by Rose Tremain
I look round at my fellow bathers. The Cross Bath is divided: men on one side, women on the other. In my line of men, I see one elderly creature with his wig still unwisely in place on his head. If he has come for a cure for vanity, he is already inhibiting its efficacy.
Opposite me, the women appear most strange. For modesty, they wear peculiar yellow garments made of stiff canvas which, the moment they are submerged, inflate like balloons. I cannot take my eyes from them. I imagine them so filled with air that they will begin to bob about and then come floating towards me, helpless on the bubbling current of the bath. I can even feel the press of them round me, these balloons of women, and I fashion for the King (as my mind is so much in the habit of doing) some second-rate joke that plays on the word "prick".
But then I see that not only with my joke am I in error: I have perceived the women wrongly. Their skirts and bodices are not filled up with air, but with water. They are not light, but heavy – so heavy they are tethered to their seats, as if by an anchor. If we all stayed in the Cross Bath till nightfall, the women would ever remain separate from us. Unless, of course, the King were to come down and get into the water. Then, I believe the women would break free like minnows from their birth sacs and come wiggling towards him.
I pass very long hours sitting still in the water; I try to feel the process of cleansing occurring. I force myself to visit, in my mind, all the rooms at Bidnold one by one. I stand in each doorway and watch as all my possessions are removed and then the furnishings and the carpets and the wall-hangings so that the room has no hint of my presence in it anywhere. And then I imagine the waters of Bath flowing into it and staining it a sulphurous yellow and then withdrawing like the sea on an ebb tide. And so the room is no longer a room, but only a washed and empty place.
When I can stand the stench of the waters no longer, I retire to my room in the Red Lion. The innkeeper's name is John Sweet. His wife, Mistress Sweet, sings on with no accompaniment and no listeners except herself and Merivel. She alone knows that I am sickly, for the food she sends up I cannot eat.
I dreamed, last night, a most infamous dream. I was in a high chamber at Whitehall where a clutch of gallants and their women, together with the King and his Queen, were assembled. "Why are we all come here?" I asked one I recognised as Sir Rupert Pinworth. "Why," said Sir Rupert, "for the wedding. Naturally."
At that moment, the crowd moved to make a pathway for the bride and groom. I craned my neck to see them. They walked sedately, arm in arm, to the end of the chamber where a priest stood ready to read his prayers over them. The groom wore a villainous sulphur-yellow coat and breeches, the bride a white dress, very pretty, yet stained here and there with the sulphur colour.
And then I saw their faces. The groom had the face of Barbara Castlemaine and the bride the face of Celia. And when the priest had said some prayers and they too murmured some assents, they there, in front of all the people, began to take off their clothes and throw them away impatiently. And I saw now that it was indeed the two women whom the priest had "married" and who now began to play in earnest the groom and bride, kissing each other and touching all indecently each other's parts while the King and his Queen and all of us looked on, applauding now and then, as if at a play. And Sir Rupert leaned over and whispered in my ear: "You see what marriage is become. It is become anything we make it be."
And I woke up, very hot and troubled. And, for poor comfort, put my hand upon my prick.
Knowledge that I should hope for very little from the waters of Bath stole upon me after that night. I felt, not cleansed by the place, but sickened and suffocated by it. The sight of the bodies of the men, many old and palsied, some poxy-seeming, did not help me to love the water. And I was soon weary of watching the women squatting down in their yellow balloons. They appeared to me utterly foolish and pathetic. Rosie Pierpoint has more grace than they.
So I paid John Sweet and bowed to his wife and complimented her on her singing and left, paying threepence a mile for post-horses to return me to London. And when I came there, I saw a thing to which, at Bath, I had paid no heed: the spring had come. In the garden of the Leg Tavern, there were fat buds on a chestnut tree and celandines in the grass and the air was no longer chill as it had been the night I walked to the Tower. Visiting my bookseller, I saw on his almanac that we had begun on the month of March. "Where I shall be at the month's end," I said to him, "I do not know."
