Merivel A Man of His Time (28 page)

‘We shall do a Cupping,’ I said to Violet and nodded to Mrs McKinley to make a flame to heat the glasses.

While she did this, I persuaded Violet to let me examine the breast wound. When I unwound the Bandages I saw that this was healing well, with no sign of any new Tumour. But then I noted that Violet’s stomach was strangely swollen and lumped up, and when I put my hand there Violet screamed with pain.

I stroked her hair. The thinness of her features troubled me so much, I wanted to put some veil or piece of Gauze over them, so that her skull would not be so visible to me. I found myself wishing that Violet Bathurst might have died on the night when the King made love to her. This, I thought, would have been a fitting end for her: a surfeit of delirium stopping her heart – not this wasting and falling in of the flesh.

When the cups were readied, I gently turned Violet and unlaced her nightgown. Her back now lay before me, pale and thin, with each nub of Vertebra pressing up, as though yearning to break free of the skin.

I laid my hand softly on her neck, to hold her still, while Mrs McKinley set down the Cups. When they began their terrible blistering, Violet reached out for me and clutched my knee.

She began babbling to me of her old passion for me. I grew hot in the face with embarrassment when she reminded me of our Fornications on the staircase and how, at that time, nobody but I could give her the satisfaction she craved.

I did not dare glance at Mrs McKinley, but only saw, at the corner of my eye, her deft hands continuing their work. And she uttered not a word.

‘’Tis the role of a Nurse,’ she had once said to me, ‘that she sometimes be deaf.’

After reminding me of yet more violent Amours we had contrived
together
Violet said: ‘There was affection, too, Merivel. Very deep. I shall not call it love, yet love it almost was. And how many people can one veritably love in the world? Those we hate or despise far outnumber those we adore. Our souls are similar, yours and mine: always hungry, always frail. ’Tis quite miraculous we have both endured so long. I am content with that.’

‘This is not the end, Violet,’ I said to her. ‘We shall play more games of Shuttlecock … in the autumn …’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We shall not, Merivel. A Shuttlecock is light and I am heavy. I am falling to earth.’

After the cupping we gave her the Opium, very strong and raw, made her as comfortable as we could and kept watch by her side. She soon enough slept.

Mrs McKinley took out her Knitting and, as the day became evening, the clicking of her needles was the only sound.

‘What are you making?’ I asked her.

‘Merely a square, Sir Rabbit,’ she said softly. ‘See? Made of fine string, not wool. A square may become any Thing in the world you wish it to be.’

Towards five o’clock, food was brought up to us from Chef Chinery: a plate of Cutlets in Gravy, a dish of Cabbage and Potatoes, and a flask of Cider.

Both of us were hungry, so we set upon this meat and drink with great Attack, seated at a little table near the window. But I blush to relate that we ate so greedily, filling the air of the room with our slurpings and munchings, that we did not hear the constricted sounds of dying that Violet Bathurst began to make. The cat heard them and fled from the room. But I paid this no heed. I thought it was we who had chased the animal away.

Only when I had scraped my plate clean and wiped my mouth with the fine Damask napkin did I look over at the bed, and see Violet’s eyes wide and staring and her jaw gaping. ‘She is gone,’ I said. ‘She is gone.’

We went to her, and I closed her eyes and kissed her forehead, then Mrs McKinley bound her jaw with Buckram. After this binding, her work done, she got stiffly to her knees and took into her hands the wooden cross she wears ever about her neck.

‘Our Lady of Heaven,’ she said, ‘I pray you receive the soul of Lady Bathurst in your gentle heart. Forgive her all her trespasses. Let her rest in peace. And, if it please you, in your infinite mercy, look kindly on good Sir Rabbit who is but a mortal man.’

The evening was coming upon us, very soft and luminous, with all the white roses of the garden shining in the descending light.

I walked to the lake and tried to picture the row boat, painted red, in which I had once ravished Violet, before falling into the water. I now remembered that when I fell, my Breeks were all a-tangle round my calves, preventing me from kicking out in a proper swimming stroke, and for a moment, in the icy lake, I thought that I would sink and drown.

