Clive came to rest, breathing heavily, leaning on the rail besides a jousting row of food vendors parked to the side of the old drawbridge. And so, it took a few moments for him to steady himself enough to notice the towering monstrosity rising before him.

“By the mass!”

The eponymous House with Many Windows had been an impressive facade, to be sure, but it was a mere ordoeuvre next to the riotous banquet of red and gold confection that lay just ahead. Ornately carved and lacquered, stepped and gabled, crowned with tapering azure Russian onion-domes and a midday glint from what Clive thought might be a sundial – nay, two sundials! – this building, likely about half-way along the Bridge, must have been at least thirty feet wide, for it straddled the thoroughfare and jutted well out over the river on both sides. It hardly seemed to belong here at all, and Clive half-wondered if some foreign power had succeeded in setting up fort on English soil (elm) without the Crown’s notice. Certainly, nothing English could ever have been so utterly... lewd.

image [https://c17thlondontokens.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/nonsuch-house.jpg]

And then he saw her.

And all the gapeseed’s onions, and dials, and lacquer simply ceased to exist. She was leaning on the sill of one open window on the upmost fourth floor, her eyes closed, the warm river’s breeze feathering the soft brown waves of her hair. Her blue gown was so high-necked that it was practically a night-shirt, but still managed to sigh softly of the woman beneath. Her chin was elegant, noble and pointed; her mouth, the smallest rosebud of a smile. At this distance, she was little more than a vignette, but somehow Clive knew, even without seeing her eyes, that she was perfect. Not perfect in the way that a painting was perfect. Perfect in the way of the horizon – unreachable, unknowable, yet somehow everything you wanted. A woman like that would have you scaling superlatives and clinging desperately to creaking clichés that were simply not fit to bear the weight of their comparisons. A woman like that was...

—abruptly gone! A weighty sleeve, cardinal and red, stretched across her face towards the window handle. A voice, sonorous and amplified by the interior, yet high and oddly nasal in a keening, Sandy sort of way, wafted down to bridge-level:

“Come away from the window, child! Let not Lugh’s rays ebon your dolomite complexion...”

The vision of loveliness opened her mouth to protest... and then she was gone, sealed behind the leaden panes.

Clive stared after her, suddenly unable to move, much less breath.

“Eh, eh! Don’t even think about it, mate!”

Clive turned, startled, wondering at who had spoken... To his great surprise, he found himself proxy to the foxy bow-legged fellow from earlier – he of the broad hat and lazy eye. The fellow was following his gaze.

“I wasn’t – I was just–just–”

“Oh, you weren’t?”

“I mean I just wanted to know... the name of that building!”

“Non such house.”

Clive double-took. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nonsuch House, mate!”

Clive was doubly taken. Was the fellow mad?

“Well, excuse me, but clearly there is! It’s right there!”

“Of course it is!”

“You... you’re not making any... never mind.” Clive turned back towards the window. “Who was she? She’s beautiful!”

“Trust me, mate: you want no part!”

“That must have been her father – does he own the whole building? Some kind of merchant or...”

The stranger sighed. “You’re new in town, ’ain’t ya?”

“What gave it away?”

“Well, for one, you ask too many questions.”

“So?”

“Questions can be dangerous for your health.”

“Why?”

The strange fellow shook his head. “Not the brightest spark neither. What’s y’name?”

Clive proffered a hand, “I’m Clive! Clive Hucklefish!”

The fellow took his hand and sniffed it. “Huckledish?”

“Fish.”

The man wrinkled his nose. “No thanks, mate. I’ve just eaten!”

Clive was finding his newfound companion intensely puzzling.

The other drew himself up and thumbed his chest. “And I am Gerald Muldoon – but you may call me Jerry – everyone does! Look, Clive, I need your ’elp with something – a little experiment, y’might say – all in the name of public safety, mind! – and in return for your time I pays you with good honest coin! And besides, it will take your mind off the local poultry! Now what says you to that, eh?”

Clive was delighted. He’d heard tale that the streets of London were paved with gold, of course, but he’d always presumed that to be a metaphor – he’d never dreamed it could really be so easy to find work! This was his second haul in ten minutes!

