The Darling Strumpet Part 27

CHARLES HAD SURVEYED THE DAMAGE, STATIONED SOLDIERS AT Nell's house, and offered his condolences and a generous lifelong pension to the inconsolable Rose and promised her that justice should be done, that Jack would be found and brought to punishment. But in the cold light of the afternoon, as night approached again, and Nell and Rose sat huddled by the fire in Nell's room, none of it seemed to matter. John was dead, and Jack was out there somewhere. As long as he still lived and went free, Nell would always be in terror that he would return.

Bridget appeared to take away the remains of supper and spoke in a low voice to Nell.

"Madam, Harry Killigrew is below and requests most urgently that he might speak to you and Mrs. Ca.s.sells."

Nell looked to Rose.

"Yes," Rose said. "Ask him to come up."

Harry, swathed in a dark cloak, threw his hat aside as he came into the room, and stooped swiftly to Rose.

"I know the king has put out a watch for the murderer, but if you give the word, Rose, my friends and I can work in other ways."

"What do you mean?" Nell asked.

"Better not to ask," Harry said, glancing at her. "Rose knows. Would you have it so, darling?"

Rose lifted her head, and Nell had never seen a look of such black intensity in her eyes.

"Yes," Rose whispered. "Find him, Harry. Find him."

"'Fore G.o.d, Rose," Nell gasped, when Harry had gone. "What was that about?"

"The Mohocks," Rose said. "The Ballers. Have you not heard of them?"

"Yes, I've heard that the Ballers are a crew of dissolute gents who gather at Mrs. Bennett's to watch her strumpets dance naked," Nell said. "And Sam Pepys told me how people cleared the paths at Vauxhall when Harry and his mates were there, so drunk and swaggering they were."

"Yes," Rose said. "But they do more than that when occasion offers. When justice needs to be meted out and the law cannot come at the miscreants, the Mohocks have their ways of finding them out, and seeing that vengeance is done."

Nell felt the hair rise on the back of her neck at the thought of Harry and his friends asking quiet questions in the right quarters, giving coin for information, calling in favors owed, and closing in on Jack, wherever he might be hiding, with no mercy in their hearts.

Two days later Harry reappeared at the house once dark had fallen. He nodded at Rose in response to the question in her eyes.

"Aye, we found him. We made it clear to him before he died that we knew not only of this crime, but of what he had done to you, Nell, long past. And took from him the weapon he used against you." He brought a leather bag from beneath his cloak, and Nell could see that it was steeped in blood. "Would you see? His c.o.c.k and stones."

Nell's gorge rose and she clapped a napkin to her mouth to prevent herself from vomiting.

"No," she gasped. "Merciful G.o.d, no."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

JACK'S INVASION OF THE HOUSE AND JOHN'S DEATH THREW NELL'S household into grief and confusion. Rose sobbed in her room for hours at a time. The children had loved and admired John, who had seemed the very epitome of das.h.i.+ng manhood, and were fretful and frightened. And no wonder, Nell thought. If you cannot feel that you are safe in your own bed, where is there hope of safety? She was determined to spare them the terrors of her own childhood, and despaired that brutality and bloodshed had come so vividly into their lives. The servants were jumpy. Meals were late, errands were forgotten, and the other tasks of keeping the household running were performed erratically or not at all. And Eleanor, whose presence had been no more than an occasional annoyance to Nell, was drinking heavily, erupting into rages at whoever crossed her path, and causing constant turmoil.

This, Nell thought, was the final straw.

The little donkey, Louise, stood in the drawing room. She raised her tail and let fall a mushy t.u.r.d onto the Turkey carpet.

"But how did she get in?" Nell demanded again. The stable boy knelt with a pan and shovel to clean up the mess, ducking his head to avoid Nell's eyes. Bridget stepped forward, her hands working in her ap.r.o.n.

"It was your mother, madam. She said she was trying to cheer little Jemmy up as he was feeling so poorly, and she thought he'd brighten to have the creature's company."

Nell was so stunned she couldn't speak. Eleanor had been the cause of little domestic flurries and skirmishes since her arrival, but this raised things to a new level. d.i.c.ky One-Shank stumped toward them and silently took the donkey's bridle. Nell shook her head in disbelief as the donkey was led away in disgrace, then turned back to Bridget.

"Was she drunk? Come, I'll not be angry." Bridget met her eyes, and Nell saw sympathy there.

"Aye, deep cut, madam, and flying the flag of defiance."

"FLING HER OUT," ROSE SAID WHEN NELL SOUGHT HER ADVICE. "YOU'VE done more for her than she had any call to expect, and none could blame you."

"I can't just put her onto the streets," Nell objected.

Rose shrugged. "Then move her somewhere else. We've all enough trouble without her making more."

