Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  ‘I am very sorry, Sir Robert,’ said Tabitha.

  ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I am sorry. But all things come to some kind of ending.’

  A long silence fell in the hall. Then Tabitha said, in a little shy voice:

  ‘What is to happen to me? Are you sending me out into the dark?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘For I have never forgotten and never will forget what you did for Margaret. Tomorrow I will ride in the cart to see Lady Prideaux and ask that you be taken into her Service. Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. If she will take me …’

  ‘She will take you. And you will go into Cornwall with the family in summer?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Very well. There are Puffins in Cornwall and these are birds that I have never seen, but I promise that you shall see them.’

  I slept long and woke just before dawn and knew, instantly upon waking, where Will had kept the King’s loyer, where none but he would ever go to find it.

  So I rose and pulled on my robe, and took a candle and my Cane and made my silent, hobbling way up into the White Room in the West Tower – the room that had once contained my whole existence.

  It was empty of all furniture, save a small Turkey Carpet and one Chair, where I liked to sit, sometimes, and watch the Alterations of the sky, and listen to the wind, and feel that I was above the world and yet floating in its beauty, like a cloud. Only Will, of all my household, knew that I still came here.

  I laid down the candle. At the four great windows to the north, south, east and west of the tower the light was strengthening and I saw that the day would be fair.

  I knelt down and pushed away the chair from its habitual position, and rolled back the carpet. And, exactly as I had anticipated, under a board that had been cut for this purpose lay the leather bag in which Will had ever kept our Yearly Household Accounts. And stuffed in among the papers was a great quantity of the King’s gold.

  I barely touched the Sovereigns, but only stayed on my knees, looking at their obstinate shine. Then I noticed that something else had been buried by Will under the floorboard.

  I reached in and took it out, and saw that it was my Book (the story of my life that I had called The Wedge) that had lain under my mattress for sixteen years and was now more than ever creased and torn and soiled with dust and mouse droppings by being squashed into this new hiding place. But I thanked Will for keeping it safe. When so much else had been taken from me, I was glad to find that this little Record of my Existence, all tattered as it was, was still there in the world.

  I sat in the chair and began to read. I read how, in the first sentence, I described myself as ‘a very untidy man’, with a fat stomach and a misshapen nose, and this made me smile.

  I then progressed to what I called the ‘Five beginnings’ of my life, and these, in showing as they did so much haste and foolery and madness in my younger self, amazed me very much. Indeed, the Book so absorbed my attention that I only raised my eyes from it when the light all around me suddenly underwent its great Transition to the deep red of the sunrise. I looked out at the sky. For a moment I seemed to be held within a cauldron of fire.

  Epilogue

  Deposition by Mrs R. Pierpoint, made at her Laundry on the Eighteenth Day of March in the year 1685

  THESE THINGS I here set down, which I swear by all the fishes in the river to be the Truth, as it visited me here on the morning of the 18th of March in the year of the King’s death, 1685.

  The day was chill. I had lit my fires and put a Quantity of Sheets and Petticoats onto a boil, and I was warming myself, holding out my arms to the Coppers, when my street door was opened and there came in my old and dear friend, Sir Robert Merivel. And when I saw him I ran to him and cried out: ‘Oh, Sir Rob, take Rosie in your arms, for she is all a-cold!’

  And so we clung together, and sighed together and I lamented thus: ‘The King is dead! And it is a Shame, a crying Shame for England and for us who loved him, and for all the bountiful white Cavalier Lace that has sustained the Laundry trade.’

  And Sir Robert, he strokes my hair and kisses my cheek, but he cannot speak for that he is all choked with weeping.

  And so I led him near my burning cauldrons to warm him, and gave him a Handkerchief, newly ironed, and he says to me, ‘Whose is the kerchief?’

  And I say, ‘’Tis no matter whose. For it is yours now and what can anyone care about a Handkerchief when the King has so lately passed away?’

