Anne and her sister Mary make their entrance into Court under wooden clouds, that smell a little of distemper. Their bodies are draped in heavy layers of silk and brocade, run through with gold and silver thread, and made heavier still by the many jewels their dressers have attached to them; Anne feels heavy inside too, as if all the months of practice and expectation, the dancing lessons, the acting lessons, the fittings, the conversations overheard, and even her own prayers have all been mixed up and baked together, so that now the whole concoction sits stolidly in her breast, like a pudding on a pantry shelf.
For all this weight, she treads daintily – if not quite as daintily as Mary – her arms outstretched as they have been taught, holding a castanet in each hand. The sisters take their places first, then the other young ladies take their places behind and to either side. First they curtsy – everything begins with a curtsy – then there is a little pause, a quick burst of applause, and the music starts, half flowing up from the pit, and half down from the clouds, two separate streams of sound that pool together on the stage, exactly where she stands.
Now they begin to trace the steps that they have learned, with the viols and the recorders treading alongside, three slow beats at a time; underneath the music, Anne can hear the heels of their shoes sliding against the baize, the little thuds they make when they all step in time, and the rustling of their skirts whenever, with a pert clicking of castanets, they kick up and show the Court their stockings. It is a pretty song, so the hardest task she has is to keep herself from humming. The Court is watching her, so the Court might well be listening too.
Anne is, for once, grateful that God has given her such bad eyes. From the stage, the Court is no more than a glistening murmur, held at bay by a row of candles. Their flames run together, making a bank of fire. She can see smaller lights flashing on the dancers’ costumes and when the dance brings her close enough, she catches a glimpse of a face: Mary’s is taut with concentration; the others’ are scared or excited or saucy, according to temperament. This is as much as she wishes to see. If she saw anything more, she fears she would not be able to dance at all.
The music stops, the Court applauds, and now Anne can go back to the tiring-room, where Danvers and the other dressers are waiting, and where she can refresh herself from dishes of oranges, olives and almonds. As she steps through the wings, she meets the Duke of Monmouth and his gentlemen on their way to the baize to dance a minuet. Lady Henrietta Wentworth stops suddenly to watch them walking out, and Carey Fraser, who is just behind, nearly trips over her gown – a couple of the other young ladies giggle, and are shushed.
Monmouth is the King’s eldest son, but not his heir: that is the King’s brother, the Duke of York, Anne’s father. Mary’s and Anne’s places, at Court, and in the succession, are therefore ordained by God, and the masque they are about to perform has been commissioned so that these important truths might be confirmed and demonstrated. Monmouth’s place is altogether less certain, but he is handsome and beloved, one of the lights of the Court, so it is only right that he should have his minuet, and lead the dance. Mary says it is to show the world how well the King loves him; Squinting Betty Villiers, who has no part, says it is to show the Court how well his leg is turned.
The masque has been written by a Mr Crowne who, as he writes in his dedication to Mary, has been unexpectedly called out of his obscurity by the command of their step-mother the Duchess, to the glory of serving her fair and excellent Highness. So unexpected was this call, he explains, that he has not had time to ripen his conceptions, and regrets that the words he has found for Mary to say must fall sadly short of the excellence of her thoughts:
For none can have Angelical thoughts but they who have Angelical virtues; and none do, or ever did, in so much youth, come to so near the perfection of Angels as yourself, and your young Princely Sister, in whom all those excellencies shine, which the best of us can but rudely paint.
Anne is used to hearing Mary’s perfections praised: she is quick, she is diligent, beautiful, agreeable, pious; she dances gracefully, draws and paints exquisitely, embroiders charmingly. Conscientious in all things, she read the whole libretto of Calisto: the Chaste Nymph as soon as it was put into her hands. Her young Princely Sister has seen only her own parts, because reading makes her eyes water. Mary’s view is that Anne could read much more if she wanted to, but as she is herself always just as willing to talk as to read, she has told Anne the whole story, more than once:
‘We’re to play sisters – Calisto and Nyphe – they’re princesses, and nymphs serving Diana. Jupiter and Mercury watch them. Jupiter loves Calisto. She loves only innocence and chastity, but there’s a jealous nymph, Psecas, who thinks she’s shamming it. Psecas knows Mercury loves her, and means to pretend to love him in return, so her conduct will shame all the rest—’
‘How’s that?’
‘Because if one nymph loses her honour, it throws suspicion on the others. Where was I . . .? Jupiter tells Mercury how he’ll appear to Calisto in Diana’s shape, thinking that she cannot mind if her mistress caresses her, so he finds Calisto and embraces her and she thinks he’s Diana run mad and calls “Help!”—’
And here Mary strikes the appropriate attitude.
