All are seeking, have and will so long as they live, and none will find it until it arrives.
In adversity now, in strict and simplified condition, Walter Ralegh is spared from this common expense of spirit. And what was once a young soldier’s way, to live most keenly here and now by chosen deferral of the future, has remained his own. Long since he concluded that Fortune (that fantasy of men) is not a subject of foreknowledge. If so, Providence, which is no fantasy, is beyond powers of reason or imagination to comprehend. Why would God be so careless as to cloak his enigma in the sounds of a few birds, in the actions of stars or the habits of common plants? Since no man since Adam has understood these holy mysteries, then only the most ignorant or vain, in this age of iron, can assume himself to be chosen and gifted above all mankind to know. The wisest know only this—that the mystery is there, written on everything and in the hearts and bones of the living. From Ralegh, who can imagine only an alternative, single and profoundly simple—he will live or he will die this morning—to the King of England, who believes it is his duty to imagine something of the future of his kingdom into times beyond any imagining.
And yet there is not one soul in all of England or the world who can at this moment, between the last of the night and the beginning of the day, picture the future. For the future is always, as the dead Queen could have told them, stranger than all dreaming and imagination.
If, as many awake, living and breathing this morning believe, ghosts of the dead possess the vision of what will be, being bodiless as dreamers who are lifted above demarcations of time, now is time for them to speak their news, before cockcrow sends them to narrow beds of clay and cold stone.
But the dead have nothing to say to the living.
Perhaps because they have found no language the living can comprehend.
Perhaps because, out of an enormous weariness, they wish to spare the living any diminution of the doubts and fears which are the privilege of the living.
Perhaps because the dead do not know or, anyway, turn away from all vision of the future lest they, too, must bear the inevitable crippling sorrow of ancient gods, prophets, and seers, being already freighted with a sad cargo of memories, of the things undone which they ought to have done, of those things done which they ought not to have done, the sum of which must seem, in the strict cells of clay and stone where they wait for the Day of Judgment, the true accounting of their lives.
This day ghosts will go to ground and keep silence, as always.
Still, in this final hour between old night and the new day, between dreaming and waking, a time outside the music of living time, the secrets of the future are there, just as the forgotten past blooms briefly again.
In this kingdom the beginning and the end lies with the King. Though not so much as he hopes and wishes.
Begin and end with James, the King.
His alternative, as he can conceive it, is as simple as Ralegh’s.
The Spanish Match. Either he will succeed and it will follow. Or all this will come to nothing.
Beyond which he cannot imagine worse.
Nor can imagine whether success or failure will prove well or ill. Or whether decisions he has made and must make will prove to be wise or foolish. Cannot imagine if, either way, wise or foolish, he will live to know or whether or not his subjects will take the results (success or failure) as wise or foolish, and praise or blame him, living or dead, for his choices.
Beyond the imagining of the King are some truths:
that, after a long life of fear of violent death, he will die safe in bed, unwounded, and with all the cloudy questions, which plague him, remaining unanswered;
that this death by nature will be worse by far than violent wounds, will be long, exquisitely painful, and ineffably sad;
that it will be Charles, his son and heir, who will one day die violently and more so than James has ever feared or imagined for himself, his own fear being transmuted into the fate of his son’s blood and bone;
but that when that day will come the son will triumph over the father’s fears, dying with no fear and dying well;
that young Carew Ralegh will be Charles’ friend, and faithful too, to the end, just as Carew will be friend and companion to the son of Robert Cecil;
that an awkward boy, one whom the King has never so much as heard of, one Richard Brandon, who, in the course of practice of the vocation he is this morning seeking to learn, will be the instrument to end his dreams and the life of Charles;
that after that day and time (sooner than anyone, king or fool, can imagine) England will change her nature and, though changing again and again ever after, will never be the same nation again;
that his lifelong labor for peace, for the blessed name of peacemaker, will in his lifetime come to nothing and Charles, the son, and Buckingham, favorite and pupil, will make war and disastrously; and likewise igniting fires of a full century of war and devastation on the Continent;
that soon enough Charles and Buckingham, called Steenie, will bury him twice over, first in metaphor and truth while he lives, as he had feared Prince Henry would, never finding cause to fear Charles or Steenie enough; then literally, though after any time when living or dying will matter to James; that, soonest, Queen Anne will be dead and that in her absence he will have much time to come to know what value, what service she had been to him when he did not know it;
that, to compound irony, another of his deep fears will prove to have been premonition, though not for himself but for Steenie, who will die in agony from an assassin’s knife, just so;
that pupil and protege, this handsome Steenie, will prove too perfect in his studies, learning everything—including, it may be, the art of poison—too well, but not learning what virtues James could have taught;
that thus this pupil, like Carr, will become a figure sculpted by the King, but one whose perfection will be to be a living parody of the King’s best intentions;
these and many more things, all sharp turnings against him, sharper than blades, the King could even now imagine as contingencies and spare himself and his progeny and projects the consequences of, if he dared to look deep enough into himself, dared to set free imagination wholly to face the future he loves and lusts for, both himself and the future meeting in the naked embrace of lovers; but will not; and so, for a time, since there is neither hope nor amendment possible, is spared the horrid vision of his future stripped of all finery, wigless, without paint and perfume, until there is no remedy but to bear it;
that least of all can he conceive the destiny of Walter Ralegh, whose future lies now most firmly in the King’s hands and is conceivable; that Walter Ralegh, who has squandered his future many times over and should for certain be bankrupt for all future time;
that it will be, in times beyond imagining, Ralegh’s spirit and name which will be summoned up in memory by many who will know him not well, if at all; and that many of these, honoring the name and spirit of a stranger, will find inspiration to actions which would have appalled him.