I had only to wait two days at the Leg before my groom arrived with Danseuse.
Both man and horse seemed tired and somewhat stiff, but my joy at their arrival was so great I felt, for a few hours, returned to something like contentment. That night, however, I laid out on my bed all the possessions left to me in the world and when I saw what they were, I felt a sweating of fear on my neck, for I knew that no man could depend upon them for his survival. This is what I now owned: my case of surgical instruments, my oboe, some sheets of music, some paint brushes and some boxes of pigment, several suits of gaudy silk and taffeta, a quantity of coloured stockings and lace shirts, three periwigs, four pairs of gloves, made by my father, my set of striped dinner napkins, a quill pen, given to me by Violet Bathurst, some nightshirts and a nightcap, a pair pairs of high-heeled shoes, two letters from the King, tied with a ribbon, my Bible, much thumbed and annotated, a recipe for lardy cake, splodged with Cattlebury's tears, a single fur tabard, two purses: one Japanese, containing thirty shillings, one leather, containing forty-seven sovereigns,
Thanks to my clothes, I would not yet appear poor and, unless I was robbed of the sovereigns, I would not, for some while yet, know poverty at all. And yet there it was, spread out before me, the inevitability of my eventual destitution.
Other men, contemplating such a fall from grace, have made of their low state a springboard from which to jump up and make some new beginning. But in this age, no fortunes are made except at Court. All endeavour – even the labours of a humble glovemaker like my father – is made or marred by favour or dislike at Whitehall. Even common bargemen -like the late Pierpoint – feel, in the new, bustling commercial life upon the river, the touch of the Royal hand. And Rosie at her washing cauldrons: in the jabots and cuffs and collars of Brussels lace worn by the Cavaliers she sees a way to her own prosperity. And I, if I should try some new thing, where would all strivings lead me, but back to where I once walked and waited with my father – to a place so heavy with the King's presence I could not breathe?
What, then, was left to me? If any, I told myself, has made himself immune to the Royalty in all things, from him would I learn best how to live from now on. And no sooner had I convinced myself that at last a thought that was not entirely foolish had entered my head, than I knew at once who that person was. And I said the name of my old friend out loud. "Pearce," I said, "let me come to you."
Since my last glimpse of Pearce on the speckled mule, I had not given him a great deal of thought. He does not love or condone my follies. My behaviour towards Celia would have made him weep with shame. Thus, it was not comfortable to think of him while I was at the same time giving him cause for embarrassment and grief.
Now, cast out from Celia's life, and knowing I would soon saddle Danseuse and make my way to the Fens, I was able once again to set his palid visage before my mind's eye. It is a face most dear to me, yet one which creates in me – in equal measure – feelings of sorrow, irritation and tenderness. "Tender" is a word of which Pearce makes considerable use, it being a Quaker term applied to those tolerant souls (and there are not very many of them, if Pearce is to be believed) who do not, at the sight of a Quaker, spit in his eye or demand that he take off his hat. I am "tender" then. In our past together, I occasionally stood between Pearce and his antagonists, not because I am courageous, but because Pearce has about him some innocence of a child and I do not like to see children hurt and insulted. Yet for all these acts of gallantry, Pearce is harsh with me. He once likened my life "to a poorly done sampler, Merivel. Showing a variety of s
titches, yet making up a most incoherent picture." He is a man who, for all his rapturous speech, cannot bring himself to make visible the secret affections of his heart. I know that he loves me very dearly; he, I believe, does not know that he does. And yet, when I arrive at his wretched hospital, he will run (or at least increase the speed of his gait somewhat) to greet me. When he sees me, he will be glad.