“Alright, I’m game! Anything for good honest coin! Are you some kind of city health inspector?”

“You might say that. Now, come over here!” Jerry led Clive over to an orange seller – a buxom young thing, pretty as a pixie, framed with a mass of soft brown curls that would have put Pepys’ wig to rout. A large basket was lodged between hip and elbow, and the girl was occupied in lengthy negotiation with a pair of fine gallants (Clive wondered how buying fruit could be so complicated).

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Jerry was instantly taken. “Phwoar!” he breathed in Clive’s ear, “now there’s a ripe pair just beggin’ for a squeeze!”

Clive nodded earnestly. “Yes, her oranges look most succulent!”

Jerry looked at Clive as if he might be missing something (like... anything between his ears). “Watch this!” he said.

He strode boldly up to the orange girl. “Can I touch ’em, then?”

The girl rounded on him, free hand on hip, seemingly outraged, mouth open and ready to volley at the impudence of this newest interloper. Yet... something stopped her. Her eyes flicked up and down, taking in Jerry’s height, his odd stance, his dumb grin. She took a breath, a slight smile playing around the corners of her lips.

“If you were referring to mi Chinas, sir, you may very well inspect them. I assure you that they are most ripe and sweet. They’re sevenpence each, or you can have them for sixpence if you come by the Royal this afternoon, and more besides.”

“More besides?”

“We have a most fulsome comedy by James Howard playing. It’s called All’s Mistaken, or The Mad Couple.”

“Really? And what talented pair of actors and ’tresses shall be playing said gay couplin’?”

“Well, sir, the part of the Duke shall be taken by a most fine player: one Charles Hart–”

“–I’ve seen him. ’E’s alright. And for t’other?”

“Well,” the girl said, with a twinkle in her eye, “the part of the Duchess shall be performed by none other than the humble orange-seller you see before you.”

Clive couldn’t believe it – a real actress from the Theatre Royal – right here on London Bridge!

Jerry feigned surprise. “What – you?”

“Indeed, me, sir, if it pleases.”

“An actress? A rising star of the modern London theatre? Well, I’ll be! I thought you were just a purveyor of particularly toothsome orbs!”

“Sir is too kind.”

“So what you doing ’ere, then? Shouldn’t you be warming up?”

“Well, I’m new to the stage, and, it’s true, I always used to sell the oranges before. Mistress Moll says I should keep mi hand in, and not let a little acting go to mi head. But sooth, sir, acting’s my real love!”

“You and me both, sweet peaches! Aren’t you gonna be late for curtain-call? Shows at 3 of th’noon lest I’m much mistaken?”

“I’ll be heading back to the theatre, presently.”

“Then, I shall look for you this afternoon on the boards, Miss–?”

“Gwyn. Nell Gwyn. Nelly to them what knows me.”

“And more besides.”

Nell gave him a small smile and a lingering look, and bobbed coyly, before turning back to the gallants, whose faces seemed to have turned to ice during the interim, but which melted swiftly enough as Nell’s beams returned.

Jerry turned back to Clive.

Clive could hardly speak, he was so excited! “Jerry! She’s an actress! A real honest-to-god actress!”

Jerry made a couple of batting motions with his hand, “Not so loud! Nothing honest about her... I knew who she was: I saw her in The Indian Emperour. She was bloody awful! Great teats though...”

Jerry stole another long look for good measure. Clive waited respectfully while he finished.

Finally, Jerry shook himself and seemed to recall Clive’s existence. “So... anyways... ‘fore we get started, what brings you to London Town, Clive?”

“Well!” This was Clive’s favourite topic, and he was going to make damn sure Jerry knew it! “I am going to be an actor! Back in Devon, the local rag said I had ‘Promise.’” With a magician’s flourish, Clive produced his rather sticky 1663 edition of the How Now My Luva! (Devonshire’s local merchant periodical), a pamphlet never far from Clives’s heart (he kept it under his left armpit). Remarkably, Clive had made the front page (a sad reflection on the state of Devonshire affairs for that period). The headline was undeniably sensational:

CLIVE HUCKLEISH MURDERS HAMLET!

