Lady in Waiting

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘A new house for you, and for me,’ Ralegh said. ‘New to us as the first morning of God’s creation! A light, shining house, with wide windows to catch the sun. And you shall have your bower painted in the new fashion, with vines and foxgloves and passion-flowers on its walls, so that it will be always summer for you, even when the snow comes blowing down the wind.’

  So Sherborne Lodge began to rise from its foundations, and while it was a-building, life ran gently for Ralegh and Bess. They watched the progress of the house, and planned the garden; here was to be the herber and the orchard, here a nut alley, here smooth lawns in the curve of the old lime avenue. Ralegh ran the estate with the help of John Meeres, his steward; and from time to time departed to visit his other estates, or on his yearly tour of the Stannery Courts or some business of the West Country Militia.

  Occasionally Ralegh’s affairs took them up to Westminster, where they lodged themselves in Durham House, a cloud-cuckoo-land castle of many turrets, inadequate drains and defective chimneys, in which poor Bess found it almost impossible to housekeep at all. They were cut off from the Court, but not from their old friends, and the house was seldom quite empty of company; Ralegh’s kinsman Sir George Carew; the Pembroke family; rather surprisingly, Robin Cecil and his wife — for Cecil’s failure to stand by Ralegh over his marriage had slipped into the background, forgotten by both men with what at first seemed to Bess surprising ease. But in a little while she found that she herself was forgetting also, returning to the old friendship as though the chilling interlude had never been. She liked to see Robin Cecil with his Bess (always it was ‘Your Bess’ and ‘My Bess’ when the two men spoke to each other of their wives), for with her, he was a different man from the faintly sinister Secretary of State whom the English called ‘Robert the Hunchback’ and the French ‘Monsieur le Bossu’; a man with a gift for laughter, and quiet eyes.

  At Durham House, Ralegh was happiest in his study, a turret room high among the stars and the winds of heaven, with the Thames flowing far below its windows. There he wrote a few winged and lovely verses — not the gracefully artificial verse that had flowed so easily from his pen in his early years, for his muse came upon him ever more rarely, these days, and his poetry was a harsher, a brighter and an infinitely better thing that cost him something in the making — there he talked with his oddly assorted friends. Spenser had come there in the old days before Ireland became his home; and Kit Marlowe, dead this year and more in a tavern brawl at Deptford; and Philip Sidney and many more. Richard Hakluyt came now, always full of the latest voyage of discovery; and young poets and playwrights such as Ben Jonson, picked up over the Canary wine at the Mermaid Tavern, to argue the night away, puffing at their pipes until the room dissolved in a dun fog of tobacco smoke. Or again, it might be the wizard Earl of Northumberland, or Dr. Hariot the Mathematician, or John Dee the Astrologer and Alchemist. And when John Dee was there, Bess knew that Ralegh would most likely not come to bed at all, for the two of them would sit pondering Rosicrucian Mysteries, or discussing perspective glasses or his great map of Atlantis until dawn.

  Most of these odd friends of Ralegh’s were often at Sherborne also, and the School of Night sat in the old chapel there almost as often as at Durham House, debating amid the wreathing tobacco smoke such questions as the exact nature of the human soul.

  At Sherborne, Bess had made a still-room out of one of the groined store chambers and gradually her shelves were filling; a hound bitch had puppies, and the new flamed and feathered tulips came into flower, and these were the things that contented her. On Sundays she walked to the Abbey with Ralegh, carrying her posy of bee-balm and bergamot, while he carried the family Prayer Book. She loved those Sunday mornings, kneeling beside Ralegh in the little chapel of St. Catherine. She loved the glimpse of the choir, with its columns springing fountain-wise from floor to arched and jewelled roof, like prayers caught in golden stone as they leapt heavenward. People said that Ralegh had no God, but that was not true; he was an explorer, not an atheist, Bess knew that. But she knew also that because he was so much an explorer, the services in the Abbey had little meaning for him, and she was grateful for the willingness with which he came with her, Sunday after Sunday.

  It was all very peaceful.

