That afternoon — a fresh autumn afternoon of great drifting clouds in a clear-washed sky, and the brown leaves showering down the wind — Bess rode hawking in St. James’s Park with the Queen’s party. She was carrying Ralegh’s Indian falcon, Jezebel, which was too big and fierce for a woman; but Ralegh had asked her to fly the creature while he was away. Far ahead, the Queen rode among her chosen gallants. The green-clad falconers and huntsmen with the leashed hounds moved among the party, but not of it, with the authority of men doing their own skilled work; while the Court party called to each other, laughing, under the russet trees, as they made for the lake where the heron were to be found.
Ralegh and his band of West-countrymen were rowing in to the assault; they were making their way along the unprotected reef under the guns of High Fort, to rush the defences.
And the falcon on Bess’s gloved fist roused, as the excitement of the chase touched her, rattled her barred feathers, and settled again. Twice more, and it would be safe to fly her.
Ralegh had sent back for his Dutch war veterans.
The lake in St. James’s Park was a sheet of ruffled silver, the brown-tipped rushes swaying in the autumn wind, and out of the rushes a heron broke cover, and rose, with Sir George Carew’s falcon after her. She was circling swiftly higher, climbing the blue spirals of the air, with winged and talloned death mounting hard behind, up and up into the eye of the sun, until the winged death overtopped her victim, and stooped, despite the heron’s rapier beak, and struck.
Ralegh was bringing up his troops, limping serenely along at their head, oblivious of the bullets that splattered on the rocks around him, with an ash-plant to help his wounded leg and the faithful Lawrence Kemys at his shoulder. He had elected to go into action that day minus any armour save a steel gorget, and despite his usual preference for pale or muted colours, in a doublet of scarlet tuft-taffetas which was easy for his men to follow, and also made a superb target for the enemy marksmen.
As the hawking party rode home that evening, resistance was crumbling at Horta and High Fort; and for some unaccountable reason, Ralegh was still alive and unscathed. But My Lord of Essex, arriving just too late to find that Ralegh had stolen from him the one successful action of the expedition, was raving like a hysterical woman.
Finally the whole ugly affair blew over, and late that autumn, the Fleet returned home. But meanwhile, the Spaniards, taking advantage of their absence, had sailed from Ferrol, and only been prevented by storms from reaching Falmouth. The Queen could not suffer fools, even fools she loved, and she laughed at her Robin, ridiculing his conduct in minute detail, and with a delicate, rapier malice that set him writhing and did nothing to sweeten his feeling towards Ralegh.
For a while, the life of the Queen’s Captain lay through comparatively tranquil waters; and he had leisure to spend in his backwater at Sherborne, which made Bess happy. He did not want it so; he wanted the stress and turmoil of the open seas; his dream was calling to him again. But Ralegh’s adventuring days, it seemed, were over. For one thing he was a sick man; he had paid a heavier price at Cadiz than he had realised at the time, and was to carry pain with him for the rest of his days. That alone would not have held him back, but it was coupled with the fact that he was, as usual, short of money, and the Queen and the Government could spare him nothing, either in cash or ships or men. The Irish rising which had broken out in 1595 had become by now a nation-wide revolt; and with Spain on the alert to make the most of the situation by a landing at any time, Ireland was to demand the whole of England’s fighting power for years to come. Spain in the New World must wait its turn until the nearer threat was over.
Ralegh must possess his soul in what little patience he could lay claim to.
The brief fellowship between himself and Essex, now that it had gone up in a shower of sparks, had added bitterness to their antagonism that had not been there before, and the steel was out between them. But their ways were to lie divided in the months that followed, for in March 1599, after quarrelling with the Queen and being only half forgiven, Essex departed for Ireland with a small army of horse and foot, to put down the rebellion.
Summer passed, and on Michaelmas Eve, Bess sat beside the fire in Ralegh’s study, working a new set of bed-curtains with gay flowering branches and birds between.
