Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh

by George Garrett

  “I am ashamed already,” he replied.

  “For the good of your soul I ought to send you off to Oxford as you are—a Westcountry vagabond with an empty stomach and not a penny to your name. Perhaps you can fall in with a tribe of gypsies and live a happy life.

  “But you seem somewhat humbled by your adventures. And we are, you and I, alas, of the same stock and blood, however distant. And perhaps they can make a semblance of a gentleman out of you at Oriel, if never a scholar. And, above all, you will be there. My conscience need trouble me no longer. Therefore give thanks that you have a most charitable cousin.”

  He gave him money in an old purse. Not enough for renting a horse or riding a baggage cart (“You walked here—no doubt to save money for the city—but walking nonetheless. Walking you came in, and walking you shall go out!”) and only enough to spare for a modest chamber (“What need a featherbed for a stout fellow who sleeps in open fields?”) and the simple ordinary at the inns (“Eat plain and hearty fare and your stomach will thank you for it.”).

  “I thank you kindly.”

  “Be off with you now and allow me the pleasure of forgetting you.”

  He nodded and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” his cousin said.

  And when he turned back his cousin threw him a penny he had to stoop for.

  “You may wonder what that is for. Well, sir, walk over to Bethlehem Hospital, which the vulgar call Bedlam. And there for a penny they will let you wander about among the lunatics and see the worst of them chained to the walls. Which is where you will be if you don’t mend your ways. Which I doubt upon the grounds of Scripture—the leopard cannot change his spots.”

  “Our Savior did heal the mad,” Ralegh said softly. “He cast out demons more than once. Do you recall the incident in the country of the Gadarenes?”

  “The demons were turned into pigs, were they not? and leapt to their deaths.”

  “Not all of them,” Ralegh said. “Some lived to propagate and multiply. And over the ages have turned back into a semblance of human form.”

  “What proof of that nonsense?”

  “I did not believe it myself,” Ralegh answered. “But now I will bear witness under oath that I have seen the living proof of it in London—a pig in a gown at Gray’s Inn who calls himself a cousin.”

  And he hurled the penny at his cousin’s face. Turned heels and walked out across the courtyard, his cousin shouting after him.

  “Pride, Wat Ralegh! Your damned pride will undo you. Mark my words.”

  Pompous fool was right of course. He came to nothing good, but nothing evil either. hived quiet enough, a gentleman and justice of the peace in Devon. Lived to die quiet in his bed.

  Walked out proud enough and direct to a barber. From which, patched up and brushed clean, he went forth to find rain and clouds gone and sunlight making a balmy day. Set out walking down Fleet to Temple Bar. But the way was crowded with sober, decent folk, and he turned to the river and took the ragged lane called the Strand, running past the gatehouses of bishops and great men, then going up and on to Charing Cross. Past St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields and fine houses (one of Burghley’s) and the sign of the inn of The Swan. Where a drink would have soothed him, but cost too much.

  By then he was sweating in the sun and his muscles and bones were new again. So he could laugh at his own folly and his kinsman’s shocked furious final face, as he swung north from St. Martin’s, stopping for a drink of water from the old well at St. Giles in the fields. A mean, poor, dirty little village it was. A few shops and sagging houses clustered close around the dissolved and decaying hospital for lepers. Fearing that all his doings were written on his flesh and announced by a bell which would call folks out of their houses to shout “Unclean!”, he muttered a prayer to St. Giles, especial patron of lepers and cripples.

  Perhaps his good cousin (damn his eyes!) was right. Pride would be his lameness.

  Well, St. Giles, help me get from here to Oxford. Though you were not much comfort to Sir John Oldcastle, when that poor knight was slow-roasted in chains here. And, since he had time while they cooked him, I wager he called upon every other saint he had ever heard of. No, Saint Giles, thank you for the drink of cool water and that is all I ask. Though I confess a Smithfield saloop would be better medicine for what ails me. Better a beggar with a clapper than a cellar in St. Giles, Londoners say, to mark the lowest ebb of poverty. Well, Saint, I thank you, but I shall not tarry here. Amen.…

  Off again until the road crossed the highroad to Oxford. And turned west on it. Stepping lively, to the rhythm of tunes he learned in London and could now whistle against loneliness.