  But under the peaceful surface of life there were harsher currents setting; for as the months went by, Ralegh became filled with a growing fret, and poor Bess, knowing it, was powerless to help him, and so lost her own contentment. From the first, he was constantly striving to win back the Queen’s favour, less for its own sake than because it might yet — though it had never done so before — enable him to follow his dream. There were always seamen and explorers at Sherborne or Durham House, wherever Ralegh was. His study table was for ever littered with maps and charts, and for ever the centre of report and discussion of foreign lands and unexplored seaways, and as time went by the tide of these discussions set ever more strongly Westward. Ralegh’s mind was becoming increasingly full of Guiana. To him, as to the rest of his day and kind, the land between the headwaters of the Orinoco and the Amazon was a Promised Land. Many before him had set out to find it, and failing, had generally paid for the failure with their lives; but where many had failed, one more might yet succeed. Ralegh had been only a few months married when he sent out Jacob Whiddon, one of his Captains, to reconnoitre the Orinoco, and in due course the reconnaissance party returned with glowing accounts of the country and its richness, and reports of Manoa, that the Spaniards called El Dorado, the Place of Gold; a city of which even the streets were paved like the City of God. The search for El Dorado appealed to Ralegh at many levels, for a colourful exploit that might recapture the Queen’s favour, for the fascination of exploring new lands and seeing new and curious things, for the riches that it would yield to its discoverer. (Yet his desire for the gold of El Dorado had in it some almost mystical quality, which Bess guessed at but could not understand; it was poet’s gold, alchemist’s gold, the Flower of the Sun, not the mere stuff of buying and selling.) Above all, convinced of the dire necessity that England should have possessions in the New World, to combat the growing strength of Spain; new Englands linked to the old one, where men for whom there was no opening at home could make a new life; new Englands to stand shoulder to shoulder with her in time of danger, and be a market for her woollen goods and a source of raw materials, he hoped that the bright goal of El Dorado, if he could uncover it, might draw men Westward in good earnest. The impetus was desperately needed; so little had been accomplished, so tragically little, since he sat with Bess in the ditch at the bottom of Lady Sidney’s garden.

  So as the second winter of her marriage went by, Bess grew more and more unhappy. It was not that she wanted to keep him tied to her; let him go down to the sea and seek out fresh lands for his empire, only not this obsession with the West, with El Dorado that had been the death of so many men. The thing became a nightmare, growing in her mind to be a tangible enemy striving to draw her love from her. She would wake in the mornings and find Ralegh sleeping quietly beside her, the vital warmth of his body against hers, and wonder where his spirit was; if it had gone Westward to his land of golden cities and great rivers and singing trees, and be almost sick with a mingling of fear and jealousy. By that time she was carrying Ralegh’s child, which perhaps had more than she guessed to do with the hideous fears and fancies that crowded upon her that winter.

  In February, Ralegh went up to Westminster again; a mere flying business visit, and Bess did not accompany him, being four months gone with the baby. He returned to her unheralded, on an evening when the gutters spouted and the courtyard cobbles were a-swim; but for Bess, it was as though the sun came through. She was a naturally happy person, and the happiness in her, however low it sank, was always there, ready at a slight incident to leap up and fill her whole being. This evening, when supper had been cleared, and she and Ralegh were alone in the living-place, save for a couple of setters asleep before the fire, she was happier than she
had been for months. Outside, the rain swished by, spattering against the glass, but in here there was firelight and taper-light, warmth and safety; and Ralegh, safely returned to her from the dark world outside, seated on the other side of the hearth, puffing contentedly at his pipe. For a little while she was free of her fear.

  But presently Ralegh sprang up, reached a candle from the smoke-hood, and crossing to the chest which stood beside his great writing table, opened it and began to take our papers, scanning each briefly, and laying it on the table beside him. For a few minutes Bess continued to stitch at the baby’s cap she was making; then she looked up, her needle poised. ‘Is it the Militia papers? Leave them until the morning, Walter.’

  Ralegh answered her without raising his eyes from the paper he held. ‘No. These are some papers for Robert Cecil — Jacob Whiddon’s reports and suchlike.’ He added the paper to those on the table, his face suddenly kindling in the way she knew so well. ‘He thinks at last that he may possibly be able to help me to my letters patent!’

