Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  Pressing upon my arms, I lifted myself a little in the bed. Now I saw that laid next to my poor Pallet was a pair of shoes, which, though caked in malodorous gutter slime, I recognised as my own, and I looked about me for the rest of my clothes and my wig. All that I was wearing were my undergarments. My right ankle, I could now feel, was swathed in a bandage, but my feet were bare.

  I could see no clothes anywhere in the vicinity of my bed. The cold in the Ward was very fierce. (Pearce and I had sometimes complained to the Nursing Sister about this, saying ‘how are your Patients to recover, if all their bodily energy must be put into shivering?’) But there seemed to be no means to ameliorate their lot. Winter was ever difficult to endure in this place.

  Far down the room there was, in fact, a large fireplace, in which burned a few Coals, but scarce enough to make the colour of any flame and only sending out wisps of black smoke, which set everybody to coughing and retching. I pulled the thin blanket round me and, moving very slowly like an aged man, hoisted my feet onto the floor.

  I stared at these feet and the legs to which they were attached. They did not look like my feet and legs, but indeed like those of a Pauper, as though, to contrive my entry into St Thomas’s, my own limbs had been cut off and undergone some fearful exchange with the lower extremities of a Vagrant. I could see, too, that my right leg (or the right leg of the Vagrant) was horribly swollen and the foot a fierce purple colour, and when I tried to stand up, a very malicious pain came up this leg and into my thigh.

  From this I deduced that my ankle was either turned or broken and had not been set properly, and that getting about upon it was going to bring me the gift of weeks of pain. And that this pain should have been caused by Fubbsy’s Trunks, with their great weight of pewter, silver and gold falling onto my leg, made me more than ever understand how the Rich are detested by the poorest of the Poor, and how they might like to see our heads chopped off and put upon spikes on London Bridge.

  Watched by the Scurfy man, now awake again and scratching himself all over, and breathing the vitiated air through his mouth, I managed the few steps that took me to the end of my bed. I then bent and peered underneath it, hoping to see there my shirt and coat and breeches, but all that I found was a little nest of straw and, lying in it and gone quite into Rigor Mortis, a dead cat.

  This sight was so vivid and horrible that it reminded me on the instant of all the dead things Pearce and I had found in St Thomas’s during the time that we worked here, and upon which we sometimes practised Anatomical dissections.

  These included numerous mice and rats, but also dogs, squirrels, foxes and sparrows. In the Operating Room, where the Cuttings for the Stone were performed, we came upon a dead seagull, and in the Privies a dead Monkey, dressed in a little Mountebank’s velvet coat. Of the human dead, taken out upon carts to Common graves, we lost count. Many of these lives we had attempted to save, but we had possessed neither the knowledge nor the means, and very often cursed our own profession for all its failures and shortcomings. Pearce, who had tried and failed to save his own mother, was always made angry by Death.

  The pains in my leg and head being very severe, I now sat down again upon my bed and pondered what I might do, being thus hurt and almost naked as I was, and it was at this moment that I heard a new sound and that was the tolling of a bell.

  I lifted my head to try to see out of the dirty window, but it was too high and all I could glimpse was the sky, which, after the snow that we had seen, was filled with an eerie brightness, sun and dappled cloud being in perfect Opposition, like lamplight trying to shine through a square of flannel, and this sight, for reasons that I know not, brought forth in me a feeling of profound melancholy.

  I lay down again, deciding that I was not fit to move or go Anywhere, and could only hope to sleep until I felt a little stronger and able, then, to send some word to Margaret. The fact that my nostrils were now but two feet from the dead body of the cat troubled me somewhat, but there was no other bed to go to; all were occupied.

  So I closed my eyes and hoped to dream of something sweet and reviving, and was drifting surely to some temporary Oblivion when I heard the sound of the tolling bell change and become a sonorous clamour. And then I understood that not one, but many, many bells had begun to toll, then more and more, and still more, till the air of London seemed rent apart with a terrible, never-ending thunder.

