Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Rose Tremain

  Dedication

  Title Page

  PART ONE: The Great Enormity

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART TWO: The Great Captivity

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART THREE: The Great Consolation

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  PART FOUR: The Great Transition

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Restoration

  Chapter 1

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The gaudy years of the Restoration are long gone. Robert Merivel, renowned physician and courtier to Charles II, loved for his ability to turn sorrow into laughter, now faces the agitations and anxieties of middle age. Questions crowd his mind: has he been a good father? Is he a fair master? Is he the King’s friend or the King’s slave?

  In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles – all glitter in front and squalor behind – leaves Merivel in despair, until a chance encounter with Madame de Flamanville, a seductive Swiss botanist, allows him to dream of an honourable future.

  But will that future ever be his? Back home at Bidnold Manor, his loyalty and medical skill are tested to their limits, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause unlooked-for havoc in his heart and on his estate.

  With a cascade of lace at his neck and a laugh that can burst out of him in the midst of torment, Merivel is a uniquely brilliant creation, soulful, outrageous and achingly sad. He is Everyman. His unmistakable, self-mocking voice speaks directly to us down the centuries.

  About the Author

  Rose Tremain’s bestselling novels have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music and Silence), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger (Sacred Country). Restoration was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989 and made into a film in 1995. Her short story, ‘Moth’, was also filmed (as the award-winning Ricky) by François Ozon in 2009. Her most recent novel, Trespass, was a Richard and Judy Bookclub Choice. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.

  Also by Rose Tremain

  Novels

  Sadler’s Birthday

  Letter to Sister Benedicta

  The Cupboard

  The Swimming Pool Season

  Restoration

  Sacred Country

  The Way I Found Her

  Music and Silence

  The Colour

  The Road Home

  Trespass

  Short Story Collections

  The Colonel’s Daughter

  The Garden of the Villa Mollini

  Evangelista’s Fan

  The Darkness of Wallis Simpson

  For Children

  Journey to the Volcano

  For Penny, of course, with love

  Part One

  The Great Enormity

  1

  ON THIS DAY, which is the Ninth day of November in the year 1683, a most singular thing has occurred.

  I was taking my habitual midday dinner (of boiled chicken with carrots and small ale) when my Manservant, Will, came into my Dining Room at Bidnold Manor, bearing in his gnarled old hands a package, wrapped in torn paper and bound with faded ribbon. He placed this object at my right hand, thus causing a cloud of dust to puff onto my plate of food.

  ‘Take care, Will,’ said I, feeling all my breath drawn in and then expelled in such an almighty sneeze that it flecked the tablecloth with tiny morsels of carrot. ‘What is this Relic?’

  ‘I do not know, Sir Robert,’ said Will, attempting a dispersal of the dust, by waving his misshapen fingers back and forth.

  ‘You do not know? But how has it arrived in the house?’

  ‘Chambermaid, Sir.’

  ‘You got it from one of the maids?’

  ‘Found under your mattress.’

  I wiped my mouth and blew my nose (with a striped, very faded dinner napkin once given to me by the King) and laid my hands upon the parcel, which, in truth, appeared like a thing purloined from some Pharaoh’s Tomb, far down in the dry earth. I would have questioned Will further about its unlikely provenance and the reason of its sudden discovery on this particular day, but Will had already turned and was embarked on his slow and limping return journey from the dining table to the door, and to have called him back might well have occasioned some physical Catastrophe, which I had no heart to risk.

  Alone once more, I tugged at the ribbon, noting some stains upon it, as of Mouse or Fly droppings, and the notion that some creature might have had its whole lowly existence beneath my mattress caused me a brief moment of amusement.

  Then I had the package open and saw before me a thing so long forgotten by me, I think it would never have come back into my mind of its own accord by any means.

  It was a Book. Rather, it had once aspired to the immortal status of a Book, but never did acquire any such immortality, but only remained a collation of pages, written in my inky, looping hand. Long ago, in the year 1668, when I returned here at last to Bidnold Manor, I contemplated destroying this Book, but I did not. I gave it to Will – with the instruction to consign it in some hiding-place of his own choosing and to contrive to forget where that hiding-place might be.

  The pages contained the story of my Former Life. I had set down this story at a time of great confusion in the last years of my fourth decade, when I felt for the first time the radiance of King Charles II fall upon my insignificant shoulders.

  I had hoped the writing of it would enable me to understand what role I might play in my profession as a Physician, in my country and in the world. But though in all my frenzied Scribblings I believed myself to be moving towards some kind of Wisdom, I cannot now recall that I ever arrived there. I was driven from place to place like a hungry dog. It was a time of marvels and glories, crammed with sorrows. And now, to read my own words and see this Life again unfold before me, brought to my heart an almost unbearable overload of Feeling.

