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

Chapter Two. Wedding Games

On her wedding eve, my future bride was to be locked, as custom dictates, with her bridesmaids inside her father's house. In the morning, I would ride to her door (from the rather lowly inn I would be forced to occupy on the night the sixth of June), with all the village running and shrieking before me, got up in homespun garters, love-knots, ribbons and general fooleries, playing flutes and viols and banging tambourines. I was looking forward to these proceedings. You do not need reminding that I am a glutton for foolishness, and this rowdy pageant was, in prospect, greatly to my taste.

I was also looking forward to putting on my wedding clothes, chosen by the King and made by his personal tailor: an admirable white silk shirt, a sash of purple, breeches striped white and gold, white stockings, purple shoes, gold-buckled, a black brocaded coat and a purple and black hat with white plumes of such magnificence that, from a distance, I appeared to be wearing a three-masted barque upon my head.

I had, of course, invited Pearce to the wedding, but he had declined my invitation, much to my chagrin. I would have liked Pearce to see me in my garb. I can only conclude that he refused, not from envy or mean-mindedness, but that he feared the sight of me might cause his circulation to cease, thus cruelly sundering him from his mentor, the late William Harvey, the first man to understand that blood moved in a circular motion, outwards from the heart and to it again via the pulmonary veins. "Not a day passes," Pearce once said to me, "when I do not feel WH within me." (Pearce is much given to metaphysical utterances of this kind, but my affection for him makes me charitable towards them.)

To my bride's father, Sir Joshua Clemence, I had had to go, in mid-April, to beg his daughter's hand. The King, it seems, went before, to vouch for me as a man of honour, talent and wealth, owner of the country estate of Bidnold in Norfolk and desirous only of making his daughter contented and comfortable in all things, for as long as I should live.

So it was that Sir Joshua Clemence received me with great affability, pouring sack for me, averting his eye only fractionally when I spilt a little of it on the watersilk arm of my chair, and assuring me that the King's word was all he needed to deliver his pretty daughter into my hands. What I do not know is whether, at the time of the wedding, Sir Joshua already knew that Celia was the King's mistress. I suspect that he did and was flattered by the knowledge. For the King moves like God in our world, like Faith itself. He is a fount of beauty and power, of which we all yearn, in our overheated hearts, to feel some cooling touch. Sir Joshua struck me as an intelligent and in all respects noble person, yet even he, when he heard that the King was to be a guest at the wedding, couldn't conceal the hectic spots of joy that broke out on his cheeks. He told me that his greatest love was music, in particular the playing of the viola da gamba. "Now," he said rapturously, "I will play at my daughter's wedding and at the same time achieve my life-long dream, that the King, restored to his throne, would one day listen to my music."

With Celia, I had, prior to the wedding, half a dozen meetings, all presided over by the King, with whom my bride (as was generally gossiped round London) appeared so deeply in love that her hazel eyes hardly ever strayed from his face. I had a sense, at these meetings, of my own superfluity, but was too enthralled by the maps of Norfolk the King produced, on which to show me Bidnold Manor and its lands, to let this feeling discomfort me.

The glimpses I allowed myself of my bride confirmed her to be a pretty, small-featured woman of about twenty. Her skin was pale and absolutely without blemish. Her hands were tiny. Her hair was a weak brown, swept up from her face by ribbons and allowed to tumble to her shoulders in ringlets. Her breasts, I perceived, were meagre and her feet narrow. Her countenance, like her father's, was admirably serene. Though able to confirm that she was a quiet beauty, I was relieved to find that she was a woman not at all to my taste. She was too refined, her back held at too straight an angle, her curves too modest. Compared, say, to Rosie Pierpoint (despite the women available to me at Court, I had found it impossible to break off my riotous relationship with this naughty drab), Celia was as the mouse to the kittyhawk. In my amours, I crave the tearing beak and the cruel claw. I like a fight, a drubbing. The passivity I saw in Celia rendered her, in my darker imagination, useless.

