Restoration (24 page)

We rested two nights on our journey, arriving at Whitehall towards mid-morning of the third day. We traveled wearing our tabards, but at our last lodging in Essex I dressed myself in my black and gold suit and put powder on my face, it still appearing rather poxy with some measle encrustations upon it. I did not wish the King to imagine I had the King's Evil.

Taking Will with me (he most neatly attired in a beige coat and grey leggings), I entered once again the Stone Gallery where I had been so overwhelmed, one auspicious afternoon, by the near-presence of Majesty that I had betrayed all my father's hopes for my future. As on that first time, the Gallery was noisy with people walking up and down and I knew that many of them would be petitioners and suitors for small favours who, tonight, would be sent away with nothing and yet tomorrow would return and the next day and the next.

I gave my name to the guards of the Royal Apartments and was told to wait. An hour passed, during which time I grew very weary from standing, so that I thought, at one moment, I would fall over. Will held onto my elbow and leaned me against a pillar. I could see that his mouth was agape at some of the gallants and their women who passed us. Even on my croquet lawn, he had never seen such plumes and buckles; even at my dinner table, no such pearly dresses. "I warrant, Sir," he whispered once, "these folk have even more money than you."

"Yes, Will," I replied, "I warrant they do."

At length, a message was brought to me: I was to return at one o'clock and go to the second of the King's tennis courts, known as his Favourite Court, where His Majesty would meet me. I looked up, in some dismay, at the messenger. I was about to request that he inform the King of my recent illness which had left me so feeble that I was hardly able to walk unaided in his Gallery, let alone compete in a set of tennis, but the man turned rudely and walked away from me, and I did not want to make myself foolish by shouting after him. I shrugged. "All we can do," I said to Will, "is eat a little meat and hope it may strengthen me."

By mid-day, then, we were at the Boar Tavern in Bow Street, where I ordered for Will a dish of oysters and some pigeon patties and for myself a carbonado cooked with marrowbone and stout, a most fortifying dish. We drank a little ale and Will sucked in his oysters and gobbled his patties, but I could not manage more than two mouthfuls of the carbonado, having no real appetite at all. Will duly ate it up, while I took my timepiece from my pocket and in silence watched the hand move towards the quarter hour.

"I am about to die, Will," I said suddenly. "I feel it. This afternoon I am going to die."

Will wiped his mouth with a crumpled napkin.

"Die how, Sir?"

"I do not know yet."

Well, you know me intimately by this time. You do not need reminding how painful and yet how wondrous it is for me to come into the presence of the King. I become very flushed and hectic and beside myself with joy and yet at the same time filled with a most sad longing to make time itself (upon which the King keeps such a glittering eye) move backwards, so that I can be what I once was, Merivel the Fool.

My love for Celia – love being by its nature a possessive thing – might well have diminished my desire for the company of the King, her lover, yet it did not seem to have done so, and when he stepped out into the empty cloistered court a cold sweat of adulation and fear broke out upon my brow.

The King was accompanied by two Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, one carrying the cloth-lined shoes he likes to wear for tennis, the other two tennis racquets, the wooden handle of the King's own racquet being bound with scarlet ribbon. Though my fear made me lurk in the shadow of the side penthouse, the King saw me at once. It is often remarked by those who have known both the sunshine of the King's affection and the frost of his indifference that his mood is discernible from his very first glance, for he is not a dissembler. Even with his Parliament (towards whom some say he should show more tact) he seems to be incapable of concealing his frequent displeasure.

Leaving Will to wait outside the court, I had taken with me my gift of the fur tabard, prettily wrapped in yellow linen, and this I now held in my arms as I executed my bow, hearing as I did so my hip joints click, like the joints of an old man. I looked up. The King, who seemed to have grown taller even than he was before, regarded me from on high with a look of unyielding severity, such as those most frequently cast upon the unruly German students by Fabricius. I had anticipated displeasure but I had not fully imagined how weak it would make me feel. I felt myself tilting. I reached out and held fast to one of the columns of the penthouse. I could not allow myself to fall.

