I did not let these thoughts cast me down. In the whole journey I had hardly a moment of sadness and whenever we stopped for the night I lay long asleep, dreaming myself already there.

So we trot down into Bidnold village, past the Jovial Rushcutters and past the church, and then we make the left turn into the park through the great iron gates and Danseuse flicks her tail and gives a snort and the speed of her trot increases.

There is a fresh breeze and the shadows of fast-moving clouds sail across the grass. The chestnuts are in full candle-burst. A cluster of deer grazes under them and, as we come on, the animals raise their heads and look at us.

We round the curve in the drive and there it is: Bidnold Manor in the County of Norfolk, the house snatched from the Anti-Royalist, John Loseley, and given to me in return for my role as cuckold, the house where all my foolishness was contained, Merivels house.

I rein Danseuse in and slow her to a walk. We are now at the very spot where, one freezing morning, I began to run after Celia's coach and fell down on some ice and tore a pair of peach-coloured stockings. The parkland is moated here and beyond the moat is the south lawn with its great cedar trees and as we walk sedately forward I notice that the lawn is neatly clipped and edged and that round the cedars have been put carved stone benches.

My eye is on the front door now. I remember the heaviness of it and the gladness I always felt when it opened for me and I went in and heard it close at my back – as if I had known all along that the house would belong to me for only the briefest time.

The door opens now. Will Gates comes out and is followed by Cattlebury and the two of them stand side by side and look towards me with dazed expressions on their faces, as if they had been brought forth to witness the passage of Halley's Comet or some such peculiar wonder. This sight of them makes me smile and I call out: "Will! Cattlebury! Here I am!" but my voice does not carry to them for, although I think I am smiling, I am in fact crying like a child and cannot seem to get any hold upon myself to stop my tears which fall so fast and so abundantly that the whole scene before me trembles and moves and it is difficult to keep my balance on my horse.

She halts and I climb down and I see Will and Cattlebury hold out their hands, so I take them in mine, one in each, and hold very tightly to them and force out from my choked heart a burst of my old laughter.

"Sir," says Will, "you are got very thin."

I nod. I am endeavouring to speak.

"We will remedy it, Sir Robert," says Cattlebury, "with carbonados."

"Yes," I say. "We will. With carbonados."

I was mistaken when I imagined neglect and disrepair.

Though empty of any owner, each room at Bidnold appears clean and dusted and perfumed, as if in readiness to receive one.

Little remains of my vulgar decoration. The carpet from Chengchow is still in place upon the Withdrawing Room floor, all its colours cleaned and bright, but the walls are no longer red and gold; they are hung with a dove-grey damask and the scarlet sofas are gone. Yet the room is grander than before. Above the fireplace is a gilded Italian mirror. Every chair and footstool is upholstered in peach silks and Prussian blue velvets. Equestrian portraits (from which Doric columns and Sylvan glades are not entirely absent) grace the walls. There is a card table of maplewood, a chequer table of ebony and ivory, a spinette made by the Frenchman, Florent-Pasquier. At the windows the brocade drapes are heavy and rich.

"I did not imagine," I say to Will, as I look round this beautiful room, "that the Viscomte was a person of such exquisite taste."

Will looks embarrassed. "Me," he says, "I liked all your scarlet and pink, Sir Robert."

I laugh. We go on into the Dining Room, scene of my candlelit suppers with Celia. My oak dining table is still in place, but the walls have been panelled and the ceiling carved and embossed and painted yellow and blue. It reminds me of a state room, forbidding almost in its formality, and again I remark to Will that the picture of the Viscomte I put together from his letters does not match that which I am forming of him now.

"Well," mumbles Will, "it probably would not, Sir, because in a letter you cannot tell all there is. You have to leave out a great deal, owing to briefness or lack of words."

"True, Will," I reply, "but you led me to believe he did not really care about the house, and in this I see that you were mistaken, for he has furnished it very finely."

Will shrugs his shoulders, upon which hangs a new rust-coloured coat. "He does not come here any more," he says, "and I hope he will not."

"Then what is to become of all these furnishings?"

"I do not know, Sir Robert."

"They are to lie shrouded in dust sheets for all time?"

"I cannot say."

"What, Will?"

"I cannot say whether they will be shrouded for all time."

"What were the orders given?"

"Beg pardon, Sir?"

"What orders did the Viscomte give regarding the furniture?"

"He gave none."

"None? He just left without any word?"

"Without so much as a word, Sir."

"Then he surely intends to return. He might return today, tonight, at any time."

Again, Will shrugs. His squirrel's eyes do not look at me. "He might, Sir. But I do not think that he will."

I abandon this conversation and I go with Will to the Olive Room, which is absolutely unchanged in every detail from the day when I sat in it for thirty-seven hours and watched over Pearce's sleep. The thought that I will sleep one night in it between cold linen sheets under the green canopy with its scarlet tassels is a very affecting one and I sit down upon the little window seat and thank Will for making this room ready for me. I feel tired suddenly and I know that in my tiredness I have, once again, begun to see and hear things that are not here. On the stairway, when my glance fell onto the hall, I fancied I saw a footman wearing livery glide silently from the door of the Morning Room to the kitchen passageway, and now, as I turn and look out at the sighing trees and flying shadows of the park, I seem to hear, very far off, the same whimpering of a dog that had once caused me to open the door of my rooms above the lute-maker and peer down into the dark.

It is the middle of the afternoon. I tell Will that I will rest for a little while. So he leaves me and closes the door. I do not sleep, or even shut my eyes, but lie and listen to the wind and marvel at where I am.

Though I feel somewhat solitary and foolish, Will and Cattlebury insist that supper is served in the Dining Room.

I have put on my blue and cream suit. I am not placed at the head of the table, where I used to sit, but at my right hand, as it were, as if I were my own favoured guest.

The room is lit by numberless candles.

"Blow some of them out, Will," I say. "I do not need a hundred pieces of light to eat a carbonado." But he refuses. "You were fond of light, Sir Robert," he says. "You used to tell me that."

The meal that Cattlebury has prepared for me is very rich and I disappoint him and Will by being unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls of it. I see these two men look at me and think, He is not like his former self, and it touches me to know that the old Merivel – so despised by Pearce and by Celia and causing such irritation to the King – was to them a person of substance.

The Burgundy wine I am offered smells of summer fruit, yet has so strong an effect upon my blood that when my meal is ended, I can hardly rise from the table, so heavy do my limbs feel.

"Lord," I say to Will, who helps me up, "it is as if old age had come upon me in the space of half an hour."