"Restoration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tremain Rose)

Chapter Thirteen. Royal Tennis

I remember that Will half carried me, dripping and trembling from the bath. He dried me and put over my head a clean nightshirt and lay me down in my bed and I instructed him to pile furs upon me and I could smell the badger skins; they smelled of earth.

I burrowed down. I burrowed into sleep. And when I woke in the middle of the night, I knew that I was most horribly ill, with a pain in my forehead and at the base of my skull such as I had never imagined, unless it were the pain of death itself.

I vomited copiously into a basin. The sounds of my retching woke Will, who had laid himself to sleep on the floor of my bedchamber. He took the basin away and brought me water. "Sir," he said, holding the cup to my mouth, "I see some red patches or blotches upon your face."

I lay back, the pain in my head causing me to whimper like Celia's neglected Isabelle. Will held a mirror to my nose. I squinted at myself. It was an afflicting sight, one that I may long remember. I had contracted the measles.

I will not describe for you the discomfort of this illness. It will suffice to set down that I was very vexed with pain for several days, a pain relieved only by the frequent doses of laudanum which I prescribed for myself and which, in turn, sent my brain into a kind of delirium so that I no longer recognised my room, nor Will within it, but believed myself to be, variously, at Whitehall, in my parents' workshop, in Wise Nell's stinking parlour and on a tilt boat.

When the pain at last lessened and I was able to lie still without groaning, I knew that what was now stealing upon me was a sleep so profound it was like a swaddling of death. It held me for some fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. Then I would wake and find Will or Cattlebury at my side with a little cup of broth, which I would try to sip. Then I would piss feebly into my pot and lie down again and in minutes re-enter this velvet sleep, at one moment remarking to myself that, if it resembled death, it also resembled infancy and musing foolishly on the possibility of being reborn in a more handsome and serious guise.

This, of course, did not come about. I was "reborn" two weeks later, weak as a mole and covered with scabs. I sat up and saw Will sitting in a chair, wearing his tabard. "Thank you, Will," I said. "And for caring for me so well. Without you, I would have been in a sorry mess."

"Are you better, Sir?"

"I believe I am. Though I feel somewhat puny and hollow…"

"Are you recovered enough for some news?"

"News?"

"Yes. About your household."

"Meaning you and Cattlebury and the other servants?"

"No, Sir. Meaning your wife and her maid and Mister Finn and the music master. They are all gone. Gone to London."

"Celia has gone?"

"Yes, Sir Robert. And taken all her dresses and fans and so forth."

"But the portrait…"

"Finished. And the day it was, the King sends one of the Royal coaches, and they all get into it and are gone."

I lay down again. I stared at my turquoise canopy. "That is the end of it, then," I heard myself say. "Now, she will never return. What date is it, Will?"

"February, Sir. The twenty-second day."

One week later, as I sat by my fire, staring vacantly into the flames, Will brought me a letter. It was, as I knew it would be, from the King. Or rather, it was not from him but from one of his secretaries and set out the following summons:

His Gracious Majesty, King Charles II. Sovereign of the Realm commands:

That Sir Robert Merivel present Himself at Whitehall Palace no more days hence than four, upon receipt of this Royal missive.

Signed: Sir J. Babbacombe. Secretary

"So," I said to Will, who had brought me the note, "Finn did his work."

"I beg your pardon, Sir?"

"Never mind. The King calls me to London, Will. And it will not be to praise me."

"You're too weak, yet, to go to London, Sir."

"Needs must, Will. I shall not ride, but take the coach. Perhaps you would be good enough to accompany me?"

"Willingly, Sir Robert."

"We shall leave tomorrow morning, then. Make sure my black and gold coat is clean and my gold breeches."

"Yes, Sir."

"And fold up the tabard I had intended my wife should wear. We shall take it to the King as a present. Though I fear – "

"What, Sir?"

"That no offering of this kind will be enough."

I shall not dwell upon the details of our journey, except to record that, as we came to Mile End and Will saw in the distance the tower and turrets of London, he grew most childishly excited thinking of the marvels he was about to witness for the first time, he having passed all thirty-nine years of his life in Norfolk. And when it dawned upon his Norfolk mind that he might, in all probability, set eyes upon the King in his palace, he began to blub, thus causing me in the space of five minutes more delight than I had experienced in as many weeks. (I have grown, in my time at Bidnold, most fond of Will Gates. If he is now to be taken from me for ever, I will remember him often.)

We rested two nights on our journey, arriving at Whitehall towards mid-morning of the third day. We traveled wearing our tabards, but at our last lodging in Essex I dressed myself in my black and gold suit and put powder on my face, it still appearing rather poxy with some measle encrustations upon it. I did not wish the King to imagine I had the King's Evil.

