"Very little," she replies, "except that it is far from London!"
"Precisely!" smiles the King, "and therefore useful to me. It is there, you see, that I envoie all those I have begun to find tedious."
"Well," I said to Pearce, as I sat down in the Study, "I believe I know now for certain what has happened. What I greatly fear, however, is that Celia will believe her life is over. I really do not think she will ever be consoled."
Pearce (as is one of his irritating habits, detested by me since our student days) did not so much as glance up from his book when I finished speaking, but simply read on, as if I had not even entered the room. I waited. Sometimes I find Pearce so deeply annoying that, were I the King, I could have bouts of wanting to send him to Norfolk.
"Pearce," I said, "did you hear what I said?"
"No," said Pearce. "I didn't. I imagine it was some observation on your wife's plight."
"Yes, it was."
"Well, I have nothing to add. Fools such as you have become and courtesans such as she, once the whiplash of mirth or passion has died, invariably feel the scourge of the whip itself."
I sighed. I opened my mouth to discourage Pearce from further muddled metaphorical utterances of this kind when he lifted the little book he'd been reading and brandished it in my face.
"This is interesting!" he announced. "On the Cartesian question of spontaneous generation: 'For if generation of the lower forms is not spontaneous, then vermiculus unde venit? Whence the maggot?' "
I got up. "I'm sorry, Pearce," I said, my voice brittle and cold, "but I do not feel able, after the troubles of this day, to enter upon a discussion of maggots. I shall go and play my oboe until bedtime."
With that I strode out and went to my Music Room. I shall spare you an account of my struggles with my instrument that evening and the quantity of anxious spittle with which reed after reed was saturated. I shall report only that I wrestled with simple scales for an hour or more, after which time my grazed hand was giving me so much pain that I lay down on the floor of the Music Room and put it between my thighs, with my knees drawn up to my stomach, and in this childlike posture fell into a troubled sleep.
When I awoke, very stiff and cold, with my hand swollen and set into a premature rigor mortis, I saw from the grey light at the window that the winter dawn was breaking over Norfolk, County of Exiles. Despite my numbness and pain, I found myself, on the instant of waking, filled with purpose and resolve. I must go immediately to Celia. I must make her understand that, stranger to her though I am, disagreeable though she may find my physical self, I am occasionally a person of generous mind and that – forswearing any hope of recompense or reward – I am content to be her protector and treat her with respect and kindness for as long as she remains at Bidnold.
I went up to my own chamber, where I changed my clothes and wig. None of the servants was yet stirring. By the handsome timepiece given to me by the King, I saw that it was a little before six. The embers of a fire were still glowing in my grate and I tried to warm my dead hand somewhat before setting out along the chilly corridors to the Marigold Room.
I stopped in front of Celia's door. I could hear a tiny, piteous sound, which I first took to be weeping, but then recognised all too foolishly well as the whimpering of a Spaniel. Minette, Minette, I thought. I grieve for you. You are buried in the park and the deer chomp the grass above you… But this was quite the wrong moment for self-pity, so I knocked with a firm and authorative hand (my left hand, the other one being now afflicted with a sudden intolerable pricking and tingling) and waited.
After a moment or two, an unfamiliar foreign-sounding voice, the voice of Sophia no doubt, called angrily: "Who is there?"
"Sir Robert," I replied, "I want to speak to Lady Merivel, please."
The dog was now scrabbling at the door. I believe the maid pushed it away roughly before she said: "My mistress is sleeping. Go, please, away."
"No," I said. "I will not go away. Please wake my wife. I have much that is important to say to her."
"No!" hissed Sophia. "My Lady is sleeping!"
"She may sleep later. I must speak to her now."
I was about to add that at this precise moment I was feeling a great deal of compassion for Celia but that such is the nature of mood and emotion that I could not guarantee, if forced to return at another time, to find within me the same degree of kindness, when the door was opened. The maid stood there in her nightgown and lace cap. I saw now that her skin was sallow and her upper lip uncommonly hairy. I decided she must be one of the large retinue of Portuguese women who had been shipped to England with Catherine of Braganza, many of whom had found themselves forced to serve outside their beloved Queen's household and who, by the Whitehall gallants, were known scathingly as "the Farthingales" after the peculiar hooped skirts beneath which they concealed their stocky legs.
This Sophia gave me a look of the utmost loathing as I went past her into the room. I shall be rid of you, Farthingale, I said to her in my mind, for I am master here.
I must relate, however, that in the scene which followed (I deliberately refer to it as a "scene", for the albeit unoriginal notion that my life since my wedding has become something of a farce does very often strike me as apt) I demonstrated all too lamentably my lack of masterliness and found myself most horribly insulted and abused. This is what happened:
I found Celia, not in bed as Farthingale had pretended, but sitting on the orange and green cushions of the window seat, fully dressed in her black garb, staring out at the dismal dawn.
I asked her if she had slept well and she replied that she had not slept at all so hideous did she find the room, so vulgar, so gaudy and tasteless. She could not, she said, imagine anyone – except probably myself – being capable of finding any rest within it.
Reminding myself that I should not become angry, I assured her calmly that she was free to select another room whenever she wished. I then asked her if I might sit down. She answered that she would prefer me to remain standing.
By this time disconcerted by Celia's hostility, of which I truly believed myself undeserving, I nevertheless began upon what I had come to say. I told Celia that I of all people, who had briefly known some affection from the King, understood exceedingly well the quality, the measure of her sadness. I began to speak of the terrible degree to which my being and my spirit, once calm and content in its serving of God and the Trinity, was now possessed by the King. I went so far as to say that I believed there was no man or woman in the Kingdom (be they as pious as my dead parents, be they Puritan or Quaker, be they lord or lunatic) utterly free from and untouched by any longing to see their own putrid lives lit up by his radiance. "Inevitably then," I went on, "you and I, Celia, who have known something of the man's love…"
"Love?" shrieked Celia. "What presumption, Merivel! What self-deception! How can you dare to speak of what the King felt for you as love! Not for one second, not for one mote of time did King Charles love you, Merivel. I advise you never again to use the word!"
"My only intention…" I began, but Celia, now standing and fixing upon my face her fearful eyes, refused to let me speak. She jabbed a small white finger towards my scarlet waistcoat as she yelled: "The truth is that the King, in his love for me, in his passion for me, made use of you. He used you, Merivel. He looked around for the stupidest man he could find, the densest, the most foolish, the one who would accept whatever he did like a dog and cause him no trouble – and he found you! I begged him, don't marry me to that idiot, I begged him on my knees, but all he did was laugh. "Who can I ask," he said, "to be paid cuckold except an idiot?" Do you understand, Merivel? Dense as you are, do you comprehend what I'm saying?"