B009RYSCAU EBOK (41 page)

EPILOGUE

Twenty-fifth of March, 1603—Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

B
ESS RAISED HER EYES FROM THE LITTLE RED SHOE IN HER HAND
to find Crossman gazing at her.

“Well, it’s late,” she said. “If I’m to make you work, I suppose I’d best get on with it.”

She pulled each of the items from the box before her and ranged them on the table. The delicate handkerchief that Robbie Barlow had given her on the morning of her first wedding day. A little cap, worn so few times before poor baby Temperance had let go of her little life with a gentle sigh, and the tiny gown in which Lucres had been christened. A little book, a spelling primer, that had belonged to her son Harry, when she had still had such hopes for him. A heavy gold ring, far too large for her fingers, that had adorned the hand of William Cavendish. A rose, pressed and flat but still redolent of summer, that Will St. Loe had given her during that summer progress when they had been so happy together. A lock of red-gold hair, tied with a bit of blue ribbon—Jane Grey’s hair, enclosed in that last letter. The gloves she had worn at her fourth wedding, to George Talbot, the soft ivory kid still giving off a faint scent of perfume.

Astonishing that these few little items held such a weight of memory and meaning. She took up each again, memorizing their contours, their colors, the feel of each in her hands, for she would never see them again.

A log on the fire gave a sharp crack and shifted, sending a shower of sparks upward. Bess glanced at the westward-facing windows, black now in the wintry darkness. And yet—surely not blank, for something caught her eye, a flash of color, of movement. It seemed to Bess that it was her mother she had glimpsed there. And there, in another window, another fleeting image—William, and beside him Will. There was a ripple of light in the diamond panes of the next window over, and Bess saw the face of Jane Grey. The firelight must be playing tricks on her eyes. She glanced sharply to the windows on the northern wall and drew in her breath, for from the expanse of glass a crowd of faces gazed out at her—Robbie Barlow, George Talbot, Lizzie Brooke, Frances Grey, the angelic countenances of Temperance and Lucres, Cat Howard, Doll Fitzherbert. And Elizabeth, eyes like jet sparkling in the crystal panes.

Bess turned back to Crossman. He must think she was mad. But his eyes were warm and grave and there was a half smile on his face as he gave a minute nod.

“Have you changed your mind, my lady? I can return in the morning.”

Crossman shifted his cap in his hands and Bess was tempted to send him away.

“No, let us not wait,” she said. She let her fingers caress Temperance’s tiny cap. “Let us do it now, for otherwise I might change my mind. We brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry anything out of this world, we are told, and I have carried these things long enough. Let the walls of Hardwick hold them now, for it will still be here when I am no more. And that is really what we crave, is it not, Rob? To know that we are not truly gone.”

Crossman nodded gravely, as if weighing her words.

“It is. But you of all folks should have no fear, your ladyship. It would take a bigger world than this to forget such a lady as you.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many to people to thank for their help in making this book come into the world:

My agents, Kevan Lyon, Arabella Stein, and Taryn Fagerness.

My editor, Kate Seaver.

Pat Bracewell and Melanie Spiller, my wonderful writing group mates, who provided thoughtful and supportive criticism week after week, and encouragement when I thought it couldn’t be done. Pat deserves special thanks for a reading and critique of new scenes added at the last minute.

Diana Gabaldon, Bernard Cornwell, Margaret George, Leslie Carroll, and Patricia Bracewell took time to read the not-quite-final draft of the book on tight deadline and provided me with lovely quotes for the cover.

Helen Hollick, Elizabeth Chadwick, Linda Collinson, Susan Keogh, Jenny Quinlan, Richard Spillman, and Joan Szechtman responded to my query on the Facebook page of the Historical Novel Society about the use of curry combs. With her permission, I have used a couple of sentences that Helen Hollick wrote describing how Bess might have felt herself grow calmer as she groomed her colt.

My father, Dick Bagwell, came up with a great selection of songs for me to choose from to give Bess something to sing to Moth as she groomed him, and provided information about music at court.

Noel Gieleghem and Elspeth Golden provided advice about clothes and fashions of the period.

Alice Northgreaves provided useful information about the Letters of Bess of Hardwick project under Dr. Alison Wiggins, which is digitizing Bess’s letters—though, alas, not in time for me to have made use of them. Alice also put me in touch with Polly Schomberg of the National Trust, who arranged for me to visit Hardwick Hall out of season, although I wasn’t ultimately able to make that visit.

J. D. Davies kindly took many pictures of Hardwick Hall and Old Hardwick Hall for me, as I was unable to go, and gave me words I could quote to convince my editor that I couldn’t write a novel about Bess of Hardwick and not have Hardwick Hall make an appearance.

