Ready finally to rap on the door and hold up his head into the glare of a tallow candle, yellow in its horn lantern, unblinking in spite of the gasps which greeted him.
“I should have been here in time for supper. But I was set upon by a half-dozen idle rogues armed with cudgels.”
“Lord God, are you hurt?”
“A few bruises. No matter, no matter. One of these gypsies had a pistol and he pointed it straight at my heart.…
“But rain had ruined the fellow’s powder. He couldn’t make flash or fire. So I skewered him clean with my sword. Danced him like a chunk of mutton on a spit and left him to feed kites.
“If a man points pistol at me and aims to kill, he must pay the price.”
“And the others?”
“Well, now, when they saw this gypsy go to God, they dropped sticks and took off like a flock of bleating sheep. Haloo! says I. I may be late for supper but damn me if I’ll miss the sport! So I ran them for miles, clean out of the county. And I doubt they’ve caught their wind yet.…”
Laughs and laughs until the old servant chuckles too.
A pause.
“Well?”
“Are you finished, sir?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only, sir, if it pleases you, I was thinking if you had done with your tale, you might like to come in out of the rain.”
No, not that man. Who changed with the times without ever changing.
Ask him, and he’ll define mutability without hesitation.
“Why, ’tis the wiggling of fingers and wagging of hands whereby the deaf and dumb make chatter with each other.”
Take instead the other, the ageless young man.
Take him as young and unlined, save when he raises an eyebrow, or the laughing edges of his eyes, the corners of his lips; forever unchanging and unfading. He is the child of change. And all that can be outwardly seen of him, all that the changing world and Court could ever know, burning with change, his nature like the nature of flame, restless, ever swaying and dancing, dying down to flare up again with least encouragement of air.
If he is one man, he is also many. As all the cards together make a deck.…
And in that bunch every card’s a one-eyed knave!
Voice of our disgruntled, discarded country gentleman, still outraged.
Listen! he calls out. I know the fellow well, or else his twin brother. I sat at table playing cards with him. Played at Spanish primero and honest English trump. Played gleek and maw, post and pair, and Pope July, and never won so much as a clipped coin off him. Those young peacocks had rings upon their fingers with mirrors set amongst the jewels.
—Console yourself, sir, the young man replies. Think: Far from Court, far from care. Think, in restored country wisdom: A man must go old to Court and young to a cloister who wishes to go from thence to heaven.
Damn you, sir! (the other voice, fading, answering from safety of distance), An ape is still an ape though he be clad in purple.
—To which, sir, in the same spirit, permit me to reply: You cannot make a whistle out of a pig’s tail. Be content, and remember before you spurn that well-fed village widow: There is a virtue which poverty cannot destroy. Go to and be content. You are out of the rain. You are eating bread and cheese and drinking the widow’s cider from a stout wooden cup. And if the woman will believe half your tales, why you may yet be named the best liar in England.
There is no further answer from the other.
The young man turns to best advantage, to the light, to speak for himself.
—A poor country bumpkin, with little money and less charm. Though, perhaps, with a bare necessity of both, sufficient to lord it in some godforsaken village in a distant county where none of us knows anyone or wishes to. Some fellow whose grandfather was knighted by a dead king in a moment of drunkenness or fever. And on that alone, came bouncing into Court to make his fortune, to play the bright angel who tripped over the ledge of heaven and fell, ass over joint stool, down to common earth.
—Pity is wasted on the man. He is a sheep, fit for an age of sheep. And sheep are single-minded animals, solemn and stupid beyond believing. The last frisk of life goes out of them when they cease to be called lambs. Their happiest destiny is to be a joint of cold mutton in an alehouse.
—Believe me, I have no compassion for those fellows. The worst are insufferable impudent rogues. The best are bodies to fill a chamber or swell a progress. And each and every one is a clown. Of course, the more the merrier. We plucked them, feathers and all, down to natural goosebumps, and then sent them home. Without them one might have been sore pressed, at times, for money and amusement.
—I recall one solemn fellow, fat as a pig and not half so fastidious, who besought us, with most touching simplicity, to teach him the ways and manners of the Court and how to advance himself.
