Page 89 of The Pirate and the Pagan
“You are so lucky to be married, it is the one dream I cherish in my heart,” said Frances.
Just then Summer noticed Barbara Castlemaine with three gentlemen in tow enter the card room. She stopped to greet Summer, swept her dark eyes over Frances in an insolent examination, and invited, “Come and play dice, Lady Helford, I’m determined to have those rubies off you before I’m done, y’know.”
Frances whispered behind her fan, “Oh, Lord, I wish she hadn’t stopped to speak with us. My reputation will be smirched forever.”
“Lady Castlemaine is the King’s mistress, there’s no dishonor in that at this court,” explained Summer.
“Lady Helford, I am a maiden. If my name is not totally unblemished, I will never receive an offer of marriage.”
“I see,” said Summer, trying to keep from laughing. “Who is the lucky gentleman?”
“Why, any gentleman of the court who is in possession of a title and unencumbered by a wife,” confided Frances.
Later Summer told the Queen, “Your Grace, I can assure you Frances Stewart will never become any man’s mistress. She is obsessed by the notion she must keep her reputation spotless so she will receive an honorable proposal of marriage.”
The Queen said, “How clever you are. You shall be my spy.”
Summer groaned inwardly. She longed for adventure and intrigue and the delicious danger connected with spying, but the only spying she had been asked to do was to find out who was sleeping with whom. From personal experience Summer felt such intimate information was nobody’s goddamn business but the lovers’ themselves!
Thus began a social whirl for Summer whereby she rode in the park each morning, saw a different play each afternoon, and spent her evenings at Court getting up to nonsensical escapades with the Queen and her ladies. They went about on what they called “frolics.” They thought it the height of daring to dress up as orange girls and go abroad pretending to sell their wares to the cheeky Londoners. Along with the rest of London they flocked to see a baboon brought from Guinea and thought it could be taught the King’s good English.
Summer was growing weary of the whole pointless rigmarole. Here was Frances Stewart being a silly professional virgin, making the King jump through hoops, and there was Barbara Castlemaine opening her legs and holding out her greedy hand at the time so he’d pay her gambling debts of thirty or forty thousand, while children picked rags for threepence a bushel and the plague was devastating the poorer districts, which were a breeding ground for rats and vermin.
The war was spoken of quite openly now. Ships were being built and fitted out for war as fast as the money could be found. Prince Rupert fit himself out with a ship named Henrietta after the King’s mother and Lord Sandwich escorted Charles’s sister and mother back to France while it was still safe to cross the Channel.
Charles received the Dutch ambassador to warn him that England had been pushed too far and intended to retaliate. Reports came in that England had beat the Dutch at Guinea and also in America at New Netherlands and in fact were doing the Dutch fleet damage all over the world.
Uniforms were seen everywhere. Companys of soldiers in white doublets roamed the streets of London, navy garb was seen everywhere, and one company of the militia actually dressed like Turks. Naturally fashion was influenced by all the talk of war and navy blue and brass buttons and jaunty red jackets were worn to court functions. On slim ladies the male attire was provocative, but on the majority, whose figures tended to be on the plump side, the fashions were disastrous.
It was fashionable to speak of war, but not to speak of plague, so people spoke in whispers. A tally had begun to be taken, because the dreaded scourge had begun to seep into some of the fashionable districts and it seemed like the church bells which tolled for the dead were ringing night and day. Now when the courtiers went to the theater in Drury Lane, they could no longer close their eyes to the red crosses on the doors and their breaths caught in their throats as they read the pitiful signs scrawled across houses that begged, “Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.”
Whispers were turned into full-voiced concern, then became loud cries. Plague! Plague! Suddenly it became apparent that death played no favorites. London could not stop the Reaper whose skull grinned and gave the gravediggers employment.
The theaters began to close. Ships’ crews were kept aboard and not allowed to roam London’s taverns, and the King decided to remove his court from Whitehall to Hampton Court away up the Thames past Richmond.
Fanatics preached that it was a divine judgment being handed down from above because the whole court was profligate and infected the whole of society. Others blamed the populace at large for its loose morals. It was said that all Londoners had murderous tempers, would cheat even a blind man, and steal the copper pennies from the eyes of a corpse. It was all true, of course, but Londoners, be they prince or pauper, did not mend their ways. Rather they became almost frenzied in their pursuit of pleasure and dangerous diversion.
Summer had deserted the bland company of Queen Catherine and Frances Stewart for the faster crowd of Barbara Castlemaine and Anne Carnegie. Accompanied by Buckingham and big-headed Henry Jermyn, they took a boat over to Southwark one evening to attend something reported to be very exciting. It was a knife fight, much more bloodthirsty than cockfights or bear baitings. The preliminary bouts were sword fights where first blood drawn won, but the main bout was whispered to be a fight to the death!
Their party arrived accompanied by a dozen swaggering gallants, all laughing too loudly. Linkboys with their flares led them from their boat to the secret place of the knife fight. Summer wore a hat with a sweeping feather which concealed her left cheek, and she had stolen a page from the book of Black Jack Flash and wore dramatic black and white. The very air was charged with excitement and Summer could feel her pulses racing. This was a welcome change from the company she usually kept. They had become dull as a damned sermon.
She had just accepted a silver flask from one of her admirers and was about to tip its fiery contents down her throat when a powerful hand took her wrist and made it immobile. “Hell and furies,” she swore, “let go or I’ll have you beaten and kicked!”
“Indeed, madame?” said Lord Helford in a voice so menacing, a shiver ran up her spine. “I don’t believe a knife fight is a fit place for the mother of my child … or have you conveniently rid yourself of it?” He sneered as he raked her slim figure from head to toe.
His words cut her to the heart. “What makes you such a cruel bastard?” she asked low, her throat swollen with unshed tears.
Desire flared in him. She was more temptingly beautiful than she had ever been. She was still extremely slim-waisted, but her breasts could only be described as voluptuous. He pictured her naked and ached to experience her new ripeness. His green eyes glittered with suppressed fury. “I didn’t mind your frolics with the Queen, she is always well guarded and chaperoned, even when she isn’t aware of it, but the company you keep tonight is unacceptable. If you are allowed to associate with such, you will become as notorious as the whores you are with. I’m taking you home.”
“Plague take you, Helford!” It was a most obscene epithet to throw at him in such times of horror.
“It may take you, madame. I hear pregnant women are particularly vulnerable.”
She gasped. Real fear had been with her for some time now. He took her elbow in a firm grip.
“Take your hands from me, sir,” she ordered angrily.
“If you don’t come willingly, I shall simply carry you off. The choice is yours,” he said in a tone that brooked no denial. She glanced about to see who was watching her encounter with her husband and thought better of refusing him. Helford was capable of any atrocity that crossed his mind. He had his carriage waiting. He helped her inside and she sank back against the velvet squabs. Being confined together in such a small space was almost unbearable. The very air between them was charged with sexual tension until finally, when she could bear the silence no longer, she spat, “I hate you!”
