The Darling Strumpet. Gillian Bagwell

ran down Nell’s chin and onto her bare chest. She scrambled for the pot under the bed and retched into it.

      “What, wench, do you not like the taste of my buttermilk?” Harper laughed as he wiped himself with his shirt and buttoned his breeches. “Well, you’ll come to it with use. Still, here’s tuppence for you. You’ll do better next time.”

      After Harper had left, Nell wanted nothing more than to sleep. But, afraid of being cast out if she failed to live up to Madam Ross’s expectations, she washed herself, wincing as she did so, dressed, and went back downstairs. Rose beckoned and looked searchingly at her.

      “How are you faring?” she asked. “Not too bad?”

      “Not too bad,” Nell responded, though she tottered on her feet with exhaustion. “Will it always hurt so much?”

      “No,” said Rose. “You’ll grow used to it by and by. Remember the salve.”

      Madam Ross was approaching, an approving smile on her powdered face.

      “You’ve done well. All the gentlemen were most pleased.” She looked at Nell’s dishevelled hair and bleary eyes.

      “That’s enough for your first night. Go to bed now. Those lads and more will be back tomorrow.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      AS MADAM ROSS HAD PREDICTED, THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE KING’S arrival were busy. The town was crowded with Royalists returning from the years of exile at country homes, with village lads who had come to see the king’s arrival and stayed to look for work, with sailors eager to ship once more under the proud flag of a monarch, and with huge numbers of soldiers glad to be done with fighting and hardship. London was mad with joy. Anything seemed possible now that King Charles was back, and Nell listened enthralled to the gossip and stories about the growing court at Whitehall. “That Barbara Palmer doesn’t trouble to hide from anyone, not even her husband, that she’s the king’s mistress!” Rose exclaimed. “I’ve heard that he spent his first night at the palace in her arms.”

      “Of course, he has no wife,” chimed in plump Jane, one of the girls who had taken a special liking to Nell. “But still, he makes mighty bold with his dalliance.”

      “And who’s to stop him?” asked Rose. “Harry Killigrew told me that the king has half a dozen bastards. He’s got a boy that was born to him on Jersey afore he and his court moved to France, and he’s brought the lad to live at the palace. Thirteen years old, and the spitting image of his father. Harry says the king so dotes on and dandles him the whisper goes he might be acknowledged a lawful son.”

      When she heard bits of news about the king, Nell thought again of his darkly handsome face, jaunty carriage, and booming joyous laugh as he had ridden by, and the electric excitement she had felt when his eyes met hers. It was unbearably tantalizing to know that he was even now somewhere only a few miles away, doing—what? Whatever kings did, though what exactly that might be, she was not sure. Each piece of information she gained only made her long for more, and she added each new fact or story to the growing picture in her head of a life unimaginably different from hers.

      Some of what Nell heard about the king and the goings-on at court fitted in some shadowy way with her own new observations about men. They seemed to be ruled by their desires in a way that she was not, and she realised that she held a kind of power over the men whose attention she caught. This was a novelty, and a mystery to be explored.

      “They’re like pups, these lads,” laughed Jane, “tumbling all over themselves to get at you, their heads so full of cunt they can’t think of aught else. Mr. Killigrew says his new young actors are so bad, he’s going to hire me a-purpose so they can keep their minds on their work.”

      “Actors?” Nell asked.

      “Aye,” said Jane. “The playhouses are to open again. Tell her, Rose. I forgot all that Harry said.”

      Nell had met Harry Killigrew a time or two. He was a wild young buck who had burst onto the scene in London recently, having fled from Heidelberg, where he had wounded a man in a duel. He ran with a rakish crowd of young bloods and visited Rose frequently. Nell thought his dark unruly hair and golden-hazel eyes were striking, but she was a little afraid of him.

      “Harry’s father, Tom Killigrew, was a theatre man in the old days,” Rose said. “He fought for the king in the war, and now his loyalty is rewarded. His Majesty has given him one of the patents for the new playhouses.”

      “That’s it,” said Jane. “It’s to be the King’s Company, and Mr. Davenant will run the other one.”

      Never having been in a theatre or seen a play, Nell could not quite imagine what they might be like. Perhaps she would find out later. For the present, she had matters of more immediate interest.

      Jimmy Cade, her client from that first night, had become a regular. Nell liked him well enough, and as Rose had said, there was a certain ease in bedding a man she was used to. She need not fear what the encounter would bring, and as she became more familiar with his preferences, she could better give him what pleased him, ensuring herself a steady source of money.

      In contrast to the hot haste of their first encounter, Cade became more relaxed with Nell, not only stopping to take his boots off before he joined her in bed, but frequently chatting with her after. He was young, but he had seen action in the war, and she liked to hear his stories about battles and military life.

      She watched him dress one hot afternoon, when they had dozed off after their bout and then awoken for a second round. His uniform made her think of her father, and she wondered if he had looked or moved as Cade did.

      “My da was in the army,” she said.

      “Was he? And where is he now?” Cade asked, struggling with his boots.

      “He died,” Nell said softly. “In prison in Oxford. He lost all in service of the king.”

      “Long since?” Cade asked, looking at her more carefully.

      “When I was but a baby. I never knew him.”

      “I’m sorry for it, Nelly. There were too many died, too many babes left fatherless.”

      Nell nodded silently. There was nothing to say, nothing that could express the pain that flooded her heart, the longing for something she had never known and would never know. Tears welled from her eyes, and she knuckled them away.

      Cade buckled on his sword belt and picked up his hat, then gave Nell’s damp cheek a gentle stroke. She wished he wouldn’t leave her alone, but he was already at the door and spoke over his shoulder.

      “I’ll see you soon, little one.”

      “WHAT WAS OUR DA LIKE?” NELL ASKED ROSE LATER. “WHY DID HE go to prison?”

      Rose shook her head sadly. “I don’t remember much. I was very small myself. I remember him coming in the door and sweeping me up into his arms, laughing as he talked to me. Least, I think I do. Then he was gone. I remember Mam crying. It frightened me and I ran to her. But she pushed me away and shouted at me to leave her be.”

      The sisters sat in silence for a few moments. The past was locked away, behind an impenetrable wall. Their mother was the only link to that distant time. But Nell found it impossible to think of her mother as other than she was now—bitter, blowsy, and hard. Was it possible that Eleanor Smith had once been young and happy, had brightened at the sound of her man’s footsteps at the door, had had a tender smile for Rose and Nell or ever regarded them as other than a burden? If so, that woman was long dead. And Nell knew that Rose was her only ally in a harsh and unpredictable world.

      THE CONVERSATIONS WITH CADE AND ROSE SEEMED TO HAVE OPENED a rift in Nell’s mind, a doorway to a rolling mist of fear and sadness. She could not shake off the dark shadows, and for the rest of the day she was weighted with a profound sense