by Rose Tremain
‘Where is Will?’ said I with a long and painful sigh. ‘Please go and find Will Gates.’
Tabitha came and knelt down beside my chair. ‘Sir Robert,’ she said, ‘you shall not punish us. We have taken Advantage of your absence and we are sorry for what has been done, but all has come to this Bad Pass, for that we had no money to run the house …’
‘No money?’ said I. ‘What do you mean? I left money a-plenty.’
‘No, Sir. Beyond November we had none, Sir. Nothing for food or oil or candles or any Commodity at all. We killed and ate the Deer. We had no choice. When the Deer were all gone we let the farmers’ pigs and sheep roam in your Park, in return for meat. We could not buy beer, so we drank your cellar. For you did not send us anything, nor any word. We could not but assume that you were dead, or had decided to forget us, and so you are veritably to blame for abandoning us so cruelly. We were not willing to starve.’
‘Tabitha,’ said I. ‘I did not “abandon” you. You know what manner of man I am. I could never have done such a thing. Before I left for Switzerland, half of the King’s loyer for a Six-month was deposited with Will Gates. This was more than enough to keep the household in every kind of Commodity for a year and that year is not yet gone.’
Tabitha looked down at the carpet. Her fingers played nervously over its intricate patterns. ‘We searched,’ she said, ‘but we could not find it. We could not find any money anywhere.’
‘You searched …?’
‘Yes. When Mr Gates passed away—’
‘What?’
‘When Mr Gates left us, Sir …’
Tabitha now put her head into her hands, brushing aside the hair that had fallen over her face. She would not look at me as she said: ‘He did not suffer, Sir Robert. He died in his sleep on the first of December. When he did not come down that morning, I and Mr Cattlebury went to his room, and he was very peaceful and still upon his bed, and covered with his old Badger skin.’
I stared out at the shrouded Library, clutching the arms of my chair. I did not move any muscle of my face or body, nor say a word.
Tabitha went on: ‘We did all correctly, Sir Robert, as far as we could. We sent for the Searchers to determine the cause of death, but they saw no cause, except that his heart had stopped beating. They said only that Mr Gates was ready to “become one with the earth”.
‘We had no money for a woollen winding sheet, but Mr Cattlebury, he said that this did not matter. He ordered that Mr Gates be sewn into some more of the Badger skins, such as we wore last winter, enough to shroud him quite, and then the Undertakers were sent for and they took him away.’
Silence fell in the room. I looked at the empty Fireplace, and longed more than anything in the world to find Will kneeling beside it and laying kindling in a neat stack to start a beautiful fire.
At length I asked: ‘Where is he buried, that I may go and visit him?’
When Tabitha did not reply, I asked the question again. Again, she fussed with her hair, trying to thrust it away from her eyes. Then she said: ‘We had no money, Sir Robert, and no friend nor relative came forth to claim the body. We had no choice. He lies in the Paupers’ Grave behind Bidnold Churchyard.’
I remained in the Library, unmoving, until the dusk came down. In this twilight I saw figures swaying drunkenly down the drive and heard once more the boy’s Magpie laugh. So I rose and went out and stood by the door, and saw my former Servants, together with the nameless others they had invited to their voluptuous revels, staggering away from Bidnold, taking with them all they could carry of my remaining Possessions.
I did not try to stop them. That I should be bereft of much that I had owned did not greatly trouble me. I had once seen a man hanged in Norwich for the stealing of a single bale of cloth and yet these people, under my very nose, were making off with a great hoard of china and silverware, and dispersing out into the wider world, where I would never find them.
Among the stolen goods were very many clocks, and this stealing of Time brought back into my mind a tender souvenir of Hollers and the clock he had attempted to give to Madame de Maintenon, and which she had rejected for that it ‘stole Time from God’. And then I thought how Life itself is the greatest Theft of Time, and how all we can do is to watch as the days and months and years slip away from us and make off into the Darkness.
This was a melancholy observation, but what troubled me more and made me so sick at heart that I could barely breathe was the image I had of Will’s body, bound and tied in the Badger tabards, carelessly thrown into a Communal pit with Quicklime heaped upon it.
