To each of her lovers she gave a bracelet made from her abundant hair, and some who did not get them had imitations made which they swore were hers. Her name began to appear in the almanack records of half the young fops in town, many of whom she did not even know. Buckhurst gave her a painted fan with a dreamy sylvan scene on one side and on the other the loves of Jupiter which depicted the god in the guise of a swan, a bull, a ram, an eagle, with various women—all of whom looked like Amber. Within a week copies of it were hiding blushes and veiling smiles in the Queen’s Drawing-room.
In December a filthy verse which was unmistakably about her—though the woman in it was called “Chloris” and the man “Philander,” after the old pastoral tradition—began to circulate through the tiring-room and the taverns and bawdy-houses. Amber, who was becoming tired, resented it deeply though she knew many similar poems had been written with far less provocation than she had given, but she could never find out whose it was. She suspected either Buckhurst or Sedley, both poets and very creditable ones, but when she accused them they smiled blandly and protested their innocence. Harry Killigrew followed the insult by flipping her a half-crown piece one night when she tardily suggested a settlement.
Early in January she spent two nights in succession at home without a caller or an invitation, and she knew all at once that her vogue was passing. And only a few days later Mrs. Fagg confirmed her fears that she was again with child. She felt suddenly sick and discouraged and exhausted. It was all but impossible for her to force herself to get out of bed in the morning, her appetite was gone, she looked pallid and thin and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. Almost anything could bring forth a passionate flood of tears or a hysterical tantrum.
“I wish I was dead!” she told Nan. For her future was only too clear.
Nan suggested that they go away from London for a few weeks and when Mrs. Fagg advised a long ride in a coach, to be taken with her own special medicine, she agreed. “If I never see another fop or another play as long as I live I’ll be glad!” she cried violently. She hated London and the playhouse, all men and even herself.
CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR
AMBER DECIDED TO go to Tunbridge Wells in the hope that drinking the waters would make her feel better. She set out early the next morning in her coach with Nan and Tansy, Tempest and Jeremiah. As it was raining, they could travel at but little more than a foot-pace, and even then the coach almost turned over several times.
Amber rode along in sullen silence, eyes tight shut and teeth clenched, not even hearing the chattering of Nan and Tansy. She had taken Mrs. Fagg’s evil-tasting medicine and her belly was full of grinding cramps which seemed worse than those of child-birth. She wished that the earth would open and swallow them all, that a thunderbolt from heaven would strike her, or merely that she would die and be relieved of her misery. She told herself that if a man ever dared make her an indecent proposal again, though for a thousand pound in gold, she would have him kicked like a common lackey.
They stopped at an inn late that afternoon and went on the next morning. The medicine had taken its effect but she felt even worse than she had the day before, and at each turn of the wheels she longed to open her mouth and scream as loud as she could. She scarcely noticed when the coach came to a stop and Nan began wiping at the steamy window with her sleeve, putting her face against it to look out.
“Lord, mam! I hope we’re not set upon by highwaymen!” She had had the same apprehension almost every time Tempest and Jeremiah had stopped to pry the wheels out of the mud.
Amber scowled crossly, but kept her eyes shut. “My God, Nan! You expect a highwayman behind every tree! I tell you they don’t go abroad in weather like this!”
At that moment Jeremiah opened the door. “It’s a gentleman, mam, who’s been stopped by highwaymen and his horses taken.”
Nan gave a little cry and turned to her with an accusing stare. Amber made a face. “Well, ask him if he wants to ride with us. But tell ’im we’re only going to the Wells.”
The man who returned with Jeremiah was perhaps sixty, though his skin was clear and smooth and fresh-coloured. His hair was white, cut much shorter than a Cavalier’s, and was not curled but had merely a slight natural wave. He was handsome, somewhat above six feet, erect and broad-shouldered. The clothes he wore were old-fashioned but well made of fine materials, sober black and untrimmed with ribbon or gold braid.
He bowed to her politely, but his manner suggested nothing of the French-tutored courtier. This was some plain City-bred man, very likely a Parliamentarian who thought the worst of Charles Stuart and all his beribboned cursing whoring sword-fighting crew—a substantial merchant, perhaps, or a jeweller or a goldsmith.
“Good afternoon, madame. It’s very kind of you to invite me into your coach. Are you quite sure I won’t be making you uncomfortable?”
“Not at all, sir. I’m glad to be of service. Pray get in, before the rain soaks you through.”
He climbed in, Nan and Tansy moved over to make room for him, and the coach started off. “My name is Samuel Dangerfield, madame.”
“Mine is Mrs. St. Clare.”
Mrs. St. Clare obviously meant nothing to him, and for once she welcomed the anonymity. “Did my coachman tell you that I’m only going as far as Tunbridge? I don’t doubt you can hire horses and another coach there.”
“Thank you for the suggestion, madame. But as it happens I too am going to Tunbridge.”
They talked little after that and Nan explained her mistress’s silence by saying that she was suffering wretchedly from a quartan ague. Mr. Dangerfield was sympathetic, said he had had that ailment himself, and suggested bleeding as a sovereign remedy. Within three hours they arrived at the village.
Tunbridge Wells was a fashionable spa and the previous summer her Majesty and all the Court had paid it a visit; but now, in mid-January, it was a dreary deserted scattered little village. Not a person was in sight, the elms that lined the single main street were naked and forlorn, and only the smoke drifting from several chimneys gave evidence of life.
Amber and Samuel Dangerfield parted at the inn, where he had accommodations, and she promptly forgot him. She rented a neat little three-room cottage, furnished with very old polished oak, chintz curtains, and an array of shining brass and copper utensils. For four days she did not get out of bed but lay sleeping and resting, and by the end of that time her vitality and energy began to return. She started worrying again about what was to become of her.
“Well, I can’t go back to London, that’s sure as the small-pox,” she told Nan as she sat morosely in bed, propped against pillows and plucking at her brows with a silver-plated tweezer.
“I’m sure I don’t see why, mam.”
“Don’t see why! D’you think I’d ever go back to that scurvy theatre again, and have every town-fop laughing in his fist at me? I will not!”
“Well, after all, mam, you can go back to London without going back to the stage, can’t you? It’s a sorry mouse that has but one hole.” Nan liked well-worn aphorisms.
“I don’t know where else I’d go,” muttered Amber.
Nan drew in a deep breath to prepare for her next speech, but kept her eyes on her deftly stitching needle. “I still think, mam, that if you’d take lodgings in the City and set yourself up for a rich widow you’d not be long a-catching a husband. Maybe you don’t want to—but beggars should be no choosers.”