Lady in Waiting

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Then she stood to survey the result, a little wistfully. The face that looked back at her out of Ralegh’s great steel mirror was paler than usual, and the hair which she considered her best point had been darkened by the unkind rain, so that the gold was gone from it and it was merely brown, and the short ends clung damply in wisps about her temples. It seemed to her that she had never looked so old, or so plain. Yet even as she looked, the reflected mouth lifted in rather tremulous joy, and her face had its own beauty as she turned away, holding out both hands to her tirewoman. ‘Joan, dear Joan, cease your sniffing, and kiss me and wish me happy.’

  Joan promptly burst into tears and caught her to her rather meagre bosom. ‘Ah, my lamb, what will become of us! I do wish you happy, as happy as a Queen! There now, do you go down to the man, for your heart is away before you and ‘tis too late to mend that now, though the Lord knows I’ve done all I can to bring you to your senses. Run along now, and I’ll be close behind you to see you wed.’

  Beside the empty hearth in the hall, Ralegh was waiting for her, and for an instant, as Bess checked at the stairhead, panic set her heart drumming. What had she to do with this man who carried his head as the Prince of the Morning? Then he turned, and his eyes met hers, and the panic died. He stood unmoving, watching her as she came slowly down the stairs. ‘I have been waiting for that all my life,’ he said.

  ‘For what, Walter?’

  A couple of strides brought him to the stairfoot, his head tipped far back on the strong neck, his eyes caressing her across the space between. ‘To see you come downstairs with a rose in your girdle.’

  Her hand was in his, as she walked beside him across the hall and up three worn steps to a little chamber that, from the shape of its one window, seemed to have originally been a private chapel, and from the faint sweet smell that hung about it, to have lately been used for storing apples. It had returned to its old use now; a chest under the window spread with a fine white damask cloth, and two crimson cushions ranged before it; a yellow glow of candle-light triumphant over the grey of the wet spring afternoon and the shadows of an ilex tree outside. Lawrence Kemys was already there, and with him an ancient cleric of gentle, cobwebbed aspect, nursing a great Church Prayer Book as though it were a baby.

  The old man turned a troubled face to her as she entered, and reverently laying down the great book, took her hand between both of his old dry ones. ‘Mistress Throckmorton, my mind misgives me in this matter: but if you will tell me that you have considered well this step that you are taking, and that you are resolved upon it and content to abide by it, I shall perform my part with a quieter mind.’

  Bess smiled reassuringly at the anxious old man, who was clearly afraid that she had been swept into this marriage by the same high-handed methods as had doubtless been used on himself — as in a way, she had. ‘I have considered, and whatever the outcome, I am content,’ she told him.

  A renewed sniffing behind her told her that Joan was of the company, and Job’s comforter though she had been of late, the presence of her dour little henchwoman gave her a sense of having someone of her own with her after all. And she was very glad of it, as she turned beside Ralegh to the makeshift Lord’s Table, and the Vicar once again took up the great Prayer Book.

  It was soon done; the final words spoken: and Bess and Ralegh rose from their knees, still hand in hand.

  ‘May I be the first to wish you happy unto your life’s end, Lady Ralegh,’ said the gentle old cleric. ‘It may be that you will have more of tribulation — more of testing also — than is the common lot in marriage, but I think also that you will have much joy ...’ His old quiet eyes drifted from her face to Ralegh’s and back again; and his voice began to drift too. ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it ...’

  Afterwards they supped in a panelled upper parlour where bowls of late spring flowers had been set to bring scent and colour into dark corners; Bess and Ralegh, Lawrence Kemys and the ancient Vicar, served for the most part by a square man who seemed to stand in much the same relationship to Ralegh as Joan did to herself. A strange wedding feast, and would have been rather a muted one, but for the bridegroom. The Vicar was clearly still unhappy about the ceremony that he had just performed, both for Bess’s sake, and for his own, and even got so far as murmuring to himself distressfully, ‘I hope I have done right. I do trust that I have done right; I do trust the Queen’s Grace never comes to hear of my hand in this!’

