They were threading their way among the shipping that lay below the clustering towers of Greenwich Palace, slipping in and out of the moonlight, through water that was now sheeted silver, now black as obsidian in the shadow of stern castle or jutting prow.
Looking back again, Captain King uttered a harsh exclamation. ‘They have turned in after us!’
‘Aye,’ Ralegh said, not troubling to look round.
Stucley sat completely silent.
The wherry bumped lightly against the water steps. Ralegh rose in the stern, and setting a hand on Hart’s upheld wrist, stepped ashore. The stair gleamed sugar-white in the moonlight, between dark masses of shrubs; and mingled with the cold river smells, the faint summer night warmth of honeysuckle breathed upon the air, speaking of quiet hedgerows and sleeping gardens, the very essence of peace and happy things.
Ralegh mounted the stair with King and Stucley beside him, and turned at the top to look down.
The wherry had drawn to one side, the men resting on their oars, awaiting further orders; and the barge was almost at the steps, the plash of the oars swelling clear and urgent in the stillness. They could see her darkly etched against the moon-silvered water, until she slid into the shadow of the bank. She came alongside with a flourish, her rowers backing water with the precision of a trained crew, and several figures sprang ashore.
Ralegh watched them mount the few shallow steps, standing serenely and in perfect command of the situation, to receive them at the top. The leader’s face was clear in the moonlight, under the narrow curled brim of a fashionable tall hat. ‘Ah, Sir William St. John,’ Ralegh greeted him levelly. ‘Your business is with me, I imagine?’
Sir William bowed, sweeping off his hat. ‘I deeply regret that it is so, Sir Walter.’
Ralegh regarded him with a faint, bitter twist to his mouth. ‘Of course. How much was it that I paid you two years ago, for your help in obtaining my freedom? No matter, it cannot have lasted a man of taste and fashion very long — yet I doubt if the King pays very much better.’
‘Sir Walter, I am but doing my duty —’
Ralegh cut him short. ‘Sir William, your duty is not needed at this time; I have already submitted to the arrest of my kinsman, Sir Lewis Stucley, who stands beside me.’
St. John turned his head quickly. ‘Is that true, Sir Lewis?’
Stucley made a small, uneasy movement with his shoulders. ‘Why no — not as yet,’ he said after a moment. ‘It is a matter easily remedied, however.’ He turned to the man beside him, raising his voice. ‘Sir Walter Ralegh, I arrest you in the King’s name.’
For the space of a dozen heart-beats the scene seemed frozen into brittle stillness. Ralegh had swung round on his kinsman with a look before which the other gave back a hasty step; King, with a furious exclamation, had whipped a hand to his sword hilt, only to find his arms caught and twisted behind him by two of the men who had come up with St. John; other men were closing in on the group. Yet the illusion of complete and frozen stillness persisted. Ralegh splintered it with a harsh outgoing breath. ‘Yes, we were boys together, were we not, my coz? I used to think you were a fool, but it seems I did you an injustice. You’re no fool, Lewis, and you’re a superb actor; you should be at the Globe. I was the fool, to trust you in this or any other matter; but as for Captain King —’ his eyes went to the seaman’s face and remained there for a moment, meeting his startled look with an unmistakable command. ‘As for Captain King’ his compelling gaze whipped to Stucley, ‘As for Captain King — No, I think no man could brand me fool for trusting one of my own Captains. How much did his loyalty cost you, Lewis?’
The faintest shrug of his cousin’s shoulders told him that Stucley was prepared to let the lie pass. What, after all, was Captain King to him?
But Captain King himself was of a different mind. ‘Thank you. Sir Walter.’ He almost choked on the words. ‘But I am by way of being particular as to the service I take. I have been your man for twenty years and more, and I’d as lief not change to serve Sir Lewis and his kind now,’ and drawing his guards with him, he moved a deliberate step away from Stucley, as from the vicinity of a bad smell.
Ralegh looked at him with a suspicion of a smile. ‘So be it, then. I’ve done my best to save your stubborn neck for you, William, but I confess I shall be glad of your continued company.’
‘Sir Walter,’ Stucley thrust in hurriedly. ‘There has been enough delay. I regret — I must needs trouble you for your sword.’
