Merivel A Man of His Time (24 page)

‘Good enough. Now,
permit me
to give you some orders. Lady Bathurst’s Nurse, Mrs McKinley, will be staying until Her Ladyship recovers sufficiently to be nursed by Agatha. Nurse McKinley made a very efficacious Potato Broth for Lady Bathurst last night, which calmed her digestion, so please ensure there is a plentiful supply of potatoes.’

‘There are always potatoes. The earth of Norfolk heaves with them.’

‘Good. I would also request that you make sustaining meals for Mrs McKinley …’

‘Irish, be she?’

‘Yes, she is originally from County Donegal.’

‘Then all she will need is potatoes. That be what they live on there.’

I stared at Chinery, a large, ageing, vexed-looking Norfolk man, who had had an unaccountable fondness for the old mad Earl and has not been happy in his work since Lord Bathurst’s death.

‘Pray do not assume,’ I said, ‘that Mrs McKinley will be happy to live on potatoes. Her nursing work will be arduous. She will need Meat and Bread and Fish and fruit and Ale. She must be kept strong.’

Chinery returned to his gazing out upon the stable yard, quite as though he had not heard me.

‘Chinery!’ I said sharply. ‘Please pay attention. I am very tired. I would like to take some Coddled eggs and bread and Coffee before I leave the Hall. Please make sufficient for Mrs McKinley, too, and send them up forthwith.’

I stayed just long enough to see Chinery turn and nod his assent. Then I strode out of the kitchen, attempting to hold my head high, and pleased I was not wearing a Sword, over which I might have tripped and fallen.

On my arrival home, longing to sleep, I was immediately taken aside by the King, who told me he had a Matter of great Importance to discuss with me.

At once my exhaustion fled and was replaced with a terrible agitation.

We repaired to the Library, where the King began pacing about, till I was giddy with his coming and going.

At last he halted and said: ‘I have decided, Merivel. I cannot stay at Bidnold any longer.’

My lips were dry and my voice weak as I asked: ‘Has anything
happened
while I have been away, Sir?’

‘No. Nothing has happened, except my Conscience has been pricked.’

‘May I ask by what, Your Majesty?’

‘By all that I am neglecting. I cannot go on in this vein. The Duke of York is right: things will come to ruin if I do. I am the King. I must return and govern.’

‘This is very sudden, Sir …’

‘Not really. Ever since my brother’s letter I have not felt at my ease. There is so much in the Land that seems to be falling apart for want of money. I must set about trying to raise it, by some means.’

‘How will you raise it, Sir?’

‘By further Loans from King Louis, I suppose. Unless some alternative can be conjured from the Air, or you yourself have an inexhaustible supply of half-crowns. Oh, but listen, Merivel, let us talk no more of it. Shall we not have one more happy evening at
dinner
and Shuttlecock games with the excellent Prideaux family before I depart? Will you invite them on Thursday?’

‘Yes …’

‘And perhaps, this time, Margaret will be strong enough to join in the play?’

‘I am not sure, Sir.’

‘I think she will be. She can play on my team. Now, tell me, Merivel, how is Lady Bathurst?’

We both sat down. I was yearning to see Margaret, but I was forced to remain with the King in the Library, to give an account of Violet’s operation.

He listened gravely. He said that he considered Violet Bathurst ‘an exceptional woman, of wondrously furious desire’. He asked me if she would survive the Cutting of the Cancer.

‘She may survive this, Sir,’ I said. ‘But the Cancer may return. I have, for the moment, done everything I can.’

It was then that I remembered the Box with the curl from St Peter’s head, and I fetched this and gave it to the King, and told him it was a gift from Violet for the Queen.

He lifted out the curl and sniffed it. Then he wound it round his long index finger and examined it.

‘I am most interested in the role of Superstition and Delusion in a human life,’ he said. ‘These things are very easy to deride, but I do not set them aside lightly. I have seen how the Queen is comforted by the Relics she has amassed. She kisses them with such passion! In her mind they are the Loving God made Manifest. It matters not that they may be some old knuckle bones from a Poorhouse graveyard in Kent, or a scrap of linen from a Bazaar in Egypt. What matters is what they are
to her
.’

‘I agree with you, Sir. Montaigne says that the end of Delusion may be the end of Joy.’