  He sits himself down upon a pile of Garments, waiting for the wash: some fine shirts among them, but much of them very worn and used, and hanging by Threads, for that their Wearers are come to impecunious times and cannot afford new, but send me over and over the same old rags.

  And Sir Robert, when he has blown his nose and wiped his eyes, notices this and says to me: ‘What are these Tatters you are laundering now, Rosie?’

  And I says to him: ‘These are the Tatters of England. And all the Whole and Beautiful things are no more.’

  And then I sent home the girls who work for me, Mabel and Marie, and went and locked my Door to the Street and put up my Sign: Mrs Pierpoint regrets that the Laundry be Closed today. Pray bring your Raiment tomorrow, and I took from my shelf a flask of wine, and then I sat down beside Sir Rob upon the Linen and held him close to me and said: ‘Shall we drink this, though it be ten in the morning, and let all the world go softly by and be hanged?’

  And he lays his head on my breast and says: ‘Rosie Pierpoint, I have always cherished you in my heart and through all my life you have given me Solace.’

  I kiss his forehead and say: ‘I shall not forget all the Capons and all the pots of Cream you brought me and how I always smeared the cream upon the roasted Capon, and never have any Birds tasted so fine.’

  We began to drink the wine. And Sir Robert, he started to tell me how he was to journey into Switzerland and there make a fine Marriage to an honourable woman, and I said I was glad for him and glad for the fortunate lady who would be the Wife of a man so Sweet and full of laughter.

  And he said: ‘Alas, I cannot hear laughter in me any more, Rosie. My skull aches. My daughter is to marry, and make her way into a finer life than any I have provided and soon enough forget me. I buried my servant, Will, and England has buried the King, and all my mirth is spent.’

  I could not imagine this: that Sir Robert Merivel would laugh no more. And so, to cheer him and try to hear his laughter again, I began to remind him of all the times he and I had played the Beast together and how, once long ago, his father had come upon us, in the middle of our play, and hidden his poor face for shame in the bed Curtain, and a solemn smile did spread itself across Sir Robert’s features for a trice, but then he said: ‘I am weary, Mrs Pierpoint. I cannot find it in my heart or in my body to do Any Thing – even though I know that my life in Switzerland will be an Easy Life.’

  And what could I say by any way of Contradiction, for did not I, that very morning, have to drag myself to my fires and, when I looked down at the cold River, had I not for a little moment envied my late husband who drowned there, long years past, trying to get a haddock from the raging water, and who sleeps now with Angels’ wings folded upon him, with all his sufferings and poverty forgotten, while I toil on in the March cold?

  So then I say – and I am willing to set this down too, for that I swore I would be honest in this Testament – ‘Shall we but go on, as ever we did, my fine Sir, and play a little? For the door is shut and locked, and though we are Mourners we are yet alive.’

  And Sir Rob took my hand and kissed it and said to me: ‘Sweet Rosie, let me rest. My head is sore and my foot is swollen. Let me not move …’

  I told him he would be more comfortable in my bed than on a pile of Laundry and that besides, ‘the garments under you, as well as being torn and tattered, are most foul, Sir Rob. For people’s want of money stretches out the Interval between their visits to my Wash House. They will wear a Shirt for days and weeks and, though a table
cloth be stained, keep setting it out again and again. Can you not smell the stench of sweat and grime and gravy?’

  He smiled and said: ‘The stink of the world has never troubled me. Even at Cambridge, when I dissected cadavers … Even the King when he was dying … Even raising Will from the Paupers’ Pit … A Physician must learn to breathe difficult air, and that is that.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said I, ‘let me go and prepare my bed. I will help you to it. And if your desire is only to sleep, then sleep you will and I shall be the Watcher of your dreams.’

  I stirred my Coppers and mixed in a quantity of Lye and then I left Sir Robert on the wash Pile, holding the flask of wine, and I saw him take off his wig and fling it away, and then he laid his head down on the Pile and closed his eyes.

