Lady in Waiting

  ‘I am here, Sir.’ Watt stooped forward from the shadows by the bed head.

  ‘Is not this — an edifying scene? I regret that at the moment, I am — lacking another hand.’

  ‘We must contrive without,’ Watt said, and perching himself casually against the pillows, set his hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘So — you can feel that?’

  ‘I can feel that.’

  He lay for a while with his eyes on Bess’s face, and then little by little the tired lids drooped, and his hand relaxed and slipped from hers.

  ‘Lady Ralegh, you must come away now,’ Dr. Turner’s voice murmured presently in her ear; then as she shook her head. ‘You have been sitting in the same position ten hours or more; you will faint.’

  ‘I am well enough,’ Bess returned.

  But Watt’s hand was under her arm. ‘Come, darling.’

  She glanced up at him, read the determination in his eyes, and rose. She was so stiff that she would have fallen but for his arm round her.

  ‘It is unjust — damnably unjust that such a thing should happen to father, after all that he has had to bear already!’ Watt whispered in sudden, furious rebellion, as he looked down at the still figure on the bed.

  ‘It is no question of justice or injustice, but a direct outcome of what has gone before,’ the Doctor said. ‘If you cage a man of Sir Walter’s humour long enough, to beat his wings against the bars, something breaks; spirit or brain or heart; something breaks under the strain in the end. It is as simple as that.’

  Lawrence Kemys was standing just outside the door. He looked as though he had been standing there all the night, and the face he turned to Bess as she came out, was haggard in the light from the doorway. ‘How is he, Lady Ralegh?’

  ‘He is asleep now,’ Bess said. ‘He is better — I think that he is better. But he cannot move his left arm.’

  Kemys said nothing, but he looked down an instant at his own left arm, moving it experimentally, as though he found it strange that it still obeyed his will. It was an odd, revealing gesture, telling more of his devotion to the other man than any words could have done.

  Behind them in the room they had just left, Ralegh roused a little, muttering restlessly in his sleep. Watt glanced to the Doctor who was bending over the bed. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Something about the New World,’ said Dr. Peter Turner.

  Chapter 18 - The Sword and the Sheath

  FOR a few days Ralegh hung delicately poised between life and death, and then came down on the side of life. Indeed the strength of his hold on life was almost terrible. He had been a sick man long before his arraignment, and the strain of his trial for treason and the long captive years that followed it in this prison that was a hot-bed of plague in summer and creeping chill in winter, would have killed many a hale and hearty man; had killed many before now. But neither these things nor the seizure that had resulted from them seemed able to quench the flame of life in Ralegh.

  He was not now the appalling patient that he had been after Cadiz, for he had learned many lessons since those days, and by late spring he was well on the road to recovery, with the power beginning to return to his left arm.

  Some time previously, it had been arranged that Watt was to go abroad after Christmas, in the charge of Ben Jonson, to finish in Paris the education which he had failed to finish at Oxford. He had not done so well as had been hoped of him at the University, and had signally failed to commend himself to his tutors; he had a good brain when he cared to use it, but the wildness of a hawk, and a taste for practical jokes of the more Rabelaisian kind that they found distressing. Hence the proposed year in Paris. But when the time came, Watt had flatly refused to leave his father while he was so ill.

  The relationship between her husband and son never ceased to be a bewilderment to Bess, for it was quite unlike any that she had met between father and son elsewhere. It was a turbulent relationship still, flaring up from time to time in sparks and flame, but seeming to exist for the most part on a plane of rather casual friendship. Yet the bond between them, though unexpressed, went very deep; deeper even than she had guessed until now.

  But in the late spring, Watt at last made ready for his postponed journey.

  Bess was loth to see him go abroad with such a bear-leader. It was not that she was afraid of his being led into evil ways, for Watt was the type who would take to evil ways for himself if he wished to, but would certainly not be led into them by anyone else; but she could not help feeling that the wild and brilliant Ben, notorious drunkard and quarrel-picker, was likely to be a liability rather than an asset as a travelling companion. But neither of her menfolk listened to her. They never did.

