Merivel A Man of His Time
Read Merivel A Man of His Time Online
Authors: Rose Tremain
Contents
PART THREE
: The Great Consolation
PART FOUR
: The Great Transition
About the Book
The gaudy years of the Restoration are long gone. Robert Merivel, renowned physician and courtier to Charles II, loved for his ability to turn sorrow into laughter, now faces the agitations and anxieties of middle age. Questions crowd his mind: has he been a good father? Is he a fair master? Is he the King’s friend or the King’s slave?
In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles – all glitter in front and squalor behind – leaves Merivel in despair, until a chance encounter with Madame de Flamanville, a seductive Swiss botanist, allows him to dream of an honourable future.
But will that future ever be his? Back home at Bidnold Manor, his loyalty and medical skill are tested to their limits, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause unlooked-for havoc in his heart and on his estate.
With a cascade of lace at his neck and a laugh that can burst out of him in the midst of torment, Merivel is a uniquely brilliant creation, soulful, outrageous and achingly sad. He is Everyman. His unmistakable, self-mocking voice speaks directly to us down the centuries.
About the Author
Rose Tremain’s bestselling novels have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (
The Road Home
), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (
Music and Silence
), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger (
Sacred Country
). Restoration was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989 and made into a film in 1995. Her short story, ‘Moth’, was also filmed (as the award-winning
Ricky
) by François Ozon in 2009. Her most recent novel,
Trespass
, was a Richard and Judy Bookclub Choice. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.
Also by Rose Tremain
Novels
Sadler’s Birthday
Letter to Sister Benedicta
The Cupboard
The Swimming Pool Season
Restoration
Sacred Country
The Way I Found Her
Music and Silence
The Colour
The Road Home
Trespass
Short Story Collections
The Colonel’s Daughter
The Garden of the Villa Mollini
Evangelista’s Fan
The Darkness of Wallis Simpson
For Children
Journey to the Volcano
For Penny, of course, with love
Part One
The Great Enormity
1
ON THIS DAY
, which is the Ninth day of November in the year 1683, a most singular thing has occurred.
I was taking my habitual midday dinner (of boiled chicken with carrots and small ale) when my Manservant, Will, came into my Dining Room at Bidnold Manor, bearing in his gnarled old hands a package, wrapped in torn paper and bound with faded ribbon. He placed this object at my right hand, thus causing a cloud of dust to puff onto my plate of food.
‘Take care, Will,’ said I, feeling all my breath drawn in and then expelled in such an almighty sneeze that it flecked the tablecloth with tiny morsels of carrot. ‘What is this Relic?’
‘I do not know, Sir Robert,’ said Will, attempting a dispersal of the dust, by waving his misshapen fingers back and forth.
‘You do not know? But how has it arrived in the house?’
‘Chambermaid, Sir.’
‘You got it from one of the maids?’
‘Found under your mattress.’
I wiped my mouth and blew my nose (with a striped, very faded dinner napkin once given to me by the King) and laid my hands upon the parcel, which, in truth, appeared like a thing purloined from some Pharaoh’s Tomb, far down in the dry earth. I would have questioned Will further about its unlikely provenance and the reason of its sudden discovery on this particular day, but Will had already turned and was embarked on his slow and limping return journey from the dining table to the door, and to have called him back might well have occasioned some physical Catastrophe, which I had no heart to risk.
Alone once more, I tugged at the ribbon, noting some stains upon it, as of Mouse or Fly droppings, and the notion that some creature might have had its whole lowly existence beneath my mattress caused me a brief moment of amusement.
Then I had the package open and saw before me a thing so long forgotten by me, I think it would never have come back into my mind of its own accord by any means.
It was a Book. Rather, it had once aspired to the immortal status of a Book, but never did acquire any such immortality, but only remained a collation of pages, written in my inky, looping hand. Long ago, in the year 1668, when I returned here at last to Bidnold Manor, I contemplated destroying this Book, but I did not. I gave it to Will – with the instruction to consign it in some hiding-place of his own choosing and to contrive to forget where that hiding-place might be.