  I made my bed with a clean Coverlet, and plumped the pillows and emptied my pisspot into the river, then closed my little window. I next took off my drawers, in case we might come to a lovemaking, remembering how Sir Rob was ever excited by finding me Naked under my petticoats, and liking to put his hand there and touch me. And I thought how, of all the men that I have known, my dear Sir Robert was the boldest Lover and most attentive to me, and then I thought of the ‘honourable’ woman in Switzerland who was to be his Wife, and I envied her and all her beautiful life remaining.

  At length I returned to the Wash Room, somewhat foggy now with steam, and through the clouds of steam made my way to the Laundry heap where Sir Robert lay.

  I knelt down beside him. He lay very still, asleep, and the flask of wine had fallen across his chest and spilled over his Waistcoat.

  I was loath to wake him, for I knew by every sign that he was Weary, but, God forgive me, I wanted him in my bed to console me for the feelings of Death that were in the London air, so I took the flask from him and touched his face and said his name. He opened his eyes and looked at me, but his look was vacant, as though he could not see me, nor know where he lay.

  ‘Sir Rob,’ I whispered, ‘let me help you up. Try to stir yourself a little and we shall go to my room and lie down together and forget the Sad Times that are come upon us.’

  I put my arm under his shoulder and tried to lift him up, but the weight of him seemed, on a sudden, very great, as though there was a Stone lodged in his heart.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Raise your head and your chest. Help me to help you. And then we shall, in a trice, be comfortable together under my new Coverlet.’

  He managed to lift himself a little. But when he looked up at me his gaze was all bewildered, and then, on a sudden, as I had him sitting up, he gave a great Shout, which sounded almost like a clap of laughter. And there was such a wild and vibrant Echo to the Shout that I seemed to hear it carried out of my window into the air and fly westwards along the river, past the boats crowded at Southwark Steps, past the Commerce milling at Black Friars, past the gates of the Temple, and sounding on and on and on above the water, until at Whitehall it faded and was heard no more.

  And he was gone in that instant of the Shout. It was his last sound on earth.

  I closed his eyes and laid my head next to his, and held him to me and wept. The steam from the boiling Coppers shrouded us and made all the air around us white.

  I could ardently have wished that he had not passed away so sprawled as he was upon a heap of dirty Laundry, but there I could do nothing. The World is as it chooses to be and he was one who knew it well.

  Read on for the first chapter of

  the prequel to Merivel

  Restoration

  Part One

  1

  The Five Beginnings

  I am, I discover, a very untidy man.

  Look at me. Without my periwig, I am an affront to neatness. My hair (what is left of it) is the colour of sand and wiry as hogs’ bristles; my ears are of uneven size; my forehead is splattered with freckles; my nose, which of course my wig can’t conceal, however low I wear it, is unceremoniously flat, as if I had been hit at birth.

  Was I hit at birth? I do not believe so, as my parents were gentle and kindly people, but I will never know now. They died in a fire in 1662. My father had a nose like a Roman emperor. This straight, fierce nose would neaten up my face, but alas, I don’t possess it. Perhaps I am not my father’s child? I am erratic, immoderate, greedy, boastful and sad. Perhaps I am the son of Amos Treefeller, the old man who made head-moulds for my father’s millinery work? Like him, I am fond of the feel of objects made of polished wood. My telescope, for instance. For I admit, I find greater order restored to my brain from the placing of my hands round this instrument of science than from what its lenses reveal to my eye. The stars are too numerous and too distant to restore to me anything but a terror at my own insignificance.