  The two travellers departed, and behind them, Ralegh in his prison and Bess in her lodging set themselves to live even more frugally than before, since a son completing his education in Paris was a luxury that must needs be paid for. Ralegh set himself with Lawrence Kemys’ help, to tutor his second son, finding him eager to please but maddeningly slow after Watt and Prince Henry. He returned to his writing; he returned to his chemical experiments. Time passed, featureless.

  Summer chilled to autumn, to winter; spring came back to the Tower, and again the blackbird sang in the Lieutenant’s garden through the harsh light evenings; and rather earlier than they expected, Watt came home; wonderously bearded, curiously clad in the latest French fashions, and full of strange oaths as his father had been when Lady Sidney so disapproved of him.

  He made his reappearance alone, for Ben Jonson was celebrating his safe return with a three-day drinking bout; but when the three days had elapsed, that worthy also appeared, somewhat the worse for wear, to make formal, and thankful, relinquishment of his charge. And then the whole disgraceful explanation of their early return came out. It appeared that Ben had been invited to take part in an evening debate with — among others — Daniel Featly, a Protestant Minister and old tutor of Ralegh’s, on ‘The Real Presence’, and had taken Watt with him, thinking that he might benefit thereby. But the debate had been long, and the wine good and plentiful, and by the small hours, Ben had been peacefully insensible, and the combination of wine and an overdose of theological discussion had had an effect on Watt that was positively frightful. He had coveted a large hand-barrow from somewhere, arranged his tutor in it with feet together and arms extended, and wheeled him home to their lodging through the early morning streets, exhibiting him at street corners by the way, as the best representation of the Crucifixion in all Paris.

  Watt was undoubtedly still a little wild.

  There was, of course, a superb and thundering scene between him and Ralegh, and apologies to Ben Jonson from Ralegh, but none from Watt.

  Through the rest of that year, Watt hung about in London, spending a good deal of time with his father, sharpening his wits against the wits of the Mermaid Tavern, and inevitably, before very long, getting into mischief. In the spring of 1615 he fought a duel with a young gentleman of the Lord Treasurer’s Household; and being discovered, departed hastily for foreign parts, not to escape punishment, oh no, but taking his adversary with him, that they might finish the quarrel in peace.

  That done, he returned, smiling and unrepentant, to his father.

  Bess was present at the encounter, and so was Carew, who, with his tongue stuck out of one side of his mouth to assist concentration, was labouring at a Greek translation under his father’s eye, when the door opened and Watt strolled in upon them, twiddling a nosegay of jonquil heads in a silver holder, and announced that he was back.

  ‘So I perceive,’ said Ralegh, coldly; and ignoring the hand that was held out to him, returned to the business of Carew’s education. Watt, not in the least abashed, rapped his small brother lightly on the head, and came to kiss his mother.

  ‘For you,’ he said, dropping the posy into her lap. ‘Sweet, it would be pleasant to see you with a lute in your hands, instead of a needle, just by way of a change.’

  ‘If I had not three menfolk in c
onstant need of shirts, I might have leisure for a lute,’ Bess said, returning the kiss. Ralegh laid down his pen. ‘Watt.’

  His son turned to him instantly, with a wicked grin. ‘Sir, you propose to tell me exactly what you think of me, and I am all attention.’

  ‘I rejoice to hear it,’ Ralegh said with the steel sounding in his voice, ‘because that is exactly what I do propose to do.’ He leaned forward a little, his arms folded on the table, and in no uncertain terms, proceeded to do it.

  ‘God alone knows,’ he ended, after a long interval filled by his quietly scarifying remarks, ‘what I have done of evil, that I should find myself to have begotten a mere swashbuckling bravo for a son.’

  At that point Watt, who had listened gravely throughout, remarked in his caressing voice, ‘Mother would seem to be finding cause for amusement in this distressing scene. Share the jest with us, darling.’

  ‘I was remembering someone I knew once — oh, long ago,’ Bess said, ‘who sealed up another young man’s beard and moustache with wax to stop him talking — and spent a week in prison for brawling. Nothing more.’

  Ralegh choked slightly. Carew squealed, and finding his father’s eye upon him, turned himself hastily back to his Greek translation. ‘Never trust a woman,’ said Watt, reflectively. ‘What did your father say, Sir?’

