Exit the Actress (46 page)

“Very true, and I shan’t forget it.”

I felt Rose shaking with suppressed giggles behind me.

Rose tells me that Mr. Adams now has a sign in his window listing all the products favoured by
Mrs. Nelly Gwyn of the King’s Theatre and Whitehall.
Good grief.

George Buckingham dropped by the tiring room after the performance. I had removed my costume and was wearing just my corset, chemise, and petticoats (Teddy quickly threw me a silk wrapper) and was beginning to remove my heavy stage make-up when George ambled in. With a twitch of his head he dismissed Teddy (the high-handed gall of that man!). Teddy, who was taking down my tightly upswept hair and had a mouth full of pins, made a move to go. I turned around to glare at Buckingham. How dare he appear in
my
tiring room and send
my
Teddy away, my look told him in no uncertain terms.

“Stay,” I said in a studiedly casual tone, turning back to the mirror.

“Go,” said Buckingham evenly, matching me pitch for pitch.

Teddy just stood there with the pins in his mouth, not sure what to do and clearly disliking the idea of a scene. George Buckingham, as Teddy is forever pointing out, has a ruthless streak—beware.

“George, my love,” I said with sugary sweetness into the mirror, “Teddy, as you can see, is taking down my hair just at present; if you want to see me alone, then you can bloody well wait.”

That did it. Teddy turned back to my hair and worked quickly, fingers flying, eager to escape.

“Oh, fine then,” Buckingham said, conceding defeat and restlessly moving about the room.

“What is the matter with you anyway?” I asked, watching him fidget. “You should be happy.”

This past week Buckingham’s position as first man of the realm has been truly cemented. It has been all the talk of court. He is set high—even above the Duke of York, his mortal enemy
du jour
. The gruesome vultures are picking over the bodies Buckingham leaves behind. Buckingham had Lord Anglesey removed from his lifetime appointment as Treasurer, and it looks as if he will also have Lord Ormonde (such a sweet man, really a pity) replaced as Governor of Ireland. The Council will soon be made up of entirely his men. The king seems strangely uninterested in this obvious strategising and is disinclined to discuss it.

“I am happy. I just wish—” He shot a look at Teddy. “
She
is still as present as ever, and I find it grating.”

She
. Castlemaine: the pregnant, meddling, opinionated, rich, and still powerful
maîtresse en titre. She
—still angling for a higher income and a grander title, even though she no longer shares the king’s bed.
She,
who has wormed her way into the good graces of Bab May, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and now has seemingly unlimited access to the royal purse.
She,
who wears enough diamonds and rubies to outshine the queen—as if her evident fertility were not triumph enough. Wretched woman.

“If anyone should desire her downfall, it should be me, yet you seem far more put out at her continuing influence,” I said lightly.

“Her influence,” Buckingham said, through gritted teeth, “is driving me mad.”

“Ha! Only because she
could
be doing much to advance you and isn’t.” I laughed. Buckingham’s motives are always far more transparent than he thinks they are.

Note
—Tom mentioned as we were leaving that Her Majesty the Queen attended the performance tonight. “But she did not laugh and left before the final act,” he said, holding the door for me.

“I suppose there can be no worse thing than watching hundreds of people standing and applauding your husband’s mistress,” I replied sadly.

“Especially if your husband is the one leading the applause,” he said as we wandered home. “You could only keep one, Ellen,” he said, watching me carefully. “You could have the love of either the king or queen, but never both.”

Damn and blast. Grandfather would cringe to hear me using such language, but honestly, the monarch and his Parliament are both behaving like school-yard enemies. Each only wants the other to pay due deference, but no! Pride before all! It is at a standstill. For heaven’s sake—say whatever they want to hear to make them feel involved and then get the money to pay the navy! I am starting to sound like Buckingham, who is always banging on about the navy and fairness to the common man.

Charles says he is working on a solution with his sister Henriette-Anne, the Madame of France. She is secretly brokering some sort of deal between France and England—well, between her brother-in-law and her brother, really. God knows what Charles will have to promise to elicit money from the fanatically organised Louis; he was vague about the details. It is really too bad that Louis married Marie Theresa, the Spanish heifer, as Charles called her, instead of the elegant Henriette-Anne, who is said to be the most beautiful, most loveable, and most accomplished woman in France, and married to the most frivolous man in all Europe.

Note
—Buckingham has made the situation a great deal worse. Tonight at dinner he loudly and unfavourably compared Charles to his cousin Louis.
Unfortunately, Buckingham described Louis as a king who
understands
how to make his kingdom great, and then went on to liken Cliveden, his new country house (hardly a house yet, as the construction is taking forever), to Louis’s great building project at Versailles. Unlike our own king, who is having trouble managing his legislators—unlike our king, who has no such monies to indulge his passion for building. I could wring Buckingham’s neck for the unnecessary hurt he causes Charles.

It happened. And it was as awful as I feared.

Last night we attended an evening of cards in the Duke of York’s apartments.

“Everyone is happy you’re here. You twinkle. Most people don’t twinkle,” Buckhurst quietly encouraged, smoothing his beautifully cut velvet coat and taking a seat at the card table. He knows how the king’s brother still can make me nervous. I squeezed his arm in gratitude.