  Bess jabbed her needle into her sewing, and through it into her finger, and a bright speck of crimson stained the cambric. She gave a little cry.

  Ralegh looked up with a bright abstracted eye. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I — have pricked my finger,’ Bess said. She felt sick, and her hands were shaking so that she laid down the scrap of sewing, and gripped them together in her lap.

  ‘Poor sweeting,’ said Ralegh with perfunctory sympathy, and returned to the task in hand. He did not even notice her lack of response to his news.

  After a few moments, her voice once more under control, Bess said: ‘Walter, if you will be sending someone with those papers, will you add a packet for me? I promised Elizabeth Cecil some recipes for rose water and green ginger conserve, and I forgot to send them up with you.’

  So next day when a groom set out for Westminster, he carried, beside the Guiana papers, a packet addressed in Bess’s hand to Lady Cecil. But inside it, between the recipes for rose water and green ginger conserve, lay a letter to Cecil, begging him for old friendship’s sake, to dissuade Ralegh from his wild project, and employ him, if, as it seemed, he must go to sea, ‘In sure waters towards the East, rather than help him forward towards the Sunset.’

  A wild March day came, a day when rain and sunshine were sharp as a stiletto, and the crocuses in the new garden were blowing like gold and purple flame in the wind. For Ralegh, determined that the house should not stand naked in its first years, as so many new houses did, had planted the further parts of the garden already. They had been looking over the house which was nearing completion, and now, leaving the busy workmen, and the harassed master builder who Ralegh had been reducing to apologetic pulp over some question of the staircase, they had wandered out to see how the garden did.

  ‘Presently,’ Ralegh said, ‘we will have some yellow wallflowers seedlings over from Ireland. I brought the first plants home from the Azores and planted them at Youghal, but they are wasted in that lost land; and they have the sweetest scent of all, in the springtime.’ He bent to free a rush-daffodil that had failed to burst the brown membrane over its head, with deft and gentle fingers.

  ‘This is going to be a most lovely garden,’ Bess said softly, watching him.

  ‘As fair as we, with God’s help, can make it,’ Ralegh said. ‘When Cecil gains me my letters patent, I shall bring back flowers from the New World for it — flowers and trees and all manner of curious growing things; and herbs for your herb garden, Bess.’

  The New World! Always the New World, as though the old world here at Sherborne on such a morning, was not fair enough to break any heart. She said quickly, a little too quickly: ‘You are very sure of Robin Cecil’s success in the matter.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralegh said. ‘Cecil is very near to the Queen in these days.’ He turned to look at her, for there had been something unusual in her voice. It must have been in her face also, for after a moment he asked abruptly, ‘Why? Bess, why did you say that?’

  She did not answer, and he reached out and caught her by the shoulders. His hands were not gentle now; they bit into her flesh through the stuff of her cloak, and his face was as hard as his hands. ‘Why did you say that, Bess? What did you mean?’

  ‘Please, Walter — you are hurting me.’

  His hands gentled instantly, but he repeated his question mercilessly. ‘Tell me what you meant. You know something. You shall tell me, Bess.’

  Bess drew a sobbing breath, and told him, with the desperate defiance of a child confessing some wickedness that it refuses to be sorry for. ‘Robin Cecil will not get you your letters patent, because I sent him a letter with those recipes for Elizabeth — because I begged him, if you must go to sea, at least not to help you towards the Sunset!’

  For an instant she saw such blazing anger in his eyes as seemed to scorch and shrivel her very soul; then it was gone, and the brilliant blue eyes staring into hers were only puzzled. He let his hands slip from her shoulders. ‘But why, Bess? Is it that you would not have me leave you before your time? If I gained my commission tomorrow, I would not go until after the imp is born, you know that.’

  Bess gulped and shook her head.

  ‘Then what is it, Bess?’

  ‘If it were another woman,’ she burst out, ‘if only it were another woman, I could fight it; but it is not — and I can’t, I can’t.’

