Nelly gave Villiers a swift nudge in the ribs with her elbow and when he did not take his cue quick enough she kicked him sharply on the ankle. He winced at that and promptly said: “Your Majesty, if it would not be too great an impertinence, may I beg the honour of your company, and his Highness’s company, at supper with me?”
Charles and York accepted instantly and all of them left the theatre together, hailed a hackney and set out for the Rose Tavern. It was already dark, though not yet six-thirty, and the rain came in gusts. Charles and York were not recognized at the Rose, for both men had their hats pulled low and cloaks flung across their chins, and Nelly wore a full vizard. The host escorted them upstairs to a private room, which they asked for, with no more ado than if they had been any trio of men bringing a wench to supper.
Villiers was not very gay, for he resented the King’s intrusion, but Charles and James and Nelly enjoyed themselves immensely. They ordered all the most expensive and delicious food the famous kitchen prepared, drank champagne, cracked raw oysters, and ate until they had turned the table into a litter of shells and bones and empty bottles. It was two hours before Charles suddenly snapped his fingers and said that he must be on his way. His wife was expecting him in the Drawing-Room that night to hear a newly arrived Italian eunuch who was supposed to have the sweetest voice in Christendom.
With the first enthusiasm he had shown Villiers jumped to his feet and bellowed downstairs for the bill. The waiter came in as Charles was holding Nelly’s cloak for her and, because he was obviously the eldest, presented the bill to him. Charles, a little drunk, glanced at it and gave a low whistle, experimentally put his fingers into the various pockets of his coat and each time brought them out empty.
“Not a shilling. What about you, James?”
James likewise searched his pockets and wagged his head. Nelly burst into peals of delighted laughter. “Ods-fish!” she cried. “But this is the poorest company that ever I was in at a tavern!”
The royal brothers both looked to Villiers who tried not to show his irritation as he gave his last shilling to pay the bill. Then they went downstairs where both Charles and James kissed Nelly goodbye before they climbed into a hackney and set out for Whitehall, hanging out the coach windows to wave back at her. She flung them enthusiastic kisses.
By the next day the story was all over the Palace and was being told in the tiring-rooms and at the ‘Change, in the coffeehouses and taverns—to the vast amusement of everyone but Moll Davis. And she was angrier than ever when a bouquet arrived for her, a huge cluster of a stinking weed Nelly had found growing somewhere along Drury Lane.
AMBER LOVED BEING a part of the Court.
Familiarity had not disillusioned her and as far as she was concerned it was still the great world and everything that happened in it more exciting and important than it could possibly have been anywhere else. Buckingham himself was not more convinced than she that they were God’s chosen people, the lords and ladies of all creation. And now she was one of them! With no protest at all she was soon sucked into the maelstrom of Court life and whirled about in a mad darkness.
She went to suppers and plays and balls. She was invited everywhere and her own invitations were never refused, for it was dangerously impolitic to slight one of the King’s mistresses. Her drawing-room was often more crowded than the Queen’s and she kept several gambling-tables going at once: ombre, trente-et-quarante, lanterloo, various dice games. The street-beggars had begun to call upon her by name, a sure sign of importance. Hack poets and playwrights hung about her anterooms and wanted to dedicate a new play or sonnet to her. The first young man to whom she played generous patron—making him a gift of fifty pounds, but not troubling to read the poem before it was published—had written a virile and malevolent satire on the Court and everyone in it, including her.
She spent money as if she had inherited the Privy Purse, and though Shadrac Newbold made investments for her and kept her accounts she paid no attention at all to what was coming in or going out. The fortune which Samuel had left still seemed to her inexhaustible.
