Restoration

The dog was now scrabbling at the door. I believe the maid pushed it away roughly before she said: 'My mistress is sleeping. Go, please, away.'

'No,' I said. 'I will not go away. Please wake my wife. I have much that is important to say to her.'

'No!' hissed Sophia. 'My Lady is sleeping!'

'She may sleep later. I must speak to her now.'

I was about to add that at this precise moment I was feeling a great deal of compassion for Celia but that such is the nature of mood and emotion that I could not guarantee, if forced to return at another time, to find within me the same degree of kindness, when the door was opened. The maid stood there in her nightgown and lace cap. I saw now that her skin was sallow and her upper lip uncommonly hairy. I decided she must be one of the large retinue of Portuguese women who had been shipped to England with Catherine of Braganza, many of whom had found themselves forced to serve outside their beloved Queen's household and who, by the Whitehall gallants, were known scathingly as 'the Farthingales' after the peculiar hooped skirts beneath which they concealed their stocky legs.

This Sophia gave me a look of the utmost loathing as I went past her into the room. I shall be rid of you, Farthingale, I said to her in my mind, for I am master here.

I must relate, however, that in the scene which followed (I deliberately refer to it as a 'scene', for the albeit unoriginal notion that my life since my wedding has become something of a farce does very often strike me as apt) I demonstrated all too lamentably my lack of masterliness and found myself most horribly insulted and abused. This is what happened:

I found Celia, not in bed as Farthingale had pretended, but sitting on the orange and green cushions of the window seat, fully dressed in her black garb, staring out at the dismal dawn.

I asked her if she had slept well and she replied that she had not slept at all so hideous did she find the room, so vulgar, so gaudy and tasteless. She could not, she said, imagine anyone – except probably myself – being capable of finding any rest within it.

Reminding myself that I should not become angry, I assured her calmly that she was free to select another room whenever she wished. I then asked her if I might sit down. She answered that she would prefer me to remain standing.

By this time disconcerted by Celia's hostility, of which I truly believed myself undeserving, I nevertheless began upon what I had come to say. I told Celia that I of all people, who had briefly known some affection from the King, understood exceedingly well the quality, the measure of her sadness. I began to speak of the terrible degree to which my being and my spirit, once calm and content in its serving of God and the Trinity, was now possessed by the King. I went so far as to say that I believed there was no man or woman in the Kingdom (be they as pious as my dead parents, be they Puritan or Quaker, be they lord or lunatic) utterly free from and untouched by any longing to see their own putrid lives lit up by his radiance. 'Inevitably then,' I went on, 'you and I, Celia, who have known something of the man's love…'

'Love?' shrieked Celia. 'What presumption, Merivel! What self-deception! How can you dare to speak of what the King felt for you as love! Not for one second, not for one mote of time did King Charles love you, Merivel. I advise you never again to use the word!'

'My only intention…' I began, but Celia, now standing and fixing upon my face her fearful eyes, refused to let me speak. She jabbed a small white finger towards my scarlet waistcoat as she yelled: 'The truth is that the King, in his love for me, in his passion for me, made use of you. He used you, Merivel. He looked around for the stupidest man he could find, the densest, the most foolish, the one who would accept whatever he did like a dog and cause him no trouble – and he found you! I begged him, don't marry me to that idiot, I begged him on my knees, but all he did was laugh. 'Who can I ask,' he said, 'to be paid cuckold except an idiot?' Do you understand, Merivel? Dense as you are, do you comprehend what I'm saying?'

Well, I'm afraid I cannot go on with the scene. It is very painful, is it not? Of course I 'comprehended', as she put it. I comprehended all too chillingly and although, in her rage and despair, she flung yet more insults at me, while the odious fat Farthingale looked on and smirked, I simply am not able to set them down.

I made no further attempt to offer my friendship to Celia, let alone enquire how the King's rejection of her had come about, but quietly withdrew from the room, shutting the door behind me before Farthingale could slam it in my face.

My first thought was: to whom, after this terrible revelation, shall I turn for comfort? To Pearce? To Will Gates? To Violet Bathurst? To Meg Storey? To my lost wench, Rosie Pierpoint? I felt a most terrible need of some kindly human company. But the hour was still early, my house dark, and I imagined them all sleeping: Pearce on his back with his white hands folded upon his ladle; Will Gates on his truckle bed dreaming of village girls; Violet enclosed by sumptuous brocade, safely absent from old Bathurst's brain; Meg in her attic, fallen asleep in her drawers and with beer upon her breath; sweet Rosie in Pierpoint's bed, stirring now to the murmur of the waking river… and I let them be.

I walked away from the Marigold Room to the west wing of the house and climbed the cold stone stairway to the circular room in the turret, whose discovery had given me so much joy. The room was still empty, still untouched. I went to each of the windows and looked out. A small slit of red in the sky hinted at sunrise. A white mist lay on the park, shrouding the deer.

I sat down under one of the windows. It will never be used now, this seemingly perfect room, I thought. At least, not by me. For it is surely the place which, though it aspires to do so, my mind can neither order nor understand. It is beyond my limit. I am earthbound, gross, ignorant. I will never reach to here.

It was of course Pearce to whom I eventually confided what had been said by Celia in the Marigold Room.

I had agreed to go with him upon a strange errand: to dig up a small quantity of earth from the village graveyard, from which Pearce intended to extract the saltpetre. He is suffering, among other afflictions, from a bladder stone and hopes to dissolve it in time by swallowing regular doses of this foul substance.

For the purposes of gathering the earth, he had taken with us a small spade and a leather bag. With some chivalry (Pearce still being weak from his arduous journey across the Fens) I offered to carry the spade and Pearce hung the bag about his long neck, thus giving himself more than ever the air of a mendicant.

We walked slowly down the drive and out onto the little road that leads to the village. Once we had gathered the earth, it was my intention to offer Pearce some refreshment at the Jovial Rushcutters, over which I could tell him what had been said to me. I found, however, that so slow was the pace of Pearce's walk that I was forced to prattle to keep myself from getting cold and thus had come out with my sad story long before we had reached the village, finishing it by hurling the spade away from me in a violent gesture of anguish.

Pearce looked at me. In his large eyes, I did detect a small glimmer of pity, but for some time, during which I retrieved the spade, he walked on in silence. I was just beginning to wonder whether I should embark on my tale again, this time making certain every few sentences that he was listening to me, when Pearce cleared his throat and said:

'It is my belief, all unfashionable as I know it to be, that all things, including lunacy, may be susceptible to cure.'

'What?' I said.

'It has been believed since the beginning of time, that the mad are possessed of Devils and are thus filled with evil. This evil, it is universally agreed, must be beaten out of them by extreme chastisement, torture and all other conceivable kinds of cruelty…'

'Pearce,' I said, 'happy as I am to discuss your work at the New Bedlam at some later time I would ask you now to give your attention to my state of mind and – '

'I am giving my attention to your state of mind, Merivel. If you could, for once, listen to what I have to say instead of disregarding me, you will see that I have some helpful ideas on the subject.'

We walked on. A pale sun now emerged from behind a bank of cloud and glimmered eerily upon us.

'Let me describe to you,' Pearce went on, 'a woman who was brought to me at the Whittlesea Hospital – for such is the name we have given to our Bedlam. This woman had been found half drowned in a ditch after wandering the shire for month upon month, year upon year, begging and shouting obscene words, mortifying her body, particularly her breasts and her arms with sharp hawthorn twigs. Her chief delight, in her poor suffering