Merivel A Man of His Time (15 page)

To the Bear I said: ‘The boat beneath us moves over the water towards England, my poor friend, but the mist holds us in a ghostly Shroud of Unknowing.’

Cold began to cramp my limbs, but I stayed sitting on the Chicken Crate and comforted myself with my remembrance of Louise, of her sweet warmth and her lively conversation, and her ample breasts, and I asked myself whether, after fifty-seven years of my life, I had not at last found Love.

‘What d’you think?’ I asked the Bear. ‘Am I deluded?’

And the animal, for answer, lay down softly and closed its eyes.

I stayed a night at Dover, at a poor Inn, where no fires burned.

From here I made preparations for a cart to convey the Bear to Norfolk, and had to pay dearly for it, for it was difficult to find any man of Dover willing to make this journey. I do think that all Dover men are salted by their nearness to the sea and do not like to travel far from the ocean. Had I asked them to conduct a Whale in a great water barrel to Bidnold, perhaps they would have done it, out of a
Natural
Affinity with this monster of the deep, but the warm-blooded Bear and the distance they would have to travel in its company affrighted them to the tune of seventeen shillings.

Luckily, I was well provided with money, having got twelve
pistoles
for the Sapphire ring, from a Jeweller acquaintance of Monsieur Durand’s, of which only ten had been promised to the Guards of the
Jardin du Roi
, and in the time to come I would be grateful for the extra two hundred
livres
the transaction had gained me.

Only at moments did I chide myself for having sold something so precious and which I could never, ever come by again.

The moment my hired carriage turned, at last, into the drive at Bidnold, where the park was dusted with snow, I had the sudden feeling that something attended me at my house that I would not like. I cannot say why I felt this, except that, arriving there as the dusk was falling, everything appeared to me very shadowy and dead-seeming, with no Deer in sight, nor any bird or animal at all, and my habitual gladness to find myself once more at my beloved Bidnold was strangely absent from my heart.

As we drove up to the door, Will Gates came out – as he was ever wont to do – to greet me. But on his face I could read at once a very Great Anguish, and when I stepped out of the carriage he reached out to me and took both my hands in his and looked up at me with eyes glittering with tears.

‘Will,’ I said, ‘tell me the Matter at once.’

‘Oh, Sir Robert,’ said Will, ‘I can barely say the words. ’Tis Miss Margaret, Sir. Taken very ill. And nobody knows what to do for the best.’

No news could have been more terrible to me than this – save news of Margaret’s death. Stiff from my journey, I felt myself falter and almost sink down where I stood outside my front door. Will, all bent over as he is, was able to take hold of me and helped me inside, where my frame collapsed itself onto a wooden settle in the Hall.

‘Where
is
Margaret?’ I managed to say. ‘Is she not far away in Cornwall?’

‘No, Sir. Sir James and his family could not leave for Cornwall. Miss Margaret was taken ill on the eve of their departure. She could not travel. They are nursing her at Shottesbrooke, and hoping and praying …’

‘What is the illness, Will?’

‘All I know is she has been a-bed for more than thirty days. And there is no sign that she rallies. I sent Tabitha over to help with her care. We would have gladly nursed her ourselves here at Bidnold, Sir Robert, but Lady Prideaux thought it best that she be not moved. So I did not know what more to do …’

I sat huddled on the settle and Will stood over me, and I could hear his congested breathing and see his gnarled old hands wringing themselves in Desolation. And then I became aware that Cattlebury and some of the other servants has come into the Hall and were standing silently round me.

‘We are mighty sorry, Sir Robert,’ I heard Cattlebury say. ‘I am making broths with choicest Marrowbone and taking them myself to Shottesbrooke. And Lady Prideaux, she says to me: “Your broths, Cattlebury, they are keeping her alive, for she will take no other thing …”’

‘Thank you, my kind man,’ I said. ‘That is most considerate.’

I looked round me at my Household and saw the silent cluster of faces, all watching me with great tenderness of feeling, and this loyalty, for which I felt most heartily grateful, made me try to rally myself. I stood up, unaided by Will, and announced: ‘I will go to Shottesbrooke without delay. Bring me a cup of Alicante, Will. Simmer it a little with cloves and cinnamon, to warm me. I will take it in the Library. Then I will set forth.’

‘You had best take some food, too, Sir Robert.’

