Vox Meditantis

Tuesday, 22nd November 1774

They bid me speak plain, yet what is plain speech in times such as these? The very ground beneath my feet gives way – here in this cursed marsh where I have fled to collect my wits, if wits they may still be called. The mire sucks at my shoes, and the fog hangs thick as courtiers’ lies. ‘Tis fitting, is it not? That I should stand in a place as treacherous as the halls I have left behind, where a man may sink without warning, where what appears solid proves but rotting weeds and black water.

They think me a fool, and rightly so – I wear the title as another man wears his coat. But a fool sees what wise men will not see, or dare not speak. I have watched them these weeks past, whispering in corners, their heads bent together like priests at some dark altar. What sacrifice do they prepare? Whose blood will grease the wheels of their ambition? I know well enough the colour of a king’s displeasure, and I have seen men broken for less than what is whispered now in private chambers. The colonies rage, they say, across the sea – rage like a fever in the blood. And here at home? Here we smile and bow and sharpen our knives behind our backs.

A lady asked me once – ’twas in summer, when the world seemed less foul – whether I should chuse the sea-coast or the high hills for my dwelling, were I free to chuse at all. She thought it a trifling question, a game to pass an idle hour. But I answered her true, though she laughed and called me strange. Give me neither, said I, for both are places of peril. The shore is where the land gives up its claim, where a man stands betwixt one kingdom and another, never safe, never certain which element will claim him. And the mountains? They are for those who would be seen, who stand high and draw the eyes of all below. I am a jester, madam, said I – I live in the low places, in the mud and the shadows, where a man may yet keep his head upon his shoulders. She thought me droll. But I spoke as God’s truth, as sure as I stand here now in this stinking bog with the night coming on.

For what is the court but another marsh? What is favour but uncertain footing? A man rises, and the ground shifts beneath him. A man speaks, and his words are weighed for treason. I have juggled and capered and made them laugh, aye, and all the while I have watched their faces – seen the cold calculation behind the smiles, the hunger behind the courtesy. They speak of duty and honour, but ’tis power they crave, power and the blood-price it demands. How many must be sacrificed ere they are sated? How many necks stretched, how many bodies broken on the wheel of their ambition? The axe falls in the Tower yard, and they call it justice. The gibbet creaks at Tyburn, and they call it law. But I know what it is – ’tis the offering they make to their own greatness, the tribute they pay to keep themselves exalted.

I am mazed, perhaps. The night air and the marsh vapours confuse my brain. Or perhaps ’tis the hand of God upon me, shewing me what others cannot see – that we are all of us standing in a swamp, that the ground gives way beneath our feet even as we prance and posture. The fog creeps closer now, and somewhere a bird cries out – a heron, maybe, or some other creature of these desolate places. I should return. But return to what? To smile and jest whilst they plot and scheme? To dance for my supper whilst the world tilts towards the abyss? Better to stand here in the cold and the damp, where at least the danger is honest, where at least I need not pretend the ground is firm when I know it is not.

God help us all. God help the fools and the wise men both, for I fear we shall have need of it ere long.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.