Restoration Page 8

  With that I strode out and went to my Music Room. I shall spare you an account of my struggles with my instrument that evening and the quantity of anxious spittle with which reed after reed was saturated. I shall report only that I wrestled with simple scales for an hour or more, after which time my grazed hand was giving me so much pain that I lay down on the floor of the Music Room and put it between my thighs, with my knees drawn up to my stomach, and in this childlike posture fell into a troubled sleep.

  When I awoke, very stiff and cold, with my hand swollen and set into a premature rigor mortis, I saw from the grey light at the window that the winter dawn was breaking over Norfolk, County of Exiles. Despite my numbness and pain, I found myself, on the instant of waking, filled with purpose and resolve. I must go immediately to Celia. I must make her understand that, stranger to her though I am, disagreeable though she may find my physical self, I am occasionally a person of generous mind and that – forswearing any hope of recompense or reward – I am content to be her protector and treat her with respect and kindness for as long as she remains at Bidnold.

  I went up to my own chamber, where I changed my clothes and wig. None of the servants was yet stirring. By the handsome timepiece given to me by the King, I saw that it was a little before six. The embers of a fire were still glowing in my grate and I tried to warm my dead hand somewhat before setting out along the chilly corridors to the Marigold Room.

  I stopped in front of Celia's door. I could hear a tiny, piteous sound, which I first took to be weeping, but then recognised all too foolishly well as the whimpering of a Spaniel. Minette, Minette, I thought. I grieve for you. You are buried in the park and the deer chomp the grass above you… But this was quite the wrong moment for self-pity, so I knocked with a firm and authorative hand (my left hand, the other one being now afflicted with a sudden intolerable pricking and tingling) and waited.

  After a moment or two, an unfamiliar foreign-sounding voice, the voice of Sophia no doubt, called angrily: "Who is there?"

  "Sir Robert," I replied, "I want to speak to Lady Merivel, please."

  The dog was now scrabbling at the door. I believe the maid pushed it away roughly before she said: "My mistress is sleeping. Go, please, away."

  "No," I said. "I will not go away. Please wake my wife. I have much that is important to say to her."

  "No!" hissed Sophia. "My Lady is sleeping!"

  "She may sleep later. I must speak to her now."

  I was about to add that at this precise moment I was feeling a great deal of compassion for Celia but that such is the nature of mood and emotion that I could not guarantee, if forced to return at another time, to find within me the same degree of kindness, when the door was opened. The maid stood there in her nightgown and lace cap. I saw now that her skin was sallow and her upper lip uncommonly hairy. I decided she must be one of the large retinue of Portuguese women who had been shipped to England with Catherine of Braganza, many of whom had found themselves forced to serve outside their beloved Queen's household and who, by the Whitehall gallants, were known scathingly as "the Farthingales" after the peculiar hooped skirts beneath which they concealed their stocky legs.

  This Sophia gave me a look of the utmost loathing as I went past her into the room. I shall be rid of you, Farthingale, I said to her in my mind, for I am master here.

  I must relate, however, that in the scene which followed (I deliberately refer to it as a "scene", for the albeit unoriginal notion that my life since my wedding has become something of a farce does very often strike me as apt) I demonstrated all too lamentably my lack of masterliness and found myself most horribly insulted and abused. This is what happened:

  I found Celia, not in bed as Farthingale had pretended, but sitting on the orange and green cushions of the window seat, fully dressed in her black garb, staring out at the dismal dawn.

  I asked her if she had slept well and she replied that she had not slept at all so hideous did she find the room, so vulgar, so gaudy and tasteless. She could not, she said, imagine anyone – except probably myself – being capable of finding any rest within it.

  Reminding myself that I should not become angry, I assured her calmly that she was free to select another room whenever she wished. I then asked her if I might sit down. She answered that she would prefer me to remain standing.

