticent creature that she hardly ever came to anyone’s attention. Even Nell didn’t notice anything untoward for a time, for she continued her evening visits to Whitehall Palace and only came into the theatre to rehearse her lines, have Eliza curl up her hair or have a costume fitting. The new set of clothes being stitched were for Aphra Behn’s play which, now that she’d borrowed some money from a rich noble, was at last going ahead. The emphasis of
Secret Love
had been changed somewhat, Eliza realised as she helped Nell with her lines; it now reflected Nell’s higher status as one of the mistresses of the king. It was a rags to riches story which partly mirrored Nell’s own life; a romantic comedy about a woman who left her faithful but boring husband to live with a lord.
Nell’s role as Sophia was a much more important one now, and as well as the scenes where she had to dress as a youth in tights, included an opening view where she was revealed asleep, only partially dressed, on a grassy bank. This first scene alone, it was thought, would get the audience flocking in, for everyone wanted a glimpse of the king’s latest mistress, especially without her gown and bodice.

One afternoon following rehearsals, Nell didn’t rush off as she usually did, but sat around in the tiring room gossiping with the other actresses. It was then, at last, that she noticed Jemima’s shape.

‘Hell’s teeth, Jemima!’ she said suddenly. ‘I do believe you’ve got something to tell us!’

Jemima, seeing where Nell was staring, went scarlet. She shook her head, though, and said in a low voice that indeed she had not, that Nell and Eliza knew all her secrets.

‘But I don’t think we know
this
little secret,’ Nell said with feigned coyness.

Jemima didn’t reply and Eliza held her breath.

‘For you seem to have a certain happy event planned.’

‘I have not!’ Jemima said, all in a fluster. ‘I … I am merely putting on a little weight.’

Nell looked at her. ‘Are you sure?’

Jemima nodded vehemently.

Nell shrugged. ‘Just as you please,’ she said. ‘Although I wonder what William is thinking of to leave you in such a condition.’

Eliza shot Jemima a sympathetic glance, for William – darling William, as Jemima always referred to him – had hardly been by to see her of late. Instead he’d sent
notes to excuse himself, assuring Jemima that he was working hard to earn money to secure their passage to the Americas. Eliza repeated these excuses to Nell, who’d replied that if working hard meant he had to visit every gambling den and whorehouse in London, then he was certainly doing his best.

‘I regret that I spoke to Jemima as I did,’ Nell said to Eliza a little later that same afternoon, ‘for she’s taken it badly, hasn’t she?’

Eliza nodded, for Jemima had broken down in tears, then gone off to hide herself backstage somewhere. ‘But she
is
with child and I’m glad you brought up the subject.’

‘I fear she is,’ Nell said. ‘And what will happen to her when she’s saddled with the child I don’t know, for she’s lived such a molly-coddled life up to now with her servants and maids that she’s hardly capable of looking after herself, let alone bringing up an infant.’ She sighed, exasperated. ‘Curses on William Wilkes!’

‘He’s nothing but a worthless oaf!’ Eliza chimed in, thinking of all the times Jemima had sat crying over him.

‘’Tis terrible: a woman without a protector in her situation …’ Nell’s voice trailed away and Eliza, learning fast about London life, had no doubts about what would happen to Jemima. She’d be sent to a poorhouse, or – worse still – to Bedlam with the mad people, for anyone who had a child out of wedlock was perceived to be of dangerously weak morals.

‘Go and buy some sweetmeats for me, will you, Eliza?’ Nell said. ‘I’ll give them to Jemima and say I’m sorry for having brought up the subject. No doubt she’ll tell us about it in her own good time.’

Eliza made her way on foot towards the Royal Exchange, the very grand trading exchange in the City which had been rebuilt after the Fire. Here there were not only facilities for the rich merchants to trade wholesale, but a multitude of little shops and stalls selling delicate and flavoursome things. At a shop calling itself The Sugared Plum she purchased some frosted rose petals and a quantity of dainty crystallised fruits and, after looking in every other shop window, crossed the courtyard of the Exchange to make her way back to Drury Lane. She was rather preoccupied, wondering when she’d hear from Aunt Thomasina, when she saw William Wilkes, grandly dressed and seeming rather drunk, talking to several other young gallants. She hesitated, nervous about approaching him, yet anxious to take the opportunity to say something about Jemima’s condition.