Merivel A Man of His Time (23 page)

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘After a little Time of Recovery has passed. Indeed, I shall organise a party of Skittles at Bidnold and you can partner the King.’

Violet shook her head. ‘You are dreaming,’ she said. ‘It will not come about.’

I rose early and collected Mrs McKinley from her house in Bidnold Village, and I noted how everything about her was clean and scrubbed, from her pink fingernails down to her polished boots.

I showed her the Opium I had got from Dunn and she said: ‘Lord, Sir Rabbit, you could put an Army to sleep with this Quantity!’ And an Image came to me of the Swiss Guards in the Place des Armes at Versailles, lined up in their ranks, and then falling over in an Opium-induced trance, one by one. And I smiled.

‘I am only anxious that Lady Bathurst does not suffer too much,’ I said. ‘But I warn you, she is much given to screaming, it is in her nature and you must try not to be too distracted by this.’

‘No, no, Sir. I shall not be distracted. All my children were Screamers. I just shut my ears and said my prayers, and all went into a lovely Quietness.’

We arrived at Bathurst Hall and straight away were shown up to where Violet lay on her bed in its new position near the window. She looked very pale and the fierce easterly light etched lines on her skin that I had not noticed before. When I bent over her she reached up and pulled me towards her. ‘Merivel,’ she said, ‘I am afraid …’

‘It will be quick, Violet,’ I said. ‘In less than five minutes it will be over. We shall then stay by you while you sleep.’

I had commanded that a fire be lit in the room and a cauldron of water set on it to heat, and this had been done as I had asked. While I positioned a chair near the bed and prepared my Scalpel, Mrs McKinley mixed a good quantity of the Opium powder with Brandy to make Laudanum and Violet swallowed this down. I watched her eyes flicker as it began to enter her blood.

Mrs McKinley then gently removed the top part of Violet’s
nightgown
and took out clean muslin rags and washed the area of the Cutting in hot water and then with Tincture of Witch Hazel. After this she lifted Violet’s arm and cleaned that also, saying, ‘’Twill be Nothing, My Lady. You shall see. In a trice it will be gone.’ With the cleaning done, she laid a square of linen under the arm, strapped Violet’s wrists to the bedposts and begged her to stay as still as she was able.

At the door stood Violet’s maid, Agatha, a pretty dimpled girl, torn, I could see, between wanting to stay with her Mistress and desiring to flee. I turned to her and said: ‘Agatha, go downstairs and heat a Warming Pan. The shock of a Cutting can make a person very cold. I shall call to you when I want it brought here. Find woollen blankets and bring them too.’

The girl curtseyed and fled away. I looked over at Mrs McKinley.

‘We shall give the Laudanum a little more time,’ I said, ‘then we shall begin.’

Mrs McKinley pressed a white linen cap onto her head and rolled up her sleeves. She took Violet’s hand in hers, gently stroking the palm. This stroking seemed to calm Violet, and we saw her eyes close and heard her breathing become deeper.

I raised the Scalpel. I told Mrs McKinley to press upon the breast, to draw the skin tight for the Cutting. As she did so, the Thing seemed to enlarge itself and I saw now that some small outcrop of it extended down into Violet’s armpit, and this dismayed me, for I thought it would be a clean round Nub I was taking out, as if removing an eyeball from its socket, and now I understood that my Scalpel would have to make a second cut and then a third.

Mrs McKinley saw this too. ‘I think ’tis more than it at first seemed, Sir Rabbit,’ she whispered to me. ‘Look there. And you will have to get it all.’

I took a breath. I cannot ever cut into another person’s body without remembering how I had to hack deep into Katharine’s body to deliver Margaret, and in consequence I remain calm, for I know that nothing could terrify me as profoundly as that operation did.

I made two swift cuts, like a cross, in the centre of the Cancer. Not much blood flowed. I lifted back the skin and investigated how deep I would have to go to bring out the lump of Cancerous matter,
which
was mottled purple and white in its colour and looked to me like some Sea Creature clinging to a rock pool.

Violet had begun to moan. Mrs McKinley spoke to her softly, telling her that the worst would soon be over.