  By this time disconcerted by Celia's hostility, of which I truly believed myself undeserving, I nevertheless began upon what I had come to say. I told Celia that I of all people, who had briefly known some affection from the King, understood exceedingly well the quality, the measure of her sadness. I began to speak of the terrible degree to which my being and my spirit, once calm and content in its serving of God and the Trinity, was now possessed by the King. I went so far as to say that I believed there was no man or woman in the Kingdom (be they as pious as my dead parents, be they Puritan or Quaker, be they lord or lunatic) utterly free from and untouched by any longing to see their own putrid lives lit up by his radiance. "Inevitably then," I went on, "you and I, Celia, who have known something of the man's love…"

  "Love?" shrieked Celia. "What presumption, Merivel! What self-deception! How can you dare to speak of what the King felt for you as love! Not for one second, not for one mote of time did King Charles love you, Merivel. I advise you never again to use the word!"

  "My only intention…" I began, but Celia, now standing and fixing upon my face her fearful eyes, refused to let me speak. She jabbed a small white finger towards my scarlet waistcoat as she yelled: "The truth is that the King, in his love for me, in his passion for me, made use of you. He used you, Merivel. He looked around for the stupidest man he could find, the densest, the most foolish, the one who would accept whatever he did like a dog and cause him no trouble – and he found you! I begged him, don't marry me to that idiot, I begged him on my knees, but all he did was laugh. "Who can I ask," he said, "to be paid cuckold except an idiot?" Do you understand, Merivel? Dense as you are, do you comprehend what I'm saying?"

  Well, I'm afraid I cannot go on with the scene. It is very painful, is it not? Of course I "comprehended", as she put it. I comprehended all too chillingly and although, in her rage and despair, she flung yet more insults at me, while the odious fat Farthingale looked on and smirked, I simply am not able to set them down.

  I made no further attempt to offer my friendship to Celia, let alone enquire how the King's rejection of her had come about, but quietly withdrew from the room, shutting the door behind me before Farthingale could slam it in my face.

  My first thought was: to whom, after this terrible revelation, shall I turn for comfort? To Pearce? To Will Gates? To Violet Bathurst? To Meg Storey? To my lost wench, Rosie Pierpoint? I felt a most terrible need of some kindly human company. But the hour was still early, my house dark, and I imagined them all sleeping: Pearce on his back with his white hands folded upon his ladle; Will Gates on his truckle bed dreaming of village girls; Violet enclosed by sumptuous brocade, safely absent from old Bathurst's brain; Meg in her attic, fallen asleep in her drawers and with beer upon her breath; sweet Rosie in Pierpoint's bed, stirring now to the murmur of the waking river… and I let them be.

  I walked away from the Marigold Room to the west wing of the house and climbed the cold stone stairway to the circular room in the turret, whose discovery had given me so much joy. The room was still empty, still untouched. I went to each of the windows and looked out. A small slit of red in the sky hinted at sunrise. A white mist lay on the park, shrouding the deer.

  I sat down under one of the windows. It will never be used now, this seemingly perfect room, I thought. At least, not by me. For it is surely the place which, though it aspires to do so, my mind can neither order nor understand. It is beyond my limit. I am earthbound, gross, ignorant. I will never reach to here.

  It was of course Pearce to whom I eventually confided what had been said by Celia in the Marigold Room.

  I had agreed to go with him upon a strange errand: to dig up a s
mall quantity of earth from the village graveyard, from which Pearce intended to extract the saltpetre. He is suffering, among other afflictions, from a bladder stone and hopes to dissolve it in time by swallowing regular doses of this foul substance.

  For the purposes of gathering the earth, he had taken with us a small spade and a leather bag. With some chivalry (Pearce still being weak from his arduous journey across the Fens) I offered to carry the spade and Pearce hung the bag about his long neck, thus giving himself more than ever the air of a mendicant.

  We walked slowly down the drive and out onto the little road that leads to the village. Once we had gathered the earth, it was my intention to offer Pearce some refreshment at the Jovial Rushcutters, over which I could tell him what had been said to me. I found, however, that so slow was the pace of Pearce's walk that I was forced to prattle to keep myself from getting cold and thus had come out with my sad story long before we had reached the village, finishing it by hurling the spade away from me in a violent gesture of anguish.

