Chapter Thirteen. Royal Tennis

I remember that Will half carried me, dripping and trembling from the bath. He dried me and put over my head a clean nightshirt and lay me down in my bed and I instructed him to pile furs upon me and I could smell the badger skins; they smelled of earth.

I burrowed down. I burrowed into sleep. And when I woke in the middle of the night, I knew that I was most horribly ill, with a pain in my forehead and at the base of my skull such as I had never imagined, unless it were the pain of death itself.

I vomited copiously into a basin. The sounds of my retching woke Will, who had laid himself to sleep on the floor of my bedchamber. He took the basin away and brought me water. "Sir," he said, holding the cup to my mouth, "I see some red patches or blotches upon your face."

I lay back, the pain in my head causing me to whimper like Celia's neglected Isabelle. Will held a mirror to my nose. I squinted at myself. It was an afflicting sight, one that I may long remember. I had contracted the measles.

I will not describe for you the discomfort of this illness. It will suffice to set down that I was very vexed with pain for several days, a pain relieved only by the frequent doses of laudanum which I prescribed for myself and which, in turn, sent my brain into a kind of delirium so that I no longer recognised my room, nor Will within it, but believed myself to be, variously, at Whitehall, in my parents' workshop, in Wise Nell's stinking parlour and on a tilt boat.

When the pain at last lessened and I was able to lie still without groaning, I knew that what was now stealing upon me was a sleep so profound it was like a swaddling of death. It held me for some fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. Then I would wake and find Will or Cattlebury at my side with a little cup of broth, which I would try to sip. Then I would piss feebly into my pot and lie down again and in minutes re-enter this velvet sleep, at one moment remarking to myself that, if it resembled death, it also resembled infancy and musing foolishly on the possibility of being reborn in a more handsome and serious guise.

This, of course, did not come about. I was "reborn" two weeks later, weak as a mole and covered with scabs. I sat up and saw Will sitting in a chair, wearing his tabard. "Thank you, Will," I said. "And for caring for me so well. Without you, I would have been in a sorry mess."

"Are you better, Sir?"

"I believe I am. Though I feel somewhat puny and hollow…"

"Are you recovered enough for some news?"

"News?"

"Yes. About your household."

"Meaning you and Cattlebury and the other servants?"

"No, Sir. Meaning your wife and her maid and Mister Finn and the music master. They are all gone. Gone to London."

"Celia has gone?"

"Yes, Sir Robert. And taken all her dresses and fans and so forth."

"But the portrait…"

"Finished. And the day it was, the King sends one of the Royal coaches, and they all get into it and are gone."

I lay down again. I stared at my turquoise canopy. "That is the end of it, then," I heard myself say. "Now, she will never return. What date is it, Will?"

"February, Sir. The twenty-second day."

One week later, as I sat by my fire, staring vacantly into the flames, Will brought me a letter. It was, as I knew it would be, from the King. Or rather, it was not from him but from one of his secretaries and set out the following summons:

His Gracious Majesty, King Charles II. Sovereign of the Realm commands:

That Sir Robert Merivel present Himself at Whitehall Palace no more days hence than four, upon receipt of this Royal missive.

Signed: Sir J. Babbacombe. Secretary

"So," I said to Will, who had brought me the note, "Finn did his work."

"I beg your pardon, Sir?"

"Never mind. The King calls me to London, Will. And it will not be to praise me."

"You're too weak, yet, to go to London, Sir."

"Needs must, Will. I shall not ride, but take the coach. Perhaps you would be good enough to accompany me?"

"Willingly, Sir Robert."

"We shall leave tomorrow morning, then. Make sure my black and gold coat is clean and my gold breeches."

"Yes, Sir."

"And fold up the tabard I had intended my wife should wear. We shall take it to the King as a present. Though I fear – "

"What, Sir?"

"That no offering of this kind will be enough."

I shall not dwell upon the details of our journey, except to record that, as we came to Mile End and Will saw in the distance the tower and turrets of London, he grew most childishly excited thinking of the marvels he was about to witness for the first time, he having passed all thirty-nine years of his life in Norfolk. And when it dawned upon his Norfolk mind that he might, in all probability, set eyes upon the King in his palace, he began to blub, thus causing me in the space of five minutes more delight than I had experienced in as many weeks. (I have grown, in my time at Bidnold, most fond of Will Gates. If he is now to be taken from me for ever, I will remember him often.)

We rested two nights on our journey, arriving at Whitehall towards mid-morning of the third day. We traveled wearing our tabards, but at our last lodging in Essex I dressed myself in my black and gold suit and put powder on my face, it still appearing rather poxy with some measle encrustations upon it. I did not wish the King to imagine I had the King's Evil.

Taking Will with me (he most neatly attired in a beige coat and grey leggings), I entered once again the Stone Gallery where I had been so overwhelmed, one auspicious afternoon, by the near-presence of Majesty that I had betrayed all my father's hopes for my future. As on that first time, the Gallery was noisy with people walking up and down and I knew that many of them would be petitioners and suitors for small favours who, tonight, would be sent away with nothing and yet tomorrow would return and the next day and the next.

I gave my name to the guards of the Royal Apartments and was told to wait. An hour passed, during which time I grew very weary from standing, so that I thought, at one moment, I would fall over. Will held onto my elbow and leaned me against a pillar. I could see that his mouth was agape at some of the gallants and their women who passed us. Even on my croquet lawn, he had never seen such plumes and buckles; even at my dinner table, no such pearly dresses. "I warrant, Sir," he whispered once, "these folk have even more money than you."

"Yes, Will," I replied, "I warrant they do."

At length, a message was brought to me: I was to return at one o'clock and go to the second of the King's tennis courts, known as his Favourite Court, where His Majesty would meet me. I looked up, in some dismay, at the messenger. I was about to request that he inform the King of my recent illness which had left me so feeble that I was hardly able to walk unaided in his Gallery, let alone compete in a set of tennis, but the man turned rudely and walked away from me, and I did not want to make myself foolish by shouting after him. I shrugged. "All we can do," I said to Will, "is eat a little meat and hope it may strengthen me."

By mid-day, then, we were at the Boar Tavern in Bow Street, where I ordered for Will a dish of oysters and some pigeon patties and for myself a carbonado cooked with marrowbone and stout, a most fortifying dish. We drank a little ale and Will sucked in his oysters and gobbled his patties, but I could not manage more than two mouthfuls of the carbonado, having no real appetite at all. Will duly ate it up, while I took my timepiece from my pocket and in silence watched the hand move towards the quarter hour.