Nor can Ralegh, though a student of the ironies of time and capable as any man of comprehending the turns and counterturns of future time, imagine the satirical ending of his own chronicle, as for example:
that many, indeed most of his schemes will truly come to pass, though in different form than he imagined or intended, so that he will come in time to seem a kind of prophet, child of the future he renounced;
that strangers and countrymen will take his spent memory and recreate it as they wish and need, sometimes into a heroic emblem, blindly admired; sometimes equally distorted and defaced, made into a bloody-minded, deceitful, conniving, ruthlessly ambitious rogue, a sign and symbol of a mad brutal age of scheming, himself the chief schemer among a crowd of murderers, vagabonds, and knaves;
that of all his writings, the outward and visible expense of his feeling and thought, it will be the poems which will live longest, at the last to be read by schoolboys just as he once read the tags and remn
ants of the ancients, and that his greatest labor, the History, will live for a brief time, flourish, then vanish into dusty places;
that Sherbourne, though lost for good to himself or his line, will endure, be preserved, a monument at the last, not to the Digby’s, who will keep and preserve it, but to himself;
that even his name will change, becoming most commonly known and spelled in the one fashion which, among half a hundred variations he used, he never once employed.
Many things happen between the cup and the lip.
Nor can any of the others whose lives and fortunes for yesterday and this day impinge upon the life and fortune of Walter Ralegh, imagine the separate futures which wait upon them already.
Each at this moment dividing night from dawn is, no matter how surrounded by kith and kin, friends and servants, alone with his store of memory and the secret ciphers which make a record of it, and with the present of clear, cold, starlit time.
Each is clothed in garments of his own concerns. They pass each other, strangers in a strange land, without seeing. Or are like ships on open sea at night, each with a lone lantern burning high on the poop. Not ships passing each other or on a crossing course, but each, unknown to the other, sailing the same course, riding the same wind, sailing for the same unknown destination.…
Sir Lewis Stukely, Vice-Admiral of Devon, already revenged for injustice (real or imaginary) inflicted by his kinsman, enriched for his service to the King and soon to be richer. He will move to receive the blessings of the Lord Admiral, then, he thinks, to take the Destiny, furniture, fittings, and cargo.
Will not believe his ears (this morning, no later) when he hears Lord Howard of Nottingham, who should be too old to summon up more than a weary shrug: “Thou base fellow! Thou, the scorn and contempt of men! How dare you presume to come into my presence!”
Stukely will not have the Destiny or any part of it.
Three fourths of all that vessel’s value is already marked for Bess Ralegh, in payment for her investment in the venture; and she will have it though many others will remain unpaid.
Yet, fleeing wrath and public disgrace, the Lord Admiral’s voice striking him like a knotty cudgel, and assuming that to be the worst he could imagine, Stukely will be wrong. It will not be the worst.
Within a few months, he will find himself out of favor with every man in England. Will have the King’s reply to his complaint ringing his head more roundly than the Lord Admiral’s words.
“I cannot hang every man who speaks ill of you,” the King will tell him. “There are not enough trees in this kingdom.”
And shortly enough he’ll be penniless, a pauper and felon in the Tower, charged and punished for counterfeiting. And false or true (whether a portion of his payment was made in clipped coin to ensnare him or he was so reduced and rash to clip coins himself) no one will care, and no one will ever know.
Still young, he will die a madman on the Isle of Lundy within two years.
Sir Thomas Wilson, undaunted, will have the wisdom of past experience confirmed again. He will find himself out of favor and out of purse for his service. Lucky to keep body and soul together, neither sadder nor wiser. Of the books, papers, maps, instruments, etc., he desires, some few will indeed go to the King, but none will pass through Wilson’s hands.
He will live to see Lord Lieutenant Apsley, his bad fortunes ended, marry off his daughters well.
Sir Hugh Hammersley will have some present fears come true, but he could take heart if he imagined that, come what may, he will be both colonel and president of the London Artillery, will be most influential in days ahead. And it will be he who holds this office upon the erection and opening of Artillery Garden in 1622. All in due time, in 1627 he will be the Lord Mayor of London as well.
Sir Sebastian Harvey will be led a merry chase. While he swears his oath in Westminster Hall, the winds will turn again, and weather will turn with the wind. Cold rains will blow away much of the joy of the procession, will wet and stain and soak a wealth of finery and expensive robes, including his own.
Yet for all this, Harvey will have his day to remember. A day which will be remembered.
