hold of my heart.
I approach and remove my hat. I go down on my knees. I am choked and unable to speak. To my shame, I feel my eyes fill with tears. 'Sir…' I manage to whisper.
'Ah. Merivel. Is it you?'
I raise my head. I do not want the King to see that I am crying, yet I know that in this instant he will see far more than this, that in my face he will be able to discern, with terrible precision, the degree of suffering which his neglect of me has caused.
'It is me. It is I, in fact, Sire…' I stammer.
He walks elegantly to where I'm kneeling, the harsh cinders of the path seeming to make wounds on my skin. He reaches out and touches my chin with his glove.
'And how is your game of tennis coming along?' he asks.
I feel, to my intense agony, a fat tear slide down my chin and moisten his glove.
'It would be coming along well, Sir, I'm sure,' I say stupidly, 'except that I do not have a tennis court at Bidnold.'
'No tennis court? That is why you are getting fat, then, Merivel.'
'No doubt it is. That and a greed of which I do not seem able to rid myself…'
It is at this moment that I realise that the pocket of my coat is terribly stained by the remnants of the quail, which I have forgotten to remove. I cover the pocket quickly with the plumes of my hat. The King laughs. To my intense delight. I feel his hand leave my chin and his long fingers travel upwards over my mouth, take hold of my flat nose and give it a vigorous tweak.
'Get up then,' he says, 'and come with us, Merivel. There is much to discuss.'
He leads me, not to his State Rooms, but to his laboratory which, during my time at Whitehall, was a place that fascinated me and in which the King's restless mind was forever at work on new experiments, the most engrossing of which was the fixing of mercury. The smell in the place reminded me of the smell of Fabricius's own room at Padua where, on his night table, he was fond of dissecting lizards. It had about it something of the smell of the sewer or the tomb and yet my brain was invariably excited by it. I suppose that, before I turned away from anatomy, I recognised it was the odour that accompanied discovery.
As we enter the laboratory, the King casts off his coat and throws it down. His chemist is not at work yet so we are alone in the room. I gather up his coat and hold it in my arms while he strides along the tables looking and probing and sniffing. So engrossed does he seem for a moment with the experiments in progress, that I wonder if he has forgotten me. But after a few moments he stops and picks up a phial of ruby-coloured liquid and holds it to the light.
'Regard this,' he says. 'A purgative recently patented by me.'
'Excellent, Your Majesty,' I say.
'Excellent it is. But it is no mere tedious physic, Merivel. It has a property I did not foresee and which is both informative and amusing. We call it the King's Drops. Presently, I shall put some into a sip of wine for you. And we shall see what follows.'
I say nothing. The King perches on a stool very near me and stares up into my face.
'Time has altered you, Merivel,' he says. 'Some vital part of you appears to be asleep.'
I do not know what to say to this either.
'I see this same look in very many of my people, as if they merely prefer to
I lay the heavy brocaded coat aside, catching a fleeting whiff of the sweet perfume with which even the King's gloves and handkerchiefs are scented.
'Mercifully for England – perhaps mercifully for you, my dear Fool – something has arrived on our shores which may rouse us all from sleep.'
'What may that be, Sir?'
'Plague, Merivel. Pestilence. At Deptford four people have died. And it will spread. Some of us will be spared and some will die. But all of us will awake.'
'I heard no rumour of plague, Sir.'
'No. But then you are at Bidnold. You are asleep in Norfolk. You are dreaming, Merivel!'
I am about to reply that indeed I have been dreaming of former times and wishing them with me again, when the King takes from his pocket a lace handkerchief and proceeds, with some tenderness, to wipe the moisture from my boiling face.
'Now,' he says, having cleaned me up, 'we must speak about Mistress Clemence, your wife. For this reason I have summoned you, Merivel. From my knowledge of your character – and I hope I am not mistaken in this – I believe you to be, like your father before you, a man who clearly understands and accepts the station to which chance and favour, no less than his own deserving, have brought him and does not diminish himself by lusting after what he cannot have. Much has been given to you, Merivel, has it not?'
'Yes, Your Majesty.'
'And you do not, even indolent as I fear you have become, drive your brain to despair by wishing for more,
'No…'
'Or do you? Is it a Dukedom you want of me now?'
'No, no. On my honour.'
'Good. Look at that toad, by the way, the thing in the bell jar. Will you help me to dissect it later?'
I look to where the King is pointing and I see an awesomely large bull toad, stiffened and bloated by death.
'If you wish me to, Sir,' I say.
'Yes, I wish you to. Now, listen well, Robert. When I married Celia to you, it was to hide her, so to speak, from the very intelligent gaze of Lady Castlemaine, the better to find her again myself and sport with her unobserved.'
'This I know, my Liege.'
'Very well. You may imagine then my dismay, my fury nay, when I hear from the lips of your wife the command to end my liaison with Castlemaine, likewise to terminate my amours with certain actresses from the Playhouse, and keep her as my only woman, outside the bed of my good Queen. Naturally, I did not answer her one single word, for no subject on earth may command me thus. I merely gave instructions that she was to vacate her house at Kew and all her possessions save her dresses and jewellery and ride at once to you, where she must remain until the folly of her importunate conduct burns shame into her skull!'
The King gets up off his stool and begins once again to walk up and down, poking and prying at his chemical compounds. I see his cheek twitching, a tick of nature caused only and always by anger. I remain silent, only nodding. After a moment or two, the King picks up a large pestle and, using this for emphasis, continues thus:
'Yet, alas, Merivel, I miss her! Though I would whip the silly girl the grosser part of me is uncommonly sensible to her absence. What a plight! My reason tells me to abandon her for ever, but this, the Royal tool, is waving about in search of her. And life is brief, Merivel. We should go to pleasure, as to all things, with energy and will, a gift you once had even to excess, if I recall.'
'And still would, Sir, if my mind – '
'Then go to this one task with a will for me. Impress upon Celia the folly of her demands. Remind her of my fondness for order and rank and my loathing for those who get above themselves. Teach her to be content with what she has, for what she has is much, and bid her never to hope for more. Tell her then to come to me in humility and she may have it all again, her house, her servants, her money and the King in her bed from time to time.'
Disliking my role as messenger, I am about to say to the King that I have had very little in the way of conversation with Celia and fear that her dislike of me may hamper my attempts to pass on his wisdom, when the King grabs my hand and declares: 'Enough of that. I leave it in your hands. Now come, Merivel, I shall now pour you a cup of wine and, into the wine, we shall put one or two of my Drops!'
His anger has vanished as swiftly as it came on. He chuckles as he pours and measures. I watch his hands, then his smile, which is so beloved to me. I have a sudden belief that whatever is in this cordial, the King intends
