Most Secret (16 page)

“All of us were in a flurry and dither: especially Mary Knepp, who took the part of Victoria and had a song to sing. I played badly, I know; I forgot some of my speeches to Ned Kynaston (he was Jack Wildish) and needs must improvise with jeering speeches out of other plays. And, whatever this portended or might not portend, I vow I felt much more alarmed than I felt pleased.”

At the end of three acts out of five, Dolly explained, she was changing her dress in the tiring room when Mrs. Knepp brought her an unsigned note and said: “Lacka-day, Doll, there’s good fortune in store for
some
people.” The note, which was from the royal box, she could not have disregarded even if she had wished; and it requested her to be at home that night could she find it convenient to do so.

In her more prosperous days now she had lodgings off Bow Street, with a cage of canaries in the window. And so she swept, dusted, and polished in a mighty to-do. Then she put on her best gown, doused herself with perfume, painted and patched her face; and sat down in apprehension to await her visitor.

He arrived secretly, after the docks had gone eleven. She heard him walk up the three flights of stairs whistling a country air, which hardly seemed dignified, nor did he have any escort except a few bad-tempered spaniels. He had to stoop to enter the doorway; he wore a plain dark coat much behind the fashion; and yet by his manners, she said, you could tell he was the King of England.

She had heard (Dolly continued) that the best way to please King Charles was to behave naturally in his presence—as though anybody could!—and even jeer him a little. She contrived the mockery pretty well, drinking a good deal of wine to keep up her courage. Yet he seemed so comfortably at home as he sat there, his great voice urbane and his long legs stretched out, that she did behave naturally, forgot fears, and found herself more frank than she had expected to be with anyone.

Dolly fetched out her most cherished possession, a music box which played “Cuckolds All Arow” when you wound it up. He was so pleased with this that he wouldn’t let it go, but played it over and over until he almost broke the works, shaking it beside his periwig when it ran down, and tapping his foot in time to the music.

For his part, he said, he liked tunes a man might keep time to; and he asked her if she could sing. Dolly, all fear gone and able to troll out a rollicking measure with the best of them, promptly produced a beribboned cittern. She sang him a number of well-known airs, full of hey-ding-a-ding-dongs and fa-la-li-la-las. She sang “Here’s a Health unto His Majesty” and “The Man That Is Drunk Is as Great as a King,” whereat her visitor wagged his head and joined in the chorus. Then she sang one with which he said he was unacquainted, Grainevert’s song out of Suckling’s play.

Come, let the State stay!—

Drink merry away,

There is no business above it;

It warms the cold brain,

Makes us speak in high strain—

He’s a fool that does not approve it.

The Macedon Youth

Left behind him this truth:

That nothing is done with much thinking;

He drank and he fought

Till he had what he sought:

The world was his own by good drinking!

At this he fell silent for a time, with the spaniels curled up at his feet. “Ay?” says he. “It may be true, though the matter is debatable,” so that she wondered if she had offended him. But he only bade her sing him another strain, which she knew but had never liked, it being a queer and solemn song by John Shirley. It surprised her, Dolly thought, that
he
would like it. She plucked at the strings lightly, feeling for the tune.

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things …

That was how it went, as the bells were tolling midnight:

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate—

Death sets his icy hand on Kings …

In the quiet of the little room King Charles sat motionless, with his wig black against the candlelight and his swarthy chin in his hand.

“But that, madam,” says he, “is a melancholy business to contemplate.” And he reached over and took the cittern away from her.

Whereat Mistress Dolly, being a rational young woman and thinking she knew what move would be next, smiled at him, albeit she was a trifle disappointed. For this was the king, who had a great reputation among the ladies. And yet she felt, astonishingly, no more drawn towards him than towards several others who (for one reason or another) she had obliged.

“Madam,” says the king in a thoughtful way, “we are now, at the least of it, made acquainted. What’s your opinion of me?”

“Sire,” says Dolly, “I think I may say I like you.”