Taking Will with me (he most neatly attired in a beige coat and grey leggings), I entered once again the Stone Gallery where I had been so overwhelmed, one auspicious afternoon, by the near-presence of Majesty that I had betrayed all my father's hopes for my future. As on that first time, the Gallery was noisy with people walking up and down and I knew that many of them would be petitioners and suitors for small favours who, tonight, would be sent away with nothing and yet tomorrow would return and the next day and the next.

I gave my name to the guards of the Royal Apartments and was told to wait. An hour passed, during which time I grew very weary from standing, so that I thought, at one moment, I would fall over. Will held onto my elbow and leaned me against a pillar. I could see that his mouth was agape at some of the gallants and their women who passed us. Even on my croquet lawn, he had never seen such plumes and buckles; even at my dinner table, no such pearly dresses. "I warrant, Sir," he whispered once, "these folk have even more money than you."

"Yes, Will," I replied, "I warrant they do."

At length, a message was brought to me: I was to return at one o'clock and go to the second of the King's tennis courts, known as his Favourite Court, where His Majesty would meet me. I looked up, in some dismay, at the messenger. I was about to request that he inform the King of my recent illness which had left me so feeble that I was hardly able to walk unaided in his Gallery, let alone compete in a set of tennis, but the man turned rudely and walked away from me, and I did not want to make myself foolish by shouting after him. I shrugged. "All we can do," I said to Will, "is eat a little meat and hope it may strengthen me."

By mid-day, then, we were at the Boar Tavern in Bow Street, where I ordered for Will a dish of oysters and some pigeon patties and for myself a carbonado cooked with marrowbone and stout, a most fortifying dish. We drank a little ale and Will sucked in his oysters and gobbled his patties, but I could not manage more than two mouthfuls of the carbonado, having no real appetite at all. Will duly ate it up, while I took my timepiece from my pocket and in silence watched the hand move towards the quarter hour.

"I am about to die, Will," I said suddenly. "I feel it. This afternoon I am going to die."

Will wiped his mouth with a crumpled napkin.

"Die how, Sir?"

"I do not know yet."

Well, you know me intimately by this time. You do not need reminding how painful and yet how wondrous it is for me to come into the presence of the King. I become very flushed and hectic and beside myself with joy and yet at the same time filled with a most sad longing to make time itself (upon which the King keeps such a glittering eye) move backwards, so that I can be what I once was, Merivel the Fool.

My love for Celia – love being by its nature a possessive thing – might well have diminished my desire for the company of the King, her lover, yet it did not seem to have done so, and when he stepped out into the empty cloistered court a cold sweat of adulation and fear broke out upon my brow.

The King was accompanied by two Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, one carrying the cloth-lined shoes he likes to wear for tennis, the other two tennis racquets, the wooden handle of the King's own racquet being bound with scarlet ribbon. Though my fear made me lurk in the shadow of the side penthouse, the King saw me at once. It is often remarked by those who have known both the sunshine of the King's affection and the frost of his indifference that his mood is discernible from his very first glance, for he is not a dissembler. Even with his Parliament (towards whom some say he should show more tact) he seems to be incapable of concealing his frequent displeasure.

Leaving Will to wait outside the court, I had taken with me my gift of the fur tabard, prettily wrapped in yellow linen, and this I now held in my arms as I executed my bow, hearing as I did so my hip joints click, like the joints of an old man. I looked up. The King, who seemed to have grown taller even than he was before, regarded me from on high with a look of unyielding severity, such as those most frequently cast upon the unruly German students by Fabricius. I had anticipated displeasure but I had not fully imagined how weak it would make me feel. I felt myself tilting. I reached out and held fast to one of the columns of the penthouse. I could not allow myself to fall.

"What is the matter with you, Merivel?" said the King.

"I have been ill, Your Majesty."

"Yes. You appear ill. But this does not surprise me. When a man transgresses the proper order of things, first his mind, then his body are bound to suffer."

I did not know how to reply. I nodded merely, and held out my gift.

"What is that?" asked the King, regarding my bulky parcel with some distaste.

"A present, Sire. An invention of mine. Designed to be of comfort in winter weather."

"It is almost spring, Merivel. Or did you not notice?"

"No. I did not notice. I have been confined to my room."

"Show it to me nevertheless."

In a clumsy, fumbling manner, I unwrapped the tabard and held it up, as I have seen Farthingale hold up dresses against her own body for her mistress's approval.

