Lady in Waiting

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The Attorney General gathered his scarlet robes about him, bowed to the Lord Chief Justice, and sat down.

  In his place, the Clerk of the Crown rose to read the indictment, the old indictment; and as he listened, Ralegh seemed to hear again the frantic beating of a peacock butterfly against a sunlit window in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle. The record of the old conviction and judgment followed, and then the old question in a slightly changed form. ‘Sir Walter Ralegh, hold up your hand. Have you anything to say why execution be not awarded against you?’

  Ralegh raised his hand, bringing himself back by a conscious effort from Winchester to Westminster, gathering himself for one last fight. He was warmly conscious of Sir Allen Apsley standing close beside him, not as the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had brought here his prisoner, but as a friend, powerless to help him in any way, but still a friend. From the smooth faces and scarlet robes, he singled out those of the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Henry Mountague.

  ‘My Lord, all that I can say is this; that the judgment I received to die so long since — I hope it cannot now be strained to take away my life; for that since it was His Majesty’s pleasure to grant me a commission to proceed on a voyage beyond the seas, wherein I had power, as Marshal, over the life and death of others, so, under favour, I believe I am discharged of that judgment.’

  The Lord Chief Justice set down the nosegay of herbs and autumn gillyflowers with which he had been playing, and leaned forward. ‘Sir Walter, this of which you now speak, touching your voyage, is not to the purpose. Neither can your commission in any way help you; by that you are not pardoned, for by words of a special nature, in case of treason, you must be pardoned, and not by implication. There was no word tending to pardon in your commission, and therefore you must say something else to the purpose; otherwise we must proceed to give execution.’

  Ralegh made a quiet gesture of acceptance. ‘If your opinion be so, My Lord, I am satisfied, and so put myself on the mercy of the King.’

  There was a moment’s pause, full of the hollow murmuration of activity from other parts of the Great Hall; and then again the voice of the Lord Chief Justice. ‘Sir Walter, you had honourable trial and were justly committed. Ever since judgment was pronounced against you, you were a dead man in the eyes of the law, but the King had mercy on you. Now, your new offences have stirred up His Majesty’s justice. I know that you have been valiant and wise, and doubt not that you retain both these virtues; and now you shall have occasion to use them. I would give you counsel, but I know you can apply unto yourself far better than I can give you.’ The Lord Chief Justice picked up his nosegay, sniffed it and laid it softly and deliberately down again, evidently deciding on a little counsel after all. ‘Fear not death too much, nor fear not death too little; not too much, lest you fail in your hopes; not too little, lest you die presumptuously. So I make an end, with my prayer to God that he may have mercy on your soul.’ He looked round him at the red robed figures of his brethren; at the Attorney General, not again at Ralegh. ‘Execution is granted.’

  There was little more to come. Ralegh was told the hour and place of his execution, and handed over to the custody of the waiting Sheriffs of Middlesex, whom he kept waiting a short time longer, while he took his leave of Sir Allen Apsley.

  ‘Goodbye, Apsley; God keep you, and reward you for your gentle usage of me in these past weeks. Remember me kindly, since I shall not see you again.’

  ‘May God keep you, Sir,’ the other returned, wringing his hand. He would have said more, but the words would not come; and as Ralegh turned to leave the Court between his guards, the Lieutenant of the Tower was unashamedly weeping.

  Outside in Palace Yard, the fog wreathed about the ancient buttresses; a chill, clean fog, smelling of the river, and as he crossed it with his guard, Ralegh all but collided with Sir Hugh Beason, an old acquaintance, who checked at sight of him with a startled exclamation. ‘Ralegh! Why man, it was to hear news of you that I came this way. What verdict?’

  ‘Was the verdict ever in question?’ Ralegh asked gently.

  The other’s round pink face puckered distressfully. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Very sorry, you know — not much of a one for words —’ He thrust out a hand as pink as his face, and Ralegh gripped it.