  I lay very still, with my eyes open. Then I whispered it aloud: ‘The King is dead.’

  All I had to hold to was my blanket and my straw pillow.

  I pressed my face into the pillow and cradled my head with my arms to try to muffle the sound of the bells. The straw became so damp with my weeping that from being a dry inert substance, it returned again to Vegetable Matter and began to stink.

  In the Ward, silence slowly fell, as the poor Sick of St Thomas’s crept about in confusion, knowing what the bells announced, but yet unwilling to believe it, for that it was too mighty a thing to be believed. I did not look at the suffering people, but I was aware of many shuffling footsteps in the room, as those who could move began to move towards the windows, as though to see the bells tolling would be to understand what now awaited us all in England under the new Monarch, James, Duke of York.

  I cradled my head more tightly. I called out to the King. I told him I was sorry. I said that I had ardently wished to be by his side in his last moments, but that the terrible loss of my medical instruments had prevented this. I imagined him calling out to me, just as he had once called, in jest, in our games of Blind Man’s Buff: ‘Merivel! Where are you? Where are you?’

  And I replied that I had always been close to him in my mind, that for more than twenty years I had loved him, and that though I had sometimes attempted to lay this love aside, I had not been able to do it. I had been, in Pearce’s harsh words, His Majesty’s Slave. ‘But this Slavery I did not mind!’ I cried out. ‘For what is a human life worth, if it does not discover something greater than itself to serve? If I had not served you, if you had not roused me from my slothful Sleep, I would have been Nothing.’

  All through the day the bells tolled.

  I lay as though paralysed, wanting to make my way, along with the great crowds of the city, back to Whitehall to pay my Homage. But such was the pain in my skull, and so prostrated was I by my weeping, that I could barely raise my head from the stinking pillow.

  Food was brought to me – mutton and bread and a little cup of Ale. A Nurse helped me to sit up and I reached for the Ale and drank it down like a drowning man gulping Air. Then I asked the Nurse, ‘Where are my clothes, I beg you? I must find them and go to where my Duty lies, beside the body of the King.’

  She consulted with the Sister and this woman came to me and said: ‘You were brought to us just as you are, in your undergarments and your shoes. You were surely taken for Dead and robbed of everything else.’

  Cursing Fubbsy’s Servants, who must have run away and left me to die, despite the one-and-sixpence I had given them, I thought, I shall never get out of here. Days will pass and the body of the cat will rot and I shall rot too, naked and forgotten by all. In this place occurred one of the Beginnings of my life and in this place will it arrive at an Ending I did not anticipate: an Ending through Grief.

  Night came and the fire was banked up to warm us a little in our Mourning, but all through the dark hours did the sound of crying and wailing go on and on among the Patients, only enlivened now and then by the noise of a fart or a sudden puking. I lay exhausted on my saturated pillow and listened to all this, and did not close my eyes. I told myself that I was Keeping Watch upon the King’s soul.

  On the blessed morrow, towards mid-morning, came a face that I recognised, moving slowly through the Ward, examining each patient, and arriving at length beside me and crying out that, at last, he had found me.

  It was Julius Royston.

  ‘Julius,’ I said, ‘I declare that I am Lazarus and you are the Saviour of Mankind. If I could raise mys
elf up, I would fall at your feet and kiss them.’

  36

  THE DAY THAT followed the night of His Majesty’s burial was like a prolongation of the darkness of Night, with great Crowds, in black Mourning Crêpe visible everywhere from our windows, and a lowering sky above them. And I stood with Margaret at Fubbsy’s windows and we watched this Mass of people under the perpetual rolling twilight of the cloud. And I thought about their love for the late King and how it must have been an Obstinate, rolling and reshaping love, like mine, so that nothing could persuade them to leave this place, which was the place where it had come to rest.

  Margaret and I, however, were soon enough forced to leave.

  Fubbs had sequestered herself straight away at the French Ambassador’s house, leaving us with almost no Furniture at all and no clean linen for our beds.

