Merivel A Man of His Time (41 page)

I had known John Huddleston for many years, once saving his life with a powerful Emetic of Rock Salt and Syrup of Buckthorn, after he had imbibed a Porridge laced with poison. The Poisoner (suspected of being a Quaker) was never brought to Justice. But from that moment onwards Huddleston had kept by him a bottle of ‘Merivel’s Efficacious’ Emetic, in case the thing should ever be tried upon him again. He was thus disposed to see me as his rescuer and so to overlook my known debauches and my formerly disreputable Influence upon the King’s morals.

We greeted each other plainly and warmly. Huddleston had always struck me as a man of great humanity, to whom I had once admitted that, after the deaths of my Parents in a cruel and terrible fire in 1662, I had lost my Faith in God altogether.

Instead of berating me, or attempting to Convert me anew (which pious people are so fond of doing), he had asked me whether my Mother and Father had also ceased to believe in a Loving God, and when I told him that they had not, but remained steadfast in the Faith, he had sweetly conjured for me an image of the Paradise in which my Parents now resided.

It was, as befitting my Father’s trade, a Haberdasher’s Paradise, with clouds made of wool and Feather Trees waving in the wind, and paths strewn with pearl buttons and fields of linen-weave and houses made of Buckram. And sometimes, when melancholy struck me down, I had tried to imagine this fanciful kingdom, with my Mother and Father in it, and my Mother exclaiming, ‘Oh, do look, dearest: a Ribbon Grove. Do you see how pretty it is!’

‘The news is bad, Merivel,’ said Huddleston. ‘Very bad. I am going to the Queen and we shall pray together.’

‘How is Her Majesty?’ I asked.

‘She is prostrated. She cannot eat nor sleep. She chides herself that she has not been “a good enough wife”.’

‘Ah. Yet, perhaps it might be the husband who has not been “good enough.”’

‘Quite so. But she scourges herself and she is tormented by another
thing
– that the King, for all his promises to her, has never been received into the Roman Catholic Church.’

‘This matter is on the Queen’s mind?’

‘Yes. She is most upset that it has not been done.’

Here I took Father Huddleston’s arm and drew him aside into what I thought was an Ante-room, telling him that there was an urgent matter upon which I had to speak to him in private.

We found ourselves not in an Ante-room, but in a broom cupboard.

‘Oh,’ said I, looking around at a quantity of Besoms and feather Dusters stacked into this small space, ‘this will not do …’

I made to go out again but Huddleston said: ‘No, on the contrary, it is a fitting place for any Secret and you must know that Catholic Priests of my age were accustomed to
making ourselves small
to fit the Holes made for us. When Cromwell’s men came to search Moseley Hall, His Majesty and I slept the night in a space no larger than this. Of course, we did not have Brooms for company; we had Fear. Should I be fearful of what you are about to tell me?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all. I only ask your help with it.’

The Father sat himself down on an upturned wooden bucket and I squashed my body in and clutched at the Besom handles to steady myself as I related to Huddleston all that the King had confided to me in the coach.

When I had done, he gazed down at his hands, which were stiff and pale from many decades of Prayer, and said nothing for a moment. Then he looked up at me and said: ‘Thank you, Sir Robert. You could not have told me words that I would rather hear. But we must pray it is not too late …’

‘I still do not know how it is to be done.’

‘It shall be done through me. I shall consult with the Queen and the Duke of York, and we will find a time that is fitting, before His Majesty slips away from us. I know you do not believe in the Rewards of Heaven, but if you get there, perhaps you will.’

34

ON WEDNESDAY THE
4th of February, following a long sleep, the King seemed to rally. I urged that a Marrowbone broth, such as had kept Margaret alive during the Typhus, be made for him, and this was done, and after he had sat up to be shaved and washed, he was helped by me to drink some of this.

The spooning of broth into His Majesty’s mouth enabled me to sit very close to him and to talk to him unheard by others in the room. I thus was able to tell him that, once the Duke of York had found the means to clear the Bedchamber of all the Bishops and assembled Privy Councillors, Father Huddleston would come to him, bearing the Host.

‘When will it be?’ he whispered.

‘I know not, Sir,’ I said. ‘But it
will be
. Trust me.’

