The Loves of Charles II (118 page)

Nell said: “I could tell you, Sire.”

And she told him; her explanation was lucid and witty. She restored him to his good humor, and shortly after that occasion Nell discovered that she was to bear the King’s child.

Now that Nell was with child by the King, it was no longer possible for her to play all her old parts. She was helped by Will Chaffinch, who had charge of such items of the royal expenditure, and she moved into Newman’s Row, which was next to Whetstone Park.

Nell was elated by the thought of bearing the King’s child. Charles was only mildly interested. He had so many illegitimate children; it was a legitimate one which he so desperately needed. Even before he had been restored to his throne he had a large and growing family, of which the Duke of Mon-mouth was the eldest son. Some he kept about him; others passed out of his life. One of the latter was James de la Cloche who had been born to Margaret de Carteret while Charles was exiled in Jersey. He believed that James was now a Jesuit. Lady Shannon had given him a daughter; Catherine Pegge a son and a daughter. There were many others who claimed to be his. He accepted them all in his merry good humor. He was proud of his ability to create sons and daughters; and when some of his subjects called him “Old Rowley,” after the stallion in the royal stables who had sired more fine and healthy colts than any other, he did not object. Barbara Castlemaine had already borne him five children. He loved them all tenderly. He adored his children; there was nothing he liked better than to talk with them, and listen to their amusing comments. He enjoyed his visits to Barbara’s nursery more than to their mother’s chamber. They were growing more amusing—young Anne, Charles, Henry, Charlotte, and George—than their virago of a mother.

He had an acknowledged family of nine or ten; he did what he could for them, raising them to the peerage, settling money on them, keeping his eyes open for profitable marriages. Oh, yes, he was indeed fond of his children.

And now little Nell was to provide him with another.

It was interesting; he would be eager to see the child when it put in an appearance; but meanwhile there was much elsewhere with which to occupy himself.

He was faintly worried once more by the shadows cast over his throne by his son Monmouth, and his own brother, the Duke of York.

Monmouth was turning out to be a rake. In the sexual field, it was said, he would one day rival his father. Charles could only shrug his shoulders
tolerantly at this. He would not have had young Jemmy otherwise—nor could he have expected it with such a father and such a mother.

He wished though that his son did not indulge in so much street-fighting. Charles had given him a troop of horse, and when he had inspected fortifications at Harwich recently it was reported that he and his friends had had a right merry time debauching the women of the countryside.

It would be churlish of me to deny him the pleasure in which I myself have taken such delight, the King told himself. Yet he would have preferred young Jemmy to have had a more serious side to his character. It was true that the King’s friends indulged in like pleasures; but these were men of wit; they were rogues and libertines, but they were interested in the things of the mind as well as those of the body—even as Charles was himself. So far it seemed to him that his son Jemmy had taken on himself all the vices of the Restoration and none of its virtues.

Jemmy was growing more arrogant, more speculative every day. He was providing the biggest shadow over the crown. Brother James also caused anxieties. He was very different from young Jemmy. James had his mistresses—many of them—and he visited them and got them with child whenever he could escape from Anne Hyde. James was not a bad sort; James was merely a fool. James had a perfect genius for doing that which would bring trouble—mainly on himself. “Ah,” Charles would murmur often, “protect me from
la sottise de mon frère.
But most of all, protect my brother from it.”

Now James was having trouble with Buckingham. There was another who was doomed to make trouble for others and chiefly for himself. Two troublemakers; if they could but put their heads together and make one brewing of trouble ‘twould be easier, mused Charles. But they must busy themselves with their separate brews and give me double trouble.

Buckingham—by far the cleverer of the two—had decided that James should be his friend. He made advances to the Duke, suggesting that they sink their differences and work together. Buckingham wished to rid himself of his greatest rival in the Cabal, my lord Arlington, and had solicited James’ help to this end.

James, with sturdy self-righteousness, had set himself apart from their schemes. He intimated that he considered it beneath him to enter into such Cabals; he was resolved to serve the King in his own way.

More tact should have been used when dealing with the wild and reckless Buckingham.

Buckingham now saw James as an enemy; and how could such an ambitious man tolerate an enemy who was also heir presumptive to the crown?

Buckingham raged, and mad schemes filled his imaginative brain. The
King must get legitimate children; the Duke of York must never be allowed to mount the throne.

So now it was that Buckingham brought out his wild plans for a divorce between the King—that mighty stallion, who had proved many times that he was capable of getting children with a variety of women—and sterile Catherine, whose inability to perform her duties as Queen could plunge the country into a desperate situation.

Charles had declined Buckingham’s efforts on his behalf, which had ranged from the divorcing of Catherine to the kidnapping of her and carrying her off to some plantation where she would never be heard of again.

Moreover Charles had sought out James.

“My lord Buckingham’s wild mind teems with wild plans,” he said. “And the very essence of these plans is that you shall never follow me. Do not laugh at them, James. Buckingham is a dangerous fellow.”