She cursed herself in bitterness for not more nimbly exercising her charms. Here was such stupendous opportunity, such opportunity as would be offered to few wenches in a dozen lifetimes, that any sane woman would have hurled herself at him without more ado. She could have wept with vexation for being such a fool. Yet it stuck in her throat that a man who approached her fair and friendly, without arrogance on the one hand or foppish struttings on the other, should not get a straight and friendly answer. And so she spoke out of her very hatred of too much coyness. “Sire,” says Dolly truthfully, “I think I may say I like you.”

Bygones Abraham and Rowdy Kinsmere, listening to her recital, gathered that at this point the king must have observed her furious face. But Dolly only reported that he smiled, plucked at a string on the beribboned cittern, and explained that his errand here was not what she had supposed.

“Madam,” says he with great civility, “pray don’t exert yourself. I am an old fortress, unconscionably easy to capture. I do not think there has been a watchman awake these twenty years. But that,” says he, rubbing his nose, “is precisely the difficulty. Already there are so many conquerors feasting inside that I am not at all easy in my mind. Too many more assaults might bring down the walls or wreck the powder magazine—which would be, you must own, some little of a catastrophe.”

And he looked at her with sardonic raised brows.

“Madam,” pursues he, “let us change the metaphor. I am addicted to a weakness called sauntering: which leads me, more often than not, to no happy valley. But tonight I would speak of graver matters. If you were granted one wish of all things in this world, what would you wish for?”

She would wish, Dolly felt at the time, for the return of that damning deposition which Pembroke Harker had forced timorous Aub Fairchild to write, and which he still held over her as a threat. But she could not say this—not yet. She asked him, with respectful humility, why he wished to know. Nor would the king himself pursue it further.

“Well, let be!” he said. “Yet I have heard report of you, madam, as one who can hold her tongue if need be. It is possible (God’s fish!), it is possible we may speak of this another time.”

He did speak of it another time: ten days later, when he invited her to sup at the Rose in Covent Garden. They were not altogether alone that night. In the next room two of his younger and madder cronies—my Lord Rochester, author of the mock epitaph, and Sir Charles Sedley, who had written
The Mulberry Garden
with a brace of
their
wenches—were getting howling drunk and smashing furniture, while assuming the king pursued his latest conquest with Dolly Landis. What King Charles actually said was:

“You are acquainted, I think, with a certain Captain Pembroke Harker?”

“Pem Harker?
Him
?”

“You do not appear overfond of this man!”

“
Overfond
?”

“Nor am I happy, between ourselves, with report of disaffection in the army, or of schemes on foot to take the militia away from my control. My father lost his head because of such measures. I will not let the army pass from under my command, not even for half an hour. If Captain Harker be concerned in this, plotting treason against me …”

And then, presently, Dolly blurted out her whole story.

“God’s fish, madam, here is no trumpery business of a stolen purse! Do you watch him, madam, and mark him well. Bring me the least indication my suspiciousness is correct, and, whatever you have done, I will pardon you should you be betrayed. It is probable you will be pardoned in any case. Bring me full proof of this man’s activities, with the requisite witnesses, and with the pardon shall go the fulfilment of whatever wish of yours it is within my power to grant.”

At this point of her recital, in the Cupid Room of the Devil, Dolly Landis set down her glass with a shaky hand.

“Yet it was not disaffection in the army?” she cried.

“Nay, less,” rumbled Bygones Abraham, “though matters may come to that pass in future. ’Twas a greater thing by far.”

“He misled me, then? He misled me deliberately?”

“That would appear probable.”

“Now wherefore,” cried Dolly, “should the King of England trouble his head to deceive the likes of
me
? Because he is become earth’s greatest jester?”

“Not so,” retorted Bygones, and slowly rose up. “Because he is become earth’s greatest cynic.”

Chimney smoke blew through the open windows into Bygone’s face, but he paid no attention. He lumbered to the fireplace, wheezing, and turned round with his back to it

“Come!” he said. “You are both too young to have clear recollection of the Restoration a decade gone. What happened, hey? I’ll tell ye.

