Merivel A Man of His Time (27 page)

‘Ah,’ said Ambrose. ‘Well, we had no other way but to beg our Relatives to take us in. We parted ways, with much sorrow to leave each other and for the failure of our endeavour, and went back into the world. I went to my Brother’s house in Ely. And by and by, I was able to get a little Trade begun. I will show you the fruits of it in my wagon, if you have the time to give me …’

It was now that the Library door opened and Will entered. He bowed to Ambrose. He shuffled towards my chair and announced, almost inaudibly: ‘A Messenger has arrived, Sir. From the King.’

‘Not now, Will,’ I hissed.

Will cleared his throat and said again, more loudly, ‘Begging your pardon, Sir Robert, but there is a Messenger from His Majesty who craves your presence.’

‘Ask him to wait, Will,’ I said.

Will looked at me in cross-eyed perplexity. Then, not knowing what to say to me, he reached out and held on to the back of a Settle, to steady himself to turn and walk out again.

To my consternation, Ambrose made as if to rise and said: ‘Do not let me detain you, if you have an important message …’

‘No, no,’ said I, ‘it is nothing important. It will be some little matter … erm … to do with Giraffes for St James’s Park …’

‘Giraffes?’

‘Yes, that is what it will be. Giraffes from King Louis of France. I was lately at Versailles and promised His Majesty I would procure at least one for his Menagerie at St James’s. Please sit down, Ambrose, and continue with your story. And Will, kindly inform the King’s Messenger, that the Giraffe matter is in hand and serve him some of this excellent Chocolate.’

Will, now almost at the door, swayed with drunken Confusion. But, pausing only to scratch his old head, he went obediently out.

Offering Ambrose more Lardy Cake, I settled myself to hear the rest of his tale. He had barely begun upon this when the Library door opened again and my Footman came in, bearing a letter, which he laid beside me, and when I saw the Post Mark ‘Helvetica’ upon it, my heart lurched: the letter was from Louise! Realising this, I could
not
prevent myself from staring at the letter on the table beside me, so urgent was my longing to read its contents.

Ambrose had fallen silent. Now, he rose and said: ‘I see I have come at a bad time, Robert. Messengers and Letters need all your attention. Let me trouble you no longer.’

‘No, no!’ I said. ‘Business can wait. These are trifling matters, but your visit is not trifling. You said you had some things to show me in your wagon. Why do we not go and look at these now?’

Placing Louise’s letter in the pocket of my coat, already feeling a kind of warmth radiating from it into my hand, I followed Ambrose out into the drive.

Here, he folded back the canvas flaps of his wagon and what I saw, standing shoulder to shoulder like little trees in the cart, was great quantity of Dovecotes, painted all in different colours and with different designs to their roofs and nesting holes.

‘My word, Ambrose!’ I said. ‘How did you come by so many Dovecotes?’

Ambrose reached in, took down one of them and set it on the gravel. It was painted white and it was, I had to admit, an object of some beauty, and reminded me all at once of the white doves, which still came to settle on the roof of my precious West Tower at Bidnold.

Ambrose’s hand caressed its roof, which was made of Reed thatch. ‘I make them,’ he said. ‘With my last farthing, when I had my shelter at Ely with my brother, I bought cheap wood and began to fashion small things from it: bowls and ladles and simple boxes, and these I sold in the Market.

‘And people told me my work was fair. So I began upon designs for other things, but what I longed to make was these; I cannot tell you why.’

‘You longed to make them because they are beautiful.’

‘Yes, they are. And they have saved me. I live upon these. I no longer try to bring Souls to God. I bring birds to a place of refuge. I suppose it is a very small thing.’

21

I BOUGHT THREE
dovecotes from Ambrose. The white one I kept for myself. The other two were painted a sweet grey-green and I intended to make gifts of them, in due time, to Violet Bathurst and to the King.

Before he left, I asked Ambrose to tell me a little of what had become of Eleanor, Hannah and Daniel.

‘Oh,’ said Ambrose. ‘Well, their hearts were locked into our work at Whittlesea. You remember how dedicated they were to our Cause. When that Cause failed, they could not find any other thing to do, and before ten years had gone by, both Daniel and Hannah passed away.’

‘They died? Even as young as they were?’

‘They did, alas.’

‘Died of what, Ambrose?’