"Ha!" At the sight of the sewn-together badger pelts, the King let out a sudden explosion of laughter. His two Gentlemen also began to giggle. I wished, like some intrusive street vendor, to regale the King with the virtues of the tabard – its versatility, the freedom of movement it allows the wearer, its vital warming of the blood flowing to lung and kidney – yet suddenly found that I was a little ashamed of my product, its lack of elegance being its chief and most damning fault.

"Is it intended to be worn?" asked the King.

"Yes, Sir. My household have, by the wearing of these, been free of ague and cold…"

"But you have not?"

"I had the mischance to catch a measle."

"How Merivelian! And you look poxy still."

"I know, Sire."

"You do not need furs, Merivel. And nor do I, if I can warm myself by other means. The exercising of the body will keep disease away far more efficaciously than badgers' coats. So, come. We shall play a set of tennis. You used to show more skill at this game than with the games of the heart. And may still. Unless you are altogether disintegrating."

The King turned away from me and put on his shoes. I draped the tabard, which most evidently he did not want at all, over the cloister wall of the side penthouse. The badger snouts hung mournfully down. And I thought, with some amazement, what kind of mind could invent such an odd garment? The mind of a mad person. And only a madman would think of offering a thing of such eccentricity to his King. Merivel, I told myself, as I removed my black and gold coat, you are losing hold…

A racquet was put into my hand. Hastily, I tried to recollect what cunning I had once employed at this fast game and recalled that my best shot had been a low sliced thing to the dedans wall, usually missing the dedans, but bouncing so low my opponent was not able to scoop it up upon the first bounce, thus provoking a "chase". If you are familiar with the game of Royal Tennis, you will know that very many points are won or lost in a "chase" and His Majesty, though hitting the ball with a deal more power than almost all his opponents, can often be beaten by shots that cut the ball and so make it die, almost upon its first bounce, and land close to the back wall. The King's strength lies in accuracy. In any set, he will win a number of points outright by shots to the winning gallery and the dedans. Among some players at Court he used to be known as the Bell Ringer, with reference to the little bell that jingles when a ball slaps hard into these winning spaces.

So, in the cold February light, we began to play, the King placing himself, as of right, in the service court. I noticed that the net had grown in splendour, being, in my time, a mere piece of string but now an ornate braid hung with tassels.

No sooner had one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber installed himself in the marker's box than the King dealt me a most brilliant service that seemed to flutter by me almost before the ball had bounced, as if we were playing not with wads of hair and cloth but with a flight of wrens.

I remembered from a previous time that, although His Majesty likes to win at tennis, he does not like to win easily. He likes a fight. He likes the other man to run and run and never give up. What I tried, then, was to put out of my mind all knowledge of my recent illness and to play as nimbly as a lizard, scuttling forward and back, chasing every shot. Unfortunately, all out of practice as I was, my play was most horribly wild and inaccurate, one of my balls flying straight at the marker's box and smiting one of the Gentlemen in the eye, another going so high that it soared up and over the penthouse roof- to bounce, perhaps, at Will Gates's feet as he sat and digested the carbonado and waited for his first glimpse of his Sovereign.

My play was, in short, very lamentable and we had concluded but three games when I found myself feeling most horribly sick, my mouth suddenly filling with bile. I dropped my racquet, so that I might kneel for a moment on the pretence of retrieving it. I took some great breaths of air. Then I heard the door to the side penthouse open and I wondered all at once whether Celia had come to preside over the contest and smile her sweet smile upon the King's certain victory.

But it was not Celia. It was a footman come with lemon juice and sugar for us. "Lemons from Portugal in February!" said the King. "Grown under glass especially for my dear Queen." So a little respite was granted to me, albeit indirectly, by that placid and good-natured woman who seemed to be so often absent from the King's thoughts. I believed her to play no part in my story at all, yet on that day she undoubtedly saved me from casting up my meagre dinner onto the stones of the tennis court.

To my immense relief, I was able to win the fourth game. I was on the service side now. From the left-hand section of it, I managed one strangely brilliant service and three sliced shots to the tambour which the King adroitly retrieved but then pitched the ball under the net. In the next three games, however, such strength as I had had drained from me. Sweat poured down my face, mixing with the powder with which I had hoped to cover the ravages of my measles. I could not run any more, but only stagger. Shot after shot sped past me into the dedans or the winning gallery. Never send to know, I thought, for whom the bell jingles. It jingles for thee, Merivel. And then I thought of Pearce, whose favourite poet John Donne is. And I asked Pearce to remember me now and give me strength to face all that was still to come.

"As I foresaw," said the King at the conclusion of the set, "you have become slow."

"I know, Sir…" I mumbled.

"Very slow. And the game, of course, is a fast one."

