Merivel A Man of His Time (35 page)

‘Gravity?’ I sigh, buttoning my breeks as hastily as I can. ‘Well, indeed, this is a Grave matter, Beck. I do not mind telling you that I really do not wish to die.’

‘I understand. This why I am sent here. To tell you that you do not need to die.’

I sit down on the bed. I note that it is still dark outside my window. Beck approaches and stands with one hand on the bedpost.

‘Are you telling me that the duel is cancelled?’

‘No. It is not cancelled. But it is not you who will be killed; it is the Colonel.’

‘Capitaine Beck,’ I say, ‘why do you not sit down? Then you can explain to me calmly what it is you mean.’

Beck selects a tapestry-covered fauteuil, but does not relax into it but sits leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘Can we be overheard in this room?’ he asks.

‘No, I do not think so. The walls are stone.’

‘Very well. I will tell you. The Colonel came here to the Château, knowing that you were in residence with his wife, to
invite
a duel. The duel is what he wants. In a duel lies Death with Honour. And that is what he seeks.’

I stare at Beck. He appears hot in his uniform, even on this chill dawn, and he begins wringing his hands. He looks as though he might be about to cry.

‘I am not quite following you, Capitaine,’ I say.

‘Let me be plain,’ he says. ‘The Colonel had a lover. He was a very young officer, almost a boy … ’

‘Petrov.’

‘Yes. The Colonel’s love for Petrov was very great. He told me it was a sublime love – the love he had always believed might be possible between fellow soldiers, a love
ordained
by God. It put him into a religious and physical fervour. Petrov was as beautiful as a girl and
full
of grace. The Colonel was a man in Paradise. He believed his life would henceforth be with Petrov, and be a marvellous and noble and faithful life. But something happened.’

‘Yes?’

‘Petrov betrayed him. I mean that he left him – for another Officer. I suppose that this is what those with beauty always do: they try to ensnare the whole world.’

Beck swallows. I see that he is in great discomfort, but I remain silent and after a moment he resumes his story: ‘The Colonel has struggled to go on with his life, to fulfil his duties in His Majesty’s Guards. He has been very brave in these struggles, but he does not wish to endure them any more. If he cannot live with Petrov, he would prefer to die.’

‘Might he not persuade Petrov to come back to him?’

‘He has tried. He has prostrated himself before him. But Petrov is tired of him and enamoured of another, and that is that. Love is a terrible thing.’

Beck wipes his brow, which is sweating profusely. I rise and pour water for him and he thanks me. I return to the bed and say: ‘Forgive me, Capitaine, but if the Colonel is so hungry for Death, why does he not kill himself?’

‘He is a Soldier, Sir Robert. He has lived by the Code of the Swiss Guards, which demands “Death with Honour”. There is no honour in suicide, unless as an act of atonement for cowardice in battle.’

‘So he sought
me
out? He pretended all his anger on behalf of his wife, so that I would be his Executioner?’

‘That is correct. On Friday morning you will take your positions for the duel. The Colonel will point his pistol at you, but he will not shoot. You will shoot. You will aim for the heart.’

We sit in silence, staring at each other. After a few moments I say: ‘How am I to be sure that this is not a trap? Colonel de Flamanville has always felt a great Detestation for me and I can readily imagine that it would give him satisfaction to kill me.’

‘I understand your suspicions, but I swear to you, Sir, this is no trap. I have lived with Colonel de Flamanville, as his Adjutant, for many months. He is a man bound upon a rack. The mental anguish he endures makes him cut his own flesh. He does not eat nor sleep.
Did
you not remark how thin he has become? When he catches sight of Petrov he trembles and faints. He is in Hell. He thinks only of death.’

I look over to the window and see the first streaks of a pale dawn laid across the earth’s edge. ‘There is … a difficulty,’ I say.

‘Yes. What is that?’

‘I will not be able to kill him.’

‘No,’ says Beck. ‘We had foreseen this. You are unpractised. We have devised a remedy.’

28

WHEN I WOKE
again I looked out of my window and saw Louise walking alone in the Knot Garden with its covering of snow. She wore a cloak and her pace was measured and forlorn.

