Paula Marshall - The Beckoning Dream

Catherine could not help being acidic. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.

He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so.

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PAULA MARSHALL,

married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely, has been a swimming coach and has appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.

This novel, like all of mine, is firmly based on fact, and is dedicated to the memory of Aphra Behn, wit, poet, dramatist, novelist and secret agent, who lived the life of a free woman in the mid-seventeenth century—no mean achievement. It has taken three hundred years for her reputation to be revived and her many talents to be properly appreciated.

One of her greatest achievements as an agent in Holland was to warn the British Government in 1667 that the Dutch Navy was about to launch a major attack on the naval bases of Sheerness and Chatham on the River Medway. Her warning was ignored, as she recorded in her autobiography, and for three hundred years her biographers and critics mocked her for having claimed that, had the Government heeded her report, a major disaster for the British Navy would have been avoided.

Three hundred years later, Aphra’s claim was vindicated when her letter, giving details of the proposed attack, was discovered in the State Papers. In the same way, her right to be seen as the mother of the English novel and as the writer of a number of witty and actable plays was also derided until the Sixties of the present century when her work was looked at with fresh eyes.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

“True love is a beckoning dream.” Old saying

Two men from the court of King Charles II at Whitehall sat on the side of the stage of the Duke of York’s Theatre in the early spring of 1667. One of them was short and plump and was wearing a monstrous blackcurled wig. The other was tall and muscular; his wig was blond, and his hooded eyes were blue. Both of them were magnificently dressed and were wearing half-masks so that it was impossible to detect their true identity.

They were watching a play called The Braggart, or, Lackwit in Love, which had just reached the scene where, as the script had it, the following ensued:

Enter to LACKWIT, BELINDA BELLAMOUR, disguised as a youth, one LUCIUS.

LACKWIT Ho, there, sirrah! Art thou Mistress Belinda Bellamour’s boy?

BELINDA Nay, sir.

LACKWIT How “Nay, sir’? What answer is that?

Art thou not but just come from her quarters?

BELINDA Aye, sir, but nay, sir. Aye, sir, I have come from her quarters. Nay, sir, I am not her boy—my mother was of quite a different kidney!

So, aye, sir, nay, sir!

LACKWIT Insolent child! (Makes to strike her with his cane.)

BELINDA (Twisting away.) What is the world coming to when a man may be beaten for speaking the truth!

LACKWIT Man! Man! Thy mother’s milk is still on thy lips!

BELINDA Aye, sir—but it is not Belinda’s!

By now the audience—which was in on the joke of Belinda’s sex—was roaring its approval as Belinda defied Lackwit by jumping about the stage to dodge his cane, showing a fine pair of legs as she did so.

Master Blond Wig drawled at his dark friend, “Now that she has chosen to show them, her legs are better than her breasts—and they, when visible, were sublime. A new star for the stage.”

He took in the pleasing sight that the actress playing Belinda presented to the world in boy’s clothes; lustrous raven hair, deep violet eyes, a kissable mouth and a body to stiffen a man’s desire simply by looking at it!

“Aye,” agreed Black Wig, who was also appreciating Belinda. “And a new playwright, too. The bills proclaim that he is one Will Wagstaffe.”

“Will Wagstaffe!” Blond Wig began to laugh. “You jest, Hal.”

“Nay, Stair, for that is what the playbill saith. And the doxy who affects the boy is none other than Mistress Cleone Dubois, who made a hit, a very hit, as Clarinda in Love’s Last Jest by that same Wagstaffe whilst thou were out of town.”

“Did she so? I do not believe in Will Wagstaffe, and nor should you,” exclaimed Blond Wig. “But I have a mind to play a jest of my own.”

The action of the play had come close to them whilst they spoke, as Belinda and Lackwit sparred. Blond Wig picked a fruit from the basket that the orange girl had left before them, and threw it straight at Belinda, whom nothing daunted, either as Belinda playing a boy on the stage or in her true nature when not an actress. On seeing the orange coming, she caught it neatly and flung it back at Blond Wig as hard as she could.

He retaliated by rolling it across the stage towards her as though it were a bowling ball. Mr Betterton, the doyen of all Restoration actors, who was playing Lackwit, jumped dexterously over it, so that it arrived at Belinda’s feet.

She bent down, picked it up, and examined it before beginning to peel and eat it, segment by segment, exclaiming as she did so, “Why, Sir Lackwit, I do believe that the fruit thou hast refused is better than the wit. For that is dry, and this orange is juicy. I shall tell my Mistress Belinda that whilst you may have pith and self-importance, you lack the true Olympian oil which the Gods bestow on their favourites.

“But for the orange peel, this,” and she threw the shards of the peel straight at Blond Wig, who was on his feet applauding her improvisation, as were the rest of the audience.

“The doxy is wittier than the man who writes her lines,” exclaimed Blond Wig after bowing to the audience, who applauded him as heartily as they had rewarded Belinda. “And if you and the audience cannot see the jest in a man who writes plays calling himself Will Wagstaffe why, then, you and they are duller than I thought.”

“Enough of this,” whispered Betterton to Cleone as they grappled together in a mock and comic wrestling match. “Improvisation is well enough, and one of Rochester’s Merry Gang interfering with the action on stage may have to be endured, but you need not encourage him.”

“Need I not? But the audience, who is our master, approved.”

“Aye so, but we risk every fool in town wanting to be part of the play.” He turned himself back into Lackwit again in order to declaim in the direction of the pit, “Why, I vow thou art as soft as a very girl, Master Lucius. You need some lessons in hardening thyself.”

“Dost think that thou are the man to give me them, Sir Lackwit?”

The pit roared again. Some of the bolder members threw pennies on to the stage at Belinda’s feet. Blond Wig had produced a fan and waved it languidly in her direction.