Still, the king’s words were never far from my mind. A celebrity, he’d said.
Now William finished his book of counsel and had it bound in silk.
I ordered two new gowns: one white and triumphant like a lighthouse, one bruised like autumn fruit.
~ ~ ~
FIREWORKS, SPEECHES, GUN SALUTES, A BALL. IN APRIL OF 1660, THE Hague celebrated with King Charles II. William rushed to his side. He hoped to be named Master of the Horse, but his reception was cool, the little book went unmentioned, and that post of honor was granted to a handsome new courtier named Monck. Snubbed — even as Marmaduke was made a baron, Lord Jermyn an earl — William refused an invitation to join the king’s brother on the crossing, hired an old rotten frigate, and left alone the following day. He never returned to Antwerp. He sent a letter instructing me to remain where I was, a pawn for all his debts. His trip took an endless week — they were becalmed in the middle of the passage — but when finally he saw the smoke and spires of London, his anger passed to joy. He said: “Surely, I have been sixteen years asleep.”
~ ~ ~
ALONE IN MY ROOM, I WAS WRITING PLAYS. THEY WERE ALL-FEMALE plays for an all-female troupe. Of course, it was absurd. Women so rarely acted in public. Of course, I never meant them to be staged. “They will be acted,” I said to no one, “only on the page, only in the mind. My modest closet plays.” I smiled. I dipped my quill in ink.
The housekeeper knocked and held out a note. I took up William’s instructions from the ornate pewter tray.
No more to be done, yet everything to do.
Flemish tapestries, drawing tables, lenses, the telescopes from Paris, books, of course, and perfumes, platters, ewers, ruffs, tinctures, copperplates, saddles, wax. There were little green-patterned moths dashing around the attic, bumping at the glass. I thought I felt like that. I dreamed the moths crept upside down on the surface of my mind. In the mornings I met with a magistrate or bid a neighbor farewell. I myself packed linen-wrapped manuscripts into crates. The plays had a box to share, each handwritten folio tied with purple ribbon: in Bell in Campo, the Kingdom of Restoration and the Kingdom of Faction prepare to go to war, and the wives, with Lady Victoria at their helm, insist on joining the battle; in The Matrimonial Trouble, a housemaid who has married the master proceeds to put on airs; in The Convent of Pleasure—the only not quite finished — Lady Happy, besieged by men who wish to marry her fortune, escapes to a cloister. But the pesky men sneak in, dressed like women, to join the ladies’ play within the walls. Enter Monsieur Take-pleasure and his Man Dick.
Monsieur Take-pleasure. Dick, Am I fine to day?
Dick. Yes, Sir, as fine as Feathers, Ribbons, Gold, and Silver can make you.
Takepl. Dost thou think I shall get the Lady Happy?
Dick. Not if it be her fortune to continue under that name.
Takepl. Why?
Dick. Because if she Marry your Worship she must change her Name; for the Wife takes the Name of her Husband, and quits her own.
Takepl. Faith, Dick, if I had her wealth I should be Happy.
Dick. It would be according as your Worship would use it; but, on my conscience, you would be more happy with the Ladies Wealth, than the Lady would be with your Worship.
Takepl. Why should you think so?
Dick. Because Women never think themselves happy in Marriage.
Takepl. You are mistaken; for Women never think themselves happy until they be married.
Dick. The truth is, Sir, that Women are always unhappy in their thoughts, both before and after Marriage; for, before Marriage they think themselves unhappy for want of a Husband; and after they are Married, they think themselves unhappy for having a Husband.
Takepl. Indeed Womens thoughts are restless.
Then scenes change according to my whim, for I was writing more freely than ever before. In the cloister one moment, we’re next on a field of green, where sheep graze around a maypole, and Lady Happy is a shepherdess, while the Prince-who-woos-her-as-a-Princess is a shepherd. Next, Lady Happy is a Sea-Goddess and the Prince-as-Princess is Neptune astride a rock. They embrace, as friends, and then as friends they kiss. Happy questions her fate. Truth be told, she felt a certain stirring. And “why,” she asks, “may not I love a Woman with the same affection I could a Man?” In the end, the Prince’s true nature is revealed. But would Happy, who fled all men, be happy to be his? I hadn’t yet decided, but hurriedly placed a lid atop the crate, then marched myself and my household to the shore. The goods and lower servants boarded a frigate. I, at last, a Dutch man-of-war.
THE RESTORATION
~ ~ ~
IT CAME AS A SHOCK. AFTER A BRUTAL CROSSING — IN WHICH SHE HIT her head in a storm and swore she’d seen a bear at the helm of the ship — Margaret expected to find her husband at his London residence, Newcastle House, in fashionable Clerkenwell. Yet there she stood in Bow Street in a rented house, again. “I cannot call it unhandsome,” she said when asked if she liked her new room. Where was she meant to keep her gowns? It hadn’t even a mirror. William’s steward came to tell them that her crates could not be found. Her sister, Margaret learned, would be in Cornwall for three weeks. All this in the first two hours, still stinking of the ship. A doctor came, declared her sound. Margaret washed. She slept. In morning light, she dressed. And over the following week, as William prepared to petition the courts for the return of his elegant townhouse, Margaret prepared for some sign of the notice she’d allowed herself to expect.
A celebrity, the king had said.
She sat by the window day after day, yet no one they knew would be walking in Bow Street, and no one in Bow Street seemed to notice who she was.
This was the Restoration, after all. The very air in London was filled with triumphant returns. When the king arrived on his ship in the Thames, twenty thousand horse-and-foot stood brandishing their swords. Everyone had their version of events. Everyone spoke at once. John Evelyn, from the Strand, beheld it and blessed God: “Praised be forever the Lord of Heaven, who only does wondrous things.” “A pox on all kings!” cried a hag. “Oh look, the king,” gasped a girl held aloft. The diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of bonfires the city over, an infinite shooting of guns, and men drinking to the king’s health upon their knees in the street. London was born anew, again. The theaters reopened in a glow of candles and laughter. There were public lectures at Gresham College — on astronomy, on wind. Throngs of visitors, exotic ambassadors. There was tennis at Hampton Court.
Amid this tumult, Margaret’s crates went undelivered. Her manuscripts were missing. She had only two gowns on hand.
“Did you know,” she said over toast one morning, setting aside a letter from her sister, “it is the fashion in London for a lady to appear in public in a state of near-undress?”
“Ah,” said William, and grabbed his hat.
He had always some appointment or some old friend to see.
“My dear,” he sometimes offered, “if you wish to come, then say.”
But Margaret said nothing, or hesitated, and William left, annoyed. When he returned in the evening, he’d find her seated alone at the table in one of those two gowns.