‘Of nothing in particular. Nothing that I know of. Merely that they – even as devout Quakers – could not find in themselves the means to continue, for all their True Endeavour had been taken away.’

‘Ah. The terror of finding that life no longer has any Meaning! How much I fear that state. And Eleanor?’

‘She found a good man to marry – a Quaker farmer. And they live from the earth and have raised a beautiful child. That is all I know.’

‘I am happy for her. She would have made a good mother. She was a kindly “mother” to me often enough!’

Ambrose made no comment upon this, but turned and began searching again in his wagon. He then put into my hands a leather bag, which I immediately recognised.

It had belonged to Pearce. Indeed, it had been a
gift
from me to him, long ago when we were both medical students at Cambridge and he a poor Sizar (forced to wait upon the Master and Fellows at table, to pay his way) with no money to his name and nothing in which to carry around his Work. I remembered that he used to wear the bag hanging round his neck, as though it might have been a horse’s Nosebag and all the Learning in it so much Hay, and the sight of him thus draped about used to give me much mirth.

‘When we left Whittlesea,’ said Ambrose, ‘I found this at the bottom of an old cupboard in what was once Pearce’s room. His clothes, such as they were, we had given to our Charges, but this remained where it lay. There is a book in the pouch, by Hieronymus Fabricius—’

‘Ah, the Great Fabricius!’

‘Yes. But a strange work:
De brutorum loquela
, published in Padua. Perhaps you know it?’

‘I know
of
it. The subject is interesting. Aristotle says in the
Politics
that Man is the only animal with the gift of Speech, but this is at least open to Question, and I imagine Fabricius is questioning it here.’

‘My Latin is not good enough to read it. I said to Eleanor and Hannah, “It should be given to Robert. It is what John would have wanted.”’

‘I am not certain about that, Ambrose,’ I said. ‘I expect you will remember that all John gave me, when he knew he was about to depart this world, was his soup ladle.’

‘Which you put into his grave …’

‘I did.’

‘So now you have a treatise on the Language of Beasts. And the leather bag, though it is old, has the Stamp of Austell’s of Cambridge, so it is surely well made.’

‘I know it is. I bought it for John.’

‘Ah. Well, now it returns to you. Generosity sometimes moves in a circular direction.’

Ambrose departed in his wagon. He left me with regret in my heart that I had not been more hospitable nor made something more of the visit. And though I had paid him well for the dovecotes, I knew that he was disappointed too, and as he drove away he turned on me a look of Severity. His horse had been neither fed nor watered.

*

Louise’s letter, which I had been so impatient to read that I had rudely cut short my time with Ambrose, lies on the floor. My lunch of Boiled Tongue and Carrots, for which I have no appetite, lies on its tray, congealing.

I close my eyes. I yearn for Oblivion. But certain sentences in the letter keep returning to my mind: ‘
I can only conclude, from your Silence, that what passed between us was of no real consequence to you
.’ ‘
I therefore think it best to consign our fleeting Amours to History.’ ‘Though I suggested you might come to me here in Switzerland, I see now that this Invitation was too hastily made, and so I must withdraw it
.’

Now I lie in bed, sipping Laudanum, my only Consolation.

Bitterly I reproach myself that I had not replied to Louise’s letter but, Captive as I was, first to Margaret’s illness and then to the King’s presence in my house, I had truly been unable to travel to Louise – even in my mind. I had foolishly assumed that she would somehow comprehend this from afar and wait out the months until I could come to her again. But I had been wrong. She had not comprehended it. How could she? She had known nothing of what was occurring. And so, being hurt by my neglect, she had decided to let me slip away.

On being told that I have eaten no lunch, Will comes to my room and stares reproachfully at the Laudanum jar.

‘You will be sick again, Sir Robert,’ he says.

‘I do not care,’ I say. ‘Indeed, I care about nothing on this Earth. It is certainly time that I left it.’

Will fusses with my coverlet, trying to straighten it. ‘I remember that you uttered some Foolery about dying long ago,’ he says, ‘but you were in the Dining Room and I said to you, “Do not die here, Sir. It is not seemly. If you are determined to die, pray go somewhere else.”’

‘I am not in the Dining Room now, Will. I am in my Bed. This is as good a place as any.’

