"Pray don't go, Merivel. Forgive me if I spoke of matters that do not regard me."
I did not know what to reply. To Pearce I would have delivered myself of some insult to George Fox or to the soup ladle but, angry as I was, I did not wish to wound Celia. I suggested at last that we retire to our rooms but Celia, it seemed, intended to stay and watch over the bird and wished me to stay with her.
I felt mightily tired. The very act of picking up the scalpel had affected me. I wanted to lie down and dream I was a Russian in a coat of weasel-skin, carefree in the snow. But what could I do? On this peculiar January night, my wife wished to be with me – for the first time since she'd come to Bidnold. I could not refuse her.
I decided at once that we must have food to sustain us through our vigil. I hadn't the heart to wake Cattlebury, so carrying a candle and holding my blanket close about me, I walked the cold corridors to the kitchen and returned with a tray of meats: a cold game pie, a cold roasted guinea fowl and some charred pork sausages – and a flagon of sack.
The card table, so lately an operating theatre, now became a dining trestle. We ate with our fingers and drank the sack from the stone bottle, and the food and the fire banished the ache in my backbone and turned Celia's nose unflatteringly red.
After we had eaten, Celia sang. The song was a lullaby and most beautiful and, when she had finished it, she whispered to me her secret hope, that the King would give her a child. It was upon this subject that she had been attempting to write to the King when she had heard the small noise made by the nightingale falling from its perch. Interpreting this as a sign that what she was doing was dangerous, she had immediately cast her letter into the fire and come running to wake me. I did not know what comment to make upon this secret hope of hers, finding myself most afrighted by it. So I laid my head among the fowl bones and went immediately to sleep and when I woke I heard Celia crying.
I sat up. I saw a grey light at the window, heralding sunrise. The fire was low. Celia was no longer at the table, but kneeling by the bird's cage. "It is dead, Merivel," she said. "It is quite dead."
I knelt. The bird lay in a pool of greenish slime, its terminal evacuation caused by the Fortis. From the rigor of its body, I recognised at once that it was indeed dead, but in truth I gave this very little attention, for, weeping as she was, Celia had let herself fall forwards and reach out to me for comfort. So it was that I found myself holding her, kneeling, in my arms for three or four minutes together. Though I would dearly loved to have kissed and caressed her, I did not allow myself to do this, but only to hold her head against mine and stroke her hair.
Two days later, after we had buried the Indian Nightingale near the grave of my dog, Minette, in the park, snow began to fall. Through this snow, on a fat grey horse a man came riding to my door. His name was Sir Nicholas Hogg. He informed me that he was a Justice of the Peace for the Parish of Hautbois-le-Fallows cum Bidnold and that at a recent Quarter Session of the Justices I had – as Squire of the Manor of Bidnold – been appointed an Overseer of the Poor.
I invited Justice Hogg into my study. My garb that day was muted, Celia having insisted that I go into demi-deuil for the wretched nightingale, and Hogg, it seems, took me for a serious man.
I enquired of him what my duties as Overseer might be and he replied that they would be light, " Norfolk being not at this time disfigured by a great quantity of poor", but that I should bear in mind at all times that paupers were divisible into three categories.
"Three categories?" I asked. "And all fit conveniently into one of the three?"
"They do. For you have in this land your Impotent Poor, your Able Poor and your Idle Poor."
"Ah," I said.
"But it is expected of the Overseers that they will avoid errors in their categorisation, for errors will invariably bring a man before the Justices and thus consume their precious time. So let me warn you that the commonest area of error is in the distinguishing between your Impotent Pauper and your Idle Pauper, for a great many of the Idle will counterfeit Impotence and thus a great quantity of those appearing to the unpractised eye Impotent will in fact be found to be Idle. I trust you understand me?"
"I believe I do."
"This, then, is your most important task: correct categorisation. If, for example, you come upon a person begging by the wayside, how may you be able to distinguish whether the said person is of the Idle variety or the Impotent variety?"
I thought for a moment about this. I was briefly tempted to make some flippant rejoinder to the effect that there were many at Court who would infinitely prefer to be thought Idle (which indeed they were) than to be thought Impotent (which some of them were but went through elaborate performances to conceal). But I truly wished to take my new responsibilities seriously, so I replied at last that I would first cast my eye over the person's person, to ascertain in what condition his body stood, whether mutilated, diseased or wounded, and that I would enquire of him what circumstances of personal misfortune had reduced him to begging by the road.
But Sir Nicholas Hogg shook his head.
"No, no," he said. "An unreliable method. No, no, no. There is but one question to ask him. You must enquire whether or not he has a Licence to Beg. And when he shows you his Licence, you must make sure that it is a True Licence and not a Counterfeit."
"Ah," I said, "and if he has no Licence at all?"
"Then, you have your answer. He is not Impotent, he is Idle. It is really a most simple matter!"
"And how are the Licences obtained, Sir Nicholas?"
"Application is made to us, the Justices. And each individual case is put before us at the Quarter Sessions."
"And what of the man who falls upon hard times, is hurt, say, in a brawl or falls from a tree while picking plums and his spine is crushed, and he can no longer work, and yet finds on the almanac that the next Quarter Session is many weeks off. How is he to live in the meantime, except by begging?"
"This is a hypothetical case, Sir Robert, and I know of no such precedent. At all events, he must not beg. He must find other means."
"Yet I do not know what those means might be."
"Very well. One such means is that he could come to you."
"And what must I do?"
"It is the occasional duty of the Overseer to dispense small sums, on a sixpenny or ninepenny scale, in charity, or, if preferred, dispense gifts in kind, such as a thin hen or a pigsfoot, as and where they think fit. It is for this reason only men of substance are elected to the position of Overseer, so that their own livelihood is not one whit inconvenienced."
Sir Nicholas began lighting up a very foul pipe at this juncture, thus giving me a little time to formulate other questions concerning the condition of the workhouse at Norwich, and the type of work done there, this place being the principal refuge for what Hogg dubbed the Able Poor of the county. I was told that it was a very excellent type of workhouse and that the men, women and children housed there were most merry, seated at their spinning wheels and looms "and thus receiving charity not only for their arms and fingers, which are at work, but also for their undeserving legs, which are idle."
Hogg wiped some black morsels of tobacco from his fleshy lip before he added: "Unfortunately the sick-house there has, mistakenly in my opinion, been converted to an ale house, but I am informed the few sick are cared for in an adequate shed."
I enquired whether, as an Overseer in a small parish, it would be necessary for me to visit the workhouse at Norwich, but Sir Nicholas replied that my authority extended only as far as the boundary of Hautbois-le-Fallows cum Bidnold with the neighbouring parishes of Coote-by-Leyland and Rumworth St James, an authority I shared, he told me lastly, with none other than Lord Bathurst, described as "an excellent Overseer, most generous with rabbits". The notion that Bathurst could be relied upon to tell whether a poor man was Impotent or Idle I found somewhat disconcerting and was about to make some observations on the muddled state of Bathurst's mind since his accident in the field, when Sir Nicholas walked to my study window, looked out at the snow falling very thickly now and declared that he must depart at once or risk to find the highway obliterated and all routes to what he called his "Seat at Hautbois" impassible.