I began the cutting. My blade went deep, circling the Cancer. Mrs McKinley dabbed at the flowing blood with her muslin rags. Violet began crying out in agony and her body arched and moved, so that my hand was jolted and the blade stabbed deeper than I had intended. Violet screamed. The scream was so loud and distressing to my head, it was as if Sound suddenly got in the way of Vision and blurred it. I blinked. With one hand Mrs McKinley was trying to hold Violet still and with the other swabbing blood from the wound.

‘Try a prayer?’ I hissed to Mrs McKinley.

‘Oh, yes, a prayer. I will, Sir.’

She began a very low mumbling to God, asking him to give us Quietness.

I blinked again and turned the scalpel so that now I was cutting – or hoped I was –
underneath
the Cancer.

‘I am almost there, Violet,’ I said. ‘I almost have it out …’

‘No!’ Violet cried. ‘Let it alone! Close it up, Merivel. I can bear no more!’

‘My Lady,’ said Mrs McKinley. ‘Sir Rabbit must take it all out, or it might grow again.’

‘Let it grow!’ cried Violet. ‘I’m old and ugly now! Let it smother me and take me away with it!’

Mrs McKinley acted to swiftly to pour more Laudanum into Violet’s mouth and this – more than the prayer, I shall admit – quietened her. I took up the muslin and swabbed and swabbed, to get the blood away. Then, probing with my finger, I felt the Cancer loosen from the flesh on one side. I cut again underneath and it loosened more. Blood ran over my hand.

Two more cuts and the Thing was loose. With my Spathomele I prised it out and set it in a glass dish. Pressing a wad of Muslin hard on the wound, I stared at the Cancer and I thought how strange and terrible it was that the body, in its darkness and secrecy, produces Additions that can bring it to the grave.

Violet was quiet now, her breathing shallow. Dearly I wished that
I
could sew up the wound and there would be an end to the Cutting, but I knew that my labours were not done. In the armpit lay two Satellites of the main Cancer and these could not be left in Violet’s body.

I took up the Scalpel again. I had promised that the whole Cutting would take no more than five minutes, but my struggles with the elusive Satellites took more than thirty-five, for they, it seemed, were welling over with blood and I could not cut without pausing while Mrs McKinley swabbed and swabbed.

By the time I came to sew up the skin, Violet was pale with deep Shock and was hiccuping violently, and both Mrs McKinley and I began to fear she would be seized by Convulsions, or that her heart would cease.

Together we bandaged the wounds, then we cleaned our hands and arms with black Soap in hot water, and I called for Agatha to bring the warming pan and the blankets. We untied Violet’s wrists and laid her right arm by her side, but placed the left arm on the pillow, away from the wounds.

Mrs McKinley, touching Violet’s forehead with her strong hands, whispered to me, ‘Lord, Sir, but she is terrible cold …’

Agatha came in, and when she saw the bloody rags all around and her Mistress pale as a Ghost, and the Cancerous tumours in the dish, almost fainted clean away. I took the warming pan from her and wrapped a blanket round it, and told Agatha to bring more hot water and bowls of Chocolate for me and Mrs McKinley.

Both the square of linen and the sheet underneath Violet were crimson and damp with blood, and Mrs McKinley and I knew that we had to get them away. But here was a difficult task, for the pain of movement would be very great for Violet. I put my arm under her right shoulder and neck, and lifted her forward, and Mrs McKinley peeled back the linen and the bloody sheet, then I laid her down again and raised her back and her buttocks, so that the sheet could come out. Then we spread out clean linen and pressed soft Pillows round the wound, and began to try to get her warm, setting the warming pan near her feet and covering her with the Woollen blankets.

Into her mouth Mrs McKinley dribbled yet more Laudanum. The
hiccups
continued for another ten minutes. Then they stopped and Violet lay still and quiet before us. I lifted her wrist and felt for a pulse, and got it, faint, but ticking there, as the morning began slowly to pass.

Mrs McKinley took off her white cap and wiped her brow with it. ‘Lord, Sir Rabbit,’ she said, ‘the Chocolate will be a lovely thing.’

We sat out all the daylight hours in Violet’s room. The sun glanced on us, then hid itself behind cloud and the room darkened, as if promising rain.

My mind kept wandering to Bidnold and what the King and Margaret might be doing there, but I tried to put these ugly thoughts away. I knew that I had to remain with Violet until the morrow.

I watched her face, once almost beloved to me. She snored in her Laudanum sleep. I said in a low voice to Mrs McKinley, ‘It was not done as cleanly as I had hoped.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was as difficult as any I’ve seen, including my own.’

