Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  My young self, I recalled, was always in a lather of Heat. So explosive with Plans and Mad Wonders had it been, that I could recall no wintertime – except one – when it had felt cold. And I was just beginning to marvel at this when I noticed a large bundle, wrapped in Linen, at the bottom of the Armoire. And I remembered what it contained.

  I lifted it up and set it down, and spread out the Linen wrapping, and there before me lay a great heap of Badger Furs. They had been fashioned into Tabards by my Tailor, old Trench, in the Winter of 1665, which, I now remembered, had been of long and icy duration, and in the course of which I, no less than the next man, had begun to shiver.

  I had insisted that all my household servants follow my own example by wearing these Badger skins, ‘to prevent chills and Agues’. I had warned them that we would, every one of us, appear a trifle foolish, draped in these singular Garments (with the snout of a dead Badger rearing up on each shoulder), but that upon them might depend our survival of the cold. ‘Of what account is mere foolishness,’ I asked them, ‘compared to Death?’

  All had agreed to wear the furs. All except Will.

  Will had turned aside from me and would not, under any threat of Punishment whatsoever, put on his Tabard. I had endeavoured to coax and cajole him. I had warned him he might suffer from all manner of ailments if he did not keep his body warm in this way, but he utterly disregarded me.

  ‘I shall not, Sir Robert,’ he informed me, ‘and that is that.’

  Now the Tabards were a little mangy with Moth holes, and spiced with the Dust of Time, and the snouts no longer reared up, but hung down somewhat mournfully, and many of the glass eyes, sewn in by Trench, had fallen out. However, when I shook out the garments I could feel that there was still much warmth in them. And so it came to me that I would brush them down and wash and dry them, as carefully as I tended my wig, and lay some of them upon Margaret’s bed. Reserving one for myself, I would distribute the others among the servants. ‘Pay no attention to the Moth holes,’ I would say, ‘but only consider the heat they will bring to the area of your hearts.’

  *

  I stand in my Library, distributing the cleaned Tabards.

  When Will comes in I expect him to refuse to put his Tabard on, but he does not. He heaves the garment over his head and laces it round his bent old form.

  ‘Very good, Will,’ I say. ‘I am excellently pleased you have consented.’

  He moves slowly across the room, making for the door. The Tabard sways below his knees as he walks and he reminds me of a poor Bison I once saw in an engraving, with its head hanging low and all its fur in tatters.

  I do not know whether I am about to laugh or weep at this. I feel something welling up in me, some Great Emotion, but it seems to lodge in my breast and not come out.

  As Will reaches the door, he turns and says to me: ‘I am doing this for Miss Margaret’s sake, Sir Robert, so that I may play my part in her recovery, and that is the only reason.’

  13

  IN THE FIRST week of February we were entered upon the ninth week of Margaret’s illness. There was no change, for better or worse, in her condition. Typhus, it seems, is a thoughtless visitor who assumes a Right of Habitation in the body and sleeps there, and forbears to leave.

  Looking at my Almanac one morning, and calculating the weary succession of days, I began to believe that we would be walled up for all time in our helpless Arctic prison and slowly die there. And this thought put me in mind of that other bereft prisoner, the Bear, whom I had woefully neglected.

  I walked out to the place where the cage stood and I saw that the snow was so deep in it that there was hardly any place remaining for the animal’s body. Though it kept trying to move, the packed, frozen snow constrained it, whatever it attempted. The weather, in short, was constructing a Coffin round it.

  I called to me one of the Grooms and together we began shovelling out snow, mixed with animal faeces, from the between the bars of the cage, which was awkward, arduous work, but after an hour, labouring up a Great Sweat, we had released the Bear from its hapless position and it was able to turn, very slowly, in a circle.

  I could see from the way the animal moved that its limbs were stiff and sore from its confinement, and I told the Groom to fetch me some strong chains from the stables.

  ‘Chains to what purpose, Sir Robert?’ he asked.

  ‘Only fetch them,’ I said, ‘then I will show you.’

