Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  “I see. But the Queen remains here at Windsor, does she not?”

  Lady Bedford narrowed her eyes. “She does.”

  “And you share her confidence, do you not?”

  “I do.”

  “And the King loves her, does he not? I mean to say, he thinks well of her, listens to her counsel.”

  “He does. For a man so fond of boys, King James thinks highly of his wife. Unlike the eighth Henry, James of Scotland sees his queen as something more than a brood-mare for men-children.”

  Anne smiled. “I thought so.”

  A maidservant arrived with a tray of cakes and two crystal goblets of wine. She placed the tray on the table. After dismissing the servant with a nod, Lady Bedford handed Anne a glass and said, “And you would have me intercede with the Queen on your husband’s behalf. You wish me to direct her to keep Robert Cecil at arm’s length.”

  “No. Yes. I mean, any help you can offer would be most welcome. But Lord Cecil must not suspect my hand in the matter.”

  “Of course. You may rely upon my discretion.”

  “But what I really wish to ask is whether you might introduce me to the Queen.”

  For just a heartbeat or two Lady Bedford looked taken aback. Then she smiled wryly, placed her hand on Anne’s, and said, “I like you. I can see full well why your good husband calls you lectissima.”

  Anne’s eyes widened with delight. “Oh! He said that?”

  “How very like him, is it not? He means it in its full, double sense.”

  “Yes,” said Anne, “most choice and most learned. Wonderful. He said that of me?”

  “Well, indirectly, yes. If you must know, he said it of me, but I am sure he was thinking of you.”

  Anne withdrew her hand. She looked as if she had been stabbed. After closing her eyes for a time, she said quietly, “There is a third sense.”

  “A third?”

  “Yes. The word can also mean most readable. If Jack said it of you, he means he knows how to read you.”

  Lady Bedford laughed, a little uneasily. “No man, I think, knows how to read me. Not even your dark-eyed husband.”

  “Well. I suppose that is a good thing.”

  Lady Bedford asked pointedly, “Good for me, or good for you?”

  Anne let out an exasperated breath. “I know not. But I came here hoping our benefit might be mutual. If you are . . . fond of my husband, surely helping him stay alive is of some interest to you. To me it means everything. Is it in your power to grant me audience with the Queen?”

  “Well. As I say, I like you. I can put your plight to her in its fairest light. But I know not how to say this other than to say it plainly: I am quite sure she would not like you. Her tastes are most . . . selective. Your seeing her is out of the question.”

  “You don’t seem to understand. I fear for my husband’s life. I would do something to help him.”

  “But you are doing something. You are talking with me, and I will talk with the Queen.”

  “No, I would do something.”

  Lady Bedford rose and extended a hand. “I shall give the matter further thought. As for now, I am expected for dinner at the King’s table. I must bid you good day.”

  Anne took Lady Bedford’s extended hand, curtseyed halfheartedly, and turned to leave. Lady Bedford sharply clapped her hands twice and called, “Sirrah!” Before Anne had reached the door a portly footman entered. “Bring Mrs. Donne a coach. Take her wherever she will.”

  The footman, who must have known the maidservant had just brought refreshments, glanced at the untouched cakes and wine and registered only momentary puzzlement before bowing and saying, “My lady.”

  The thick-wristed helmsman peered nervously into the darkening north, but the captain remained unperturbed. He assured the queasy-looking Chute that the spire of Antwerp’s Cathedral of Our Lady would pull into view within the hour. “The wind holds fair from the west,” the captain added. “I think we’ll make port well ahead of any squall.” Chute looked unconvinced, then alarmed. He put a hand over his mouth and lurched to the aft rail. The captain turned to Burr and laughed. “What cheer, good Timothy? You look near as greenish as Sir Walter.”

  Burr said, “I have no love of this pitching about in a great wooden casket on the vasty deep, were it the fairest day in June. But to commit ourselves to the waves in the February wind! As you are unaware of the season, I must think you have all been struck to very midsummer madness.”