"What is the matter with you, Merivel?" said the King.

"I have been ill, Your Majesty."

"Yes. You appear ill. But this does not surprise me. When a man transgresses the proper order of things, first his mind, then his body are bound to suffer."

I did not know how to reply. I nodded merely, and held out my gift.

"What is that?" asked the King, regarding my bulky parcel with some distaste.

"A present, Sire. An invention of mine. Designed to be of comfort in winter weather."

"It is almost spring, Merivel. Or did you not notice?"

"No. I did not notice. I have been confined to my room."

"Show it to me nevertheless."

In a clumsy, fumbling manner, I unwrapped the tabard and held it up, as I have seen Farthingale hold up dresses against her own body for her mistress's approval.

"Ha!" At the sight of the sewn-together badger pelts, the King let out a sudden explosion of laughter. His two Gentlemen also began to giggle. I wished, like some intrusive street vendor, to regale the King with the virtues of the tabard – its versatility, the freedom of movement it allows the wearer, its vital warming of the blood flowing to lung and kidney – yet suddenly found that I was a little ashamed of my product, its lack of elegance being its chief and most damning fault.

"Is it intended to be
worn
?" asked the King.

"Yes, Sir. My household have, by the wearing of these, been free of ague and cold…"

"But you have not?"

"I had the mischance to catch a measle."

"How Merivelian! And you look poxy still."

"I know, Sire."

"You do not need furs, Merivel. And nor do I, if I can warm myself by other means. The exercising of the body will keep disease away far more efficaciously than badgers' coats. So, come. We shall play a set of tennis. You used to show more skill at this game than with the games of the heart. And may still. Unless you are altogether disintegrating."

The King turned away from me and put on his shoes. I draped the tabard, which most evidently he did not want at all, over the cloister wall of the side penthouse. The badger snouts hung mournfully down. And I thought, with some amazement, what kind of mind could invent such an odd garment? The mind of a mad person. And only a madman would think of offering a thing of such eccentricity to his King. Merivel, I told myself, as I removed my black and gold coat, you are losing hold…

A racquet was put into my hand. Hastily, I tried to recollect what cunning I had once employed at this fast game and recalled that my best shot had been a low sliced thing to the
dedans
wall, usually missing the
dedans
, but bouncing so low my opponent was not able to scoop it up upon the first bounce, thus provoking a "chase". If you are familiar with the game of Royal Tennis, you will know that very many points are won or lost in a "chase" and His Majesty, though hitting the ball with a deal more power than almost all his opponents, can often be beaten by shots that cut the ball and so make it die, almost upon its first bounce, and land close to the back wall. The King's strength lies in accuracy. In any set, he will win a number of points outright by shots to the winning gallery and the
dedans
. Among some players at Court he used to be known as the Bell Ringer, with reference to the little bell that jingles when a ball slaps hard into these winning spaces.

So, in the cold February light, we began to play, the King placing himself, as of right, in the service court. I noticed that the net had grown in splendour, being, in my time, a mere piece of string but now an ornate braid hung with tassels.

No sooner had one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber installed himself in the marker's box than the King dealt me a most brilliant service that seemed to flutter by me almost before the ball had bounced, as if we were playing not with wads of hair and cloth but with a flight of wrens.

I remembered from a previous time that, although His Majesty likes to win at tennis, he does not like to win easily. He likes a fight. He likes the other man to run and run and never give up. What I tried, then, was to put out of my mind all knowledge of my recent illness and to play as nimbly as a lizard, scuttling forward and back, chasing every shot. Unfortunately, all out of practice as I was, my play was most horribly wild and inaccurate, one of my balls flying straight at the marker's box and smiting one of the Gentlemen in the eye, another going so high that it soared up and over the penthouse roof- to bounce, perhaps, at Will Gates's feet as he sat and digested the carbonado and waited for his first glimpse of his Sovereign.