‘It shall not be so, Will!’ I announced to the descending night. ‘It shall not end thus.’
In the empty house, which had never, in all the time that I had known it, been so bereft of people, I could not decide what to do or where to put myself.
I returned to the Library and lit a single candle and sat on among the half-remembered ghosts of footstools and card tables, and a fine Globe that I would never see again.
‘Your world, Merivel,’ said Pearce’s voice suddenly out of shadows, ‘is horridly Shrunk.’
This made me smile. ‘You are right, my friend.’ I said. ‘It is.’
‘What shall you do now?’ asked Pearce.
‘I know not,’ I said. ‘I know not.’
I thought about my Work, my Meditations upon the Animal Soul, that I had begun with such touching Optimism, and wondered whether I would return to it, or whether, in embarking upon a subject that might never be truly proven or knowable, I had not set out merely upon another of my pointless journeys, like that to Versailles, at the end of which the services that I offered would never be taken up and the Conclusions that I sought would never be found.
‘What d’you think, Pearce?’ I asked. ‘Shall I keep the idea of this work alive?’
But there was no answer. Pearce had gone.
I slept a little, then woke feeling racked by hunger. Remembering the rabbit stew, I took up my cane and made my way down again to the kitchen.
Here two oil lamps had been lit and by the light of these Tabitha was slowly and patiently cleaning the room of spilt wine and urine and semen and discarded rabbit bones.
Laid across three hard chairs was Cattlebury, insensible to everything, snoring like a bloodhound. I stared at him and saw that his neck was being almost broken in two by the heaviness of his head upon the seat of the hard chair, and pity for this neck and for the man Cattlebury stung me on the instant so hard that I said to Tabitha: ‘Help me to lift him and we will put him in his bed.’
We carried him, by slow and wearisome degrees, to his small room and laid him down and covered him against the cold night. I stared at his fat, ruined face and remembered all the fine fare, all the Carbonadoes and Lardy Cakes and Pigeon Pies and Milk Possets and Mince Tartlets that he had made, and which had sustained my life for so long. And I reached out and touched his forehead and laid my hand tenderly upon it for a moment, before I came away.
37
THE FOLLOWING DAY I gave a few coins to Tabitha and bade her walk to Bidnold Village and hire me a horse and cart, for I could barely limp ten paces on my swollen ankle.
The horse she managed to obtain was a feeble, slow mare, who would not be whipped into a trot, so we travelled wearily, but I did not greatly care. I had but one task in mind.
I arrived towards ten o’clock at the Sexton’s house. His name was Sexton Blunt and this had always made me smile, for that he was indeed a blunt man, with no courtesy and no grace. Taking my cue from him, my dealings with him were now curt and unadorned.
I held before his small hard eyes a purse of five livres and said: ‘You know me, Sexton Blunt, and that I am a man of my word. I here claim kinship with one William Gates, mistakenly cast into the Communal Pit after his death in December, when I was far from England.’
‘Kinship?’ said Blunt. ‘What manner of “kinsman” can a Pauper be to you?’
‘He was no Pauper,’ said I. ‘He
was an honest and God-fearing and hard-working Servant to me for twenty years, and I loved him well. And I wish that he may lie in a well-made grave. I shall pay for its digging and for a Headstone. All I ask of you is that you find men today to take him out of the Pit and make a grave for him in the Churchyard. I shall oversee their work.’
When Blunt began mumbling that I should first need to consult the Parish Clerk, I took back the Purse and said: ‘Ah, it is thus to him that I should give the five livres?’
‘No, no,’ said Blunt, looking fearfully at the money, ‘but it is the Procedure. No body may be taken out of the Pit without signature of the Parish Clerk beneath the signature of the Sexton …’
Ten livres, then: five to Blunt and five to the Parish Clerk for some scribbled Permission. With this piece of naked Robbery agreed upon, Blunt said: ‘And you must find your own men to dig in the Pit, Sir. I cannot ask any that I know to do this work.’
‘I see, Sexton. Are you thus suggesting that, though this matter concerns the Church and is in your Parish, men will do my bidding more willingly than yours?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then?’