‘—so he shows himself in his true shape, but she still won’t have him, so he orders the Winds to seize her. Then his jealous Queen, Juno, comes looking for him. In the meantime, Mercury promises to make Psecas a goddess, and they plan to have Calisto shamed, and Nyphe too. Nyphe finds them and – listen, Anne, this is your biggest part – she quarrels with Psecas, who thinks herself above the others now—’
‘And I tell her that I am a princess born, but she is only made great by her lover.’
‘So you have read that, at least – yes, and then Psecas and Mercury plot to show Nyphe with Mercury and Calisto with Jupiter in front of Diana and Juno. Then Juno finds Jupiter and Calisto, and Jupiter tells her he’s to have Calisto as well as her. Then Nyphe finds Calisto alone, and they weep together.’
‘But then . . .?’
‘Then Mercury finds Psecas and tells how he’s roused Juno to punish Calisto, and now they will shame Nyphe. Now the sisters are enchanted and afraid. They see Diana and— no, there’s something else: Juno appears and tells Diana she is deceived in Calisto, and— Sister, you do not listen—’
‘I am. I do. Mary, do please go on.’
‘Very well. So now . . . so now the sisters come. They think Diana is Jupiter so they strike her with darts, so Diana says they must die. Then Juno says she’ll crown Psecas a goddess, but Psecas makes Mercury angry, so he tells all to Diana, and so the sisters’ honour is restored. Psecas is banished, and Jupiter sets the sisters in the sky to rule over a star. And that’s the end.’
If Mary has told this story more than once, it is because Anne has asked more than once, partly because she is reassured by repetition, but also because the story seems to complicate itself further with every telling. By this time, though, she has grasped the chief point, which is that nobody much cares if she understands, as long as she speaks her lines beautifully, and as she is well able to do this – Mrs Betterton has even commended her voice to the King for its sweetness – she is no longer troubling herself, or Mary, about the intricacies of the plot. After all, Mary is thirteen and it is quite natural that she should comprehend more than Anne, who has only just turned ten.
Anne understands this much: the play is about lovemaking, adultery and attempted ravishment, but it is from the Classics, and all the parts are taken by ladies, so there can be nothing improper in it. The gods Jupiter and Mercury are played, respectively, by Lady Henrietta and Sarah Jennings, while their father the Duke has commanded Margaret Blagge out of retirement from Court to play Diana, and Anne has heard from several reliable sources that Mrs Blagge is so given over to goodness and piety that she has sworn never to say or do one amusing thing ever again. Margaret is sharing a tiring-room with the princesses and other principals, and while they wait between acts she sits on a chair in the corner, reading a book of devotions. When they are called for the first act she puts down the book with conspicuous reluctance, accepts her bow and arrows from her dresser, and takes her place at the head of her train. Mary follows her, then Anne, and then Lady Mary Mordaunt, who is Psecas. A group of lesser ladies, playing lesser nymphs, join them in the wings, and they complete the retinue.
Anne hears Jupiter’s last lines –
She swiftly by like some bright meteor shot
Dazzled my eye, and straight she disappeared
– and thinks, as she always does, of Mrs Jennings, who leaves the stage as they come on, bright-haired and dashing in her breeches, her smile like a private letter.
After a long evening of pursuing and plotting, resisting and weeping, denunciations and revelations, all interspersed with the affairs of shepherds and shepherdesses from the King’s music, and dances of Basques, Cupids, Winds, Satyrs, Bacchuses and, finally, Africans, the sisters make their final entrance under a great canopy, with the Africans supporting it.
Jupiter is to crown them before an assembly of all the gods, so as soon as they reach centre stage, the wings are pulled back, and behind and above them a heaven is revealed in the form of a glory, with the gods and goddesses seated in front of it. The glory is made of a huge back piece with a round hole in the middle of it, taffeta stretched over the hole and many dozens of candles behind. Anne can see nothing of this, but she can feel the heat, which, added to the warmth of the footlights, her heavy costume and the press of bodies on stage for the finale, is suddenly almost too much. But soon enough Lady Henrietta has descended from the glory to speak the epilogue, and it is nearly over.
Jupiter announces a final change of heart: he will not waste their virtue and beauty on a star. That is no way for a king to dispose of princesses: he will keep them to oblige other thrones, to grace some favourite crowns. Having spoken, Lady Henrietta steps forward in her own person and addresses the real King, on the subject of the real princesses:
Two glorious nymphs of your own godlike line,
Whose morning rays, like noontide, strike and shine
Whom you to suppliant monarchs shall dispose,
To bind your friends, and to disarm your foes.