by Rose Tremain
Supper that evening, with Fubbs, Margaret and Julius, was most lively and happy. We were joined afterwards by Lord and Lady Delavigne, who were courteous and kind to me, and showed me with great pride a sumptuous Diamond Ring, which was then placed by Julius upon Margaret’s finger.
At this the russety Lord Delavigne began to blub with joy (thus endearing himself to me as a Weeper who, like me, may have worn out many expensive handkerchiefs over the passing years). Wiping his eyes, he put his arm round Margaret’s shoulders and round the shoulders of his youngest son, and made a short impromptu speech about the elusive nature of Human Happiness and how it should be caught with what he termed ‘a bold advance’, as a Butterfly may be caught in a net.
‘Oh, and pinned down, Delavigne, I suppose you will say next?’ teased Lady Delavigne.
‘No, Hortensia, not at all. If by “pinned down” you infer that I am talking about some kind of Containment or Slavery, which indeed I hope you do not mean, you are utterly mistaken. For when, in thirty years, have you ever been “pinned down” by me – except at your own desiring in the marriage bed?’
‘Really, Delavigne! What shocking Discourse is that, in front of Sir Robert?’
‘I do not say anything to shock. I am merely saying that the commodity of happiness is rare and should be taken when it offers itself.’
‘It is indeed,’ said Hortensia. ‘We pray for it most ardently.’
The moment had brought the Delavigne family very close, but I could not refrain from looking at Hortensia Delavigne, who still had some Beauty attendant on her, and wondered under what circumstances the Opportunity of making love with the King had ‘offered itself’ and how quickly or hesitantly she had taken it, and what she had felt about it since.
I knew that she, too, must know – or at least surmise – that Julius was the King’s son, but had never, in twenty-three years, breathed a word about it, not even to get some Advantage from His Majesty, and I thought how this spoke well of her character and of her love for Delavigne.
Then the King came in and we sat down to a furious game of Basset, which is a divertissement dependent scarcely at all upon skill, but only upon a high degree of Chance. Here, it was played recklessly, for high stakes and amid great laughter. This laughter brought some colour back into the King’s face. And I was much delighted to find myself on such a Winning Streak that I ended the rounds with more than twenty livres won. But, alas, this drove my mind back towards money and how the wedding at Bidnold would be very costly, for all would have to be done in a magnificent way and I did not know how I was to afford it.
One of Fubbsy’s French Musicians then came and sang sweet Airs for us, and we all fell silent, thinking of the Time to come and what it might bring to us of fortune and misfortune. And I saw, all the while, Fubbs looking sadly at the King, and I thought how, of all his mistresses, she had perhaps been the most loving and afforded the King the greatest comfort. And it pained me to think that, were the King to die, she would be cast out by the Duke of York and her apartments given elsewhere, and all her Status gone.
But such are our days. Such are the days and times of Every Man and, no matter how hard we work and strive, we can never know when something shall be given to us and when it will be taken away.
32
A STRANGE SIGHT greeted me early the following morning: Fubbs, topped out with a veritable Rose Garden of Curl Papers, and her cheeks scarlet-petalled with weeping, bending over me, beseeching me to help her.
‘What is it, Your Grace?’ said I.
‘Another seizure!’ she babbled. ‘More violent this time. And I cannot go to him, so says Lord Bruce, for the Queen is there. You must go, Merivel. He is unconscious! He may never wake. Please, I beg you, go to him for me.’
I dressed as quickly as I could. One of Fubbsy’s Maids brought me a dish of Chocolate and I drank it gratefully. Then I took a moment to clean my Surgical Instruments and made my way to the King’s Apartments, leaving Margaret to console Fubbs, who was faint with grief and dread.
The Guards on the outer door had multiplied to six. Their faces were horridly grim, as the faces of those brought to witness an Execution, but one of them recognised me and let me pass into the King’s Rooms, which were already choked with people.
Pushing my way through this throng of Privy Councillors, Bishops, assorted Lords-in-Waiting, Servants and Doctors, I spied at last the figure of Queen Catherine, kneeling at the His Majesty’s bedside, yet seeming to float upon her wide black skirts, as though the King were already embarked upon the fast-flowing Styx, bearing him to a Protestant Perdition, and she trying to rescue him in her fragile Catholic barque.
