Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh

by George Garrett

  A pitcher of ale would cure me now. I’m drunk and flat on my ass in a deep Devon lane. Sweet odors of springtime. Will get up and go find me a bed. A good bed and a wench to warm it. Not now, though. Later will be soon enough. I lie in an English lane counting the stars and listening for a nightingale. And then I sleep …

  Keymis, I could kill you now.

  My son dead. The Spaniards driven off, but enough lived to tell the tale. You found no gold mine. Baubles and trash from the village of San Thomé.

  In my fever and sorrow I cursed you and the day you were born.

  “Then, sir, I know what I must do,” you said.

  I did not raise my hand to stop you. Closed my eyes and bit my tongue. I heard your feet go away. I lay there until I heard the shot and shouts.

  Keymis had been cleaning his pistol and it fired, they told me.

  You bungled that too, Keymis. Had to finish yourself with a knife.

  God forgive me, I laughed, thinking Keymis could not even kill himself cleanly.

  God can forgive me and will, I believe and trust.

  Now I ask your forgiveness too, Keymis, my old faithless friend.

  The man on the bed mutters something. The servant by the fire blinks and stirs. “Sir?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  Then: “Heap up the fire, Ralph, and brighten this room.”

  “We’re low on firewood, sir. I doubt we’ll last through the morning.”

  “Well, if we don’t, we can burn my bed and chest.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind, Ralph,” the man on the bed says, sitting up, clutching his blanket around him like a cloak. “We won’t be needing wood or coal for more fires here, I’ll warrant.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  The fire burns and the room glows.

  He thinks: And if we need more wood than my bed and sea chest, why here am I, a bundle of old dry sticks.

  Smiles to remember the proverb: Two dry sticks will kindle a green one.

  So much for the wisdom of this world. Even Aristotle couldn’t have said it better.

  “Fetch me my pipe and tobacco,” Ralegh says. “I have slept enough for an old man.”

  But what of all this? And to what end do we lay before the living the fall and fortunes of the dead, seeing that the world is the same that it hath been and the children of the present time will still obey their parents? It is in the present time that all the wits of the world are exercised.

  RALEGH—History of the World

  Having perused the documents three times over, word by word, weighing each one—a task not made easier by the haste with which the clerks scribbled them—Lord Lieutenant Apsley of the Tower descends from the upper chambers of his house to where the others are waiting, backs to the fire, cups of his ale, warmed against the weather, in their hands.

  “Well …?”

  That is Wilson, Sir Thomas Wilson, the one who is smiling. The other two, young men, gentlemen officers of the Court of Westminster, are as strict-faced as playing-card knaves. They are dressed drably, nondescript, cloaked; plain texture of gray and brown cloaks, doublet and hose being almost part and parcel of the weather itself, as if tailored out of last night’s fog. Their wide-brimmed, low-crowned hats are likewise plain, brightened with neither feather nor band. Only Wilson, shorter than either, a stumpy rooster of a man, is dressed for a public occasion. Not grandly, if the jewels were counted or cloth touched to test quality, but bright and bold enough. So that, at a distance and the more so because of this company, he will be seen and will seem the picture of a gent of the Court.

  He must not have come to the Tower with them, by water. For, as Apsley, coming down the steep stairs and crossing toward them, notices, it is their cloaks, not Wilson’s, which steam by the fire, their hats which are still wet as if with a dew.

  All three are armed, sword and dagger.

  “Well now, Apsley,” Wilson continues. “Do these instruments meet with your approval?”

  Apsley wrinkles a frown. “It is not for me to approve or disapprove,” he says, “It is for me to obey my orders when they are properly presented.”

  Wilson snorts. “You may be sure they are, sir. Anything from the King is proper.”

  “To be sure,” Apsley begins, hesitant, “but I must be certain that all is in order …”

  An answer wasted on Wilson, for he has turned to the fire, giving Apsley his back to talk to, and is sipping the last of his ale.

  Apsley feels a flush on his cheeks. Is grateful for the beard which hides most of it.

  “No man will question your care,” one of the gentlemen begins. “It is true these papers were hastily drawn. There could be some flaw in them. You are to be commended.”