  Pearce looked at me. In his large eyes, I did detect a small glimmer of pity, but for some time, during which I retrieved the spade, he walked on in silence. I was just beginning to wonder whether I should embark on my tale again, this time making certain every few sentences that he was listening to me, when Pearce cleared his throat and said:

  "It is my belief, all unfashionable as I know it to be, that all things, including lunacy, may be susceptible to cure."

  "What?" I said.

  "It has been believed since the beginning of time, that the mad are possessed of Devils and are thus filled with evil. This evil, it is universally agreed, must be beaten out of them by extreme chastisement, torture and all other conceivable kinds of cruelty…"

  "Pearce," I said, "happy as I am to discuss your work at the New Bedlam at some later time I would ask you now to give your attention to my state of mind and – "

  "I am giving my attention to your state of mind, Merivel. If you could, for once, listen to what I have to say instead of disregarding me, you will see that I have some helpful ideas on the subject."

  We walked on. A pale sun now emerged from behind a bank of cloud and glimmered eerily upon us.

  "Let me describe to you," Pearce went on, "a woman who was brought to me at the Whittlesea Hospital – for such is the name we have given to our Bedlam. This woman had been found half drowned in a ditch after wandering the shire for month upon month, year upon year, begging and shouting obscene words, mortifying her body, particularly her breasts and her arms with sharp hawthorn twigs. Her chief delight, in her poor suffering mind, was to defile. She kept her own excrement in a pouch, with which to smear the hands and fine clothes of those who gave her alms; with the same substance she daubed tombstones and churches. When we took her in, so terrible was her rage that, though I do not like to see this done, we were forced to chain her limbs to the wall. And for several weeks, she fought night and day with her chains, so that her wrists and ankles became running sores, no matter how carefully we bound them with cloth. Do you begin to form a picture of this woman, Merivel?"

  "Yes, thank you, Pearce," I said.

  "Very well. Let me recount to you then the morning upon which I went to this woman and found her quiet at last. She was sitting hunched in the corner, her limbs folded up and still. As I entered, she lifted her arm and pointed to two large turds she had recently voided onto the floor. I did not particularly wish to look at them, but her pointing was very insistent and the change in her demeanour so considerable that I did what she asked. And when I approached, I saw that writhing in and out of the greenish stools were two great worms, each several inches long, very white and loathsome. And then I looked again at the woman and she was weeping. And I unchained her and we took her away and washed her and put her in a clean bed. And from that day she was calm and talked with us of her home when she was a child and of the baby she had in her sister's care and we knew that she was cured. The worms had poisoned her blood and this poisoned blood had entered her brain. She was not wicked, Merivel. She was ill. Mercifully for her, her body at last discharged from itself the source of her illness."

  "I am glad for her," I said flatly.

  "And so to you, my dear friend. Now I shall tell you what I perceive has happened. You are possessed by one thought: you wish the King to draw you back to him and to love you. In the absence of this love, you are literally mad with grief. And in time this madness will work horribly in you, so that you will become, like the woman I've just spoken of, a defiler. True, you may not daub others with excrement, but you will daub them with hate. Unless you can come to see your ache for the King's favours as a morbid affliction from which you must rid yourself or die."

  Pearce stopped on the road and reached out and placed his bony hands on my shoulders. I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on:

  "What happened this morning, those harsh words that were spoken, I can only see as beneficial, Merivel. Do not stop me, but listen! In this knowledge, the knowledge that the King has never loved you, only used you, as I long suspected, lies the only hope of your cure. For this knowledge must be the beneficial evacuation of nature, the rank and putrified stool which, foul as it is, carries out and away the far fouler source of poison and decay – the great worm of hope."

  I stared at Pearce. I was unable to speak, so filled was I suddenly with belief in the rightness of what he had said. I could only nod my head and keep nodding it up and down, as if I were a stupid jester trying to jingle the bells on his hat.