  “Why, Tim,” said Jack, “this is the fairest February day I have seen in half a year of Februaries. The sea lies calm.”

  “Lies calm! I know who lies, and it is not the sea. The waves I think rise half again as high as the mast. By God’s eyelid, I would we had reached dry land. I could kiss your good dry land, be it netherland or no.”

  But for Chute’s occasional retchings, the men fell silent for a time. Shivering patches of gray light glanced off the undulating waters that stretched away on every side. The ship rose, creaked, and plashed with a steady rhythm: a slow cadence to calm the mind. As Burr’s look faded to a sullen pout, Jack’s thoughts drifted to the otherworldly calm that had stayed Essex’s fleet for days upon days back in ’97. Jack had written about it, and he remembered the lines:

  Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,

  A stupid calm, but nothing it doth ’suage.

  Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;

  In calms, heaven laughs to see us languish thus.

  No use of lanterns; and in one place lay

  Feathers and dust, yesterday and today.

  In ’97 one poor soul, crazed in that calm by a fevered calenture, mistook the green waters for a field near his house in Cornwall and leaped overboard. A boat was lowered to fetch him, but by then the seaman had already gone under. It was just as well; the fever would have taken him within hours anyway.

  It had been yet more days before a breeze arose and the fleet straggled home treasureless, without even having attacked the Armada. A year after the daring raid of Cadiz, this bootless voyage to the Azores had proved the beginning of the end for Essex. Nor did it one whit advance Jack Donne.

  Now, though, the ship carrying Jack, Burr, and Chute made fair for Antwerp, plowing before a rising wind. Our Lady’s cathedral rose steadily ahead. Lesser buildings took shape around its bulk. The stone lacework of the spire told of a graceful Catholic world long gone, a world of honest artisans united in their striving heavenward.

  Or so Jack allowed himself to imagine, part of him knowing all the while it wasn’t so. Simony and strife, corruption, would-be reformers brutally put down: all of it had been there all along. The city’s wealth had funded that magnificent edifice on broken backs, the mortar pinked with the blood of the poor. Still, the cathedral took one’s breath away.

  Before long, as the sky darkened into storm behind them and the mate barked orders to the crew, the helmsman steered the ship into the broad, brackish waters of the Westerschelde. Chute knelt half-swooned against the rail, his forehead pressed onto his fist. Burr glanced furtively about, as if to glimpse some subtle enemy lurking along the shore. Jack was quickened by the sight of so many ships, so much bustling trade, as the crews hurried to finish their work ahead of the storm.

  Anne tried to contain her fury as she rode from Windsor Castle in a carriage drawn by a team of strong-necked, wide-flanked horses. To be toyed with as Lady Bedford had just done! The churning within her felt unfamiliar, extravagant and alluring in its demand that she submit to it with her whole being. Men—many of them—had underestimated her. In their unthinking way they assumed her to be one more ignorant girl. But never had a woman treated her so. The jealousy that had for months smoldered within her now fanned into the burning purity of hatred. Oh, it was delicious, this hatred, hot and dangerous and delicious. All at once she knew what had always mystified her: how people could do violence to one another. She imagined herself slipping a crippling poison into Lady Bedford’s wine, or thr
owing a vial of some caustic vitriol into her haughty, hawklike face.

  By the time the travellers’ coach pulled into the narrow street where Jack’s mother lived, bursts of wind and rain shook against the carriage walls. Chute had insisted on hiring the coach instead of walking in the rain, but now he complained that the swaying carriage was no better than the ship. Some of the houses were ramshackle affairs, looking as though the storm might blow them to the ground. Jack wondered whether his mother had fallen on hard times. She had told him she had funds enough to live comfortably. Had she been lying, knowing that her son was too poor to send her much money? But soon the condition of the dwellings improved. A minute or two later the carriage came to a stop before Jack’s mother’s house: sturdy-looking stone with a half-timbered upper story, not spacious but more than adequate.

