Merivel A Man of His Time (20 page)

She brushed my lips with her hand. ‘Thank you, Merivel,’ she said, ‘and for giving me the King. What delights I have always found under this roof!’

Then she drove away in her carriage and I returned to my Porridge, which was cold, and to Margaret, who was very subdued and quiet.

‘I have made a decision,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow I shall resume, in some measure, just for an hour or two, the rounds of my Patients. Will you entertain the King, if he should request any entertainment, while I am gone?’

‘Yes,’ said Margaret. ‘Shall I teach him to play Rummy?’

My unfortunate Patients …

For a long time they had been at the mercy of Dr Murdoch, whom I have known since my Days of Folly. He is old now, and from his nose and ears sprout vigorous hairs, like rats’ whiskers and I pity the recumbent Sick, who are forced to contemplate these whiskers and be repulsed by them, and fear the scratching or pricking of them, as Dr Murdoch bends down towards the bed.

Though, like Pearce and myself, Murdoch once worked at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, he did not last long there and he has
never,
by my measurement, been a bona fide Physician, but merely stumbled through his life in a stupor of half-knowledge, dispensing this or that remedy at his ignorant whim.

He is prone to muddling one Patient with another. To a man who had lost a great quantity of blood from inadvertently tripping over his own feet and falling onto his scythe while haymaking, what does Murdoch do but let
more
blood, misremembering him for a patient with choleric seizures – for the only reason that both men were large and bald. And so the scythed man dies, having almost no blood left in his body, and his poor wife says to me, ‘It were the Doctor that killed him and no mistake.’ But she has no money nor status in the world and so can bring no Suit against him.

Murdoch has got very rich on his paltry skills and by pursuing his Patients to the grave, and beyond, for his payments. He has built himself a fine house at Walsham and acts as though he were a lord, demanding Deference from all and sundry, and disliking me very intensely, for that I am an Intimate of the King and Murdoch very prone to jealousy.

In recent times, Murdoch has been assisted by a younger man, Dr Sims, who was called to Margaret when she first fell ill at Sir James’s house. Neither he nor Murdoch understood that she had Typhus, so I conclude that this Sims, too, is a Know-nothing fool, scarce better than the old rat-man. And I remember Pearce often saying to me that half the Physicians in England were imbeciles, and that this was a great tragedy for the people.

‘Do you include me in the Imbecile Category?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Pearce. ‘On the contrary. You are a very fine Physician – when you give your mind to it.’

I set out with these thoughts turning in my brain, and guilt in my heart for my abandonment of so many of the sick and needy all through the bitter winter. I hoped that word had spread of Margaret’s illness and that I would be forgiven on account of it.

The first Patient I visited was a Wool Merchant named Mr Percival Maybury, whose one great affliction – and that, he said, blighting his whole life – was his abiding Constipation, and because all his thoughts turned, day by day, upon the making of a good stool to relieve the
pain
in his bowel, his Wool business was neglected and going down towards ruin.

He had grown very thin. He told me that Dr Murdoch had prescribed Clysters of bitter almonds, but that these ‘produced stools that are black and burning’ and causing him great agony as they passed out of him. And so he now forbade himself to eat, almost, so much did he fear the blocked passage of food in his gut.

‘This will not do, Mr Maybury,’ I said. ‘We must find some other remedy.’

In previous times I had tried Clysters of Turpentine for him, and these would bring him ‘great relief’ for a while and then, I know not why, cease to have any effect whatsoever. I now told him that I had been told of an excellent device to sluice out foul matter and this was called an Enema Pump, made of a Sheep’s bladder, attached to a carefully sewn leather Pipe, and the bladder filled with salted water and squeezed into the anus through the Pipe, with a force that sent the liquid up the large intestine. And when, in time, it forced itself out again, why then, all the stools followed its downrush and came out with no hurt or strain.

Percival Maybury looked marvellously cheered by this and asked me how he could come by such an instrument. I told him that I would ask my Apothecary in Norwich to procure one for him.

Meanwhile I advised him to eat Oatmeal and peas, this diet – to my certain knowledge – having a very loosening effect upon the bowel. And I recounted to the poor Wool Merchant the flavour of my time at Versailles, in my shabby room with Hollers and drinking water from the garden fountains, and this made him laugh exceedingly and I was cheered, because I know that in laughter may reside Forgiveness.

