by Ashly Graham
The man set the candelabra down at one end of the table, went to the wall, and waited while Arbella went to that opposite. Then in tandem they undid the figure of eight hitches that secured the cords at each end to hooks on the wall, and lowered the rack. When it was over the table just above the basket with the leaves in it, they re-secured the cords.
Then, with the rain still beating hard on the roof, Arbella followed the man’s example in removing the leaves from the basket and laying them across the rods on the rack. The smell of Havana tobacco conjured thoughts of spice cake, and stored apples, and old-growth forests, and burning leaves, and brandy. It was the scent that Arbella remembered from her childhood, when she liked to stick her nose into the sandalwood interior of her father’s humidor. In those days, when he was a very different man, he liked a good cigar and would occasionally allow her a puff.
As they worked in silence the repetitive task of handling the aromatic leaves diminished the tension between her and the stranger. When the basket was empty, the two returned to their respective ends of the rack, raised it to a few feet above head height, and re-secured the cords.
Now that the job was done, the man was struck by a thought. ‘Who is this George thou wert addressing?’
‘George is a Yeoman Warder of the Tower. He’s a friend of mine, as are other of the Beefeaters.’
The man seemed perturbed. ‘I’faith, I will not have any flat-footed Warders trespassing here. I alone have permission from the Lieutenant to use the garden-house, and I warn thee most severely: tell no one about it and do not return. In future when I come here I will be armed and beat anyone I may find with the flat of my sword. Anyone who wisheth to observe me doth so from a boat as I take my daily air on the riverside terrace. The world knoweth that I walk the leads on the roof of the Tower every morning at ten o’clock, and at four in the afternoon. Contrary to popular belief I do not enjoy being licked by the puppy-dog tongue of adulation, and have become accustomed to being removed from the body publique.’
The eyes narrowed. ‘Art thou a spy? Answer me boy! If so we will settle this with sharp instruments.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. And again, I am not a boy.’
The individual looked disappointed. ‘Very well, I will take thee at thy word. It is a pity, for I am fond of duelling. My fellow incarcerate at the Tower, Lord Henry Percy, is but a poor fencer—it is as much as he can do to spear the food on his plate—and, talent aside, my skill suffereth for want of practice.’
‘I think it is high time you told me who you are.’
‘I assume that thou art aware of the prophecy.’
‘You are evasive, sir. What prophecy?’
‘A prophecy exists that “a George of Edward’s children should destruction be”. The prediction, which is supposed not to have lost its effect when Gloucester usurped the kingdom, is that a man named George may eliminate the heirs to the House of Plantagenet. Where is this person to be found? He could be of great value to me and others of my confidence, indeed he might earn the gratitude of the nation.’
‘Of value how?’
‘It is a prophecy that continues to vex King James’s superstitious mind, and I am eager that it should be fulfilled. Coward that James is, hearing the name of George alone is enough to affright him and send him scuttling to the border. My proposal to thee is that—contingent upon my securing a loan from my good friend Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, whom I call the Wizard Earl because of his acknowledged skill in matters of science—I will compensate George handsomely for any service he may provide in advancing our cause. The Wiz’s coffers are still well filled with gold. Even if he is not in generous mood I will win what I need by destroying him at piquet after dinner, for he is as bad at cards as he is with a rapier.’
‘The George I was referring to is a faithful servant of the Crown, whose only weakness to my knowledge is getting as drunk as a lord of a Saturday night dahn the Pig and Whistle. Whatever his private feelings may be about our present monarch, King James, he would never breathe a disloyal word, let alone commit treason.’
Arbella started as lightning flashed at the window. ‘I’ve got it!’
‘What is’t, girl?’
‘I prefer the term woman. Eccentric that you are, you’re pretending to be the Elizabethan knight, explorer, courtier, historian, poet, and amateur chemical experimentalist Sir Walter Ralegh. How very funny. I suppose it’s all part of the act you were about to put on before the storm hit.’
‘By ashlar, corbel, and cusp! By quoin and trefoil, spandrel and squinch! Thou art a pert one and no mistake. Dissimulation and frivolity...thou darest accuse me of such!’
‘It’s so obvious now, I wonder why I didn’t cotton on sooner. Sir Walter Ralegh was imprisoned in the Brick tower by Queen Elizabeth the First, and in the Bloody tower by King James the First. And, hello?, as I should not need to remind you, he was executed in sixteen eighteen, and James died in sixteen twenty-five. “A man can but die once.” Henry the Fourth, Part...’
‘So I used to think, but...well, I am as I am. As for the King, extant or not I would still have my revenge upon him in one world or another; and when I do those without as well as within the Tower’s walls shall hear my jubilation.’
‘Sir Walter Ralegh,’ Arbella continued, who was always pleased to display her historical knowledge of the era, ‘and Lord Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, a crypto-Catholic, were imprisoned here at the same time. The Earl had been complicit in the Gunpowder Plot of sixteen oh-five to blow up Parliament and the person of the Protestant King James the First of England, for which he was fined an eye-popping thirty thousand pounds, offset by a seven hundred pound per annum annuity.