  I take up the Book and go to my Library. I lay the Book on my escritoire and attend to the feebly burning fire, placing more logs upon it and exhorting it to remember why it was lit – and that reason was to warm me. But I am still shivering. I wonder whether I shall send again for Will who, from long and weary habit, has a knack for coaxing flames into life. But in these late times of the 1680s, when I am approaching my fifty-seventh birthday, I am more and more reluctant to assign to Will any task whatsoever, owing to his extreme age (seventy-four years) and his many Infirmities.

  Indeed, the whole Question of Will is one which hugely vexes me, for I do clearly see that, in regard to this faithful Servant of mine, I am caught in a very p
ainful Trap.

  I have known William Gates (ever and always called ‘Will’ by me) since the year 1664 when the King gifted to me the Order of the Garter, together with my Norfolk Estates. These Rewards I got for an important service I had rendered His Majesty, which changed utterly the course of my life.

  Will came into my household, along with my cook, Cattlebury, in that same year and, in all my many joys and tribulations, never for one moment showed me anything but loyalty and consideration of the most touching order.

  Though my interior Decorations were, at one time, very loud and vulgar, Will pretended his admiration for them. Though I myself behaved towards my young wife Celia in ways loathsome to her and to the world, never at any moment did Will throw me the least glance of sorrow or reproach. And when I and my beloved house had, for some years, to part company, on account of my innumerable follies, Will became its de facto guardian, faithfully writing to me with News of the comings and goings within it, and of the changing colours in the park, as some several seasons passed. In short, no man could have had by his side for almost twenty years a more admirable, loyal, honest and hard-working Servant.

  Now, however, Will’s body and mind are much decayed. Though I pay him handsomely, he is no longer able to perform to any satisfactory degree the Tasks about my house and person for which he receives his money. He cannot walk without his knees bend outwards and his spine curves over, like the spine of a little rat, so that his progress across any room is most painful and slow. When attempting to carry any Article, whether a tureen of soup or a tankard of ale, he is like to let it fall and smash or spill, for that his hands have some Disease of Curvature and cannot fasten themselves securely round an object.

  Other afflictions are come upon him, viz. Forgetfulness, near-Blindness and a Deafness, which I fancy may be dictated more by Whim than by any true loss of hearing. For if I give Will an order that he does not relish, such as that of accompanying me on one of my visits to my Patients, he affects not to hear a word that I have uttered, whereas any command that is to his liking he obeys without question or hesitation.

  He has become very fearful of the world beyond the gates of Bidnold. Where, once upon a memorable time, he came with me by fast coach to London and waited patiently in the gardens at Whitehall while I endured an encounter with the King which almost broke my heart, and Will’s too, now he keeps close within the house and is barely to be seen taking the air of the park, ‘lest,’ he says to me one day, ‘it give me a bitter Winter Ague, Sir Robert, or that I might trip upon a grassy tussock and break my Shin and fall, and be not able to raise myself up and lie undiscovered till night come, or morning, when frost or snow obliterate me quite.’

  ‘Ah, is that what you think of me, Will,’ say I to this, ‘that I would leave you lying alone and wounded under the stars or out in the snow?’

  ‘Well, I do, Sir,’ says he, ‘for the reason that you would not know of my falling, for I am a Servant, Sir Robert, and have practised the Art of Invisibility for these twenty years, so that the sight of me, whether upright or lying down, be never troubling to you.’

  I wanted to remark that, in recent years, the Sight of Will causes me nothing but trouble, but I did not. For to say anything wounding to Will appears to be quite beyond my powers. And when I think of what I should rightly do, which is to dismiss him from my service, I feel in my heart a terrible Ache. For the truth is that I feel for Will a most profound affection, as though he might be a sort of Father to me, a Father who, in his goodness, has chosen to overlook my many imperfections and to see me as an Honourable Man.

  What am I do, then?

  If I take from Will his seniority in the Servants’ Hierarchy at Bidnold Manor and assign to him lighter duties, such as those a mere Footman might easily perform, I know that he will feel the pain of this demotion through to his heart’s core. He will deduce that I no longer value him. The sweetness of his nature will turn sour towards those who would now be above him in rank.

  If I call him to me and tell him that I wish him to Take his Ease henceforth and do no more work, but live in honourable Retirement here in my house, with all his pecuniary needs accommodated by me, it is possible that – such being the intensity of the bodily pain he suffers – he might fall at my feet and bless me and shed tears of gratitude and tell me that no kinder being than I, Sir Robert Merivel, lives and breathes in the world.

  But though I admit I do like to imagine this scene, with my poor old Servant prostrate at my feet as though I were the King Himself, with all his inestimable power, I do also foresee, alas, great perturbation coming from another source, namely the rest of my Household, including Cattlebury, who is not far behind Will in age and Mental Confusion, and who has alarmed me with his occasional bouts of violent, seditious Agitation, during which he is fond of blaspheming against the Monarch and the Stuart dynasty and all their works.