There are others, I know, whose indulgence I crave in advance for their omission.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel covers only the first half of the very long and very eventful life of Bess of Hardwick. All of the major characters and most of the minor ones are real people. The further Bess rose in prominence and power, the more documentation there was of her life, but much less is known about her early years. David N. Durant’s biography,
Bess of Hardwick
, begins with her second marriage, when she was nineteen. Maud Stepney Rawson’s
Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle
dispenses with her first two marriages and the first thirty years of her life in ten pages. Another twelve pages takes Bess to the age of thirty-seven and the death of her third husband. Even Mary Lovell’s
Bess of Hardwick: Empire Build
er, the most recent biography, takes only two hundred pages of almost five hundred to bring Bess to the age of forty in the autumn of 1567, where my book ends.

So I have used what facts are known about her younger years, but of necessity have had to make some suppositions and also to invent, based on what seems possible or likely. I have chosen to put Bess in places and situations in which she could have been when it made the story better. For instance, she was in the household of Lady Zouche from about 1539, and since Lady Zouche’s husband became one of Henry VIII’s gentlemen pensioners around that time, Bess could easily have been at court to observe the king’s last three marriages, and so I have put her there, though I don’t know if she was.

I’ve taken some small liberties with other real people. Bess certainly knew Elisabeth Brooke, who was eventually the wife of William Parr and the Marchioness of Northampton, but I don’t know when they met. Elizabeth Brooke was just Bess’s age and was first noted at court at the age of fourteen when she became a maid of honor to Catherine Howard. I have placed her in the household of Lady Zouche with Bess a couple of years earlier, rather than writing a fictional character who drops out of sight. Her presence also creates a plausible bridge to Bess’s acquaintance with Catherine Howard and with Catherine Parr, who Elisabeth Brooke also served. Similarly, one of Bess’s friends in London was Dorothy Fitzherbert, later Lady Port, who also grew up in Derbyshire, so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch to also place her in Lady Zouche’s service.

I didn’t need to invent Bess’s close connection to the Greys. Bess did serve in the household of Henry Grey and Frances Brandon, and her second wedding, to their friend Sir William Cavendish, took place at their home, Bradgate Park. Bess was very close to Jane Grey, and kept Jane’s portrait near her all her life. The scenes in which Katherine Grey discloses to Bess her secret marriage and her pregnancy really did take place, as well as all that happened as a result, including Bess’s questioning in the Tower. And when Mary, the youngest of the Grey girls, died, she was buried at St. Botolph without Aldersgate, next to Bess’s second husband Sir William Cavendish.

I’ve used bits of real letters and quotations from people, woven into fictional letters and dialogue.

Read on for a special preview of Gillian Bagwell’s novel

THE DARLING STRUMPET

A novel of Nell Gwynn, who captured the heart of England and King Charless II

CHAPTER ONE

London—Twenty-ninth of May, 1660

T
HE SUN SHONE HOT AND BRIGHT IN THE GLORIOUS
M
AY SKY,
and the streets of London were rivers of joyous activity. Merchants and laborers, gentlemen and ladies, apprentices and servants, whores, thieves, and grimy urchins—all were out in their thousands. And all with the same thought shining in their minds and hearts and the same words on their tongues—the king comes back this day.

After ten years—nay, it was more—of England without a king. Ten years of the bleak and gray existence that life had been under the Protector—an odd title for one who had thrown the country into strife, had arrested and then beheaded King Charles. What a groan had gone up from the crowd that day at the final, fatal sound of the executioner’s axe; what horror and black despair had filled their hearts as the bleeding head of the king was held aloft in triumph. And all upon the order of the Protector, who had savaged life as it had been, and then, after all, had thought to take the throne for himself.

But now he was gone. Oliver Cromwell was dead, his son had fled after a halfhearted attempt at governing, his partisans were scattered, and the king’s son, Charles II, who had barely escaped with his life to years of impoverished exile, was approaching London to claim his crown, on this, his thirtieth birthday. And after so long a wait, such suffering and loss, what wrongs could there be that the return of the king could not put right?

* * *

N
ELL
G
WYNN AWOKE, THE WARMTH OF THE SUN ON HER BACK IN
contrast to the dank coolness of the straw on which she lay under the shelter of a rickety staircase. She rolled over, and the movement hurt. Her body ached from the beating her mother had given her the night before. Legs and backside remembered the blows of the broomstick, and her face was bruised and tender from the slaps. Tears had mingled on her cheeks with dust. She tried to wipe the dirt away, but her hands were just as bad, grimy and still smelling of oysters.

