Read Online Merivel A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rose Tremain
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still lingers here and I feel sure that, within moments, I will have procured some cold limb of rabbit to plug the pain in my stomach. But the kitchen door is locked.
I sit down where I am, in the cold stone passage. I rub my eyes. I reflect that only at Whittlesea did I ever feel a comparable hunger and, even there, it was usually possible to procure a bowl of gruel or Frumenty on which to make a poor feast.
Thoughts of Whittlesea bring to my mind images of my dead friend. Though, from childhood, I was always greedy, Pearce lived his short life on so little food that I often wondered how his flesh held itself to his bones. I once asked him, indeed, in a mocking vein, how it did so and he replied simply: ‘Do not be so stupid, Merivel.’
As ever, this Memory of Pearce calms me a little and I whisper to him: ‘What am I to do, Pearce? Surely, I shall be dead by morning …’
I hear in my mind his croaking laugh. He frequently scolded me for being a Great Exaggerator and for pretending my lot to be always and ever worse than it was. Now, I imagine him saying: ‘Consider the people at the outer gate, Merivel. Consider the man who fell from his Stilts as your coach came rampaging in. For perhaps he broke his arm or his collar bone, and who is to give him help and where is he to lay his head? You have a room and a cot, but where will he sleep tonight but out on the cold earth?’
And then I see that this thought has done me a great Favour. For I remember that, among this gathering of the poor, were sellers of bread and Peas bottled in Brine. And I tell myself that perhaps, even though it is the dead of night, they are still there and can be roused from sleep to sell me some meagre victuals.
But the great Expanse that is the Place des Armes lies between me and this one hope of sustenance, and the thought of traversing this in the cold and dark, only to find that the Hawkers have all vanished away, fills me with misery. ‘I am wretched,’ say I to myself, ‘and I will have to stay this way till morning, and that is that.’
Unexpectedly, however, as though urged on by the ghost of Pearce, I rise up and go out. Lines of Swiss Guards, motionless in the moonlight, with their serried shadows falling upon the flints of the Place, like fallen statues, endure their freezing Watch. And I wonder, as I make my shivering way towards the gate, how much of life is endurance and nothing more. And I think of Margaret in Cornwall and pray that she is asleep in a warm bed.
At the gate, all is deserted and silent. I take hold of the railings and peer out, wondering if there is somebody asleep on the ground that I cannot see. I call softly and jingle the few coins I have found in my coat pocket. But nothing stirs.
I am about to turn and make my way back to my cot – if, indeed, I am able to locate the room where it is – when I hear the rattle of wheels and the snort of a horse. I wait and watch. At length appears a slow cart, pulled by a big mare and I see two huddled female figures, wrapped in shawls, riding in the cart.
And then I recognise what this is, the heavy conveyance that comes long before dawn to the Palace gates: it is a Milk Cart.
Never did I imagine that Milk could become such a thing of Beauty and Wonder to me. I pay for a brimming tankard from the hands of the Milkmaids. The milk is creamy and fresh, cooled by the night air, and I drink it down with all the joy and satisfaction of a baby suckling from its mother’s breast. Then, I buy a second tankard and gulp this too, and the Milkmaids in their woollen cloaks stare at me and smile.
6
I HAVE ARRANGED my portion of the Dutchman’s room sufficiently well, by moving my cot six inches to the left, so that some of my clothes can be hung on makeshift wooden pegs and my boots laid out to air.
I live on Peas in Brine, bread and milk, got from the poor Tradesmen at the gate and, like the Dutchman, whose name is Jan Hollers, drink water from the fountains. Hollers has
I sit down where I am, in the cold stone passage. I rub my eyes. I reflect that only at Whittlesea did I ever feel a comparable hunger and, even there, it was usually possible to procure a bowl of gruel or Frumenty on which to make a poor feast.
Thoughts of Whittlesea bring to my mind images of my dead friend. Though, from childhood, I was always greedy, Pearce lived his short life on so little food that I often wondered how his flesh held itself to his bones. I once asked him, indeed, in a mocking vein, how it did so and he replied simply: ‘Do not be so stupid, Merivel.’
As ever, this Memory of Pearce calms me a little and I whisper to him: ‘What am I to do, Pearce? Surely, I shall be dead by morning …’
I hear in my mind his croaking laugh. He frequently scolded me for being a Great Exaggerator and for pretending my lot to be always and ever worse than it was. Now, I imagine him saying: ‘Consider the people at the outer gate, Merivel. Consider the man who fell from his Stilts as your coach came rampaging in. For perhaps he broke his arm or his collar bone, and who is to give him help and where is he to lay his head? You have a room and a cot, but where will he sleep tonight but out on the cold earth?’
And then I see that this thought has done me a great Favour. For I remember that, among this gathering of the poor, were sellers of bread and Peas bottled in Brine. And I tell myself that perhaps, even though it is the dead of night, they are still there and can be roused from sleep to sell me some meagre victuals.
But the great Expanse that is the Place des Armes lies between me and this one hope of sustenance, and the thought of traversing this in the cold and dark, only to find that the Hawkers have all vanished away, fills me with misery. ‘I am wretched,’ say I to myself, ‘and I will have to stay this way till morning, and that is that.’
Unexpectedly, however, as though urged on by the ghost of Pearce, I rise up and go out. Lines of Swiss Guards, motionless in the moonlight, with their serried shadows falling upon the flints of the Place, like fallen statues, endure their freezing Watch. And I wonder, as I make my shivering way towards the gate, how much of life is endurance and nothing more. And I think of Margaret in Cornwall and pray that she is asleep in a warm bed.
At the gate, all is deserted and silent. I take hold of the railings and peer out, wondering if there is somebody asleep on the ground that I cannot see. I call softly and jingle the few coins I have found in my coat pocket. But nothing stirs.
I am about to turn and make my way back to my cot – if, indeed, I am able to locate the room where it is – when I hear the rattle of wheels and the snort of a horse. I wait and watch. At length appears a slow cart, pulled by a big mare and I see two huddled female figures, wrapped in shawls, riding in the cart.
And then I recognise what this is, the heavy conveyance that comes long before dawn to the Palace gates: it is a Milk Cart.
Never did I imagine that Milk could become such a thing of Beauty and Wonder to me. I pay for a brimming tankard from the hands of the Milkmaids. The milk is creamy and fresh, cooled by the night air, and I drink it down with all the joy and satisfaction of a baby suckling from its mother’s breast. Then, I buy a second tankard and gulp this too, and the Milkmaids in their woollen cloaks stare at me and smile.
6
I HAVE ARRANGED my portion of the Dutchman’s room sufficiently well, by moving my cot six inches to the left, so that some of my clothes can be hung on makeshift wooden pegs and my boots laid out to air.
I live on Peas in Brine, bread and milk, got from the poor Tradesmen at the gate and, like the Dutchman, whose name is Jan Hollers, drink water from the fountains. Hollers has
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