  Indeed, I dread that I might find myself the butt of a jealous Mutiny, upbraided for my unfairness and for my lack of consideration towards Cattlebury, but also towards the housemaids, footmen, washerwomen, woodcutters, grooms, and kitchen maids et cetera et cetera. And then I see in my mind a terrible Cavalcade of all my servants (without whose presence this household would soon enough fall into chaos) disappearing down the drive, and I left alone but for Will, to whom, in time, I would become a Nurse … thus performing a neat but vexing turn upon the Wheel of Fortune.

  Better, say I to myself, to harden my heart and let Will perform his solitary Exit, with the destination ‘Workhouse’ writ upon his retreating back. But a Trap closes even upon this notion. For I have seen the Workhouses. Indeed I have. Not only are they cold and inhospitable places, and full of vermin and noise and stench, they must also, by law, live up to their name and so demand of their inhabitants that they work. Thus we return by a dread circle to the one thing of which Will Gates is well-nigh incapable: labour.

  I ask again, what am I to do?

  I cannot put Will out, to beg in the lanes and fields of Norfolk. He has no Family anywhere (nor ever has had, as far as I can ascertain) to take him in.

  And so I conclude that – as with very many vexing things in this life – the only course is to do nothing, in the vain hope that the Question of Will may somehow be resolved by Nature.

  But no sooner has it entered my head that Will might soon die, than a feeling of the utmost Panic seizes upon me and I ask for Will to be sent to me in the Library straight away, so that I may verify that he is not dead yet.

  Some time lapses between my command and Will’s arrival at my door. As it lengthens – by virtue of the Slowness with which Will moves – I find myself drawn again to the sight of the Book lying on my escritoire and remembering that within its pages are numerous accounts of Will’s kindnesses to me, as when I was commanded to ride in haste to London for an Audience with the King, without my supper, and Will thrust two Roasted Quail into the pocket of my riding coat and tied a flask of Alicante to the saddle of my mare, Danseuse, without which repast I might have fallen down in a faint when at last summoned into The Presence.

  It has been, indeed, as though, for almost twenty years, Will’s mind had kept a vigil upon mine, anticipating its many vacancies and shortcomings, and attempting to remedy these before I had become aware of them. And this realisation moves me to sudden tears, so that when at last Will enters the Library, he finds me blubbing by the fire. Though his sight is poor, he can tell at once that I am crying and says: ‘Oh, not again, Sir Robert! Upon my soul, I think you will wear out all your handkerchiefs before the year is gone.’

  ‘Luckily,’ I say, ‘it is November, Will. So there is not much more of the year in which to wear them out.’

  ‘True, Sir,’ he says, ‘but I do not know, and nor does any of us here at Bidnold know why you must always be weeping.’

  ‘No,’ say I, blowing my nose on a silk foulard once given to me by my former Amour, Lady Bathurst, and now worn to a gossamer thinness. ‘I do not know either. Now, Will, I have
sent for you to ask you about this Book. It is the same Book, written by me in the years 1664 to 1667, which I gave into your possession when this House was restored to me in 1668. Was it then that you placed it under my mattress?’

  Will’s eyes go wandering about the space before him, as though it might be some dark cave where no light entered. His gaze falls at last upon the package containing the Book.

  ‘1668?’ he says. ‘That was long ago, Sir Robert.’

  ‘I know it was. It was fifteen years ago to be precise. Was it then that you laid the parcel under my mattress?’

  ‘Must have been, Sir.’

  ‘But you cannot be certain?’

  ‘Of what thing in the world can a man be certain, Sir Robert?’

  ‘Well. There is such a thing as Memory. Do you have any recollection of placing this object in my bed?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. I took it and laid it under your mattress, where you would not see it.’

  I leave the fireside and begin to pace about the room, stuffing away my foulard and, in a general way, trying to assert in my person some semblance of Dignity and mastery of the moment. Then I turn and stare accusingly at Will.

  ‘Do you mean to say, therefore,’ I say, ‘that my mattress has not been turned in sixteen years?’

  Will does not move, but stands by the escritoire, holding fast to its edge, as though he might be about to fall. At length he says: ‘It is not my job to turn mattresses, Sir Robert.’

  ‘I know. But all the same, Will. Sixteen years! Do you not think that you, as head of the staff at Bidnold, should take some responsibility? Could not fleas and bedbugs have clustered there and done me harm?’

  ‘Done you harm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would never do you harm, Sir Robert.’

  ‘I know, Will. All I am asking—’

  ‘But there is another thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A person does not always see a thing when it is there.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean … this Book of yours, it is so faded and snowed with dust and time, it might have looked – to the chambermaid – as a mere Wedge, to hold fast the corners of the bedstead.’