Oysters. That was the cause of all this pain. Yesterday evening, she’d stopped on her way home to watch as garlands of flowers were strung on one of the triumphal arches that had been erected in anticipation of the king’s arrival. Caught up in the excitement, she had forgotten to be vigilant, and her oyster barrow had been stolen. She’d crept home unwillingly, hoped that the night would be one of the many when her mother had been drinking so heavily that she was already unconscious, or one of the few when the drink made her buoyant and forgiving. But no. Not even the festive mood taking hold of London had leavened her reaction to the loss of the barrow. Replacing it would cost five shillings, as much as Nell earned in a week. And her mother had seemed determined to beat into Nell’s hide the understanding of that cost.

Nell had no tears today. She was only angry, and determined that she would not be beaten again. She sat up and brushed the straw out of her skirt, clawed it out of the curls of her hair. And thought about what to do next. She wanted to find Rose, her dear older sister, with whom she’d planned so long for this day. And she was hungry. With no money and no prospect of getting any.

At home there would be food, but home would mean facing her mother again. Another beating, or at least more shouting and recriminations, and then more of what she had done for the past two years—up at dawn, the long walk to Billingsgate fish market to buy her daily stock, and an endless day pushing the barrow, heavy with the buckets of live oysters in their brine. Aching feet, aching arms, aching back, throat hoarse with her continual cry of “Oysters, alive-o!” Hands raw and red from plunging into the salt water, and the fishy, salty smell always on her hands, pervading her hair and clothes.

It was better than the work she had done before that, almost since she was old enough to walk—going from door to door to collect the cinders and fragments of wood left from the previous day’s fires, and then taking her pickings to the soap makers, who bought the charred bits for fuel and the ashes to make lye. Her skin and clothes had been always gray and gritty, a film of stinking ash ground into her pores. And not even a barrow to wheel, but heavy canvas sacks carried slung over her shoulders, their weight biting into her flesh.

Nell considered. What else could she do? What would buy freedom from her mother and keep food in her belly and a roof over her head? She could try to get work in some house, but that, too, would mean endless hours of hard and dirty work as a kitchen drudge or scouring floors and chamber pots, under the thumb of cook or steward as well as at the mercy of the uncertain temper of the master and mistress. No.

And that left only the choice that Rose had made, and their mother, too. Whoredom. Rose, who was four years older than Nell, had gone a year earlier to Madam Ross’s nearby establishment at the top of Drury Lane. It was not so bad, Rose said. A little room of her own, except of course when she’d a man there. And they were none of the tag, rag, and bobtail—it was gentlemen who were Madam Ross’s trade, and Rose earned enough to get an occasional treat for Nell, and good clothes for herself.

What awe and craving Nell had felt upon seeing the first clothes Rose had bought—a pair of silk stays, a chemise of fine lawn, and a skirt and body in a vivid blue, almost the color of Rose’s eyes, with ribbons to match. Secondhand, to be sure, but still beautiful. Nell had touched the stuff of the gown with a tentative finger—so smooth and clean. Best of all were the shoes—soft blue leather with an elegant high heel. She had wanted them so desperately. But you couldn’t wear shoes like that carting ashes or oysters through the mud of London’s streets.

Could she go to Madam Ross’s? She was no longer a child, really. She had small buds of breasts, and already the lads at the Golden Fleece, where her mother kept bar, watched her with appreciation, and asked with coarse jests when she would join Mrs. Gwynn’s gaggle of girls, who kept rooms upstairs or could be sent for from the nearby streets.

But before she could do anything about the future, she had to find Rose. Today, along with everyone else in London, they would watch and rejoice as the king returned to take his throne.

Nell emerged from under the staircase and hurried down the narrow alley to the Strand. The street was already thronged with people, and all were in holiday humor. The windows were festooned with ribbons and flowers. A fiddler played outside an alehouse, to the accompaniment of a clapping crowd. The smell of food wafted on the morning breeze—meat pies, pastries, chickens roasting.

A joyful cacophony of church bells pealed from all directions, and in the distance Nell could hear the celebratory firing of cannons at the Tower.

She scanned the crowds. Rose had said she’d come to fetch her from home this morning. If Rose had found her gone, where would she look? Surely here, where the king would pass by.

“Ribbons! Fine silk ribbons!” Nell turned and was instantly entranced. The ribbon seller’s staff was tied with rosettes of ribbons in all colors, and her clothes were pinned all over with knots of silken splendor. Nell stared at the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—a knot of ribbons the colors of periwinkles and daffodils, its streamers fluttering in the breeze. Wearing that, she would feel a grand lady.

“Only a penny, the finest ribbons,” the peddler cried. A penny. Nell could eat her fill for a penny. If she had one. And with that thought she realized how hungry she was. She’d had no supper the night before and now her empty belly grumbled. She must find Rose.

