Young Bess

by Margaret Irwin

  He was by far the most important figure on the Council after Somerset, and had managed the Scottish campaign rather better than he, but the Duke felt no uneasiness on that score; he had long ago labelled him in his mind as an old friend, and his labels were apt to remain unchanged.

  But he was annoyed by the fellow’s idle air; here he was lounging into his room, apparently only to sniff at his posy and remark on the stifling August heat and the stinking steam of the vapours exhaled by the river that wound like a decaying dragon below the open windows. With a curious glee in his gentle voice he called Somerset’s attention to the oily glitter on old Thames’ dark scales, too sluggish for ripples, a slimy pewter colour under the thunder-grey of the sky.

  ‘Look at the old serpent gliding down to Tower Bridge and Traitors’ Gate,’ he said, ‘so rotten that she is phosphorescent, and faugh!’ He twiddled the miniature bouquet at his nose, ‘Yet she’s swallowed finer bodies than yours or mine, and will swallow more yet, that old serpent.’

  The Good Duke flung down his pen. ‘Your fancies may be poetic,’ he rapped out in the tone of an irritable schoolmaster, ‘but I have no time for them. Can you not see that I am engaged on business of the State?’

  Dudley flicked a glance across the writing-table; it came to rest on the note Somerset had just written and stuck up in the stand before him ‘Barnaby to be whipped.’

  A slow bluish flush crept up above the Good Duke’s beard. ‘The King’s learning,’ he said, ‘is the prime business of the State. We can’t have him writing to foreign princes with mistakes in his Latin syntax.’

  He tossed Edward’s letter over to Dudley, who read it with an eyebrow up. ‘We can’t have him writing to foreign princes with declarations of war either,’ he remarked softly.

  ‘Oh – that! I shall tear it up, naturally.’

  ‘Then why trouble about the syntax?’

  The Good Duke groaned. It was impossible to explain a principle. Nobody but himself was capable of understanding one.

  He curtly offered his visitor a seat, in the manner of one who has made up his mind to endure interruption, and demanded the reason for it.

  ‘An unwelcome one, I fear,’ said the suave voice by the window. ‘The House of Commons has just thrown out your Act against the Enclosures of the common lands.’

  The Protector was silent. Then he reached for his copy of his Proclamation on the Enclosures and began to read it out. John Dudley sat down. He had heard it before. The pitiful complaints of His Majesty’s poor subjects left him cold. In what far Eden had they not complained?

  ‘“In time past,”’ read the Protector, ‘“ten, twenty, yes and in some places a hundred or two hundred Christian people have inhabited and kept household, to the replenishing and fulfilling of His Majesty’s realm with faithful subjects for its defence, where now there is nothing kept but sheep and bullocks. All that land which heretofore was tilled and occupied with so many men is now gotten by insatiable greediness of mind unto one or two men’s hands and scarcely dwelt upon with one poor shepherd. Men are eaten up and devoured and driven from their houses by sheep and bullocks.”’

  ‘Not original,’ murmured Dudley. ‘Sir Thomas More wrote back in the ’twenties that sheep are eating men.’

  ‘Even that tax I put on, of 2d. on every sheep owned, hasn’t stopped it.’

  ‘You can’t put back the clock. The wool trade’s been going on “in time past” for a long time. And it gave England her wealth.’

  ‘What’s the use of wealth?’

  The Earl of Warwick cocked an ear to listen to the hammering of the hundreds of workmen engaged on the building of Somerset House. The Duke of Somerset heard it too. He tapped nervously on the table as though to cover the sound. The Earl coughed sympathetically.

  ‘Look at the final result!’ said the Duke. He picked up his Proclamation again. Dudley hastily agreed that the final result was deplorable. Hoping to forestall a renewed reading, he remarked that one result was the shortage of man-power in this Scottish war; but the Duke instantly capped it from the Proclamation, ‘“This realm must be defended against the enemy with force of men, not with flocks of sheep and droves of brute beasts.”’