He lay on his side, turned towards the Queen. I could not see his face, but I was dismayed to note that there were no coverings over his body, only his nightshirt, crumpled and stained. And from around the other three sides of the bed the Doctors worked their ‘cures’ upon him. Blood was being let from his arm. His head was being shorn. And, watched intently by a brace of Bishops, mumbling prayers, the Royal arse was being subjected to the tubes and bladders of the Enema Pump.
Pity for the King choked me. I stood very still, watching. And I thought how my profession, with all its agonising interferences, is so often inept and fumbling, and I wanted the Doctors to go away and leave His Majesty in peace. But I could do nothing.
I searched for Lord Bruce, but could not see him in the throng. Then I caught sight of William Chiffinch, the Keeper of the King’s Closet and one very close to the King for all of his Reign. Chiffinch had been in the Royal apartments with me on that long-ago night in September 1666 when the Fire began. Two years later, when I returned to Whitehall, he had recognised me and gripped my hand and said, with some emotion, that he was glad I had not perished in the flames.
Chiffinch was now attempting to control seven of the King’s yelping Spaniels on their leashes. I took from him three of the dogs, one of which was Bunting, and she, recognising me, began jumping up and tearing at my stockings. I picked her up and tried to hold the others steady, but now, like children, they all wanted to be carried, so I put Bunting down again and voiced a stern Command to her, and the dogs did sit for a blessed moment or two, while Chiffinch related to me what had happened.
‘He went to his Closet towards eight o’clock, Sir Robert, and I waited outside. But he was a long time there, so I went in and I said: “How do you, Sir?” He was as pale as ashes, and he could not seem to reply to me, but just puffed out his cheeks a little.
‘I brought him to his Bedchamber, where his Barber, Follier, was waiting to shave him. Follier bid him good morning, but His Majesty said nothing, and I and Lord Bruce helped him to the chair and Follier began his shaving, but no sooner had he begun the shaving than there came a terrible sound from His Majesty’s mouth, like the shriek or screaming of some wild animal, and he fell back in the chair.
‘We got a weak Pulse from him and he was breathing in shallow gasps. We carried him to the bed and began sending for the Doctors and for the Queen, and we have sent for the Duke of York, but he is not come yet, and someone said he was seen sculling on the river, but he has not been found. But the Privy Council Men are all come, and some Bishops, and I wish they had not, for they do nothing but choke up the room and take up all the Air that the King should breathe.’
I was silent for a moment. Then I said: ‘I am superfluous here also. Tell me what I might do.’
‘Well,’ said Chiffinch, ‘you could take the dogs for a walk, Sir Robert. Or I fear they will shit over the floor and we shall all be treading in it. His Majesty usually takes them for their Constitutional at this time of the day.’
I thus set out with the seven dogs. I noted that at the gates of the Palace a crowd of people had begun to gather.
The day was cold but fair and I took the dogs along towards the Park, each one trying to go at a scamper, so you could say that they took me, and I was forced to make little running steps to keep up with them, with all the while the sev
en leashes threatening to become tangled in each other and trip me up.
No sooner did they sniff the air of the Park than the dogs decided each to do his or her business all over the place, and I confess I felt a mite ridiculous, standing and waiting while they shat and pissed, and the people who passed me looked at me with disgust, for that I had let some of them do this on the Gravel pathway and had not tugged them into the grass.
But then one man, recognising the Decorations on the seven leashes as belonging to the King, stopped me with an earnest look and said: ‘I heard a Rumour, Sir, that the King is dying. These are his dogs, I know. Can you tell me if the Rumour be true?’
I tugged very hard on the leashes to rein the dogs in, and a pain ran up my arm as I said: ‘We do not know, Sir. The Doctors are with him. He suffered this morning some kind of Convulsion, since when he appears to be sleeping. This is all I can tell you.’
The man gaped at me. He was a person of about my own age. He looked back in the direction of Whitehall and said: ‘I was there at his Coming In. I saw his barge sail up the River. I heard the bells ring out all over London. We called him our Black Boy, for his dark curls and golden skin. We thought him immortal.’
