Rose Tremain - Restoration

Celia sat opposite me. A stranger entering the room would have assumed we were at cards or dice, except that I was bizarrely clothed in a blanket and Celia in her winter cloak.

"Now," I said, "if you would hold the bird as still as you can. I am going to open its beak and hold it thus with the spatula and with my dropping-glass here dribble some Fortis down its gullet."

The nightingale kicked its legs, but once within Celia's hands did not struggle, only regarded us with its sad clouded eye. It swallowed the physic and we would have to wait upon its passage through the body.

"Very well," I said. "Now I shall do the phlebotomy. The sight of a little blood will not upset you, I hope?"

"No," said Celia. "I am only concerned for the bird, for if it should die, I cannot but feel some misfortune may follow."

"Why so?"

"Because it was a gift to you, was it not?"

"Yes."

"And from the King. And if what the King has given away should come to harm, then I fear for you – and for me."

I was, as you may imagine, about to inform Celia that the bird had been a present – nay, a bribe – from that soi-disant portraitist, Elias Finn, and had nothing to do with the King whatsoever, but then I decided not to. For, unhappy as I was to see my Indian Nightingale so ill, I also recognised that I had begun to enjoy the little escapade and did not wish Celia to desert me in the middle of it.

I began without more ado on the blood-letting, finding at last a faint pulse on the feathered thigh and making a small incision with the scalpel inscribed Merivel, Do Not Sleep . Dark veinous blood spurted out onto the linen. Never having thought to perform a phlebotomy on a bird, I had no idea what quantity to let out before staunching the flow. After some few minutes of seepage, however, Celia looked at me piteously. Some blood had fallen onto her hands, and it was my anxiety to wipe this away as quickly as possible that made me reach for a bandage and begin to bind the wound. Its leg wrapped, the nightingale did look most exceedingly tragic. Celia picked it up and held it close to her face, trying to feel its heartbeat. Then I folded more linen and laid this on the floor of the cage and she put the bird in and I began to clean my instruments with a little spirit and put them away.

"We have done all we can," I told Celia. "By morning, when the purge has worked, we shall see if it appears a little stronger."

"Will you let more blood tomorrow?"

"Possibly. Although I really don't know what quantity of blood is in it."

Celia stood up. "Why are you no longer a physician, Merivel?" she said.

I shall spare you the little discourse that followed, in which I attempted to explain to Celia my vision of her father's skull when he played at our wedding and the despair into which my knowledge of bone and sinew had been ready to let me fall. I knew as I spoke that Celia did not believe me. She accused me of not knowing where my own salvation lay and called me cowardly. Greatly vexed, I was about to retire once more to my bed and was picking up my instrument box, when Celia reached out and touched my hand.

"Pray don't go, Merivel. Forgive me if I spoke of matters that do not regard me."

I did not know what to reply. To Pearce I would have delivered myself of some insult to George Fox or to the soup ladle but, angry as I was, I did not wish to wound Celia. I suggested at last that we retire to our rooms but Celia, it seemed, intended to stay and watch over the bird and wished me to stay with her.

I felt mightily tired. The very act of picking up the scalpel had affected me. I wanted to lie down and dream I was a Russian in a coat of weasel-skin, carefree in the snow. But what could I do? On this peculiar January night, my wife wished to be with me – for the first time since she'd come to Bidnold. I could not refuse her.

I decided at once that we must have food to sustain us through our vigil. I hadn't the heart to wake Cattlebury, so carrying a candle and holding my blanket close about me, I walked the cold corridors to the kitchen and returned with a tray of meats: a cold game pie, a cold roasted guinea fowl and some charred pork sausages – and a flagon of sack.

The card table, so lately an operating theatre, now became a dining trestle. We ate with our fingers and drank the sack from the stone bottle, and the food and the fire banished the ache in my backbone and turned Celia's nose unflatteringly red.

After we had eaten, Celia sang. The song was a lullaby and most beautiful and, when she had finished it, she whispered to me her secret hope, that the King would give her a child. It was upon this subject that she had been attempting to write to the King when she had heard the small noise made by the nightingale falling from its perch. Interpreting this as a sign that what she was doing was dangerous, she had immediately cast her letter into the fire and come running to wake me. I did not know what comment to make upon this secret hope of hers, finding myself most afrighted by it. So I laid my head among the fowl bones and went immediately to sleep and when I woke I heard Celia crying.

I sat up. I saw a grey light at the window, heralding sunrise. The fire was low. Celia was no longer at the table, but kneeling by the bird's cage. "It is dead, Merivel," she said. "It is quite dead."

I knelt. The bird lay in a pool of greenish slime, its terminal evacuation caused by the Fortis . From the rigor of its body, I recognised at once that it was indeed dead, but in truth I gave this very little attention, for, weeping as she was, Celia had let herself fall forwards and reach out to me for comfort. So it was that I found myself holding her, kneeling, in my arms for three or four minutes together. Though I would dearly loved to have kissed and caressed her, I did not allow myself to do this, but only to hold her head against mine and stroke her hair.

Two days later, after we had buried the Indian Nightingale near the grave of my dog, Minette, in the park, snow began to fall. Through this snow, on a fat grey horse a man came riding to my door. His name was Sir Nicholas Hogg. He informed me that he was a Justice of the Peace for the Parish of Hautbois-le-Fallows cum Bidnold and that at a recent Quarter Session of the Justices I had – as Squire of the Manor of Bidnold – been appointed an Overseer of the Poor.

I invited Justice Hogg into my study. My garb that day was muted, Celia having insisted that I go into demi-deuil for the wretched nightingale, and Hogg, it seems, took me for a serious man.

I enquired of him what my duties as Overseer might be and he replied that they would be light, " Norfolk being not at this time disfigured by a great quantity of poor", but that I should bear in mind at all times that paupers were divisible into three categories.

"Three categories?" I asked. "And all fit conveniently into one of the three?"

"They do. For you have in this land your Impotent Poor, your Able Poor and your Idle Poor."

"Ah," I said.

"But it is expected of the Overseers that they will avoid errors in their categorisation, for errors will invariably bring a man before the Justices and thus consume their precious time. So let me warn you that the commonest area of error is in the distinguishing between your Impotent Pauper and your Idle Pauper, for a great many of the Idle will counterfeit Impotence and thus a great quantity of those appearing to the unpractised eye Impotent will in fact be found to be Idle. I trust you understand me?"

"I believe I do."

"This, then, is your most important task: correct categorisation. If, for example, you come upon a person begging by the wayside, how may you be able to distinguish whether the said person is of the Idle variety or the Impotent variety?"