  Then, on February the 16th came an order from King James that the apartments were to be ‘vacated absolutely’ and nothing taken from them except ourselves, who had ‘outrun our time’. And so, though scarce able to walk and with the pain in my head very bad, I packed my clothes and such possessions as remained to me, and escorted Margaret to Lord Delavigne’s house.

  Lady Delavigne, seeing the bandage round my head and my need of a Cane for dragging one foot in front of the other, very courteously invited me to stay awhile at Delavigne House ‘till you be a little more mended’. But I was now impatient to get to Bidnold, so after thanking her elaborately I said: ‘There is but one thing will make me well, M’Lady, and that is the tender Ministration of my Servant Will Gates. I shall put myself into his hands.’

  And so I said Goodbye to Margaret, where she stood on the steps of Delavigne House, and I could not help but notice that, framed as she was by the Grand Portal with it enormous Coat of Arms above, she looked very small. I wanted to run back to her and hold her to me again, but then came Julius to her and he put his arm round her shoulders. The two of them smiled and raised their hands to me in farewell. And, trusting all to Julius Royston, I was gone.

  Almost always my heart had lifted at each and every occasion of my arrival at my beloved Bidnold. But now, as I my hired Coach made the turn into the drive and I looked out at my Park, what I saw was not my Park as I remembered it, but some unfamiliar Landscape.

  The grass was long and rank with weeds, the trees all girt about with dead leaves and all the ironwork benches gone. In these neglected pastures I saw, where once the pretty Deer had roamed, pigs truffling in mud and a troupe of ragged sheep limping about on the tussocks. Of the Deer there was no sign. And the drive itself, always kept very neat with gravel, was pitted with the ruts of farm carts and host to some terrible Plague of Moss of a brownish-yellow colour.

  As the house itself came into view I was aware of yet greater Dereliction.

  One third of the west wall was clamped all over by a raging Ivy. I saw panes broken and missing from the windows, and slates gone from the roof. Where once my Curtilage had been neatly squared with plantings of Box and Holly, there now grew among these a tangle of some nameless dead weeds and a poor broken regiment of Hemlock.

  I descended from the Coach, with much distress to my ankle, and stared about me. When last I had glimpsed my house and grounds they had been as they ever were, with everything clipped and clean and shipshape. Now, so altered and defiled were they that I was at pains to recognise them. The air itself, habitually very sweet, resembled that of a Farmyard, vitiated by pig stench, and indeed, what I felt myself to be was some poor Yeoman returning to his little acre of grass and livestock, all alone and with no hope of any betterment to his life.

  The day was bitter cold. My Coachman stood about, holding the horses, waiting for his money. The front door of the house remained closed. As I fumbled to find a Purse, I babbled to the Coachman, ‘It seems I am come in the wrong Season …’

  I counted out coins for the fare and watched with great anxiety as the Coach departed – much as I had done at Versailles – as though to be abandoned by the Coach put me in some sudden danger.

  Then I turned and limped with my Cane towards the door. I began to call out to Will, telling him I was come home at last and as I called, I could not but remember that other Returning after much absence in 1667, and how, though I no longer believed the house to be mine, I was so moved by the sight of it that I let out a great shout of joy, and, when I saw Will and Cattlebury standing here to greet me began blubbing like a baby.

  I went in and found the hall in darkness, with no candle burning and no fire lit. Here again the scent of the air was altered. Habitually it smelled of Beeswax and wood smoke, and this homely perfume had always cheered my soul. Now the air felt damp and tainted with something sickly, as though mice or rats had come to die there. I looked down. At my feet was spread out the pelt of Clarendon. His glass eyes stared blindly out into the crepuscular gloom. And I knew that it was from him (my poor Clarendon, inexpertly treated and cured) that the stench arose.

  Then I heard – from the direction of the kitchens beneath – the unmistakable sound of laughter. I moved forward a little and listened. More waves of mirth rose up and broke upon the cold and silent strand of the hall. Again I called Will’s name loudly and desperately. My head throbbed. My ankle sent shafts of pain into my thigh.

