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  "Very well. There are two remedies. Either of these will help the infection, or neither will help it at all. The first is plantain water mixed with a little loose sugar; the second is a treacle posset. These will or will not cure you."

  De Gourlay thanked me and laughed again and seemed impatient for me to join in the laughter. But I could not. Now I saw that, by believing in the cleverness and wisdom of his own game, he was in fact rendering himself rather foolish. For what was the game but another self-deception: by juggling negatives and positives he expected to be able to protect himself from pain, yet it was clear to me that he craved as much from life as any man. For what was the insertion of the "de" into his surname but a declaration of hope?

  Night seemed to have come by the time de Gourlay left my room. Though I had put a taper to my fire, I felt distressingly cold. A bath, I decided, was the only thing that would warm me.

  I called for Will. He informed me that he had delivered my note to Celia.

  "How is my wife?" I asked him.

  "Listless, Sir. Impatient for the return of Mister Finn, so that the portrait may be finished."

  "Finn has left?"

  "Yes, Sir. The day after your cancelled party. On Whitehall business, he boasted."

  So, I was not wrong. Finn had been appointed (or had made himself) the King's spy.

  As I sat in my tub (my head lolling and somewhat uncomfortable, so that it occurred to me to design a chin-strap for myself such as I had imagined for the people of the River Mar) I tried to determine what consequences this spying would have for me. Knowing the King as I did, supreme as he is in his power over every person living in his Kingdom, I was prepared to wager that he would be amused by the folly of my love for Celia. "Well, Merivel…" I could hear him say, "what a clumsy, impersonation of Romeo you do make! Tussling with Juliet upon the balcony! In future, do try to remember which role has been given to you. You are Paris." I smiled. So perfectly could I remember the inflections of the King's voice that I could almost believe him to be present in the room, just beyond the steam rising from my bath-water.

  I closed my eyes. Will was ladling hot water over my shoulders and stomach, yet I was starting to feel cold again and it was the coldness of a fever. "Bring more water, Will," I instructed, "and let it be piping hot."

  "This is hot enough, Sir. You will vaporise."

  "Do not argue. Go, heat more water. I am drowning in cold."

  I was left alone, then, in my tub. Outside the window, I heard the shrieking of a nightjar. I thought of Nell's prediction of my fall. I thought of Pierpoint's fall from his boat. And of Rosie, alone in her laundry, waiting for thirty shillings to fall into her palm.

  Chapter Thirteen. Royal Tennis

  I remember that Will half carried me, dripping and trembling from the bath. He dried me and put over my head a clean nightshirt and lay me down in my bed and I instructed him to pile furs upon me and I could smell the badger skins; they smelled of earth.

  I burrowed down. I burrowed into sleep. And when I woke in the middle of the night, I knew that I was most horribly ill, with a pain in my forehead and at the base of my skull such as I had never imagined, unless it were the pain of death itself.

  I vomited copiously into a basin. The sounds of my retching woke Will, who had laid himself to sleep on the floor of my bedchamber. He took the basin away and brought me water. "Sir," he said, holding the cup to my mouth, "I see some red patches or blotches upon your face."

  I lay back, the pain in my head causing me to whimper like Celia's neglected Isabelle. Will held a mirror to my nose. I squinted at myself. It was an afflicting sight, one that I may long remember. I had contracted the measles.

  I will not describe for you the discomfort of this illness. It will suffice to set down that I was very vexed with pain for several days, a pain relieved only by the frequent doses of laudanum which I prescribed for myself and which, in turn, sent my brain into a kind of delirium so that I no longer recognised my room, nor Will within it, but believed myself to be, variously, at Whitehall, in my parents' workshop, in Wise Nell's stinking parlour and on a tilt boat.

  When the pain at last lessened and I was able to lie still without groaning, I knew that what was now stealing upon me was a sleep so profound it was like a swaddling of death. It held me for some fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. Then I would wake and find Will or Cattlebury at my side with a little cup of broth, which I would try to sip. Then I would piss feebly into my pot and lie down again and in minutes re-enter this velvet sleep, at one moment remarking to myself that, if it resembled death, it also resembled infancy and musing foolishly on the possibility of being reborn in a more handsome and serious guise.