‘I am suggesting that none will do it at all.’
While the Permission was laboriously written out and signed, I went to the Joiner and Coffin Maker, Mr Shanks, and purchased a Coffin ‘Ready-Made for a Small Man or Woman, no higher than five feet and four inches’ and put it in the back of the cart. The ‘Ready-Made Small’ were the only coffins available, ‘for that most who die, save children, Sir,’ said Shanks, ‘are fatter than once they were, and seem to die of this fatness, and I can barely fashion the boxes fast enough’. With the coffin I was furnished also with a Woollen Shroud, for which I was forced to pay a foolish price, but again I did not care.
I then made my way to the lowly dwelling where Patchett resided among his fields of Ragwort – he who had killed poor Clarendon with his Blunderbuss.
I found him wresting Turnips from the hard earth of his vegetable patch and said to him: ‘Patchett, I have need of you now …’
When told of the terrible task I was asking of him, instead of protesting he smiled. Scratching his Giant’s head he said: ‘I knew that matters between you and me would not end with the death of your Bear, Sir Robert. I knew that more would be asked of me one day. But I did not foresee this.’
‘Will you do it?’ said I.
He kept on scratching. He sighed and his weary breath vaporised in the cold air. He was a man who had known Will and been witness to his kindness of heart, so I kept talking, telling him that it was ‘for Will’s sake and not for mine’ that he had to be lifted from the Pit.
At length Patchett said: ‘I will do it for money, Sir Robert. Or for Meat.’
I ransacked my person to see what Coin remained to me after my payments to the Sexton, the Parish Clerk and the Coffin Maker, and all that I found was one golden Sovereign. I held this in my palm and Patchett stared at it in awe.
‘Here,’ I said, ‘this is yours, if you can get Will Gates snug into his Coffin before nightfall.’
With the Sovereign safe in his pocket and with his face tied round with rags against the stench and contagion of the Paupers’ Pit, Patchett began digging at one o’clock. I stood by to urge him on. I knew that we had only a few hours of light remaining.
I said to him: ‘We shall find Will very quickly in this shallow pit, for that his body was wrapped in Badger furs.’
‘Badger furs?’ said Patchett. ‘Could nobody find better nor more fitting to wrap him in?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They could not. His winding sheet is but this – the skins of animals.’
As Patchett’s spade rummaged through the soil and lime, the stink of Death did indeed begin to rise up towards us, and I remembered how, in this one matter of the smell of the dead, I had always been more courageous than Pearce and stayed quite well through the Anatomy lessons, when other students vomited or fainted away. And, to keep Patchett at the work, I began to tell him about the dissections I had once performed at Cambridge, making them sound very bloody and strenuous and exciting, so that it would be these past things and not the present churning of earth and bones that would occupy his mind.
As I had predicted, it did not take very long to come upon the muddy bundle of fur that was Will. Patchett lifted him out and laid him on the grass, and I saw how, among the cords that bound him to his tattered shroud, were visible two or three Badger snouts, and these marled but homely faces lessened my horror by some degree, as though I imagined the animals were keeping company with Will, as a stuffed toy keeps company with a child, making more bearable his long Night.
I would have washed and combed the furs and the snouts, except that I saw the Maggots were already at them and I baulked at combing out Maggots. But I came to where Will lay, not minding the stench of him, and knelt down and put my hand where I knew his face to be.
‘Will,’ said I, ‘I am taking you out of the Paupers’ Grave, for never were you any Pauper, but rich as the richest man, with kindness.’
Patchett and I then wrapped him in the expensive Woollen Shroud, and laid him in the Coffin that was sturdy and made of oak, and I closed the lid and nailed Will down, while Patchett started on a grave for him.
The grave – even in February – lay in sunlight, with the thin shadow of an apple tree just glancing across its corner, and I thought it a good place.
As the sunlight departed and the air became very cold, I began to fear that the grave might not be ready before the darkness fell. I went and found a spade and tried, despite my swollen ankle, to join with Patchett in his labours. But in truth, so difficult was it for me to put any pressure on my foot, or to move about in the churned earth, that all I did was hamper him.
