Gillian Bagwell - The Darling Strumpet

Nell made her way through a doorway in a wall that was not yet built, and realized that she must be standing upon the stage. She crept silently forward, hardly daring to breathe. The center of the space was a soaring emptiness. Like a cathedral, she thought. Galleries for spectators lined the walls. She wondered what it would be like to stand on that stage before an audience, and thought of how Lady Castlemaine had surveyed the crowds before Whitehall on the night of the king’s return. She snapped open an imaginary fan and swished it languidly before her, her head held high, her chin tilted coquettishly.

“Lud, Your Majesty,” she trilled, batting her eyelashes, and gave the invisible king a pouting smile.

A harsh bark of laughter and the sound of clapping startled Nell so much that she almost cried out. A figure stumped toward her from the shadows at the back of the theater. It was a grizzled old man in a loose shirt and pantaloons, with a long pigtail, and Nell was amazed to see that he was missing the lower part of his left leg and walked on a wooden peg.

“I meant no harm,” Nell began. “I’ll go.”

“Don’t go on my account,” the old man said with a grin. “I was enjoying it. And any road, I’m just a harmless old carpenter.”

“You look like a sailor,” Nell said, staring at his weather-beaten face.

“And so I have been, since before I’d a beard to my face. But I’m too old for that now, and happy to have a berth ashore. A playhouse is much like a ship, you know-canvas, ropes, rigging-and needs a crew just as a ship does.”

“I wish I could work at the playhouse.”

The old sailor squinted at Nell and tapped a finger alongside his nose.

“And mayhap you can. I hear the king has ordered that from now it’s only women are to act the parts of women.”

“No boys?” Nell asked.

“No boys. Not in petticoats, leastways. The Duke’s Company sent little Moll Davis onto the stage but a month or two ago. A pretty little thing she is, and much cried up, too. About your years, I’d think.”

Nell had been so cut off from her theater friends that she had not heard that bit of news. She felt a surge of jealousy toward pretty little Moll Davis.

“How came she to be in the Duke’s Company?”

“I don’t know,” the old man shrugged. “But if there’s call for one actress, there’ll be call for more, as sure as eggs be eggs.”

“What’s your name?” Nell asked.

“Richard Tarbutton is the one my old mam gave me. But my mates call me Dicky One-Shank.”

“I’m Nell. Nell Gwynn.”

“Nell Gwynn,” said Dicky One-Shank, his blue eyes disappearing in the weathered folds of his face as he smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

“HE SAID THERE ARE TO BE NO MORE BOYS PLAYING WOMEN’S PARTS, but only girls,” Nell excitedly told Robbie that night over supper. “Actresses.” She said the word reverently.

“Actresses!” Robbie spat, throwing down a chicken bone. “Whores, more like. The only reason for putting women on the stage, mabbed up like slatterns, is so that men can look on them with lust.” He snorted again, tore a hunk of bread from the loaf, and furiously sopped it in the gravy on his plate.

Nell thought, but did not say, that he had had no objection to looking on her with lust when she was at Madam Ross’s place. He seemed to have little sense of humor these days, and more and more she did not speak what was in her mind for fear of rousing his irritation.

THE DAYS SHORTENED INTO WINTER DARKNESS, AND THE THAMES froze again. Nell and Rose walked onto the deep and shadowy ice, encrusted with sludgy snow, but Nell lacked the joy she had felt the previous winter. And Rose was downcast.

“Is summat amiss?” Nell asked, and was surprised to see tears in Rose’s eyes.

“Harry’s got married. Lady Mary Savage.”

“Oh.” Nell hardly knew what to say. Of course Rose knew as well as she did that gentlemen like Harry would never marry girls like them, however much they enjoyed their sport and company. But knowing didn’t stop the hurting.

“Hard luck, that is,” she ventured. Rose nodded, turning her head aside and wiping away tears.

“I was a fool to let myself care for him as I did,” Rose said.

“No,” said Nell. “You can’t help how you feel, Rose, any more than you can stop the rain from falling. He don’t deserve you anyway. You’ll soon find someone that treats you far better, I warrant.”

Rose tried to smile, and hugged Nell to her.

“Oh, sweet girl, what would I do without you?”

ONE MORNING IN FEBRUARY, NELL AND ROBBIE WERE AWOKEN EARLY by a pounding at their door. Jane, breathless and red faced, rushed in past Robbie.

“Oh, Nell! Rose has been taken up for theft!” She choked out her story between sobs. “The shoulder clappers came at dawn. They had a gentry cove with them claimed she’d pinched his larum.”

“Oh, no,” Nell gasped. The punishment for the theft of something as valuable as a pocket watch was the gallows.

Nell was so terrified she could not think, but Robbie was cooler.

“Where stands the matter now? What’s been done?”

“Madam’s gone to Whitehall to see can Harry help.”

“And Rose?”

“Clapped up in Newgate.”

Newgate. The name alone evoked darkness and despair. Nell knew that debtors rotted there in misery for years, as her father had languished in prison in Oxford. And all London knew of the regular pageant of death, when condemned prisoners were led from the prison to be driven in carts through jeering crowds and pelted with offal on their way to Tyburn Tree, the enormous three-sided gallows that could accommodate twenty-four nooses, and the resultant twenty-four swinging corpses.

“I must go to her!” Nell cried.

“No,” Robbie said harshly. “You can do her no good.”

But Nell would not be deterred.

“’Tis no place for a girl,” Robbie said, grim faced, shoving his hat onto his head.

“No, and no more is it a place for Rose than it is for me,” Nell retorted, stamping with impatience to be gone. Robbie had no answer to that, and they set off, Nell racing along in front of him.

The winter morning sky was leaden gray, the wind blew bitter cold, and a light shower of snow fell icy wet.

When they arrived at the gates of the prison, Nell’s stomach tightened with fear. The ponderous stone walls towered before her, broken only by narrow slits. The enormous ironclad portals led into a cobbled courtyard, crowded with the morning’s desperate traffic-prisoners in irons shuffling through the doors that led into the depths of the prison; guards and soldiers, grim and armed; the usual London rabble of beggars and urchins; legions of wives, lovers, mothers, sisters, and friends. A foul stench permeated the air, a noxious mixture of human and animal waste, vomit, blood, rotting food, and the unmistakable odor of death. A grizzled guard stopped them.

“If she was shopped this morning, trial might be tomorrow,” the guard shrugged when Robbie explained their errand. “Or mayhap the day after. No way of knowing.”

Robbie turned away, but Nell stayed where she was.

“Can I not see her?” she asked.

“That thou cannot.” The guard ran a tongue over his chapped lips and wiped his nose with the back of a dirty hand. Nell stared at him with hatred, taking in the broken and rotten teeth, the rough stubble on the heavy cheeks, the purple nose running in the cold air. She darted past him through the door. She was young and fast, but his stride and his reach were much longer than hers. He grabbed her by the hair and flung her down. She scrambled to her feet and, in a rage of humiliation and helplessness, ran at the man before Robbie could stop her. Disbelief and growing annoyance on his face, the guard caught her and held her from him at arm’s length. He shook her hard, then lifted her so that her face was close to his. She smelled beer and onions and felt the moist warmth of his breath.