We stood up at last. Violet had ceased her shrieking. I kissed her shoulder, swearing on the life of my sweet mother that I was not, nor would ever be, in the habit of touching my wife and promised to visit her the following evening and spend the night in her bed. At which time, I told her, I would explain my absence, which had been caused only by a visit from my friend Pearce, with whom I had had such grave discourse that all thoughts of pleasure had been dislodged from my mind.

I fastened the pheasant tail hat to her lovely head. She placed a very tender kiss on my flat nose and obediently left. I waited until I heard her coach clatter off into the night, and then returned to the Dining Room. The eel tart had been removed and the pigeons served. Celia sat upright and still, sipping her wine.

"I must apologise," I said, "for the unforeseeable interruption. Pray do begin upon your pigeons."

"Thank you," said Celia. "Your cook, at least, is exceedingly good. Tell me, Merivel, do you have mistresses?"

"Naturally," I replied, "I am a man of my time."

"And is that woman one of them?"

"She is. Her name is Lady Bathurst."

"And do you love her?"

"Ah," I said, "that word that finds itself so frequently upon our lips!"

"Well?"

"No, Celia. I do not love her. Now pray tell me how you find Cattlebury's madeira sauce?"

Celia replied that it was excellent. My unexpected exertions with Violet had given me a ravening hunger and I set upon several pigeons with somewhat unseemly attack. I was wiping my mouth in preparation for the quail when I heard the unmistakable sound of a horse cantering swiftly up the drive. Moments later, just as the quail were being put before us, the Dining Room door was flung open once more and Will Gates came rushing in.

"A letter, Sir!" he said excitedly. "Come this very moment from London."

"Very well, Will. There's no need for such haste. Give it to me."

He put the letter into my hands. He looked at it and I looked at it. We both knew, by the unmistakable seal upon it, that what had arrived on this extraordinary night was a letter from the King.

It is in my possession still, this letter.

This is what it says:

Merivel,

To our dear Fool, we send greetings.

Pray be good enough to visit us in our Physic Garden at eight o'clock before noon tomorrow, Friday December the tenth in this the fourth year of our Reign, 1664.

This command comes from Your Only Sovereign and Loyal Servant of God,

Charles Rex

I rode through the night, taking Danseuse as far as Newmarket, changing horses there and again at Royston. Will Gates begged me to let him accompany me, fearful, I believe, that in my passion to reach London I would go flying into a ditch, there to die unmourned. But I refused. "The stars," I said, (succumbing, I know not why, to a fleeting attack of Pearceian romanticism), "will be my companions, and the very darkness itself!"

I had anticipated and indeed so it proved, that my spirit on this journey would be hurtling ahead of my body, causing me to shout at it in order to rein it in. It did not worry me if some poor cottar woke under his low eave to hear me singing or shrieking in the December night, but I preferred to undertake this noisy adventure alone, leaving Will to keep an eye on Farthingale lest, in my absence, she got intolerably above herself and began setting fire to my paintings, baiting my bird, playing my oboe, or I know not what.

As I set off, Celia was weeping. No doubt it pained her, nay, frightened her beyond measure that it was to me and not to her that the summons had come. She would, she said piteously, send some message with me, some plea, but knew not how to shape the words. And I could not linger for an instant, not even to finish my supper or powder my wig. "If I do not throw myself into the saddle at once," I told Celia, "I shall not reach London by morning, and you know as well as I that if I am not there at the hour appointed, His Majesty will not wait for me. As sternly as he commands loyalty from his subjects does he command punctuality. A betrayal of time he regards as a betrayal of faith. The first object that he ever showed me, Celia, was a clock."

And so I galloped away. Into my pockets I had thrust four or five quail to sustain me through the twelve hours of travel and at the moment of my departure, Will came running with a flask of Alicante, which I strapped to my saddle. "Farewell!" I shouted, but did not look behind. The road ahead mesmerised my being.

I entered London at seven o'clock. Over the river, unglimpsed by me for so long, rose the sluggish sun and mist streamed up off the water. I heard the swearing of the bargemen and the shouting of the lightermen, the cry of gulls and the ruffle of pigeons, and though my thighs ached and my rump was sore, I knew that my spirit was still strong.

See me, then, arrive at last at Whitehall. I have stopped at an inn to relieve myself and to drink some water, suffering suddenly from a terrible thirst. I have had the serving girl brush my breeches and wash my boots. I have shaken the dust from my wig and soaped my face and hands. I feel extraordinarily hot as I enter the Physic Garden, I wonder if I am about to vaporise and disappear, leaving behind nothing more than a greasy puddle. Once again, as on that first most terrible visit, I feel that the near presence of the King has altered the air. "Lord God," I say, sending out one of my little bleeps of prayer, "help me to breathe."

I walk on between the neat hedges of box, smelling those herbs that outlast the winter, bay, rosemary, sage, lemon balm, thyme, and there, in the very middle of the garden, setting his watch by the sundial, I see him, the man who, if a hole were made in my breast such as the one I saw at Cambridge, I would beg to reach in and take hold of my heart.

I approach and remove my hat. I go down on my knees. I am choked and unable to speak. To my shame, I feel my eyes fill with tears. "Sir…" I manage to whisper.

"Ah. Merivel. Is it you?"

I raise my head. I do not want the King to see that I am crying, yet I know that in this instant he will see far more than this, that in my face he will be able to discern, with terrible precision, the degree of suffering which his neglect of me has caused.

"It is me. It is I, in fact, Sire…" I stammer.

He walks elegantly to where I'm kneeling, the harsh cinders of the path seeming to make wounds on my skin. He reaches out and touches my chin with his glove.

"And how is your game of tennis coming along?" he asks.

I feel, to my intense agony, a fat tear slide down my chin and moisten his glove.

"It would be coming along well, Sir, I'm sure," I say stupidly, "except that I do not have a tennis court at Bidnold."

"No tennis court? That is why you are getting fat, then, Merivel."

"No doubt it is. That and a greed of which I do not seem able to rid myself…"

It is at this moment that I realise that the pocket of my coat is terribly stained by the remnants of the quail, which I have forgotten to remove. I cover the pocket quickly with the plumes of my hat. The King laughs. To my intense delight. I feel his hand leave my chin and his long fingers travel upwards over my mouth, take hold of my flat nose and give it a vigorous tweak.

"Get up then," he says, "and come with us, Merivel. There is much to discuss."

He leads me, not to his State Rooms, but to his laboratory which, during my time at Whitehall, was a place that fascinated me and in which the King's restless mind was forever at work on new experiments, the most engrossing of which was the fixing of mercury. The smell in the place reminded me of the smell of Fabricius's own room at Padua where, on his night table, he was fond of dissecting lizards. It had about it something of the smell of the sewer or the tomb and yet my brain was invariably excited by it. I suppose that, before I turned away from anatomy, I recognised it was the odour that accompanied discovery.