  This, of course, did not come about. I was "reborn" two weeks later, weak as a mole and covered with scabs. I sat up and saw Will sitting in a chair, wearing his tabard. "Thank you, Will," I said. "And for caring for me so well. Without you, I would have been in a sorry mess."

  "Are you better, Sir?"

  "I believe I am. Though I feel somewhat puny and hollow…"

  "Are you recovered enough for some news?"

  "News?"

  "Yes. About your household."

  "Meaning you and Cattlebury and the other servants?"

  "No, Sir. Meaning your wife and her maid and Mister Finn and the music master. They are all gone. Gone to London."

  "Celia has gone?"

  "Yes, Sir Robert. And taken all her dresses and fans and so forth."

  "But the portrait…"

  "Finished. And the day it was, the King sends one of the Royal coaches, and they all get into it and are gone."

  I lay down again. I stared at my turquoise canopy. "That is the end of it, then," I heard myself say. "Now, she will never return. What date is it, Will?"

  "February, Sir. The twenty-second day."

  One week later, as I sat by my fire, staring vacantly into the flames, Will brought me a letter. It was, as I knew it would be, from the King. Or rather, it was not from him but from one of his secretaries and set out the following summons:

  His Gracious Majesty, King Charles II. Sovereign of the Realm commands:

  That Sir Robert Merivel present Himself at Whitehall Palace no more days hence than four, upon receipt of this Royal missive.

  Signed: Sir J. Babbacombe. Secretary

  "So," I said to Will, who had brought me the note, "Finn did his work."

  "I beg your pardon, Sir?"

  "Never mind. The King calls me to London, Will. And it will not be to praise me."

  "You're too weak, yet, to go to London, Sir."

  "Needs must, Will. I shall not ride, but take the coach. Perhaps you would be good enough to accompany me?"

  "Willingly, Sir Robert."

  "We shall leave tomorrow morning, then. Make sure my black and gold coat is clean and my gold breeches."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "And fold up the tabard I had intended my wife should wear. We shall take it to the King as a present. Though I fear – "

  "What, Sir?"

  "That no offering of this kind will be enough."

  I shall not dwell upon the details of our journey, except to record that, as we came to Mile End and Will saw in the distance the tower and turrets of London, he grew most childishly excited thinking of the marvels he was about to witness for the first time, he having passed all thirty-nine years of his life in Norfolk. And when it dawned upon his Norfolk mind that he might, in all probability, set eyes upon the King in his palace, he began to blub, thus causing me in the space of five minutes more delight than I had experienced in as many weeks. (I have grown, in my time at Bidnold, most fond of Will Gates. If he is now to be taken from me for ever, I will remember him often.)

  We rested two nights on our journey, arriving at Whitehall towards mid-morning of the third day. We traveled wearing our tabards, but at our last lodging in Essex I dressed myself in my black and gold suit and put powder on my face, it still appearing rather poxy with some measle encr
ustations upon it. I did not wish the King to imagine I had the King's Evil.

  Taking Will with me (he most neatly attired in a beige coat and grey leggings), I entered once again the Stone Gallery where I had been so overwhelmed, one auspicious afternoon, by the near-presence of Majesty that I had betrayed all my father's hopes for my future. As on that first time, the Gallery was noisy with people walking up and down and I knew that many of them would be petitioners and suitors for small favours who, tonight, would be sent away with nothing and yet tomorrow would return and the next day and the next.

  I gave my name to the guards of the Royal Apartments and was told to wait. An hour passed, during which time I grew very weary from standing, so that I thought, at one moment, I would fall over. Will held onto my elbow and leaned me against a pillar. I could see that his mouth was agape at some of the gallants and their women who passed us. Even on my croquet lawn, he had never seen such plumes and buckles; even at my dinner table, no such pearly dresses. "I warrant, Sir," he whispered once, "these folk have even more money than you."

  "Yes, Will," I replied, "I warrant they do."