At this last injunction, something crossed His Majesty’s face that I had not seen in many a long hour, and that was a smile.

‘I know,’ I said, reading at once what lay behind the smile, ‘I once broke your trust, but that was long ago. And tell me, Sir, have I ever betrayed you since?’

The King’s jaw worked painfully slowly upon the broth, as though it might have been a gobful of tough meat. Then he said softly and sadly: ‘… betrayed Clarendon.’

‘Ah,’ said I. ‘Clarendon. Yes. But I am atoning. I am endeavouring to compose a Treatise upon the subject of the Souls of Animals, and Clarendon is ever in the forefront of my mind.’

I expected the King to laugh at this, or at least to smile, but he did not.

‘Souls of Animals … ’tis certain,’ he said, nodding as vigorously as his poor afflicted head would let him. ‘Animals have souls …’ Then, he suddenly began clawing at his sheet and asked: ‘Where is Bunting?’

I sent a Servant to find where the dogs were being housed and to bring Bunting to His Majesty. I hoped that he would continue drinking the broth, but he pushed the spoon away and said again: ‘Where is Bunting? I must have her by me.’ Then he looked about him distractedly, at the faces in the crowded chamber and said: ‘Why is
nobody
by me? Where are my children? Where is Fubbs?’

I was like a Jack-in-the-Box, during these Last Days, called to His Majesty’s bedside, sent away, called to him again, dismissed once more.

This – and I could not but smile at it – resembled an accelerated version of my life, with regard to the King. And I thought that, by rights, this uncertain Condition should have made me nimble and canny, but that it had not. I had always been – as Pearce once commented – Caesar’s Slave. And now, a slave still, I was growing old and flat-footed.

Yet I harboured the certainty that, when the hour came and King Charles bid his Kingdom adieu, I would be by his side. Though he might die in the middle of the night, I felt sure that before the moment came, somebody would wake me. Though he might die in the Queen’s arms, or in Fubbsy’s, yet nevertheless did I picture myself standing near.

On Wednesday evening rumour spread into the city beyond Whitehall that the King was rallying and would soon be well, so we heard the sound of Bells being rung all over London and, looking from a high window, as the dusk fell, I saw the intermittent glow of bonfires. But I knew that the King would not be well. I longed to go about the city and warm myself at the fires, and tell the people to get out their mourning clothes and take all to be cleaned at
Mrs Pierpoint’s Superior Laundry
on London Bridge.

Returning to Fubbsy’s apartments, I saw that they had undergone a terrible Stripping. Each and every object that could fit inside a trunk
and
others besides, such as Card Tables and embroidered Footstools, which could not, had been piled into the Entrance Hall, waiting for a cart to trundle them away to safety.

Margaret and I looked about us in some dismay.

‘Well,’ said I, ‘I am glad that she did not confiscate the beds.’

From Margaret’s room, however, many precious objects had been removed, so that nothing remained with which she might brush her hair and only one Candle Sconce had been left to her. She sat down on the bed and said to me: ‘If the King dies, the Duchess will leave for France. She has asked me to go with her. She has been so good to me, Papa, but I would prefer to stay in England, where I can be close to Julius. What am I to do?’

‘You must do as your heart desires,’ said I. ‘And you should remember that the Duchess, separated from the King, will be nothing and no one in France, so your life may become dull and sad there.’

‘Yet she expects me to go with her …’

‘She cannot hold you to her for ever, and this she surely knows. I shall return to Bidnold, and you may come with me there, if that pleases you, and Julius may visit us and we can show him the Hornbeam Alley …’

At this very moment came in Julius Royston and, finding us sitting wearily in an almost empty room, said: ‘Oh, misery! What Hovel is this you now inhabit?’

And this gladdened us with laughter, and Julius put forward at once a Plan for Margaret to move into Lord Delavigne’s house ‘where you may be comfortable again, sweet love, and possessed of a Hairbrush!’

And I could see that Margaret was very taken with this Plan and would mightily prefer to inhabit Delavigne House on the Strand than to travel to Norfolk in February and be parted from her fiancé.

And so it was arranged that, after the King had made his final adieu, Margaret would live under the protection of Lord and Lady Delavigne, in a mansion where there was no shortage of Footstools or Candelabra, and I would travel alone to Bidnold, where I prayed to find everything made clean and safe for my Returning.