‘You had a Cancer in your breast?’

‘I did. But it was cut out of me long ago, before I met you. And look at me, Sir Rabbit. Strong as a horse. I shall die ancient in my bed. You can lay a fat Wager on it.’

18

WE PASSED A
most wretched night, with Violet starting to vomit up the Laudanum she had swallowed and then, because the quantity of Physick in her body had diminished, being afflicted with unbearable pain.

We cleaned her and tried to soothe her and get her comfortable, but her body was still icy cold and her lips dry and cracked. We gave her water and Mrs McKinley fumigated the Bedchamber with Frankincense, and then went down to the kitchen to make what she called ‘a Potato Broth’, such as her family used to consume in Donegal, and always efficacious for ‘cure of poison’.

I sat alone with Violet. I kept the fire brightly burning and tried to put more coverings on the bed, but Violet said they were too heavy on her wound and she could endure nothing touching it.

To try to take her mind off present sufferings, I invited her to tell me more about her night with the King and I did see a frail smile appear on her wounded features.

‘Well, he is very talkative during the Act,’ she said. ‘And I do adore sexual discourse – as I remember that you do too, Merivel.’

‘Sometimes …’ I said.

‘But afterwards, when we had quite exhausted several Positions, he began to talk about the Queen, and how he has betrayed her with a hundred women, and how he has pacified her, through all the years, with Religious Gifts.’

Violet then pointed over at her bureau near the fire. ‘See the little wooden box on it, Merivel. Bring it here and I will show you something.’

I fetched the box, which was finely made in the shape of a Sea Chest and studded with small Brass nails. Violet told me to open it, which I did, and found inside, on a lining of blue velvet, a curl of white hair.

‘It belonged to Bathurst,’ said Violet. ‘He bought it in Rome for a large sum. As you recall, he was a mad and credulous man. He had been told that the hair in the box had been cut from the head of St Peter and he chose to believe it.’

‘Ah, it is hair, then, that has survived almost seventeen hundred years?’

‘Precisely so. How could anything Human not perish and turn to dust after all that time? I pointed this out to Bathurst, but he was unmoved. He used to mumble his prayers over it. He used to ask it to bring him luck at the Horse Races.’

‘And did it so?’

‘I cannot remember, Merivel. He was the worst of Gamblers, until he went mad and forgot about it. But I bethought myself, after the King left, that his Queen, in her Catholic piety, might believe it too. So I want you to give it to him to give to her – to atone for all that he did with me of a wild and filthy nature!’

‘I will,’ I said stroking Violet’s forehead. Then I said, in a hushed and choked voice: ‘Violet, tell me something else. Do you really believe that the King will try to seduce my daughter?’

‘He does not
try
to seduce anyone. He succeeds.’

‘Will he not think Margaret is too young?’

‘I have no idea, my friend. But what can it really matter? To lose your Virginity to the King of England …’

‘It matters greatly to me! When I remember the misery that it brought to Celia.’

‘Celia was a stupid girl, Merivel. I always marvelled that you had any feeling for that mousy and dull creature – especially when you had me to attend so ardently and efficaciously to the needs of your prick. But Margaret is not credulous and weak, as Celia was. She will not let herself suffer.’

Mrs McKinley returned at this moment with the Potato Broth, so this conversation had to cease.

We raised Violet up a little in the bed. I could see that Dawn was
creeping
towards us beyond the windows. I spooned the broth into Violet’s mouth, and prayed she might keep it in her and not vomit it up again. Then we laid her down again, and I touched her cheek and felt that the good Broth had warmed her a little. The scent of Frankincense in the room was heady and strong, and I felt myself yearning for sleep.

At eight o’clock, before leaving Bathurst Hall, I went down into the vast Kitchen, where, in times past, meals for thirty or forty people were prepared and the ovens seemed to be roaring day and night, and the savour of roasted meat was so strong, it used to seem to me as though you might live only on this – on the fragrance alone.

Now all was very silent, with every surface scrubbed and cold. Violet’s cook – ‘Chef Chinery’ as he likes to style himself – stood looking out of the window, wondering, it seemed, what to make of the breaking day and how to pass it.

‘Good day to you, Chinery,’ said I. ‘Are you well?’

‘As well as Time permits, Sir.’