  He came back, hung about and rattling with the chains, like some Ghostly Spirit come out of the grave, which made me smile, for that he was a very fat man to whom Death no doubt appeared a most unfair and inimical Thing, and I took them off him and found one that I could pass through a ring in its end.

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I am going to reach into the cage and loop this chain round the Bear’s neck, like a leash round the head of a dog.’

  ‘To do what, Sir?’

  ‘When I have the chain secure, you will open the gate of the cage …’

  ‘Not I, Sir Robert!’

  ‘Yes, you, my good man. I cannot do this all alone. But have no fear. I will have the animal on its leash. You have only to stand safely behind the open gate and I will lead the Bear out.’

  ‘Heaven deliver us! What if he pull the chain from your hand?’

  ‘He will not do that. He is weak. You have seen how confined the poor creature has been.’

  ‘He could still eat you alive.’

  ‘Why then you will have no need to bury me in the ground.’

  ‘I was not joking, Sir.’

  ‘Nor I. For digging a grave in this frozen earth would be a pitiless labour.’

  The Groom stared at me, as though lamenting that he was employed by a madman, then he looked up at the sky, which, as we laboured in the snow, had darkened over Bidnold, promising us yet another Blizzard.

  While he watched me, I pulled my thick leather gloves up almost to my elbows and, holding the Chain, slowly reached into the cage and encircled the Bear’s neck. Feeling my hand upon it, the animal threw back its head and almost dislodged the Chain, but I managed to hold tight to it, and with my other hand reached for the Ring and tugged hard on this, till I had his head in a necklace.

  The Bear let out a little noise of protest, but it did not resemble the howling I had heard it make in the Jardin du Roi, so I was emboldened to talk to it.

  I said: ‘My poor friend, we are going to go for a walk. We shall go slowly, so that you can find the feeling in your haunches and in your feet. We shall not go very far.’

  ‘Lord, love us!’ said the Groom. ‘You are taking a wild beast for a walk?’

  ‘Yes. If it will come with me. Animals who do not move die soon enough.’

  ‘And what if it escape your Chain? What if it savage my horses, or the cows?’

  ‘It will not. It has been fed every day – or so I commanded. Animals such as this will only attack when they are hungry.’

  ‘How d’you know that, Sir Robert?’

  ‘Only by ordinary Logic. Would you slit the throat of a lamb to eat it if you were not famished?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I would, Sir. I would save it up for later.’

  Seeing my ‘logic’ so easily annihilated by this fat Groom, I found it best to discuss the matter no further. The sky was darkening all the while and I did not relish the idea of walking very long in a Blizzard with the Bear. It was attempting to shake off the collar, but the Chain was strong and my grip was firm, and I now commanded the gate of the cage to be opened.

  The gate was secured by two iron bolts, but these the frost had welded almost to their housings, and I was afraid the Groom would run away before he had persuaded them to move. While he struggled with the bolts, the Bear regarded him hungrily.

  To move its thoughts from biting off the Groom’s hand, I stroked one of its ears, and it turned its face to me with a look of poignant Reproach.

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I promised a fine Stockade. I promised branches to climb and a place to
walk or run. But we cannot build them yet. Everything at Bidnold is captive to the winter.’

  When, at last, the bolts yielded and the Groom tugged open the gate, the Bear looked out at the white landscape before it, but did not move. The Groom clung to the open gate, shielding himself in terror. I held fast to the Chain and in my left hand carried a stalwart stick, which I knew would avail me almost nothing should the Bear decide to attack me, yet it armed me in some inadequate way and helped my Resolution not to falter.

  Then I walked forward, endeavouring to pull the Bear after me, and slowly, with a limping gait, it followed. I shouted back instructions to the Groom to clean and swab the cage, and to put down clean straw and fresh water.

  I led my poor Captive down a cleared pathway into the park. Some Crows clustering on the topmost branches of a frozen oak tree at once set up an irritable clamour, but the Bear paid them no heed and we ambled on.

