The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  After graduating, his father’s prep school, St. George’s, was a very good match for him as a junior teacher. Teaching his ten- to thirteen-year-old students in the upper school to love Latin and English literature suited not only his studies but also his love of books. And, since he continued playing cricket at the county level after graduating, he could also fill the role of coaching sport during spring term. What’s more, from the standpoint of the school, he could be promoted to the parents as an alumnus who went on to a good public school and then became an Oxford scholar. For Stephen, returning to St. George’s and his home village gave him a welcoming base where he could happily work on a long gestating book about the Romantic poets in Italy. He had never thought he would have to step in as headmaster of St. George’s after only two years. That job was his father’s fate, not his.

  Actually, the teaching and headmastering parts of his post-university career had gone well, but his love life was a shambles. Just after getting their degrees, Stephen and his girlfriend, Margaret Hamilton, had announced their engagement. The cadence of his life had seemed to move in such an orderly and satisfying progression: from babyhood to prep school; and then onto public school, cricket, and university. Surely next would be marriage, family, publications, and a distinguished career before the inevitable two-column obituary in The Times. One hundred years earlier, someone like Stephen might have had a detour into the Empire to administer a small province in India for a time. The path would generally have been the same for many Oxford grads. But that had not happened, because his fiancée was a change agent, not an order seeker. And he found that fascinating.

  He thought Margaret Hamilton was the love of his life—and maybe that was still true—but apparently, for her, his love was not enough. She was even from the same village. But in their childhood its population had swollen to thirty thousand, mostly because of an influx of commuters, and they didn’t know each other until they met just after their third year in college. Perhaps that wasn’t so strange in England, where single-sex education still often separated upper-crust boys and girls all through childhood and adolescence, only bringing them together as young adults.

  The shrill ring of his telephone interrupted his random thoughts. It was well after nine—getting a bit late for a call, he thought.

  “Stephen, it’s Andrew, at the church.”

  He recognized the voice of the parish verger and replied with surprise, “Oh, hello, Andrew.”

  “Sorry to call out of the blue, but I just thought you should know,” Andrew continued. “I was walking home and saw all the lights on in the vicarage, so I stopped by to have a quick word with the vicar about finishing up all the repairs. There was no answer at the door, so I used my key and found Vicar Hamilton had fallen in the kitchen. I called the ambulance, because he was unconscious, and they’ve just taken him down to the hospital. They’ll keep him there—and there’s nothing for you to do now, but I wanted to call. I just called Margaret in London as well and left a message on her machine, so she’ll know. Perhaps you can look in on him tomorrow there. I know you two have been as thick as thieves with all those old papers, so I wanted you

  to know.”

  “Andrew, you say he was unconscious? Did they say it was serious?”

  “Well, they didn’t say much. Just a fall. I thought perhaps he hit his head on the cooker on the way down. They said his breathing and pulse and such all seemed good, but they told me he would definitely be kept overnight. They’ll take X-rays after he wakes up. So perhaps we’ll know more tomorrow. All right? These things happen—I mean, he is getting on.”

  “Yes, Andrew. What a shock. But thanks very much for calling. And I will check up on him.”

  Stephen didn’t hesitate, grabbing his jacket and keys and heading out the door. Driving, he was less than five minutes to the National Health Service hospital, a campus of stern 1960s brick and glass rectangles perched on a small hillside overlooking the village. The main door to the hospital was darkened and locked, but the lobby next to it for emergencies was bright with light, and he headed inside.

  A formidable-looking nurse sat behind a desk with a glass protective window in front of her. She looked fierce, but spoke with disarming kindness, “Yes, sir. How can we help?”

  Stephen asked if he could see Vicar Hamilton, but quickly had to explain he was indeed not a member of the family, just a friend. While he was rattling on, she was tapping into her keyboard and looking intently at a screen in front of her.

