Exit the Actress (44 page)

“I do not know how to tell you this, madam, indeed I really don’t.”

“Try, Mrs. Walsh. Try to tell me whatever it is that has you at our door at this hour,” I said, struggling for patience.

“They arrested them, last night, for disgraceful behaviour, and kept them all night in the gaol, not that it won’t do them good, mind you—”

“Wait, Mrs. Walsh, slowly, they have arrested who?”

“Lord Sedley and Lord Buckhurst, for doing indecent things in town. They say old Dr. Fanning got the shock of his life when they leapt out at him from behind a tree, naked as … well,
naked,
and he is a
doctor
and used to seeing, you know …
things
—”

“And now they are arrested and in
gaol
?”

“Only place for them, if they insist on acting like that—”

I stopped listening. Mrs. Walsh seemed to have forgotten her timidity and was fully prepared to hold forth on the proper punishment for nudists. “Thank you, Mrs. Walsh,” I said abruptly, cutting her off.

“But, what do you want me to tell them?”

“Them?”

“The constables downstairs.”

“Ooh! Constables … constables are
here
! Thank you, Mrs. Walsh, just please tell them to wait, won’t you, and perhaps give them some breakfast,” I said, steering her along the passage. “Some of your lovely macaroons and maybe eggs and sausages?” Thinking quickly, I decided that Charles was going to find out regardless, and most likely be furious, but it was better if he stepped in
now
and got them out of gaol and then punished them privately rather than have everyone suffer the embarrassment of the king’s
companions in prison. Hurrying back into the bedroom, I awoke the sleeping monarch.

“Your Majesty!” Constables Cole and Gunstun jumped up in unison from their cooked breakfasts to bow to the king. Not sure of how to do it, between them, they managed to knock over a chair and drop a butter dish. Charles just smiled and accepted their clumsy obeisance with his customary good humour.

“Now, constables, perhaps you would care to join me for my traditional morning constitutional walk?”

“Walk?”
they echoed their king, their mouths full of food.

“Yes! Vigorous walking—good for the body and good for the spirit. I go at least five miles every morning, and then perhaps a swim? Nothing beats a swim to get the blood moving.” The constables looked at each other in confusion.
This
was the fabled lazy, debauched king? The same pleasure-ridden king who permitted his men to run about wholesome country towns naked? Without waiting for their reply, Charles headed out the garden doors, and the bewildered constables had no choice but to follow.

I retrieved the butter dish and righted the chair. All would be well. He would see to it. I dreaded to think of what he would do to the boys in private, but Charles would not abandon them publicly. Johnny appeared at my side. Early for him—the ruckus must have woken him.

“He will forgive them,” he said in answer to my thoughts. “He will forgive us anything. That is the trouble,” he said, watching the unlikely trio make their way down the drive, the king striding ahead, boisterously pointing out various trees and plants of interest with his gold-tipped walking stick and the startled constables trailing in his wake.

Johnny was right. How well he knows the king. By the time Buckingham, Rupert, and Peg emerged, Sedley and Buckhurst were returned—Sedley with a black eye and Buckhurst limping—and their royal favour restored. They retold the story of their night in jail over luncheon—a lovely outdoor affair, served on long tables covered in cloud-white cloths with roast carp, fresh salad from the garden, and bowls of strawberries with thick country cream. I so much prefer simplicity to the rich court food.

They told of the Sunne Tavern and then the King’s Head and Betsy the
serving maid, who challenged them to run the length of the high street naked before she would kiss either of them. This same Betsy who disappeared once they began their drunken, naked serenade outside the tavern. Of the doctor, who shook his cane at them, the tavern keeper, who shooed them away—locking the tavern with their clothes inside—the seamstress, who offered from her window to sew them some clothes, and finally the watch, who chased them and arrested them.

“But they beat you?” I asked, eyeing their injuries.

They looked at each other furtively, as if deciding whether or not to be truthful.

“No,” began Sedley awkwardly, “that was from…” He let his sentence trail off.

“We ran into some trouble with … Betsy,” finished Buckhurst.

“Betsy!” whooped Buckingham. “Don’t tell me she did that!” he said, pointing at Sedley’s black eye.

“The doctor is her uncle,” Buckhurst said, rising to her defence. “And she is much stronger than she looks.”

“Yes,” agreed Sedley solemnly. “Betsy is burly.”

I asked Charles, just before he fell asleep, why he was not wroth with them. This was our private time at the end of the public day. Snug and safe, I could let my thoughts uncurl. The moonlight striped our silk coverlets as he held me close.

“They are wild boys,” he said indulgently. “They are brilliant and extreme and cannot be held to codes of normal behaviour. And besides,” he added thoughtfully, running his long fingers through my sea-horse curls, “I do not care enough to reform them.”

That is him all over, I thought. Charles notices everything but will only exert effort if it interests him.

“Johnny, too?” I asked, sensing that Johnny was special.

“No, Johnny is different. I would move heaven and earth to reform Johnny,” he answered quietly, looking at the moon.

Moved
again
. After our unexpected Suffolk publicity we decided to remove to Windsor Castle for some peace. We arrived in time for chapel and all trooped in, still dressed in our travelling clothes—all except Johnny, who never attends church. Rupert and Peg had sent word ahead, and the castle was all in readiness for us—as ready as it can be in its current state of renovation. After a simple supper together we looked over the modifications to the ancient fortress.

“But it must be better, Rupert!” Charles thundered with excitement, racing about the crumbling building and gesticulating vigorously.

