Merivel A Man of His Time (48 page)
Read Merivel A Man of His Time Online
Authors: Rose Tremain
I celebrated by visiting Mrs Pierpoint, getting drunk with
her at the Leg Tavern and tumbling her in a muddy ditch on Hampstead Fields. Afterwards, she had the temerity to ask me whether, now that I was in the King’s employ, I could get some position at Court for the uncouth Mr Pierpoint, who is a mere bargeman, and I learned at once a lesson I never let myself forget: that power and success carry in their train a clamouring queue of greasers and supplicants, the noise and sight of which haunt my private pleasures and my dreams, but from whom multifarious and handsome bribes may very often be had.
A year passed most profitably and pleasurably. My nature, I quickly understood, was in every particular well suited to life at Court. My fondness for gossip and laughter, my brimming appetites, my tendency to sartorial chaos and my trick of farting at will made me one of the most popular men at Whitehall. Few games of Cribbage or Rummy were started without me, few musical evenings or
soirées dansantes
were given to which I was not invited. Women found me hilarious and in magnificent numbers allowed me to tickle not only their humours but their charming and irresistible centres of pleasure, and I seldom slept alone. And – most fortunate of all – the King showed towards me from the start a most flattering affection, stemming, he told me, not only from my curing of Lou-Lou, but from my ability to amuse him. I was, I suppose, his Fool. When I made him hold his sides with laughter, he would beckon me to him, take hold of my squashed nose with his elegant hand and draw me towards him in order to smack an affectionate kiss on my mouth.
After a while, I realised that he actively sought my company and this realisation was to me a most astounding thing. He would show me his gardens and his orchards and his tennis court, and began coaching me at tennis, at which I proved more adept and nimble than I expected. He gave me presents: a handsome French clock from the collection I’d seen that first afflicting day, a set of voluminous striped table
napkins, large enough to cover my whole suiting while I ate, lending me the risible appearance of a man in a tent and thus causing mirth at the dinner table, and a dog of my own, a sweet Spaniel bitch he insisted I christen Minette, after his own adored sister.
Impossible to say I wasn’t happy. My half-finished knowledge of medicine was adequate to keep the dogs well, particularly dogs fed on milk and beef and bedded in warm rooms. And as to comfort, diversion and women, I had all any man could ask. I was growing fat and a trifle indolent, but then so were many at Court, not possessed of King Charles’s great energy and curiosity. When Pearce visited me, he grew white and rigid at the sight of so much profane luxury. ‘This age suffers from a woeful moral blindness,’ he said stonily.
And then . . .
On an April morning, the King sent for me.
‘Merivel,’ he said, ‘I want you to get married.’
‘Married
, Sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Marriage, Sire, is not, has never been, on my mind . . .’
‘I know. I’m not asking you to want it. I’m asking you to
do
it, as a favour to me.’
‘But –’
‘Have I not done very many favours to you, Merivel?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Voilà!
You owe me at least this one. And there will be compensations. I propose to give you the Garter, so that your bride will have a title, albeit a modest one. And small but agreeable estates in Norfolk I have confiscated from a recalcitrant Anti-Monarchist. So arise, Sir Robert, and go to your duty without hesitation or barter.’
I knelt. We were in the Royal Bedchamber and from the adjoining study came the disunified tick-tocking and pinging of the clocks, which perfectly mirrored, at that moment, my own confused thoughts.
‘Well?’ said the King.
I looked up. The Royal visage was smiling at me benignly. The Royal fingers caressed the dark brown moustache.
‘Who . . .?’ I stammered.
The King leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. ‘Ah yes. The bride. It is, of course, Celia Clemence.’
The knee on which my weight was balanced trembled and then tottered beneath me. I fell sideways into the carpet. I heard the King chuckle.
‘It means, of course, that you – and possibly she – will have to spend some time in Norfolk, thus depriving me of your respective companies now and then. But this is a sacrifice I am prepared to make.’
I endeavoured to right myself, but my left knee had gone suddenly numb and wouldn’t support me, so I had no alternative but to lie in a kind of foetal heap by the Royal footstool.
‘I don’t,’ said the King, ‘need to explain myself further, do I, Merivel?’
‘Well, Sir . . .’
‘I do? I’m surprised at you. I thought you were one of the most knowledgeable people at Court.’
‘No, it is merely that this is . . . this matter is . . . somewhat difficult for me to grasp.’
‘I can’t for the life of me see why. It is childishly simple, Merivel. The frequent presence of Celia Clemence in my bed has become a necessity in my life. I am, as everyone knows, utterly beguiled by her. Likewise, my
grand amour,
Barbara Castlemaine, is absolutely essential to my continuing health and well-being. In short, I love and need both mistresses, but I have no wish to continue to endure Lady Castlemaine’s tantrums on the subject of Miss Clemence. They make me edgy and give me indigestion. So she must be married at once – the better that I may come by her again secretly, without Castlemaine’s knowledge. But to whom must I marry her?
Not, I think, to a powerful aristocrat, who will soon irritate me profoundly by starting to consider his own position and honour. No. What I am looking for in Celia’s husband is a man who will enjoy and profit from his estates and title, and who will be kindly and amusing company to his bride on the rare occasions he is with her, but who is far too enamoured of women in general to make the mistake of loving any particular one. And in you, Merivel, I have surely made the perfect choice. Have I not? You also, as I am fond of observing, have a pleasingly fashionable name. To ask Celia to become – in name alone, of course – Lady Merivel, is something I feel I can undertake with equanimity.’
So that was it, uttered: the fifth beginning.
The dogs were to be taken from my care and in their place was to be put the youngest of the King’s mistresses. The practical matter which most absorbed me, as I left the King’s presence, was that I could not remember how far from and in what relation to (viz. north-east or directly north of) London lay the county of Norfolk.
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Copyright © Rose Tremain 2012
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Hardback ISBN 9780701185206
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