  A poor scholar he was, but poor he would always be, Master of Arts or no. For that boy was feeling shrunk to the size of a dwarf, after the extraordinary shine of London. Feeling good to have seen it and known it once, feeling good to be young and strong. Keeping his pride, but feeling no hints of promise as he walked toward a place where he would be too poor to buy or even to rent his own gown.

  Smarting in love and pride and shame for the old name he bore, for his Westcountry home and accent and ways. Not daring to dream much. Not caring much yet.

  Not knowing how much he cared.…

  An ignorant boy came to London and caught the fever of it, though he knew it not.

  Will not say farewell to city or fever now. Too many farewells already. Too many times. None final, excepting as every farewell is final.

  Came to love this city as I have loved my home in Devon. Have seen her all in grandeur and all naked and bare. But I am not a boy now. Or, rather, since I bear the boy I was within me, I am more than that boy.

  Am also an old man with a new sack of rags and bones, each one a regret.

  I regret the loss of a London I never truly possessed.

  Better and wiser I had followed John Stow with his measuring stick and his spade.

  Poor Stow, he followed me, at a distance and not at expense of study, and my fortunes. This man who has made London forever new by charting it old. Up and down. By 1580 we were called Collegium Antiquariorum. And by favor of the Queen we met at Herald’s College. Were we not like heralds bringing news and true reports? Bishop Parser, upon whose power and favor the thing commenced, was dead and gone. Thus not able to taste the first fruits of his planting.

  And the paradox of the merchant tailor—Stow. Thus favored, he gave his time and substance to his task. To what purpose? The new King favored neither the enterprise nor him. To keep old English embers glowing, giving off heat, was not the intent of the King.

  And it may be—I can conceive it—Stow and some others, too, of that little band, suffered from the King’s suspicions because I had been one among them. They were forbidden to meet again, though they could not be prevented from happening upon the Boar’s Head Tavern upon the same evening.

  Could not prevent some of these from coming to the Tower as visitors to me. But the sun was not shining on them.

  Poor Stow, now truly poor, and weary from labors, received in reward neither aid nor pension, but, satirically, a patent from the King—a license to be a beggar.

  Died within a year. Scarcely time for a man of four score years to learn a new trade.

  Yet, thanks be to God and to John Stow, his Survey of London restored the freedom of the city to me even as I was penned in the Tower. Thanks to his pen, I could walk those streets again.

  I could wish you were with me, old man of Three-Needle Street, my companion here and now. To brighten a brief moment with the long-burning light of the past. Could wish you here and this boat a proud and decorated barge, myself having come to fetch you to the Queen. Who shall this day honor and reward you. I am her Captain again, and all the boats and wherries must give way for us. Watermen and citizens raise their hats and cheer. Ships at anchor and tied to wharfs fly flags, fire cannon salutes, and the crews climb ratlines to see you. You stand in honor, uneasy not to be walking, tall and lean.

  John Stow, I am no pr
ophet, no prognosticator. But I will tell you this. The King is a scholar and he writes books, a rare thing for any king. Still, reason tells me your words will live when his, and mine, too, no doubt, are feeding the insatiable worms that love most those books least read.

  —Why so? you ask. I never sought to write wisdom.

  —John Stow, wisdom and folly are close kin and time will make one common tomb for both of them. Your pains and care were for simple truth. Which is most precious, the brightest of all things in this dark dream of a world.…

  In time measured by sands in a glass or by clocks, time passing has been too short for measuring. A few grains of sand, a stutter of the clock hand, a blink of the eyes. Time for a few strokes of the oars of the barge, a call from the coxswain, as she eases into the river and the incoming tide, straightens and steadies to go.

  If sun were shining, sky were blue, and water calm, they would still be floating in the shimmering image of the Tower. Having moved less space than a stone’s throw.

  Such is the time of memory, though memory may be long.