I followed the King into the garden where I had left Will and where he still stood in his grey leggings. The King walked at such a swift pace that I had to scurry to keep up with him and had no hope of getting his attention to ask him to turn upon my servant, however briefly, his majesterial glance. But I could not afford to worry too greatly about Will. I knew that my beating at tennis was but the preliminary to a more bitter scourging.

I was led into a little summer-house, not unlike the one at Bidnold where I had briefly attempted my secret oboe lessons with Herr Hummel. The place was swept and clean, but in the fading light of the winter afternoon a somewhat chilly habitation. I put on my black and gold coat. The King blew his nose then turned his face towards me. So close was he to me that I could see clearly the fine lines that gathered at the corners of his eyes and at the edge of his lips. It seemed to me that he had aged since my last meeting with him in his laboratory and the observation distressed me, as if I had believed that in a changeful world the King alone was outside the reach of time.

"So," he said at last, "you did not play by the rules, Merivel."

"In the tennis, Sir?"

"No. Not in the tennis. With regard to your wife."

I looked down. I noticed that there was blood in my shoe, but did not know from what part of me it could possibly have come.

"I do not know what rule I have broken, Sir," I said quietly.

"I am surprised. Why were you chosen as Celia's husband, Merivel?"

"Because you knew that I would do anything you asked of me."

"That is true of very many people in our Kingdom. No, it was not for that. It was because, at one of our earliest meetings, you told me the story of the visible heart you had seen at Cambridge. You told me you knew that your own heart had no feeling whatsoever. And I believed you. Yet now I see that I should not have done, for it is by no means true."

There was a long silence. Silence, when one is in the presence of the King, seems a most fearful condition, and I felt hot and faint.

"Love was not asked of you, Merivel," the King said at length. "Indeed, it was the only thing forbidden you. But so soft and coddled and foolish have you become, you could not see that in the breaking of this rule you would, like old Adam, drive yourself out of Paradise."

"Out of Paradise?"

"Yes. For what is your role now? You cannot play Celia's husband any more because she refuses to set eyes on you ever again. Thus, in trying to be the thing you were charged with pretending to be, you have rendered yourself useless."

I looked out at the afternoon dusk that was settling upon the garden. Near a stone bench, I could make out the shadowy figure of Will, who, when darkness descended, would find himself lost.

"I had not intended…" I stammered, "… to love Celia. I loved her voice first, her music. And I do not know how this love was transformed into a love of another kind. I do not know how."

"It happened because you allowed it, Merivel. You became futile. You had too little work and too much dreaming time. And then you indulged your dreams. You thought you could re-cast yourself. Voilà tout. And now you are no more use to me."

The King looked away from me, and for a moment I thought these words signalled my dismissal. But they did not. He had more to say to me yet.

"Happily for you, Merivel," the King continued, "I have enough affection for you to wish to make you useful again, if not to me, then to the people. I fear it will take some time, for look at you! How wretched you have become! But we must try, must we not?"

"Yes, my Liege."

"Very well. Then hear what I have in mind. I am, for the time being, content with the arrangements of my own life. Celia is returned and appears to have learnt some wisdom -perhaps from you, although I doubt that this is so and she certainly denies it. At all events, she is returned to Kew and I am happy that she should be there. But in most other matters, I am not so fortunate. I have the impression that the 'honey-moon' of my reign is over."

The King again turned a little from me, so that I saw his face in profile and was struck, not for the first time, by the length and fineness of the Stuart nose, which is so very unlike my own. I was about to suggest that the King's love affair with his people would surely last as long as he lived, but before I could speak he cut me off.

"I lack money," he said. "We are engaged in a war of trade with the Dutch, yet I lack the means to fit out our ships. This poverty is a foul humiliation, Merivel, and must be remedied. I have been too generous, too profligate with gifts of land and estates. But now comes a reckoning. Now comes a time when I must pay attention to arithmetic."

And so at last the King came to it, to what he called his "arithmetic". He was taking Bidnold from me.

He was "repossessing" it, just as he had repossessed Celia. For, like Celia, it did not belong to me. All that I owned had come to me from him and now he was taking it back. Some French nobleman would purchase it from him, house, lands, furniture and all, and the money thus acquired would be used to buy hemp and tar and sailcloth and rigging. Bidnold would thus "become useful" again. Land would be translated into ships by the King's arithmetic and those ships would be ships of war.

And what of me? How, dear Lord, was I to be made useful again? By being forced, now that I had no land, to return to the only profession that would get me a living: medicine. I was to awake at last from the sleep into which the King had seen me fall. No longer would I be able to dream away my time under the Norfolk sky for henceforth – from this very night, in fact – I would own nothing save my horse and my surgical instruments, the only things which had been "gifts of affection" and not "gifts of expediency".