*

On Thursday the King sent for me again. Wondering whether he might require of me some Medical Intervention, I went to get my Surgical Instruments, but I could not find them.

Since my return from Switzerland, I had kept them by my bed, in the lowest drawer of my Night Table, but when I opened this drawer there was nothing in it – only a little fawn-coloured dust, where a Beetle had been gnawing at the wood.

I searched everywhere in my room, yet knew that my Instruments would not be found. And I could not but conclude that Fubbs had instructed her Servants to snatch up everything of value – regardless of its ownership – and hurl it into the waiting trunks.

This both saddened me and made me angry. The Instruments I had kept safely with me since 1665. They had been a Gift to me from the King, who, wanting to rouse me out of the lethargy into which I had fallen at Bidnold, had had inscribed upon the handle of the Scalpel, the Motto
Merivel, do not Sleep
.

I had cared for them with scrupulous attention, keeping them polished and sharp. It was with them that I had attempted to cut away Violet Bathurst’s Cancer. It was with them that I had let blood from Margaret’s arm during the time of her Typhus. It was with them that I had attempted to take out the Stones and Tumours of my patients down the span of twenty years. Without them I felt enfeebled.

I nevertheless made my way, empty-handed, to the King’s door and was ushered into the room, where I witnessed His Majesty saying goodbye to Fubbsy’s son, the Duke of Richmond, the youngest of his illegitimate children, and saw how everybody round the bed had turned their backs on Fubbs and her child, trying to snub them. With her great overload of grief, and now finding herself openly insulted by One and All, Fubbsy’s eyes had turned red and Squinty.

When Fubbs and her son had gone out, I was taken to the Bedside and saw at once, from the King’s colour and from the shrunken aspect of his face, that he was surely sinking.

‘Merivel,’ he whispered. ‘The time is come. Pray fetch Huddleston and ask that the room be cleared of everyone except my brother and Lord Feversham, who is a Catholic and will bear witness to my Conversion.’

‘I will fetch Huddleston, Sire,’ I said, ‘but I have no authority to clear the room.’

‘Then ask the Duke of York to do it. But do not delay.’

The Duke of York was one among the many who had turned his back upon Fubbs. But I now saw that he, too, was weeping, and to interrupt his tears seemed heartless and rude. I nevertheless approached him. He looked at me with Disdain Absolute, but permitted me to come near, and when he heard my whispered Message, he blew his nose very loudly and assented to clearing the room.

I sped off to find Huddleston, who had promised to wait in the Queen’s apartments until he should be summoned and, when he saw me, he knew that the moment had arrived and scuttled round him to procure the Host, sanctified by one of the Queen’s Priests, and slammed a wig upon his head, so that none would recognise him.

‘Father,’ said I, ‘I do not think the wig will suffice, for all will see your Priestly garments below. Why do you not take my cloak and put it round you?’

I laid my warm cloak round Father Huddleston’s shoulders and together we returned to the King’s Rooms, to see departing the phalanx of Bishops, who had appeared so fascinated with the Enema procedures, and I felt glad that these proud churchmen were Out of Favour and the humble Huddleston brought to sudden significance by the strange configuration of the times and His Majesty’s conscience.

We lurked together outside the Bedchamber, feigning a sudden interest in a tapestry depicting a Wild Boar stuck with the arrows of the approaching Hunters, until the last of the Lords and Councillors had departed. Then the Duke of York came to the door and ushered Huddleston inside the Chamber, and I made as though to follow him, but found the door closed in my face.

The day was very cold, with a violet sky promising snow. Deprived of my cloak, and with the door so cruelly shut a mere inch from the nose the King used to love to tweak, I discovered myself to be shivering with misery, and I could not but think of the icy grave that attended my poor Sovereign, as cold as that in which we had buried Pearce.

I sat down on a stone settle and put my head in my hands. I knew that these two men – John Pearce and Charles II of England – had been the guardians of my Soul, passing it from one to the other, yet
keeping
it always safe in their hands. And what would become of it now I could not tell, but could only imagine that it was destined for a long fall into Darkness.

By and by came Huddleston out of the Chamber, and tenderly put my cloak back upon my shoulders and whispered to me: ‘It is done. He is received into the True Church.’