—We laughed and were about to begin his education with the art of throwing dice, when Harrington, Sir John, the Queen’s godson and a most amusing fellow, really, Harrington stopped us before we had begun.
“No, no!” quoth Harrington. “You idle, ignorant, lascivious, negligent, parasitical popinjays have forgotten the first principle of the Gospel according to Castiglione.”
“A sinister and wicked Italian, as I recall,” someone said. “A devious writer bent upon corrupting youth.”
“And, devoting yourselves to wholly frivolous pastimes when you could be reading The Book of Martyrs or hearing a sermon in the city.”
“But, Harrington,” says another, “I am a sort of martyr, don’t you see? I’ve taken on poverty, chastity, and obedience, all in the service of the Queen. And now I offer my life and example, a martyr to eternal tedium.”
“Be still,” Harrington says. “You were born to die at the end of a rope. It’s written in the stars.”
“I never look at the stars. They are too perfect. Perfection is tedious too.”
“You are so debauched, so vicious with deadly sloth and the other six, whatever they may be, you have forgotten all you learned in school, if you learned anything but to count the strokes of the master’s cane on your backside. Have you forgotten Ovid? This world is nothing but continual change and transformation. And I propose to prove the poet was right. I intend to turn this into a silk purse.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” says the fat boy. “And I promise to share with you anything that Fortune may send to fill that silk purse.”
—Followed by our laughter, a pack of hounds at their heels, Harrington and the fellow left our chamber arm in arm.
—Rumor was bruited about that Harrington was dead earnest in his pedagogy. And, sure enough, he might have been a Jesuit for all we saw of him for a month or so. We heard he was teaching the fellow, in brief, of course, according to Castiglione. He was seen hopping about like a trained seal, while Sir John shouted hoarse encouragement, at an Italian fencing school. Someone passed beneath a window and heard a lute, terribly tuned, tortured, and a voice singing what might have been “Greensleeves,” if sung by a drunken Muscovite.
—It was widely believed in our circle that Harrington would try to pass the fellow off as a foreigner. Or perhaps with a cloak of feathers and stain of walnut juice he could play an Indian. In rags he would be a perfect Irishman.
—Not so.…
—At last Harrington placed him in the care of his own tailor. Then brought him forth, a very elegant satirical model of the finest men of the Court. Perfect to the last details tailor and barber could contrive.
—Being the Queen’s godson and amusing to Her Majesty at all but most serious moments, Sir John had no difficulty arranging occasion to present his pupil to the Queen. It was, as I recall, in the large presence chamber at Whitehall. There were many of the Court there, for the news had traveled the corridors on greased wheels.
—The two were summoned and brought forward to kneel before Her Majesty. They must have rehearsed it a thousand times. For the pupil dropped to his knees before the Queen a
s graceful as if he had been doing so for all his years.
—Unfortunately, as he did so, he farted.
—It was not, I should venture, a decorous fart. Some say it was a trumpet fart. Others, because of the rich resonance, insist that it was more like the deep blast of an hautboy. It reminded me of nothing so much as a large cannon fired in a small room.
—At that moment all the candles flickered and burned blue. Portraits went aslant on the walls. A pensioner or two may have fainted. I swear I heard a halberd fall and clatter on the floor before the echo had died away. There was so great a quiet you could have heard whispers behind a lady’s fan at a hundred yards.
“Which one of you did that?” Her Majesty demanded.
“I confess it was I,” Harrington, ever unruffled, replied. “I’ve been somewhat windy all day.”
—The Queen said nothing for a moment, staring at the two of them.
—And very slowly, as if fire had been kindled behind his eyes, the round face of the pupil began to glow, first maiden blushing pink as dawn, then brighter and deeper, until, having run through a full day in less time than it requires to snap your fingers, his face was a truly magnificent sunset painted in scarlet.
“Damn you Jakes Harrington, you tell more lies than the Pope’s epitaph!” the Queen said. “It was that fat boy who let fly the fart. Begone, both of you. My eyes are burning and I think I may go blind.”