‘I have no appetite.’

‘I will bring you some broth,’ said Cattlebury. ‘It will revive you.’

I thanked Cattlebury and the other Servants for their kindness, and walked with slow steps to the Library, where, to my great comfort, a fire was burning.

Will helped to settle me in a chair. As he removed my cloak and caught sight of the new ribbons sewn into my coat seams, he could not refrain from asking: ‘What are these strange Adornments, Sir? I have never met the like of these.’

‘Nor I, Will,’ I said, ‘until I came to Versailles. ‘And costly they were, yet they brought me one piece of good fortune. But none of that signifies now. Is my daughter going to die?’

Will made a great Performance of folding my travelling cloak over
his
arm, smoothing it down and down, until it could be smoothed no more. ‘I cannot say, Sir Robert,’ he said.

It was dark night when I arrived at Shottesbrooke Hall.

Sir James and his wife came down and greeted me, in their night attire, and gave orders that a bed be made ready for me. Then Arabella Prideaux clung to my neck and wept.

‘It is our Fault, Merivel!’ she cried. ‘We got from Lowestoft some boiled Shrimps, to give Margaret a taste of what she might eat in Cornwall. And she did not like them, but Mary and Penelope urged her to try more … And in the night she was very ill, vomiting everything she had eaten, and then came on a high fever and a great Headache and a pain in her stomach …’

‘Her stomach we have managed to soothe a little, with Asses’ milk and the excellent broth your Cook insists upon bringing to us,’ said Prideaux. ‘But the fever will not abate, nor the great Agony in her head. She has been purged and bled. We have tried Cantharides and all else that Dr Murdoch can think to do, to try to get the fever to subside. Sometimes it breaks for a little and the Pain lessens. But then it always returns. And she is getting very weak.’

I felt a chill sweat break on my skin.

‘Are you telling me,’ I said, ‘that nobody has put a name to the thing she from which she suffers?’

‘Dr Murdoch does not know,’ said Arabella.

‘Dr Murdoch is a Quack,’ said I, ‘and always was. Who else have you summoned?’

‘Another physician from Attleborough, Dr Sims. But he could not diagnose any cause, either,’ said Prideaux, ‘beyond a poison got from the Shrimps.’

We stayed silent for a moment. Then I asked: ‘Is there, on Margaret’s face or body, any sign of redness or rash?’

‘There is a rash,’ said Arabella, ‘in the area of her neck and breasts. We have tried washing her with Nettle Soap, to draw out the sting of the rash, but it is stubborn …’

Now the sweat on me was like ice and I felt it course down my body. I stared at Prideaux and his wife, all helpless in their nightshirts
and
with their hair in embarrassing disarray, and holding in their hands each a trembling candle. And though I knew that they were good and honest people, I wanted to howl and scream at their ignorance and at the ignorance of the doctors.

‘She has Typhus,’ I said.

She lies in a high, spacious room, in soft, clean linen. A fire burns in the grate.

Outside, in the freezing night, Owls cry. And the sound they make, which is one of great Desolation, echoes the sound I hear inside myself, as I sit by her bedside.

I have instructed the household that no visitors must come near Margaret any more, for that Typhus is a deadly Contagion, and I would not see sweet Mary and her sisters follow my daughter to this Place where she is.

To Tabitha, who will not let herself be moved from her Mistress’s side, I have given instructions that she must tie rags about her own face – as I myself shall do, just as I did when I visited victims of the Plague in the year 1666 – when we are near her. ‘And when we wash her,’ I instruct, ‘we must afterwards wash ourselves and be always washing, so that we do not get any Contagion from her skin or from her mouth.’

Margaret sleeps in uneasy rest. I see the rash creeping up to her chin and onto her cheek. I long to stroke her cheek, but I do not. Her hair is damp and tangled on the pillow, and this, too, I want to caress and smooth with my hand, but I do not.

I talk softly to her. I tell her that I will fit out a carriage with furs and cushions, and take her home to Bidnold on the morrow.

‘This Bidnold of ours,’ I say, ‘was once described to me by the King as “the place where we shall come to dream”. He understood that it is a house of great Consolation. If you cannot get well at Bidnold, even though it be cold winter, you cannot get well anywhere on the Earth. And I swear to you, in the King’s name and in the name of my long-lost friend John Pearce, whom I could not save from Death, that I will do everything in my power, as a father and as a Physician, to make you well.’