  To which Ralegh replied with an odd blend of laughter with a very real gentleness for the old man’s fears. ‘If she does, I will swear I forced you to it at the rapier point, and Captain Kemys will bear witness to the same. No man shall suffer for my joy.’

  But Ralegh himself seemed in dancing spirits, and by little and little his mood irradiated the other three, until even the Vicar forgot his scruples and his fears, and sat smiling quietly on his companions, presently even blossoming into three classical jests and a long and somewhat rambling story concerning the poet Simonides. The meal became an intimate and joyous occasion; and they pledged each other in thin Greek wine that tasted of the grape, eye smiling into eye above the rim of the fragile calyx of Venetian glass.

  When the guests were gone, one to his vicarage, the other to his ship refitting at Deptford, Bess and Ralegh, alone in the panelled parlour, turned to look at each other as though for the first time. ‘I have been wanting to do this all through supper,’ Ralegh said, and began deliberately to loosen the points of her close ruff. ‘I want to see your neck — you have a beautiful neck. I want the warm white hollow at the base of it ...’ He opened the throat of the mannish doublet; and laid a caressing forefinger on her skin. ‘Soft, warm hollow. I can feel the life beating in it — like a small bird.’

  ‘A very happy small bird.’

  ‘Bess — oh Bess, my heart! My most dear!’ He flung his arms round her, straining her close. ‘You’re mine! Mine to me! And not even the Queen’s Grace can come between us now!’

  Not even the Queen’s Grace. The words could scarcely have been more unfortunate. A blight seemed to fall on Bess as she heard them, and she pressed back from him to look up into his face. ‘The Queen — Oh Walter, what have we done?’

  He pulled her into his arms once more. ‘What have we done? We have noosed three shining days and nights out of Eternity to be our own! A day for every petal of the flower-de-luce, a night for every star in Orion’s Belt!’ He kissed her again and again, as though to drive the sudden chill out of her with his own flame; gradually succeeding; kindling her response until for a while the forgot the world and the Queen’s Grace, and her whole being leapt to him as a lark into the sunlight.

  At last she drew away from him, laughing at her own fears, and gathering up a strand of hair that he had dragged loose, moved across to the deep window-seat, and sat down, drawing her skirts close to make room for him beside her.

  The window was a little open, letting in the scents of the rain-wet garden, and the thin hushing of the wind through the leaves of the ilex tree.

  She put up her hand with a child’s joy in little things, to trace the pattern of the leaded panes. ‘Stars in your window,’ she said, and paused, head cocked to listen. ‘How like to the sea the wind sounds in the ilex branches.’

  Ralegh looked at her quickly. ‘You hear it, too? It was for the stars in the window and the sea in the ilex branches that I bought this place, when first I needed quarters of my own within reach of Westminster, long before Durham House was added unto me.’ He turned a little, resting one hand over hers, to look out into the quiet garden. ‘There were just such stars in the window of my own chamber, in my old home, and just such an ilex tree outside the parlour window. But the Channel was only a mile away, and save in a flat calm the calling of it was always mingled with the sea-sound in the ilex leaves. The place went to strangers when my father died. I tried to buy it back when first I was possessed of sufficient fortune, but the new owner would not sell. You would have loved Hay
es Barton.’

  She smiled at him fondly. ‘I am very sure I should. Tell me of it.’

  And Ralegh told; sitting in the deep window-place with her hand in his, while the twilight stole up through the garden. and the sea-hushing of the wind in the ilex leaves sounded softly behind his words. A peaceful and reflective mood seemed to have fallen on him; and he was no longer the Queen’s Captain, the will behind great enterprises; no longer even the poet or the lover; only a quiet man talking quietly of places and people that were dear to him, to the companion with whom he was content.