Within the year, seeking a wife with good dowry for Buckingham’s brother, Kit Villiers, the King will select a young daughter of Harvey for this honor.
But neither threats nor bribes by the King of England will budge the stout ironmonger from refusal. Nor a Star Chamber fine of 2,000 pounds exacted for some old error new-discovered. At last the King of England will be forced to summon Harvey and his wife to Court and into the royal presence, before the assembled Court, and, letting the beams of royal light shine upon them, the King shall plead a mighty persuasive case.
To which Sir Sebastian Harvey will have the extreme pleasure, in the presence of all that company, of replying with an unbudging, unequivocal no.…
The marriage will not take place.
Less than a fortnight Robert Tounson will be able to write an account of his part in the events of this coming morning to his friend, Sir John Isham; and he will confidently conclude: “That was all the news a week ago, but it is now blown over.…”
And the Dean will be rewarded with the Bishopric of Salisbury, and for a price within his means. But before he is even properly settled in that seat of eminence, Tounson will be dead of smallpox.
George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, stiff and gloomy man, leaning ever more strongly toward the Puritans, often tactless and sometimes cruel, yet ever courageous and unflinching, will remain the man he is. In and out of favor he will hold his office until he dies in 1633.
He will remain consistent against both Spain and the Catholics and a nettle to the King. And will not lose the gratitude of the King for having first found and brought forward George Villiers.
He will continue, one by one, to lose old friends and allies at Court—first the late Prince Henry, then Winwood, Queen Anne, Coke, Bacon, and even Buckingham will turn against him. He has tested the King to the quick by his arguments against the royal prerogative and most especially for his actions against the Countess of Essex when she sought a simple divorce in order to marry Robert Carr; by being outspoken in arguments against the Spanish Match; by encouraging the Princess Elizabeth (at enormous expense and soon enough to cost greater grief) to marry Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate. For (at least it is widely believed) advising Ralegh to make open war with Spain on his last voyage; for resisting already the growing power and influence of his own creature—Buckingham.
He will endure. Even the embarrassment of being briefly stripped of his office and powers by Charles I in 1627.
Above all will endure the one event he cannot possibly imagine. Will endure true sorrow, shame, mortification, even after July 21, 1621. When, while visiting Lord Zouch at Bramshill, on a fine day of hunting together with a noble company, the Archbishop will aim his crossbow at a stag, and his bolt will kill the gamekeeper, Peter Hawkins. He will then retire to an almshouse, but find himself saved from loss of office by the vote of Lancelot Andrewes, together with the benefit of an apt old precedent uncovered by Sir Edward Coke.
And thereafter for the rest of his days the Archbishop of Canterbury will fast and pray one Tuesday every month to do penance for the death of Peter Hawkins.
Among all the lawyers and judges it will be, ironically, Sir Edward Coke who fares best, though often in danger and threatened.
Old, he will remain a leader in the Commons, his spirit unchecked by twenty-six weeks and five days of strict imprisonment in the Tower, following the Parliament of ’21. He will be as strong and unyielding as ever in debate during the Parliament of ’24. And likewise no less a presence in ’28, under Charles I; by which time he will be known as a kind of king himself and will be called Monarcha Juris.
And after that, in his last years will come to write the Reports and Institutes, which, by recovering the English law of the past, will create English law for all time to come.
And though old and feeble and much
alone, he will be so feared by King Charles that, at the last, while he lies quietly dying at the age of eighty-two, having outlived both friends and enemies, the King’s men will urgently ransack his library, notes, and papers, searching for words and precedents which they, by then, will fear more than cannons and hostile armies.
And living long, Coke will see how the fortunes of such as Francis Bacon and Henry Yelverton turn and change by the spin of the wheel.…
Will witness Francis Bacon utterly overthrown in 1621. Impeached by Parliament for taking of bribes and gifts; sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds and to imprisonment in the Tower at the King’s pleasure and “to be ever incapable of holding any office, place, or employment in the state or commonwealth,” and never “to sit in Parliament nor to come within the verge of the Court”; and to be spared by only two votes, one of these cast by his archenemy, Buckingham, from being publicly degraded and deprived of all of his titles.
It will be the King’s pleasure to keep Francis Bacon in the Tower for three days, then to release him in a gesture as much of indifference as mercy.
And Bacon will give up beautiful York House to Steenie. Whose motto Fidei Coticula Crux will grace the arch at the water gate.
His fine will be reduced, and he will live quietly at Gorhambury for five more years, where he will have leisure to finish the writing of his own works.
Will die of a sudden illness in 1626, dying at Arundel House on Easter Sunday.
And will die, to no man’s surprise, at least twenty thousand pounds in debt.
Sir Henry Yelverton has something to learn of the whims of fortune. He will soon lose his office of Attorney General. Will, upon advice and urging of Francis Bacon, be tried before Star Chamber, fined and imprisoned. And after that his tongue, never silver, will denounce Buckingham by name. And that slip of tongue will increase his woes.
But later still, King Charles will soften and will appoint him to the bench as a judge of common pleas.
Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Page 57