Rose's practicality helped make up Nell's mind, and she felt a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders once she had settled her mother in a house in Chelsea. It was far enough away that Eleanor could not easily make inconvenient scenes, yet close enough to salve her conscience. She could still make visits with the boys, limiting the time she spent with her mother to what was bearable.

She little needed the additional pressure of her mother's disagreeable nature, she thought. The year had gone from bad to worse, quite apart from the goings-on in her household. The spring and autumn meetings of Parliament had been fraught with dissension, with the members urging Charles to enforce penal laws against Catholics and to make war on France. He had lost patience in November, and once more prorogued Parliament, so the Earl of Shaftesbury's Green Ribbon Club met and plotted in the coffeehouses.

And Jemmy was sick again. Nell sat by the side of the bed, consumed with worry. He was sleeping now, and the flush of the fever seemed to have broken. He didn't lack for care-at the first sign of his illness she had dispatched a coach to fetch the king's surgeons, and she had hired a nurse to sit with him, though she rarely left the room herself. What was wrong with him? It was not that any particular illness he had was serious in itself, but that he seemed perpetually delicate. His little cheeks worked and his dark eyelashes twitched as he dreamed. Nell laid a hand on his forehead and was relieved to find that it felt cool. His fever had broken. Be safe, my angel child, she thought. You are my life and happiness.

THE WITS HAD GATHERED FOR SUPPER AT NELL'S HOUSE ON A CHILL December night, and the main topic of conversation was the advent in London the previous day of the famous Hortense Mancini, d.u.c.h.ess of Mazarin.

"I saw her arrival at St. James's Palace," Buckingham said. "Astride a black stallion and dressed in men's traveling clothes, cloak and boots, and spattered with the mud of the road, with only a manservant to accompany her. Looked like a messenger."

"Ah," said Rochester, with a wicked glint in his eyes, "but the message she brings, beneath that rough apparel, is carnality itself."

"Still as handsome as ever, is she?" Dorset asked, leaning forward eagerly, winegla.s.s in hand.

"Still the Roman Eagle." Buckingham nodded. "Fierce and proud, and daring any man to tame her."

Nell looked around the table with annoyance. Every man there seemed inflamed at the thought of Hortense.

"She left her husband, didn't she?" she asked, trying to flounder onto more solid ground.

"That she did," crowed Fleetwood Sheppard. "Mad b.u.g.g.e.r he is, too. Practically kept her behind bars, I've heard, so jealous he was."

"And she's been eight years on the run," Rochester drawled. "Ranging over France and Italy, putting in with whatever lover and provider she can find."

"But her latest bit of luck has run out," Dorset explained to Nell. "The Duke de Savoy died, and his widow sent the pulchritudinous Hortense packing."

Nell strove to keep her voice even. "And what does she want here?"

The men exchanged leering glances.

"Not much mystery there," Rochester said. "The story is she's come to visit the d.u.c.h.ess of York, who's some kin to her. I'm sorry, Nell, but I'd lay all I have that what she's really after is a place in the royal bed, at least long enough to get herself a child and some cash from our Charlie."

"He knows her, then?" Nell asked, her stomach churning.

"Knows her?" Buckingham laughed. "He wanted to marry her sixteen years ago, when she was just a girl. But her uncle Mazarin didn't like his prospects, for at the time he was penniless, without a crown or a kingdom."

"Mayhap she thinks there's still a chance for her?" Sheppard laughed.

Not again, Nell thought. Not again.

NELL'S FIRST VIEW OF HORTENSE SOME DAYS LATER AT COURT DID nothing to allay her concerns. The newcomer, dressed in a gown of cloth of silver, was lushly voluptuous, with hair that fell in heavy black waves and flas.h.i.+ng eyes that seemed to change from steely slate gray to ocean blue. Every man in her presence seemed enthralled.

After supper, Hortense took up a guitar and played her own accompaniment while performing a dance from Spain. Her heels clicked rapidly on the marble floor and she moved with a sinuous grace. It was easy enough for Nell to picture Hortense writhing in abandon in a rumpled bed, and from the look on Charles's face, it was clear his mind ran deeply in the same thoughts.

Nell glanced around the company. The queen's face was perhaps set a little more determinedly than usual. Barbara's lips were pursed in contained fury, her eyes like fire. And Louise was looking like a fat baby who fears her sweet will be s.n.a.t.c.hed from her hands. No mistaking, Nell thought, this Hortense blows an ill wind for all.

By May, it had become clear exactly how much trouble Hortense was. Louise, after weeks of tearful squalls and tantrums failed to draw Charles's attention, departed to take the waters at Bath.