‘Ralegh and Percy had a friendly rivalry, and competed with each other in their efforts to advance science through chemical experimentation. Lord Henry also received tutelage from the astronomer, Hariot, and was a skilled mathematician. His diversions from scientific study included attempting to distil beer and wine into whisky; building a bowling alley with a canvas roof next to the Martin tower, where he was confined for sixteen years; and making a sundial for its southern face. Sir Walter coveted Percy’s apartment, because it was larger than his and more comfortably furnished. But the Earl refused to give it up. He insisted that he needed the space for his son when he came to visit; though to ensure that he never did he kept a pet fox, which stank to high heaven and sent his offspring into lodgings.’
The putative Ralegh eyed Arbella with suspicion mixed with surprise. ‘I hated that fox. I had to scrub myself for an hour in the bath after visiting Percy, and have my clothes fumigated. After one particularly lengthy dinner in his apartment, upon returning my servant had to throw away my suit. Finally I won the fox from him at cards and had my servant send it to the King; who I was told, and I can believe it of such an unsanitary and malodorous individual, affected not to notice the smell and had it released in Richmond Park, where it was hunted and killed. The brush was returned to me and I returned it to the Wiz, who now uses it as a fly whisk.’
Arbella conceded a light laugh. ‘You’ve done your homework well, sir, though you are not above embroidering the facts a little. Where we are now in the Lieutenant’s private garden, and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to visit it because I’d no idea it still existed, is the converted hen-house where Ralegh came to avoid catching the plague. Despite the damp and draughts he stayed healthy. By agreement with the Lieutenant, with whom he was on good terms, no one else was allowed to enter. It was here that Ralegh set up his laboratory, the remains of which we see about us, and devoted himself to alchemy, which is how he filled his time when he was not writing his History of the World in his apartment. Ralegh’s most important scientific project—for which possibly he utilized what I take to be a kiln over there—was refining the formula for an elixir that he called his Balsam of Guiana. Although he was suspected of trying to create the Philosopher’s Stone, which was supposed to have the power to transmute any
metal into gold or silver, this Great Cordial, as it was also referred to as, was a compound of herbs and roots and berries that Ralegh alleged had the power to restore the sick to health.’
‘That was indeed…potentially…the greatest of my achievements. But in our recapitulation let us not forget to mention my success in distilling brine into fresh water.’
‘I apologize for the omission. The secret was lost for two centuries after you discovered it.’
‘Anent the Cordial, I will not comment upon it…except to say that some of the ingredients I acknowledged at the time and others I did not. Thus it will remain. The solution of pearls thou mayst have read about, and the musk and hartshorn. The mint, borage, gentian, and mace have never been a secret, nor the sugar. Any person might detect the attar of red roses, and spirits of wine. A few were able to identify the aloes and sassafras. None the bezoar stone, which is not surprising because it hath no smell. I mention it only because though I hoped for more it contributed little.’
‘Bezoar?’
‘It is found in the stomachs of ruminants. There are other components which I will never reveal, even if King Jock himself were to pardon me and declare my birth date National Tobacco Day. Without them, my Cordial was nothing more than a cooling drink for a summer’s day.’
Arbella decided to go along with the game that they were playing. It was a lot more interesting than anything else she had to do that afternoon, even if the storm abated sufficiently for her to return to Lloyd’s, which it had not yet shown any sign of doing.
‘It’s not every day that a young woman, with very little of consequence to keep her occupied, should fall into the company of such a famous man.’
After a moment of indecision, “Ralegh” sat down on the bench and motioned to Arbella that she should take the other end.
‘Tell me more about myself.’
‘If you wish I can recite one of your verses.’
‘Very well. Proceed.’
Arbella, joining him on the seat, spoke the lines quietly:
‘
Even such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and secret grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from that earth, that grave, that dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
‘You wrote those lines the night before your execution, and they were found in your Bible at the Gate-House at Westminster.’
The Ralegh ran a contemplative hand through his beard, and then, dismayed at what he had done without thinking, tried to restore its shape by patting it with both hands. A strand remained sprung out at right angles to his jaw, which Arbella thought it best not to mention. In the silence that followed her recitation, she was reminded of the real knight’s reputation for vanity about his personal appearance. It was said that he used to spend hours grooming himself before a mirror with a curling instrument; and that once, when he fell asleep after a meal, Henry Percy amused himself by fastening his moustaches to his beard with sealing wax.
Ralegh took pains over his hair, which it was common practice in Elizabethan times to stiffen with starch, powder, perfume, wax, and dye. There were many styles of beard: according to preference they were worn short, pointed, square, round, oblong, or T-shaped. At night after they had been brushed, some men slept with them encased in a wooden press.
When Ralegh made no comment, Arbella prompted him. ‘That poem is well known. It’s in all the anthologies.’
The great man got up, walked over to the cloak where it was hanging damply on the wall, and reached into an inside pocket. From it he withdrew a silver pipe with a long curved stem and a leather pouch. Removing some shredded tobacco from the pouch, he filled the pipe with it and tamped it with his thumb, and used the candelabra to puff it alight. His eyes lidded in the smoke.