The group round the table consisted of Ralegh himself, Lawrence Kemys, old Dr. Dee dragged from his study at Mortlake, young Ben Jonson still slightly under a cloud for killing a fellow actor in a tavern duel last year, and Thomas Hariot the astronomer and mathematician who had done so much survey work for Ralegh in the New World. They were typical of Ralegh’s catholic taste in friends; and save for Lawrence Kemys, who was by this time one of the household, Bess could not in her heart of hearts approve of them. Especially she could not approve of John Dee, nor of the interests that bound him and Ralegh together; those interests which set people whispering, naming them atheists and dabblers in forbidden things. Bess, herself of a simple and orthodox faith, had never been able to understand Ralegh’s experimental attitude to the hidden side of life. The idea of turning base metal into gold, about which so much of the talk seemed to centre whenever the School of Night gathered, was something she could grasp; but when the gold-making became a symbol, an outer garment for mysteries of the Spirit that had no name, then she was left bewildered, and afraid.
But tonight they were not talking of hidden things, and Ralegh, as he sometimes did, had asked her to give them her company; and so here she sat, in the tall tower chamber that always seemed to her a little too near the stars for comfort, stitching at a stiff honeysuckle head, by the light of a candle behind a globe of water. The men at the table bent together, pouring over some new charts spread there. Their voices murmured on, weaving a background to the tiny sharp pluck, pluck, pluck of her needle in the stiff green damask. From time to time she glanced up, her eyes lingering now on one face, now on another, returning most often, with a kind of shrinking fascination to the face of John Dee that might have been that of a rather cobwebby archangel.
John Dee, who kept Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy open on his study table, who had foreseen the execution of the Queen of Scots in his gazing-crystal. What would he see if he looked into his crystal now? Bess wondered. Changes were in the very wind, everything shifting and changing and flowing on into the unknown, like the Thames below the terrace of Durham House. What would he see?
Wise old Burghley who had been Elizabeth’s Councillor all her Queenhood, and her sister’s before her, had been dead more than a year, and his son was come to his full estate. Out of a long past summer night Bess seemed to hear his voice again. ‘I want to guide the delicate threads of destiny, braiding them at my will. I want men a little afraid of me — tall men, with straight backs.’ He had that now; and what next? The old ambition had been warped but human, but in the past few years it seemed that much that was human had died in Robin Cecil. The man had given place to the Secretary of State, an impersonal force who could not care who was caught and strangled in those delicate webs of his weaving.
Philip of Spain was dead, too; after lying for weeks cankered and stinking, with his black confessors about him, and his open coffin beside his bed. The arch-enemy who had been bound to the Queen for almost half a century by ties of animosity as strong and constant as ever ties of love could have been.
And the Queen herself was growing old ...
And the Queen’s Robin? Strange rumours were filtering back from Ireland; rumours of a shameful truce with the rebel Tyrone; rumours that it was more and worse than a truce. Small wonder that here at home the defence forces had been turned out in case of need. Bess’s resentment rose against the Earl of Essex, not for his threat to the realm, but because he was making Walter work so hard when his leg was troubling him. She always knew when Walter’s leg was troubling him, because he had a trick of keeping his hand over the place where the old wound ached — just as he was doing now.
Ralegh, Essex, Ceci
l; still the strange triangle, and over them, as over the rest of England — but more urgently over them — the threat of change, the future closing down. If John Dee looked into his gazing-crystal now, what would he see? Another execution, maybe? If so — whose? Perhaps he had already looked. She glanced up again at the old, absorbed face, her gaze lingering there as though trying to read the answer in it, then with a little shiver, drew a strand of golden silk from the rainbow tussy-mussy beside her, and bent to thread her needle. What was the matter with her tonight? she wondered.
Trying to escape her own thoughts, she gave all her attention to the careful setting of her stitches, and it was not until hurried footsteps sounded on the winding stair, and the door burst open, that she realised that yet another visitor was come among them out of the autumn night. He set the manservant aside, and entered with the unceremoniousness of an old friend, saying as he did so: ‘God den to you, Gentlemen. I wondered if I might find you at home, Ralegh.’
The five men had turned at his entrance, and Ralegh greeted him in surprise. ‘Cobham! What a-devil’s name brings you back to Westminster at this hour? Have you had supper?’
