Though the wind seemed unable to cease (as if the vast cloudy sky held the wind trapped, as under a dome) no rain at all fell on me in all my journey and for this blessing I found myself giving thanks to the silent God of the lardy cake. And so in this way let my thoughts dwell upon the very simple credo that informs Pearce's life and which makes him immune to all the spells under which I had fallen. Despite much evidence to the contrary, he and his Quaker friends believe that the Apostolic age is not over, that God and his Son have much more to say to us yet, but will not choose persons of worldly authority through whom to say it. "The Seed of Christ, Merivel," Pearce had informed me many times, "is planted not in the souls of Priests or Kings, but in the bosom of The Commonest He," thus causing whole hundreds of proud citizens to quail with fear at the idea of God's word passing through the likes of Cattlebury or the late Pierpoint and so to denounce Quakerism as an utter heresy. Strangely, the King (who does not appear to quail at anything, even death) is tolerant towards Quakers – more tolerant of their discourtesies than he has been towards mine. Were Pearce to come into the King's presence and refuse to remove his hat, I do not think he would have his house taken from him. I could imagine, even, that the brazen gesture might be rewarded with that gift I once held to be more priceless than any other, the Royal Smile.
So, with my incoherent thoughts turning always in a circular fashion back towards myself, I trotted on towards the village of Doddington, and stayed my third night in the little town called March, where I slept a most disconsolate sleep, being full of trepidation about my imminent arrival at Pearce's Hospital.
The New Bedlam, or Whittlesea Hospital, has been founded in a place with the poetic name of Earls Bride, but which I saw at once to be really no proper place at all, but a thin straggle of poor cottages, having no forge or ale house or dairy or any means that I could see of purchasing provisions. It is like a drowned place, a shipwrecked place. Those few who cling to it must endure a life of most fearful monotony, their only visitors being the birds and the buffeting wind. Upon my first sighting of Earls Bride (is there the ghost of a true bride in the name or has it corroded in the damp air, being once Bridle Way or even Bridge?) I had this most perverse thought: that the penning up of one hundred lunatics in their midst had brought some entertainment to the inhabitants of this God-forsaken place.
As we approached the Hospital, which is a cluster of barns built around a lime-washed low-roofed house such as might house a yeoman farmer, Danseuse stopped dead and, though I kicked vigorously at her flanks, she could not be persuaded forward. I dismounted and looked about me and listened. I could hear nothing except the huffing of the wind, but I note in passing that, since my meeting in the King's summer-house, my hearing seems to have suffered a most inexplicable loss, and I could tell from Danseuse's stubbornness and from the way her ears were pricked that she had heard a sound that made her uneasy.
Around the buildings has been constructed a flint and clay wall, like a bailey round a castle except that this structure was, I presumed, designed not to keep enemies out but to keep the mad folk in, lest they go roaming about in the flat land and drown. An iron gate had been let into the wall and it was towards this that I led Danseuse, having put a comforting arm round her neck.
The gate was locked. I knocked and waited and then turned and looked at desolate Earls Bride on its little causeway. It was the look of one who, suddenly feeble of spirit, wishes to turn round and retrace his steps homewards. And I know that, had Bidnold still been mine, I would have done this. I would not even have stayed to greet my old friend. I would, in short, have run away.
A tall man, large in every respect, with a great barrelled thorax and very mighty hands, opened the gate to me and stood smiling enquiringly. He had red curly hair, very thick and abundant, and a red beard, under which he made a steeple of his fingers.
"How may I help you, Friend?" he asked.
I nodded to him, the while noting a distressing shivering in the neck of my horse.
"I have come to see my friend, John Pearce and… well, in truth I really cannot say why else I find myself here, unless it is in the belief that I could be of some use…"
"Please enter. We will get oats for your horse. It is not a glad place you have come to, but a place of suffering. I expect you noticed our words from Isaiah upon the gate?"
"I saw some words, but did not read them."
"Ah. Then read before you come in."
The large man now returned his hand to the gate and pushed it to a little, as if making to shut me out. Had he closed it entirely, I do believe I would have turned my horse round and cantered away, but he did not.
I peered at the inscription beaten into the metal: "Behold, I have refined thee but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" Isaiah 48.10.
"Very well," I said. "I have read the words."
The gate moved again to admit me. I felt Danseuse's head push up against my restraining arm and she jangled her bit.
"Please follow me, Friend," said the red-haired man who, I now noticed, was wearing a leather tabard over his black coat and leggings. The tabard was very stained and blackened with use, like a worn saddle. I looked down at my own clothes. I was wearing brown velvet breeches and a brown coat edged only a little with carmine. The lace at my wrists and throat was limp. My own good sense told me that, for all their relative modesty, these garments were not sturdy enough for the days that were coming.
I stepped inside, tugging my horse, and the gate closed behind us. We stood in a kind of courtyard with a floor of cinders, very patchy with moss. A single tree, an oak, grew in the middle of it.
"This," said the man in the tabard, "is the Airing Court. We believe in the healing property of air."
"This is where they walk?"
"Yes. Round the tree and then round again, and so on, round and round, but the tree is not dull. It is a most restless and changeful tree. You see?"
"Yes. And now the spring is – "
"My name is Ambrose Dyer. I should have mentioned this at very first, for names are important with us."
"I am glad to meet you, Mr Dyer."
"And you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your name?"
"Ah. Robert Merivel. Pearce and I were medical students together at Cambridge."
"John. We do not call him Pearce. He is John. And I am Ambrose."
"I believe, to me, he will always be Pearce. As he, in turn, addresses me as Merivel."
"Here, he is John."
"So I must be Robert?"
"And I am Ambrose. Now I shall name for you our buildings. The house itself we call Whittlesea House and this is where we, the founders and keepers, six in number have our rooms and where we eat together. And the three barns or asiles, meaning places of shelter, are called George Fox, and Margaret Fell, and William Harvey."
Despite the trepidation I was feeling, I smiled to myself. Even here, in this lonely place with its one oak tree, Pearce had remembered his mentor, for of course it was true that he carried the great WH with him everywhere in his circulating blood.
"Which barn is called William Harvey?" I enquired.
"The smallest," said Ambrose, "to the left of us, here. Where those very deep into their madness are put."
At that moment, as we walked towards the house, Pearce came out of it. When he looked up and saw me he appeared to gasp for air like a fish. And then, as I predicted he would, he broke into a stumbling run.
That night, I slept on Pearce's bed, with Pearce lying on a pallet on the floor not far from me. My mind seemed to inhabit a place much stranger than the room, so that I did not feel as if I slept but only fell in and out of odd, dreamlike trances. Each time I believed myself to be near to sleep I heard an echo of the King's voice, repeating the same words again and again: "I have refined thee, Merivel. Behold, I have refined thee. But not with silver. Not with silver…"