Exit the Actress (24 page)

We are returned! Mother elected to stay in Oxford for another month, as the house is leased through March, and Grandfather has chosen to stay on to look after Great-Aunt Margaret, who has been poorly this winter, but Hart and I are back! The court has slowly been filtering in this week, and the queen (whom I have never spoken to but who seems so dignified and sweet) returned to Whitehall yesterday.

London is a sad shade of itself. Many of the houses and shops are boarded up, and grass
does
grow in the streets. A young family is living in Jane Smedley’s house. We no longer know our neighbours; so many have moved away or … There are only two options these days: moved away or … They say officially that one in five Londoners died, although I have heard the figure was closer to one in three. Everyone knows someone … lost someone. Lizzie lost her father-in-law; Elizabeth lost her sister and aunt. From the theatre, we lost: Daniel, our doorkeeper; two stagehands; one of the dray horses (not from plague, of course); Mary, the wig mistress; and Sue, our charwoman. I think the Duke’s only lost Paul, their lamplighter. The plague pits, just beyond the city, are shallow and full.
Oh London, what have you been through?

Tom is recalling everyone, as the Lord Chamberlain is thought to be reopening the theatres this week. Nick should arrive tonight. Teddy travelled down with us. We are, all of us, ready to laugh.

Note
—The queen miscarried—again. And at Merton College to boot—the very place Castlemaine had her last healthy baby. I understand her pain and pray for her.

A success! At last I am a comedienne!

James (the middle of the Howard boys), together with Dryden, wrote
me
a comedy! Well, in truth, they just wrote a comedy, but they kept
me
in mind for a part as they wrote it. I am honoured! The play is
The English Monsieur
, and I play Lady Wealthy, costumed in a beautiful striped silk gown donated by Castlemaine herself (Rose had to take it in by half, as she is of a more rounded figure), and Hart plays Wellbred, my lover whom I much abuse but then reform and marry—and very well he does it, too! His timing is much improved. We tease and joust with barbed words but then call a truce and commit to loving each other. It is a brilliant new formula, and the audience thoroughly enjoyed us. We shall play it again tonight!

Note
—Hart told me this evening that the queen’s mother died last month in Portugal, but they have not told our little queen, as she is in a course of physic and they dare not upset her delicate emotional balance. How horrible to be lied to.

I am a success, but Rose has returned to being a whore—terrible, not to be spoken aloud, but true—sadly and, I fear, permanently true.

They have finally told the queen. All the court is now in deep mourning (finally). The queen is so small and looks even smaller in black.

Our new styled comedy is a sensation, and I have become something of a known figure in town. They are calling it “mad couple comedy.” Last night we were dining out, and an elderly husband and wife approached me. Hart tried his best to shield me from the attention (it discomfits him to have me looked at), but I did not mind their affection. I found it true and touching. They told me I am in person just as I am on the stage. “It must be a mark of my poor acting,” I responded gaily. Hart rolled his eyes.

Note
—There is
finally
talk of peace with the Dutch. I am ashamed to admit that often I forget we are even at war.

The season is over, and we are away to the country. I am glad for the rest. Here is peace: away from the tumultuous stage and the bustling city. Here I can take the time to truly care for Hart, as I know he has been feeling neglected. Here we will take time together. I will try harder to quiet my mind and enliven my heart. Yet I can’t help thinking, if it were true love, would it require all this effort?

Note
—I invited Rose to come, but she declined. She seems fixed on her course.

Hart woke me in the night with the news that there is a great fire east of here. He had already sent Hugh to fetch Rose. Luckily, Mother and Grandfather are with Great-Aunt Margaret. “How did it happen?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“My love, this city is made of wood. Each house has hearths, candles, ovens, torches … It is easy enough.”