  ‘Thank you, Beason. Come you tomorrow, and see me on my journey.’

  ‘I wish there was more that I could do. At what time and place?’

  ‘Here in Palace Yard, eight o’clock; but you had best come early to be sure of a good place.’ Ralegh had already begun to move on, but he looked back with a sudden quirk of laughter. ‘I myself am in the happy position of being sure of one.’

  He went on with the Sheriffs of Middlesex, to the cell in the old gatehouse, where he was to spend his last night.

  It was drawing on to evening before the news was brought to Bess, By Master Campion, who had succeeded Master Wollaston as her gaoler some weeks previously. She had been walking all day, to and fro, to and fro, distractedly, in the parlour of the little house in Broad Street, while Carew, who had been allowed to join her at last, stood by the window, sometimes watching her, sometimes staring blindly out into the fog.

  But she was still enough now, listening to what Master Campion had to say, and staring at his eyebrows. How little and shrivelled he was, compared with Master Wollaston, and how grotesquely over-large for him were those eyebrows. So large that if they grew any larger they would surely take charge of him altogether — and if that happened —

  She pulled herself up sharply, aware that she was wavering on the brink of hysteria.

  Master Campion was telling her that Walter was to die in the morning; at eight o’clock in the morning.

  ‘I must go to him,’ she said dully. ‘I must go at once. Master Campion, I am to be allowed to go to him?’

  Master Campion had not been a gentle gaoler, but he answered her with unexpected kindness. ‘My orders are that you are no longer under house arrest, Lady Ralegh, and that you are to be free to visit Sir Walter for a short while, later.’ He held out to her a folded note that she had not before noticed in his hand. She took and opened it. It was a dog-eared scrap of paper which Ralegh must have had in his pocket, and on it, he had written a few hasty lines.

  ‘I am to be allowed your dear companionship but for an hour, Bess, therefore do you come to me in the hour before midnight, for I would fain see your face as near as maybe to the last that I see in this world. Bring with you my good clothes, for I would not go forth tomorrow in a threadbare doublet unworthy of the occasion. My love I send you not, for you have it, dearest Bess, now and always.’

  No, he would not go forth tomorrow in a doublet unworthy of the occasion. That was the Queen’s Captain to the finger tips.

  When Master Campion had gone downstairs again, Carew spoke for the first time. ‘When they sentenced father, all those years ago, it was for plotting with Spain, wasn’t it, Mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, Carew.’

  ‘And now they are going to carry out the sentence — the same sentence — because of the things they say that he has done against Spain.’ The boy’s newly broken voice jumped uncontrollably, and settled into a husky monotone. He swung back to the window, beating a clenched fist lightly against the glass with every choking word. ‘One day, when I am a grown man, I will make people know that; I’ll make the whole world know — what those bloody murderers did to father; how King James murdered father, to pick favour with the King of Spain!’

  Chapter 25 - The Night and the Morning

  IN his prison chamber in the old gatehouse of St. Peter’s Monastery, Ralegh held better court that evening than James could do in Whitehall Palace, as, all through the hours a steady stream of friends came to bid him God speed. He greeted them with obvious gladness, making of their last gathering a joyous occasion, so much so that some of his visitors found themselves disapproving, even while they fell under his influence. Courage they understood, but this gay courage of Ralegh’s wa
s almost unseemly in a man who was to die with the morning. Had he no thought for what lay beyond tomorrow’s quittance? Did he, perhaps, believe that beyond it lay nothing at all? Old rumours of his atheism, of which even the Lord Chief Justice had acquitted him returned to them, and refused to be got rid of.

  Presently the Dean of Westminster, attending on him as his spiritual adviser, found himself occupying the one stool, with the man whose last hours he had come to solace sitting on the edge of the narrow plank bed and gazing down at him with obvious serenity and even a glint of amusement, which was not what he had expected. The Dean spent some little while in trying to persuade Ralegh to confess to the crimes for which he was to die, that his mind might be the more at ease. But Ralegh’s mind was already at ease; more so, perhaps, then the Dean of Westminster’s. ‘No, Dr. Townson, I will make no false confession. I am innocent of all the charges against me.’