  I don’t know whether you can imagine me yet. I am thirty-seven years old as this year, 1664, moves towards its end. My stomach is large and also freckled, although it has seldom been exposed to the sun. It looks as if a flight of minute moths had landed on it in the night. I am not tall, but this is the age of the high heel. I strive to be particular about my clothes, but am terribly in the habit of dropping morsels of dinner on them. My eyes are blue and limpid. In childhood, I was considered angelic and was frequently buttoned inside a suit of blue moiré, thus seeming to my mother a little world entire: sea and sand in my colours, and the lightness of air in my baby voice. She went to her fiery death still believing that I was a person of honour. In the scented gloom of Amos Treefeller’s back room (the place of all our private conversations), she would take my hand and whisper her hopes for my splendid future. What she couldn’t see, and what I had not the heart to point out, was that we no longer live in an honourable age. What has dawned instead is the Age of Possibility. And it is only the elderly (as my mother was) and the truculently myopic (as my friend, Pearce, is) who haven’t noticed this and are not preparing to take full advantage of it. Pearce, I am ashamed to admit, fails to understand, let alone laugh at, the jokes from Court I feel obliged to relay to him on his occasional visits to me from his damp Fenland house. The excuse he makes is that he’s a Quaker. This, in turn, makes me laugh.

  So, to me again – whither my thoughts are extremely fond of returning.

  My name is Robert Merivel, and, although I’m dissatisfied with other of my appendages (viz. my flat nose), I am exceedingly happy with my name, because to its Frenchness I owe a great deal of my fortune. Since the return of the King, French things are in fashion: heels, mirrors, sedan-chairs, silver toothbrushes, fans and fricassées. And names. In the hope of some preferment, a near neighbour of mine in Norfolk, James Gourlay (an ugly, rather disgusting person, as it happens), has inserted a ‘de’ into his otherwise Scottish-sounding name. So far, the only reward to come to the pompous de Gourlay is that a French wit at my dinner table dubbed him ‘Monsieur Dégueulasse’. We giggled a great deal at this and some new scarlet breeches of mine were stained with the mouthful of raisin pudding I was forced to spit out in my attack of mirth.

  So this is how you might imagine me: at table, rustling with laughter in a gaudy suit, my migrant hair flattened by a luxuriant wig, my freckles powdered, my eyes twinkling in the candlelight, my pudding being ejected from my mouth by that force within me which snorts at sobriety and is so greedy for foolishness. Do not flatter yourself that I am elegant or worthy in any way, but yet I am, at this moment that you glimpse me, a rather popular man. I am also in the middle of a story which might have a variety of endings, some of them not entirely to my liking. The messy constellations I see through my telescope give me no clue to my destiny. There is, in other words, a great deal about the world and my role in it which, despite all my early learning, I utterly fail to understand.

  There was a beginning to the story, or possibly a variety of beginnings. These are they:

  1. In 1636, when I was nine years old, I carried out my first anatomical dissection. My instruments were: a kitchen knife, two mustard spoons made of bone, four millinery pins and a measuring rod. The cadaver was
a starling.

  I performed this feat of exploration in our coal cellar, into which, through the coal hole, came a crepuscular light, augmented a little by the two candles I placed on my dissecting tray.

  As I cut into the thorax, a well of excitement began to fill and glimmer within me. It rose as I worked until, with the body of the starling opened and displayed before me, I had, I suddenly recognised, caught a glimpse of my own future.

  2. At Caius College, Cambridge, in 1647, I met my poor friend, Pearce.

  His room was below mine on the cold stairway. We were both by then students of anatomy and, though our natures are so antipathetic, our rejection of Galenic theory, coupled with our desire to discover the precise function of each part of the body in relation to the whole, formed a bond between us.

  One evening, Pearce came up to my room in a state of hilarious perturbation. His face, habitually grey-toned and flaky, was rubicund and damp, his stern green eyes suddenly afflicted with a louche brightness. ‘Merivel, Merivel,’ he babbled, ‘come down to my room. A person is standing in it who has a visible heart!’

  ‘Have you been drinking, Pearce?’ I asked. ‘Have you broken your vow of No Sack?’

  ‘No!’ exploded Pearce. ‘Now come down and you will see for yourself this extraordinary phenomenon. And, for a shilling, the person says he will permit us to touch it.’

  ‘Touch his heart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not a cadaver then, if its mind is on money?’