We are as ready as we can be: our valuables are packed (we had not yet unpacked from our last trip to Hill House) and waiting in the hall; Ruby is on her lead next to me as I can’t have her running off should we need to go quickly; and we have put wet sheets under the doors and water buckets beside every window. In the end we ran out of buckets and used pots and vases and even the footbath. Is there anything else? Oh the…

Chickens. Rose, Hugh, Cook, and I rounded up all the chickens and locked them in their coop. Hugh can put it in the wagon when we go.
If
we go.

Tom, wigless and hatless, arrived after breakfast to say that he has hired men to remove all the costumes and paintings in the theatre to a safer location and to stand by with water buckets in case the fire reaches Bridges Street. Hart left with him to secure the theatre, promising to be back in two hours. We are not to leave the house.

If it is not out soon he is sending me to the country. “Won’t you come with me?” I asked, surprised by how very much I wanted him to come.

“I think my duty is here,” he responded heavily.

Hart is just home for an hour’s rest and food. He is exhausted, his hair singed and his face blackened. The fire seems to have begun in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane, just behind the Star Inn on Fish Street—we bought sugared buns there last Christmas. Farriner swears he properly banked his ovens, but nevertheless the fire broke out. Mayor Bludworth arrived quickly but refused to pull down the neighbouring houses to create a firebreak (disastrous!)—so it spread down to the warehouses of Thames Street and on and on. It is a monster. It raged through the lovely old church of St. Margaret’s and St. Magnus the Martyr (a church that has stood in that spot since the conquest!), and then it reached the wharves: timber, pitch, hemp—a fire’s favourites. There is a strong south-easterly wind, which is making matters worse.

Eventually the king and his brother the duke overrode the mayor and took control of the fire-fighting (so bold—they are at the forefront of the fire-fighters!), but it burns out of control. Hart has been at the king’s side aiding in the organisation of the fire engines—the water supply is not consistent, and the streets are too narrow for these great machines to get close, and so really, all we have are bucket brigades to the river and hooks to pull down houses as fast as we can. I fear for our home in Drury Lane, but Hart says he cannot imagine that it would reach that far west, but then yesterday he would never have imagined it would reach St. Botolph’s. This crisis has brought out his best self—efficient, patient, brave, and reasonable. There is nothing of the spoilt, sulky man he can be when threatened by things far less tangible.

Hart and Tom shared a hurried breakfast of sausage, buns, and pottage before setting out. Cook packed them a basket of hard-cooked eggs, dried meat, cheese, and bread, as well as flasks of goat’s milk (cider and ale are far too flammable). They are both exhausted but still determined. Tom’s left shoulder was burned yesterday when a street lamp collapsed on him. Rose rebandaged it this morning, but Hart forbade me to go to the apothecary for a cooling salve, even though it is just over in Chancery Lane. They want us to stay home and have promised to send word if the fire gets close. I am afraid of the blaze but anxious to be doing something useful.

We went out. It was a silly thing to do, but I needed to see for myself that the house was safe, and Rose wanted to get some things from Lewkenor Lane. The air was white with ash. My face felt papery and hot in the obscured morning sun. I reached for Rose’s hand and pulled her close beside me. We walked arm in arm as we had as little girls as we made our way through hazy streets. Everywhere were signs of hasty departure. On Longacre, packed cases stood outside an abandoned coach, its wheel cracked and left unmended; on St. Martin’s Lane, chickens ran about the street, a goat rummaged though a rubbish heap, and the smell of rotting meat clouded about the deserted butcher shop. And then, in the hot, smoky air of Bow Street, we found a friend.

“Oh no!” Duncan said when he saw us. “Back home to Maiden Lane for both of you.”

Startled, we both stood open-mouthed in the road, unsure of what to say. What
is
the etiquette when one runs into an old friend after a long and painfully awkward separation in the midst of a national crisis?

“But Duncan, we are just—” Rose began.

“Just being foolish as ever. Turn around,” he interrupted, roughly took our hands, and pulled us in the opposite direction.

“Duncan, we are going to check on the house!” I tried to reason with him.