I nodded gravely.
‘Are you one of his Servants?’ asked the man.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think that is what you might call me. Very much of my life has been taken up with trying to serve him.’
‘Forgive me if I have you wrong. Perhaps you are some Noble Lord?’
‘No, you do not have me wrong.’
I was aware then that, our conversation being overheard by others who strolled there, a small group had clustered round us and all of these, when they heard that the King was gravely ill, looked stricken. At the centre of the group the dogs leapt about and whined, and the people reached down to pet them, as though to touch one of the King’s dogs might have been to touch His Majesty himself.
One woman, very finely attired, picked up Bunting, laid the dog’s head on her bosom and said: ‘If the Age is ended, what will become of England?’
‘Papist James will come in,’ snarled another onlooker, a man of fierce, choleric appearance, ‘and all will be corrupt and distorted by the Dictates of Rome, and England will go down in another Dutch war. And it will be bloody and have no end … ’
And the saying of this (which Prediction was most likely and most true) raised an outcry among the little assemblage, which, by now, others had joined. Some shouted: ‘Down with Papists!’ and ‘Death to Rome, not to King Charles!’ and ‘God rot the Duke of York’.
I realised after some moments that many were looking at me accusingly, as though I might have been the veritable Duke, or perhaps the Pope Himself. I thought this most unfair and unreasonable, but all I could do was try to calm them by saying: ‘His Majesty’s Life is not yet over! He may yet recover. He may yet grow as old as Father Time. Please set down the dogs that I may continue their walk, Ladies. Please oblige me …’
But they did not want to let go of the dogs and the crowd around me grew larger yet, and truly I did not know what to do to escape. And I could not, in the midst of this Captivity, but think about my conversation with the King the day before, almost upon this very spot, in which he confided to me his desire to be converted to the Church of Rome. I was even afraid that some vestige of this secret confession was somehow visible upon my features.
I snatched Bunting from the lady’s opulent breast and, clutching the dog to me, tried to reason with the people, saying: ‘Gentlemen, Ladies, please hear me. Hush, I beg you. What am I to do if His Majesty wakes and asks for his Spaniels and none is there? He holds much store by them and likes to have them near him at all times. Please, I ask you, let go of the animals that I may take them back.’
As Colonel de Flamanville and many others were aware, I have no ‘Natural Authority’, but this frail argument did at last prevail and I managed to push my way through the Mob, holding tight, still, to the seven leashes, and steer the dogs home, their feathery tails wagging merrily in the sunshine.
After returning the Spaniels to poor Chiffinch, and noting that there was no change to the King’s condition, except that his head was quite bald and his feet were now being Blistered, and that the Duke of York had taken the Queen’s place at the bedside, I returned to Fubbsy’s apartments.
Margaret and Fubbs were seated before a large fire, trying distractedly to play a game of Rummy. Fubbsy’s hair had been deforested of its Curl Papers and she wore a pretty cap over her cascading brown locks.
On seeing me she flew to the bottle of Cognac she kept always upon a little Marquetry table and poured glasses for us all.
‘Tell us,’ she said. ‘Tell us …’
I took a grateful sip of the Brandy (the scent of which does always remind me, wistfully, of Laudanum and make me crave it) and said: ‘There is no change. But the Queen has retired. Perhaps you may be permitted to go in, Duchess?’
Having kicked off her shoes for the Rummy game, Fubbsy at once began searching for them under the card table, with her wide French rump all in the air, like the rump of any scullery maid washing a floor, and sorrow for her filled me utterly.
Once she had found her shoes, she called for her blue satin cloak (a favourite garment of the King’s) and, winding herself in this, fled from the apartment, leaving me alone with Margaret.
I sank down in an Armchair and gulped my brandy. After my scramble with the dogs in the Park I was sweating. Margaret came to me, and knelt down and put her head on my knee. She was silent for a long moment, letting me recover my breath, then she said: ‘Will he die, Papa?’
‘Well,’ I replied, ‘the Physicians are doing their best to kill him.’
Fubbs was a long time gone and I felt glad for her that she had been received into the King’s chamber.