Building projects
energise
him, I remember the queen saying. Charles had returned from his Continental exile inspired by the luxury and efficiency of his cousin King Louis XIV’s grand palaces. His designs for a Long Walk here at Windsor look much like the drawings of Louis’s gardens at Versailles. I love to watch him whip himself into an architectural frenzy. His artless enthusiasm is infectious.

“We must renovate, redecorate, improve, improve, improve! Things can always be better! More beautiful, more
modern
.”

Charles is obsessed with modernising his residences, his cities—his country, for that matter. Rupert shot Peg a look as if to say,
Modernity takes money,
but held his tongue.

Rupert showed Charles his experiments with
mezzotinting,
his newest passion, while Peg and I looked over fabric samples (bright Chinese silk and hand-blocked India chintz), the sketches of the delicate blue-and-white Chinese porcelain bowls (meant for the Yellow Salon), and the drawing of the great golden dinner service he planned to import from France.

“All my residences must have proper place settings,” Charles announced, looking over our shoulders at the drawings. “It is barbaric for more than one man to share a plate. And we must have courses after the French fashion; it is absurd to lay out all the food at once. It gets cold.”

“Sixty guineas?” I asked, just making out the figures at the bottom of the sketch. “For one plate?” To me, it seemed a small fortune.

“Place setting, my dear,” said Rupert kindly. It is very different.

“We must look like a court again,” Charles went on, more to himself than to us. “My father’s court had all this and more, until…”

I held my breath. I saw Peg grip Rupert’s hand. Charles so rarely spoke of how his father lost everything—his plates, his country, his crown, his head.

“Sixty guineas?” Charles said, turning to me and reverting to his light jovial tone. “For you, my little lark, I could not have you eat off anything less.” He swooped down to kiss me. Only I could feel that he was trembling.

Ugh!
Back in bickering, wrangling London. I have come to crave country quiet, and my patience for the pettiness of Whitehall and all its slithering, shape-shifting intrigues wears thin. The walls, the chairs, the carpets all listen, and agendas abound. Everyone works for someone. Everyone has a price. Who will rise? Who will tumble down? No one falls without a push. I cannot bear such scrutiny. Buckingham and Castlemaine are mortal enemies, even though they are cousins, and even former lovers, some say—hard to picture. They were certainly childhood playmates, but nevertheless they would go to the death now. They grapple and snarl over the king’s affection like wild dogs.

Tonight Charles offered me a suite of rooms inside the palace (not just a single sleeping chamber but a closet and sitting room as well—a coveted honour), but I do not want them. Charles just laughed at my eccentricity but did not question me as to
why
I do not want them. He did not want to hear the answer and so did not probe further—always the smoothest road, how like him.

Thinking about it now, I do not know how I would have explained it. To
take a room in the palace would be to overreach, and this is not a man to understand overreaching. In truth, I do not want to set myself against the good queen. I do not want to cause unnecessary hurt, and for myself, I need to be able to get away and be apart from this artificial place.

Mrs. Barbara Chiffinch, the queen’s chief seamstress and wife of the increasingly friendly Mr. William Chiffinch (brisk but kind), always comes and helps me to bathe and dress (in the King’s Closet) and then, if the weather is unfit for walking, finds me a hackney—less conspicuous than the royal coach—to take me back to Drury Lane. The king does not understand my reluctance to hang about this viper’s nest of a court, but Mrs. Chiffinch does. She bustles me out quickly and efficiently.

“You’ll get used to it, dear.

They all do. Give it time,” she always says.
They all.
That is just the trouble:
they all.
Ruby and the puppy, on the other hand, are quite at home in the palace. They settle down on the large cushions by the fire with four or five of Charles’s many spaniels and are disgruntled when they get uprooted in the morning.

This morning I hurried through the Stone Gallery and met Rose at the King Street Gate, taking care to stay in the shadows as this gate is too near Castlemaine’s apartments for my comfort. I can see her conspicuously white cambric undergarments fluttering away at her window. Why bright white underclothes displayed in public denotes breeding, I’ll never understand; it would seem to me to indicate the reverse. On her bloated allowance Castlemaine can afford to order some for wearing and some for hanging, ridiculous woman.

My encounters with Castlemaine are now cutting and brief. She takes great pains to point out any outward signs of my low breeding: my loud laugh, my tendency to run, my love for the guitar (a base instrument), even my Protestantism—she being recently baptised a Catholic (no coincidence that this is the unofficial religion of the half-French royal family). Last week when I dashed into the Banqueting Hall without waiting for Watkins, the footman, to open the door (he is nearly blind and takes an age, but he served the old king and is therefore guaranteed a place for life), she made sure that all and sundry heard of my rough-hewn behaviour. What she did not know was that I had to be at the theatre at two; it was after one, and I could not find Ruby. Damn her refinement. If my dog is lost, I will
bloody well go running after her. Castlemaine’s own illustrious pedigree does not help her on the road to good manners, I have noticed—nor does her new religion. The king just finds it annoying. He finds most things about her annoying—or so he tells me—except her children. For them, he has endless patience and affection. I can understand it. They exhibit none of their mother’s imperious behaviour and seem sweetly tempered. Mighty Castlemaine’s power is said to be on the wane, and the court can smell blood. There is much talk of who the father of this child might be, and
King
Charles is not on the list of likely candidates—Charles
Hart
unfortunately
is,
as is, remarkably, Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer; Wycherly, the playwright; and, most likely of all, Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans.

Rose was waiting for me, and we made our way across Pall Mall to the stationers and then on to St. Olave’s in Hart Street. We chatted of this and that: she has begun work in Hatton Garden, at the King’s Theatre Nursery for apprentice actors and actresses.