There is little in our lives, since the day I went to Whitehall, to bind our friendship. And sometimes it appears to me as a ghostly thing, a thing which had its proper life in Cambridge in the years of the King's exile. These "ghosts" were to be found very often together late at night, putting coal onto small fires, eating plum cake, trying at the same time to digest Descartes' theory that the ethereal human spirit was connected to the "body machine" by the pineal gland; then giving up at last and spitting it out and giving in to laughter.
The ghost Pearce was sentimentally fond of fishing and in summer would take the ghost Merivel with him on his angling trips. "The Apostles," Pearce would say fancifully, as the two of them sat watching for mayfly, "were fishermen. Fishing is a contemplative, devotional thing and not entirely suited to you, Merivel, who are too restless and dazzling." And it is true, Pearce was the luckier angler. The brown trout came to his hook on the evening rise. Merivel got only the muddy grayling. But the ghosts stayed on the river, content with each other, content with the sport, till the air cooled and a thin mist began to sit on the water and they became shadowy in time. I can remember that returning to my room in Caius from these fishing expeditions was like returning from another world. And the memory of them, coming sometimes to my mind when it is vexed with trouble, has always been soothing.
So, endeavouring to put from me the devastations of the recent time, consigning to darkness the smell of the King's perfume, the sound of Celia's voice, the touch of the King's hand upon my nose, the sight of my own lust on my starlit roof, I looked at my remembrance of Pearce very closely, as it might be through a microscope, allowing that which had become invisible to be seen once more in clear definition. In this way, I prepared myself for my journey.
For my decision to go to the Fens ran some way ahead of my ability to do so. In short, no sooner had I said the word "Pearce" out loud than I knew myself to be afraid. My friend's company I knew would be beneficial to me; the company of a hundred lunatics could afford me nothing but pain. Thus, I tarried at the Leg. From the ghosts by the trout stream, I begged courage.
The date of my setting forth was the tenth of March.
I passed the first night at Puckeridge and the second in Cambridge, where I took myself to Caius and stood on the dark stairway outside the room that had been mine. From inside the room came the sound of soft, serious voices. It occurred to me that none in that room, however studious they might be, could know that the organ of the heart has no feeling.
On the third day I rode on towards Willingham and I saw how the landscape became, as it were, less and the sky more and how the creatures most numerous were the birds, who had their existence in both elements. A wind got up, making Danseuse nervous, so that she became for a while a dancer indeed, shying at gusts. But the birds rode on the wind. I watched them glide and plummet on the eddies. I saw bustards, and dottrels and wild geese.
And I observed how, in this Fen land, the crust of the earth appears thin, allowing water to seep and ooze upwards so that it is possible to imagine there are fishes and not worms in the soil. And it is a landscape of thin things – feathery marsh grasses and bullrushes and bending willows – so that I smiled when I thought of Pearce within it, thin and threadbare, and I also began to sense how I, with my wide, flat face, my fleshy lip and my soft belly, was not at one with it at all.
Though the wind seemed unable to cease (as if the vast cloudy sky held the wind trapped, as under a dome) no rain at all fell on me in all my journey and for this blessing I found myself giving thanks to the silent God of the lardy cake. And so in this way let my thoughts dwell upon the very simple credo that informs Pearce's life and which makes him immune to all the spells under which I had fallen. Despite much evidence to the contrary, he and his Quaker friends believe that the Apostolic age is not over, that God and his Son have much more to say to us yet, but will not choose persons of worldly authority through whom to say it. "The Seed of Christ, Merivel," Pearce had informed me many times, "is planted not in the souls of Priests or Kings, but in the bosom of The Commonest He," thus causing whole hundreds of proud citizens to quail with fear at the idea of God's word passing through the likes of Cattlebury or the late Pierpoint and so to denounce Quakerism as an utter heresy. Strangely, the King (who does not appear to quail at anything, even death) is tolerant towards Quakers – more tolerant of their discourtesies than he has been towards mine. Were Pearce to come into the King's presence and refuse to remove his hat, I do not think he would have his house taken from him. I could imagine, even, that the brazen gesture might be rewarded with that gift I once held to be more priceless than any other, the Royal Smile.