What, then, of my wedding night? Well, I shall tell you in time, for no man in England can have had one so strange. But first, I must relate how I went with the King and Celia to Bidnold.

It was a Jacobean manor, moated and bordered by a substantial park, in which red deer harmoniously browse. Its interior was plain and dingy, reflecting the Puritanical tastes of the unfortunate John Loseley Esquire, its previous incumbent. Though struck by its drabness, I rejoiced in it. For from these plain rooms, I decided at once, I would fashion interiors that reflected, in their crimsons and vermillions, in their ochres and golds, in their abundance of colour and light, my own excessive and uncontainable nature. I would transform the place. I would open it up and let it explode with diversity, in the same way as the glorious complexity of the starling's anatomy had exploded to my eye in the shaft of light from the coal hole.

On my first visit, I bounded from room to room, leaving the King and Celia decorously perched on a Tudor settle, becoming, as my vision of the place began to catch fire, so boiling and flushed that I threw off my coat and unwound my sash and flung them down. My house! I had imagined passing my whole life in cramped apartments. Now, I had thirty rooms in which to spread myself. In one almost circular room in the West Tower, I let out an involuntary yelp of delirium, so perfect did the space seem – for what, I didn't know or care, I merely sensed in prospect the degree of perfection to which, in my mind, this space would one day arrive. It was as if, in the body of Bidnold, I had come at last to what Harvey called, "the divine banquet of the brain." And the banquet was mine! I sat down and took off my wig and scratched my hogshair and wept for joy.

Arrangements for the wedding went ahead, then, with all parties content with the arithmetic. That Celia and I had scarcely said a word to each other, and that she eyed me with some distaste did not appear to matter at all. The lengths to which the King had gone in order to hold onto her, in the face of Lady Castlemaine's jealousy, no doubt convinced her that his love for her was considerable. And he reassured her, as he had me: "There will be no physical union between you. When I am not with Celia, you will give her brotherly companionship and she will order your house."

"I prefer to order my own house, Sir."

"As you will. A hostess can be invaluable, however, if you want to entertain at Bidnold, which I suppose you do?"

"Definitely, Sir. I am already dreaming of entertainments."

"Good. I like you, Merivel. You are utterly of our times." So, in a mood of feverish excitement, occasioned by my constant visits to plasterers, wall painters, upholsterers, silversmiths, tapestry-makers and glass cutters, my wedding day, the seventh of June 1664, approached.

How shall I describe my wedding? It was like a tolerably good play, a play of which, long after the thing is over, certain lines, certain scenes, certain arrangements of people and costume and light return vividly to your mind, while the rest remains dark.

The lowly inn returns to me. I see its sawdusted, spittle-stained floor, as I cross its threshold in my purple, white and gold attire to follow the rag-bag cavalcade to Celia's house.

I am hoisted onto a grey horse with bells on its bridle. I have been deeply affected by the sight of myself in my outrageous clothes and my spirit is shouting: Forward! Onward! Go!

The crowd is drunk already and full of lechery and screeching, gallants and peasants messed together, waving gloves and ribbons. I couldn't ask for more delirious company, and, above it, smiling and nodding on my plumes, is the midsummer sun.

Up the hill we go, children running before, a fiddler skipping at my side, his head and hair like a turnip, his tune like a maypole dance. This is a pageant, a play, I tell myself, as I sit on my festooned horse. I am the Player Groom; Celia a Dumb-Show Bride. And yet I am, as we set out, ecstatically happy. I want to embrace somebody – God? the King? my dead mother? – for the gift of this ornamented morning. So what I do, as the house comes into view, is lean down and gather into my feverish arms a dimpled village girl and kiss her and the men whistle and the women clap their hands and the turnip fiddle player shows the black creases of his smile.

