Restoration Page 19

  "As I foresaw," said the King at the conclusion of the set, "you have become slow."

  "I know, Sir…" I mumbled.

  "Very slow. And the game, of course, is a fast one."

  I followed the King into the garden where I had left Will and where he still stood in his grey leggings. The King walked at such a swift pace that I had to scurry to keep up with him and had no hope of getting his attention to ask him to turn upon my servant, however briefly, his majesterial glance. But I could not afford to worry too greatly about Will. I knew that my beating at tennis was but the preliminary to a more bitter scourging.

  I was led into a little summer-house, not unlike the one at Bidnold where I had briefly attempted my secret oboe lessons with Herr Hummel. The place was swept and clean, but in the fading light of the winter afternoon a somewhat chilly habitation. I put on my black and gold coat. The King blew his nose then turned his face towards me. So close was he to me that I could see clearly the fine lines that gathered at the corners of his eyes and at the edge of his lips. It seemed to me that he had aged since my last meeting with him in his laboratory and the observation distressed me, as if I had believed that in a changeful world the King alone was outside the reach of time.

  "So," he said at last, "you did not play by the rules, Merivel."

  "In the tennis, Sir?"

  "No. Not in the tennis. With regard to your wife."

  I looked down. I noticed that there was blood in my shoe, but did not know from what part of me it could possibly have come.

  "I do not know what rule I have broken, Sir," I said quietly.

  "I am surprised. Why were you chosen as Celia's husband, Merivel?"

  "Because you knew that I would do anything you asked of me."

  "That is true of very many people in our Kingdom. No, it was not for that. It was because, at one of our earliest meetings, you told me the story of the visible heart you had seen at Cambridge. You told me you knew that your own heart had no feeling whatsoever. And I believed you. Yet now I see that I should not have done, for it is by no means true."

  There was a long silence. Silence, when one is in the presence of the King, seems a most fearful condition, and I felt hot and faint.

  "Love was not asked of you, Merivel," the King said at length. "Indeed, it was the only thing forbidden you. But so soft and coddled and foolish have you become, you could not see that in the breaking of this rule you would, like old Adam, drive yourself out of Paradise."

  "Out of Paradise?"

  "Yes. For what is your role now? You cannot play Celia's husband any more because she refuses to set eyes on you ever again. Thus, in trying to be the thing you were charged with pretending to be, you have rendered yourself useless."

  I looked out at the afternoon dusk that was settling upon the garden. Near a stone bench, I could make out the shadowy figure of Will, who, when darkness descended, would find himself lost.

  "I had not intended…" I stammered, "… to love Celia. I loved her voice first, her music. And I do not know how this love was transformed into a love of another kind. I do not know how."

  "It happened because you allowed it, Merivel. You became futile. You had too little work and too much dreaming time. And then you indulged your dreams. You thought you could re-cast yourself. Voilà tout. And now you are no more use to me."

  The King looked away from me, and for a moment I thought these words signalled my dismissal. But they did not. He had more to say to me yet.

  "Happily for you, Merivel," the King continued, "I have enough affection for you to wish to make you useful again, if not to me, then to the people. I fear it will take some time, for look at you! How wretched you have become! But we must try, must we not?"

  "Yes, my Liege."

  "Very well. Then hear what I have in mind. I am, for the time being, content with the arrangements of my own life. Celia is returned and appears to have learnt some wisdom -perhaps from you, although I doubt that this is so and she certainly denies it. At all events, she is returned to Kew and I am happy that she should be there. But in most other matters, I am not so fortunate. I have the impression that the 'honey-moon' of my reign is over."

  The King again turned a little from me, so that I saw his face in profile and was struck, not for the first time, by the length and fineness of the Stuart nose, which is so very unlike my own. I was about to suggest that the King's love affair with his people would surely last as long as he lived, but before I could speak he cut me off.

