“One month! Great God! Have you no respect for the ancient and honourable institution of English law? Because of my regard for your father I have overlooked many of your past misdemeanours, but this is beyond anything! If it were not for the honour and esteem in which I hold Sir Michael I would have you sent to the Fleet, to learn a better view of the conduct befitting a young man. As it is, sirrah, you are expelled. Never show me your face again. And get that creature out of here—within the hour!”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
The door opened. “Let me tell you this, sirrah—there is nothing a young man may get by wenching but duels, claps, and bastards. Good-day!” The door closed noisily.
Amber waited a moment and then flung open her own door. “Oh, Michael! You’re expelled! And it’s all my fault!”
She began to cry but he came swiftly across to take her into his arms. “Here, here, sweetheart! What the devil! We’re well rid of this scurvy place. Come now, put on your hat and doublet and we’ll find us lodgings where a man may live as he likes.”
He took two rooms in an inn called the Hoop and Grapes, situated in St. Clement’s Lane, which wound up out of Fleet Street. It was outside the City gates in the newer and more fashionable west-end of the town. Drury Lane was nearby, and Covent Garden, and not five minutes walk away was Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Vere Street, which had become the Theatre Royal.
He bought her some clothes, second-hand at first because she needed them immediately—though later she had some made—and she found herself precipitated into a whirl of gaiety and pleasure. She had met several of his friends while they were still at the Temple, but now she met many more. They were young men of good family, future barons and lords; officers in the King’s or the Duke’s guards; actors from one of the four public theatres. And she met, too, the women they kept, pretty girls who sold ribbons or gloves at the Royal Exchange, professed harlots, actresses, all of them wise and gay and no more than Amber’s age—flowers that had bloomed since the Restoration.
They went to the theatres and sat in the pit where the women wore their masks and sucked on China oranges, bandying pleasantries with everyone in earshot. They went to the gambling-houses in the Haymarket and once Amber was thrown into a frenzy of excitement when a rumour swept through that the King was coming. But he did not and she was bitterly disappointed, for she had never forgotten his expression that day he had looked at her. They went to the New Spring Gardens at Lambeth and to the Mulberry Gardens, which was temporarily the height of fashion. They went to dinner at all the popular taverns, Lockets near Charing Cross which was always filled with young officers in their handsome uniforms, the Bear at the Bridgefoot, the notorious Dagger Tavern in High Holborn, a rough-and-tumble place that abounded in riots and noise but was famous for its fine pies. They went to see the puppet-play in Covent Garden, currently the resort of all the fashionable world. At night they often drove about town in a hackney, contesting as to who could break the most windows by throwing copper pennies through them.
And when they were not out their rooms were full of young people who came in at all hours of the day and night, ordered food and drink sent up, played cards and got drunk and borrowed their bed for love-making. None of them had a serious thought or occupation, beyond avoiding their creditors. Pleasure was their creed. The old views of morality had gone as much out of fashion as high-crowned hats and, like them, were now disdained and ridiculed. Indifference, cynicism, selfishness and egoistic opportunism were the marks of quality. Gentleness, honesty, devotion—these were held in contempt.
The gentlemen of the old school, of the decorous Court of Charles I, were blaming the present King for the manners and behaviour of the new generation. And while it was true that Charles neither wished nor tried to set up strict standards, the same conditions had existed during the late years of the Protectorate, though then more than half concealed under a mantle of hypocrisy. The Civil Wars, not his Majesty, had sowed the seeds for plants suddenly shot to full growth since his return.
But Amber was not even remotely aware of the force of trends and currents.
She was in love with this life. She liked the noise and confusion, the continual bustle and disorder, the reckless devil-may-care gaiety. She knew that it was wholly different from the country and was glad that it was, for here she might do as she liked and no one was shocked or admonitory. It never even occurred to her that this was perhaps not the usual life of all gentlemen of all times.