At length, and almost in darkness, with one icy star visible behind the apple tree, the grave was ready and we put the coffin in. And I felt a great Relief flood over me at a thing properly done. Then I took up the spade once more and we pressed the rich earth of Bidnold Churchyard over and round the Box, and I told Patchett what words I would get engraved on a Headstone, and these were they:
William Gates, Esquire,
1609–1685
An inestimable man
The nag and I found our way by moonlight back to the house. She was spent and sweating from lugging the cart and I told her that, once there, the Grooms would bed her down in a warm stable and give her hay and water. But then I remembered that there were no grooms – only men cavorting in some distant hostelry, exclaiming over the Booty they had stolen from me and no doubt laughing at all my losses.
The stables, however, still stood, and there was straw in them, and I unhitched the poor mare from the cart and led her in, and found among the straw a few carrots to give her, and filled a bucket with water from the well and set it before her. I watched her drink a little and then she lay down.
As weary as the horse, and with the pain in my foot now very biting, I limped into the house and found, to my great joy, a goodly fire burning in the hall. I sank down on a settle beside it and at length came Tabitha, dressed in a clean dress and pinafore, and with her hair washed and tidy, bringing me wine.
‘Ah,’ said I, ‘I am surprised there is any wine left, Tabitha, if every day was like yesterday in this house.’
She lowered her head as she poured the wine for me. ‘It was not every day, Sir, but only when Mr Cattlebury had the Heat upon him and invited all and sundry.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’
‘It was but a few times, Sir …’
‘Well, God be praised for small Mercies. Now please fetch Cattlebury, Tabitha, for he and I have before us a grave conversation. He must surely know that he could be hanged for all that he has done.’
‘’Twas only want of money made him do it, Sir Robert. He said to me one day: “Men without money to put food in their bellies turn swiftly to beasts.” And I think they do. For we were very wretched here. If Mr Gates had only told us where he kept the K
ing’s loyer …’
‘I know,’ said I. ‘But still, Tabitha, the Ruin I see about me is very bad. What am I to do with Cattlebury? I do not think that he can any longer stay in my employ.’
Tabitha stooped and laid another log upon the fire. Then she looked up at me. ‘He left while you were gone today,’ she said, ‘and will never more come here.’
I stared at Tabitha. Into my mind came a very vivid picture of my former cook, whom I had known for almost twenty years, standing like an Ogre over his fires, always and ever on the precipice of some Mutiny or other, but yet never falling over it until lately, because he had no other home but Bidnold Manor. And now he was gone out into the dark and I could not predict what would become of him.
‘Did he leave any word for me?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Tabitha. ‘He bade me write it for him, for that he could not form his Alphabet very well.’
‘Let me see it, then.’
Tabitha produced a scrap of paper from her Apron pocket and gave it to me.
Sir Robert, I read,
I cling to my Life and shall not swing on Mouse Hill for only taking what was needed to keep my soul within my body.
I bid you adieu. I shall ever carry Bidnold with me in my heart.
M. Cattlebury
I read the message several times, then I put it away in my pocket and took Tabitha’s hand in mine and said: ‘Bidnold goes with us all in our hearts, but it is over.’
‘It is over?’
‘Yes. I shall put in hand small repairs to windows and suchlike, to make it safe. Then all that remains here will be taken to a Store House and Bidnold Manor will be closed. I shall be gone to London and thence, in summertime, to Switzerland.’
‘What will become of the house, Sir?’
‘It will be sold.’
‘Sold to whom?’
‘I know not. I care not. I once set it all to rights, Tabitha, creating my own wild wonders in every room, with scarlet brocade and golden Canopies and crimson Tassels, which almost stopped the heart of my friend John Pearce. I was on fire with my Endeavours. I could scarce sleep for my excitement when I found the Carpet from Chengchow! Bidnold Manor is the only house I have ever owned. I lost it once and then it was restored to me, and I have loved it very dearly. Margaret hoped to be married here. But I shall I have to disappoint her, for I have not the stomach to set it to rights again. It must go on without Merivel.’