  Time of tides is otherwise, rising and falling to the whims of the moon. Rising and falling to the stirring and shifting of the vast sea, engirdling the landsman’s world. The sea owes fidelity and obedience to the moon; yet the sea and the winds are free to blow and rage together from all quarters, and free also to be deadly calm. The tide of the Thames, then, servant to the sea, rising and falling to a great command, within an ordered scheme.

  Yet the simple truth, and any fisherman or waterman can tell you so: no two rivers or harbors have the same scheme of time, rising and falling. Each with its own rhythm and order. And even within that ordering much change according to the seasons and the moon.

  And the fat or thin of the moon comes from the sun, as the moon on its own rhythm and set in its path as strict as the river must follow its banks. That moon, ever the same, is ever changing, new to old to new again, and thus forever different.

  Tides of the sea will sometimes rise high, lap over bank and wharf, flood low places and then withdraw again.

  Against those tides, steady and undeterred, is the river’s flowing. Which, according to clouds and sky and rain, according to the wealth or poverty of well and freshet and spring, will flow now swift, cloudy as a horse trough with a cargo of earth, now slow, a thin clear trickling. And more than once in a lifetime has turned into an ice as thick as stone pavement.

  Each thing, all things sublunary, being bound in obedience to the other, yet each in bondage separate and free to be and become itself. By letter of natural law condemned to constancy. Yet, by the terms and spirit of the same law, pardoned and free to be forever changing, thus ever inconstant.…

  Standing, his hand light upon the shoulder of an oarsman, who has dipped and pulled his oar a few strokes only, breathing the river, Ralegh can picture in the same tumbling time as a shuffling cascade of cards the journey of the river toward this place. A passage to here and beyond.

  Arising, some say, from the seven clear cold bubbling springs, called Seven Sisters, near Cheltenham. Others name other sources; no matter. For certain this river flows two hundred crooked miles to London. Longest and largest of English rivers, swallowing other rivers, freshets, streams, rills, and these all fed by the waters of wells and springs beyond counting.

  Flowing toward London and the sea. Past many places he has known.

  Past Oxford, where gentlemen and scholars can boat but are not supposed to swim. But where on warm nights without too much moon he shucked clothing and played and splashed like a dolphin. And once on a bitter starless night when the river was all thinly frozen, he slipped out of chambers, climbed silent over the wall, and went alone to break the sheen of ice and feel the breathtaking cold as he plunged in to test his manhood. As a boy will do.

  Flowing past Oxford, walls and towers of colleges. Where the river is called Isis.

  Beginning a taut loop, a bending, like a pulled bow, as it runs past the ruined Benedictine abbey at Abingdon, once nearly dying into nothing with the monks gone, but now reviving on the power of malt.

  Past Dorchester, where the Augustinians were. Here where the first West Saxon Christian king was baptized in the river. And where no snake or adder may dwell within the sound of the bell of the abbey church of Peter and Paul.

  Below here Isis and River Thame join in matrimony, the holy mystic copulation of waters, to become one—the Thames.

  Subject worthy of celebration by his friend, the poet Spenser. And, indeed, Spenser was planning such a poem once—Epithalamion Thamesis. In which not only Thame and Isis were to be wed, but every river and stream in England would come as wedding guests.

  Past Wallingford, named for Saxon crossings, where the cock crows and hens lay eggs in the ruins of the abbey and the duchy castle still stands proud, though harmless now.

  See how the river, renewed, now begins to wander idly, as if more sure of its destination, certain and unhurried, south of the chalk and the tall beeches of Chiltern Hills. Going gentle past farms and villages, and half-timbered houses.

  Grows stronger and deeper, drinking the waters of the Kennet at Reading. Where stones of the abbey have served to make a royal lodge, the Queen’s House, and been dispersed to many purposes.

  Then turns again to uncoil in a shivering of loops and slack knots like a tossed length of line.

  Passing by Sonning and Henley. Bending up and around and down again to run beneath the gray freestone battlements of Windsor Castle, lofty on one bank, and the school of Eton upon the other.

  Windsor, a proper royal castle, sited splendid upon a chalk hill to view the woods and fields and the river.