  “There is no flaw,” Wilson says, over his shoulder. “If there is, leave it to the lawyers, who will scent it soon enough. A soldier is hardly a judge of these things.”

  “Nevertheless I must judge, Mr. Wilson,” Apsley says, surprised at the curtness of the voice he hears. “And judge I shall. In the name of the King and for the King. I shall read through again, if I choose, to satisfy myself.”

  Now Wilson turns, his tight smile unchallenged, but his right hand resting easy on his hilt, his eyes hard.

  “Then, God’s wounds!, read on until you grasp the meaning, Apsley.” To the others: “We may well spend tonight here while he studies.”

  At this Apsley, astonishing himself again, abruptly relaxes and laughs.

  Wilson shrugs and laughs too, as if relieved. The other two are men with wooden masks. As befits their station and this duty.

  “All is in order then?” one ventures.

  “All but one thing,” Apsley answers. “There must be a writ of habeas corpus. I must have it before I deliver him over.”

  “You shall have it at Westminster,” Wilson says. “It shall be delivered to you there.”

  “I trust so,” Apsley replies. “For without that writ I can give him over to no man. I dare not.”

  “Oh Lord,” says Wilson, sighing. “Let one of the men of the Commission command you to and you’ll jump through a hoop or dance like a clown. Do not be so brave about this thing. It does not become you.”

  Now it is Apsley who half turns away, biting his lip, pretending again to examine the papers. He bites his lip, tasting a salt of blood. He is not certain why, whether it is to check his anger or to hide his shame or both.…

  “Have no fear, Lieutenant Aspley. You shall have your habeas corpus and the rest of your life to study it if you wish. You are not of such consequence in this affair as to be in any danger.

  “If you prefer,” Wilson continues, “I shall take the man and deliver him up myself.”

  “You do not have the authority.”

  “That, sir, is a moot point.”

  Indeed it is.

  Sir Allan Apsley knows it well enough. He could scarcely have anticipated this singular dilemma when, after a long service as a soldier and no small sacrifice—all his sons lie under Ireland’s misty sod, killed in the wars there, he received this office in reward. He paid for it, of course, and a price he could not afford. But it is an office with opportunity for a man to feather, belatedly, a neglected nest, to end his days with something to show for himself and, he hopes, to pass on. Perhaps enough to make a decent dowry for his daughters. An office where a prudent man, in bits and pieces and without breaking the laws, may with good fortune, recoup his investment and turn a modest profit. Under ordinary circumstances.…

  His predecessors have fared badly, not blameless to be sure, but caught in traps of extraordinary circumstance, Elwes—of course he was careless, but what could he have done, truly, beyond exercise prudence? and was that, carelessness, not his sole crime?—lost his life.

  Now Lieutenant Allan Apsley must contend with Sir Walter Ralegh. It is almost too complex and devious for him to grasp. Nor would he try to grasp beyond what he can know. His only course, from the dawn when Ralegh was brought here by
Stukely and the King’s men until now, has been to be careful as he can. To seek to offend no man.

  Sir Thomas Wilson has tested that resolve and has made the exercise, even of common carefulness, most difficult.

  Ever since Ralegh emptied his purse by torchlight and became a prisoner, at the end of a warm summer night, Ralegh—and Apsley with him, then—has been turned and shifted like a weathercock. Apsley lodged him first here in the safety and comfort of his own house, still called the Queen’s House. A trim and tidy place, though small, solid old brickwork and the heaviest of timbers turned iron-hard with aging, resting in the southwest corner of the inner court within the full shadow of the bell tower, where the Lady Arabella, herself in like fashion apprehended in flight by water and returned here, languished and died.

  Aspley, though alert, kept Ralegh more as guest than prisoner. Ralegh ate at table with Apsley and his wife and daughters, sometimes joined by Bess and his own kin as well. He added to Apsley’s larder most generously, to be sure.

  Was visited by friends and servants. And from the Queen’s House it was a slight walk and an easy climb to enjoy his old walking place on the walls. Where the crowds again gathered to watch him. Sometimes, preferring some privacy, the old man would turn instead to the green and make the circuit of the entire Inner Ward, stopping to talk with the yeoman warders and others he knew.