Ralegh slipped it free and offered it to him without a word, laid ceremoniously across his forearm. The other took it with a less perfect ceremony, and handed it to one of the waiting men.
‘Yours also, Captain King.’ William King, his arms being released, also yielded up his sword.
‘And now that these formalities have been safely accomplished,’ Ralegh said, ‘do we return to the Tower tonight?’
‘A lodgement for the night has been made ready for you here at Greenwich,’ St. John told him.
‘So? Gentlemen, I am a trifle confused; in whose custody?’
‘In mine. Sir Lewis, I believe, returns immediately in the barge in which we came. That is so, Sir Lewis?’
Stucley nodded, already edging towards the steps. His father, who had been a great rogue, would have carried off the situation with a flourish; but Lewis, being only a small one, could not; he was abashed and ill at ease in the accusing presence of the man he had betrayed, and would clearly be only too thankful to be on his way back to London.
‘Before you go,’ Ralegh said, ‘is it too great a thing to ask, that you return to me my pipe and tobacco box?’
Stucley felt with a kind of unwilling haste in his pockets, and produced the required articles. ‘The rest of your gear will doubtless be returned to you in due course.’
‘Oh, doubtless.’ Ralegh took then from him, and as he did so, the moonlight caught the Queen’s ring on his hand, striking a spark of bluish fire from the single diamond.
Stucley saw it, and for a moment greed and shame were oddly mingled in his face. ‘I was forgetting,’ he said, the hurried uneasiness growing in his manner. ‘That ring: I regret that I must for the present relieve you of it also.’
‘Queen Elizabeth gave me this ring,’ Ralegh said, his voice suddenly harsh. ‘By what right do you relieve me of it?’
Stucley gathered up a rather tattered effrontery, but could not prevent a slight stutter. ‘By — by the King’s orders. It is not fitting that a traitor to his most gracious Majesty should wear the gift of the Queen who named him her successor. Should you be acquitted, it will be returned to you with all else.’
‘Acquitted? Acquitted of what, in God’s name?’ Ralegh demanded, and then, as the other remained silent, he drew off the Queen’s ring that he had treasured through so many years, and dropped it into the hand held out to receive it.
Even Sir William St. John wore a faint look of distaste, as Stucley pocketed it with the rest.
‘God den to you. A most pleasant journey back to London, now that your work is done.’ Ralegh seemed to be holding his kinsman’s eyes with his own, so that the other, trying to turn away, checked and could not break clear. ‘Doubtless you have deserved well of the King,’ he said levelly; and the men watching remembered afterwards, how quiet, almost gentle, his face looked in the moonlight. ‘But, Sir Lewis, these actions will not turn out to your credit.’
Stucley turned, muttering something, and went down the steps to the waiting barge. As he did so, a rough voice called out to him from the wherry, where Hart and the boatmen who had seen his kiss bestowed on Ralegh, had been witnesses to the whole scene played out at the head of the river stair close above them. ‘Goodnight to you, Sir Judas Stucley.’
It was the name that was to cling to him through the remainder of his life.
*
Very early next morning Ralegh went back to the Tower that he had left two years before; back up river, to be stranded at last on the steps of Traitor’s
Gate.
It was not much past high water, and the lower steps were awash as he stepped from the boat, and stood an instant looking up the worn flight — worn by the feet of so many, men and women, innocent and guilty, who had never walked down them again, nor out through the Byward Tower, save to their graves. The great mass of St. Thomas’s Tower was dark above him, the gate-arch black as ancient sin. The gates were opening now, and he glimpsed the blue undress uniform of the Yeoman warders inside. Then as King and St. John landed beside him, he turned for a last look at the morning. It was a grey morning, but with a gleam of silver-gilt in it that seemed to promise sunshine later. A string of swans had come down river from Westminster as they sometimes did, to glide brotherly among the tall ships that lay at anchor off the Tower Wharf. Swans and shipping and wheeling gulls, and the swift grey river.
He turned again to the stair, to find himself face to face with the new Lieutenant of the Tower, who had come down in person to meet him; that same Sir Allen Apsley, who had been with him at Cadiz and Fayal; the young Gentleman Adventurer who had apologetically ordered away the jolly boat for Lady Ralegh on the day that Ralegh forgot her.