‘In the words of that flouncing Scot, James,’ said Ralegh, taking the well-bitten mouthpiece from his lips and jabbing the air for emphasis, ‘smoking is, “A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” My wife’s similarly negative feeling on the subject hath been the cause of dissension between us. She considereth the smell of tobacco to be as repellent as I did that of the Wiz’s fox; once she doused me with a pail of water to put out the fire. But smoking is only one of many matters on which Bess and I are divided, and it is only by abstaining entirely from her company that I have any peace in my life at all. Imprisonment hath its advantages. In the past I was fortunate that, as lore attests, a man so fine of figure and feature, so noble in reputation, as I never lacked for amorous diversion. “Sweet Sir Walter!, sweet Sir Walter! Oh! Swisser Swatter! Swisser Swatter!” Many times have I heard that breathless refrain from the comely wench I had conquered and was disporting me with.’
Arbella snorted. ‘You are referring, of course, in the case of your wife to the long-suffering Lady Elizabeth Throckmorton, the Queen’s Maid of Honour, whom you married in the summer of fifteen ninety-two after discovering that her liaison with you had put her in an interesting condition.’
‘I had no choice in the matter. As beautiful as Bess was in her youth—thou wouldst find it hard to credit now—her temper hath always been so fiery as to make me seem a very milksop by comparison. She and the Queen are the two most fearsome women I have known, and compliance with their wishes was ever the best option.’
‘As I understand it, Sir Walter, the families of important personages like yourself were allowed to accompany them to the Tower, as well as their servants. If her ladyship does not live with you, as I believe to be the case, is she not at least a frequent visitor?’
‘My wife, who was also for a time imprisoned in the Tower owing to the Queen’s anger at our having got married secretly without her permission…in a separate cell, thank God…is not easily drawn back to the place…the Deity be praised again. After her younger son was born and christened here, my Bess was released by her royal namesake. She doth not care to be reminded of her double confinement within these walls.’
A look of alarm crossed Ralegh’s face. ‘If thou art indeed a girl, is’t possible thou art acquainted with my wife? Or worse, art thou her emissary? Answer me honestly!’ He sucked fiercely on his pipe as he glared at her.
‘You may rest easy on that count. I have not had the pleasure of meeting your wife.’
The knight exhaled a stream of smoke and relief. ‘Bess!’ he said hoarsely, ‘how could I have traded Gloriana’s favour for that virago?’ He halted, perhaps embarrassed by the indiscretion. ‘There were not enough cloaks in the world to cover the puddles of my shame at incurring the Queen’s displeasure; no poems I could write extolling her beauty and virtue, that were of sufficient merit in her eyes to win her forgiveness.’
‘Ah yes, the verses to Cynthia, as you called her.’
‘When they proved ineffective, I hit upon the idea of regaining her favour by profiteering in the Caribbean. Being ever desirous to fill the Treasury with King Philip’s gold, though we were not at war with Spain at the time she was moved to agree. Officially, I was forbidden during my voyage to “robbe or spoile by sea or by lande, or do any acte of unjust or unlawfull hostilitie, to any of the subjects of us, our heirs or successors, or to any of the subjects of any [ ] the kings, princes, rulers, governours, or estates, being then in perfect league and amitie with us….”
‘Nonetheless, the Queen gave me every unofficial encouragement to act as a Privateer in bringing home as many carracks and galleons as I might be able. But Fate, alas!, was against me, and I—who had once been a shining star in her firmament, with the titles of Captain of the Guard, Governor of Jersey, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Vice Admiral of the West, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries bestowed upon
me—sank in her esteem and affection lower than a heavily broadsided vessel.’
‘The Stannaries?’
‘The Cornish tin mines.’
Arbella said hesitantly, ‘Sir Walter, might you care to elaborate upon the plot you were involved in, after Queen Elizabeth’s death, to unseat King James and put Arbella Stuart on the throne? It is a subject that…’
Ralegh sighed. ‘James, or ‘“The wisest fool in Christendom” as Henri the Fourth of France, or it may have been his minister Sully, dubbed our King, easily confounded us. I regret to admit that I had grown desperate and careless in mine affairs by the time that dandiprat Scot slithered down from the north. Nonetheless Arbella Stuart, I remain convinced to this day, would have made the perfect replacement for such a foppish excuse for a monarch—a man who will be remembered for nothing but his treatises on smoking, and witchcraft, and as the author of a poor poem, The Kingis Quair, the King’s Book.’
Arbella breathed the only lines of it that she could remember:
‘
The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea,
They live in freedom each in his kind,
And I a man, and lacketh liberty.
’
She added, ‘You might have written the lines yourself.’
Ralegh spat, ‘Doggerel, pure doggerel. What doth James know of the loss of freedom? I, on the other hand, my voyages and History of the World attest to my compulsion to travel and explore. Even in captivity when one is forcibly restrained from indulging one’s peripatetic urges, a mind such as mine draweth a circle on a map with a pair of compasses; thus may one leg circumscribe the earth while the other remaineth affixed to the centre.’