My play was, in short, very lamentable and we had concluded but three games when I found myself feeling most horribly sick, my mouth suddenly filling with bile. I dropped my racquet, so that I might kneel for a moment on the pretence of retrieving it. I took some great breaths of air. Then I heard the door to the side penthouse open and I wondered all at once whether Celia had come to preside over the contest and smile her sweet smile upon the King's certain victory.

But it was not Celia. It was a footman come with lemon juice and sugar for us. "Lemons from Portugal in February!" said the King. "Grown under glass especially for my dear Queen." So a little respite was granted to me, albeit indirectly, by that placid and good-natured woman who seemed to be so often absent from the King's thoughts. I believed her to play no part in my story at all, yet on that day she undoubtedly saved me from casting up my meagre dinner onto the stones of the tennis court.

To my immense relief, I was able to win the fourth game. I was on the service side now. From the left-hand section of it, I managed one strangely brilliant service and three sliced shots to the
tambour
which the King adroitly retrieved but then pitched the ball under the net. In the next three games, however, such strength as I had had drained from me. Sweat poured down my face, mixing with the powder with which I had hoped to cover the ravages of my measles. I could not run any more, but only stagger. Shot after shot sped past me into the
dedans
or the winning gallery. Never send to know, I thought, for whom the bell jingles. It jingles for thee, Merivel. And then I thought of Pearce, whose favourite poet John Donne is. And I asked Pearce to remember me now and give me strength to face all that was still to come.

"As I foresaw," said the King at the conclusion of the set, "you have become slow."

"I know, Sir…" I mumbled.

"Very slow. And the game, of course, is a fast one."

I followed the King into the garden where I had left Will and where he still stood in his grey leggings. The King walked at such a swift pace that I had to scurry to keep up with him and had no hope of getting his attention to ask him to turn upon my servant, however briefly, his majesterial glance. But I could not afford to worry too greatly about Will. I knew that my beating at tennis was but the preliminary to a more bitter scourging.

I was led into a little summer-house, not unlike the one at Bidnold where I had briefly attempted my secret oboe lessons with Herr Hummel. The place was swept and clean, but in the fading light of the winter afternoon a somewhat chilly habitation. I put on my black and gold coat. The King blew his nose then turned his face towards me. So close was he to me that I could see clearly the fine lines that gathered at the corners of his eyes and at the edge of his lips. It seemed to me that he had aged since my last meeting with him in his laboratory and the observation distressed me, as if I had believed that in a changeful world the King alone was outside the reach of time.

"So," he said at last, "you did not play by the rules, Merivel."

"In the tennis, Sir?"

"No. Not in the tennis. With regard to your wife."

I looked down. I noticed that there was blood in my shoe, but did not know from what part of me it could possibly have come.

"I do not know what rule I have broken, Sir," I said quietly.

"I am surprised. Why were you chosen as Celia's husband, Merivel?"

"Because you knew that I would do anything you asked of me."

"That is true of very many people in our Kingdom. No, it was not for that. It was because, at one of our earliest meetings, you told me the story of the visible heart you had seen at Cambridge. You told me you
knew
that your own heart had no feeling whatsoever. And I believed you. Yet now I see that I should not have done, for it is by no means true."

There was a long silence. Silence, when one is in the presence of the King, seems a most fearful condition, and I felt hot and faint.

"Love was not asked of you, Merivel," the King said at length. "Indeed, it was the only thing forbidden you. But so soft and coddled and foolish have you become, you could not see that in the breaking of this rule you would, like old Adam, drive yourself out of Paradise."

"Out of Paradise?"

"Yes. For what is your role now? You cannot play Celia's husband any more because she refuses to set eyes on you ever again. Thus, in trying to
be
the thing you were charged with pretending to be, you have rendered yourself useless."

I looked out at the afternoon dusk that was settling upon the garden. Near a stone bench, I could make out the shadowy figure of Will, who, when darkness descended, would find himself lost.