  ‘The Italian and German troops make a good substitute,’ soothed Dudley.

  The Protector, mindful of his talk with Tom, said curtly, ‘I’ve had quite enough of that.’

  ‘Let’s hope the Scots will too.’ Dudley got up and added sympathetically, ‘It has not been a lucky session for all of your Reform measures.’

  ‘For not one of them! The House of Commons have thrown out my Bills to provide for poor children in each town, and to prevent farmers being unjustly turned out of their own land; while the House of Lords reject my Act to prevent the decay of ploughing and growing of crops. Most important of all, my project for the Reform of the Common Law didn’t even reach a second reading in the Commons. Every one of my schemes to provide for the poor has failed.’

  ‘You are forgetting your Act of Slavery.’

  The Protector’s eyes rolled round at him with the look of a wounded stag.

  ‘Yes. The only one to be passed unanimously by both Houses! The only way in which Parliament would consent to provide for the unemployed.’ And he began to quote his Slavery Act, by heart.

  The Earl pulled a scrap of paper on the table towards him and drew a gargoyle face. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but there have been slaves here in England before now.’

  But the Duke went on quoting. The Earl began to scribble.

  The Duke never noticed it. ‘At least,’ he said presently, ‘it only applies to the able-bodied. The Act provides for the aged and impotent by collections in church every Sunday. They are not slaves.’

  ‘They’d be no use,’ said the Earl. In a minute or two this fellow would argue himself round, as usual, into self-justification.

  But instead, ‘Liberty, liberty!’ cried the Duke in a great voice. ‘Is this to be the end of all my hopes to make England a land where nothing can be profitable that is not godly and honest; nor nothing godly and honest whereby our neighbours and Christian brethren are harmed? But these fat newly rich fellows in Parliament care nothing for their brethren. Is there indeed one honest man amongst them except myself? And you,’ he remembered to add.

  ‘Parliament represent the rich. Why should they care about the poor?’

  ‘Then by Heaven!’ (the Protector had actually made an oath) ‘I will not rest until the poor too are represented. I will reform Parliament so that the yeoman, yes and his labourer, shall find a mouthpiece in it.’

  Dudley repressed a shudder of that contemptuous distaste with which one recognises symptoms of an abnormal state of mind. Really, Somerset was becoming a public danger as well as nuisance. Reform always led to revolt. And the fellow was working the Duke himself into a frenzy.

  With lips white with rage, the Duke burst out, ‘In spite of the devil, of private profit, self-love, money, and such-like devil’s instruments, it shall go forward.’

  ‘Would you go against your own class?’ Dudley asked in carefully gentle reproof. ‘The new landed gentry are making still stronger distinctions between rich and poor. Even the universities are becoming conscious of rank; they are growing so expensive that the yeomen and labourers can no longer afford to send their sons. Absurd as it may seem, I believe that very soon Oxford and Cambridge, yes, and even Eton, will be only for the sons of gentry. Regrettable, but one can’t put back the clock. Your hopes for the future are really only dreams of the past, when any labourer’s son could get the learning that is now the privilege of the rich. But we must forget all that and live in the present.’

  The Duke sighed heavily. There was no time he liked so little.

  ‘Whatever makes the past or future predominate over the vulgar present,’ he pronounced, ‘advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.’

  Dudley laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. Poor old Somerset, he should have been the celibate Master of some college, a
thinker, dreamer, idealist.

  ‘You drive yourself too hard,’ he said. ‘There are limits to what one man can do, though you will never recognise it. Think less of your brethren – and more of your brother.’

  Somerset started as if stung. ‘What of my brother? I’ve had enough of him and to spare. He was here just now, haranguing me like a tornado.’

  ‘It’s in the family,’ thought Dudley, and aloud ‘Will he take the command of the fleet you’ve offered him?’

  ‘Not he! Nor would I urge it now after the fantastic way he’s just been talking to me about the Scots, as though it were a crime to lead foreign troops against them. You’d think they were his brothers!’

