'Naturally, I would not…'
'Then we shall endure,' she said, 'until a better time arrives.'
She stood up to leave then. Emboldened by her honesty and courtesy, I asked her whether she would sup with me that evening. She hesitated only momentarily before replying that she would.
So overjoyed by this was I, that I descended at once to the kitchen. To Cattlebury's creative hands, I consigned a menu of eel tart, pigeon breasts stewed with madeira and Spanish plums, roasted quail with a salad of fennel, followed by egg pudding and boiled apples. Farthingale, I commanded, was to be served her supper upstairs.
She came flying down to Bidnold in her coach and the snorting and whinnying of her horses was to be heard far and wide. She entered my house in all her most magnificent finery with her head held high and proud, my Lady Bathurst with a great anger and lust upon her!
She demanded to see me. She was told I was at supper with my wife. She pushed past the servants and swept into the Dining Room, where Celia and I were at work upon the eel tart. She stared at us. She wore on her head a most admirable velvet cap, from which protruded upright two pheasant tails, a most peculiar but arresting fashion. I gazed at her.
She did not have to speak for me to understand the crime of which I stood accused. Since the arrival of Pearce, I had not once been to visit her or sent word to her. By now, the news that my wife had come would have reached her and she would have wrongly supposed this to be the cause of my neglect.
I must now tell you that Violet Bathurst's language, learnt I suspect from Bathurst and the hunting field, can turn at times most deliciously vulgar and I saw, even as Violet opened her mouth, that this would be one such time. Anxious that Celia be spared accusations that would distress her, I stood up, bowed and apologised to my wife, caught Violet by her angry wrist and pulled her peremptorily from the room.
Letting her fury rain down upon my head, I led her quickly to my Withdrawing Room, where I slammed my door behind us, took the wild struggling creature in my arms and kissed her with considerable force. Her body was hot and trembling and her rage seemed to have perfumed her skin with a scent so magnificently irresistible that in a matter of moments I had torn the pheasant tails from her head, lain her down upon the carpet from Chengchow, unbuttoned my breeches and entered her with more passion and haste than I had felt for any woman since my lost afternoons of Rosie Pierpoint. With each push of my loins, Violet swore at me, thus further exciting both herself and me, so that shrieking and foul-mouthing each other, we arrived together at our little moment of ecstasy and clung to each other, swooning and gasping as it passed.
We stood up at last. Violet had ceased her shrieking. I kissed her shoulder, swearing on the life of my sweet mother that I was not, nor would ever be, in the habit of touching my wife and promised to visit her the following evening and spend the night in her bed. At which time, I told her, I would explain my absence, which had been caused only by a visit from my friend Pearce, with whom I had had such grave discourse that all thoughts of pleasure had been dislodged from my mind.
I fastened the pheasant tail hat to her lovely head. She placed a very tender kiss on my flat nose and obediently left. I waited until I heard her coach clatter off into the night, and then returned to the Dining Room. The eel tart had been removed and the pigeons served. Celia sat upright and still, sipping her wine.
'I must apologise,' I said, 'for the unforeseeable interruption. Pray do begin upon your pigeons.'
'Thank you,' said Celia. 'Your cook, at least, is exceedingly good. Tell me, Merivel, do you have mistresses?'
'Naturally,' I replied, 'I am a man of my time.'
'And is that woman one of them?'
'She is. Her name is Lady Bathurst.'
'And do you love her?'
'Ah,' I said, 'that word that finds itself so frequently upon our lips!'
'Well?'
'No, Celia. I do not love her. Now pray tell me how you find Cattlebury's madeira sauce?'
Celia replied that it was excellent. My unexpected exertions with Violet had given me a ravening hunger and I set upon several pigeons with somewhat unseemly attack. I was wiping my mouth in preparation for the quail when I heard the unmistakable sound of a horse cantering swiftly up the drive. Moments later, just as the quail were being put before us, the Dining Room door was flung open once more and Will Gates came rushing in.
'A letter, Sir!' he said excitedly. 'Come this very moment from London.'
'Very well, Will. There's no need for such haste. Give it to me.'
He put the letter into my hands. He looked at it and I looked at it. We both knew, by the unmistakable seal upon it, that what had arrived on this extraordinary night was a letter from the King.
It is in my possession still, this letter.
This is what it says:
This command comes from Your Only Sovereign and Loyal Servant of God,
Charles Rex
I rode through the night, taking Danseuse as far as Newmarket, changing horses there and again at Royston. Will Gates begged me to let him accompany me, fearful, I believe, that in my passion to reach London I would go flying into a ditch, there to die unmourned. But I refused. 'The stars,' I said, (succumbing, I know not why, to a fleeting attack of Pearceian romanticism), 'will be my companions, and the very darkness itself!'
I had anticipated and indeed so it proved, that my spirit on this journey would be hurtling ahead of my body, causing me to shout at it in order to rein it in. It did not worry me if some poor cottar woke under his low eave to hear me singing or shrieking in the December night, but I preferred to undertake this noisy adventure alone, leaving Will to keep an eye on Farthingale lest, in my absence, she got intolerably above herself and began setting fire to my paintings, baiting my bird, playing my oboe, or I know not what.
As I set off, Celia was weeping. No doubt it pained her, nay, frightened her beyond measure that it was to me and not to her that the summons had come. She would, she said piteously, send some message with me, some plea, but knew not how to shape the words. And I could not linger for an instant, not even to finish my supper or powder my wig. 'If I do not throw myself into the saddle at once,' I told Celia, 'I shall not reach London by morning, and you know as well as I that if I am not there at the hour appointed, His Majesty will not wait for me. As sternly as he commands loyalty from his subjects does he command punctuality. A betrayal of time he regards as a betrayal of faith. The first object that he ever showed me, Celia, was a clock.'
And so I galloped away. Into my pockets I had thrust four or five quail to sustain me through the twelve hours of travel and at the moment of my departure, Will came running with a flask of Alicante, which I strapped to my saddle. 'Farewell!' I shouted, but did not look behind. The road ahead mesmerised my being.
I entered London at seven o'clock. Over the river, unglimpsed by me for so long, rose the sluggish sun and mist streamed up off the water. I heard the swearing of the bargemen and the shouting of the lightermen, the cry of gulls and the ruffle of pigeons, and though my thighs ached and my rump was sore, I knew that my spirit was still strong.
See me, then, arrive at last at Whitehall. I have stopped at an inn to relieve myself and to drink some water, suffering suddenly from a terrible thirst. I have had the serving girl brush my breeches and wash my boots. I have shaken the dust from my wig and soaped my face and hands. I feel extraordinarily hot as I enter the Physic Garden, I wonder if I am about to vaporise and disappear, leaving behind nothing more than a greasy puddle. Once again, as on that first most terrible visit, I feel that the near presence of the King has altered the air. 'Lord God,' I say, sending out one of my little bleeps of prayer, 'help me to breathe.'
I walk on between the neat hedges of box, smelling those herbs that outlast the winter, bay, rosemary, sage, lemon balm, thyme, and there, in the very middle of the garden, setting his watch by the sundial, I see him, the man who, if a hole were made in my breast such as the one I saw at Cambridge, I would beg to reach in and take
