This historical novel, set in 1660s England and Northern Canada, opens with a captivating first line: “This was the beginning of Lilly's real life, the one she would invent out of thin air.”
London in the Restoration era was not easy on the poor. Lilly Cole, whose mother has recently died, survives by working at her aunt's brothel. There she meets the playwright and lovable drunkard Bartholomew, who teaches her the art of stagecraft. Bart, a gentleman with good connections, not only introduces her to the theatre, ensuring she receives plum roles, but presents her to the king, Charles II, who soon takes the pretty, 16-year-old Lilly as his mistress.
The Players, by Margaret Sweatman, Goose Lane, 332 pages, $22.95
Lilly is a roaring success both on the stage and in the royal bed. Sweatman does not shrink from presenting the times in all their brazen glory. She writes erotic with the best: “In the sweet surfeit of the hours, she drifted down into nearly trusting desire, to the place Charles invented or knowingly sought out, where she, with the last shreds of separate mindfulness, thought, I will be what you like, let you do what you like; I'll even like what you do.”
Lilly is indeed inventing her own life out of thin air. She's a lively character, feisty and ripe with earthy intelligence. Nothing can stop her rise up the social ladder, until late one night she is raped in an alley by the truly evil Lord Metcalf. As he turns his back, she finds a piece of broken glass on the ground, slashes his neck and watches the scoundrel die in a pool of blood. But spies lurk everywhere in this untrusting age, and someone has seen.
Meanwhile, two French adventurers have arrived at court. Médard Des Groseilliers and Pierre Radisson, who have experience in the New World beaver trade, persuade the king to provide them with two ships so they can search for the Northwest Passage to China. In the hopeful and deluded geography of the day, everyone believes that Japan and China are simply a two-week sail beyond the western end of Hudson Bay. In any case, the Frenchmen explain, even if we don't make it to China, we can do a booming trade with the Indians for beaver pelts.
The novel is also bursting with good humour and refreshing in its willful ignorance of political correctness
Since the ambitious and cunning Sir George Rose is whispering to the king that Lilly is a murderess, she secretly leaves with Bart on the Wivenhoe, bound for Canada. The expedition is headed by the eccentric Magnus Brown, a distant genius who is enamoured of Lilly. In fact, just about every important male character in the novel falls for the vivacious Lilly at one time or another.
The crossing provides the opportunity for harrowing, memorable scenes of the ship surrounded by icebergs off the coast of Greenland. After further scrapes and bruises, the Wivenhoe eventually reaches Hudson Bay. Although a few of the sailors abhor and fear the presence of a woman on board, Lilly is able to play her role well enough to survive (despite being pregnant with the king's child). Unfortunately, Hudson Bay is already filling up with pack ice (ah, Northern Canada in August) and the dream of China is quickly aborted as our adventurers head down into James Bay, make land and build an encampment for the winter, where they almost starve while instigating a prosperous trade with the Indians.
I don't believe I'm giving anything away by revealing details of the plot, as this story is all about the telling. Sweatman's writing flows as smoothly as a muscular northern river, with a stunning control of voice. She keeps the reader engaged every moment, introducing us to a company of intriguing characters, and makes good use of fastidious detail, as in this list of provisions for the ship: “Eighteen barrels of shot, five thousand needles, twenty blunderbusses, thirty muskets, and so on. Raisins, beer, prunes, peas, oatmeal, beef, etcetera. Pork. Thirty-seven pounds of tobacco …”
The novel is also bursting with good humour and refreshing in its willful ignorance of political correctness. The Englishmen can never quite get Des Groseilliers's name correct, calling him every variation of “Gooseberries” possible. And when Lilly meets an Indian chief, these two skilled mimics go to town: “Lilly wiped her nose with the back of her hand and curtsied. The chief mimicked her, wiping his nose and making a most astonishing curtsy. She brightened. She curtsied with greater flourish. The savage copied her with perfectly gauged exaggeration.”
Altogether, this frothy, tangy novel is tart as a green apple, far grittier and more realistic than costume dramas of the period available on TV and film. Ultimately, Sweatman creates a memorable female character making her way in a world of men: Lilly Cole, player, survivor, early Canadian.
Mark Frutkin's most recent novel is Fabrizio's Return, winner of the Trillium and the Sunburst Awards.