  “Sir, he was just admitted this evening and now he’s up in the intensive care ward on the fifth floor. There is a notation that he is still unconscious, but his vital signs are good. I’m afraid they wouldn’t want you up there now tonight, but you can rest assured he is being well attended. You can call in again in the morning for an update. Visiting hours for that ward are ten a.m. to one p.m. and again from four to seven thirty p.m. By then he may have been transferred into a normal ward, where you can visit longer. I’m afraid that’s all we can do tonight.”

  Stephen knew he wasn’t going to get any further just then, and he thanked her and walked back out to his car.

  Driving home, he thought you wouldn’t think a vicar’s solo evening at home would end up with a trip to hospital. Carpe diem.

  Margaret was going to be upset.

  London, 1579–1580. Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth, knew firsthand how much damage a monarch could do.

  Destruction had become the family business while she was a child. Her father, King Henry VIII, tore up centuries of tradition, dismantling the old church and parsing out abbeys and monasteries to his favorites as personal estates. Also, he beheaded her mother. Then, soon after, her half sister “Bloody Mary” made a brutal attempt at Catholic revival.

  When Elizabeth took the throne, she chose instead to enforce peace over her divided kingdom. She summoned Parliament to enact a religious settlement consolidating her power both as sovereign and head of a unified Church of England, independent of Rome. She published an updated Book of Common Prayer defining the new code of worship for everyone and imposing fines on those not going to church. And all the while, she kept a close watch over all the ambitions, threats, and plots being hatched against her at home and abroad.

  Close at hand, there were certainly many worthies to be managed. Her full-time court numbered twelve hundred, with each one fixed to a specific place in the great chain of being underneath her majesty. Keeping the Crown just below God and the heavens, she introduced a new nonreligious holiday, to celebrate her accession, each November 17, along with a chivalric code of court behavior based on her own ideas about the divine rights of royalty and the roles pomp and ceremony should play to honor her. She made it clear that success at court would come only to those who embraced this cult of Elizabeth, and so, around the Virgin Queen, a façade of chivalry and platonic love was acted every day in the face of more lusty realities.

  Lowest in the hierarchy were the Ladies of the Presence Chamber, on call whenever the Queen was to be her most resplendent—for example, at the visits of foreign suitors to her elusive hand. They swelled the crowd with no specific duties, and had little interaction

  with Elizabeth.

  Next, the Ladies of the Privy Chamber tended the Queen in her private rooms adjoining the Presence Chamber. These women played a subdued chorus to Elizabeth’s starring role. Often they wore only vestal white as a counterpoint to the bejeweled costumes of the Queen. They walked and danced with their lady, selected the morsels for her plates, carried the dishes to her dinner table, and ate only what Elizabeth did not.

  Finally were the Ladies of the Bedchamber, who were the most intimate with the Queen and also performed many arcane offices. For example, the First Lady of the Bedchamber looked after the jewels Elizabeth wore each day and made a close accounting of their transport back and forth between court and the Jewel House. The Mistress of the Sweet Coffers cleaned and scented the Queen’s linens. And the Groom of the Stool made sure chamb
er pots were in good supply and any contents speedily removed.

  Anne Vavasour was to become the most junior of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. She arrived in mid-November during the twenty-first year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, just in time for the Accession Day celebrations of November 17. With the court encamped at Whitehall for the holidays, Anne settled in to shared quarters. A small part of her hoped her kinfolk long at court would help her find her way, but mostly she just sharpened her wits and elbows and dove in to explore this strange new stage

  by herself.

  She was fascinated by the crowded jostlings of the Presence Chamber, where so many suitors stalked the elusive queen. There, before the main midday meal, an elaborate table was laid for her majesty, but eventually only two Ladies of the Privy Chamber came out and salted plates of the choicest foods for delivery into the Privy Chamber just behind.

