Very reluctantly, I got out my surgical instruments and my remedies, ointments and powders, but, having set them out next to Minette on the Dining Room table, found that I was at a loss to know what to do; in my desire to forget my former profession, I had succeeded in burying knowledge that was vital to me now.

I thought of Lou-Lou and Fabricius's dictates about nature. Would I be able to cure Minette by a similar attack of idleness? I did not think so. She was vomiting almost constantly, poor thing, and on her belly was a large dribbling sore.

I diluted a little laudanum with milk and spooned this down her throat, and after some minutes she entered a quiet sleep. I examined the sore. It was a foul and stinking thing. I imagined its poison entering her blood vessels and thus being carried to her heart. If only it had been a boil I could lance, but it was not, it was an open wound which, because it was on her belly, I had neglected to notice for several days, or even weeks.

I cleaned the thing as best I could with some warm water, moistened some linen with alcohol and laid this upon it. Minette whimpered in her sleep and then her body was suddenly wracked with terrible convulsions. Foam-flecked spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth. I held onto her and waited for the convulsions to subside. At my elbow, my servant, Will Gates, was sweating and pale.

"It's no good," I said to Will. "I don't trust my own knowledge. Where can I find Doctor Murdoch at this hour?"

"Doctor Murdoch is a quack, Sir, a regular empiric."

"Never mind. He's our best hope. Where is he to be found?"

"In one place and only one."

"Well?"

"At the Rushcutters, Sir."

Why did I not send Will to the inn? I did not send him because I thought a fast canter on Danseuse in the crisp November evening would help to rid me of some of the fear and anxiety by which I felt myself gripped. Shouting to my groom to saddle the horse, I carried Minette to my bedroom, laid her on my bed and told Will not to leave her side, on pain of immediate dismissal.

"What will I do if she rack and rigor again, Sir?"

"Hold her," I said, "try to hold her still."

I mounted Danseuse and was away through the park, sending the deer scurrying from our pathway. I pressed her to a fast gallop and, as I filled and refilled my lungs with the rich air, began to feel my terror depart a little.

I was sweating by the time I tied Danseuse to her post outside the Jovial Rushcutters and my face was aflame. I walked in, blowing like a whale. I cast around for the unmistakable sight of Doctor Murdoch, with his stooped shoulders and long clammy hands, but I couldn't see him. "Doctor Murdoch?" I asked one of the hobnailed peasants with his nose in his ale. "Was he here this evening? Does anyone know where he might be found?"

Through the malodorous crowd of pigmen, game-keepers and fowl-breeders came Meg Storey. In the dim candlelight of the tavern, her hair looked fiery. The dress and apron she wore were lilac. She bobbed a cheeky curtsey to me, then took my hand and led me without a word to the cool, dark stillroom where the barrels of beer were stacked and there reached up and placed a soft kiss upon my mouth. "That is to tell you," she said, and I caught the sour scent of beer on her breath, "I am sorry for what happened to your new vocation."

I let out a yelp of laughter, and, all hot and in a lather of body and brain, gathered Meg Storey into my arms. "Nature…" I murmured between kisses and caresses. "Let nature work upon Minette and upon me…" And in moments I had abandoned my poor dog to her fate and lay tumbling with Meg on the earthen floor.

An hour later, Doctor Murdoch came into the tavern, but so confused and excited was I by my amours with Meg Storey, that I no longer thought to find him there, but spent the rest of the night riding hither and thither in search of him, until Danseuse would gallop no more and we walked wearily home.

Will Gates was asleep on the floor of my bedchamber. Laid out on my bed, under a striped cloth I recognised as one of the large table napkins given to me by the King, was the dead body of Minette.

I knelt down and tried to think of a prayer, but found that, along with my all too insubstantial knowledge of disease, I had consigned to oblivion any number of the ancient words of God.

Chapter Four. An Indian Nightingale

The morning after the death of Minette, Finn arrived to give me a painting lesson. Wearily, I put on my floppy hat and my smock. A chill rain, now driving against the panes of my studio window, had saturated Finn's rather threadbare outer garments and given him the look of a destitute. We were, in short, a miserable pair. And it occurred to me that, although the spur to creative endeavour may very often be melancholy, it relies in its execution on its opposing element, choleric fire, of which, that morning, I felt not the smallest flame.

"Go home," I said to Finn, unwisely as it turned out, for Finn at that time had none to go to, but had spent the previous night in one of Lord Bathurst's cowsheds. And so wet and woebegone did the poor artist feel, that he was emboldened to broach with me, not for the first nor the last time, the great subject of my influence with the King and the chance of my obtaining for him some position, however meagre – a fresco assistant, a designer of playing cards – at Court.

Now, the loss of Minette had not only saddened me, but had also made me afraid. My own deliberate act of forgetfulness had allowed her to die; King Charles, in his turn, I now saw, had consigned his onetime Fool to oblivion. I had my house and my title as recompense, but I was forgotten. Cleverer, wittier, less ignoble people had replaced me. I had served my purpose and was now cast from favour. Sick at heart as I was, however, I had no intention of revealing to Finn (himself so full of hauteur in his disdain of my painting talent) that I no longer had any influence at Whitehall.

"Finn," I said, whipping off my floppy hat and throwing it down on the stack of virgin canvases, "it is pointless to raise this matter with me, when it is manifestly clear that you have utterly failed to comprehend the way in which such transactions are carried out."

"What can you mean?" asked Finn, shifting his feet uncomfortably, so that I heard the squelch of his shoes.

"What I mean, Finn," I said acidly, "is that we live in commercial times. Take it or leave it, this is the world we inhabit. And he who takes no account of this is likely to die poor and unknown."

Finn's pretty mouth dropped open, giving him a childlike, idiotic look. "If I were rich," he said piteously, "I would of course give you gold to mention my talent to His Majesty, but, as you see, I barely make a living, and if I am to sacrifice the little you pay me for painting lessons…"

"How you set about the task of persuading me to use my influence in London is of no interest to me," I snapped. "I merely remind you that, although an Age of Philanthropy may one day catch our commercial English hearts unaware, the time is not now. And he who is not of the time risks the scorn of his peers and the grave of a pauper. Go home, or rather go back to Lord Bathurst's cowshed, or wherever you plan to lay your innocent head tonight, and think about what I have said."

I watched him walk out into the rain. Tall and thin, his retreating figure reminded me, as it never previously had, of my father, and I experienced a moment of regret, like a sudden wounding in my belly. I felt most extraordinarily alone. I would have mounted Danseuse and begun a mad-cap journey to London there and then, had I not promised the King to stay away from Court – "and neither at Celia's house at Kew, not in the corridors of Whitehall to show your face, Merivel," – unless invited there by him alone.