  I kept looking behind me at the creature, chiefly to make sure it was not about to claw me to death. I remembered the autumn day with Louise in the Jardin du Roi and how the Soldiers had come to shoot the Bear. And then I remembered the price I had paid for its life, which was exceedingly great, for that the King’s Sapphire had been very precious to me – and I thought how difficult it may often be to measure the Value of one thing against another, and how men can frequently come to ruin by the complexity of this Arithmetic.

  But I did not dwell upon this. After my labours with the shovelling of snow I felt warm and, though the sky was dark, it seemed suddenly to me that the Degree of cold in the air had lessened. And this lessening of the cold cheered me, so that my heart felt more light than it had done in a long while.

  We walked a good distance across the park, to where the cleared path ended and mounds of snow reared up at us, blocking our way. When I stopped, the Bear sat down and looked at me. Its look was so sorrowful and tender that any lingering fear I had of it vanished.

  I leaned against the wall of snow and reached out and stroked the Bear’s head. And the thought came to me that perhaps the animal, brought wild out of the forests of Germany, had been already tamed by Man before it had been taken to Paris.

  And then my next, ignoble, idea was how I – to make a great show of my courage and skill – might pretend to my future guests at Bidnold that Merivel alone (who had long ago got himself a great preferment by the saving of the life of one of the King’s Spaniels) had made it docile and obedient, for that he had a singular and unique understanding of animals and the workings of their souls, and was able to speak directly to them.

  This made me smile. And in the next moment something extraordinary happened: a great rushing wind swept suddenly across the place where I rested with the Bear and it began to rain.

  All night I listened to the sound of a great river, as the snow and ice became water once more, pouring itself into every ditch and dell, and flowing away down the drive in a surging torrent.

  I pictured my letter to the King riding on this torrent, like a paper boat, and arriving after a short space of time in His Majesty’s bathtub, where he would exclaim, ‘Ah! A message fashioned into a ship! How brilliantly unusual!’

  And his long fingers would pluck it out of the water and read my words, and then he, still taking his bath, would call to him all the great physicians at Whitehall and say: ‘Write for me every known remedy for the typhus sickness. Write them now, at once, or lose your positions at Court!’

  And they would start anxiously scribbling down their recipes, which, though their writing might be blurred a little by the steam from the hot water being poured over the King’s back, would in a short time arrive here at Bidnold.

  Then I would ride to my apothecary on byways no longer choked with snow. And after that it would not be long before Margaret was well again.

  What succeeded the Thaw was a fortnight of mildness so sweet that I fancied I could smell the Spring in the soft air. The building of the Stockade for the Bear was begun. My letter to the King was sent to London.

  I thought that everything would find some Amelioration now. But it did not.

  I was walking in my Hornbeam Alley one late February morning, looking for signs of new leaf, when Will Gates, still obstinately attired in his Tabard and sweating a little inside it, came hurrying to me in what passes for a run in his ageing frame and summoned me to the house.

  ‘What is it, Will?’ I asked. ‘Why such Olympian haste?’

  ‘Tabitha sent me,’ panted Will. ‘It’s Miss Margaret gone into a Confusion and not knowing where she is …’

  I reached out for the grey stem of one of the Hornbeams and chung to it, to stop myself from falling.

  Will came to me and held my arm to steady me. ‘Sir Robert,’ he said, ‘it may be but a temporary Confusion …’

  ‘No, Will,’ I said. ‘I have read the medical papers. It is the beginning of the end.’

  Will shook his head furiously, side to side. ‘It cannot be!’ he burst out. ‘I am still wearing my Badger skin!’

  I sit at Margaret’s bedside. I hold her hand. I say her name aloud.

  She says to me: ‘I am afraid of the cave.’

  ‘What cave?’ say I.

  ‘I went in,’ she says, ‘and there was a Fledgling trapped in there, and I took it in my hands to bring it out …’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I have forgotten. There was nothing in my hand. Only vile phlegm.’

  I stroke her forehead, which is no longer burning hot as it has been, but cold as clay. I ask her where this cave might be and she replies: ‘Cornwall.’ And this gives me a little hope, for that she remembers the name of Cornwall, where she should have been with her friends, and does not say Mesopotamia or Ipswich or Lyme Regis.

