Nell whisked out of bed and, naked as she was, hid herself behind the hangings.

Catherine entered the room just as Nell was hidden; she approached the bed, her long and beautiful hair hanging about her shoulders, her plain face anxious.

“I could not sleep,” she said. “I could do naught but think of you in pain.”

The King took her hand as she sat on the bed and looked at him anxiously.

“Oh,” he said, “the pain is to be deplored, only because it disturbed your slumbers. It has gone. In fact I have forgotten where it was.”

“I very much rejoice. I have brought this dose. I am sure it will bring immediate relief should you need it.”

Nell, listening, thought: here are the King and Queen of England, and he treats her in the same charmingly courteous way in which he treats his harlots.

“And you,” he was saying, “should be resting in your bed at this hour. I shall be the one who has to bring you doses if you wander thus in your night attire.”

“And you would,” she said. “I know it. You have the kindest heart in the world.”

“I pray you do not have such high opinions of me. I deserve them not.”

“Charles … I will stay beside you this night …”

There was a sudden silence and, unable to stop herself, Nell moved the hangings and looked through the opening she had made.

She saw that one of the King’s spaniels had leaped onto the bed and was bringing Nell’s tiny slipper in his mouth and laying it there as though offering it to Queen Catherine.

Nell, in that quick glance, took in the scene—the King’s discomfiture, the Queen’s face scarlet with humiliation.

The Queen quickly recovered her dignity. She was no longer the same inexperienced woman who had swooned when she had come face-to-face with Barbara Castlemaine, and the odious woman had kissed her hand.

She said abruptly: “I will not stay. The pretty fool who owns that little slipper might take cold.”

The King said nothing. Nell heard the door close.

Nell came slowly back to the bed. The King was gently stroking the ears of the little spaniel who had betrayed them. He stared moodily before him as Nell got in beside him.

He turned to her ruefully. “There are many strange things happening in the world,” he said. “Many women are kind to me; but I am a King, and it pays to be kind to kings, so that presents little mystery. But there is one mystery I have been unable to solve: Why does that good and virtuous woman who is my Queen love me?”

Nell said: “I could tell you, Sire.”

And she told him; her explanation was lucid and witty. She restored him to his good humor, and shortly after that occasion Nell discovered that she was to bear the King’s child.

Now that Nell was with child by the King, it was no longer possible for her to play all her old parts. She was helped by Will Chaffinch, who had charge of such items of the royal expenditure, and she moved into Newman’s Row, which was next to Whetstone Park.

Nell was elated by the thought of bearing the King’s child. Charles was only mildly interested. He had so many illegitimate children; it was a legitimate one which he so desperately needed. Even before he had been restored to his throne he had a large and growing family, of which the Duke of Mon-mouth was the eldest son. Some he kept about him; others passed out of his life. One of the latter was James de la Cloche who had been born to Margaret de Carteret while Charles was exiled in Jersey. He believed that James was now a Jesuit. Lady Shannon had given him a daughter; Catherine Pegge a son and a daughter. There were many others who claimed to be his. He accepted them all in his merry good humor. He was proud of his ability to create sons and daughters; and when some of his subjects called him “Old Rowley,” after the stallion in the royal stables who had sired more fine and healthy colts than any other, he did not object. Barbara Castlemaine had already borne him five children. He loved them all tenderly. He adored his children; there was nothing he liked better than to talk with them, and listen to their amusing comments. He enjoyed his visits to Barbara’s nursery more than to their mother’s chamber. They were growing more amusing—young Anne, Charles, Henry, Charlotte, and George—than their virago of a mother.

He had an acknowledged family of nine or ten; he did what he could for them, raising them to the peerage, settling money on them, keeping his eyes open for profitable marriages. Oh, yes, he was indeed fond of his children.

And now little Nell was to provide him with another.

It was interesting; he would be eager to see the child when it put in an appearance; but meanwhile there was much elsewhere with which to occupy himself.