  ‘Then God help you,’ said Dr. Townson, ‘as doubtless in His infinite mercy, He will. You take it very calmly, for an innocent man, Sir Walter.’

  ‘If I were a guilty man, maybe I should take it the less calmly,’ Ralegh said.

  ‘Sir Walter, we can none of us be too sure of our worthiness to meet our Maker. Beware lest, being innocent of this, you fall into the sin of spiritual pride.’

  Ralegh looked him over, Dr. Robert Townson, Dean of Westminster, Chaplain to the King; noting the faint sleekness and the air of self-appreciation; and his eyes, for all their tolerance, made the cleric suddenly a little smaller in his own estimation than was usual with him. ‘Oh no, friend. I believe there is no need that you warn me against that particular sin,’ Ralegh said. ‘Surely you, a Christian priest — if you believe as you teach — should of all men find least cause to think it strange if a man face death with quietness. It is not spiritual pride, but faith in the Grace of God and in His mercy, at which I light my candle tonight ... As for tomorrow — I have maybe seen more of death and in uglier forms than you, Dr. Townson. I had sooner die so, than of a raging fever.’

  He sat for a while, still looking down at the other man, then with a courteous gesture, got to his feet. ‘I beg your forgiveness; I think you come to pray with me.’

  So, kneeling side by side, they prayed together, while the little moaning wind which had been rising since dusk wuthered desolately between the window bars, and set the flame of the candle jumping so that the shadows leapt upon the stone walls; and from outside came the sinister sound of hammering from the Palace Yard. And presently, promising to return at dawn, the Dean of Westminster went his way, carrying with him an uneasy sense that he had been praying with a man who felt little need of his prayers, and who had himself been praying to a God who was not quite the Dean’s.

  Thomas Hariot was the next corner, and Ralegh greeted him joyously, and settled him on the stool. ‘This is a most famous forgathering! — So — now the School of Night is in being again — though a small meeting, to be sure.’

  ‘Ah, the School of Night,’ said the astronomer. ‘A long, long time since first we forgathered under that name, and we were young men in a happier world than this. I was newly back from making you your survey of Virginia, I remember. Those were hopeful days, and we had great hopes of Virginia.’

  ‘Aye, we had great hopes of Virginia,’ Ralegh said, trimming the candle. ‘Great hopes of Guiana too. Well, they have planted Jamestown. The seed of a new England in the New World, though ‘twas none of my sowing.’

  Thomas Hariot put out a blunt hand, and laid it for an instant on the other’s. ‘The seed was before Jamestown,’ he said gently. ‘Other men have sown it, but the seed was before the sowing.’

  ‘Thanks, Harlot.’ Ralegh closed his fingers for an instant over his friend’s hand, and then releasing it, rose and turned to the high, barred window. ‘The wind has blown the fog clear away, and we have stars — Universe beyond unfolding universe of stars. Those questions that we used to ponder, seeking the key to the jest of life itself in a cloud of tobacco smoke: before this time tomorrow I shall be as wise as John Dee — wiser than he was in those days, for I may know the answer to them all.’

  A little later the bolts rattled back, and again the door opened. Ralegh looked hastily towards it, but it was only Captain King. They greeted each other casually as they had greeted each other on a thousand other occasions, and Ralegh said unemotionally, ‘King, you are of all men the one I need most just now. Lady Ralegh will be here soon, and you must take her home again — afterwards. I would not that she went home from this place with no company but a strange servant’s.’

  ‘I would to God that there was more than that I could do for you, Sir Walter,’ King said huskily.

  ‘Poor William King; you did your best to die with me, did you not?’ Ralegh said. ‘Man, you are of more use to me living, for you are a friend to Lady Ralegh, and she will have need of every friend she has, in the days to come.’

