Restoration

return to the only profession that would get me a living: medicine. I was to awake at last from the sleep into which the King had seen me fall. No longer would I be able to dream away my time under the Norfolk sky for henceforth – from this very night, in fact – I would own nothing save my horse and my surgical instruments, the only things which had been 'gifts of affection' and not 'gifts of expediency'.

Plague was coming. Plague, as I had once before been reminded, rouses men, not only from sleep, but from forgetfulness. They remember Death. I, too, would remember that Life is brief, that Death creeps over it as surely as the dusk now falling around the summer-house. And with this remembrance would come another: I would remember anatomy. 'And so, Merivel, you will once more be doing and no longer dreaming. You will have become useful.'

I believe the King smiled at me then. To him, no doubt, the taking of Bidnold from me was a clever and satisfactory plan, killing, one could suggest, two birds with one stone by rendering me 'useful' once again and furnishing the King with a small amount of money. The terrible degree to which I myself felt 'killed' by the severity of my punishment the King could not begin to imagine. I had known, from the moment I understood Finn's role as spy in my household, that my behaviour towards Celia might quench any affection the King still had for me, but it had never entered my mind that he would take my house from me. I had believed that Bidnold was mine for ever. I had now and then imagined myself growing old there – with Violet as my companion perhaps, if Bathurst should chance to drop dead of an epilepsy – and being buried in Bidnold churchyard. And now that I was to lose it, together with Will Gates and Cattlebury and the carpet from Chengchow and my turquoise bed and all, the profound nature of my affection revealed itself to me. I had made it mine. In every room I saw some part of my character reflected. Bidnold was Merivel anatomised. From my colourful and noisy belly you ascended to my heart which, though it craved variety also favoured concealment, and so to my brain, a small but beautiful place, occasionally filled with light and yet utterly empty. In his repossession of my house, the King was taking me from myself.

In all my dealings with my Sovereign, I had hitherto been obedient and accepting, doing without question or barter whatever I was commanded to do. But now, as I looked at my vacant, houseless future, I felt moved to plead with the King. I knelt down on the flagstone floor of the summer-house. I put my hands together, as if in prayer.

'Sire,' I said, 'I beg you not to remove me from Bidnold. I am not, as you would believe, idle there. I have embarked upon a new vocation as an artist. I am learning to play the oboe, I am endeavouring to make sense of the stars and I have taken upon me a new responsibility: I am an Overseer of the Poor.'

The King stood up. As always, I was moved by the beauty and elegance of the legs before which I was kneeling.

'An Overseer?' he said. 'You seem fond of the term, for you used it to Celia. But an Overseer should be impartial, distanced and kind, and you were none of these to her. Will you now abuse the Poor of your parish as you abused Celia?'

'No, Sir. And I cannot say too many times how sorry I am for what I did to Celia. I loved her and this was my mistake. I do not love the Poor, only pity them.'

'What are you doing, then, for those you pity?'

'I am learning about them, Sir, their whereabouts, their collecting of sticks and other pitiful tasks, their work at the looms in Norwich…'

'And how is this to help them?'

'I am not precisely 'helping' them yet, my Liege – '

'And yet, before I met you, you were. At St Thomas 's, you were helping them – with the only skill you have ever possessed.'

'I cannot use that skill any more, Sir. I cannot.'

'Why?'

'I cannot…'

'Why, Merivel?'

'Because I am afraid!'

The King, who had been pacing about the summer-house, now stopped and rounded on me, holding up an admonishing finger clothed in a glove made by my late father. 'Precisely!' he declared. 'And do not imagine I have not known this! But this age is stern, Merivel, and those who are afraid will not survive it. Those who are weak will not survive it. You, if you remain as you are, will not survive it.'

'I beg you to let me remind you, Sire, that it was you who took me from St Thomas 's. You gave me the Royal dogs. You liked me for my foolishness…'

'And for your skill. For the two, then, were in you, the light and the dark, the shallow and the profound. But now your skill has fallen away and you are all one foolish mass.'

So it was in vain that I pleaded. The King had made up his mind. For a moment, I considered prostrating myself before him, but I know that this King is not moved by supplication; it merely irritates him. And, as for the dispossessed, he has no sympathy for them, for he was once one of them and had to wait years for his restoration.

What could I do then but accept my fate, the while finding it unjust and cruel, with as convincing a show of bravery as I could put on?

The King now moved towards the door of the summer-house and made to leave. Before he went, he looked down upon me one last time and informed me that I could return to Bidnold for one week, 'there to make preparation for your departure. The keys of the place must then be given to Sir James Babbacombe, who is to act as my agent in this matter. And so au revoir, Merivel. I shall not say adieu, for who knows whether, at some time in the future, History may not have another role for you?'

And then he was gone. And as soon as he had stepped outside the summer-house I saw servants come with lamps to light his way. They had been waiting and watching for the moment when he would walk away from me.

Chapter Fourteen. Not with Silver…

Some days have passed. I am at Bath. I have put up at an Inn called The Red Lion. I have come here in the hope that the sulphurous waters will wash my mind of some of its despair. My landlady is given to singing as she beats mattresses and empties pots. I catch myself listening for some ghostly accompanist.

I have not returned to Bidnold and do not intend to do so. I have sent letters to my staff apologising for my misfortune, which in turn becomes theirs. I have requested that one of my grooms saddle up Danseuse like a packhorse with a few true possessions and trot her by slow stages to London. I, who scoffed at Pearce's 'burning coals' now have little more to call my own than he. Should Danseuse step with her sweet daintiness into a pothole and break her leg, I shall be forced to purchase for myself some horrible biting mule.

My dreams are inhabited by Will Gates. He is weeping. His brown squirrel's face is squashed. He resembles a baby struggling to be born. With his fists he tries to wipe away his tears. And then he gets up onto my coach, sitting beside the coachman, and is driven away.

Will Gates. I loved you most dearly, Will.

When Will had gone, I begun to walk quite fast away from Whitehall and in an easterly direction, as if vainly trying to follow the coach. The winter night had come on and the streets were black and I was soon lost. But then, hurrying on down narrow street after narrow street, I saw in front of me the great bulk of the Tower. I had had no intention of arriving there, but my distracted mind perceived it all at once as a place of refuge. To the guards I announced that I had been sent by the King, to cast my eye upon the lions and leopards that he keeps chained up there, and they let me go in.

I knew my way to the dungeon where the animals were penned. I took a torch from an iron sconce and followed my own shadow down into the damp bowels of the Tower where, even at midsummer, no light falls on the stones and where, it is said, the ghosts of the dead Kings of England find themselves paraded with hundreds of their ancient enemies, as in some circus they did not expect. And there I saw the lions, who have the names of