‘I supped at the Boar’s Head on my way here, but I’d like a drink — several drinks —’ Suddenly becoming aware of Bess, he bowed deeply, his doffed bonnet brushing the floor. ‘Ah, Lady Ralegh, I crave your pardon. I am half blind from the wind and darkness, or I must have seen at first glance, the fairest ornament of this assembly.’
Bess bent her head in acknowledgment of the greeting. ‘God den, My Lord. Pray you excuse my rising; you are most welcome, but if once I lose the thread, I shall not find myself again in this flowering wilderness.’
Ralegh was bidding the servant who still hovered in the doorway to bring wine, much wine, for the whole company; and the newcomer was standing by the table, talking excitedly with the others. Lord Cobham was a tall man, with an impetuous boyish charm, that frequently got him what he wanted, even from the Queen. He had evidently been riding hard, and his soft fair hair, the only feature he had in common with the gay, gentle little spun-glass sister who had been Lady Cecil, was in wild disorder.
Ralegh swung back to him again, demanding ‘Well? — You have not yet told us what brings you here in such a smother.’
The newcomer laughed, looking from one impatient face to another with obvious pleasure in having news to impart that would burst among them like a fireball. ‘Tis a mere matter of family business that brings me up,’ he began, prolonging the pleasure. ‘But being up, I called in here on the chance of finding you, Ralegh, for I bethought me you might be interested to know that My Lord of Essex is once more with us!’
He gained his effect, all right; he had several of the party on their feet, startled and exclaiming, though Ralegh himself remained seated and completely still, his brows twitched together above his arrogant nose, as he stared at the latecomer with an odd look of suspended judgment.
Then as the burst of exclamation fell away, Dr. Dee asked in his beautiful voice: ‘But are you indeed sure, My Lord?’
Cobham swung round on him impatiently. ‘Marry-come-up! Of course I am sure! Am I not this instant from Nonsuch? This morning he arrived, mud to the eyebrows, the veriest slubber-cullion; and forced his way into the Queen’s bedchamber, still foul from the journey.’
‘And what becomes of his Command?’ It was Lawrence Kemys, also a man under authority, who spoke.
Cobham shrugged. ‘His Command may go to the Devil and take Ireland with it, for all My Lord of Essex cares.’
Ralegh spoke for the first time, crashing an open hand on the table. ‘But in God’s name why? What can the young fool have hoped to gain by such insane conduct?’
‘Why, I suppose having made his truce — if indeed it be no worse than a truce — with the rebels, he is come home posthaste to fling himself at Belphoebe’s feet and make his peace with her as swiftly as may be.’
‘He would seem to have chosen a strange way of doing that,’ Ralegh said dryly.
‘But then, Belphoebe is a strange soul; unaccountably strange. She was not ungracious towards her Robin this morning, as I hear.’
‘The Queen,’ Ralegh said, ‘is never one to be storm-swept into a decision before she is ready to make it.’
‘Have a care that when she makes it, it does no harm to your cause!’ Cobham said with an excited laugh: ‘Men who know the Queen as well as you were buzzing round her Robin like bees round a lime flower, ere I rode away!’
Ralegh was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘But then I, who know the Queen as well as they, believe her to be too little a woman and too much a prince to countenance revolt, even in her Robin ... Well, God knoweth the right of it; or maybe — Sir Robert Cecil.’
The manservant entered, carrying a silver platter on which were tall Venetian glasses and a flask of pale golden wine, which he set down on the table, and withdrew.
Ralegh had risen to his feet. He looked at Bess with a brow cocked in enquiry, but she shook her head. ‘No? Well — pour for yourselves, gentlemen.’ He laughed on a note of sudden recklessness. ‘The wine of hypocrites, odorous with the flowers of Mount Hymatos; a wine to put to noble purposes ... Gentlemen, I drink to the Queen’s mind, being made up.’
John Dee took his glass, but instead of drinking, sat gazing into it, as though trying to see some picture in the pale topaz depth of the wine; as though it had been his gazing-crystal.
Suddenly Bess wanted to scream and scream and scream, and beat away with her naked hands the on-pressing future.