  "I lack money," he said. "We are engaged in a war of trade with the Dutch, yet I lack the means to fit out our ships. This poverty is a foul humiliation, Merivel, and must be remedied. I have been too generous, too profligate with gifts of land and estates. But now comes a reckoning. Now comes a time when I must pay attention to arithmetic."

  And so at last the King came to it, to what he called his "arithmetic". He was taking Bidnold from me.

  He was "repossessing" it, just as he had repossessed Celia. For, like Celia, it did not belong to me. All that I owned had come to me from him and now he was taking it back. Some French nobleman would purchase it from him, house, lands, furniture and all, and the money thus acquired would be used to buy hemp and tar and sailcloth and rigging. Bidnold would thus "become useful" again. Land would be translated into ships by the King's arithmetic and those ships would be ships of war.

  And what of me? How, dear Lord, was I to be made useful again? By being forced, now that I had no land, to return to the only profession that would get me a living: medicine. I was to awake at last from the sleep into which the King had seen me fall. No longer would I be able to dream away my time under the Norfolk sky for henceforth – from this very night, in fact – I would own nothing save my horse and my surgical instruments, the only things which had been "gifts of affection" and not "gifts of expediency".

  Plague was coming. Plague, as I had once before been reminded, rouses men, not only from sleep, but from forgetfulness. They remember Death. I, too, would remember that Life is brief, that Death creeps over it as surely as the dusk now falling around the summer-house. And with this remembrance would come another: I would remember anatomy. "And so, Merivel, you will once more be doing and no longer dreaming. You will have become useful."

  I believe the King smiled at me then. To him, no doubt, the taking of Bidnold from me was a clever and satisfactory plan, killing, one could suggest, two birds with one stone by rendering me "useful" once again and furnishing the King with a small amount of money. The terrible degree to which I myself felt "killed" by the severity of my punishment the King could not begin to imagine. I had known, from the moment I understood Finn's role as spy in my household, that my behaviour towards Celia might quench any affection the King still had for me, but it had never entered my mind that he would take my house from me. I had believed that Bidnold was mine for ever. I had now and then imagined myself growing old there – with Violet as my companion perhaps, if Bathurst should chance to drop dead of an epilepsy – and being buried in Bidnold churchyard. And now that I was to lose it, together with Will Gates and Cattlebury and the carpet from Chengchow and my turquoise bed and all, the profound nature of my affection revealed itself to me. I had made it mine. In every room I saw some part of my character reflected. Bidnold was Merivel anatomised. From my colourful and noisy belly you ascended to my heart which, though it craved variety also favoured concealment, and so to my brain, a small but beautiful place, occasionally filled with light and yet utterly empty. In his repossession of my house, the King was taking me from myself.

  In all my dealings with my Sovereign, I had hitherto been obedient and accepting, doing without question or barter whatever I was commanded to do. But now, as I looked at my vacant, houseless future, I felt moved to plead with the King. I knelt down on the flagstone floor of the summer-house. I put my hands together, as if in prayer.

  "Sire," I said, "I beg you not to remove me from Bidnold. I am not, as you would believe, idle there. I have embark
ed upon a new vocation as an artist. I am learning to play the oboe, I am endeavouring to make sense of the stars and I have taken upon me a new responsibility: I am an Overseer of the Poor."

  The King stood up. As always, I was moved by the beauty and elegance of the legs before which I was kneeling.

  "An Overseer?" he said. "You seem fond of the term, for you used it to Celia. But an Overseer should be impartial, distanced and kind, and you were none of these to her. Will you now abuse the Poor of your parish as you abused Celia?"

  "No, Sir. And I cannot say too many times how sorry I am for what I did to Celia. I loved her and this was my mistake. I do not love the Poor, only pity them."

  "What are you doing, then, for those you pity?"

  "I am learning about them, Sir, their whereabouts, their collecting of sticks and other pitiful tasks, their work at the looms in Norwich…"

  "And how is this to help them?"

  "I am not precisely 'helping' them yet, my Liege – "

  "And yet, before I met you, you were. At St Thomas 's, you were helping them – with the only skill you have ever possessed."

