He was very young, no more than nineteen, with skin like a girl’s, loosely waving blonde hair and blue eyes, a slender but well-proportioned body. There was nothing to mar his perfection but the sound of his voice which, from long practice of keeping it high-pitched, carried a kind of unpleasant whine. He smiled at her as she took a chair next to his.
“Edward, how d’you go about getting on the stage?”
“Why? Have you a mind to acting?”
“Don’t you think I could? I hope I’m pretty enough.” She smiled, slanting her eyes.
He looked her over thoughtfully. “You certainly are. You’re prettier than anyone we have—or anyone Davenant has, either, for the matter of that.” Davenant managed the Duke of York’s Theatre, for there were only two licensed companies (though some others continued performing), and rivalry was sharp between His Majesty’s and His Highness’s Comedians. “I suppose you think to show yourself on the boards and get some great man for a keeper.”
“Maybe I do,” she admitted. “They say there’s a mighty fine profit to be got that way.”
Her voice had a soft tone of insinuation, for Kynaston, everyone knew, had numerous admirers among the gentlemen and had received many valuable gifts from them, most of which he shrewdly turned into money and banked with a goldsmith. Among his lovers he was said to number the immensely rich Buckingham, who had already begun the ruin of the greatest fortune in England, squandering what he had as recklessly as if it came out of a bottomless well.
Kynaston did not take offense at her suggestion, but he had a kind of feminine modesty which, for all that he sold himself in the open market, lent him the appearance of dignity and virtue.
“Perhaps there is, madame. Would you like me to present you to Tom Killigrew?” Thomas Killigrew was a favourite courtier and manager of the King’s Theatre.
“Oh, would you! When?” She was excited, and a little fearful.
“Rehearsal will be over about eleven tomorrow. Come then if you like.”
Amber dressed with great care for her interview and, though it was a cold dark early-November morning with no shred of sun filtering through the heavy smoke and fog, she put on her finest gown and cloak. All morning long her stomach had been churning and the palms of her hands felt wet. In spite of her eagerness she was miserably nervous, and at the last moment such a panic of doubt swept through her that she had to bully herself into going out the door.
When she reached the theatre, however, and took off her mask the attendant gave a low whistle; she laughed and made him an impudent face, suddenly relieved.
“I’ve come to see Edward Kynaston. He’s expecting me. Can I go in?”
“You’re wasting your time, sweetheart,” he told her. “Kynaston doesn’t give a hang for the finest woman that wears a head. But go along if you will.”
The stage was just clearing and Killigrew was down in the pit talking to Kynaston and Charles Hart and one of the actresses who stood on the apron-shaped stage above them. It was dark inside, for only the candles in the chandelier that hung above the stage were lighted, and the cold seemed to bring out a strong sour smell. Orange-peelings littered the aisle and the green-cloth-covered benches were dirty with the foot-marks of the men who had stood upon them. Empty now of people and of noise there was something strangely dismal and shabby, almost sad, about it. But Amber did not notice.
For a moment she hesitated, then she started down the aisle toward them. At the sound of her heels they looked around, Kynaston lifting his hand to wave. They watched her come, Kynaston, Charles Hart, Killigrew, and the woman on the stage, Beck Marshall. She had met Charles Hart, a handsome man who had been on the stage for many years, often risking imprisonment to act during the dour years of the Commonwealth. And once she had been casually introduced to Beck Marshall who stood now, hands on her hips, looking her over, not missing anything about her gown or hair or face, and then with a switch of her skirt walked off. The three men remained.
Kynaston presented her to Killigrew—an aristocratic, middle-aged man with bright-blue eyes and white hair and an old-fashioned, pointed chin-beard. He did not look as though he would be the father of the notorious Harry Killigrew, a bold rash drunken young rake whose exploits caused some surprise even at Court. Amber had seen Harry once, molesting the women in St. James’s Park, but she had been masked and well muffled and he had not seen her.
She made her curtsy to Killigrew, who said: “Kynaston tells me that you want to go on the stage.”
Amber gave him her most alluring smile, which she had practiced several times in the mirror just before leaving home. But the corners of her mouth quivered and her chest felt tight. “Yes,” she said softly. “I do. Will you give me a part?”
Killigrew laughed. “Take off your cloak and walk up onto the stage, so I can have a look at you.”
Amber pulled loose the cord which tied in a bow at her throat, flung back the cloak, and Charles Hart offered his hand to lift her onto the platform. Ribs held high to show off her pert breasts and little waist, she walked the length of the stage, turning, raising her skirts above her knees to let him see her legs. Hart and Killigrew exchanged significant glances.
At last, having appraised her as carefully as any man buying a horse, he asked: “What else can you do, Mrs. St. Clare, besides look beautiful?”
Charles Hart, stuffing his pipe with tobacco, gave a cynical snort. “What else should she do? What else can any of ’em do?”
“What the devil, Hart! Will you convince her she needn’t even try to learn to act? Come, my dear, what else do you know?”
“I can sing, and I can dance.”
“Good! That’s half an actress’s business.”
“God knows,” muttered Charles Hart. He could act himself and thought the theatre was running amuck these days with its emphasis on nothing but female legs and breasts. “I don’t doubt to see ‘Hamlet’ put on one day with a Gravediggers’ dance.”
Killigrew gave her a signal and Amber began to dance. It was a Spanish saraband which she had learned more than a year before and had since performed many times, for Black Jack and his friends in Whitefriars, more recently for Michael and all their acquaintance. Twirling, swaying, dipping, she moved swiftly about the stage, all her self-consciousness gone now in her passionate determination to please. After that she sang a bawdy street-ballad which burlesqued the old Greek fable of Ariadne and Theseus, and her voice had a full voluptuous quality which would have made a far more innocent song seem sensual and exciting. When at last she sank to a curtsy and then lifted her head to smile at him with eager questioning, he clapped his hands.
“You’re as spectacular as a show of fireworks on the Thames. Can you read a part?”
“Yes,” said Amber, though she had never tried.
“Well, never mind about that now. Next Wednesday we’re going to give a performance of ‘The Maid’s Tragedy.’ Come to rehearsal tomorrow morning at seven and I’ll have a part in it for you.”
Half delirious with joy, Amber ran home to tell Michael the great news. But though she did not expect to play the heroine, she was nevertheless seriously disappointed the next morning to learn that she was to be merely one of a crowd of Court ladies-in-waiting, and that she had not so much as a single word to speak. She was disappointed, too, at her salary, which was only forty-five pounds a year. She realized by now that the five hundred pounds given her by Bruce Carlton had been a considerable sum of money, if only she had had the wit to keep it.