  At length, a message was brought to me: I was to return at one o'clock and go to the second of the King's tennis courts, known as his Favourite Court, where His Majesty would meet me. I looked up, in some dismay, at the messenger. I was about to request that he inform the King of my recent illness which had left me so feeble that I was hardly able to walk unaided in his Gallery, let alone compete in a set of tennis, but the man turned rudely and walked away from me, and I did not want to make myself foolish by shouting after him. I shrugged. "All we can do," I said to Will, "is eat a little meat and hope it may strengthen me."

  By mid-day, then, we were at the Boar Tavern in Bow Street, where I ordered for Will a dish of oysters and some pigeon patties and for myself a carbonado cooked with marrowbone and stout, a most fortifying dish. We drank a little ale and Will sucked in his oysters and gobbled his patties, but I could not manage more than two mouthfuls of the carbonado, having no real appetite at all. Will duly ate it up, while I took my timepiece from my pocket and in silence watched the hand move towards the quarter hour.

  "I am about to die, Will," I said suddenly. "I feel it. This afternoon I am going to die."

  Will wiped his mouth with a crumpled napkin.

  "Die how, Sir?"

  "I do not know yet."

  Well, you know me intimately by this time. You do not need reminding how painful and yet how wondrous it is for me to come into the presence of the King. I become very flushed and hectic and beside myself with joy and yet at the same time filled with a most sad longing to make time itself (upon which the King keeps such a glittering eye) move backwards, so that I can be what I once was, Merivel the Fool.

  My love for Celia – love being by its nature a possessive thing – might well have diminished my desire for the company of the King, her lover, yet it did not seem to have done so, and when he stepped out into the empty cloistered court a cold sweat of adulation and fear broke out upon my brow.

  The King was accompanied by two Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, one carrying the cloth-lined shoes he likes to wear for tennis, the other two tennis racquets, the wooden handle of the King's own racquet being bound with scarlet ribbon. Though my fear made me lurk in the shadow of the side penthouse, the King saw me at once. It is often remarked by those who have known both the sunshine of the King's affection and the frost of his indifference that his mood is discernible from his very first glance, for he is not a dissembler. Even with his Parliament (towards whom some say he should show more tact) he seems to be incapable of concealing his frequent displeasure.

  Leaving Will to wait outside the court, I had taken with me my gift of the fur tabard, prettily wrapped in yellow linen, and this I now held in my arms as I executed my bow, hearing as I did so my hip joints click, like the joints of an old man. I looked up. The King, who seemed to have grown taller even than he was before, regarded me from on high with a look of unyielding severity, such as those most frequently cast upon the unruly German students by Fabricius. I had anticipated displeasure but I had not fully imagined how weak it would make me feel. I felt myself tilting. I reached out and held fast to one of the columns of the penthouse. I could not allow myself to fall.

  "What is the matter with you, Merivel?" said the King.

  "I have been ill, Your Majesty."

  "Yes. You appear ill. But this does not surprise me. When a man transgresses the proper order of things, first his mind, then his body are bound to suffer."

  I did not know how to reply. I nodded merely, and held out my gift.

  "What is that?" asked the King, regarding my bulky parcel with some distaste.

  "A present, Sire. An invention of mine. Designed to be of comfort in winter weather."

  "It is almost spring, Merivel. Or did you not notice?"

  "No. I did not notice. I have been confined to my room."

  "Show it to me nevertheless."

  In a clumsy, fumbling manner, I unwrapped the tabard and held it up, as I have seen Farthingale hold up dresses against her own body for her mistress's approval.

  "Ha!" At the sight of the sewn-together badger pelts, the King let out a sudden explosion of laughter. His two Gentlemen also began to giggle. I wished, like some intrusive street vendor, to regale the King with the virtues of the tabard – its versatility, the freedom of movement it allows the wearer, its vital warming of the blood flowing to lung and kidney – yet suddenly found that I was a little ashamed of my product, its lack of elegance being its chief and most damning fault.

  "Is it intended to be worn?" asked the King.

  "Yes, Sir. My household have, by the wearing of these, been free of ague and cold…"

  "But you have not?"

