"Violet," I said, recovering my kneeling position (only disconcerted very mildly by the similarity of my stance to Bathurst 's under the table), "grovelling is a thing I have done but once in my life, when I inadvertently fell over at the King's feet. The notion that I will ever, as long as I am of sound mind, grovel to Celia is a pure fiction, not to be entertained for one second more!"
I put my mouth upon Violet's at this moment, thus preventing further speech, and the evening proceeded very pleasantly, Violet's sudden attack of jealousy having roused her to a wild and shameless abandon.
But even as I saw her into her coach, I found myself remembering Celia and wondering where, in the unlikely event of her unexpected arrival at Bidnold, I would lodge her. Had I not, on my strange wedding night, witnessed the immodest thrusting of her loins towards the King's mouth and heard through the closet door a wailing of pleasure worthy of an African wildcat, I would have believed Celia to be an entirely chaste and modest person, a person of sober taste and small appetite, finding comfort and contentment in a bedchamber hung, say, with pale apricot moire and ornamented by sombre prints of rivers and cathedrals. As it was, by the time I had ceased waving to Violet's gloved hand disappearing into the night, I had already decided that what I called the Marigold Room would be the one I would offer to Celia. Late as the hour was, I had my servants go up and light candles in the Marigold Room, so that I could take a look at it. I would have given the thing no thought at all but for Violet. For this one brief night, she had awoken in me a minute flicker of excitement at the idea of my wife's arrival. The next morning, however, Celia was once more consigned to that part of my brain I imagine to be like a coiled fistula, filled not with putrescent matter, but with utter darkness and into which so much of what I have once known is carefully crammed.
Now, here I am, in my torn stockings and with my bleeding hand, staring at my poor wife as she turns to me on the stairway and I read in her face some terrible calamity. "My dear!" I burst out, whipping from my pocket a plum-coloured silk handkerchief and fumblingly binding my hand with it. "Welcome to Bidnold! If you had given me a little warning, I would have made everything ready for you."
"I need no welcome," says Celia, and her voice is reedy, like the voice of an old dying crone. "The servants will show me to my room."
"Yes," I stammer, "or I will show you. It's to be the Marigold Room…"
My hand is bound now, but as I take hold of the banister rail and prepare to mount the stairs towards her, I see her recoil from me, as from some rearing viper. "Stay away!" she whispers, seemingly faint with revulsion. "Please stay away."
I stop at once and smile at her kindly. "Celia," I say, remembering her name at last, "you need have no fear of me whatsoever. I will never ask anything of you. All I wanted was to show you to your room, the colours and furnishings of which I hope may be of some comfort to you in whatever misfortune – "
"The servants will show me. Where is my woman, Sophia?"
"What?" I say.
"Where is my woman? Where is Sophia?"
"I have no idea. Did you bring her with you? She's your maid?"
"Yes. Call her please, Merivel."
I turn and look towards the front door. Two grooms are stumbling through it with a leather trunk, filled no doubt with ermine-trimmed bonnets and newt-skin shoes bought for his Dear One by my sometime master, the King. My mind is travelling in sudden sorrow towards a certain set of striped dinner napkins, now unused but kept folded in linen in an oaken chest, when I suddenly see Pearce, panting and wheezing like his late mule, arrive in my hall.
"Ah, Pearce." I say quickly. "Have you caught sight of a woman named Sophia?"
Pearce is blinking. His huge eyes, his prehensile nose and his long neck make him, on the instant, resemble a species of nocturnal tree-climbing animals I have seen described as marsupials (a strange word).
"No," says Pearce. "What is occurring, Merivel? I scent some misfortune."
"Yes," I say, "misfortune there does seem to be. But for now we must find my wife's woman…"
"Your wife is come?"
"Yes. Here she is. Go out to her carriage please, Pearce, and tell her maid that her mistress calls."
Pearce is wiping his eyes on his threadbare cloak, the better to believe that the ghostly woman in black is indeed Celia Clemence, last glimpsed by him laughing merrily at her wedding. I am about to urge him outside once more when a buxom, ugly, dark-haired woman of perhaps thirty-five appears, carrying two or three dresses in her arms.
"Sophia," Celia calls hoarsely, "come up."
Sophia looks from Pearce to me, seems immediately affronted by the sight of us both and so goes swiftly up the stairs to where her mistress is reaching out her hand.
At my side, emerged from I know not where, I now find Will Gates.
"Will," I say with great urgency, "please conduct my wife and her woman to the Marigold Room."
"The Marigold Room, Sir?" whispers Will. "Might I suggest another?"
"No, you might not," I snap.
Will glares at me but nonetheless, like the matchless servant that he is, goes nimbly up the stairs past the two women and with his habitual unflowery courtesy leads them onwards and up. The grooms follow with the heavy trunks and boxes.
I did not see Celia again that day.
After supper, which I took alone with Pearce, I enquired of my cook whether orders had come down for food. I was told that some bouillon and a plum tartlet had been sent up.
"Was it eaten?" I asked.
"Either that," said my wall-eyed chef, Cattlebury, "or the dog had it?"
"Dog?"
"Aye, Sir."
"What dog, Cattlebury?"
"Mr Gates, Sir, says they brought in a dog, a small Spaniel like the one as died on you, Sir Robert."
Ah, was my melancholy thought as I left the kitchens, the King is too cunning for us all! To those he knows he must one day abandon, he gives this sweet, living gift, just to be certain that our love for him remains with us (as if he could doubt that it would!) in case he may, at some future time, have need of us again. Poor Celia!
As I returned to my Study, where I had left Pearce reading some forgotten Latin text from my Padua days, I resolved that I must try, as soon as she would let me, to offer words of understanding and comfort, and in so doing perhaps find a little relief from my own despair. For there was no doubt in my mind now: the King had sent her away. She had played her part, just as I had once played mine, and now he had cast us off. I imagine him at dinner, his arm draped elegantly round Lady Castlemaine's white shoulders, the candlelight lending a seductive gloss to the little moustache he keeps so fastidiously trimmed. He leans towards Castlemaine, nibbles the emerald dangling from her ear. "What do you know of Norfolk, Barbara?" he whispers.