  And Bess, listening to him, saw before her inner eye, the old farmhouse among the Devon hills, the walled garden, and the woods across the lane; dogs, much loved and long since dead; gatherings round the fire on winter evenings with some seaman from half the world away, the centre of an eager audience. She heard of Richard Grenville, the splendid cousin of Ralegh’s boyhood; of Lewis Stucley: ‘He was always inclined to be odd man out, and of late years, since his father lost money by one of my Virginian ventures, we have had little enough to say to each other; but as a boy, he had the finest way with grass-snakes that ever I knew.’ She heard of the small sister Meg, long since married and living near Exeter. But one figure came again and again upon the scene; the figure of a young soldier who had dreamed Ralegh’s dream with him; his half-brother Humphrey.

  ‘The first time that ever you and I met,’ Bess said presently, ‘at the bottom of Lady Sidney’s garden, you told me about Humphrey. About —’ She hesitated, searching back across the years for the exact words. ‘About his Discourse for a Discovery of a New Passage to Cathay that he had written with your aid. You were very angry, because the Queen had given the search to Sir Martin Frobisher, after all. But he never found it.’

  ‘No,’ Ralegh said. ‘It is still for the finding ... Two years we had to wait, before Humphrey won his letters patent from the Queen; not for the search, even then, but to colonise. But we both intended that the colony should make a base for the search when ‘twas founded! I should have gone with him, but the Queen denied me. Well, he planted his colony in the New Found Land — and was drowned off the Azores on his homeward voyage, as you know.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Bess said after a moment. ‘You were very fond of him, were you not?’

  ‘Very. He was a man easy to love, also he was one of the best and truest souls that ever I have known. He set down his statement of faith, in that Discourse that we concocted together, and he abode by it to the end.’ Ralegh’s voice dropped, the words falling slowly as he quoted: ‘Therefore give me leave to live and die in this mind — that he is not worthy to live at all, that for fear, or danger of death, shunneth his country’s service or his own honour. Seeing death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal.’

  Silence hung between them for a space, only the sea-song of the wind in the ilex leaves seemed to comment on the low-spoken words. The rain had ceased. A pale-winged night moth fluttered in through the window, and behind the dark mass of the ilex tree the sky was flushed with a hint of afterglow from the sun that had not shone all day. Into the hush stole a faint sound, dying away and strengthening again as the wind caught it; the drumming of hooves upon the road, casting a triple braid of sound across the waiting quiet.

  ‘Some soul rides in haste,’ Ralegh said.

  Nearer it came, and nearer yet — and stopped before the house. And as the rhythmic beat fell silent, Bess’s heart took it up, racing with sudden apprehension.

  Ralegh neither moved nor spoke, but his quietness had become that of a coiled spring. A little later there came a knocking on the parlour door, and Talbot the manservant entered. ‘This has just come for you, Sir Walter,’ he said; then as his master sprang up swearing, ‘Very urgent, the messenger said, or I’d not have troubled you, Sir.’

  It was almost dark in the room, but Bess saw the pale oblong of the packet as Ralegh took it from him, and knew past all doubt that she might bid goodbye to her three shining days and nights.

  ‘Light a candle, you fool,’ Ralegh said, his fingers busy with the seal as the man stooped to kindle a spill at the sinking fire. Light sprang up from the tapers on the mantel, one — two — three long tongues of flame leaping a little raggedly in the draught, and the room started out of its obscurity. Ralegh crossed to the hearth, unfolding the crackling sheet as he did so. ‘Give the messenger some beer,’ he ordered; but he spoke automatically, his whole attention on the paper in his hand.

  For a moment after the man had gone out, Bess sat rigid, staring at him, while the scent of musk and rosemary stole into the room from the melting candle wax. Then she started up and went to him. ‘Is it — Walter, what is it?’

  ‘Now I wonder how a’ devil he knew,’ Ralegh said, half to himself. Then he looked up, and she saw his eyes full of a dancing blue light at variance with the grim set of his mouth. He gave her the letter. ‘Look and see.’

