In all my dealings with my Sovereign, I had hitherto been obedient and accepting, doing without question or barter whatever I was commanded to do. But now, as I looked at my vacant, houseless future, I felt moved to plead with the King. I knelt down on the flagstone floor of the summer-house. I put my hands together, as if in prayer.

"Sire," I said, "I beg you not to remove me from Bidnold. I am not, as you would believe, idle there. I have embarked upon a new vocation as an artist. I am learning to play the oboe, I am endeavouring to make sense of the stars and I have taken upon me a new responsibility: I am an Overseer of the Poor."

The King stood up. As always, I was moved by the beauty and elegance of the legs before which I was kneeling.

"An Overseer?" he said. "You seem fond of the term, for you used it to Celia. But an Overseer should be impartial, distanced and kind, and you were none of these to her. Will you now abuse the Poor of your parish as you abused Celia?"

"No, Sir. And I cannot say too many times how sorry I am for what I did to Celia. I loved her and this was my mistake. I do not love the Poor, only pity them."

"What are you doing, then, for those you pity?"

"I am learning about them, Sir, their whereabouts, their collecting of sticks and other pitiful tasks, their work at the looms in Norwich…"

"And how is this to help them?"

"I am not precisely 'helping' them yet, my Liege – "

"And yet, before I met you, you were. At St Thomas 's, you were helping them – with the only skill you have ever possessed."

"I cannot use that skill any more, Sir. I cannot."

"Why?"

"I cannot…"

"Why, Merivel?"

"Because I am afraid!"

The King, who had been pacing about the summer-house, now stopped and rounded on me, holding up an admonishing finger clothed in a glove made by my late father. "Precisely!" he declared. "And do not imagine I have not known this! But this age is stern, Merivel, and those who are afraid will not survive it. Those who are weak will not survive it. You, if you remain as you are, will not survive it."

"I beg you to let me remind you, Sire, that it was you who took me from St Thomas 's. You gave me the Royal dogs. You liked me for my foolishness…"

"And for your skill. For the two, then, were in you, the light and the dark, the shallow and the profound. But now your skill has fallen away and you are all one foolish mass."

So it was in vain that I pleaded. The King had made up his mind. For a moment, I considered prostrating myself before him, but I know that this King is not moved by supplication; it merely irritates him. And, as for the dispossessed, he has no sympathy for them, for he was once one of them and had to wait years for his restoration.

What could I do then but accept my fate, the while finding it unjust and cruel, with as convincing a show of bravery as I could put on?

The King now moved towards the door of the summer-house and made to leave. Before he went, he looked down upon me one last time and informed me that I could return to Bidnold for one week, "there to make preparation for your departure. The keys of the place must then be given to Sir James Babbacombe, who is to act as my agent in this matter. And so au revoir, Merivel. I shall not say adieu, for who knows whether, at some time in the future, History may not have another role for you?"

And then he was gone. And as soon as he had stepped outside the summer-house I saw servants come with lamps to light his way. They had been waiting and watching for the moment when he would walk away from me.

Chapter Fourteen. Not with Silver…

Some days have passed. I am at Bath. I have put up at an Inn called The Red Lion. I have come here in the hope that the sulphurous waters will wash my mind of some of its despair. My landlady is given to singing as she beats mattresses and empties pots. I catch myself listening for some ghostly accompanist.

I have not returned to Bidnold and do not intend to do so. I have sent letters to my staff apologising for my misfortune, which in turn becomes theirs. I have requested that one of my grooms saddle up Danseuse like a packhorse with a few true possessions and trot her by slow stages to London. I, who scoffed at Pearce's "burning coals" now have little more to call my own than he. Should Danseuse step with her sweet daintiness into a pothole and break her leg, I shall be forced to purchase for myself some horrible biting mule.

My dreams are inhabited by Will Gates. He is weeping. His brown squirrel's face is squashed. He resembles a baby struggling to be born. With his fists he tries to wipe away his tears. And then he gets up onto my coach, sitting beside the coachman, and is driven away.

Will Gates. I loved you most dearly, Will.

When Will had gone, I begun to walk quite fast away from Whitehall and in an easterly direction, as if vainly trying to follow the coach. The winter night had come on and the streets were black and I was soon lost. But then, hurrying on down narrow street after narrow street, I saw in front of me the great bulk of the Tower. I had had no intention of arriving there, but my distracted mind perceived it all at once as a place of refuge. To the guards I announced that I had been sent by the King, to cast my eye upon the lions and leopards that he keeps chained up there, and they let me go in.

I knew my way to the dungeon where the animals were penned. I took a torch from an iron sconce and followed my own shadow down into the damp bowels of the Tower where, even at midsummer, no light falls on the stones and where, it is said, the ghosts of the dead Kings of England find themselves paraded with hundreds of their ancient enemies, as in some circus they did not expect. And there I saw the lions, who have the names of Kings, Henry and Edward and Charles and James, pacing round, the flesh of their shanks very meagre and their great fur collars mangy. And it was at that moment and not at any moment before (neither upon leaving the King's garden, nor upon saying adieu to Will and my coachman) that I felt the full terror of my fall.

I stood quite still a great while. I watched the lions, but they never once regarded me, not even to growl or snarl at the torchlight. I thought: I would rather be one of you in this pen than be Merivel. I thought: You have no memory of Africa or sunlight or a Time Before. So I would rather be you.

Quite late, with the streets silent save for the shouting of a trundle of drunks, I arrived at Rosie Pierpoint's door. I knocked and heard my knock like an echo. And as I waited, I remembered the Japanese purse and the thirty shillings and the half-written letter I had never sent.

When she came to the door, she held a shawl round her and she looked afraid. Pretty Rosie. With her I had first discovered the sweetness of oblivion.

But then she grinned. "Sir Robert," she said, "where is your wig?"

I had lost it. So it seemed. I had no recollection of taking it off.

I woke when she rose, at the first faint tracing of daylight. And I understood this small matter: that the poor use time differently from me. They are unable to prolong day with manufactured light, the cost of candles and oil being too great.

I lay on my truckle bed and watched her. She poured cold water into a bowl and took up some rags and washed herself, her face and her breasts and her belly and her cunt and the backs of her knees. And this secret toilette in the half light moved me very much. I wished to be of use to her (having been none that night in bed), so I got up and pulled on my stockings and my shirt and went down to her laundry room and broddled the fire of her stove and tipped in fresh coal, yet performing this task lamentably, sending chunks of coal skittering onto the floor, which I was then compelled to retrieve one by one with my hands. And I remembered – from my time at Cambridge and my rooms in Ludgate – how the black dust of coal is not like a dust but like a paste, moist and sticky, and if you keep in a coal fire you must be forever washing.