The next thing I vividly remember is Joshua Clemence's music. We have returned from church, man and wife. Celia wears my ring on her little white hand. I have placed, as required, a chaste kiss on her narrow mouth. I have given her my arm to lead her out into the sunlight and up the lane to Sir Joshua's house. The feast set before us surpasses in splendour anything I've seen placed on a table, and I attack the food and wine with my usual relish. The King, seated next to my bride, giggles at me and makes an elaborate show of swaddling me in a table napkin. For the second time that day, I am glad Pearce isn't here after all. His abstemious nature would shudder at the number and diversity of the dishes prepared for us. With a quick sweep of my eye, I see fricassées, steamed bass and poached salmon, roast snipe, peacock, teal, mallard and quail, game pies and carbonados, tarts of marrowbone, neats' tongues, venison pasties, baked guinea fowl, compound salads, dishes of cream, quinces, comfits and marzipans, preserves, cheeses and fruits. There are sparkling French wines and strong Alicantes and of course the Sack Posset which will be consumed before Celia and I are flung, in a rumple of ribbons, to bed.

After an hour or so of gorging and toasting ourselves, and with a not unpleasing feeling of sleepiness beginning to quieten the excitement within me, I see Sir Joshua rise, take up his viola, and stand alone before us in front of a little spindly music stand. The King endeavours to procure quiet in the room, but the gallants at the end of the table haven't noticed Sir Joshua and continue with great rudeness to belch and giggle. One of them, I notice with amusement, is vomiting into his hat. Sir Joshua ignores them. He takes up his instrument and, without speech or introduction, begins to play.

I am expecting some sprightly dance, so that we can, if the mood takes us, remove ourselves from the table and break into a little canter. But it is music of the utmost seriousness and melancholy that Sir Joshua has chosen, Dowland's Lachrimae, if my musical knowledge has not misinformed me, and within a moment or two, I find myself overtaken by an unquenchable urge to weep. I stare at Sir Joshua's face, looking down towards his viola, and, layer by layer, in my anatomist's sadness, I peel back skin and muscle and nerve and tendon, until I can see only the white bone of his skull, the empty sockets of the eyes…

I look away. I bury my face in my table napkin. I don't want my make-believe wife to see me crying. I pretend I am choking. I rise from the table and fumble my way out of the room. Tears are pouring from my eyes and I am sobbing like a sick mule. I blunder into the sunshine and throw myself onto the lawn, where I lie down and weep for a full ten minutes.

When I sit up at last and blow my nose on the sodden napkin, I become aware that a man is sitting silently no more than a few feet from me. I wipe my eyes and look at him. It is Pearce.

"What are you blubbing for, Merivel?" says Pearce.

"I have no idea."

"So," says Pearce, with his habitual gravitas, "you are married."

"Yes. What do you think of my wedding garb?"

Pearce stares at me intently, noting, I presume, the pricelessness of my buckles, the faintly royal air the colour purple lends to the whole ensemble. Luckily, I am no longer wearing the three-masted barque, for I feel suddenly glad that Pearce is there, and wouldn't want, at this moment, to cause any malfunction of his blood vessels.

"It is terrible!" he says after a while. "I expect it is that which has so unmanned you."

I smile and he smiles, and I reach out a hot hand to him, which he takes and encircles with his glacial fingers.