Buckingham was looking to Monmouth. What wild seeds could he sow in that wild mind?

So the shadows deepened about the throne, and the King had little time to think of the child which Nell would soon be bringing into the world.

There was not a breath of air in the room. Hangings had been drawn across the windows to shut out the light; candles burned in the chamber. Nell lay on her bed and thought her last hour had come. So many women died in childbirth.

Rose was with her, and she was glad of Rose’s company.

“Nelly,” whispered Rose, “should you not be walking up and down the chamber? ’Twill make an easier birth, they say.”

“No more, Rosy. No more,” moaned Nell. “I have walked enough, and these pains seem fit to kill me.”

Her mother sat by the bed; Nell saw through half-closed eyes that she had brought her gin bottle with her.

She was crying already. Nell heard her talking of her beautiful daughter who had captivated the King. Her mother’s voice, high-pitched and shrill, seemed to fill the bedchamber.

“That little bastard my girl Nell is bearing the King’s son. Who’d have thought it … of my little Nell!”

It is a long way, thought Nell, from a bawdy-house in Cole-yard to childbed of the King’s bastard.

And where was the King this day? He was not in London. He was
riding to Dover to greet visitors from overseas. “Matters of state,” he would murmur. “Matters of state. That is why I cannot be at hand at the birth of our child, sweet Nell.”

He would say such things to have her believe that the child she was bearing was as important to him as those borne by his lady mistresses. Actress or Duchess … it was the same to him. That’s what he would imply. If he had been beside her and said it, she would have believed him.

“I always said,” Mrs. Gwyn was croaking to Mary Knepp and Peg Hughes, who had come into the chamber to swell the crowds and see Mrs. Nelly brought to bed of the King’s bastard, “I always said that my Nell was too little a one to bear children.”

Then Nell suddenly sat up in bed and cried aloud: “Have done with your caterwauling, Ma. I’m not a corpse yet. Nor do I intend to be. I’ll live, and so will the King’s bastard.”

That was so typical of Nell that everyone fell to laughing; and Nell herself kept them in fits of laughter until the pain grew worse and she called to Rose and the midwife.

Not long after that Nell lay back exhausted, with the King’s son in her arms.

There was a fluffy dark down on his head.

The women bending over him cried: “He’s a Stuart! Yes, you can see the royal stallion in Nelly’s brat.”

And Nell, holding him close, believed she was discovering a new adventure in happiness. She had never felt so tired nor so contented with her lot.

This tiny creature in her arms should never sprawl on the cobbles of Cole-yard; he should never hold horses for fine gentlemen; indeed he should be a fine gentleman himself—a duke no less!

And why not? Were not Barbara’s brats dukes? Why should not Nell’s most beautiful babe become one also?

“What’ll you call him, Nelly?” asked Rose.

“I shall call him Charles,” said Nell, and she spoke very firmly. “Charles, of course, after his father.”

And as she lay there, for the first time in her life Nell knew the real meaning of ambition. It was born in her, strong and fierce; and all her hopes and desires for greatness were for this child who lay in her arms.

Charles, travelling to Dover, did not give Nell and their child a thought. He knew that he was approaching one of the most important moments of his reign.

This meeting at Dover would not only bring him a sight of his beloved
sister, but it would mean establishing that alliance which was to be forged between himself and France, himself and France rather than England and France, for the treaty which he would sign would be a secret treaty, the contents of which would be known only to himself and four of his most able statesmen—Arlington, Arundel, Clifford, and Bellings.

Secrecy was necessary. If his people knew what he planned to sign, they would rise against him. They hated the French; and how was it possible to explain to them that their country tottered on the edge of bankruptcy? How was it possible to explain that the effects of plague, fire, and a Dutch war lingered on? England needed France’s money and, if France demanded concessions, these concessions must be made. Whether they would be kept or not was a matter with which Charles must concern himself when the time came for keeping them. Meantime it was a matter of signing the secret treaty or facing bankruptcy, poverty, famine, and that sorry state which invariably followed on the heels of these disasters and was the greatest of them all—revolution.

Charles had seen one revolution in England; he had no intention of seeing another. Ten years ago he had come home; and he was determined—if it were in his power to prevent it—never to go wandering again.

So he rode to Dover.

There were so many compensations in life. Here he was to meet his sweet Minette, that favorite of all his brothers and sisters, the youngest of them all, whom he had always loved so dearly and who, in the letters she wrote so frequently to him, seemed like a constant companion. She was married—poor sweet Minette—to the most loathsome Monsieur of France, who treated her shamefully; and she was in love—she betrayed this in her letters, and he had his spies in the French Court who had confirmed this—with Louis XIV, the brilliant and handsome monarch of France. It was Minette’s tragedy that the restoration of her brother had come too late for her to marry the King of France, and that she had been forced to take Monsieur his brother.