“Vino!” Johnny called from his chair by the fire. He had been sitting there for some time, and I was not sure he could stand if he tried. His black curled wig was askew, and his eyes seemed unfocused. A pretty actress from the Duke’s was sitting with him, and I caught him shamelessly leering down her bodice.

I frowned at him.

“You’ve drunk it all,” Sedley said, reclining on a golden silk-covered sofa with his eyes closed. It was well after four, and the room had thinned out to only ten people or so. Charles was involved in a heated discussion with his brother and his son Jemmy by the matching fireplace on the far side of the room, and I was quietly dozing off in the armchair opposite Johnny.

“Can’t have drunk it
all,
” Johnny said, slurring his words so it sounded as if he had a stuffy nose. “Where’s our host, the heir to the throne?” (It sounded like
thwone.
) “He should send some flunky out to the yard to squeeze more grapes.” (
Gwapth.
) “James, find some young women with good feet and tell them to get out there. Nell, you have lovely feet … maybe too small to squeeze grapes…”

I ignored him. Charles had invited him to attend his private chapel that morning, and it had left him in a foul mood all day. Johnny and God did not seem to be on good terms at the moment.

“Mmm, yes, more wine … tell James,” Savile murmured distractedly from the card table, not looking up from his hand. He had bet an unthinkably enormous sum and lost it all in the last hand.

“Bucky, more wine, whad’ya say?” Johnny yelled belligerently.

“Splendid idea—make sure the flunky has clean feet,” said Buckhurst, laying down his cards and grinning.

Abruptly, Johnny stood up unsteadily, stepping on the pretty actress. “Well, I’m off to look for some. Nell? You coming?” The actress looked put out that she had been trod on and then not invited. Without waiting for my answer, and without bowing to James, he swished out of the room. Turned out he could walk. But he had left without a word to—

“Nelly, are you there?” Sedley asked. His head was tipped back and his eyes were lightly shut.

“Mmm.”

“Did he bow? Or ask for York’s leave? Or the king’s, for that matter? Did I miss it?”

Cultivating a relaxed tone, I lied, “Yes, he bowed, and asked for their leave, didn’t you hear him?” Such a flagrant breach of conduct would be difficult even for Johnny to shrug off, especially in James York’s own apartments. James is sensitive to slights and is meticulous about form.

“Hmm, going deaf, I suppose. You should go to bed, Nelly; you must be tired,” Savile said sleepily.

Just then Charles appeared at my side and took my arm to lead me off to bed, his face a hard blank shell. James remained on the far side of the room, and Jemmy, tense and white-faced, rigidly bowed good night to his father. They have been arguing lately, and I know how much it pains Jemmy. I gave him a sympathetic smile and dropped my curtsey good night.

Once tucked in the royal bed I felt wide awake again, and together Charles and I stayed up to watch the dawn break, laughing and loving and whispering in the fading dark.

“We shall sleep late tomorrow,” Charles said, pulling the bed curtains closed.

I looked at him, surprised. He always awoke at six for his constitutional exercise, regardless of the hour he went to bed. As a result I almost never awoke next to him.

“But…” I yawned.

“The queen wanted me to … ah … visit last night, and I told her I was unwell, so I can’t very well go walking in the morning.”

I squirmed in discomfort. It was not jealousy, as I truly want the queen to be happy, but rather a profound wish that Charles was not married to such a good woman. I snuggled deeper into the covers, determined not to unravel my contradictory wants.

An hour later, at about six, I heard the doors to the anteroom opening and a woman’s voice. It was a woman speaking English with a ripe, rolling accent. Good God! The queen. The queen, here! “Charles”—I shook him awake—“the queen!” I could hear the startled sentry in the outer room, stammering and moving to open the great doors.

Panicked, I hopped out of bed—whatever happened I did not want her to discover me
in
the bed—and hid behind the heavy window curtains.

“Ellen … where are you,” Charles hissed, poking his head out of the bed hangings. At the sound of the door he disappeared once more into the great bed.

“Good morning, sweetheart, and how are you feeling? Improved?” Queen Catherine asked from the open doors. It was a seductive private voice I had never heard her use.

“Oh, yes, vastly,” I heard my lover answer his wife.

“Well, your fever is down, but you do not look as if you slept well. Did you take the posset I made up?”

“Mmm, the lemon and sugar…” He trailed off into a dense silence. I heard a rustling of silk like autumn leaves underfoot. “Catherine…”

“You had better return this,” she said evenly. “I wouldn’t want the owner of such a little foot to catch cold.” Her shoes clicked across the floor, and I heard the bedroom doors bang shut behind her.

When I emerged from my hiding place, I found Charles seated on the edge of the bed with my shell-pink slipper in his hand.

Charles left for his walk, snapping his fingers for his spaniels. “You mustn’t mind, Ellen,” he said, gently lifting my chin. “She does understand, you know. She understands me very well.”

I threw on my clothes without waiting for Mrs. Chiffinch to bring in the bath-tub or to help me dress. I pulled my hair up into a messy twist, crammed my hat on my head, and hurried out the door. It was in the long gallery I saw her coming. She was walking with her household chaplain, surrounded by her swarm of brightly gowned ladies. I dropped swiftly into my deepest curtsey. I felt her standing above me, waiting for me to rise.