For answer, Finn put one of his thin hands into a braided pocket and took out a scrap of parchment much creased and thumbed, like a love letter kept day and night about a man's person. He handed it to me and bid me read. I saw at once the King's elegant hand, and this is what was written:

This paper sets forth and commands to be executed by one, Elias Finn, painter, the following commission: a noble and beautiful portrait of Celia Clemence, Lady Merivel, of Bidnold Manor in the County of Norfolk. This portrait to be delivered, complete and finished in every detail, no later than the twelfth day of February 1665. This portrait not to exceed twenty-five inches carrés, that it may comfortably be hung in our closet. This portrait, if found to be well-executed and pretty, to earn for the artist the sum of seven livres. This portrait, if found to be most excellent and true to nature, to earn for the artist promise of a small place at Court.

Signed, Charles R.

I looked up at Finn, who now had an insufferable grin upon his face. I handed him his paper, feeling myself invaded as I did so by a most unruly anger. Gone instantly was my little excitement for my painting of Russians. Now, I would be forced – in order not to displease the King – to give food and lodging to this impoverished artist while he spent hours in Celia's company, embellishing her with silly fans and draperies and daubing in some puffing cherub above her head, receiving for his pains both Celia's admiration and a position at Whitehall, while I struggled on alone with my oboe, exiled still from Court and possessing no power to make my wife regard me with anything but disdain, save only in moments of distress such as the night of my bird's unfortunate demise. Any sympathy I had once felt for Finn had now departed from me utterly. I both despised and envied him and knew only too well what a burden his presence in my house was going to be to me. It is fortunate, however, that at such moments of sudden anger (infrequent in my nature) I seem not to be without some cleverness and cunning. Adeptly concealing my rage, I shook my head gravely and said:

"Alas, Finn, you must not depend upon this for your future."

"Why so?" said Finn, staring anxiously at his paper.

"Why? Because such commissions are numerous. I wager the King puts out no less than two or three per diem. And already portraits of my wife have been done, but none have been paid for and the poor artists are, as far as I know, still wandering the land like the Idle Poor or decaying in their rags on the steps to the King's barge."

I was earnestly hoping that these words would cast Finn into the Nordic gloom that fits his features so well but, much to my irritation, he smiled condescendingly at me.

"This one will be paid for," he said, "because I will make a portrait too beautiful to be resisted. I have heard your wife is a pretty woman and I will improve, even, on what nature has created."

"By surrounding her with flowers and harps and foolish garlands, I suppose? But these will not improve your chances."

"No. Not by embellishment, but by succeeding at what you attempted, Sir Robert, and failed to achieve: the capturing of her essence. I will capture it and the face will be a magnet, drawing all eyes and hearts towards it."

"I wish you luck," I said acidly. "But let me warn you: much of what the King commences he does not finish. The clamour about him is so noisy, so colossal, he cannot for long remain attentive to any one thing. So beware, Finn. You may arrive with your picture and he will not even set eyes upon it."

"But I have my paper…"

"Paper! Do you not know the First Rule of the Cosmos, Finn?"

"What 'First Rule'?"

"That all matter is born of fire and will one day again be consumed by it."

Having delivered myself of this piece of questionable wisdom and before Finn could deny its relevance to the piece of parchment in his hands, I quickly changed the subject.

"Concerning your lodging here," I said, "I suppose the King gave you money for this?"

"No, Sir Robert. As I told you, I have not one farthing…"

"I am to feed you and house you as a favour?"

"As a favour to His Majesty."

"For which I shall be rewarded how?"

"He did not say. But I am a person of modest appetite…"

"Not so, judging from your clothes."

"That is mere outward show…"

"As much as life proves to be. But God sees into your heart, Finn, and would He wish you to be a parasite?"

"I am no parasite. I work hard for the meagre living I make."

"And will do so here. In return for your board, you will concentrate such talent as you have upon my work. I wish to begin some new pictures. You will help me with questions of perspective and light."

"But what of the portrait?"

"My wife is most busy with her music and her attempts to comprehend the work of Dryden. She will not spare you more than an hour a day."

Finn began to protest and, seeing his dismay, I felt my anger abate somewhat. To Meg, when I next saw her, I would tell the story of a poor mendicant who is given a little plot of ground and sees an end to his poverty if he can but till the earth and sew some seed before the beginning of spring. He goes begging for tools – for a plough and a mule and a hoe. He returns with these, but he is too late. He did not see the spring come and yet, when he gets back, it is already there. He had forgotten with what stealth change occurs and time passes.

I found myself in the attic room at the Jovial Rushcutters sooner than I had intended: I lay there that very night.

The day of Finn's arrival passed most disagreeably and I was in such a lather of fury by suppertime that all I could think of was escaping from the house, so I shouted for my horse to be saddled and rode through the slush to the village. On my way, I chanced upon two poor people collecting sticks, of which I shall write more presently.

What so vexed me was Celia's treatment of Finn. Hearing from his thin lips that the King had commissioned him to paint her portrait, her eyes grew bright with joy. She summoned Farthingale and told her the merry tiding (the two of them reading into it excessive hopes for their imminent return to Kew) and they then began to fawn upon the artist, requesting to see his work and professing to find it most marvellous and brilliant and I know not what, and then bringing forth dresses and sashes and headdresses for him to choose from for the picture, the while utterly ignoring me and behaving as if I was of no account in the matter, which, alas, is true.

I observed Celia closely. Her beautiful smile, which I had seen so often given to the King, but scarcely ever to me, was almost constantly upon her lips, thus rendering her most infinitely pretty and sweet. Hers is the kind of sweetness which, once glimpsed, makes my heart tender – as if towards a child – and my manhood cruel – wanting to possess and abuse that very same childlike thing. I saw that Finn was utterly captivated by her. I saw also that Celia knew him to be captivated and did not mind, indeed allowed herself to flirt a little with him. And this last observation created in me a bitter yearning. Why – when she was my wife – could she not behave so charmingly to me?

I sat and watched her until I could endure it no longer, then went to the Music Room and played some foul blasts upon my oboe and kicked over my music stand, then threw the instrument down and went calling for my groom. On my way to the stables, I met Cattlebury who informed me that he had come by two dozen thrushes for supper. I told him curtly that I was not hungry but that he should serve up the wretched birds in a pie "for my wife and her new friend, Mr Finn". By the time they sat down to table (Celia's smile rendered all the more irresistible by the soft candlelight, no doubt) I had already consumed several flagons of ale and was conversing with a roofing man upon the abundance of rats to be found in thatch. "What if they are plague rats?" I asked. "Then death will come by the roof." And the old man nodded. "Widow Cartwright says the plague will come to Norfolk. Round and about springtime."