  "I had the mischance to catch a measle."

  "How Merivelian! And you look poxy still."

  "I know, Sire."

  "You do not need furs, Merivel. And nor do I, if I can warm myself by other means. The exercising of the body will keep disease away far more efficaciously than badgers' coats. So, come. We shall play a set of tennis. You used to show more skill at this game than with the games of the heart. And may still. Unless you are altogether disintegrating."

  The King turned away from me and put on his shoes. I draped the tabard, which most evidently he did not want at all, over the cloister wall of the side penthouse. The badger snouts hung mournfully down. And I thought, with some amazement, what kind of mind could invent such an odd garment? The mind of a mad person. And only a madman would think of offering a thing of such eccentricity to his King. Merivel, I told myself, as I removed my black and gold coat, you are losing hold…

  A racquet was put into my hand. Hastily, I tried to recollect what cunning I had once employed at this fast game and recalled that my best shot had been a low sliced thing to the dedans wall, usually missing the dedans, but bouncing so low my opponent was not able to scoop it up upon the first bounce, thus provoking a "chase". If you are familiar with the game of Royal Tennis, you will know that very many points are won or lost in a "chase" and His Majesty, though hitting the ball with a deal more power than almost all his opponents, can often be beaten by shots that cut the ball and so make it die, almost upon its first bounce, and land close to the back wall. The King's strength lies in accuracy. In any set, he will win a number of points outright by shots to the winning gallery and the dedans. Among some players at Court he used to be known as the Bell Ringer, with reference to the little bell that jingles when a ball slaps hard into these winning spaces.

  So, in the cold February light, we began to play, the King placing himself, as of right, in the service court. I noticed that the net had grown in splendour, being, in my time, a mere piece of string but now an ornate braid hung with tassels.

  No sooner had one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber installed himself in the marker's box than the King dealt me a most brilliant service that seemed to flutter by me almost before the ba
ll had bounced, as if we were playing not with wads of hair and cloth but with a flight of wrens.

  I remembered from a previous time that, although His Majesty likes to win at tennis, he does not like to win easily. He likes a fight. He likes the other man to run and run and never give up. What I tried, then, was to put out of my mind all knowledge of my recent illness and to play as nimbly as a lizard, scuttling forward and back, chasing every shot. Unfortunately, all out of practice as I was, my play was most horribly wild and inaccurate, one of my balls flying straight at the marker's box and smiting one of the Gentlemen in the eye, another going so high that it soared up and over the penthouse roof- to bounce, perhaps, at Will Gates's feet as he sat and digested the carbonado and waited for his first glimpse of his Sovereign.

  My play was, in short, very lamentable and we had concluded but three games when I found myself feeling most horribly sick, my mouth suddenly filling with bile. I dropped my racquet, so that I might kneel for a moment on the pretence of retrieving it. I took some great breaths of air. Then I heard the door to the side penthouse open and I wondered all at once whether Celia had come to preside over the contest and smile her sweet smile upon the King's certain victory.

  But it was not Celia. It was a footman come with lemon juice and sugar for us. "Lemons from Portugal in February!" said the King. "Grown under glass especially for my dear Queen." So a little respite was granted to me, albeit indirectly, by that placid and good-natured woman who seemed to be so often absent from the King's thoughts. I believed her to play no part in my story at all, yet on that day she undoubtedly saved me from casting up my meagre dinner onto the stones of the tennis court.

  To my immense relief, I was able to win the fourth game. I was on the service side now. From the left-hand section of it, I managed one strangely brilliant service and three sliced shots to the tambour which the King adroitly retrieved but then pitched the ball under the net. In the next three games, however, such strength as I had had drained from me. Sweat poured down my face, mixing with the powder with which I had hoped to cover the ravages of my measles. I could not run any more, but only stagger. Shot after shot sped past me into the dedans or the winning gallery. Never send to know, I thought, for whom the bell jingles. It jingles for thee, Merivel. And then I thought of Pearce, whose favourite poet John Donne is. And I asked Pearce to remember me now and give me strength to face all that was still to come.