I proceeded on to an asthmatic Patient, Mr Joshua Phipps, once a Moneylender and Pawnbroker, but now forced to stay out of every city for fear of the vitiated air and what it did to his breath. Yet Moneylenders cannot prosper unless they be visible, and people see their Sign and come to beg loans or to trade their pitiful possessions for coins, and so Phipps, like Maybury, grieved both over his bodily state and over his failing enterprise.

‘I am doing battle with fear, Dr Merivel,’ he told me. ‘I cannot
conquer
my Asthma, but I am endeavouring to conquer my
fear
of it, testing myself to see how long I can last without breath till I inhale my Mint Balsam and get some air into my lungs. Now, by virtue of practice, I can endure
two minutes
.’

‘Two is heroic,’ said I. ‘I am sure that I could not last one minute.’

‘Fear constricts,’ he said. ‘Fear begins in the throat. Perhaps, if I can truly banish my terror, then I will banish the disease.’

I replied that I thought this an admirable aspiration, but meanwhile conjured for him my sea voyage to France, and how the briny air had filled me with gladness and seemed to rinse me clean of some foul Humours.

‘When summer comes,’ I said, ‘why do you not get a boat from Harwich or Felixstowe, and stay on the deck and breathe, trying to fill your lungs with the West Wind?’

He looked at me gravely. ‘I have never been inclined to go to sea,’ he said. ‘I prefer the company of dry things: Bills of Sale and Money Orders and nicely written Receipts.’

I then rode on to Bathurst Hall.

This house is very large and was once the scene of some Mad Revels, with a black Stallion being led into the Dining Room and shitting everywhere, and all the Fops mad with laughter and lust, and old Lord Bathurst himself rolling on the floor, shrieking out his half-witted nonsense, and Violet pirouetting on the table, and then everybody singing and copulating in corners or puking and falling asleep in the mess, and all the poor Servants toiling back and forth to try to clean everything up.

When I think of this time, I feel a blush creeping up my cheeks, especially at the prolonged and immodest couplings I enjoyed with Violet in various Corners of the house and even on the stairs, as we crawled to bed, like dogs. Never, I think, have I known any woman quite as wanton, deep in her soul, as Violet Bathurst, and she led me on to great extremes of licentiousness. Had Pearce witnessed one
half
of what I did with her, his heart would surely have ceased long before it did.

Now I was shown once more to her Bedchamber, a room I knew well, but which seemed, suddenly, to have become very dark, with
heavy
drapery drawn across the windows and stinking of Oil from the lamps that guttered near to Violet’s bed.

She lay there, stroking a grey cat, with her grey hair coiled in a heavy plait and her face pale, yet painted with two spots of Rouge on her cheekbones. And when I saw her like this, what I felt was a terrible Pity for the passing of time, which had taken away her beauty and my lust, and left us as the mere husks of what we had once been.

I tried to make my countenance cheerful. I felt glad that, if she were indeed dying, she had had at least one night with the greatest lover in the land. And when she saw me she was immediately drawn to tell me how fine her night had been and how the King’s mouth was still ‘of a great voluptuousness and brought me to Pleasures deep as an ocean, Merivel, deeper than any that you gave me, so that I almost lost consciousness’ and how His Majesty’s prick was ‘as large and silky as any woman could dream of’.

‘Good,’ I said weakly. ‘I am very glad, Violet …’

‘Do you not wish to hear more, Merivel?’

‘Is there more to tell?’

‘Yes indeed, for he is a lover of wondrously new Positions. Do you not wish to hear about these?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not particularly in the mood for hearing about them. And I must return to Bidnold very shortly. I have left the King in Margaret’s care.’

‘Oh,’ said Violet. ‘That is very unwise. For he will surely make love to her.’

‘
What
did you say?’

‘Well, I merely stated what should be obvious to you. Margaret is now a very pretty young woman. Why should the King not try—’

‘Hush, Violet!’ I burst out. ‘Do not say such a terrible thing. The King is my friend and will not ravage my daughter while I am gone to visit my Patients.’