I was then moved to recount to the King how, long ago, the present of an Indian Nightingale in a gilded cage had been given to me, and how I was most moved and fascinated by this bird, and kept trying to get it to sing to me by playing my oboe to it.

‘But at length,’ I said, ‘comes my Friend John Pearce, the Quaker, and says to me, “Merivel you are a Dupe. That is not an Indian
Nightingale.
That is a common Blackbird with a few painted feathers!” And I saw that Pearce was right and that my beloved Indian Nightingale was no such thing – and nor, perhaps, does an Indian Nightingale exist at all on this Earth? But yet I had savoured my State of Delusion and the ending of it caused me much grief.’

‘Ah,’ said the King. ‘Of course. You had held Wonder in your hands and then you lost it.’

We both, then, were sunk in a silent, contagious Gloom. After a while the King replaced the curl from St Peter’s head on its blue velvet bed and closed the box and said, ‘The Queen will like this. I shall tell her that a Priest in Norwich – to which city, long ago, St Peter travelled and made friends with a Barber-Surgeon – put it into my hands.’

We laughed at this and then the King said: ‘All is in the
story
, Merivel. No artefact can come to its full significance without the telling of the tale.’

On Thursday evening the 23rd of May, came the Prideaux family and we all dressed ourselves in our finest Finery, and one of my French-adjusted satin coats, with its cascade of Shoulder-Ribbons, was both mocked and admired.

I had had a long talk with Cattlebury. He seemed somewhat chastened after his eating of the Cherries and ready to put his heart into a fine Banquet for the King’s last evening. A quantity of Trout was ordered, and Capons and Hazel Nuts, and a Shoulder of Mutton and other delicacies to which I knew the King to be partial, and some fine wines were brought up from the cellar.

The dinner was very successful and splendid. At my command a hundred candles had been lit, so that a veritable fire danced and flickered all around the room, and when I looked at all the faces lit by this fire, what I saw on them was happiness. Even on Will’s face, as he stood at his post behind the King’s chair, wearing Livery now far too big for his shrunken body, I noticed a foolish smile, which he was unable to suppress, except when he took up a plate from the Footman to set it before the King, and this he did with most morose Concentration.

Margaret was wearing a turquoise gown, with turquoise ribbons in
her
auburn hair. She seemed to blush a great deal, as though at her own beauty, and I marvelled that I, with my flat nose and my Hog’s Bristles and my fat, speckled stomach, could be father to such a lovely girl.

After Dinner, too weighed down by food and drink to play at Shuttlecock, we began on a game of Blind Man’s Buff in the Withdrawing Room and got great mirth from watching him or her who was the Blindfold Catcher staggering about on my carpet from Chengchow, while we ran and hid behind chairs and curtains, and called out taunts and provocations.

When it was the King’s turn to be the Catcher, he declared that he could recognise each one of us by our Smell and, because we could not hide from our own Perfume, it did indeed come about that he caught and identified us more quickly than any other Catcher, and I thought how it seems to be his gift to know people by their scent, or their gait or by their breathing, and sometimes to ascertain, with strange precision, what is in their minds.

When we were tired of the Buff, we made up two tables for Rummy, and a Mead was served with delicate Vanilla biscuits, crafted by Cattlebury, and it came about that Sir James Prideaux was revealed as a true Master of the game and outdid us all, and collected to himself a great pile of the ha’pennies for which we were playing.

‘Ah,’ said Sir James, laughing as he gathered up his money, ‘this is excellent! Now I shall afford to take us all into Cornwall once again, and this time, Margaret, you shall come with us.’

‘And see Puffins,’ said Penelope.

‘And collect Cowrie shells!’ said Mary.

‘But eat no shrimps!’ said Arabella.

Margaret blushed and smiled, but, to my surprise, said nothing. At this moment the King stood up and walked over to where Margaret sat, and raised her up by the hand, then bowed to me and said: ‘I did not tell you beforehand, Merivel, for fear that you would try to dissuade me, but I have suggested to Margaret that a place at Court be found for her and she has consented to come – if your blessing be given.’

I sat very still and suddenly cold in my chair, while all the Prideaux family gaped with wonder at this announcement.