A voice called her name and she turned to see Molly and Deb, two of her mother’s wenches. Nell made her way across the road to where they stood. Molly was a country lass and Deb was a Londoner, but when she saw them together, which they almost always were, Nell could never help thinking of a matched team of horses. Both had straw-colored hair and cheerful ruddy faces, and both were buxom, sturdy girls, packed into tight stays that thrust their bosoms into prominence. They seemed in high spirits as they greeted Nell; it was apparent that they had already had more than a little to drink.

“Have you seen Rose?” Nell asked.

“Nay, not since yesterday,” said Deb, and Molly chimed her agreement.

“Aye, not since last night.” She looked more closely at Nell.

“Is summat the matter?”

“No,” Nell lied. “Only I was to meet her this morning and I’ve missed her.” She wondered if the girls’ good spirits would extend to a loan. “Tip me a dace, will you? I’ve not had a bite this morning and I’m fair clemmed.”

“Faith, if I had the tuppence, I would,” said Deb. “But we’ve just spent the last of our rhino on drink and we’ve not worked yet today.”

“Not yet,” agreed Molly. “But the day is like to prove a golden one. I’ve ne’er seen crowds like this.”

“Aye, there’s plenty of darby to be made today,” Deb nodded. Her eyes flickered to a party of sailors moving down the opposite side of the road and with a nudge she drew Molly’s attention to the prospect of business.

“We’d best be off,” Molly said, and she and Deb were already moving toward their prey.

“If you see Rose . . . ,” Nell cried after them.

“We’ll tell her, poppet,” Molly called back, and they were gone.

The crowds were growing, and it was becoming harder by the minute for Nell to see beyond the bodies towering above her. What she needed was someplace with a better view.

She looked around for a vantage point. A brewer’s wagon stood on the side of the street, its bed packed with a crowd of lads, undoubtedly apprentices given liberty for the day. Surely it could accommodate another small body.

“Oy!” Nell called up. “Room for one more?”

“Aye, love, the more the merrier,” called a dark-haired lad, and hands reached down to pull her up. The view from here was much better.

“Drink?”

Nell turned to see a red-haired boy holding out a mug. He was not more than fourteen or so, and freckles stood out in his pale, anxious face. She took the mug and drank, and he smiled shyly, his blue eyes shining.

“How long have you been here?” Nell asked, keeping an eye on the crowd.

“Since last night,” he answered. “We brought my father’s wagon and made merry ’til late, then slept ’til the sun woke us.”

Nell had been hearing music in the distance since she had neared the Strand. The fiddler’s music floated on the air from the east, she could see a man with a tabor and pipe to the west, only the top notes of his tune reaching her ears, and now she saw a hurdy-gurdy player approaching, the keening drone of his instrument cutting through the noise of the crowd.

“Look!” she cried in delight. A tiny dark monkey capered along before the man, diminutive cap in hand. The crowds parted to make way for the pair, and as the boys beside her laughed and clapped, the man and his little partner stopped in front of the wagon. He waved a salute and began to play a jig. The monkey skipped and frolicked before him, to the vast entertainment of the crowd.

“Look at him! Just like a little man!” Nell cried. People were tossing coins into the man’s hat, which he had thrown onto the ground before him, and Nell laughed as the monkey scampered after an errant farthing and popped it into the hat.

“Here,” the ginger-haired boy said. He fished in a pocket inside his coat. She watched with interest as he withdrew a small handful of coins and picked one out.

“You give it to him,” he said, holding out a coin as he pocketed the rest of the money. Nell could tell that he was proud for her to see that he had money to spend for an entertainment such as this.

“Hist!” she called to the monkey and held up the shiny coin, shrieking with laughter as the monkey clambered up a wheel of the wagon, took the coin from her fingers, and bobbed her a little bow before leaping back down and resuming its dance.

Laughing, she turned to the boy and found him staring at her, naked longing in his eyes. He wanted her. She had seen that look before from men and boys of late and had ignored it. But today was different. Her stomach was turning over from lack of food, and she had no money. Molly and Deb had spoken of the wealth to be had from the day’s revelries. Maybe she could reap some of that wealth. Sixpence would buy food and drink, with money left over.

She stepped nearer to the boy and felt him catch his breath as she looked up at him.

“I’ll let you fuck me for sixpence,” she whispered. He gaped at her and for a moment she thought he was going to run away. But then, striving to look self-possessed, he nodded.

“I know where,” she said. “Follow me.”

* * *

H
ALF AFRAID THAT SHE WOULD LOSE HER PREY AND HALF
wondering what had possessed her to speak so boldly, Nell darted through the crowds with the boy after her to the alley where she had spent the night. Slops from chamber pots emptied out of windows reeked in the sunshine, but the passage was deserted, save for a dead dog sprawled in the mud. Nell dodged under the staircase beneath which she had slept. The pile of straw was not very clean, but it would do. The boy glanced nervously behind him, then followed her.