I stared at her for a long while, feeling great tenderness towards her. But this tenderness was mixed with the sorrow that my love for her was not as overwhelming as hers was for me.

In deciding this, I cursed my own Obstinacy and Refusal. Louise was as graceful, cultured and marvellous a woman as I could ever hope to have by my side. I should have rejoiced to be the recipient of her passion. And in part – and especially when my carnal desire for her was equal to hers for me – I did. Yet the thought that I would spend the rest of my life with her wearied me. It wearied me because I knew that she would expect too much of me – from my body and from my mind.
I knew that I would fail her
.

I dressed and went down into the Dining Room, where I found the Baron eating plum pie and drinking coffee. When these restoratives had also been served to me, and revived me a little, I recounted to him the Content of my meeting with Capitaine Beck.

At once he said: ‘I fear some trap, Merivel. The story strikes me as too extreme and fantastical for a Military man. This is done, I think, only to ensure that you keep the pledge of the duel.’

‘It may be, Baron. But Capitaine Beck seemed very distressed on behalf of the Colonel, as though he
felt
his suffering in his own body. It is difficult to doubt what he said.’

The Baron sipped his coffee. Then he said: ‘Let me go to de Flamanville this morning with the proposition I described to you last night. Perhaps he will accept. If he accepts, then we shall know that all mention of despair and suicide was but a ploy to bring you to your certain Execution. And he will live the rest of his life very happily, free from the constraints of marriage and with sufficient money to indulge his heart elsewhere. He will get from me the house in Paris, of course, but I do not think that Louise is very fond of it.’

Into my mind, when I thought about this house, came the terrible image of the Colonel’s Sister, Mademoiselle Corinne, with a morsel of boiled Parsnip hanging off her chin and shrieking at me through her toothless mouth, and spending her mournful evenings cutting silhouettes out of black paper.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not think that she is fond of it.’

‘And you and Louise may live on your Estates in England. There is room in your grounds for a Laboratory, I assume?’

I looked distractedly down at the remnants of my fruit pie. I knew what this question signified. The Baron saw my discomfort and leaned towards me and said gently: ‘Though I admire you, Sir Robert, and would very much dislike to see you killed, I am doing this for Louise. We should both understand what is at issue here. If you cannot promise to marry her you must tell me now. Then you will have to take your chance with the duel.’

A silence followed. The Baron, with his clear hazel eyes, observed my struggle to utter words we both knew would change my life. I knew that I was perched upon some dreadful promontory, where the Void gaped on two sides, and my feelings of Vertigo were fearful. I wished only to retreat to where I had once been safe, but knew I could not. To my own dismay I heard myself stammer: ‘There is plenty of room for a Laboratory at Bidnold.’

I watched Louise for a long while, pacing back and forth in the garden, sunk in her thoughts. Then I went to the Library, as though I imagined I was about to begin upon some Work on my
Meditations
, and went so far as to lay out my papers and my quills. But I knew
that
this was no time for work. I merely sat at the table, feeling wan and chill, staring at the wall.

I longed to be young again: sculling on the river, sporting with Rosie Pierpoint, fishing with Pearce, playing the fool for the newly restored King – before my destiny was changed by him. I longed, in sum, to be a free man.

But I was not free. I was either going to die on the morrow, or pledge myself to marry Louise de Flamanville.

I told myself that as her husband I would be the envy of many men. They would observe her passion for me and want to bed her, but she would refuse them. And, if she did, they would look at me anew, wondering what Trick I possessed to keep such a woman enslaved to me. I would be revered.

Further, and most important, I would be wealthy. Louise would bring with her a bounteous Dowry. I would have no mean Old Age. I would have no Death through Poverty. I would be able to provide for Will. I would, when my daughter married, give her a sumptuous wedding …

So now all my thoughts toiled upon money and upon status. I would not only be rich; I would have a permanent and honourable place in the Baron’s Society. Broussel would write an opera about me. I would hear myself immortalised in sound …

I found, to my shame, that in a short space of time I was much consoled by these things. Indeed, I was made cheerful enough by these material and artistic considerations to risk going to Louise, knowing that I could now be tender towards her, my future wife.