  She had no need of the signature to tell her who was the sender. It was obviously written in haste, but even so, Robert Cecil’s graceful Italian hand was unmistakable. ‘If this find you at Islington, as I pray God it may, return at once to Court,’ she read, ‘bringing with you your companion, whether she be Lady Ralegh or yet Mistress Throckmorton. A short while ago, the lady’s brother, being up from Beddington, came to visit her, since that she was detained by the Queen’s pleasure from her three days’ visit to that place; whereas all knew that she had indeed set out for Beddington full three hours before he came, there having been no let or hindrance from the Queen to her visit. There have been no lack of wagging tongues, you may believe, to bring this to the ear of the Queen’s Grace, nor was there lacking one to swear to having seen her ride away with a man (being come as a groom from her kinsman) who he had seen beforetime in your company. Make all speed back; an hour’s delay will harden the Queen’s anger by just so much. R.C.’

  She was still reading when Ralegh strode to the door and plucked it open, shouting, ‘John! John Talbot, my boots and riding-cloak! Bid Peter bring round my horse, and the sorrel mare for Lady Ralegh as quickly as may be, and bid him be ready to ride with My Lady himself.’ The door crashed shut, and he swung back to Bess where she stood frozen before the hearth. ‘Sweet, you must rouse out your woman and make ready to ride. My old Peter goes with you; he is not known about the Court, and you may trust him to keep his mouth shut —’

  She cut in breathlessly. ‘Walter, I do not understand — do you not ride with me?’

  ‘I? If I return to the Queen now, it is farewell to my command of this venture against Spain! I am away to overtake this morning on the Plymouth road.’ He was kicking the fire into a last blaze as he spoke; he plucked the letter from her numb fingers, and stooping. thrust it into the flames. They burned with no red or yellow of the steadfast earth, those flames, but with the cold blue and green of shifting seas. Driftwood, Bess thought dully, watching; old ships’ timbers, maybe, burning with the blue and green of distant seas.

  ‘I am to go to the Queen — alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was quite clear about it. ‘Hold the Queen in play, Bess — your woman’s wit shall furnish you some tale to tell — any tale but the truth — ere you reach Westminster.’ He had his arms round her, crushing her against him, seemingly unaware of her lack of response. ‘Lie to the Queen, Bess, at least until I am beyond the reach of her recall.’

  Beyond the reach of the Queen’s recall. And after that, she was free to face the Queen’s wrath — alone. But he was not thinking at all of her, now; she knew that; even with his arms around her, he was reaching out to something beyond.

  Suddenly it was as though she were looking down the long vista of years, through the many times that she would lose him to his dream, to the last time of all, on a grey autumn morning when the clocks were striking eight, and a headsman’s axe flashed down in Old Palace Yard.

  Chapter 6 - Orlando Furioso

  BESS lied to the Queen, lied and was not believed, and still refused to admit that she had
been with the Captain of the Guard, let alone that she was married to him. She faced the towering fury of the Queen with a desperate courage that astonished her fellow Maids of Honour, and lied and lied, to gain Ralegh the time he needed; while at the other side of England, Ralegh, on the point of sailing, was indignantly denying that he had ever had any dealings with Mistress Throckmorton, marital or otherwise.

  It was all in vain. Ralegh was recalled by pinnace when the Fleet was already at sea, and once again Sir Martin Frobisher was given the command in his stead. There was one last horrific interview in which they faced together the lightnings of the Queen’s rage, and then the Tower for both of them.

  The Queen was nothing if not Old Harry’s daughter.

  For all that summer, they remained pent within the grim walls, despite all Ralegh’s frantic efforts to get out. From the Tower, in the early days, he wrote to Cecil a most piteous appeal. ‘I leave to trouble you at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath with lame legs and lamer lungs,’ in the hope that it would be shown to the Queen, and that being shown, it would soften her heart. But Robin Cecil proved a less staunch friend than he had expected, since at the moment friendship with Ralegh was no way to the Queen’s good graces; and the hot lag-end of August found them still prisoners, with no prospect of enlargement.

  Ralegh spent his time in railing against his fate; in sending frantic messages to the Queen, protesting that the light of his world was gone out since Belphoebe turned her face from him; in raging up and down his prison like a wild thing caged, and reviling his friends when they came to console with him.