Winsor, Kathleen (56 page)

He
offered his arm to Amber, who could not conceal her delight and pride, and
making a quick bobbing curtsy to the three beaus she sailed off. She had never
been so stared at or felt so full of importance in her life as she did now, for
wherever he went the Duke attracted as much attention as the King himself and
more than his Highness ever had. On the way to the north gate they passed the
Mall where Charles was playing before a gallery crowded with ladies and a
packed row of courtiers and beggars and loitering tradesmen. The King— who had
just struck the little wooden ball into a hoop suspended from a pole at the
opposite end of the Mall—saw them going by and waved. Buckingham bowed.

"If
the King would spend as much time in the council-room as he does at the
tennis-court and Mall," murmured the Duke as they went on, "the
country might be in a better state than it is."

"Than
it is? Why, what's the matter with it? It seems well enough to me."

"Women,
my dear, never understand such matters and should not—but you may believe me.
England's in a most miserable condition. The Stuarts have never been good
masters. Here's my coach—"

They
circled around the Park and stopped at Long's, a fashionable ordinary in the
Haymarket, which was a narrow little suburban lane lined with hedges and
surrounded by green fields. The host led them upstairs to a private room and
supper was served immediately, while below in the courtyard the Duke's fiddlers
played and people gathered from neighbouring cottages to sing and dance to the
music. From time to time a cheer went up for the Duke, who was popular with the
Londoners because he was well known to be a violent anti-Catholic.

The
food was excellent, well-cooked and seasoned, and served hot by two quiet
unobtrusive waiters. But Amber could not enjoy it. She was too much worried
about what the Duke was thinking of her, what he would do when the meal was
over and what she should do in her turn. He was such a great man, and so
rich—If only she could please him enough it might be the making of her fortune.

But
it did not seem likely the Duke would be an easy man to please.

He
was thirty-six years old, and his life had left him nothing of either illusion
or faith. He had raked and probed his emotions, experimented with his senses
until they were deadened and dull and he was forced to whip them up by whatever
voluptuous device occurred to him. Amber had heard all this and it was what
made her uneasy. She was not afraid of what he would do—but that she would
never be able to interest this bored and jaded libertine.

Now,
once the table had been cleared and they were left
alone, he
merely took a pack of cards from his pocket and began to shuffle them idly; they
flew through his fingers with a speed and sureness which proclaimed the
accomplished gamester.

"You
look uneasy, madame. Pray compose yourself. I hate to see a woman on edge—it
always makes me feel that she expects to be raped, and to tell you truly I'm not
in the mood for such strenuous sport tonight."

"Why,
I didn't think the woman breathed who couldn't be persuaded by your Grace by an
easier means than that." In spite of her awe and eagerness Amber could not
keep a certain tartness from her voice; something in the personality of the
Duke set her teeth on edge.

But
if he noticed the sarcasm he ignored it. He dealt himself two putt hands, one
from the top and the other from the bottom of the desk, inspected each with
satisfaction and began to shuffle again.

"She
doesn't," he said flatly. "Women are all inclined to make two
mistakes in love. First, they surrender too easily; second, they can never be
convinced that when a man says he is through with them he means it." As he
talked he continued to watch the cards, but there had spread over his face a
look of brooding discontent, a self-occupied bitterness. "It's long been
my opinion the world would run far smoother if women would not insist on
expecting love to be a close relation of desire. Your quality whore is always
determined to make you fall in love with her—by that means she thinks she
justifies the satisfaction of her own appetite. The truth of the matter is,
madame, that love is only a pretty word—like honour—which people use to cover
what they really mean. But now the world has grown too old and too wise for
such childish toys—thank God we're beyond needing to deceive ourselves."

He
looked up at her now and tossed the cards away. "I take it you're for hire
on the open market. How much do you ask?"

Amber
looked at him, her eyes narrowed slightly and slanting at the corners. His
harangue, made obviously for the sole purpose of amusing himself, since it was
plain he did not consider it necessary to convince her of anything, had made
her angry. She had been listening to that kind of talk from the tiring-room
gallants for a year and a half, but the Duke was the first man she had met who
wholly believed what he said. She would have liked to get up, slap his face and
walk out of the room—but he was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and the
richest man in England. And her morals were dictated rather by the expediency
of the moment than by any abstract formula of honour.

"What
am I bid?"

"Fifty
pound."

Amber
gave a short unpleasant laugh. "I thought you said you weren't in the mood
for a rape! Two hundred and fifty!" For a long moment he sat and stared at
her, and then he got
up and walked to the door. Amber turned, watched him apprehensively, but he
merely spoke to a footman who was waiting just outside and who ran off down the
steps. "I'll give you your two hundred and fifty, madame," he said.
"But pray don't flatter yourself it's because I think you'll be worth it.
I can give you that sum without missing it any more than you would miss a shilling
flung to a whining Tom o' Bedlam. And when all's said and done, I doubt not
you'll be more surprised by this night's business than I."

Amber
was surprised; it was her first experience with perversion. And it would, she
swore, be her last if she starved in the streets.

Shocked
and disgusted, she conceived a violent loathing for the Duke which not even one
thousand pounds could dispel. For days she thought of nothing but how she could
contrive to pay him back. But in the end all she could do was put him in her
list of enemies to be dealt with at some future date— when she should be
powerful enough to ruin them all.