He was faintly worried once more by the shadows cast over his throne by his son Monmouth, and his own brother, the Duke of York.

Monmouth was turning out to be a rake. In the sexual field, it was said, he would one day rival his father. Charles could only shrug his shoulders tolerantly at this. He would not have had young Jemmy otherwise—nor could he have expected it with such a father and such a mother.

He wished though that his son did not indulge in so much street-fighting. Charles had given him a troop of horse, and when he had inspected fortifications at Harwich recently it was reported that he and his friends had had a right merry time debauching the women of the countryside.

It would be churlish of me to deny him the pleasure in which I myself have taken such delight, the King told himself. Yet he would have preferred young Jemmy to have had a more serious side to his character. It was true that the King’s friends indulged in like pleasures; but these were men of wit; they were rogues and libertines, but they were interested in the things of the mind as well as those of the body—even as Charles was himself. So far it seemed to him that his son Jemmy had taken on himself all the vices of the Restoration and none of its virtues.

Jemmy was growing more arrogant, more speculative every day. He was providing the biggest shadow over the crown. Brother James also caused anxieties. He was very different from young Jemmy. James had his mistresses—many of them—and he visited them and got them with child whenever he could escape from Anne Hyde. James was not a bad sort; James was merely a fool. James had a perfect genius for doing that which would bring trouble—mainly on himself. “Ah,” Charles would murmur often, “protect me from la sottise de mon frère. But most of all, protect my brother from it.”

Now James was having trouble with Buckingham. There was another who was doomed to make trouble for others and chiefly for himself. Two troublemakers; if they could but put their heads together and make one brewing of trouble ‘twould be easier, mused Charles. But they must busy themselves with their separate brews and give me double trouble.

Buckingham—by far the cleverer of the two—had decided that James should be his friend. He made advances to the Duke, suggesting that they sink their differences and work together. Buckingham wished to rid himself of his greatest rival in the Cabal, my lord Arlington, and had solicited James’ help to this end.

James, with sturdy self-righteousness, had set himself apart from their schemes. He intimated that he considered it beneath him to enter into such Cabals; he was resolved to serve the King in his own way.

More tact should have been used when dealing with the wild and reckless Buckingham.

Buckingham now saw James as an enemy; and how could such an ambitious man tolerate an enemy who was also heir presumptive to the crown?

Buckingham raged, and mad schemes filled his imaginative brain. The King must get legitimate children; the Duke of York must never be allowed to mount the throne.

So now it was that Buckingham brought out his wild plans for a divorce between the King—that mighty stallion, who had proved many times that he was capable of getting children with a variety of women—and sterile Catherine, whose inability to perform her duties as Queen could plunge the country into a desperate situation.

Charles had declined Buckingham’s efforts on his behalf, which had ranged from the divorcing of Catherine to the kidnapping of her and carrying her off to some plantation where she would never be heard of again.

Moreover Charles had sought out James.

“My lord Buckingham’s wild mind teems with wild plans,” he said. “And the very essence of these plans is that you shall never follow me. Do not laugh at them, James. Buckingham is a dangerous fellow.”

Buckingham was looking to Monmouth. What wild seeds could he sow in that wild mind?

So the shadows deepened about the throne, and the King had little time to think of the child which Nell would soon be bringing into the world.

There was not a breath of air in the room. Hangings had been drawn across the windows to shut out the light; candles burned in the chamber. Nell lay on her bed and thought her last hour had come. So many women died in childbirth.

Rose was with her, and she was glad of Rose’s company.

“Nelly,” whispered Rose, “should you not be walking up and down the chamber? ’Twill make an easier birth, they say.”

“No more, Rosy. No more,” moaned Nell. “I have walked enough, and these pains seem fit to kill me.”

Her mother sat by the bed; Nell saw through half-closed eyes that she had brought her gin bottle with her.

She was crying already. Nell heard her talking of her beautiful daughter who had captivated the King. Her mother’s voice, high-pitched and shrill, seemed to fill the bedchamber.