Then I saw an Oar come down to me, and I grabbed at this and felt the boat tilting above me, and expected Violet to come plunging in, with her skirts billowing out above the waterweed, but she did not. She held manfully to the Oar and I held to it too, and my head bobbed up and it was at this moment that I felt my Breeks slide off my legs and fall away.

‘Violet,’ I shouted, half choking and spouting water like a Whale, ‘I am naked below!’

‘So are we all!’ she cried, and her laughter sounded loud in the warm air.

22

THE SUMMER IS
slowly passing.

I languish in my bed, slave to fevers and dreams. To Will, who urges me to get up, I say: ‘I cannot. I have seen too much of Death. I must preserve my life by remaining here, to think my thoughts. Please make sure that I am left alone.’

The August weather is fine and warm, and the trees I can see from my window have not yet turned to any autumn colour, nevertheless I note, from the way the leaves move and clatter, that all the Freshness is gone from them. They have had their season and will soon fall. And I reflect upon the way my mind and body have always longed for summer and warmth, and how, in this year 1684, I am letting these go by without taking any pleasure or comfort from them. And part of me recognises how stupid a thing this is; I should be walking in my garden to catch the last scent of the roses, or riding at an easy canter along the Chestnut
allées
, or hosting Picnic parties. But for none of these can I summon the necessary joy.

I say to Will: ‘I am a leaf, Will, doomed to fall.’

And Will replies: ‘Pray do not offend me with Poet’s Piffle, Sir Robert. It is not worthy of you.’

‘Worthy of me?’

This, I ponder: my Worth in the vain world.

I let Clarendon die. I let Violet die. The hospitality I showed to Ambrose was miserly and unworthy. I may even have lost Louise. And the King, who has always and ever lodged in my heart as God lodges in the heart of true Believers, has, by taking Margaret away to a destiny that may prove to be her ruin, almost vanished from it,
leaving
behind only the merest hint of his presence there: a whiff of perfume, a cascade of laughter. Yet I feel this Absence not as a relief, but only as a terrible wound in my breast.

My dreams, however – though this be strange – are of a sweet, consoling nature. Often, in them, I am a five-year-old boy again, with my Mother in the Woods of Vauxhall, looking for badgers. She places a rug on the earth and sits down there in the first drift of evening, and I sit beside her, snug within the circle of her arm, feeling against my leg the warmth of her body, and she says: ‘If you are very quiet, a Badger will come from its sett and you will see its black-and-white face.’

And then, after a short while one of the animals appears, and it turns in circles and pirouettes on its hind legs, as though dancing for us, and I am held by the spell of this, and I feel my Mother’s gladness as she holds me close to her.

Yet, in reality, though we went again and again to Vauxhall Woods, no Badger ever came to visit us. I suppose I was never quiet enough, but too restless and prating. So then I understand that my dreams are showing me
what might have been
, had my own conduct been different. And I begin to wonder: can a dream ever instruct us how to be
in the time to come
?

I know not what that time holds for me. At present it appears to contain Nothing at all. I lie above a Precipice. The depths below me are black and silent. I listen for the sound of the wind, or for the calling of a human voice, but nothing is heard.

I send one of my Footmen, by the name of Sharpe, to Dunn in Norwich, with a note from me ordering more Opium. Though I have been trying to resist thinking about this excellent Consolation, my mind cannot quite turn away from it, so tempting is the absence of suffering that it procures.

But, alas, Sharpe does not return. The price of Opium is high and I sent him with a substantial Purse. And Will comes to me and says: ‘Sir Robert, that damnèd Sharpe, it appears, is a Naked Villain and a Thief. For off he goes with all his clothes in a sack, and his every possession bar his Livery of the Household, knowing he would not come back to Bidnold, but live off the Opium Purse for a goodly while. What do you think to that?’

‘What do I think?’ say I. ‘I think it lamentable. But what am I to do?’

‘You should pursue him and catch him and let him be hanged for Knavery and Theft!’

I stare at Will. Though I am shocked that any Servant should steal from me and like me so little that he betray my Trust in him, I hear myself say: ‘Alas, our England does not prosper, Will.’

‘What is that to do with Sharpe, Sir?’

‘Well, only this, that more and more do people drift from their trade or occupation, or are thrown from these, to fall into a general Criminality of Mind – even Footmen, who are schooled in humility and obedience to command from on high. And I do not know what is to be done.’