The young man smiles again, tilts his head and seems to lean back against nothing, as he might be resting against a wall or a column. A trick, no doubt, he learned at Court.
Come closer and see him change, transformed without moving muscle or adding a cubit to his stature. Except, of course, as fashion in heels and in thickness of soles causes him to rise and fall.
First, he’s beardless as a boy, short-haired, flat soft slanting cap with a burst of downy feathers over one ear. Long, high collared doublet, short hose, and over all a long gown with hanging sleeves, fur-trimmed; heavy shoes with square, blunted toes.
Next he wears a beard, long and full, merging with a thick, downturning mustache; paned and sleeveless jerkin, embroidered shirt beneath; a jewel or two, thin rim of white at the collar; and where he once wore an ornamental dagger, he wears one sharp enough to carve meat; and wears also a large-handled, heavy, one-handed sword.
Look again.… Well before the Armada sailed you find him—a little awkward now—in padded and stiffened short doublet with many buttons and peascod belly (like a pregnant wench). Puffed sleeves with wings, short hose and bright garters; flat lacework collar overtopped by the high rising of a white shirt collar. Long hair, cut even below the ears, and beard and mustache short and pointed and tamed.
—Truly, he interrupts, that was a bad time, brief as it was, for any man with decent conformation. It was a plot, a conspiracy of certain wicked old men, rough seagoing types and suchlike who were then close to Her Majesty. Or perhaps it was Her Majesty’s stratagem to make these salty dogs at home in the Court. And an attempt, wasted of course, to make the rest of us, her perennial honeybees, ashamed of being such idle fops. The Queen was very moral at times about such things. She offered us occasional opportunities to feel some shame for our shallow lives and idle pastimes. But I am happy to report that none of my acquaintance ever took advantage of the occasion. Nor, I suppose, did she expect us to.
—May I say with all modesty that upon one occasion I was kneeling nearby in attendance, and I overheard Her Majesty jesting with the Earl of Leicester. Who, as her favorite then, set the fashions.
“If we women were half as vain and inconstant in our clothing,” she said, “we would ruin our lovers and husbands and plunge the kingdom into poverty.”
—Leicester grumbled and pretended to take offense. He assured the Queen that he took no more thought about matters of appearance than a scarecrow in a field; for she of all people should know that his heart and mind were wholly given over to the service of Her Majesty. She looked into his earnest face where he knelt next to her, the portrait of an aged choirboy. And then she laughed out loud. “Go to, go to!” she cried out. So heads turned from a distance and the corners of the chamber quieted to hear.
“You foolish man, I’ll wager a jewel if you come here for dinner tomorrow, barefoot and naked as Adam, with only an empty fish cask to hide your shame, why, before supper every man in Court, except my Guard, will be clad in wooden staves and smelling of flounder.”
“If I did that,” the Earl said, “I would want time to discuss the matter with my friends in the fish market.”
“You would, indeed,” she said, pinching the jowl of his cheek. “A proper cask would be worth its weight in silver before you put it on.”
“Well,” says he, “a well-made cask is worth a lot to a fishmonger.”
“You’d extoll the virtues of wicker baskets and then buy casks for half what they’re worth.”
“I fear you don’t know the shrewd practices and sharp wit of London fishmongers,” he says. “An empty cask in and of itself is one thing. A pure fish barrel, as it were. There are very few of those, Your Majesty.”
“Do you speak from experience or rumor, Robin?”
“From speculation, ma’am. You know I am a Puritan at heart.”
“Go on, then. Tell us your fantasy.”
“I say that an empty fish cask, pristine and unsullied, is rare as the unicorn in this kingdom.”
“Then you shall have to buy full casks. What will you do with the fish?”
“When the watch is sound asleep, I’ll steal through the streets of London and leave heaps and mounds of fish at every corner. And for years after it will be a holiday, proclaimed by the Lord Mayor himself, the Day of the Earl of Leicester’s Miracle. He produced no loaves at all, but there were fishes in God’s plenty.”
“Why, man, the whole of London will stink of dead fish.”
“It will not be noticed, ma’am.”
“It is a miracle that I do not box your ears in the presence of this company.”