“Charles Stuart, elder son of the man they executed outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall, returned from exile in so-called triumph. For fifteen years he and his brother, the Duke of York, had been eating poor relations’ bread and salt at half the courts in Europe. He had been an awkward fellow in those days; they let him see it. Not only France, but tuppenny courts as well, laughed hard at him and made sport of his suit for the hand of a tuppenny princess.

“Here in England, under the Roundheads, they could sing psalms and huff high as long as Oliver was Lord Protector. But Oliver died; they were bankrupt; the psalm singing had a sound most unholy sour. Within two years they made discovery that ’twas all a hideous mistake: that they craved the son of the old king, had craved him all the time: and that, unless he made haste to return, they’d die o’ broken hearts.

“What did he think, d’ye fancy, when they fetched him back from Breda amid the lit bonfires and the bells going mad? Oh, ecod, what did
he
think? In this same country he had been chased through ditches after Worcester fight All the lean times, the years of sitting in draughts …”

“It’s to be supposed,” said Kinsmere, while Dolly merely cursed, “this had not sweetened his view of human nature?”

“Nay, lad, it had not. ‘Since you love me as much as this, I wonder I have been so long away.’ But he walked amiably enough. He kissed the Bible they gave him, and said he loved it above all things in the world.

“Past doubt he knew, as he could not help knowing, that many a rusty old Cavalier had lost land and goods and all else, and done so with the greatest cheerfulness, to see the dawn of this blessed day. Such men, the true-loyal, would gain small preferment when rogues flocked in for plunder; as, d’ye see, the rogues always do. And what of the king, who himself needed money? Parliament voted him huge subsidies, which were never collected or could never be collected save in part. And Parliament would turn on him in an instant, as it had turned on his father, did he show signs he’d a mind of his own. On what course, therefore, was he hence-forward resolved?”

“Why—”

“Why, I’ll tell ye!” roared Bygones, striking right fist into left palm. “It was to meet roguery with roguery, and deceit with the greater deceit. ‘God’s fish, they have put a set of men about me; but these shall know nothing!’ It was to rule in his own fashion, letting no man be aware he ruled, with all ill acts attributed to his ministers. To raise money independently of Parliament, and be free of ’em: bribes, titles, pardons, sale of Crown lands or appointments, everything in his power. He sold Dunkirk to the King of France. And now, if I read the signs aright—Marker read ’em aright—he fishes in more dangerous waters still.”

“Will you try, in all this,” Kinsmere roared back, “to speak one plain word of fact? What’s the king’s design, then? If negotiations with France should be on foot, what does he hope to gain by them?”

“A subsidy paid in secret by that same French king,” answered Bygones. “In my time, lad, I have seen all kinds of fighting and uproar and bloodletting. If there is any manner o’ dispute that here in England would cause more than another of fighting and blood-letting, ’tis a dispute concerning religious faith: in particular, of the Roman Catholic faith. Stay, now! Don’t ask how this concerns us! Let’s assume, for the moment, that here’s theory and no more. But do I speak truth?”

“You do.”

“I can’t claim to know the rights and wrongs of it, not being myself a praying man. I have no dislike for Roman Catholics; nor has the king. These Papists have ever stood his friends, in good fortune and in bad; when he was a fugitive in his own country after Worcester fight, a Papist priest saved his life. For my own part, I hold enmity only towards Puritans and all their works; nor have I yet met a Papist who could abide Puritans either. What’s your feeling in the matter, lad?”

“Much like your own, I think. And yet—”

“And yet,” interposed Bygones, hitching up his sword belt, “and yet, as you’d doubtless say, the feeling is not common in this nation. ’Tis a very hobgoblin with ’em, is Popery! They think of racks, and ropes, and thumbscrews. They’ll limn for you, in all fantastic luridness, fires burning again at Smithfield. And they’d slit the throat of the man who would make it our state religion. Is
this
true?”

“It is.”

“
Your
view, lass?”

“God bless the Church Established!” cried Dolly. “Though I say that so glibly, and don’t in the least know what it means, still …”

“Still,” said Kinsmere, slipping his arm round her as they both rose up, “still, theory apart, how is this to our purpose? There has been much talk of a ‘treaty.’”