  "I cannot use that skill any more, Sir. I cannot."

  "Why?"

  "I cannot…"

  "Why, Merivel?"

  "Because I am afraid!"

  The King, who had been pacing about the summer-house, now stopped and rounded on me, holding up an admonishing finger clothed in a glove made by my late father. "Precisely!" he declared. "And do not imagine I have not known this! But this age is stern, Merivel, and those who are afraid will not survive it. Those who are weak will not survive it. You, if you remain as you are, will not survive it."

  "I beg you to let me remind you, Sire, that it was you who took me from St Thomas 's. You gave me the Royal dogs. You liked me for my foolishness…"

  "And for your skill. For the two, then, were in you, the light and the dark, the shallow and the profound. But now your skill has fallen away and you are all one foolish mass."

  So it was in vain that I pleaded. The King had made up his mind. For a moment, I considered prostrating myself before him, but I know that this King is not moved by supplication; it merely irritates him. And, as for the dispossessed, he has no sympathy for them, for he was once one of them and had to wait years for his restoration.

  What could I do then but accept my fate, the while finding it unjust and cruel, with as convincing a show of bravery as I could put on?

  The King now moved towards the door of the summer-house and made to leave. Before he went, he looked down upon me one last time and informed me that I could return to Bidnold for one week, "there to make preparation for your departure. The keys of the place must then be given to Sir James Babbacombe, who is to act as my agent in this matter. And so au revoir, Merivel. I shall not say adieu, for who knows whether, at some time in the future, History may not have another role for you?"

  And then he was gone. And as soon as he had stepped outside the summer-house I saw servants come with lamps to light his way. They had been waiting and watching for the moment when he would walk away from me.

  Chapter Fourteen. Not with Silver…

  Some days have passed. I am at Bath. I have put up at an Inn called The Red Lion. I have come here in the hope that the sulphurous waters will wash my mind of some of its despair. My landlady is given to singing as she beats mattresses and empties pots. I catch myself listening for some ghostly accompanist.

  I have not returned to Bidnold and do not intend to do so. I have sent letters to my staff apologising for my misfortune, which in turn becomes theirs. I have requested that one of my grooms saddle up Danseuse like a packhorse with a few true possessions and trot her by slow stages to London. I, who scoffed at Pearce's "burning coals" now have little more to call my own than he. Should Danseuse step with her sweet daintiness into a pothole and break her leg, I shall be forced to purchase for myself some horrible biting mule.

  My dreams are inhabited by Will Gates. He is weeping. His brown squirrel's face is squashed. He resembles a baby struggling to be born. With his fists he tries to wipe away his tears. And then he gets up onto my coach, sitting beside the coachman, and is driven away.

  Will Gates. I loved you most dearly, Will.

  When Will had gone, I begun to walk quite fast away from Whitehall and in an easterly direction, as if vainly trying to follow the coach. The winter night had come on and the streets were black and I was soon lost. But then, hurrying on down narrow street after narrow street, I saw in front of me the great bulk of the Tower. I had had no intention of arriving there, but my distracted mind perceived it all at once as a place of refuge. To the guards I announced that I had been sent by the King, to cast my eye upon the lions and leopards that he keeps chained up there, and they let me go in.

  I knew my way to the dungeon where the animals were penned. I took a torch from an iron sconce and followed my own shadow down into the damp bowels of the Tower where, even at midsummer, no light falls on the stones and where, it is said, the ghosts of the dead Kings of England find themselves paraded with hundreds of their ancient enemies, as in some circus they did not expect. And there I saw the lions, who have the names of Kings, Henry and Edward and Charles and James, pacing round, the flesh of their shanks very meagre and their great fur collars mangy. And it was at that moment and not at any moment before (neither upon leaving the King's garden, nor upon saying adieu to Will and my coachman) that I felt the full terror of my fall.