Pearce and I take a turn round the rose garden. Two gardeners observe us with stony faces. "I am the groom," I want to say, "you must rejoice with me," but then I remember the confusions inherent in these words, so I say simply to Pearce: "If they want to be glum, it doesn't matter one whit to me." Almost as soon as we have returned to the feast and I have settled Pearce at the table, persuading him to take a few hesitant nibbles at a duck thigh and a sip of Alicante, the King rises and calls for the Sack Posset. So the moment approaches! I watch my wife look anxiously at her Royal Liege. He smiles at her the dazzling Stuart smile, in which half the men and most of the women of our country claim to spy proof of his divinity. Then we all get to our feet and, even before the toast is ended, I feel myself being surrounded by my Court friends, who have begun braying and whooping and banging the table, setting the remains of the fricassées and pies juddering about and bottles of wine tumbling. Then I am hustled, half pushed, half lifted, out of the room and into a long corridor. I hear Celia and her bridesmaids making a giggling progress behind us. Though I am half enjoying this charade, I look forward to returning to the table and drinking more wine and then losing myself in dancing and debauch. But I go on, herded up two flights of stairs, and into a magnificent bedchamber where, with shrieks of gaiety, my clothes are unceremoniously untied and unbuttoned and torn from me, leaving me naked but for my wig, my stockings and my garters. With-a cackle of ribald laughter, a purple ribbon is tied around my prick. I admit that this amuses me very much. I push my friends away, so that I can walk to a mirror and there I am revealed: the Paper Bridegroom. My eyes are red and puffy from my attack of weeping, my moth-covered stomach distended from the quantity of mallard and carbonado I have packed into it, my wig awry, my stockings sagging and covered in grass stains and dribbles of red wine, and my cock tied with a bow like a jaunty gift.

But I have no time to dwell on this arresting image of myself. A nightshirt is bundled over my head and I am led out along the passage to another bedchamber, at the door of which most of the wedding guests are clamouring. When they see me, a cheer goes up, and then a relentless chant begins, as I am pushed forward into the bedroom:

"Mer-i-vel Bed her well!"

"Bed her well Mer-i-vel!"

I enter the room. Celia is sitting up in the high bed. As I am hurled towards her, she averts her eyes, but the guests press in on us, so that we're forced close together, and I am aware, now, of the need to act my part. I put my arms round Celia and kiss her shoulder. Her body is taut and rigid, but she forces herself to laugh, and the company pounce on us, pulling the ribbons from Celia's hair, the love-knots from her wrists and the stockings and garters from my legs. With a final braying, the bed curtains are drawn around us and, though the chant of, "Mer-i-vel, Bed her well", can still be heard, it begins to grow fainter as the guests move out of the room and make their way back to the feasting tables, where musicians have now begun to play a sprightly polka.

I release Celia from my token embrace and she looks relieved. Absurdly, I find myself wondering whether Pearce has eaten all, or only part, of the duck thigh. I begin to giggle. I know what is going to happen now. The King has planned it with his usual attention to detail, and I find it hilarious. "Well, Lady Merivel," I begin to say to Celia, but she's in no mood for even a short conversation with me. Already, she's out of bed and opening the door of the adjoining closet to let in the King who, like us, is now attired in a nightshirt. He is smiling mischievously as he takes Celia by the arm.

"Well done, Merivel," he says, "good performance."

I get out of the bed and the King and my wife get into it.

I go into the closet where, laid out for me, as arranged, is a clean suit of clothes (scarlet and grey, this time), a white wig, a false moustache and a mask. I close the door on myself and start to take off my nightshirt, when I realise for the first time the one flaw in the plan. In order to return to the party – which of course it is agreed I should do – my only route is back through the bedchamber, in which, by the time I've struggled into the new clothes, the King and Celia will be engaged in some nuptual tumblings. I am not, as I've told you, squeamish, but I really have no desire to bear witness to these, nor to interrupt them. I can only hope that they will remember to draw the bed curtains and that I will be able to creep out of the room without being mistaken for a spy or a voyeur.

I dress as speedily as I can. As a famed lover, the King I imagine will not go to the act in a hasty way, but precede it with well-placed kisses and caresses and teasing words. Thus, I have a little time. I put on the mask. It squashes my flat nose even flatter and the eye-holes are so small that I feel like a horse in blinkers. The thought of keeping this thing on for the remainder of the night is exceedingly irksome but, if I want to go down and enjoy myself without revealing my identity, I have no alternative.

I am ready now. The red and grey suit is very nice, but I think with a moment's regret of the lost gold striped breeches and the outrageous coat. They expressed the essence of Merivel with such perfection and finesse. As a memento of this extraordinary day, I have at least kept the purple ribbon tied round my prick.