“Why then, I could not wear a fish barrel. Nothing but sackcloth and ashes would serve me.”
“Ah, Robin, not even you could bring sackcloth and ashes into fashion in my Court. But I still wager a jewel you won’t appear tomorrow in a fishmonger’s cask. You are too vain.”
“Your Majesty knows me well, chapter and verse. You shall have your jewel. But I am not so certain that vanity is the spring of my fears.”
“What then?”
“Allow me a little Christian compassion,” he says. “Some of these fine fellows are as slender and delicate as a willow wand … (Pointing directly at me where I knelt and she nodding and smiling.)
“And might shiver to death in Adam’s costume.”
“I suppose,” she said, still glancing at me, “it would be a trick to kneel in a cask.”
“Perhaps he could manage a fig leaf gracefully.”
“Go to, you naughty man!”
—Where were we? Ah, yes, we were digressing upon the theme of the padded doublet, if anyone could possibly care. Of course, God’s truth, there were times when I cared about nothing else but fashion. And, considering all, those times were, if I may say so, among my most memorable.
It is possible to believe him.
—Pray do not fall into that common error. Nothing good can come from too much trust between strangers—friends either. Excess leads to ruination. The rule of moderation holds true for everything save laughter. There can never be enough of that. Without the gift of laughter we should surely enjoy a second Deluge, for this world would be drowned in tears.…
The faint smile never flickers, but the eyes are tired and sad. In a moment he might weep, if ghosts can shed tears. Perhaps, like a player, he can summon tears for any performance.
—Let us return to the high thin air of Courts, thinner and colder than winds of the Alps.
No doubt he has visited Italy.
—Every Englishman of any quality has made a tour there. Has trav
eled in spirit if flesh were willing, but purse too thin.
—Now then, let us be done with the peascod doublet once and for all.
—I do here solemnly confess that I, too, wore it when that was the fashion, ridiculous as a puppet, Punch or Judy, no matter which. But there were other choices. When I could, despite its overt military air, I wore a pinked sleeveless jerkin, pinched in tight at the waist, with a high standing collar, chin up like any fearless soldier, and only a thin line of puffed lace along the edge. It suited me well, except for a flare at the hips and the loose short breeches. Which implied that I was proud possessor of a beam as broad as a Devonshire milkmaid.
Now see him in the glorious eighties, wearing a short doublet, knee breeches, long trunk hose, short, elegantly embroidered doublet fitting naturally; a cloak worn loose with a swagger, held by hidden laces; the collar gone, replaced by starched white folds of ruff, slanting from beneath the ears down to the point of the beard; rings on his fingers, and jewels join the feathers of his cap. For his feet he wears soft felt or velvet, backless mules; high boots for outdoors.
—Let the record show that I courageously ignored the prevailing fashion of the high-crowned sugarloaf hat. I owned one like everyone else; and, I admit I wore it once. But my friends told me that I most resembled a chimney looking for a fire.
At the time of the Armada see him in matching doublet and Venetians, soft slippers with backs, and an astounding cartwheel ruff of lace, held out half a yard by wire or bone, and making his head, the hair a little longer and brushed back behind the ears, seem set upon a white platter.
Before the century has turned, he is in better form in tight fitting doublet, short, the shoulders widened and padded with wings; much intricate small decoration and embroidery against sober colors; the ruff diminished to more modest proportion, but now aided and abetted by a lace collar, or a falling band, beneath it; of the same material, delicate to transparency, an inch or so of lace cuff turned back at the ends of the sleeves.
In the Court of King James the ruff will grow marvelous again, then mysteriously vanish forever, replaced by a wide starched collar; short doublet coming to a point; a length of stocking for the showing off of a fine leg—thin ones could be deftly padded, but woe to a fat man; seldom sword and harness; pointed shoes with high cork heels, roses and ribbons or jewels on the shoe; and, like it or not, a tall crowned hat, wide or narrow of brim, with a colorful band and one or more feathers drooping low. Hair longer, sometimes to shoulder length; beard no more than a well-trained point of the chin; mustache, however, full and wide and waxed.
Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Page 26