  I stood quite still a great while. I watched the lions, but they never once regarded me, not even to growl or snarl at the torchlight. I thought: I would rather be one of you in this pen than be Merivel. I thought: You have no memory of Africa or sunlight or a Time Before. So I would rather be you.

  Quite late, with the streets silent save for the shouting of a trundle of drunks, I arrived at Rosie Pierpoint's door. I knocked and heard my knock like an echo. And as I waited, I remembered the Japanese purse and the thirty shillings and the half-written letter I had never sent.

  When she came to the door, she held a shawl round her and she looked afraid. Pretty Rosie. With her I had first discovered the sweetness of oblivion.

  But then she grinned. "Sir Robert," she said, "where is your wig?"

  I had lost it. So it seemed. I had no recollection of taking it off.

  I woke when she rose, at the first faint tracing of daylight. And I understood this small matter: that the poor use time differently from me. They are unable to prolong day with manufactured light, the cost of candles and oil being too great.

  I lay on my truckle bed and watched her. She poured cold water into a bowl and took up some rags and washed herself, her face and her breasts and her belly and her cunt and the backs of her knees. And this secret toilette in the half light moved me very much. I wished to be of use to her (having been none that night in bed), so I got up and pulled on my stockings and my shirt and went down to her laundry room and broddled the fire of her stove and tipped in fresh coal, yet performing this task lamentably, sending chunks of coal skittering onto the floor, which I was then compelled to retrieve one by one with my hands. And I remembered – from my time at Cambridge and my rooms in Ludgate – how the black dust of coal is not like a dust but like a paste, moist and sticky, and if you keep in a coal fire you must be forever washing.

  The sun got up above the river, but lay flat behind a mist. Rosie made a milk porridge and I tried for her sake to eat some of this stuff, but it and the tin spoon made a grey tableau before me and I heard in my mind the sobbing and lamenting of the old Merivel for the colours and brightness of things now lost.

  We had not spoken to Pierpoint, only of me and my troubles. But now, eating her porridge greedily, she began, to my astonishment, upon a little eulogy for her dead husband, telling me how strong a man he was and how indifferent to rich people and how loyal to the river and the other river men. While he lived, I wished to say to Rosie, you scarcely had a gentle word for him and lived in fear of his drunken
rages and other cruelties. But I did not remark out loud upon this, only noting privately to myself that death can work most extraordinary changes to a person's reputation and all that we have wished someone to be while they lived, they become, the moment they are dead. And so I wondered, if I had been brave enough to throw myself to the lions in the tower and let them eat me for their supper, would the King's exasperation with me be turning now to fond sadness, Celia's loathing of me to a small retrospective love? While Rosie talked of her drowned bargeman, I meditated upon this. Pierpoint had died trying to catch a haddock with his hands, or in other words getting food; in my imagined death, I myself would have become food. Is either death noble, or are both ridiculous and laughable? Could a person of Celia's refinement feel affection for a husband who has been turned first to meat and thence to dung? I did not know. My mind, though very cluttered with questions, had no answers to anything at all. Like the porridge in front of me, my intelligence seemed to be growing cold.

  I could not stay with Rosie. Our old amours had been fiery. Now, they, too, were out. I think that all we felt for each other was a sad tenderness. I gave her thirty shillings (I would not lack for money for some while, if I was prudent) and she gave me a little kiss on my cheek that was still mottled by the old imprint of my measles. And we said adieu.

  And so I am come to Bath.

  The most strange thing about the pain of the individual man is that the world, knowing nothing of it, behaves as if it was not there, going shrieking on and applauding itself, making sport and promenading and telling jokes and falling down with laughter. So, as I enter the Cross Bath and immerse myself, wearing nothing but some unbleached pantaloons, I see that round and above me in the stone galleries fully-clothed people are strolling with a superior air of contentment, gossiping and giggling and fanning themselves and looking upon the bathers with an elegant nonchalance. They know nothing of what has befallen me. They could not imagine that in these waters, which smell most curiously of boiled egg, I am trying to cure myself of being Merivel.