Plague was coming. Plague, as I had once before been reminded, rouses men, not only from sleep, but from forgetfulness. They remember Death. I, too, would remember that Life is brief, that Death creeps over it as surely as the dusk now falling around the summer-house. And with this remembrance would come another: I would remember anatomy. "And so, Merivel, you will once more be doing and no longer dreaming. You will have become useful."

I believe the King smiled at me then. To him, no doubt, the taking of Bidnold from me was a clever and satisfactory plan, killing, one could suggest, two birds with one stone by rendering me "useful" once again and furnishing the King with a small amount of money. The terrible degree to which I myself felt "killed" by the severity of my punishment the King could not begin to imagine. I had known, from the moment I understood Finn's role as spy in my household, that my behaviour towards Celia might quench any affection the King still had for me, but it had never entered my mind that he would take my house from me. I had believed that Bidnold was mine for ever. I had now and then imagined myself growing old there – with Violet as my companion perhaps, if Bathurst should chance to drop dead of an epilepsy – and being buried in Bidnold churchyard. And now that I was to lose it, together with Will Gates and Cattlebury and the carpet from Chengchow and my turquoise bed and all, the profound nature of my affection revealed itself to me. I had made it mine. In every room I saw some part of my character reflected. Bidnold was Merivel anatomised. From my colourful and noisy belly you ascended to my heart which, though it craved variety also favoured concealment, and so to my brain, a small but beautiful place, occasionally filled with light and yet utterly empty. In his repossession of my house, the King was taking me from myself.

In all my dealings with my Sovereign, I had hitherto been obedient and accepting, doing without question or barter whatever I was commanded to do. But now, as I looked at my vacant, houseless future, I felt moved to plead with the King. I knelt down on the flagstone floor of the summer-house. I put my hands together, as if in prayer.

"Sire," I said, "I beg you not to remove me from Bidnold. I am not, as you would believe, idle there. I have embarked upon a new vocation as an artist. I am learning to play the oboe, I am endeavouring to make sense of the stars and I have taken upon me a new responsibility: I am an Overseer of the Poor."

The King stood up. As always, I was moved by the beauty and elegance of the legs before which I was kneeling.

"An Overseer?" he said. "You seem fond of the term, for you used it to Celia. But an Overseer should be impartial, distanced and kind, and you were none of these to her. Will you now abuse the Poor of your parish as you abused Celia?"

"No, Sir. And I cannot say too many times how sorry I am for what I did to Celia. I loved her and this was my mistake. I do not love the Poor, only pity them."

"What are you doing, then, for those you pity?"

"I am learning about them, Sir, their whereabouts, their collecting of sticks and other pitiful tasks, their work at the looms in Norwich…"

"And how is this to help them?"

"I am not precisely 'helping' them yet, my Liege – "

"And yet, before I met you, you were. At St Thomas 's, you were helping them – with the only skill you have ever possessed."

"I cannot use that skill any more, Sir. I cannot."

"Why?"

"I cannot…"

"Why, Merivel?"

"Because I am afraid!"

The King, who had been pacing about the summer-house, now stopped and rounded on me, holding up an admonishing finger clothed in a glove made by my late father. "Precisely!" he declared. "And do not imagine I have not known this! But this age is stern, Merivel, and those who are afraid will not survive it. Those who are weak will not survive it. You, if you remain as you are, will not survive it."

"I beg you to let me remind you, Sire, that it was you who took me from St Thomas 's. You gave me the Royal dogs. You liked me for my foolishness…"

"And for your skill. For the two, then, were in you, the light and the dark, the shallow and the profound. But now your skill has fallen away and you are all one foolish mass."

So it was in vain that I pleaded. The King had made up his mind. For a moment, I considered prostrating myself before him, but I know that this King is not moved by supplication; it merely irritates him. And, as for the dispossessed, he has no sympathy for them, for he was once one of them and had to wait years for his restoration.

What could I do then but accept my fate, the while finding it unjust and cruel, with as convincing a show of bravery as I could put on?

The King now moved towards the door of the summer-house and made to leave. Before he went, he looked down upon me one last time and informed me that I could return to Bidnold for one week, "there to make preparation for your departure. The keys of the place must then be given to Sir James Babbacombe, who is to act as my agent in this matter. And so au revoir, Merivel. I shall not say adieu, for who knows whether, at some time in the future, History may not have another role for you?"

And then he was gone. And as soon as he had stepped outside the summer-house I saw servants come with lamps to light his way. They had been waiting and watching for the moment when he would walk away from me.