Margaret and I sat and talked about her wedding, which, she said, she wanted to be at Bidnold and nowhere else, with all the Prideaux girls as her Maids of Honour, ‘and all the house banked up with flowers, and a great Procession down the drive, with the Village folk joining in and banging drums and tambourines, and casting ribbons and posies in the air.
She became very pink and excited, imagining this Day (the images of which could not but remind me of my ‘paper’ wedding to Celia Clemence in 1664) and while reassuring her that all would be arranged exactly as she and Julius would desire it to be, the likely cost of it still filled me with terror.
If the King died, his loyer to me would cease abruptly. The Duke of York would make certain of that. My only way to cover the expense of Margaret’s wedding would be to borrow a large sum from a Moneylender in Norwich, promising to repay him the Principal by Christmas – once I had come to some financial agreement with the Baron de Saint Maurice upon Louise’s Dowry. But from this – tainted as it was with dishonour – I found myself shrinking.
I then began thinking how my silence towards my daughter on the subject of Louise was also tainted, this time with Deceit, and I took a breath to begin upon my tale of the false duel and my promise to return to Switzerland and marry Madame de Flamanville, but even as I did so the door was flung open and Fubbs returned.
‘He has woken!’ she cried. ‘I held his hand, and at first I thought he did not know me, but when I leaned to kiss his face he whispered “Fubbs bosom” and tried to reach out a hand to touch me there.’
‘What do the Doctors say?’ I asked. ‘Is the crisis over?’
‘They are all smiling. They think all their purges have cured him. But I could not stay to talk to them, for the Duke of York commanded that the Queen be sent for. Dearly would I sit by his side all day and all night, but in that gathering round him I am Nothing. I am Nothing!’
Margaret went to Fubbs and kissed her cheek, and took her blue cloak from her, and then the two women clung together and wept.
I strode out once again into the cold, bright day.
Stopping at a Poulterer’s Shoppe, I bought a fat Capon and saw it plucked and dr
essed, then walked to a Dairy and purchased a jar of cream.
I arrived at Rosie Pierpoint’s Laundry on the Bridge just as the midday bells were striking, and found her hard at work on her Ironing, with her girls, Mabel and Marie, scraping and sudsing on their Washboards. The stench of Lye was very strong and the room was billowing in steam.
I went to Rosie and kissed her mouth, and the girls stopped their work and applauded. I put the Capon and the Cream into Rosie’s hands and said: ‘Here is your dinner, Mrs Pierpoint, to share with the girls, and the bird is a fat one and good. So build up the fire of your oven for the roasting, then light a fire in your heart and take me to bed.’
She did not protest. She laid aside a half-ironed lace shirt and gave commands for the roasting of the Capon to Marie, then led me to her Bedroom above. I heard the girls tittering as we mounted the stairs.
Rosie let me undress her slowly, revelling as I did so in the familiar roundness of her body, her breasts very full and her belly a little fat, but then she whispered to me: ‘Sir Rob, I heard a rumour that the King is dying. Tell me it is not so.’
‘It is not so,’ said I. ‘He has been ill, but he is recovering.’
‘Are you sure he is recovering?’
‘No. I am sure about nothing in the world except that my Cock is so hard it pains me. Feel here. Your poor Sir Rob is all tangled in Momentous Times and grown uncomfortably momentous. Take pity on me, won’t you, and go to it fast, for I cannot wait.’
Later, spent and comfortable again, I began to kiss Rosie very tenderly, as I might have kissed a wife who was dear to me. The knowledge that the rest of my life would be spent in Neuchâtel and that beyond the summer I might never come here to her again made me feel afraid.
33
THE FOLLOWING MORNING I went again to His Majesty’s apartments, hoping to find calm there and to hear that he had passed a restful night, but all was panic and anxiety, with the Doctors trying ever more numerous remedies and the Duke of York flailing about him, giving orders for a Cordon of Guards to be placed around Whitehall and – fearing, perhaps, that some Revolution might be planned by the Duke of Monmouth or by the Prince of Orange – signing Papers setting in hand the closure of the nation’s Ports to all who desired to come in or go out.