  Windsor, once perfection of and still a wonder for hunting. Especially for the red deer. With sixty and more parks for this purpose, each enclosed, but by gates opening into another.

  Arthur is said to have built the first fortress tower here, where now the central keep, like the drum of a giant, stands. And there are those who multiply the myth beyond the powers of imagination, saying: long before Arthur it was Arviragus, son of Cymbeline, who built here.

  Well, even a man who is skeptically inclined will confess the original to be old. Someone before the dawn of English memory built there. And all kings thereafter built upon the place anew or repaired the old.

  Three courts, each one within the other. Chapel of St. George there, saint of the Knights of the Garter. Where hang that order’s shields and helmets and banners. Where is a most remarkable organ able to mimic the noise of any musical instrument. Tombs and towers. Residences and apartments furnished with hangings of gold and silver and precious stones. Some chambers all ceilinged and walled with mirror glass. A high open-timbered gallery from which the ladies can watch the hunting.

  And for a conny of quality, native or stronger, who is willing to believe, there are such treasures as the horn of a unicorn, nine spans long. Or the magnificent Bird of Paradise, bird which never pecked or flew nor had to be gutted and stuffed, being artfully contrived out of air and feathers and whole cloth.

  Let false birds and mystic horns, fancies of wood and jewels called joinery and hangings and glass mirrors repeating the image of a man beyond counting be emblems for Windsor. Remembering that all these can be easy enough packed and removed and rearranged in another place, for another time. As in the theater. For theater it was and remains though the old stones are true.

  And the river, no trick of scenery, flows by, indifferent to both truth and illusion.

  The river flows on, in a while dividing round the sparse island of Runnymede. Where a king of England, bowing his head to parchment, in the iron presence of his barons, did, with no more than a whisk, a scribbling, scratching flourish of the end of his pen, change the chronicles of England forever.

  Now moving, a lazy snake in the first warmth of spring, as towns and villages press closer to each other—Egham, Staines, of the old London Stone, Chertsey, Walton, Hampton, Molesey.…

  Now and next, and p
roperly called an Honor of the Crown, is Cardinal Wolsey’s elephant of folly, which serves the Crown better—Hampton Court. Close by the bank of the river and made of red brick.

  Enter the gate, above which remains the late Queen’s golden rose and her device, Dieu et mon Droit, into a puzzles game of ten courts. With, outside the walls, two parks, one for the deer and the other for coursing hare. Enter into a plenitude of chambers, residences, apartments. The chapel and hall, high-vaulted with Irish oak which forbids spiders and cobwebs and will stand off any insect or gnawing vermin.

  And here most especially the strangers who visit—princes, nobility, ambassadors, and such—are bedazzled by the richness and abundance of things—hangings, tapestries, paintings, the wonders of the Paradise Room. But if dazzled by the opulence, they are delighted by contrivances and curiosities: the machine of the fountains in courtyard and garden, permitting the water to be played upon as a musical instrument, from towering jets and columns, to drops as light as a lady’s tears; the twelve Caesars done lifelike in plaster; spheres and astrolabes; exact portrayals of the native man, woman, and child Sir Martin Frobisher brought home with him from the Northwest, together with their curious clothing and the costumes of others from far lands; musical instruments made of gold and silver and glass; the head of the spear which was thrust into the side of our Lord and Savior.

  The river goes on without awe or servility. Lazy and indifferent to the wonders and follies of man’s making.…

  Here at Hampton our King assembles the full Court in early September. And his Court has grown so large with new offices and appointments and hordes of hangbys, that even the King must read the Book of Offices to know one from the other. And not all the apartments of Hampton can house them, but fields and courts of tents are needed.

  The river needs no book to make distinctions between fool and wise men, all being equal.…

  The river needs no accommodations, being surely bound for home.…

  Hampton is most pleasant for that courtier with a full purse of unworried time to spend. Great Henry left cockpits, bowling alleys, tennis courts, and tiltyards enough to keep them so busy in idleness as to be unable to meddle in affairs of state or to sweat too much while waiting for advancement.