  ‘That’s dangerous.’

  ‘When was Tom ever anything but dangerous? Well, he can’t do much harm now, for he’s gone back to his wife – says he’d rather stay at home to make merry with his friends in the country.’

  ‘Hmm. I don’t like that. Sounds as though he means to go on working against you in your absence. He’s getting up a stout following among the squires and yeomen – a following of ten thousand if one’s to believe his own boast. Old Squire Dodrington has been up in town for the lawsuit on his lands, and tells me that Master Admiral was mighty sympathetic telling him how he would get him justice; this when Tom came to dinner at Dodrington Hall bringing a couple of flagons of good wine and a venison pasty and roast sucking-pig or two – no wonder he’s a popular guest! He does it all round the country, dining with his inferiors, but not at their expense. Tells his friends to do it too. At least half a dozen fellows in the House have told me of it.’

  ‘It isn’t treasonable to be a good diner-out,’ said the Duke uncomfortably.

  ‘Depends on the after-dinner talk. He makes no secret of his discontent, that he is not allowed his share of power – meaning, no doubt, the lion’s share. He has always been accustomed to it, hasn’t he – at home?’

  The Protector winced. So it was common knowledge that Tom had always been their mother’s favourite! He tried to think of some scathing reply that would show his complete indifference to the matter; but Dudley, with an airy flick of his flower-holder, had already passed on to another. What of the pirate, Jack Thompson, and the Admiral’s obscure dealings with him? Fishy he called them, very fishy – ‘Have you taxed him with them?’

  ‘I have,’ said the Protector shortly. He had heard enough of pirates and their virtues from his brother.

  Dudley then spoke of this notorious scandal about the Princess Elizabeth.

  The Protector said nothing. He had heard too much of the Princess and her vices from his wife.

  ‘The whole country knows why she was sent away from the Queen’s household. There are some who say they know more – that it was because she was found to be with child by him.’

  The Good Duke looked at him. ‘She won’t be fifteen till next month.’

  ‘It is still possible.’

  Even the Good Duke noticed something of ironic pity in the other’s cool gaze. In another minute he would be telling him the facts of life. He was determined to snub him.

  ‘You talk like a woman,’ he said in pained disgust.

  The Earl recognised his mistake in entering into competition with the Duchess. But he stuck to his guns on the practical issue. ‘The Princess is only second heir to the throne, but it’s not a bad second, with a delicate child and a sickly woman in her thirties between. An heir to her and the Admiral would put him in a paramount position.’

  ‘A bastard would not be an heir.’

  ‘It’s not so long since the Princess herself was referred to as the Little Bastard, even by her sire. It’s a position easily remedied nowadays, when divorce is becoming so common – and so respectable.’

  The Good Duke cleared his throat. He had had a divorce himself. The Wicked Earl (as some were inclined to think him) was, on the other hand, a faithfully devoted husband and father to twelve children. He was walking up and down the room on a soft measured tread, his hands behind his back twirling that miniature bouquet like a budding tail.

  ‘It’s not any one particular prank of the Admiral’s that makes me anxious,’ he said slowly, as though considering aloud. ‘It is that everything he does, kissing that little red-haired wretch, currying favour with the King and telling him you’re too hard a task-master, dining with country squires, encouraging pirates – in all this he is helping to rock the ship of State – and that in foul enough weather already, God knows. The whole country’s in a smoulder of discontent, any breeze may blow it into a fire of revolt. Even at best there is only a quivering quiet. Remember those attempted risings this spring in half a dozen counties. They never gathered head, for they were not united. They may yet unite.’

  ‘The base ingratitude of the people!’ Somerset exclaimed. ‘I’ve done more for them in eighteen months than the old King in the whole of his reign. Do they want tyranny? Do they hate liberty? I have given them freedom of speech – of opinion—’

  ‘One has to be full fed to care about opinion.’