The
theatre reopened late in July, and Amber found that she now had among her
admirers the finest beaus in town. Buckingham had done that much for her, at any
rate.

There
was Lord Buckhurst and his plump black-eyed friend Sir Charles Sedley. The huge
and handsome Dick Talbot, wild Harry Killigrew, Henry Sidney whom many thought
to be the finest-looking man in England, and Colonel James Hamilton who was
generally considered the best-dressed man at Whitehall. All of them were young,
from Sidney who was twenty-two to Talbot who was thirty-three; all of them came
of distinguished families and were allied through marriage or blood to the
country's ruling houses; all of them frequented the innermost circles of the
Court, associated on familiar terms with the King and might have been men of
more consequence if they had cared to spare the time from their amusements.

Almost
every night she went to supper with one or more of them, sometimes in a crowd
of young men and women—actresses and orange-girls and other professed
whores—often it was an intimate group of only two or three. They drank toasts
to her and strained wine through the hem of her smock, and anatomized her among
themselves. She went to the bear-baitings and cockfights and spent three or
four days at Banstead Downs with Buckhurst and Sedley, attending the
horse-races— for the old passionate English love of field sports had returned
three-fold since the Restoration.

She
went several times to Bartholomew Fair during the three weeks it was in
progress, saw every puppet-show and rope-dancer, gorged herself on roast pig
and gingerbread and made a great collection of Bartholomew Babies—the pretty
dolls which it was customary for a gentleman to buy and present to the lady he
admired.

One
Sunday afternoon she visited Bedlam, to see the insane
hung up in
cages, their hair matted and smeared with their own filth, raving and screaming
at the sight-seers who jeered at and tormented them. At Bridewell, where they
went to watch the prostitutes being beaten, Talbot recognized a woman he had
known some time since and she began to yell at him, pointing her finger and
accusing him of being the cause of her present shame and misery. But when they
wanted to stop at Newgate to visit the great highwayman, Claude de Vall, who
was holding his court there, Amber declined.

After
the play she often drove in Hyde Park with four or five young men, and
sometimes she saw a copy of her latest gown on one of the Court ladies. She
slept short hours, neglected her dancing and singing and guitar lessons, and
was so little interested in the theatre that Killigrew threatened to turn her
out and would have done so but for the intervention of Buckhurst and Sedley and
his own son. When he chided her for missing rehearsal or forgetting her
lines—or not even troubling to learn them—she laughed and shrugged her
shoulders or flew into a fit of anger and went home. The fops threatened to
boycott the theatre if Madame St. Clare was not there, and so Hart and Lacy and
Kynaston would be sent to coax her back again. Her popularity made her arrogant
and saucy.

At
first she had intended to be just as independent and unattainable as she had
been at the beginning of her acquaintance with Rex Morgan. But the gentlemen
were not subtle. They told her frankly that they would never spend the time
courting an actress which they would lavish on a Maid of Honour. And Amber,
faced with the alternative of abandoning either her resolutions or her
popularity, did not hesitate long in her choice. When Sedley and Buckhurst
offered her one hundred pounds to spend a week with them at Epsom Wells she
went. But she was never offered so large a sum again.

To
each of her lovers she gave a bracelet made from her abundant hair, and some
who did not get them had imitations made which they swore were hers. Her name
began to appear in the almanack records of half the young fops in town, many of
whom she did not even know. Buckhurst gave her a painted fan with a dreamy
sylvan scene on one side and on the other the loves of Jupiter which depicted
the god in the guise of a swan, a bull, a ram, an eagle, with various women—all
of whom looked like Amber. Within a week copies of it were hiding blushes and
veiling smiles in the Queen's Drawing-room.

In
December a filthy verse which was unmistakably about her—though the woman in it
was called "Chloris" and the man "Philander," after the old
pastoral tradition—began to circulate through the tiring-room and the taverns
and bawdy-houses. Amber, who was becoming tired, resented it deeply though she
knew many similar poems had been written with far less provocation than she had
given, but she could never find out whose it was. She suspected either
Buckhurst or Sedley, both poets and very creditable ones, but when she accused
them they
smiled blandly and protested their innocence. Harry Killigrew followed the
insult by flipping her a half-crown piece one night when she tardily suggested
a settlement.

Early
in January she spent two nights in succession at home without a caller or an
invitation, and she knew all at once that her vogue was passing. And only a few
days later Mrs. Fagg confirmed her fears that she was again with child. She
felt suddenly sick and discouraged and exhausted. It was all but impossible for
her to force herself to get out of bed in the morning, her appetite was gone,
she looked pallid and thin and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. Almost
anything could bring forth a passionate flood of tears or a hysterical tantrum.

"I
wish I were dead!" she told Nan. For her future was only too clear.

Nan
suggested that they go away from London for a few weeks and when Mrs. Fagg
advised a long ride in a coach, to be taken with her own special medicine, she
agreed. "If I never see another fop or another play as long as I live I'll
be glad!" she cried violently. She hated London and the playhouse, all men
and even herself.

Amber
decided to go to Tunbridge Wells in the hope that drinking the waters would
make her feel better. She set out early the nest morning in her coach with Nan
and Tansy, Tempest and Jeremiah. As it was raining, they could travel at but
little more than a foot-pace, and even then the coach almost turned over several
times.