The pages contained the story of my Former Life. I had set down this story at a time of great confusion in the last years of my fourth decade, when I felt for the first time the radiance of King Charles II fall upon my insignificant shoulders.
I had hoped the writing of it would enable me to understand what role I might play in my profession as a Physician, in my country and in the world. But though in all my frenzied Scribblings I believed myself to be moving towards some kind of Wisdom, I cannot now recall that I ever arrived there. I was driven from place to place like a hungry dog. It was a time of marvels and glories, crammed with sorrows. And now, to read my own words and see this Life again unfold before me, brought to my heart an almost unbearable overload of Feeling.
I take up the Book and go to my Library. I lay the Book on my escritoire and attend to the feebly burning fire, placing more logs upon it and exhorting it to remember why it was lit – and that reason was to warm me. But I am still shivering. I wonder whether I shall send again for Will who, from long and weary habit, has a knack for coaxing flames into life. But in these late times of the 1680s, when I am approaching my fifty-seventh birthday, I am more and more reluctant to assign to Will any task whatsoever, owing to his extreme age (seventy-four years) and his many Infirmities.
Indeed, the whole Question of Will is one which hugely vexes me, for I do clearly see that, in regard to this faithful Servant of mine, I am caught in a very painful Trap.
I have known William Gates (ever and always called ‘Will’ by me) since the year 1664 when the King gifted to me the Order of the Garter, together with my Norfolk Estates. These Rewards I got for an important service I had rendered His Majesty, which changed utterly the course of my life.
Will came into my household, along with my cook, Cattlebury, in that same year and, in all my many joys and tribulations, never for one moment showed me anything but loyalty and consideration of the most touching order.
Though my interior Decorations were, at one time, very loud and vulgar, Will pretended his admiration for them. Though I myself behaved towards my young wife Celia in ways loathsome to her and to the world, never at any moment did Will throw me the least glance of sorrow or reproach. And when I and my beloved house had, for some years, to part company, on account of my innumerable follies, Will became its de facto guardian, faithfully writing to me with News of the comings and goings within it, and of the changing colours in the park, as some several seasons passed. In short, no man could have had by his side for almost twenty years a more admirable, loyal, honest and hard-working Servant.
Now, however, Will’s body and mind are much decayed. Though I pay him handsomely, he is no longer able to perform to any satisfactory degree the Tasks about my house and person for which he receives his money. He cannot walk without his knees bend outwards and his spine curves over, like the spine of a little rat, so that his progress across any room is most painful and slow. When attempting to carry any Article, whether a tureen of soup or a tankard of ale, he is like to let it fall and smash or spill, for that his hands have some Disease of Curvature and cannot fasten themselves securely round an object.
Other afflictions are come upon him, viz. Forgetfulness, near-Blindness and a Deafness, which I fancy may be dictated more by Whim than by any true loss of hearing. For if I give Will an order that he does not relish, such as that of accompanying me on one of
my
visits to my Patients, he affects not to hear a word that I have uttered, whereas any command that is to his liking he obeys without question or hesitation.
He has become very fearful of the world beyond the gates of Bidnold. Where, once upon a memorable time, he came with me by fast coach to London and waited patiently in the gardens at Whitehall while I endured an encounter with the King which almost broke my heart, and Will’s too, now he keeps close within the house and is barely to be seen taking the air of the park, ‘lest,’ he says to me one day, ‘it give me a bitter Winter Ague, Sir Robert, or that I might trip upon a grassy tussock and break my Shin and fall, and be not able to raise myself up and lie undiscovered till night come, or morning, when frost or snow obliterate me quite.’
‘Ah, is that what you think of me, Will,’ say I to this, ‘that I would leave you lying alone and wounded under the stars or out in the snow?’
‘Well, I do, Sir,’ says he, ‘for the reason that you would not
know
of my falling, for I am a Servant, Sir Robert, and have practised the Art of Invisibility for these twenty years, so that the sight of me, whether upright or lying down, be never troubling to you.’