‘Well, if you must, Sir,’ says the impudent Will and goes out at once, leaving me to my fate, without any attempt to cajole me from it. I am stung by his sudden and unexpected Indifference. Stung to my core. Awash with self-pity, I fall asleep at last.

I slept for twenty hours and woke feeling much restored, despite some clumsy dreams of Giraffes rampaging about my park.

After a hearty breakfast of Porridge, followed by Bacon and Muffins, washed down with a little Ale, I gathered up the pages of Louise’s letter, took them to the Library and began to write as follows:

My dear Louise
,

Oh what a wretch I am! But how much more wretched is this wretch made by your harsh words!

May you not forgive me?

I pray you, listen to what I shall relate. My life, through Winter and Spring, was thrown into bitter confusion by the Severe Illness of my daughter Margaret, whom I helped to nurse through many weeks of agony, before, at last, she returned to Health and Life. It was all I could do to live out each day without Despair, to come only to short nights, full of Agony and Terror and I had neither Time nor Space
…

I had got thus far, buoyant upon the notion that this letter might turn everything round in Louise’s heart, when my Footman announced the arrival of a servant from Bathurst Hall, who urgently requested to see me.

I asked that he be shown into the Library. By his sombre face I could tell that he had bad news for me and he blurted out that Lady Bathurst had been ‘struck down with Pain in her side and terrible Vomiting, and all she can say is that you must go to her at once’.

Reluctantly I set aside my letter. As I did so, I began to wonder whether the world was not, in some guise, conspiring against me, interrupting me at every turn to prevent me from seeing Louise ever again. But now I had no choice but to go to Violet.

I gathered together my Medical Instruments and such as remained of the Opium grains after my quaffings of Laudanum, and followed Violet’s servant to his coach, telling the Coachman to stop in Bidnold Village at the house of Mrs McKinley to collect her on our way.

Thankful for my long sleep, which had left my mind clear, I now attempted to deduce, from the scant information that I had, what might be happening to Violet. I knew from my studies that a Cancer, though cut out from one part of the body, may sometimes mysteriously recur in another part, and that this second coming of Cancer may be more fatal than the first. When Mrs McKinley climbed into
the
coach I said to her: ‘We must pray this is but some slight infection and not a return of any Tumour.’

To my dismay, Mrs McKinley said: ‘If you ask me, Sir Rabbit, ’tis a likely Return, or rather a Spreading, for to tell the truth, Lady Bathurst has never truly rallied since we took the Breast tumours out of her.’

And then I thought, it is not only Louise I have neglected; I have been so occupied with Margaret’s going away to Court, and then with the loss of my Bear, that I have neglected everything and everyone else. I should have visited Violet many times, but I did not. And I thought how, whatever is neglected by man soon enough sickens or departs, and I said to Mrs McKinley: ‘I see what these times are: they are a Time of Leaving.’

‘Pray ’tis not so,’ said the kindly Irishwoman. ‘Pray to Our Lady, Sir Rabbit.’

The moment I saw Violet I knew that she was dying.

Her eyes, once so very beautiful, seemed to have retreated into her skull, as though trying to escape from seeing what was before them. Her cheeks were sunken, blueish in colour from the shadow of the cheekbone upon their poor cavity. Her thin hands clawed at the sheet.

‘Lord-a-Mercy,’ whispered Mrs McKinley, when we came into the room. ‘You were right, Sir. See how she claws …’

I went to the bedside and sat down. The grey cat was in the room, but had retreated to one of the window seats, as though it knew that some Catastrophe had befallen its Mistress. Mrs McKinley stood a little apart, at the bed’s end. Violet looked up at me ardently, like one who is praying, and said in a faint, beleaguered voice: ‘Merivel, now all is sorrow.’

I took her hand in mine and caressed it. For the moment I could find no words of consolation. After a little while I said: ‘Where is the pain?’

‘Entire,’ said Violet.

‘You mean that it is everywhere?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs McKinley now began to unpack my instrument bag. She took
out
the small glass Beakers I use for Cupping – burning the skin with their heated edges, so as to raise blisters on it, through which much poison may sometimes come out. I do not like performing this Cupping, for that it causes yet more suffering to the Patient, but I have also noted its beneficial qualities of Distraction, as well as of Evacuation. While the pain of the burning lasts, other symptoms may be masked by this.