  ‘What my father may or may not have said, has no bearing on the present occasion,’ Ralegh said, with his lip twitching.

  ‘No?’ Watt quirked an eyebrow at him; then went on more earnestly. ‘But what has a good deal of bearing, is the question of my future movements. I think with your leave, Sir, I should take myself out of England for a while.’

  Bess looked up quickly from her sewing. ‘Oh Watt, is it as bad as that?’

  He gave her a quick, laughing glance. ‘I have not killed my man, only laid him by the heels a while to repent his sins and mend his manners. No Sir, it is not to avoid trouble, it is simply that I find London not quite large enough for me — a too close fit altogether, and pinches damnably across the shoulders.’

  ‘And what do you suggest doing about it?’ Ralegh had clearly set aside the matter of the duel.

  ‘Why, the Flying Joan sails for Guiana in a few days time, does she not? I’ve a mind to sail with Captain King. To speak you the truth, Sir, I think it was the knowing that your two-yearly Guiana venture was due to sail in the spring that has kept me kicking my heels about town all these months.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Captain King?’

  ‘I have. With your leave, he will take me.’

  Ralegh regarded his son thoughtfully for a few moments, while Bess sat looking from one to the other, her hands laid empty in her lap. ‘Sets the wind from that quarter?’ he said musingly.

  Watt was seated on the table by that time, swinging a mud-sparked riding boot. ‘What else would you expect, Sir?’ he said. ‘Almost my first memory is of sitting with the dogs under the study table at Sherborne, listening to you and Lawrence Kemys and some seaman you had brought home, discussing the pilotage of the Orinocco Detla. I was bred on the possibilities of a North-West passage to Cathay, and learned my letters from your Discovery of Guiana. I cut my teeth on the wonders of the New World that you declared into me when I was too small to make of them anything but a singing-rhyme. I was breeched with your plans for an English Empire beyond the sunset ... If I go now with Captain King, it may be that I shall find some new bearing that shall bring us to El Dorado yet, before the Spaniards. At the least, I shall see the fringes of Guiana.’

  His voice, as he spoke, had grown very deep, and his face taken on the look that Bess had seen so often in his father’s. She had always known that he understood his father’s dream, but until now, she had blinded herself to the knowledge that inevitably, one day, he would follow it. The old dream, the old devouring dream, taking Watt as it had taken his father. She found that she was crushing Watt’s posy, and relaxed her fingers by a conscious effort, feeling suddenly a little sick. The warm, bruised scent of the jonquils was unbearably sweet.

  The discussion had moved on while for a moment she was deaf to it. ‘... the quartz mask,’ she heard Watt saying. ‘You used to show it to me sometimes, when you had been telling me about Guiana. What became of it?’

  ‘I have it still,’ Ralegh said. He rose stiffly, and turned to the battered ebony travelling box in which he kept the few valuables that were left to him. He unlocked it with a fretted key which he took from his pocket, and after a brief search inside, turned back to the table, holding something in the hollow of his hand. ‘Here it is.’

  He dropped it into Watt’s palm.

  Bess saw the faint, lovely colour of the thing as he turned a little to catch the light on it. Carew, his Greek translation completely forgotten, was half across the table in his eagerness to see the treasure; and Watt lowered his hand, to show him.

  ‘What is it? I’ve not seen it before.’

  Nobody answered him, and Bess, looking at his interested and puzzled face, realised that to her younger son, as to herself, that tiny, exquisite, terrifying mask was a closed book, a sealed mystery. In that, she found a tattered comfort.

  But to the other two it was a mystery declared, an Ark of the Covenant.

  Watt looked up at last, and made to hand it back.

  ‘No,’ Ralegh said. ‘It is fitting that you should have it, now that you go whence it came.’

  *

  Watt went with the Flying Joan, and in due course, returned, far more manned by his eight months at sea than he had been by his year in Paris. And for days after his return, charts and maps were spread on Ralegh’s table, and conference followed conference between Ralegh and Watt, Kemys and King and Hariot.