"I've heard it's because the king has given her a dose of the pox," Rochester said over supper at Nell's, downing the remains of his wine and holding the empty gla.s.s up to the firelight. "These gla.s.ses of yours are really rather stunning, George. Far superior to anything we've had in England before."

"Yes, they are," Buckingham said shortly. "It could be true he's Frenchified her-or maybe one can't say that when the wench herself is French? But it could be that's only a convenient excuse to take herself away from court so the king's utter neglect of her is not so apparent."

"That would fit," Rochester agreed, pulling the wine bottle toward him. "And what about you, dear Nell? Is the Royal Charles docking in the famous Gwynn quim these nights?"

"h.e.l.l and death, Johnny," Nell said. "Is there nothing you won't ask?"

"Nothing," Rochester agreed cheerfully. "Well?"

Rochester, Buckingham, and Dorset looked expectantly at her.

"He sups with me quite frequently. But he hasn't shared my bed in some weeks."

"Harry Killigrew is on as groom of the bedchamber this fortnight," Dorset commented. "He tells me that the king retires to bed with all ceremony, then rises, puts on his clothes, and steals away to spend the night with Hortense."

"Well, it's certainly seized the public imagination," Buckingham said. "Have you heard Waller's satire? 'Triple Combat,' he calls it." He dug in his pocket, drew forth a crumpled broadsheet, and read, to the delight of the others, "Such killing looks! So thick the arrows fly!

That 'tis unsafe to be a stander-by.

Poets approaching to describe the fight,

Are by their wounds instructed how to write.

"It's rather good, really," he chuckled, looking up from the poem. "Here's you, Nell, as Chloris: "Her matchless form made all the English glad,

And foreign beauties less a.s.surance had."

"Fine for you to enjoy it," Nell snorted. "It's not you being held up for mockery for all the country to hear."

"Don't take it to heart," Buckingham advised. "You know you have the love of the people, and they'd back you in any fight."

"So true," Rochester agreed. "The darling strumpet of the crowd."

"Besides," Buckingham said, "Louise is on the run. That's where you want her, isn't it?"

"It is."

"So laugh and make the best of it," Buckingham said. "By this point you should know that Charles will always return to you no matter where he wanders. Take that s.h.i.+ning new coach and four of yours out for a drive. You know the people calling out to you always cheers you up."

What Buckingham said was true, Nell reflected that night as she sat at her dressing table brus.h.i.+ng her hair. Charles might be bewitched by Hortense, and spending less time in her own bed just now, but his affection for her did not seem to have dimmed, and when he came to sup with her and the boys she still felt that he was securely attached to the little family that they were.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She was twenty-six, but younger at that than Barbara, Louise, and Hortense. Her skin was still fair and smooth, unblemished by wrinkles, and her body was still taut and slim beneath the fine linen of her nightgown. She did not doubt that Charles still took pleasure in sharing her bed, and did not doubt that he would return to her bed when his ardor for Hortense had cooled. It was so much better just to accept, she thought, than to allow herself to live in terror, as poor Louise did. But then Louise feared losing her power and influence, and Nell cared nothing for those, only for Charles's love.

NELL HAD INCREASINGLY COME TO LOVE THE NEWLY FAs.h.i.+ONABLE games of ba.s.set but found that she feared them as well. The stakes were frequently enormous, which increased both her exhilaration, her sense that anything might happen with the turn of a card, and her terror for the same reason. Anything might happen. With the turn of a card. She had grown less cautious with her betting, and the previous night she had won five hundred pounds and had scarce been able to sleep for the excitement of it. It had been her first venture as talliere, or banker, though she had previously been urged that she ought to bank, as that position had a greater chance of winning than the punters, or those who only bet upon their hands.

On this night the table was the presentation of Charles's harem-or his current stable, as Barbara had departed for France. To Nell's left sat Louise, in a sea of carnation ribbons, and to her right, her dark eyes ablaze, was Hortense. An eager crowd watched, while Charles was across the room in conversation with his chief minister, Lord Danby, and the new French amba.s.sador, Honore de Courtin.

Luck had sat with Nell throughout the evening, and she had taken hand after hand, so that now she was six hundred pounds to the good. Six hundred pounds. Stacks of gold coins lay before her. She pushed aside the thought of where she would stand had the cards not been in her favor so many times.

"Your turn to act as talliere, Mrs. Nelly," Hortense said. "I take it you shall pa.s.s again?"

"No," Nell said. "I think I'll take my turn now. I'm feeling lucky tonight."

"Ah! Then we shall have to be careful," Louise simpered.

Nell dealt Hortense and Louise their hands of thirteen cards, and after consideration and consultation with onlookers, they laid their bets. Nell turned up the fa.s.se-the first card. It was the queen of hearts, and there was laughter.