  Bess Ralegh moved back from Broad Street to the house on Tower Hill close by.

  Apsley was most courteous. He felt some pity for Ralegh. Some disapproval of the trickery which had placed him in the Tower again. But Apsley was not moved to act kindly either by pity or disapproval. Two luxuries, private feelings, he could not afford to act upon. He held in mind the scandal of the Overbury poisoning. He did not fancy the image of himself dying upon the scaffold like Sir Gervase Elwes. And, a hardened man who knew the wounds of this world, he took note that twice Ralegh had been lodged in the Tower and twice walked out by Lion Gate into London a free man. He would, therefore, endeavor to keep Ralegh’s good will until he was free again or safely dead.

  With small subtlety—what need for artful deception when power is beyond measure?—the King then appointed a man of his own choosing, Sir Thomas Wilson, to act as a second Lord Lieutenant. An equal, then, in rank, but without authority to command in the Tower, and so without responsibility. The King had his reasons. The Commission he appointed to examine Ralegh, ransacking the affair of his voyage and return and his attempt to escape, hearing every witness they could find, from steadfast Captain King down to the hired oarsmen of the wherry, was not moving to any resolution with dispatch. The King sent Wilson to act as Ralegh’s close keeper. His presence to prod the Commission. Chosen to win Ralegh’s confidence if that were possible. But chiefly to stick to him, a leech, next and near as a shadow. And to ferret out secrets, catch scent of plans or schemes which might elude the gentlemen of the Commission. Who were circumscribed by custom and procedure and, not least, caution of protecting their own interests.

  So Wilson had come to the Tower to take the keys and the keeping of Ralegh away from Apsley.

  Wilson might find a way to poison him, Apsley surmised. Ralegh could not be gulled by a spy. The King must know it too. If the Commission could not find grounds to punish him, if Wilson could not find or fabricate some other cause, then it would be a convenience if Ralegh died in the Tower. Perhaps even to Ralegh himself. A solution with advantages to many.

  Except, of course, to the Lord Lieutenant, who might have to die for it.

  Wilson might be a good intelligencer, but seemed less than gifted with extraordinary intelligence. Sounding the depths of him, Apsley has concluded that Wilson took on this task either at full value or as a man gambling recklessly for everything … or nothing. In either case a fool. In either case compelled to act in much the same fashion. Somehow convinced that he was capable, where betters had failed, of working a delicate foist and taking possession of Ralegh’s purse of secrets.

  Never mind motive then, if the actions that followed from it were to be identical. Wilson would fail. Failing, he might become desperate. Would turn from craft into an artless nip, a common cutpurse. Would fail in that too. Then, thoroughly frightened, he would be subject to suggestion from any quarter, including his own inner promptings. And then he might try poison.

  What Wilson, it seemed, would never come to face, at least until he, too, might stand shivering in his shirt upon a scaffold, was that the King had duped him. No matter what Wilson knew, Apsley knew that if Wilson murdered Ralegh, it would be both of them who would pay the price for the King’s convenience.

  All who dance must pay the piper.…

  After Wilson arrived, he ordered Ralegh moved to a small old cell, rich with pitiful inscriptions on the walls, in Constable Tower on the eastern side of the Inner Ward. Aptly chosen, for here in the time of Elizabeth many Catholic priests had been held. There Ralegh would be out of sight if not of mind.

  Wilson could not have imagined, unless he forgot the man’s whole history, that discomfort would overmaster Ralegh’s spirit. Or that Ralegh, who knew by heart every inch and niche of this tower, would be frightened by the words of men who had suffered here. Or that, fox defending life and den, he would feel any shame, having played a part in placing some of them here. Or that, being of a satiric turn of mind, Ralegh would credit Wilson with wit.