  That’s where Anne was introduced to the Queen, seated among her ladies. In a mood for testing, Elizabeth commanded her to dance a brisk galliard. Anne grasped the arm of Thomas Knyvet, her uncle and sponsor, and the pair began to pace back and forth lightly before the monarch, in time with the music from the musicians by the wall. Then the pair surprised their audience, adding a fine volte to their dance by turning their bodies together, taking two steps forward and springing high into the air before landing with their feet closely entwined in a graceful pause. It was a difficult move, done perfectly. The Queen smiled and Thomas Knyvet was well pleased. With her trial over, Anne had acquired the beginnings of a good reputation. Afterward she took every opportunity to embellish it.

  Among the watchful members of the court, young Anne’s arrival was a breath of fresh air. Not only had she danced full well before Elizabeth, but also she answered any prodding with a quick retort, in whatever language the jibe was put to her. She knew her books, played the virginal sweetly, and moved with vitality and grace. Though many eyes were on her now, she had the unruffled air of someone used to being looked at.

  Meanwhile, preparations were under way for the Accession Day tilts. Over the past ten years, they had become the highlight of Elizabeth’s most personal holiday. Overseeing the action was an older courtier, Sir Henry Lee, who also had the honor of riding as the Queen’s champion.

  Jousting was one great love of Tudor monarchs, combining courage and great skill. Two opposing knights with heavy body armor and helmets, and carrying wooden lances on their right sides, charged each other on horseback, riding along opposite sides of a five-foot high wall. The object was not to harm one’s opponent, but to aim your lance well enough to hit the opposing knight so squarely that the lance shattered into pieces from the impact of the blow. The knight with the most rides and the most broken lances won. Several of the Ladies in Waiting were reprimanded for ogling the male courtiers as they practiced in the tiltyard, although Anne was careful enough to avoid detection. On Accession Day, it was indeed a thrilling display.

  After that, the weeks surrounding New Year’s Day 1580 brought many entertainments. The schoolboys of St. Paul’s and their singing master acted out one of the Queen’s favorite stories about Scipio Africanus defeating Hannibal’s elephant army. On Twelfth Night, the Earl of Leicester’s Men put on a play; apparently, it had been rescheduled from a pre-Christmas performance canceled when Elizabeth did not appear—but appear she did this night. Best of all, Anne liked the lusty tumbling of Lord Strange’s acrobats on January 15, with their fantastic gyrations and contortions.

  The diversions were welcome relief from the affairs of state being worked each day by the Queen’s Privy Council. There were rumors of continual conversations with France about a possible marriage alliance between Elizabeth and one of the sons of Catherine de Médicis—either Henry, Duke of Anjou or his younger brother, Francis, Duke of Alencon. Many dismissed the possibility, since the Queen, at forty-six, was much older, but then her majesty would say something that made it plain how interested she was—and that always kept the French guessing. Also, Spain was making great mischief for the council, with Papist Jesuits arriving everywhere, heightening the persecution against them. The entire country was mustering forces for defense, strengthening coastline fortifications, and raising taxes in the event of trouble—most probably from Spanish-backed rebels coming across from Ireland. Finally, although London escaped somewhat, plague was raging in cities such as Norwich, which lost a quarter of its population. At court, there was a sense of laying low, preparing for the worst, and keeping one’s head down.

  The list of new year’s gifts made to Elizabeth in 1579–1580 showcased twenty-two offerings of jewels from her inner circle at court, one for each year of her reign. This inventory was presented in the order of the status of the giver, from earl to gentleman, and the value of

  each present.

  Item one began with a trove presented by the Earl of Leicester, a favorite and adolescent companion of the Queen recently elevated to the post of Master of the Horse. His offering included “two bodkins of gold”—long sharp pins for ornamenting the hair—the first “a very fair table diamond, garnished about with small rubies,” and the second “a very fair ruby garnished about with single diamonds.” Leicester’s list continued with a velvet cap, a diamond encrusted brooch, and thirty-six matching buttons. Gifts two and three were elaborate brooches and bracelets from the Earl and Countess of Oxford. Item five was a group of “twenty-four buttons of gold, enameled with white and black, with one pearl in every one,” from Lady Burghley. High on the second half of the list at item thirteen was “a bodkin of gold, garnished with small diamonds,” from Sir Henry Lee. The final items, numbers twenty-one and twenty-two, were gifts of lapis lazuli stone and crystal from Lady Sidney and her son, Mister Philip Sidney. After these highlights, pages and pages of less illustrious treasures and givers then followed to flesh out all the swag.