Chapter 11 - ‘Our Jewel Is From Us Gone’
THE cold light of a February afternoon fell bleakly into Lady Ralegh’s privy parlour. Several months ago, the main part of Durham House had been destroyed by a fire starting in the stables; but this wing had been left intact, and it was a large enough lodgement for the Ralegh household when they were in Westminster. It was a little depressing to live with the gaunt and blackened ruin to which the wing was joined like one living branch on a dead tree, but from the privy parlour which had once been the steward’s office, one could not see the stark shell of the dead house, only the river, and the snowdrops on the terrace, and the distant crowding spires and gables of the Southwark Shore.
Bess was sitting beside the fire, telling a story to an audience of two little boys and a setter bitch, who lay on their stomachs at her feet. Will Cecil was often at the house, these days, for he and Watt had struck up a friendship, in which Watt, though he was but six and a half to the other’s ten, was definitely the leader. The reason for that was to be read in their faces, turned up to Bess from their cupped hands as they waited in delighted suspense for the moment when the island on which St. Branden and his followers had landed and lit a fire, woke up and wagged its tail. Will’s face was stolid and innocent, the face of a nice little boy who was nothing more. Watt’s was vividly bold beneath the overlay of his mother’s gentler features, with Ralegh’s sapphire blue eyes and Ralegh’s devil; a nice little boy who was a great deal more, and all of it wicked.
But at the moment, Watt was being good — as good as Will — because he dearly loved a story. Bess had not quite realised the association of ideas that had led her to tell them about St. Branden and his search for the Happy Isles; but now that she was embarked on it she wished that she had not chosen that particular story for today, when half a mile away in Westminster Hall, Robin Devereux who had listened to it with her the first time she had heard it, was fighting for his life against a charge of treason.
Knowing St. Branden almost by heart, she found, as Lady Sidney had done, that part of her thoughts were free to wander while she told it; and they wandered persistently back over the eighteen months since Essex had forced his way into the Queen’s bed-chamber at Nonsuch.
The account of his conduct in Ireland, which he gave presently to the Council had not satisfied them. Nor had it satisfied the Queen. She had given him in charge of Egerton the Lord Keeper, and he had spent that winter in the Tower. But in
June, despite a letter from Ralegh to the Secretary of State, bidding him to forget mercy, since Essex at liberty would be ‘ever the canker of the Queen’s estate and safety’, he was released once more, though still forbidden the Court.
After that, it had seemed to most people that his fortunes were on the mend. He had only to wait, and all would be well with him again. But my Lard of Essex was physically incapable of waiting, and presently it began to be rumoured about the Court that failing to gain his way with the Queen, he had turned to James of Scotland, her likely heir, and was intriguing with him to make sure of the succession.
Matters had come to a bitter flowering just ten days ago. Bess’s personal memory of that Sunday was only of scared faces and distant shouting; and Ralegh bidding her to keep Little Watt with her and Lawrence Kemys to stand guard over them both, before he went clattering away to guard the Queen. But she knew now that Essex had ridden into London with a following of two hundred hot-heads and malcontents at his back, intending to rouse the citizens to join him, and in the resulting turmoil it was said, to gain possession of the key points of the Palace, force his way into the Queen’s presence and dictate to her his terms, which included Ralegh’s death and the naming of Scottish James as heir to the throne. But though he was the people’s darling, their love stopped short of open rebellion. There was no help forthcoming to him from the crowded streets, and the weaker spirits in his train began to melt away, and when he turned back, Ludgate was defended against him by the trained bands, so that he only reached his house at last by river, and almost alone.
Late that night he had yielded himself up to Lord Nottingham, and his few remaining followers with him.
Surely the trial must be near its end by now?
What the end would be, Bess had small doubt; and she grieved for the beauty and the courage and the shine of Robin Devereux gone down to dust. But if Essex lived, he would be the death of Ralegh one day, she knew that; and she prayed with the ruthlessness of a woman protecting her own, that he might not live. Yet deep within her, far below the level of conscious thought, was the faint fore-knowledge that the web in which destiny had meshed them together was not to be so simply severed; that by his death, as surely as by his life, Essex would be in some sort the death of Ralegh.