‘Why …’ said Sir James, accidentally letting fall a cascade of his ha’pennies, ‘that is wonderful, Sir. Wonderful for Margaret … and for Sir Robert …’

‘The Duchess of Portsmouth has written to me,’ the King continued, ‘asking that a new young Lady-in-Waiting be found for her, so this seems to fit very nicely. I shall go to Whitehall tomorrow and set all in hand, as to lodgings and Allowances and so forth, and then, if her Father is willing, Margaret will come to London at the beginning of June. May I assume your consent, Merivel?’

Everybody looked over towards me. Only little Penelope, I think, understood what I was feeling, for she came to me and solemnly took my hand in hers.

Still holding Penelope’s hand, I stood up and bowed to the King. ‘I am honoured. This is … a great Honour,’ I said. But my voice came out very thinly, as though I might have been choking on a Parsnip. ‘But you will not be offended, I trust, if I feel obliged to ask Margaret to say – before Your Majesty and before all the Company here assembled – whether it is an honour she truly wishes to accept.’

The room fell silent. The hour was late and what candles were still alight dripped, with a steady ooze, into their sconces.

‘I do,’ said Margaret.

I stand in thin moonlight by Clarendon’s compound and look for him in the near darkness. I can hear him breathing, but I cannot see him.

Then I feel a Shadow at my side and I know that it is Pearce.

‘Well,’ he says in his ghostly voice, ‘what are you going to do, Merivel?’

‘There is nothing I can do,’ I reply.

I hear Pearce sigh – or perhaps it is the sighing of Clarendon, or the sighing of the Ash trees in the Bear’s Stockade …

‘This bitter night had to come,’ whispers Pearce. ‘The King will betray you now.’

Part Three

The Great Consolation

19

MARGARET HAS GONE
.

I accompanied her to London and saw her installed in the Duchess of Portsmouth’s apartments in Whitehall Palace.

Margaret’s room is not a dark attic space, like Celia’s, but a spacious chamber, with a high bed hung with blue Brocade, and a carved mahogany fireplace, and a table laid out with silver Brushes and Combs. I stood at the window of this room and looked down upon what she was going to see each day, and I saw in a little courtyard a stone fountain in the shape of a Nymph, pouring the water from an Amphora, and the sight of this innocent figure gladdened my heart. In the basin of the fountain there were some bright golden fish, swimming around the feet of the Nymph.

The Duchess of Portsmouth, the King’s beloved ‘Fubbs’, came to us and was very gracious and kind to us, and took Margaret in her arms and kissed her, and told her that her life would henceforth be a beautiful life. And I could see that Margaret believed her, and was full of joy and excitement, and I did not want to disturb this happiness by showing the Fears and Suspicions that still crawled in my mind.

Fubbs may lead a ‘beautiful life’, but she is not a beautiful woman, and this lack of beauty in her only augmented my agitation that the King could look to my daughter for Satisfaction – or had already done so. Fubbs is short and plump, with big eyes in a round face and a little beaky nose. She reminded me of a Wood Pigeon. I said to the Wood Pigeon: ‘Margaret is all I have.’

She came and took my hand and said: ‘The women in my care are my little ducklings and I am their tender Mother Duck.’

And I laughed to hear her choose a bird metaphor, when I had just labelled her a Pigeon, and at this moment the King appeared and we all fell into our bows and curtseys, and I felt my heavy Sword jangling about me, like a loose bridle bit on a horse, and the King said to his Fubbsy: ‘Margaret taught me to play Rummy. Now I am very good at it. She will teach you, if you are nice to her.’

The King was wearing a sober brown coat and looked tired, and his limp seemed to have grown more pronounced since he left Bidnold. To me he said:

‘I miss Norfolk, Merivel. How is Clarendon?’

‘As ever he is, Sir,’ I said. ‘He is lonely.’

He looked at me with tenderness. ‘You will be lonely, now that I have stolen Margaret from you,’ he said, ‘so what are you going to do?’

I did not know how to reply. The echo of Pearce’s ghostly words I heard in this question troubled me for a moment. But more than this, I had not been able to think what I
would
do, beyond grieving for Margaret. I had had an image of myself, standing at the Bear’s compound for hour upon hour, watching the animal’s sad perambulations round the Stockade fence, but not knowing how to improve his lot, or mine. But then I heard myself say: ‘I have an invitation to travel to Switzerland, Your Majesty.’

‘Ah,’ said the King. ‘Very good. But can you be certain that no Giraffes will come there?’

‘Giraffes!’ said Fubbs. ‘
Que voulez-vous dire?
’