Merivel A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain

Author:Rose Tremain [Tremain, Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448138586
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-09-05T21:00:00+00:00

20

I TOLD PATCHETT and the other men that I wished to bury Clarendon and asked them to help me to dig a pit. They regarded me as though I were a lunatic.

‘Forgive me, Sir Robert,’ said Patchett, ‘but look at the Meat on him! Enough for ten families. In my house we have not eaten Meat since springtime.’

The Blunderbuss had shot Clarendon near the heart, laying open the bloody sinews of his chest and dislocating his left arm, but his head had not been touched and it lay on the mound of sweet grass as though on a pillow. One eye was open and one closed. The open eye oozed blackness and I did not know what this was, whether black tears or some discharge of his brain, dribbling through the skull.

All is perplexity, thought I.

‘Bear Meat will be strong …’ I said feebly to the farmers. ‘The taste of it will not be to savour.’

‘We can bear strong Meat,’ said Patchett. ‘Never you trouble yourself about that. You go home, Sir Robert, and we will skin him and portion him up between us and have a fine Roasting tonight. We can bring you the Pelt, if you wish it, but the Meat is ours: a fair exchange for the slaughtered Ewe.’

I could not argue with this logic, though the thought of Clarendon being eaten made me sad for the world: for its pitiless Arrangements. I said I would accept the Pelt, wanting, I suppose, to possess something of my Bear, even though the animal was dead. I thought that a Norfolk Tanner might make of it some great Rug, which, when the dark winter came again, I could lay upon my bed and feel it, warm and heavy on me, in my loneliness.

I made my way back to Bidnold, going slowly through the orchards and the fields of clover, as the rain ceased and a bright morning sun began to beat upon my skull.

As I walked it came upon me that, tired though I was, I had an urgent task to perform and this was to send a letter to Louise de Flamanville, asking to be taken in by her, into her Father’s house in Switzerland.

This escape – to her and her only – I now saw as the thing for which I suddenly longed beyond all longing. I yearned to be transported there on the wings of some mythical Bird, without the glittering fatigue of a sea journey and the slow travail of coaches and the discomfort of wayside Inns. For, with Margaret gone into the King’s clutches and my poor Clarendon dead, my weariness with Bidnold and with all of England was suddenly so great that I could not conceive how I was going to endure the next twenty-four hours in it, unless with a return to the taking of Laudanum.

As I approached the house I saw a strange Conveyance, like a small canvas-covered wagon, drawn up at my front door. I at once assumed that some

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