  After the new year began, the 1580 Calendar of State Papers recorded the most important expenditures from the Royal Treasury, as ordered by a Crown anticipating serious trouble from Spain. For example, an important estimate was made “of the cost of keeping her majesty’s whole navy being fourteen sail of ships, ready for service upon twenty days’ warning.” Related to this was the order for “the names of twenty-two merchant ships fit to join with the Queen’s ships if needed.” Another item provided Sir Henry Lee with a certificate to muster five thousand men from Oxfordshire and to deliver a full list of their captain’s names, as well. Oddly, an order was recorded for the Earl of Oxford to pay two hundred pounds per year to Lady Oxford out of his rents, in case he might forget. That item was included by order of Lord Burghley, whose daughter, Anne Cecil, was Oxford’s estranged wife. Also ordered by Royal Warrant was payment of “the yearly fee of twenty pounds to Anne Vavasour, Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber.”

  Entries in Anne’s new commonplace book

  From “To the Queen,” a poem by Sir John Davies

  What music shall we make to you?

  To who the strings of all man’s hearts

  Make music of ten thousand parts:

  In tune and measure true,

  With strains and changes new.

  How shall we frame a harmony

  Worthy your ears whose princely hands

  Keep harmony in sundry lands:

  Whose people divers be,

  In station and degree

  Heaven’s tunes may only please

  And nor such airs as these.

  From Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia, describing Sir Henry Lee at jousting

  (As Hardy Laelius, that great Garter-Knight,

  Tilting in Triumph of Eliza’s Right,

  Yearly that Day that her dear reign began

  Most bravely mounted on proud Rabican,

  All in gilt armour, on his glistring Mazor

  A stately plume of Orange mixt with Azur,

  In gallant Course, before ten thousand eyes,

  From all Defendants bore the Princely Prize)

  Thou glorious Champion, in thy Heavenly Race,


  Runnest so swift we scarce conceive thy pace.

  September, 1992. At work on the opening day of school, Stephen couldn’t tell whether the boys and girls were afraid of him and his eye or simply hypnotized by James Joyce and Virgil. Probably both. But by the end of the day he’d convinced himself his classes on Dubliners and the Aeneid left them all wanting more, which was his main hope. But the administrative part of the day, dropping in on new teachers, placating parents, and addressing the newly combined male and female students of the school in the auditorium, had not gone as well as it could have. He just had too much in the back of his mind to worry about.

  Finally, just after six in the evening, he was able to drive across town for the remaining hour of visiting time at the hospital to check up on Vicar Hamilton.

  At the main reception desk, Stephen was disappointed to learn Vicar Hamilton was not taking any visitors. But the receptionist said there were other well-wishers keeping vigil in the waiting lobby off the men’s ward on the fourth floor, if he wanted to join them. There he found Verger Andrew and Margaret alone, sitting in one corner of the fluorescent-lit room. He noticed his heart jumped a beat. He hadn’t seen Margaret since the Christmas service at the church, except on television a few times—most memorably, that summer, when she reported on the arrival in France of distraught refugees from the siege of Sarajevo. At Christmas, she had waved at him from across the aisle, but didn’t come over afterward. He wondered then if she snubbed him, or simply had to be with her father. Now she looked a lot less polished, leaning over the end of the vinyl sofa toward Verger Andrew’s chair. In fact, she seemed quite fragile, with moist eyes and chafed reddened skin. Verger Andrew was holding her hand as they talked. They looked up cautiously as he came in, as if afraid more bad news was coming, but then a welcoming smile grew beneath Margaret’s sad eyes.

  He walked over to sit next to her.