  ‘I have swept away all the monstrous new Treason and Heresy Acts of the last reign, that Act of Six Articles which they called the Whip with Six Strings. Royal Proclamations can no longer become law of themselves. I have removed the restrictions on the printing of the English Bible.’

  ‘Do they care about the Bible?’

  ‘What in God’s name do they care about? I have minimised executions, refused to employ the torture-chamber. Do they care nothing for that?’

  ‘No one cares if others have been tortured and executed. Those who have been, aren’t alive to thank you.’ And Dudley turned on his heel with a flourish of his flowery tail.

  Somerset slammed his hands down on the table. ‘You are telling me that all they care about is hard cash. It’s not my fault the Exchequer was bankrupt at King Henry’s death. That the only thing that’s cheap is labour. I’ve brought in laws to raise wages, to lower prices, to prevent the markets being flooded with trashy goods. But no laws can make good men. Men have never been so mad as now to make money at the expense of their neighbour. But that is not a cause, it’s a consequence. Debased coinage, debased goods, they’re the result of debased ideas. All the old ways are gone. The world is in the melting-pot. We have the chance now to build a far greater and happier State than ever before. But they cannot take that chance; they cannot even see it. They are blind with greed. They are like wasps in a honey-jar, never seeing that their neighbours’ deaths lead only to their own.’

  Dudley led him gently but firmly back to the point. ‘Very true. The country is ripe for revolution. I know the tenderness of your feelings for your mother. But in such a case surely your country should come first.’

  ‘What do you mean by speaking of my mother?’

  Dudley did not appear to notice the question. ‘Those risings this spring failed at the outset because they had no leader. What if they should find one? I would rather your brother were anywhere this summer but at home in Gloucestershire.’

  ‘Where under heaven then should he be, unless he were dead?’

  Dudley was silent.

  The Protector glanced at him, then looked away.

  The silence thickened. It weighed on the room like a thunder-cloud.

  Dudley began to whistle a nonchalant tune. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must not delay your work for the State any longer.’

  He took his leave. The Protector watched him go. He in his turn now walked up and down the room, which had grown even more oppressively hot. He could not settle his thoughts; they chased each other round and round like rats in a trap, chasing the things that Dudley had said, had not said, had looked.

  Could he have meant what he looked?

  He thought of Tom, that perpetual nuisance of a youngest brother who had always given trouble at home; even as a baby he had been a sturdy rogue, grabbing the others’ toys, trotting through the Ladies’ Garden and picking off the heads of the flowers, and never smacked nor even scolded b
y their mother; then later playing truant from his lessons, robbing the apple orchards in Pound and Broom Close and the cherries in Ladelwell-pound; later still, making friends with such low rascals as Gorway’s son the shepherd boy and young Wynbolt the undergrubber and going poaching with them at nights. What an uproar there had been when the red-faced old keeper of the Home Park (what was his name? Something like an apple – Quince? – no, Vince) had complained to their father, gobbling with rage! And Tom at last got the thrashing he so richly deserved, but only chuckled in triumph because he had padded his breeches with rags. Tom, later, getting into that mess with Edie of the dairy-house and her fellow Audrey Cocks with the bold black eyes (how was it he still remembered their names – a couple of dairymaids?). Getting into debt; getting into all sorts of mischief when he went to the French Court in the train of Bryan, whom King Henry had nicknamed the Vicar of Hell – ‘and this young rascal is his best chorister there!’ old Foxnose François had said, pinching Tom’s ear, so that he only swaggered about his scrapes.

  And it was the same with the Hapsburgs in Hungary; and in the Netherlands with the Emperor’s sister, the Regent there; and even with that grave and dignified Oriental Potentate, Suliman the Magnificent. It was the same everywhere; people only liked him the better for being a showy daredevil adventurer. And most of all, King Henry.

  With a sudden unhappy little yelp he began to move things restlessly about on his table as he remembered that enormous laughter of their royal brother-in-law while he read out bits of Tom’s letters from the Turkish wars.