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“Let’s not go back yet,” she pleaded. “I’ve heard tell there’s an Italian puppet show at Covent Garden that would make a dog laugh. And I’ve a month’s mind for some cherries.”
So it was evening before she climbed the stairs to Robbie’s room, with the guilty recollection that the tuppence he had given her to buy candles had been spent during the day’s outing.
“You spent it!” Robbie cried. “And what are we to use for light?”
“It’s not so dark,” Nell pleaded. “I’ll get candles tomorrow.”
“I’ll get the candles myself,” he fumed, yanking the door open. “Since I cannot trust you to do as you’re told.”
Nell lay awake that night, chafing with resentment. It was only tuppence, after all, and the first money she had spent on herself since moving in with Robbie.
In the morning she strode into the taproom of the Cock and Pie downstairs. Cath, the barmaid, looked up from the jug she was washing and took in Nell’s stormy face.
“You’ve a bee in your bonnet, I see.”
“Are you hiring?” Nell demanded. Cath laughed.
“Unhappy with Robbie, are you?”
“I’ve no money to spend but what he gives me and I cannot do anything but what he tells me,” Nell fretted. “I spend my days alone and I’m so bored I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Best think twice afore you leave,” Cath cautioned. “Bored and fed is better than free and hungry.”
Nell slumped onto the stool opposite Cath.
“You’re right. I’ve nowhere to go. But please, to keep me from jumping in the river, have you no shred of gossip or excitement to share?”
“Well, that I do, now you mention it,” Cath smiled. “Mr. Killigrew is to build his playhouse just across the road.”
AS SOON AS THE GROUND WAS THAWED, THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE theatre were laid in the old Rider’s Yard. Now walls covered the framing, and acres of heavy oak planking and dark and gleaming hardwood disappeared into the maw of the growing theater. Each day Nell watched carpenters, masons, woodcarvers, and plaster-workers come and go, their tools slung in bags on their backs.
One summer day when the labourers had stopped work for their midday meal and were gathered outside to eat, sitting atop piles of lumber or leaning against the theatre’s wall, she slipped in at the back door. Skeletal frames of timber stood in the hush of the midday sunlight that filtered through chinks in the unfinished ceiling. A mist of sawdust blanketed the rough-hewn floors.
Nell made her way through a doorway in a wall that was not yet built, and realised that she must be standing upon the stage. She crept silently forward, hardly daring to breathe. The centre 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 theatre. 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 theatre friends that she had not heard that bit of news. She felt a surge of jealousy towards 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 is 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 humour 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 grey, 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 odour 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.
“Get yer arse out of here. And don’t come back, unless you want summat worse.” He dropped her, and she cried out as she landed on the cobblestones. All the fight gone out of her, Nell wanted only to flee before she shamed herself by crying. Robbie, grey faced and silent, helped her to her feet.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Nell knew he was angry and nodded without meeting his eyes, hot tears falling onto her cheeks.
“We’ll go to Madam Ross’s,” Robbie said shortly. “You can wait until there’s news.”
At Lewkenor’s Lane, Nell was relieved beyond measure that Ned was presiding over the bar and Jack was gone. The girls were gathered in the taproom like a flock of unsettled chickens, some crying, some railing against the cully who had turned Rose in, some taking a morbid enjoyment in the dramatic prospect of the execution of one of their own. They squawked and fluttered at the sight of Nell and Robbie.
“Nell!” Jane cried. “Whatever’s happened to you?”
“Nothing,” said Nell. “We tried to see Rose, is all, and the bandog flung me out on my breech.”
“The brute!” cried Jane.
“Aye, for shame!” chimed black-haired Nan. “What call had he to treat you so?”
“I tried to get past him. Came near to doing it, too,” Nell said, brightening.
“What a plucky thing you are,” said Jane. “Come, let me bind your wounds, little warrior.” The other girls clucked with sympathy while Jane fetched a basin of water and a cloth and gently wiped the grit from the scrapes on Nell’s hands and knees, crying out all over again at the red and purple blotches that already bloomed on her soft skin.
It was after noon when Madam Ross returned.
“Harry’s gone to ask for the king’s help,” she told the girls. “He’ll come here as soon as there’s word.”
So there was nothing to do but wait. Robbie went on to the City. Exhausted by the strain of waiting, Nell went upstairs to Rose’s room and climbed into bed. She could smell Rose’s scent on the bedclothes and pulled them tightly around herself. Wrapped that way, she could close her eyes and believe that Rose lay next to her. Surely Rose was safe and would be back. But fear clutched at her, and she sobbed, finally falling asleep on the tear-dampened pillow.
THE BLEAK AFTERNOON HAD TURNED TO WINTRY DARKNESS WHEN Nell awoke. She raised her head to see Rose coming through the door into the little bedchamber with Harry Killigrew. He was uncharacteristically subdued and stood by awkwardly as Rose flung herself into Nell’s embrace and began to sob.
“Oh, Nelly,” Rose finally whispered, “I was so frightened. I was afeared they was going to turn me off.”
“I tried to get you out,” Nell cried. “But I couldn’t. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” Rose was half laughing and half crying. “Oh, little one. You have the heart of a lion and nought to be sorry for. It took a pardon from the king himself to get me free.”
She nodded towards Harry and, reminded of how much she owed to his help, launched herself into his arms.
“I’ll leave you to your sister,” he said. “I’ll come tomorrow to see how you’re faring.”
When he had gone, Nell tucked Rose into bed and dashed out to the nearest cookhouse for a couple of hot pies. She and Rose sat together in the warm bed, the golden light of the candle in its wall bracket reflected in the black of the icy windowpane. Rose begged Nell to stay the night with her, and they nestled side by side in the darkness.
“When I went there today, it made me think of Da,” Nell whispered.
“Aye. I thought of him, too,” Rose answered. “I cannot bear the thought that he died alone in such a place.”
She drew a shuddering breath.
“When they took me in, I could hear such awful moans and sobbing and screaming. Like souls in hell. And Nell …” She paused.
“They took me down this horrible passage, all dank and grey. And past this little room. And in it I could see arms and legs that had been chopped off, and heads and other parts. Like a butcher shop for men.”
Nell had no words for the horror of the image the words forced into her mind. She thought again of the traitors’ deaths suffered by the men who had killed the first King Charles, and the black and featureless things she had seen on pikes on London Bridge and at the City gates, which she knew were the tarred heads and quarters of executed men. Like souls in hell, Rose had said. But Nell could not imagine a hell that could be any worse than a world in which such things were possible. She slept uneasily that night and dreamed again of the door slamming shut, of being left alone and terrified in a cold and hostile landscape.
It was not until morning that Nell asked Rose the question that had been gnawing at the back of her mind.
“Did you, Rose? Did you pinch the watch?”
“No,” Rose said. “But I think Jack did.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROSE CAME SMILING INTO NELL’S LODGING ONE MORNING A FEW weeks after her deliverance from Newgate.