So, with my incoherent thoughts turning always in a circular fashion back towards myself, I trotted on towards the village of Doddington, and stayed my third night in the little town called March, where I slept a most disconsolate sleep, being full of trepidation about my imminent arrival at Pearce's Hospital.
The New Bedlam, or Whittlesea Hospital, has been founded in a place with the poetic name of Earls Bride, but which I saw at once to be really no proper place at all, but a thin straggle of poor cottages, having no forge or ale house or dairy or any means that I could see of purchasing provisions. It is like a drowned place, a shipwrecked place. Those few who cling to it must endure a life of most fearful monotony, their only visitors being the birds and the buffeting wind. Upon my first sighting of Earls Bride (is there the ghost of a true bride in the name or has it corroded in the damp air, being once Bridle Way or even Bridge?) I had this most perverse thought: that the penning up of one hundred lunatics in their midst had brought some entertainment to the inhabitants of this God-forsaken place.
As we approached the Hospital, which is a cluster of barns built around a lime-washed low-roofed house such as might house a yeoman farmer, Danseuse stopped dead and, though I kicked vigorously at her flanks, she could not be persuaded forward. I dismounted and looked about me and listened. I could hear nothing except the huffing of the wind, but I note in passing that, since my meeting in the King's summer-house, my hearing seems to have suffered a most inexplicable loss, and I could tell from Danseuse's stubbornness and from the way her ears were pricked that she had heard a sound that made her uneasy.
Around the buildings has been constructed a flint and clay wall, like a bailey round a castle except that this structure was, I presumed, designed not to keep enemies out but to keep the mad folk in, lest they go roaming about in the flat land and drown. An iron gate had been let into the wall and it was towards this that I led Danseuse, having put a comforting arm round her neck.
The gate was locked. I knocked and waited and then turned and looked at desolate Earls Bride on its little causeway. It was the look of one who, suddenly feeble of spirit, wishes to turn round and retrace his steps homewards. And I know that, had Bidnold still been mine, I would have done this. I would not even have stayed to greet my old friend. I would, in short, have run away.
A tall man, large in every respect, with a great barrelled thorax and very mighty hands, opened the gate to me and stood smiling enquiringly. He had red curly hair, very thick and abundant, and a red beard, under which he made a steeple of his fingers.
"How may I help you, Friend?" he asked.
I nodded to him, the while noting a distressing shivering in the neck of my horse.
"I have come to see my friend, John Pearce and… well, in truth I really cannot say why else I find myself here, unless it is in the belief that I could be of some use…"
"Please enter. We will get oats for your horse. It is not a glad place you have come to, but a place of suffe
ring. I expect you noticed our words from Isaiah upon the gate?"
"I saw some words, but did not read them."
"Ah. Then read before you come in."
The large man now returned his hand to the gate and pushed it to a little, as if making to shut me out. Had he closed it entirely, I do believe I would have turned my horse round and cantered away, but he did not.
I peered at the inscription beaten into the metal: "Behold, I have refined thee but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" Isaiah 48.10.
"Very well," I said. "I have read the words."
The gate moved again to admit me. I felt Danseuse's head push up against my restraining arm and she jangled her bit.
"Please follow me, Friend," said the red-haired man who, I now noticed, was wearing a leather tabard over his black coat and leggings. The tabard was very stained and blackened with use, like a worn saddle. I looked down at my own clothes. I was wearing brown velvet breeches and a brown coat edged only a little with carmine. The lace at my wrists and throat was limp. My own good sense told me that, for all their relative modesty, these garments were not sturdy enough for the days that were coming.
I stepped inside, tugging my horse, and the gate closed behind us. We stood in a kind of courtyard with a floor of cinders, very patchy with moss. A single tree, an oak, grew in the middle of it.