‘How do you know?’ retorted Violet. ‘It was plain to me within five minutes of arriving at your house that he intended to take me to bed. He cannot help himself, and now, I warrant, he will
help himself
to Margaret!’

‘Stop!’ I said, putting my hand over Violet’s mouth. ‘Or I shall leave. D’you wish to show me your infernal Lump or not?’

Obediently she now pretended a great Contrition, kissing my hand and stroking it with her lips. Then she lay back on the pillows, holding the cat to her for comfort, and looked up into my eyes with a most piteous expression.

I waited a moment, trying to calm the agitation in my breast. Gently I raised Violet’s arm. Then I reached out for one of the lamps, and brought it near to the arm and saw by its yellow light the ‘Thing’ she had described to me, where her left breast descended to her armpit. It was purplish and a little shiny, and hard when I touched it, and I saw at once that it did indeed have the appearance of a Cancer and not a Cyst, as I had hoped.

I felt very keenly the quietness of the room, disturbed only by the purring of the grey cat and my laboured breathing. I took up my Instrument case and selected a sharp needle, with which I made a quick stab into the Thing, causing Violet to scream with pain and the cat to fly from the room.

‘I am sorry to hurt you,’ I said. ‘If this is a Cyst, then the liquid will now begin flow out from it. Bear the pain for a moment longer and we shall see …’

But no liquid came out when I withdrew the needle. What it had probed was a solid, fleshy thing. I hated the sight of it. I wanted to take up my Scalpel and cut it out there and then, but I knew that the agony of this would be too terrible to bear without a great quantity of Opium, and that I would need a Nurse to hold the patient down and to help stem the bleeding.

Where the needle had entered a little Blood was let and I wished I had some of Louise’s Salve to soothe the wound I had made. I laid a square of muslin on it and kept my hand there, to hold it in place awhile.

‘Well, Doctor?’ said Violet. ‘Am I dying, or not?’

‘I will cut the Cancer out,’ I said. ‘It is not large. You will not die of so small a thing.’

‘Ah,’ said Violet, ‘and yet I feel that I am dying. Why should that be?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Will the King die, Merivel? He told me last night that he sometimes felt himself to be immortal.’

‘The King will die,’ said I. ‘But I do not wish to see it. I shall endeavour to die first.’

Great agitation was still in my heart as I started for home. The idea Violet had put into my mind, that the King might seduce my daughter, had wounded me as fatally as any Cancer.

As I travelled towards Bidnold, I felt a sickness rise in my stomach, so that I had to rein in my horse and dismount and vomit up my breakfast by the side of the road. I stood there, shivering and afraid. An image of my poor wife, Celia, in her attic room with her needlework and an old Crone for company, visited my mind and distressed it further. I leaned against my horse for a moment, to feel the warmth of it. Then I rode on.

16

TWO LETTERS CAME
to me at this time.

The first was from my Dutch friend, Hollers. He wrote to tell me that when he had quite used up all his provisions – including those few jars of peas I had left behind when I departed so suddenly for Paris – and had almost no money left and saw no way to live but to return to Holland, his clock had at last been returned to him.

A Note, in Madame de Maintenon’s cultured hand, had informed him that his clock ‘will not serve, Monsieur Hollers, for that it advances by more than one minute per diem on the Time told by the Chapel clock. It is thus
stealing Time
from God, at the rate of eight or nine minutes per week, and God has much Work to do; He does not like Any Moment to be taken from Him.’

So alas
, Hollers wrote,
all my endeavours at Versailles have come to nothing. All the Time (that capricious commodity!) which you and I spent imagining my Future was vainly wasted. I am back in my Shoppe in my own city, and when I look around me, I see, on the sudden, that this Shoppe is a poor place and all my Timepieces, made with such loving care, give me no pride nor pleasure at all. I do not even bother to dust them any more. I shall never be Famous, Merivel! My chance of Fame is gone! I shall moulder to nothing, here on the dull Canal-side. Oh, tell me, my friend, what I am to do! I am at pains to go on with my Life in any way at all
.

Sadness on Hollers’s account made me melancholy. Though I knew that being back in Amsterdam could not possibly be a more agonising Test of Endurance than our terrible habitation at Versailles, I could
nevertheless
imagine the Clockmaker grinding his molars in frustration and sorrow.