I found her in her Bedroom, brushing her hair. I took the brush from her and told her that I loved her.

She was shivering after her long walk in the snow and I held her close to me to warm her, and she kissed me and told me we would be happy together ‘as neither of us has ever been’.

But all that I was veritably thinking about was how, next to her skin and next to mine, from now on, there would always be silk or satin or fine linen. And I put my head between her breasts and laid my face on the silk Camisole that she wore, then took the edge of the garment into my mouth and caressed it.

*

At lunchtime the Baron returned. ‘I have seen it for myself,’ he said. ‘I would not have believed it of this hard-hearted Soldier, but it is true: Colonel de Flamanville is lost to grief.’

‘Is it your belief that he genuinely wants to die, Sir?’

The Baron sighed and called a Servant to bring him a glass of Hock. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘De Flamanville’s mind is on Death. How a man may lay all his hopes upon the whims and desires of another being I have never understood. But this is what he did. He was unsparingly honest about it, to my distress. I could have wished him to be more circumspect and modest, but he seemed to yearn to tell me all. He said that when he found Petrov he found himself, and when he lost him he lost his own Soul.

‘So there we have it. He wishes to die. My offer of money moved him no more than the touch of my hand on his shoulder. He has no interest in worldly things. He does not even wish to return to the house in Paris, for that he once took Petrov with him there, and he says he cannot bear to look on it again if Petrov is not by his side and in his bed.’

‘Is he not concerned, even, for his beloved Corinne?’ enquired Louise.

‘He did not mention her. I think he is concerned for nothing and no one. He told me that he has but one aim in view: an honourable Death. So there we are. The duel must take place.’

Terrible visions came to my mind.

First I pointed my pistol at the Colonel and fired, and my shot pinged against the trunk of a tree and ricocheted back towards me and took out my eye. Then my second attempt to kill him missed by an inch and only shot off his hat and a little tuft of his hair, thus making him appear quite ridiculous. Third, so blinded by the moment was I that I swivelled the gun round and killed Beck. And to end it all, I forgot the etiquette of the duel so absolutely that I pointed the gun at myself and shot away my heart.

‘Baron,’ I said, ‘let me remind you that I am no marksman. I am not in the habit of shooting anything at all, let alone a man. I can by no means be confident of killing the Colonel.’

‘He knows that,’ said the Baron. ‘Beck will take care of it.’

*

Now Friday morning has arrived.

As I dress myself in my best black-and-gold Coat, to walk out to the duel, knowing that a chance still remains that I will be dead in half an hour’s time, I force myself to ask, what care I for Death? Those I love will merely go on without me. Margaret will marry. Will must go to his grave soon enough, whether I am there or not, and Pearce has already gone before me. As for the King, he may not even notice that I am gone …

Yet I find myself wishing, as I tramp through the snow, that I had some belief in God or His Heaven. Then, I reason, I would cross over in the hope of seeing Pearce, dressed in his Quaker garb, waiting for me, and, seeing me, break into his stumbling run and call out my name: ‘Merivel! Welcome! I had not thought to find you
here
!’

But I know that what awaits me, if I am killed, is not my friend, but only Darkness. So vivid am I to myself, in all my moods, in my goodness and foulness, that I find it impossible to imagine my own absence. I cannot see my rooms at Bidnold without putting myself in them. I cannot imagine Cattlebury concocting meals that I am not going to eat. I am able to visualise my grave, in Bidnold Churchyard, with a nice Headstone and flowers and branches of fir laid round it, but not my dead body beneath it. The concept of Not Being fills me with outrage.

The morning is full of sunshine. I walk through the Forest and I see the snow-laden trees glittering with beauty. I notice the traces of animals – foxes and Deer – and envy them their freedom and their joy, as they scamper through the great wood in all its Winter glory.

There is no wind. The silent trees seem to watch and pity as we pass, walking in line, I leading, followed by the Baron, who has volunteered to act as my Second, wearing a vast coat of fur that cannot help but remind me of Clarendon.

The date is the 15th of January in the year 1685 and I am fifty-eight years old.

We come at last to the clearing where the duel is to take place.