They eat, undress, dress again, drive out into the city. The city is half black from the fire. Still, there is birdsong and laughter. Swine root in fishy water. Towers strain, bells peal. Someone cries for a girl called Doll Lane. The carriage takes a left. Then Charing Cross, then Wallingford House, then Royal Park and the new canal. At last they disembark and enter the Banqueting Hall together, William greeting familiar faces, Margaret in diamond earrings and a hat like a fox that froze. They’ve come to pay their respects to the king and his new queen — new, at least, to Margaret — and pass beneath enormous chandeliers, Margaret in a gown designed to look like the forest floor, like glittering yellow wood moss and starry wood anemone and deep-red Jew’s-ear bloom. It has a train like a river — so long it must be carried by a maid — yet hitches up in front, so she might walk with ease. Gone are the golden shoes with gold shoe-roses, just flat boots laced to her knees. Into the king’s reception chamber — dizzying carpets and glasses of wine half-drunk — where Margaret grandly bows, but there’s little chance to speak. Someone takes her arm. While William is left to speak with the king, Margaret is stewarded to the queen’s reception rooms, where Queen Catherine sits surrounded by her Spanish ladies and several snoring hounds. How unlike Henrietta Maria and the old court this new one is: this queen is pious, unpretty, and has miscarried four times. Margaret’s curtsey is solemn. Solemnly, she offers the queen a copy of her book. The queen is cold. Her ladies cold. “Are those Spanish dogs?” Margaret asks. She is not invited to cards.
“I hate it here,” she says, climbing back into the carriage.
“You’re far too easily flustered,” William says.
In heavy rain they pass Arundel House, where the Royal Society — he’s just learned from Lord Brouncker — has been meeting since the streets near Gresham College were damaged in the fire.
“Are you listening?” he asks.
The city is black and glistens.
A simple rule, which she should have remembered. “The most preposterous sort of ceremony,” she says. For only the woman of highest rank is allowed a female train-bearer, yet Margaret has just presented herself to the queen in a train so long her train-bearer still stood out in the hall.
“An error,” William says. “I’ll apologize to His Majesty myself. You are simply out of practice. It’s been nearly seven years. No need to make a fuss. There’s no need to be always getting so upset.”
They turn up Chancery Lane.
“Take Brouncker’s wife,” he offers. “A very amiable girl. One always finds—”
“At dinner tomorrow,” Margaret says, “I will be entirely pleasant, you will see. I will limit my conversation to three topics: rain, Chinese silks, and the stage.”
But the following afternoon, William hears her telling their guests that if the schools do not retire Aristotle and read Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, they do her wrong and deserve to be abolished.
She sits with Flecknoe amid the porcelain figures and sips her cooling tea. It’s true she’s being spoken of. “The general air,” he fears, “is sympathy for the queen. For they say your slight was intended, and you must have seen her pitiful face, and surely you’ve heard. ”
But Margaret’s mind is like a ball of string. It’s just the same, she thinks. Nothing ever changes. And outside, it is spring. The orchard is in blossom. She rises to the window, sees the blooms on trees like constellations, the bees like tiny voyagers between the orchard’s many worlds.
“. her miscarriages,” he whispers.
“But I cannot be sweet Lady Brouncker!” she blurts.
Now Flecknoe is quiet, and Margaret is sorry, for he only means to help.
“I should not have come to London.”
“Nonsense!” he cries. “We must simply present you anew. Give them something else to rattle about. Une petite soirée, perhaps? Here in Newcastle House?” He unfolds into the room. “Surely the duke will agree,” he says. “Is the duke at home?”
But no, the duke is out.
At suppertime, he comes. “Where have you been?” Margaret asks. But William only suggests they take their supper outside. After a plate of beef and two glasses of beer, he finally smiles and speaks. “I have written a play,” he says. She nearly drops her fork. “The Humorous Lovers,” he tells her. But they always share their work. “Opening night is in nine days. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields. At eight.” It’s to be staged anonymously, since now he is a duke. “You may order a new gown,” he says. He is eager, she can see. He kisses her on the forehead and tells her, “Everyone will come.”
She is worried there’s something she left behind. She has her mask, her gown. The femme forte, she’d explained to the seamstress. And so the dress, like an Amazon’s, is all simple drapes and folds. Now she crosses Fleet River, her head held very straight. The water flashes in ropes, in shapes. Under the shadow of chestnut trees she stops to adjust her mask. There are others also dressed and moving toward the theater. A black glass bead in the back of her mouth holds the mask in place. She has never worn a mask before. She tries not to gag on the bead.
I am gallant. I am bold. I am right on time, she thinks.
She climbs the wooden staircase, takes her place in the box. And like ripples in a summer pond, lines of faces slowly turn — from the gallery, the pit — she watches the ripple spread. William must be late, for beside her is an empty seat. Still more and more faces turn. Margaret spies his daughters, who sit in a box nearby. Jane and Elizabeth avert their eyes, but they are the only ones.
It’s not simply that Margaret’s reputation has grown — her dress is gold, her breasts bared, her nipples painted red.
The play begins, the lovers center stage. William sits. Everyone roars. The candles sputter and hiss. Yet Margaret is as much observed as anything on the stage. Scene, scene, intermission, scene. The actors take their bows. The audience files out — chattering into coffeehouses, up onto horses, north to Hampstead, west to Oxford, south to the river and on — but before Margaret can say a thing in all the noise, William has her elbow and is guiding her through the crowd.
“Congratulations!” she tells him once their carriage door is shut.
“No, no,” he says, “congratulations to you.”
The horses lurch ahead, crossing the Fleet in the dark.
“Is something amiss?” she asks, placing the mask in her lap.
The river oozes beneath them, a blacker sort of black.
“What could be wrong?”
The driver turns north onto John.
“Only tell me,” he finally says, looking out into the night, “exactly who wears such a gown to an evening at the theater?”
“The femme forte,” she explains, “a woman dressed in armor.”