  Hariot, who had risen at the other man’s coming in, began to gather himself together, saying that he must go. Ralegh saw him to the door, and when the much-tried gaoler had opened in answer to the signal knock from within, patted him on the shoulder, bidding him be sure to drink a hot posset before he went to bed, lest he take cold in the wind, and sent him on his way. Then he returned to Captain King at the window. ‘And now, I think, a pipe, for there is more tobacco in my box than I shall be like to smoke before dawn. Come now, smoke one in fellowship with me, William.’

  A few minutes later the door opened yet again, and Bess stood in the small deep-set entrance.

  Hesitating there for an instant, her gaze went across the narrow space to find Ralegh smoking serenely by the high barred window, and beside him, Captain King, staring at nothing and puffing with grim determination at a pipe which had gone out. As she entered, Ralegh laid down his pipe on the high window ledge, and next instant Captain King had turned, wrung his old Admiral’s hand as though he meant to wring it off the wrist, and was gone past her without a word.

  The door swung to behind him, and she moved forward, and set down on the table the bundle that she had been carrying. ‘I have brought your good clothes, Walter.’

  Ralegh made no move towards her, but his gaze, which had met hers like a physical touch on the threshold, never wavered from her face, as she turned from the table and went to him. And next instant she was in his arms, caught up and bruised against him, with a fierce and agonised strength.

  A few moments they clung together, wordlessly, and then abruptly his clasp slackened. He was still holding her, but with a careful lightness that had in it already something of renunciation. Before she could say a word, he began to talk quietly, of her future and the boy’s. He had been making plans, he said, and she was to do this, and she was to do that; she was to keep Carew his full time at Oxford if that might be. As far as he could work it out, she would have just such and such an amount a year to live on. Nicholas had all the details and would see to everything for her.

  Holding to him with the same careful, undemanding lightness, Bess listened obediently. Yes, she would do this, and she would do that ... And all the while there were so many more important things to be said, and no words to say them, and the time slipping by.

  ‘Bess, do you remember the scent of the lime trees at Sherborne, when we would go walking under them on summer evenings?’

  ‘I remember — I remember all too well.’

  Nobody but Ralegh could have thought her beautiful now. Her face was haggard and stricken, grey-white to the very lips, with eyes that seemed to strain in their sockets with a wild and aching brilliance. She looked old, older than Ralegh. But Ralegh, with his restless vitality, the strength of life within him, could no more be made old by an ageing body than shabby by a threadbare doublet, and something of that quality of the young in heart had conditioned her love for him, to her own cost, so that now, to the hopeless sorrow of the woman losing her life’s companion, was added the wild grief of the girl whose love is torn from her.

  Yet al
most distraught as she was, she held to her self-control, determined not to mar with tears and ugly clingings this last little silver hour that must go down to death with him tomorrow, and be with her through the empty years ahead.

  For a while they remained, holding to each other with that careful lightness; speaking sometimes, of happy things — Sherborne — and Little Watt ...

  And then the sound of hammering, which had fallen silent in the last few minutes broke out again. A dreadful sound that seemed to fall on Bess’s heart, making her start and flinch. ‘Walter, that hammering — what are they making, down there?’

  He put back her hood with a quiet hand. ‘Look up, My Heart, not down there. See, the wind has blown the fog away, and between the clouds the sky is full of stars; the first clear skies for a sennight, and an infinity of stars ... Look, here stalks Orion from behind that sailing cloud, with his sword-chape ringing on the pinnacles of Westminster. God sends us a jewelled night for our Valedictory.’

  ‘They are building the scaffold,’ Bess said. ‘That is the hammering, is it not, Walter?’

  ‘Yes.’ His arm tightened round her convulsively. ‘Would God tomorrow’s axe might fall on me alone. I have lived beyond my peers, and tomorrow will return to me their company; but you may have twenty — thirty years to be alone.’