‘His Majesty must pass laws …’

‘His Majesty has convened no Parliament through which to pass them.’

‘So all is coming to ruin, is it, Sir Robert?’

‘Ruin compared to what was hoped for. At the Restoration there was a time of Opportunity, which you and I saw with our own eyes, but it is squandered and gone.’

‘So what is to become of us?’

‘I cannot tell, Will. Now, I am going to give you a purse. Tomorrow you must take the coach to Dunn’s of Norwich and get me the Elixir that I need.’

‘I beg your pardon, Sir?’

‘You heard me.’

‘I heard the word Elixir and that is all.’

‘And you shall ride to Norwich to procure it.’

‘I am not permitted to procure any “Elixir”.’

‘On the contrary, I am giving you permission.’

‘I mean that I cannot do it. I mean that I
will
not do it. And there’s an end of the subject.’

Will, who has been standing near the bed, where I lie in a state of unwashed catastrophe, turns from me and walks, surprisingly fast, to the door, which he opens and closes with a bang in the manner of a child undergoing a tantrum.

This amuses me fleetingly. Will’s stubbornness has often occasioned me some mirth. And now that he is so old, I see it as proof of his
obstinate
desire to Continue, which consoles me, for were Will to die, why then I see that my Solitude would be complete. As long as he argues with me, he means, perhaps, to outlive me.

But then I begin to see that unless I haul myself into a coach I will not come by my Opium by any Means, for now I can trust no other Servant but Will. And no sooner have I realised this than a terrible Craving for it overcomes me and all that occupies my mind is how I can send for it.

I fidget and turn in my rumpled bed. My limbs ache. My mouth is dry. I feel like the most wretched specimen of the Human Race. I hear myself call out to Louise de Flamanville to save me.

Days and nights pass.

My one refuge, in the absence of Opium, is in my dreams, where sometimes I am with Rosie Pierpoint, long ago when she was young, and the two of us lying together in delirium on her piles of Laundry, and I wake in an Ecstasy, imagining myself inside her. And the sweetness of her lingers long in my mind and body, and soothes them to something like peace.

The only letter that comes is from Margaret.

‘
The King
,’ she writes, ‘
spends much time with those of us who attend the Duchess of Portsmouth, and this is most flattering and agreeable. He tells me that he prefers to be here in our apartments than with his Queen or with his Privy Council or anywhere in Whitehall or in the Kingdom, save Bidnold
.’

She then goes on to relate how she has become the favourite ‘maid’ of the Duchess, who spoils her with new dresses and pieces of Jewellery ‘
and if the King come not to her at night, she sometimes wakes me and takes me into her bed and puts her arms round me and we fall asleep together, like children
.’

Though this image troubles me, I force myself to see in it only the Duchess’s affection and I reason, furthermore, that the King might draw back from betraying his Mistress with her favourite Maid-in-Waiting.

But then follows a new thought. I imagine how, waking in the night full of lust, the King might go to the Duchess and, finding Margaret there in her bed, be suddenly enamoured of the idea that the
three
of
them might make Revels all together. And I feel very hot and sweating when I think that my daughter might be so corrupted, and immediately take up my pen and write: ‘
Stay on your Guard against any Sophisticated Practices of the Bedroom, for that they may degrade and punish you with Shame, in the end. Keep yourself pure and unsullied, Margaret, and only seduce the world by showing your Talents at Music and Dancing and your Comprehension of Latin
.’

When I read what I have written, however, I do see that the tone of it is one of vile Priggishness and Pomposity, and I tear it in pieces. Instead, I force myself to write:

How happy I am, dear Margaret, to hear you are so favoured by your Employer. She is right, of course, to single out one of so sweet a nature, and all that you are getting for yourself is got by that – by your own Goodness and Kindness. And how much I look forward to seeing your new dresses and Jewels, surpassing any that I could afford! I shall come to London before September. Meanwhile, I send you my deepest affection
,

From your loving Papa
,

R. Merivel

I arrange for despatch of my letter, and soon afterwards Will informs me that Sir James and Lady Prideaux have called upon me and attend me in the Library.