She stirs awake and sees me by her, and I know from her eyes that
she
has recognised me, and I take a little comfort from this, for that I know, in its Last Stages, Typhus muddies the brain, and it is by this that you may know that the sufferer is near death.

I tell her once again that I am going to take her home. ‘And when you are well,’ I say, ‘we shall go out into the snow and there, in the Park, will you find a great lumbering beast, a Bear, which I have rescued and brought back from France. And in time we shall get to know its ways, and perhaps it will dance for us.’

‘I did not know this,’ she says. ‘That bears could dance.’

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘that is just another of my follies. I was afraid you would not recognise me unless I said something foolish.’

‘I recognise you, Papa,’ says Margaret, ‘except your clothes are a little different.’

‘Ah,’ I say. ‘Another folly: Shoulder-Ribbons! Even Will, with his poor eyesight, remarked upon them.’

‘They are very becoming …’

She smiles, and to see this smile of hers gladdens my heart so much that I want to raise her up and hold her against my breast, but I do not.

I ask her about the Pain in her head, and she tells me that this is the worst thing and the most difficult to endure, and I tell her that I will get Opium for her from my Apothecary in Norwich, and when she has taken this the Pain will be less.

She closes her eyes and I imagine that she is drifting back to sleep, but she says quietly: ‘Tell me about the King of France.’

I hear myself sigh. I realise at this moment, and not at any moment before, how weary I am and how great is my longing for sleep, but I force myself to begin on some small anecdotes from Versailles, to entertain and soothe her.

‘The King of France,’ I say, ‘calls himself Louis
Dieu-donn
é, Louis Anointed-by-God. He is a man of Glory, who also likes to compare himself to the Sun –
Le Roi Soleil
.’

‘Does he resemble the sun?’

‘Yes, very much, for that he dresses himself in gold and the colour of his wig is a burnished copper, like your own beautiful hair, and the great Heat he creates in a room is a very Palpable Heat, and I have felt it myself and seen others almost swoon at it.’

‘Swoon and fall down?’

‘Yes. Faint clean away! For he is barely mortal, you see. He was born, I am told, with two teeth already in his head, translucent as Pearls, and this was taken as a sign that he was indeed God’s chosen child and would survive his infancy and reign for ever and ever …’

‘Nothing is for ever and ever, Papa,’ says Margaret.

‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘What about my love and affection for you? I cannot see why these should have an end.’

12

NO WINTER IN
my life was ever as cold as this one, the winter of 1683–4.

In my park the Great Frost spread its burning rash over every leaf and every twig and stone and every blade of grass. Birds, roosting in the trees, dropped to the ground and died. Red Squirrels clawed and bit at the earth, where their stores had been hidden, but the earth was turned to Granite. The Squirrels grew ragged and thin, and disappeared.

I ordered that the deer be rounded up and brought to the shelter of the Cow Barns, but even there the water in their trough still froze in the night. The animals clustered all together for warmth and their sweet faces, regarding me in a silent, reproachful bunch, reminded me of Pansy-flowers.

‘It will end,’ I said to them. ‘It is a finite Season.’

But it did not show any sign of ending. The Woodsmen, who had been charged with making the Stockade for the Bear, came to tell me that they could not, even with the sharpest iron picks, make any hole in the ground for the setting of the posts. The Bear, therefore, could not be given its liberty, but was forced to remain in the cage, and the children of the Woodsmen, ragged in their woollen clothes all tied together with string, came and trespassed on my land, and threw sticks and icicles at the creature to vex and torment it.

‘They must not do it!’ I scolded the Woodsmen. ‘You must constrain them, or I shall throw you all off my Estate.’

But where should I throw them? To the Workhouse? And I
depended
upon these people for my supply of chopped wood, for Cattlebury’s stoves, for the fires that warmed my rooms, for the blaze that was kept burning, day and night, in Margaret’s Sickroom.

And when I considered how these Woodsmen and their families lived, in poor hovels, built of mud and lathes and thatched with Reeds, and how I lived, with all my French furniture and stone Fireplaces and Hangings of tapestry and brocade, I suffered a worm of sorrow for their lot, and was mightily glad that Pearce was not at Bidnold to reproach me with all the Unfairnesses of the World and to blame me for them.