He greeted his old comrade-in-arms with quick warmth. ‘Why, Apsley, this is good in you, to come down to welcome me yourself.’
His hand was caught and wrung, but it was a moment before Sir Allen Apsley could answer him. ‘I would to God, Sir Walter, that I might welcome you by another gate and in other circumstances.’
‘Why, the circumstances might be happier, I admit, but as to the gate —’ He glanced up at the grim entrance. ‘“A loyal heart may enter under Traitor’s Bridge” saith the proverb, and has before now, and will again, I doubt not. The Queen — my Queen — came this way once; and I should not be ashamed to follow in her footsteps.’ He put out a hand to draw forward his Captain. ‘Here is another for our reunion; William King. I think the last time we three met together was at Cadiz. That was a great day, eh, Apsley?’
‘A great day,’ said Sir Allen, as he wrung his second prisoner’s hand. ‘A great day, and we shall not see —’ he broke off abruptly, but the end of the sentence was clear to all of them. ‘We shall not see its like again.’ That was what he had nearly said, but it was not wise to say such things in public.
He stood back, with a gesture of invitation to them to enter. And so, with the Lieutenant of the Tower beside him, and Captain King close behind him, with Sir William St. John, whose presence no one had so far troubled to notice, bringing up the rear, Ralegh mounted the steps and passed under the dark archway into Water Lane; and heard the clang and rattle of Traitor’s Gate closing behind him.
At about the same time, Bess was standing in the parlour of the house in Broad Street, gazing in fixed horror at a stout merchant with law officers at his back, who was informing her that her husband had been taken in the act of escaping, that he was back in the Tower by now, and that henceforth she was a prisoner in her own house, in his, Master Wollaston’s, custody.
She took the news quietly; too quietly for Master Wollaston, who would have preferred tears, faints, anything but this white stillness which had the odd effect of making him uncomfortably aware that though he was one of the richest men in the City, he was not quite a gentleman.
But poor Bess had no idea that she was giving offence. She neither wept nor fainted because she had no desire to do either. ‘I think I knew,’ she was saying. ‘I think I knew.’
Chapter 24 - The Tide Running to the Sea
KING JAMES was having an acutely embarrassing time. His dear brother of Spain had by now indicated that while he held James to his promise, and Don Gualto Raule must assuredly die, he had no desire to see to the matter himself, but was content to leave the unpopular task to his dear brother of England. Harassed by the constant bullying of Count Gondomar, and perfectly aware that he was powerless to execute Ralegh without some sort of pretext, the sorely tried man bade, or rather begged, his lawyers to fashion a case for him; a case of some sort, that would at least look all right on the surface.
The Commissioners whom he appointed duly set to work to concoct the required case out of Ralegh’s Guiana expedition. They had no easy task, and though they left no stone unturned — setting spies on Ralegh to report his every word, opening his letters to his wife, and tampering constantly with the Destiny’s crew in an effort to persuade them by bribes and threats, to give damning evidence against him — they were forced at last to report to the King that there was no possibility of putting Ralegh on trial on any charge arising out of the Guiana expedition. The only thing they could suggest was that since, under the Winchester sentence of fifteen years before, Ralegh was already legally a dead man, his Majesty should simply withdraw his merciful reprieve, and allow the sentence to be carried out. And Lord Chancellor Bacon handed up to the harassed Sovereign proposals for Ralegh’s public examination before a tribunal of judges and Privy Councillors, as a means by which his crimes might be made known to the country, and James justified in the withdrawal of his mercy.
But James, remembering Winchester, was unsure of the power of even a packed Court to produce the effect he needed, at a public hearing, and therefore decided to have the examination held behind closed doors, with any results that seemed helpful made public afterwards.
