Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

“Oh.” Barbara relaxed visibly. That was another matter again. He was still willing to “deal fairly,” to come to a “settlement.” She thought she knew well enough how to handle that. “I want to please your Majesty. But I hope you’ll give me leave to think this over for a day or two. I’ve got my children to consider. No matter what happens to me I want them to have the things they should—”

“They’ll be taken care of. Study your terms then—I’ll come here Thursday at this hour to discuss them with you.”

He got up, made her a casual bow, snapped his fingers at the dogs and left her without a backward glance. Barbara sat staring at the foot of the bed, puzzled, uneasy, worried. And then she heard him talking softly and there was Wilson’s excited giggle. Suddenly she jumped out of bed and shouted:

“Wilson! Wilson, come in here! I need you!”

Thursday she met him at the door of her chamber, beautifully gowned and painted, and though he had half expected to find her in tears of hysterical anger she was gracious and charming —the old pose he had seen so seldom these past two or three years. The maids were dismissed and they sat down alone, face to face, each taking the other’s measure. Barbara knew at once that he had not changed his mind, as she had hoped he would, during that interval.

She gave him a piece of paper, a neat itemized list written in black ink, and sat drumming her nails on the arm of the chair as he read it; her eyes roamed the room but now and again flickered back to him. He scanned the page hastily, slowly his eyebrows contracted and he gave a low whistle. Without looking up at her he began to read:

“Twenty-five thousand to clear your debts. Ten thousand a year allowance. A duchy for yourself and earldoms for the boys—” He glanced across swiftly, a half humorous scowl on his face. “Ods-fish, Barbara! You must think I’m King Midas. Remember, I’m that pauper, Charles Stuart—whose country has just gone through the worst plague and fire in history and is up to its ears in debt for war. You damned well know I haven’t the means to support all this!” He gave the paper a whack with his hand and tossed it aside.

Barbara shrugged, smiling. “Why, Sire, how should I know? You’ve given me more than that in the past—and now you want to get rid of me, though no fault of my own—Why, Lord, Your Majesty, only in ordinary decency you should give me that much. It takes a deal of money to look a hostile world in the face. You know that as well as anyone. I might as well be dead as try to get along on less once you’ve cast me off—Why, my life wouldn’t be worth the living!”

“I have no intention of making your life miserable to you. But you know I can’t possibly make such an arrangement as this.”

“On the other hand, the mother of five of your children shouldn’t have to beg for her living when you grow tired of her, should she? How would it look for you, Sire, if the world knew you’d turned me off with a stingy settlement?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that in France there are several very comfortable nunneries where a lady of your religion might live well and happily on under five hundred pound a year?”

For an instant Barbara stared at him. All at once she gave a sharp explosive laugh. “Damn me, but you do have the drollest wit! Come, now: Can you imagine me in a nunnery?”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Not very well,” he admitted. “Still, I can’t make any such allowance as that.”

“Well, then—perhaps we can agree another way.”

“And what way might that be?”

“Why can’t I stay on here? Perhaps you don’t love me any more, but surely it can’t matter to you if I live in the Palace. I’ll trouble you no farther—you go your way and I’ll go mine. After all, isn’t it unfair to make me wretched because you’ve fallen out of love with me?”

He knew how much sincerity there was in what she said, and yet he had begun to think that perhaps that would be the easiest way, after all. No sudden break to wrench them apart, no unpleasant scenes of tears and recriminations—but a slow and easy drifting. Someday she would go of her own accord. Yes, that might be best. At any rate it would be the least trouble —and immediate expense—to him.

He got to his feet. “Very well then, madame. Trouble me no more and we’ll get along well enough. Live any way you like, but live as quietly as you can. And one thing more: If you tell no one about this, no one will know it—for I’ll not mention it.”

“Oh, thank you, Sire! You are kind!”

She came to stand before him and looked up into his face, her eyes coaxing, inviting him. She still hoped that a kiss and half an hour in bed could change everything—expunge the animosity and distrust which had grown out of the passionate infatuation with which they had begun. He stared at her steadily and then, very faintly, he smiled; his hand made a light gesture and he walked beyond her and out of the room. Barbara turned to watch him, stunned, as though she had had a slap in the face.

A couple of days later she went into the country to have an abortion, for this child, she knew, he would never own. But it had also occurred to her that if she was gone for a few weeks he would forget everything that had been unpleasant between them and begin to miss her—he would send for her to come back, as he had done in the old days. Someday, she told herself, he’ll love me again, I know he will. Next time we meet, things will be different.

SHE LIVED AT the top of Maypole Alley, a narrow little street off Drury Lane, in a two-room lodging which looked exactly as she always did—careless and untidy, with nothing in its place. Silk stockings were flung over chair-backs, a soiled smock lay in a heap on the floor just beside the bed, orange-peelings littered the table and empty ale-glasses stood about, unwashed. The fireplace was heaped with ashes and apparently had not been swept out for years. Dust coated the furniture and puffs of it drifted over the floor, for the girl she hired to come in and clean had not been there for several days. Everything suggested an abandonment to chaos, a gay headlong contempt for stodgy tidiness.

In the middle of the floor Nell Gwynne was dancing.

Barefooted, she whirled and spun, twisted her lithe body and flung her skirts high, completely unselfconscious, absorbed and happy. In one chair sprawled Charles Hart, watching her through half-shut lids, and sitting astraddle another was John Lacy, who also acted for the King’s Company and who also had been Nelly’s lover. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, a street-musician they had called in, stood nearby and scraped on his cheap fiddle.