  Ralegh formally petitioned Star Chamber for better quarters. His situation became a matter of public record and could not be ignored. He was ordered moved to Brick Tower, north and east, quarters of the Master of Ordnance, and Ralegh’s first lodging in the Tower when Elizabeth had sent him there. From these casements he could see the Inner Ward and patches of the river and London coming up to its wall, Tower Hill, Aldgate, the raw shacks and suburbs, unlawful but irremediable, just beyond. And, beyond that, the wide fields, where women, following the old custom, spread out swaths of cloth for bleaching.

  Wilson countered. Wrote to the Council, pleading his prisoner was not secure. He would not object to the prisoner’s comfort and health. But Ralegh should have a safer, higher lodging. Somewhere, as Wilson put it, a little nearer to heaven and yet from which there could be no escape—save to hell.

  And once more he was transplanted, this time the old twig appropriately planted in the innermost, first, and final bastion of the fortress.

  The satirical thrust: here was where Sir Thomas Overbury took his sweet slow time dying of the poisoned tarts. Whose irony and to what purpose? Perhaps the Council, speaking finality. Possibly the Commission for the expedience of using the high old presence chamber for deliberations. Even, it may be, the King, to speak to them one and all and especially to Ralegh, saying: Let this man of history settle his fate in the Tower’s oldest place amid a fit company of English ghosts.…

  The White Tower at the center of the fort. Keep of the castle built by the Conqueror upon the very spot where an old timber tower of the Saxons stood. And both of these placed upon the ground and foundations, built of and out of the ruins, of an ancient bastion of Julius Caesar. A mighty tower, solid, with fifteen feet of wall.

  And there he lies now in one of the chambers, once used by monks and even the royal Court when this was the chief palace of London, near to the Chapel of St. John. A chamber decent enough for comfort. And far better for anything human than the places for wretches of no consequence who must try to live in the dark vaults of the chapel and the crypt. Why, on a rare morning not long ago, one of the last rinsed days of autumn, Apsley and Ralegh climbed to the high roof. Could see as far as Greenwich, as if through a spyglass. There the sun gilded the stones of palace buildings and the windows were shattered points and puffs of brightness. And breeze filled the sails of incoming ships.

  “Since our Lord Lieutenant is satisfied that the King’s clerks and lawyers know their trade, let us proceed with this business,” Wilson says.

  And so, accompanied by a yeoman warder, they go out across the green toward White Tower.

>   Apsley wonders if Ralegh will have had some warning. Like all the great men, he has a crew of intelligencers. Can, at dinner, delight and amaze with pictures of things to come soon, as much as any mountebank or prophet, but needing no inspiration for his prognostications. It will not surprise Apsley to find Ralegh dressed and ready, all aglitter, smoking his pipe and waiting for them.

  Though Ralegh has been courteous to him, Apsley is not deceived. Perhaps Ralegh likes him well enough, indeed wishes him well. But he has been used, set over and against Wilson by Ralegh. Encouraged—he is ashamed but not too blind to confess it to himself—in his fears of Wilson. To fear Wilson and his rashness and folly. Ashamed, but not too proud to see there is wisdom in Ralegh’s method. For just so long as the two, each contending with and suspicious of the other, were at odds, then Ralegh, though caught between two keepers, well kept, possessed the greatest degree of freedom and safety.

  He might die of fever or boredom, but not from any poison Wilson could procure. For from the learned Dr. John Dee, now gone to eternal reward or punishment, and from his own experiments, some performed here in the Tower, Ralegh knows as much of poisons and their remedies as any man in England. Perhaps even in Italy. Should it have suited his purposes, he could have poisoned Wilson, or indeed Apsley, and so that no man would have been wiser. Should it have served him, he could have poisoned himself and left the two of them behind to stew like a couple of Irish cows cooked in their own hides.

  Here again, now as they singly climb the flimsy outside stairs to the White Tower’s high chambers, Apsley wonders about Wilson. A spy, to be sure. And there are many of those of many stations and degrees. Some worth their wages, some worthless, pure extravagance; some skilled masters, some, who though they may be lucky and live long and die quiet, will remain forever prentices in the shadowy craft. But Sir Thomas Wilson is not an ordinary spy. He is the Kings man, specially chosen for this task by the King. Must, therefore, have skill or craft to catch the eye of the King from among all those the King could have, snapping his fingers one time. Just so …