  Nobody appeared. Whoever inhabited the house was deaf to my voice, existing only within the bubble of the laughter. Being thus unheard and excluded, I had no choice but to hobble downstairs.

  I opened the kitchen door and looked in upon a mortifying scene.

  More than twenty people, men and women both, dressed in ragged and dirty clothes, were gathered there, lying and sitting about on the floor and on the chairs and table, all far gone into drunkenness.

  On the table was a congregation of bottles of wine – not less than thirty or forty at a glance – taken from my Cellar. And now that these had all been drunk, the company had started upon a shameless and ugly debauch, not caring what they did in front of each other, with two of the men crouched in a corner intent on Buggery, and some of the women with their breasts pushed up clear of their bodices, and the men sucking on their nipples and fumbling to take down their own breeks, as a prelude to Fornication. A boy, no older than twelve, was laughing like a Magpie and pissing in a terrible stream beside the range, upon which a cauldron of rabbit stew sat bubbling and spilling over.

  My eyes wandered, in a trance of disbelief, around the room. At first no one paid me any attention. Then I banged upon the stone floor with my Cane, like some foolish Schoolmaster or aged Beadle, and a few heads turned in my direction. Slowly, and with agitated dismay, I began to recognise some of these ragged people as the maids and footmen who had served me and served the King for long years, once so neat in their uniforms and hard-working and as good as any Servants could be, and now descended into a shameless Anarchy of their own devising.

  I said nothing, but only stared, and they stared back and the room slowly quietened, and some of the women sat upright and returned their naked breasts to their gowns and pushed the men away. Then, from the end of the table rose up Cattlebury, scarlet with wine and more colossal than ever in his shape and holding in his mighty hands the drawers of the wench beside him, who, further gone than most into her inebriation, still pawed at his great girth. I waited while Cattlebury’s eyes aligned themselves sufficiently to rest on me.

  ‘Sir Robert,’ he said at last. ‘We never thought to see you more.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I. ‘You never thought to see me more? Why was that?’

  ‘We pictured you gone. Dead was how we saw you.’

  ‘Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, Cattlebury, but here I am. Now please tell me what is the meaning of this ugly Scene?’

  He swayed back and forth. Sweat poured down his cheeks. The woman cackled and nudged his arm. ‘His Mighty Lordship asks what is the meaning, Mr Cattlebury. What is the poxy MEANING of this fine assembly!’

  Cattlebury wiped his face with the drawers, and attempted to steady himself an
d draw himself up in height, so that he could face me down.

  ‘The meaning, Sir Robert,’ he stammered at last, ‘is the Same Meaning that it was when you and … you and Lady Bathurst and all the merry Fops and Lechers from London did likewise, time after countless time, and we … we toiled after you to clean up your stinking mess! What other Meaning can there be?’

  More crazed laughter broke out at this. The men in the corner, taking this rude statement and the mirth that followed it as permission to resume their Hard unfinished Labours, went to them with sudden haste, quite uncaring that I should see them in this doglike rut.

  I looked upon them and upon the whole discomforting spectacle, and thought how, if men could see themselves close up when they abandon all sobriety and become animals, why then, perhaps they might not fall, as I had fallen, into so much repetition of sheer wantonness, realising at last how near it came to stealing their souls.

  At this moment a young woman came to my side, whom I recognised as Tabitha, Margaret’s maid – she who had watched with such unselfish care over my daughter’s terrible illness. Tabitha, too, had been drinking, and her hair was dishevelled and falling into her eyes, but her gown was neat and unruffled. Saying nothing, she took my hand and led me out of the kitchen. She went up the stairs and entered the corridor that led to the Library and, not knowing what else to do, I let myself hobble after her, leaving the Debauchery beneath us to burn itself out. She opened the Library door and we went in.

  I looked about me. It seemed to me that far fewer pieces of furniture stood here than the room had once contained. What remained was all covered in white dustsheets, and the air was musty and cold. I pulled aside one of the sheets and sank down on chair, and my cane fell to the ground.