  Chapter Six. The King's Drops

  Some days passed, during which I felt a welcome calm settle upon my spirits.

  When Pearce informed me he must return to Whittlesea, I thanked him – with precisely the kind of sentimental profusion he so scorns in me – for saving me, before it was too late, from becoming a veritable lunatic and earnestly begged him to visit me again at Bidnold as soon as his work permitted. He replied that he would pray for me and urged me meanwhile to return to my medical books, "in order," as he put it, "to replace the world of acquisition with the world of knowledge." I had not the heart to tell him that I did not feel capable of doing this. "What I can promise you Pearce," I said, "is that my foolish expectation with regard to all matters Royal is dead. I do not expect, as long as I live, to see the King again. Where my future lies, I cannot tell. In my painting, perhaps?"

  I report here that Pearce's opinion of my pictures was very little higher than Finn's, but he made no comment upon this last statement, only busied himself with gathering up his "burning coals" and placing them into a little tragic pile. In a sudden excess of affection for him, I offered to give him my horse, Danseuse, for his journey, but he refused, informing me that the mare was too strong and high-spirited for him and requesting me modestly to purchase a new mule for him.

  One of my grooms was duly sent on this errand and returned with a speckled, ungainly creature, "somewhat prone to bite, Sir Robert, but stout-hearted, Sir, for the long trek."

  I did not tell Pearce about the biting and the mule was straight away saddled up. Pearce mounted and without further word to me, trotted off down the drive. Just as he reached the first bend, I saw the animal throw its head round and attempt to snap at Pearce's foot. Pearce answered this insult with a kick to the mule's flank and man and beast shot off at gallop, leaving behind them a small plume of dust, at which I stared until it settled.

  Feeling chilly and in need of some refreshment, I asked Will to bring a jug of mulled wine to my Withdrawing Room, where I intended to pass an hour or two alone in thought. Somewhat to my consternation, I found Celia there, staring at my bird.

  "Ah," I said, "I will not disturb you," beginning to turn and go from the room.

  "What is the bird?" enquired Celia.

  I hesitated. The notion that Celia, like Pearce, would slander the poor thing depressed me exceedingly.

  "It was a gift to me," I said hesitantly. "I am told it is an Indian Nightingale."

  "It is m
ost beautiful," said Celia. "Only it does not sing."

  Celia turned her face towards me then and I saw that it had regained some measure of its youthfulness and repose. It struck me, as it had never struck me hitherto, that she was indeed a very pretty woman.

  "Well," I said. "It does sing. But it has to be encouraged. I could, if you wish, fetch my oboe and play a few notes to it and you might hear its very melodious trill."

  "Pray, do," said Celia.

  I shall now tell you that, in the preceding days, during which I had begun to regain some solace of mind, I had spent many hours alone in my Music Room doing battle with my instrument, as a result of which I was now able to play a little song upon it, entitled Swans Do All A-Swimming Go.

  It was this then, after I had offered Celia a glass of mulled wine and she had, to my astonishment, accepted it, which I attempted to play for her and the bird. Like all beginners, I made a false start or two, but eventually succeeded in playing the piece quite jauntily. When I had finished, Celia, who had been watching me, turned away and put a hand up to her mouth, as if to hide a smile. I was not the least offended, because my efforts with these wretched Swans amused me greatly and, as I laid the oboe down, I burst out laughing. Celia now could no longer contain her mirth, and for a full minute we stood side by side and laughed and the bird opened its marigold beak and poured out at us a crystalline trill.

  A most pleasant hour then ensued. Uninterrupted by the odious Farthingale, Celia and I drank the spiced wine and, with great dignity and courage, she asked me to forgive her for the insults of the morning in the Marigold Room. "The truth is," she said, "I believe we live in an age where many are made fools and many are deceived. I, in my faith in the King's love, am very probably as foolish as you. And yet I am convinced he will call me back to him."

  "Celia," I began, "is it not better not to hope…?"