I open the door of the closet and this is what I see: the King, completely naked, kneeling by the bed, his arms encircling Celia's spread thighs and his glossy head buried in her little brush. I stand rooted to the expensive carpet. My face, under the mask, becomes boiling red. I close my eyes. I cannot move. I retreat back into the closet and close the door.

Back inside the small room, I feel lonely and suffocated. Surely, the reward for what I've done today cannot be to condemn me to a night on the floor of a closet? I will wait, I decide till the King and Celia have got to the, "divine banque", (pace, Harvey) of the thing and pray that it will be done inside the curtains, or at least that it will be noisy enough to conceal from them my hurrying footsteps.

Meanwhile, what shall I do? I decide to think about my future. I cannot see it at all clearly. I take off the mask. What I believe I can see now is that I'm weary of medicine. All my anatomical studies seem to have brought me to a great sadness. When a man plays a viola da gamba, I want to share in his joy, not see his skull. For where will such visions end? What if, on an August evening, I am on the river with Rosie Pierpoint and I suddenly see, not the red of her lips nor the pink of her thighs, but the white of the maggots in her bones? Such a perpetual and visible awareness of mortality would, I am certain, bring me to despair in a very short time. And what would become of me then? Even my rooms at Bidnold wouldn't be able to comfort me. I'd go mad and be locked up in Bedlam, only to be visited by poor Pearce, who would shake his head and say he could do nothing for me.

I must avoid, then, coming to despair and madness. I must try to forget anatomy. Forget it utterly. I must whisper over it words of oblivion. I must forget the starling. I must forget Fabricius and the drowned pauper. I must forget the interior of the human temple altogether. Instead, I will do decorative things. I will buy more furniture and pictures and drapes. I will paint pictures, even, for like my father, I am a good draughtsman and I am not afraid of trying my hand at oils. So this will be it: forgetfulness of the cavity, the cavern, the cave, the ghastly deep. My life will move in reverse order: I have endured the night; now, with my mind on superficial things, will come the morning. I am, after all, a citizen of a New Age.

Some minutes have passed while I have conversed with myself about my future. I replace the mask over my eyes and nose and listen. I can hear laughter – Celia's and the King's – a hopeful signal that they're rowing noisily together to heaven.

I open the door and find, to my intense relief, that the bed curtains have been drawn. I duck down nevertheless and crawl on my hands and knees to the door, which squeaks loudly when I open it, but then closes on me with hardly a sound.

A while later, I am in the park of Sir Joshua 's house. Some hours have passed, in which I have jigged and polka'd and drunk and flirted and generally flung myself about in such an untrammelled way that I am now exceedingly dizzy. It is cool outside, because the sun has gone down and I am tottering towards a little shadowy copse in which, I have convinced myself, Pearce is hiding.

I stop to piss. I take down my breeches and see the ribbon on my cock. The ribbon slides off and falls to the ground and I moan gently to myself as I piss onto it.

I pull up my breeches. Ahead of me, just at the edge of the wood, someone is moving. It must be Pearce, to whom I will now confess that I am abandoning medicine altogether. "I cannot go on," I will say.

But it isn't Pearce. For now, the person has put on – I would recognise this confection anywhere, even in the coming crepuscule – the three-masted barque! Even to tease me, Pearce would be unable to bring himself to place such a thing on his head.

I hear laughter. It is high and cackling. And there, suddenly, in front of me, laughing up into my face, is the plump village girl I kissed that morning on my way to my wedding.

"Bridegroom," she giggles, "Sir Master Bridegroom!"

I reach up a hand to my face and realise with terror that my mask is no longer there.

"Come inny, Bridegroom!" cackles the girl. "Come to Bridey!"

She is drunker than I am. The hat falls over her eyes and she hiccups. I reach up swiftly under her skirt and cup and squeeze the flesh of her buttocks in my hands and in this way propel her forwards into the woods. As I pitch her down and feel myself stagger and fall onto her, it's as if the night descends on us like an executioner's blade, leaving our severed bodies to wriggle in the darkness.