  Bess kept away through that time, knowing that Sir William Waad, though milder in his rule than he had once been, was apt to make trouble if too many of Ralegh’s circle were with him at a time; knowing also that her menfolk had no need of her just now.

  But at last there came a winter afternoon when she was alone with Ralegh in the gloomy tower room that had grown familiar through the years. The five o’clock bell would not ring for a little while yet, but already it was dark — it had not been light all day, with a swirling dun-covered river fog that blotted out the world — and Talbot had brought candles. They burned smokily golden, surrounded by faint haloes, for even indoors the fog seeped through. By their light, such as it was, Bess had been at her interminable sewing; but she had folded it away now, and sat motionless by the low fire, her hands idle in her lap, looking up at Ralegh who stood leaning a shoulder against the smoke-hood, reading over something that he had just written.

  He was so near to Bess, had grown so familiar with the years, that she seldom saw him objectively; but now as she looked, sudden awareness of him came upon her, and she was seeing him clearly and consciously as she would have seen a stranger. He looked old, and he looked ill. His badger-grey hair was retreating at the temples, though his finely trimmed beard was still dark and full. His always swarthy skin was sallow and patchy with long confinement, scored with deep lines of pain and frustration, his eyes sunk back into discoloured pits in his head; and the pearl in his left ear seemed to gain a dramatic lustre by contrast with the gaunt cheek against which it hung. Save for the Queen’s ring, it was the only ornament he still possessed, and Bess realised that save when he slept, she had scarcely ever seen him without it. She could not imagine him without it; it was part of himself, just as his poetry was part of himself; that poet’s vision of his that spilled over not only into his occasional winged verse, but into the fabric of his daily life, and illumined everything he wrote — his political treatise, his great History — with unexpected colours.

  He reached the end of the closely-written sheet, and laid it on the table a little clumsily, for his left hand did not even now answer to him quite as it should; then turned back to the hearth.

  ‘Walter,’ Bess said, ‘when are you going on with your History?’

  He withdrew
his gaze from the red heart of the fire, and shook his head slightly. ‘It was begun for Harry, and when the lad died, the life went out of it also.’

  ‘But it seems sad to leave it at the Punic Wars, and the volumes that you published last year were so well received — despite the King’s efforts to suppress them.’

  Ralegh smiled. ‘No Bess, not even to annoy the King. The fires are out and the hearth is cold. Besides, it is in my mind that the time is ripe for me to lay down my pen for a while, and make one more bid for my freedom.’

  There had been so many bids for freedom, so very many, through the unforgiving years. Bess stifled a small sigh. ‘What lever do you plan to use this time, Walter?’

  ‘The old lever,’ he said. He was staring into the fire again. ‘Oh I know that I can no longer hold out the promise of El Dorado, since Sir Thomas Roe opened up the Amazon and Orinoco valleys and proved it a myth — at least to his own satisfaction. But the Golden City is not the only source of New World gold. You remember the gold-bearing quartz we brought home in the year after Watt was born? That was gathered near the mouth of the Caroni; there must be a mine there somewhere. And when Kemys went out the following year, he learned a great deal from the Indian guides, of another mine close to Mount Aio, twenty miles nearer to the sea. The mines are there, I am convinced of it; and if need be, I believe that I could reach the lower one without so much as exchanging a musket shot with the Spaniards who hold the trading post at San Thome.’

  ‘Walter, do you want the gold so much?’

  ‘I? No Bess, not now. But the King does. The King wants gold and always more gold to heap on his train of handsome lads. We have left an age of Statesmen for an age of favourites, and favourites arc ever more expensive. Poor Jamie’s pockets are to let, as usual.’

  ‘As usual,’ Bess said. ‘But since it is as usual, why should the old lever gain for you your freedom now, when it has failed so many times before?’

  ‘Because though the state of the King’s pockets be as usual, other things have changed of late. My ancient enemy Henry Howard is gone the way of Robin Cecil; and Robin Carr — I crave his pardon, My Lord of Somerset — is none so high in the Royal favour since he and his doxy were linked with the Overbury murder; and young Buckingham, who shares the King’s bed in his place, is not ill disposed towards me, and might be won to further favour — so I gather — by a bribe to himself and another to Sir William St. John, who holds his ear.’