what was the insertion of the 'de' into his surname but a declaration of hope?
Night seemed to have come by the time de Gourlay left my room. Though I had put a taper to my fire, I felt distressingly cold. A bath, I decided, was the only thing that would warm me.
I called for Will. He informed me that he had delivered my note to Celia.
'How is my wife?' I asked him.
'Listless, Sir. Impatient for the return of Mister Finn, so that the portrait may be finished.'
'Finn has left?'
'Yes, Sir. The day after your cancelled party. On Whitehall business, he boasted.'
So, I was not wrong. Finn had been appointed (or had made himself) the King's spy.
As I sat in my tub (my head lolling and somewhat uncomfortable, so that it occurred to me to design a chin- strap for myself such as I had imagined for the people of the River Mar) I tried to determine what consequences this spying would have for me. Knowing the King as I did, supreme as he is in his power over every person living in his Kingdom, I was prepared to wager that he would be amused by the folly of my love for Celia. 'Well, Merivel…' I could hear him say, 'what a clumsy, impersonation of Romeo you do make! Tussling with Juliet upon the balcony! In future, do try to remember which role has been given to you. You are Paris.' I smiled. So perfectly could I remember the inflections of the King's voice that I could almost believe him to be present in the room, just beyond the steam rising from my bath-water.
I closed my eyes. Will was ladling hot water over my shoulders and stomach, yet I was starting to feel cold again and it was the coldness of a fever. 'Bring more water, Will,' I instructed, 'and let it be piping hot.'
'This is hot enough, Sir. You will vaporise.'
'Do not argue. Go, heat more water. I am drowning in cold.'
I was left alone, then, in my tub. Outside the window, I heard the shrieking of a nightjar. I thought of Nell's prediction of my fall. I thought of Pierpoint's fall from his boat. And of Rosie, alone in her laundry, waiting for thirty shillings to fall into her palm.
Chapter Thirteen. Royal Tennis
I remember that Will half carried me, dripping and trembling from the bath. He dried me and put over my head a clean nightshirt and lay me down in my bed and I instructed him to pile furs upon me and I could smell the badger skins; they smelled of earth.
I burrowed down. I burrowed into sleep. And when I woke in the middle of the night, I knew that I was most horribly ill, with a pain in my forehead and at the base of my skull such as I had never imagined, unless it were the pain of death itself.
I vomited copiously into a basin. The sounds of my retching woke Will, who had laid himself to sleep on the floor of my bedchamber. He took the basin away and brought me water. 'Sir,' he said, holding the cup to my mouth, 'I see some red patches or blotches upon your face.'
I lay back, the pain in my head causing me to whimper like Celia's neglected Isabelle. Will held a mirror to my nose. I squinted at myself. It was an afflicting sight, one that I may long remember. I had contracted the measles.
I will not describe for you the discomfort of this illness. It will suffice to set down that I was very vexed with pain for several days, a pain relieved only by the frequent doses of laudanum which I prescribed for myself and which, in turn, sent my brain into a kind of delirium so that I no longer recognised my room, nor Will within it, but believed myself to be, variously, at Whitehall, in my parents' workshop, in Wise Nell's stinking parlour and on a tilt boat.
When the pain at last lessened and I was able to lie still without groaning, I knew that what was now stealing upon me was a sleep so profound it was like a swaddling of death. It held me for some fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. Then I would wake and find Will or Cattlebury at my side with a little cup of broth, which I would try to sip. Then I would piss feebly into my pot and lie down again and in minutes re-enter this velvet sleep, at one moment remarking to myself that, if it resembled death, it also resembled infancy and musing foolishly on the possibility of being reborn in a more handsome and serious guise.
This, of course, did not come about. I was 'reborn' two weeks later, weak as a mole and covered with scabs. I sat up and saw Will sitting in a chair, wearing his tabard. 'Thank you, Will,' I said. 'And for caring for me so well. Without you, I would have been in a sorry mess.'
'Are you better, Sir?'
'I believe I am. Though I feel somewhat puny and hollow…'
'Are you recovered enough for some news?'
'News?'
'Yes. About your household.'
'Meaning you and Cattlebury and the other servants?'
'No, Sir. Meaning your wife and her maid and Mister Finn and the music master. They are all gone. Gone to London.'
'Celia has gone?'
'Yes, Sir Robert. And taken all her dresses and fans and so forth.'
'But the portrait…'
'Finished. And the day it was, the King sends one of the Royal coaches, and they all get into it and are gone.'
I lay down again. I stared at my turquoise canopy. 'That is the end of it, then,' I heard myself say. 'Now, she will never return. What date is it, Will?'
'February, Sir. The twenty-second day.'
One week later, as I sat by my fire, staring vacantly into the flames, Will brought me a letter. It was, as I knew it would be, from the King. Or rather, it was not
'So,' I said to Will, who had brought me the note, 'Finn did his work.'
'I beg your pardon, Sir?'
'Never mind. The King calls me to London, Will. And it will not be to praise me.'
'You're too weak, yet, to go to London, Sir.'
'Needs must, Will. I shall not ride, but take the coach. Perhaps you would be good enough to accompany me?'
'Willingly, Sir Robert.'
'We shall leave tomorrow morning, then. Make sure my black and gold coat is clean and my gold breeches.'
'Yes, Sir.'
'And fold up the tabard I had intended my wife should wear. We shall take it to the King as a present. Though I fear – '
'What, Sir?'
'That no offering of this kind will be enough.'
I shall not dwell upon the details of our journey, except to record that, as we came to Mile End and Will saw in the distance the tower and turrets of London, he grew most childishly excited thinking of the marvels he was about