  Though I detest to do this, I send Tabitha for my Medical Instruments, and I open a vein in Margaret’s arm and let blood from it. But I perceive that her poor arm is well-nigh wasted away, and to see my child in this Condition brings such a rage to my heart that I can barely stop myself from screaming.

  I bind the arm, all the while cursing my own inadequate medical knowledge. But I know that I am seeing before me a body that lacks nourishment and I send Tabitha to Cattlebury with the instructions to make a Milk Posset.

  ‘Will he remember what that be?’ asks Tabitha. ‘Mr Cattlebury is got forgetful lately, Sir.’

  ‘Milk!’ I shout. ‘Milk, white wine, egg yolks, Sugar, cinnamon and Nutmeg. Whipped till it thickens. Go on your way!’

  Tabitha glides away like a little shadow and I berate myself for shouting at her, a very gentle girl, who has risked her life and gone without sleep many nights to nurse Margaret.

  It is very quiet in Margaret’s room and I do not like this Quietness, for in it I find myself thinking about the Quietness of the Grave. To fend this away, I begin to prattle in a disordered kind of fashion, telling her once more about my Parents’ Haberdasher’s Shop and all the soft little ends and bits of things that it contained. ‘There were feathers of all sizes,’ I say, ‘and cards of Lace, both Breton Lace and Lace interwoven with gold and silver thread. There were strips of finely brushed felt and pieces of fur and satin Ribbons, like those sewn into the shoulder seams of my Coats, and Buttons of every kind, including Buttons of Bone … but fire came and all of these things were burned, even the silver and the gold …’

  Margaret regards me gravely. The pupils of her eyes are very large. I cannot tell whether she hears me or understands what I am saying, or whether she is already sliding away on some lonely sea to Oblivion. And the Pity of this, that my daughter might find herself alone in an approaching dusk, with everyone and everything she had loved lost to her for ever, overwhelms me, so that I begin to cry and, once begun on my weeping, give myself to it entirely, so that I am all washed about in a tide of tears, and a deal of time passes and I do not know how to come out of it. I seem to know that, in this silent room, my World is ending. It is ending.

  My chest aches from my sobbing. And I think how this pa
in is but a slight wound compared to the great slaying of my soul that is going to come when Margaret is gone. And I say aloud: ‘I do not know how I shall bear it!’

  I repeat this, helplessly, many times, with my head buried in Margaret’s pillow and my arms enfolding her frail body. ‘I do not know how I shall bear it!’

  And then, in my damp darkness, I hear an answering Voice. The Voice is hushed, almost inaudible. It says: ‘You shall not need to bear it, Merivel.’

  I try to restrain my sobs and raise my head from the pillow.

  The room is dark, with the curtains drawn against the spring day, and only a solitary candle burning. I wipe my eyes on a corner of Margaret’s sheet and look towards the door, and I see a tall figure standing there, dressed all in Black and with a white wrapping binding his face. And I think that I am in the presence of Death, who has come, unheard, into the room, and all my flesh turns cold.

  Death moves very slowly and walks towards the bed. And I catch the scent of him as he nears me; but, strangely, Death does not smell of any foul Thing, but of the most beautiful and refined Perfume. I breathe in this Perfume and know that it is familiar to me, but I cannot remember from when or where.

  I wipe my eyes again to try to see more clearly. Death stands motionless at the bedside of my child. He wears black gloves. Above the white Muslin binding his face, his eyes regard me with a fierce Intensity. ‘Merivel,’ he says. ‘I will touch her, as I touch men for the Pox. If the King touches, God very often saves.’

  Weak from my weeping, I stumble to my feet. I try to execute my oft-practised bow, but I have to reach out my hand to stop myself from falling onto the bed.

  ‘Your Majesty …’ I stammer. ‘I mistook you for Death.’

  ‘Did you?’ says the King. ‘How interesting. Monarchs and Death are both burdened with Dread. I expect that is the reason.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘There is no Dread of you in my heart.’

  ‘Good. I did not think there was.’

  ‘Only a very obstinate love.’