The former beamed proudly.

Jerry scanned the article. “It says here the magistrate made you solemnly promise never to act in public again?”

“Same difference!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now I want to make it big on the London stage! Theatre Royal, here I come!”

Clive slapped his thigh, and assumed the position.

Jerry helped him unassume. “Yeah, erm, Clive, there’s something I need to tell you mate: it’s not going to happen!”

Clive’s crest fell (off). “Why not? I really am very keen!”

Jerry sighed, not entirely untheatrically. “Ain’t we all? We all wanted to be actors, Clive!”

“Even you?”

“Even me. Things ’ave been ’ard for us these last decades, what with the Puritans an’ all – those stone faced morons wouldn’t know a giggle if it came up and farted in their mouths! We scraped by with hawking popular excerpts in skit-and-run performances, usually Bottom, sometimes the Gravedigger – the same damn scenes, over and over, but never long enough to be caught – never a full rendition! Then, when the Merry Monarch reinstated the theatres... well! We thought all our Christmases had come at once, so to speak! Except – there was just one problem... A threat so perfidious that it was to change the face of the acting profession as we knew it!”

“Herpes?”

Jerry tilted his head in Nell’s direction.

Clive furrowed. “Oranges?”

“No mate. Actresses!”

“Actresses?”

“Imagine it, overnight, the number of acting parts available, slashed in two by an outbreak of the fairer sex! Real bubbies! My dreams of playing Juliet died right then and there, I can tell you! And worse – these so-called ‘actresses’ – they were good too! Why – before long they were even taking over some of the male characters! Can you imagine! You ain’t seen Richard III until you’ve seen it in cross-dress, I can tell you!

Matters deteriorated. With all the choice pickings taken, a vast, unemployable horde of jobbing male actors emerged, all scrapping over the same few measly roles! Before long it started spilling out of the overcrowded audition spaces and onto the streets! Innocent bystanders got caught up in running street skits! Every alleyway became a potential entrance or exit! Anything anyone said or did could be a potential cue! No-one even knew what was real anymore! Society itself began to unravel...”

“Blind me!”

“Aye! When the dust settled, the few male actors that had made it into the companies were set up for life. The rest of us had to turn to other professions to fill the gaping soul in our voids. Me... I turned to coffin-making. It puts food on the table – hours are good: graveyard shifts mostly – but you never really get over the loss.”

“That’s awful! Oh Jerry, what am I going to do?”

“Aw, don’t worry about it! Look at you, barely here a day, and you’ve already found employment! Or had ye forgotten?”

Clived sighed heavily. His dreams suddenly seemed very very far away. “So what was it you wanted my help with?”

“Ah, glad you asked!” Jerry selected an orange from Nell’s basket (her back was turned) and held it before Clive in one hand. “Now, if I were to pilfer this orange right here, right now, ‘ow long do you think it would take the watch to catch me?”

“Well... I... I’m sure they would...” Clive thought seriously, accounting that there were guardhouses at both ends of the Bridge, and he and Jerry were presently in the middle, “... maybe... three minutes?”

“Three minutes, says you! Such faith! Very well, a slow count from one and eighty. Go!” And with that, Jerry took Clive’s hand, and laid the purloined orange within it.

Clive was utterly confused. “Sorry, I don’t...”

“Run.”

“But I...”

“Now.”

“Really, Jerry, I don’t quite–”

“GUARDS!” yelled Jerry!

Clive stumbled back in shock. Nell’s head whipped round towards him. Clive looked in horror from the orange, to Nell, to Jerry, who was nodding and winking at him encouragingly and seemed to be... counting?

Nell pointed at Clive. “’Ere! ’E’s making off with mi wares! It’ll be my arse if I don’t bring the right coin back to the theatre!” She ushered the two gallants. “A free go for whichever of ye nabs him!”

The gallants stepped forward, grinning wolfishly, hands going for rapiers...

Jerry was still counting: “169... 168... 165...”

Clive stashed the orange down his breeches, swung about, and ran for his life!