  There was a long silence, and then Ralegh said very quietly: ‘No, you can’t.’ He drew her to him, and put back her hood. Her face was wet with rain and tears, and he kissed it, and stood holding her in the curve of his arm. ‘Sweetheart, I have never loved any woman but you, and I never shall. I love you quite enough to lay down my life for you if the need arose; but you must not try to come between me and my own soul.’

  She stood silent in the curve of his arm, resting against his shoulder as though she were very tired. She was accepting defeat, absolute and final. It was very peaceful to stop fighting.

  Then Ralegh turned her round, saying with a sudden quick pleasure as he did so. ‘Look, Bess! Have you ever seen so glorious a rainbow as that?’

  The rain squall that had been beating about them a few minutes ago had sped on before a burst of acid-yellow sunlight, and against the blue-black storm cloud shone a dazzling arc of colour. One end rested on the high rim of the Vale, and the other, sinking lower even as they watched, came to rest like a benediction among the hanging woods that were called Jerusalem. For a moment it seemed as though the whole world was holding its breath for fear of breaking the circle of perfection; nothing moved; even the wind had dropped away. Then a small figure appeared from behind a clump of bushes, a little square figure in a brown doublet, heading at a purposeful trot towards the foot of the rainbow.

  ‘Oh look, Bess,’ Ralegh said softly. ‘It is Meeres’ little lad — going to look for a crock of gold!’

  ‘A crock of gold,’ Bess thought. ‘El Dorado. But it is the same thing; this dream, this Unattainable, that men search for all their lives.’

  The little figure was growing smaller and smaller in the distance, and already it seemed to her that the rainbow was less brilliant than it had been. With an instinctive unwillingness to see the brightness fade and the little boy deserted by his dream, she turned from it to Ralegh. ‘I will write again to Robin Cecil,’ she said.

  His mouth quirked into a smile under the clipped beard. ‘There is no need for that. Cecil is very fond of you; but he’ll not lift a finger to keep me back from my venturing, for all your tears and prayers, my sweet Bess.’

  *

  The new house was finished, a small, pleasant house, many-windowed and shining. Much loving care had gone into the making of it, from the cooking arrangements to the painted walls of Lady Ralegh’s bower, where on a painted trellis, roses and leopard lilies and climbing passion-flowers made a summer that would last, as Ralegh had promised, when snow came blowing down the wind.

  It was July now; a wild night that seemed full of flying wings, as
the southerly gale came beating up from the Channel. And in his new and shining study, Ralegh was pacing restlessly up and down. There had been a sea-coal fire on the hearth, but he had let it die down; several candles on the mantel guttered wildly, thick rolls of wax running down and filling the cups of the candlesticks, for he had forgotten to snuff them. Still he walked, up and down, up and down; and after a while the old setter who had been sleeping before the fire, rose and walked with him, up and down.

  Presently he halted by the writing table, and took up for the dozenth time an official-seeming document that lay there. He snuffed one of the candles now guttering into a pool of molten wax, and held the document to the light, reading it again, as though he did not already know it by heart; feasting his eyes on every word of it, on the fat crimson seal and the flashing signature of Elizabeth with the final flourish that bent itself into a tiny arabesque, noting for the dozenth time, with sardonic humour, the pointed omission of the words ‘Trusty and Well Beloved’. So he was not yet forgiven. Well, Rome was not built in a day.

  He refolded the document and slipped it crackling into the breast of his doublet, then returned to his pacing, still accompanied by the mutely protesting dog. Outside, the summer gale hurled itself upon the new walls as though striving to destroy them, and the rain slashed and rattled at the windows, drowning all sound from the rest of the house. Up and down, up and down, the old setter plodding at his heels.

  The candles had guttered out one by one, and the first sodden pallor of the gale-rent dawn was stealing in at the windows, when the wind dropped an instant; and in the trough of the quiet between gust and gust, Ralegh heard the thin, outraged wailing of a new-born baby. The setter heard it too, and raised his head, whining softly, as his Master strode to the door and jerked it open.

  A short while later, upstairs in the big bedchamber that was still strange to her, Bess was pitting her will against Joan and the fat midwife, who wanted to take from her the tiny, new-washed curiously living thing that they had put into her arms only a few moments before.