When at last she stopped and made them a curtsy so deep that her bowed head touched her knee, the men broke into hearty applause. Nelly looked up at them, eyes sparkling with eager delight, and still panting from the violent exertion she leaped to her feet.

“Did you like it? Do you think I’m a better dancer than her?”

Hart waved his hand. “Better? Why, you make Moll Davis look clumsy as a pregnant cow!”

Nelly laughed, but her face changed swiftly. She reached for an orange and began to peel it, rolling out her lower lip in exaggerated pique. “Much good it does me! There’s no one there to see me these days. Lord, the pit’s been empty as a Dutchman’s noddle ever since his Majesty gave her that diamond ring! They’ve all got to have a look at the King’s latest whore.”

“You’d think a new royal mistress wouldn’t be such a curiosity any more,” remarked Lacy, knocking out his pipe on the edge of the table, stepping on the ashes as they fell to the floor. “I can count a baker’s dozen from the stage any day I like.”

At that moment there was a loud rapping on the door and Nelly ran to open it. A liveried footman stood there. “Mrs. Knight presents her service to you, madame, and would like a word with you. She waits below in her coach.”

Nelly glanced back at the two men from over her shoulder and screwed up her face to wink. “Speak of the Devil—here’s another one below. You’ll find sack and brandy in the cupboard. Maybe there’s something to eat in the food-hutch. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She disappeared, but an instant later returned to slide her feet into a pair of high-heeled, square-toed pumps, and then picking up her skirts she went swooping down the stairs and out into the street. A gilded coach-and-four stood there, the door held open by a footman. Mary Knight sat inside, her beautiful face painted an almost glistening white, and she reached out one jewelled arm to take hold of Nelly’s wrist.

“Come, sweetheart—get in. I want to talk to you.” Her voice was warm and sweet as a melody, and she smelled of some drowsy perfume.

Nelly obediently climbed in and flounced down beside her. Not at all conscious of her own griminess, she looked at Mary with passionate admiration. “Lord, Mary! I swear you’re prettier every time I see you!”

“Pshaw, child. It’s only that I wear fine clothes nowadays, and a jewel or so. By the way, whatever became of that pearl necklace my Lord Buckhurst gave you?”

Nell shrugged. “I sent it back to ’im.”

“Sent it back? Good God! What for?”

“Oh—I don’t know. What good is a string of pearls to me? My mother would have pawned it to buy brandy or to get Rose’s husband out of Newgate.” Rose was Nelly’s sister.

“Sweetheart, let me tell you something. Never give anything back. Often enough by the time a woman’s thirty she has nothing to live on but the presents made her when she was young.”

But Nelly was just seventeen and thirty was a thousand years away. “I’ve never been hungry. I’ll live somehow. What did you want to see me for, Mary?”

“I want to take you calling. Are you dressed? Is your hair combed?” The light from the torches was too unsteady to see distinctly.

“Well enough, I warrant. Who’re we calling on?”

“A gentleman named Charles Stuart.” She paused a moment, for Nelly sat in silence, not realizing whom she meant. “His Majesty, King Charles II!” The words rolled off her tongue like the flare of trumpets and a chill ran over Nelly’s flesh, along her arms and down her back.

“King Charles!” she whispered. “He wants to see me!”

“He does. And he asked me, as an old friend, to carry the invitation.”

Nelly sat perfectly rigid, staring straight ahead of her. “Holy Mother of God!” she whispered. And then she flew into a sudden tempest of indecision and fright. “But I’m all undone! My hair’s down! I haven’t got any stockings on! Oh, Mary! I can’t go!”

Mary put one hand over hers. “Of course you can, sweetheart. I’ll lend you my cloak. And I’ve got a comb here.”

“Oh, but Mary—I can’t! I just can’t!” She stabbed about for an excuse and suddenly remembered Hart and Lacy waiting upstairs for her. She started to get out. “I’ve got callers myself, I just remembered. I—”

Mary took her arm and firmly pulled her back again. “He’s expecting you.” She leaned forward and rapped on the front wall of the coach. “Drive away!”

It was only a little more than half a mile to Whitehall and Nelly spent that time dragging Mary’s comb through the snarls of her coarse thick blonde hair, her stomach fluttering and the palms of her hands cold and wet. Her throat was so tight she could scarcely speak, though from time to time she murmured, “Oh, Jesus!”

At the Palace she got out, Mary’s cloak flung over her shoulders, and just before she ran off Mary slid the pearl drops from her ears and handed them to her. “Wear these, sweetheart. I’ll wait for you to drive you home.”

Nelly took them, made a step or two away, then turned suddenly and came back to the coach. “I can’t go, Mary! I can’t! He’s the King!”

“Go along, child. He’s waiting for you.”

Nelly closed her eyes hard and murmured a prayer and then crossed the courtyard, went through the door Mary had pointed out and along a winding hall-way, down a flight of stairs to another door; there she knocked. A footman opened it, she gave him her name, and was admitted. She found herself in a handsomely furnished room. There were gold-framed portraits on the walls, a great carved fireplace, embroidered chairs from France. For a long moment she stood just inside the doorway, staring about her in awe, nervously cleaning the dirt from beneath her finger-nails.

After two or three minutes William Chiffinch came in, well-fed and silky, with pouches under his eyes and a sensual mouth, belching gently as though he had just risen from a too rich meal. His appearance put her somewhat at ease, for he was no more fearsome than any other man, even if he was the King’s Page of the Backstairs.