Meanwhile, as late summer turned to autumn, and the last roses withered in the gardens of Ely Palace, Bess was still a prisoner in her own house, all her frantic appeals for leave to see her husband refused. She was allowed no friend near her, not even Nicholas, who had come up from Beddington leaving the harvest to fend for itself, and remained in London ever since; certainly not Captain King, who had been released from the Tower against his will, as a creature of too little importance to be worth troubling about. She was allowed no part in the efforts that George Carey: and the rest of Ralegh’s friends were still making to save him. They were loyal friends — even when best hated by the world at large, Ralegh had always had the knack of making loyal friends — and now they were striving heart and soul to stir the King’s pity or strengthen his mind; but they knew, all of them, that they fought for a lost cause. The Queen, now lying mortally ill at Hampton Court, was writing letter after letter to her husband, pleading for Ralegh’s life because Henry had loved him, even humbling herself at last to write to Buckingham. ‘If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of it at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the King, that Sir Walter Ralegh’s life may not be called in question.’
And Ralegh himself, in his room in the Tower, watching the last leaves that he was to see on the trees of this world turn gold and russet in the Lieutenant’s garden, and go whirling down the autumn wind, heard of all these doings for and against him remotely, as the rumour of the sea in a shell: and was grateful for the love of his friends without wasting the faintest hope on the result of their efforts. Cut off even from Bess, surrounded by spies, and suffering constantly recurring bouts of old fever, he prepared himself, as he had done fifteen years ago, to make such an exit as would linger in men’s minds long after the last of those who witnessed it had followed him.
On October 22nd, he was brought before the Commissioners for his examination in the Council Chamber of the Lieutenant’s Lodging. The long panelled room seemed over-full of lawyers — a breed he had never liked; he saw their shuttered faces and smooth hands against the darkness of their gowns, and liked them no better. To his tired mind, they seemed of very little import — of far deeper significance that through the window of the Council Chamber he could see the grey river and the wheeling gulls.
The light tones of Francis Bacon’s voice recalled him to the matter in hand, and finding that the Lord Chancellor had opened the proceedings, he withdrew his gaze from the river to give them the courtesy of his attention.
The proceedings which followed had little likeness to any examination that could be so called, seeming to consist simply of a string of charges, all the old charges, over and over again, while
he himself was denied any sort of hearing. That of course was only natural. The Commissioners were not interested in his guilt or innocence; they were there simply to find him guilty for the King’s convenience. Wearily, he withdrew the greater part of his attention from them again.
The tide was running out, swiftly and more swiftly, hurrying to the sea. Beyond the masts of the shipping at the Wharf he could see a tall merchantman lying warped out into midstream. Soon she would drop down river and away. His tired mind followed gull-wise in her wake, down to the seas that he would not sail again.
The tide of Ralegh’s life was running out very fast now, very near to the sea. Six days after his examination he was roused out of his bed early in the morning, to go before the Justices of the King’s Bench to hear his sentence. He was blue and shivering with the old fever as his guards hurried him in the foggy dawn, back through the ways by which he had come, to the Traitor’s Gate.
Fog clung low over the water, hiding familiar landmarks as the barge pulled up river, so that even London Bridge, as they lay waiting for the fall of water to lessen between the piers, was veiled in the drifting dun-coloured murk, the tall houses upon it lost in vapour as Ralegh looked up at them. They shot the bridge at last, swinging dangerously through the dark turmoil of water between the piers, and came in the same drifting murk, to Westminster.
The fog was everywhere; even in the hollow vastness of Westminster Hall, when Ralegh was brought into it, faintly dulling the outline of the great West window, and smearing the flames of the candles that had been lit for lack of daylight. Even, it seemed, in the throat of Sir Henry Yelverton the Attorney General, when he rose to speak, so that he must clear it loudly.
‘My Lords’ — Yelverton looked round him at his brothers of the King’s Bench assembled in full panoply of Scarlet and Miniver. He had a fine voice, but the fog had certainly got into it; he cleared his throat and began again. ‘My Lords, Sir Walter Ralegh, the prisoner at the bar, was, fifteen years since, convicted of High Treason committed against the person of His Majesty and the State of the Kingdom, and then received the judgment of death, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. His Majesty of his abundant grace, hath been pleased to show mercy upon him until now, that Justice calls upon him for execution.’ The fine voice swelled and deepened. ‘He hath been a star, at which the world hath gazed; but stars may fall; nay, they must fall, when they trouble the sphere wherein they abide. It is therefore His Majesty’s pleasure now to call for execution of the former judgment, and I now require order for the same.’