  Elizabeth came to the door herself. The few years since he’d seen his mother had taken their toll: the silvered streaks in her hair had blended to a uniform gray, and she had thinned. Even so, she carried herself straight and retained some of her youthful vigor. She stepped into the rain to embrace her son before saying briskly, “Come, come, come, in from the rain. I’ve a big fire in the parlor where you can dry yourselves. And I’ll get you something warm to drink.”

  Jack introduced his traveling companions to her. Burr said, “Somewhat to drink would warm the heart, as does the sound of a good English voice.”

  Chute said, “True enough. I am ignorance itself in this Dutchman’s tongue. When the hostler spoke to us it seemed the gibbering of an ape. Your son knows enough to get us by, but I cannot tell a single word from the rest. Nor your French nor Spanish. Italian, though: I can speak your good Italian, like a native son.”

  “Are you bound for Italy?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We are,” said Chute, “and a merrier trio ne’er set foot upon good Roman soil.”

  “Well,” Jack said, “we know not whither we will travel. To Italy it may hap. Or no.”

  Chute gave him a pained look and said, “We hope to go. We are bound to go. I think we will.”

  The men sat near the fire while Elizabeth and her maidservant, a fair-haired, plain-faced woman named Kaatje, busied themselves in the small, dimly lit kitchen. Once the women were gone, Chute groaned and said his queasy stomach wouldn’t allow him to eat or drink anything. But when the mugs of steaming spiced wine appeared he took one and drank as readily as the others. Next came a course of mutton, eggs, and bread, which everyone, including Kaatje, ate not at the table but from trenchers on their laps as they sat about the fire.

  Chute and Burr went to their beds in an upstairs room shortly after supper. Jack remained behind and talked with his mother while Kaatje cleaned the trenchers, bowls, and utensils in the kitchen. As far as Jack’s mother knew, he was still an apostate, a Protestant. Yet she had welcomed him with an easy grace. Perhaps the years had slackened the fervor of her religion.

  Elizabeth said, “Your letter told me little about your business in the Low Countries. This business: is it secret, or may I know of it?”

  “You may.” He spread his hands on his knees. “I have of late reconsidered my allegiance to the Church of England.” It was true enough. How many times had he asked himself whether he had made the right choice? But he had resolved to remain a Protestant, and it pained him to mislead his mother.

  She brightened. “So you’re coming back!”

  “So it would seem.”

  She rose with surprising quickness and embraced him. Damn this half-lying.

  She backed away, holding his shoulders at arm’s length as she said, “And the others?”

  “The same. Both would be Catholics.” That much, as far as he knew, was true of Chute, maybe even Burr. Like as not, though, Cecil had sent Burr along to keep watch on Jack. It would be easy enough for Burr to find ways of posting reports to Cecil.

  Jack talked with his mother for over an hour. She wanted to know all about Anne and the children. “My one great regret,” she said, “is never seeing my grandchildren. But I am a marked woman in England. My part in the good father’s escape from the Tower is now known. I dare not risk returning.”

  Jack said, “Your part. . . . You helped Father Gerard escape?”

  “I did. I supplied the bark that bore the father away, and I furnished the rope that let him reach the boat. He had persuaded a guard, a secret Catholic, to throw across the moat from the top of the Salt Tower a weighted string to where four of us—three trusted men and I—stood upon the shore. These hands tied the string to the free end of the rope, which the guard pulled up the wall to where he stood. He knotted the rope fast to a cannon atop the tower. Father Gerard climbed along the sagging line—with great pain and difficulty, I can tell you, for the manacles had stretched and snapped the sinews of his wrists—until he reached us on the shore. The good John Arden escaped in the same way. My doings on that night are now known, for the oarsman I hired was caught. The man betrayed us when Topcliffe fixed him to the rack. So I dare not go home. Nor could I write to tell you of it, for fear of harming you.”

  Jack hardly knew where to begin. “But . . . ,” he stammered, “why did you not tell me about this plan of escape? I could have taken your place that night.”

  With a knowing little smile she slowly shook her head. “Jack,” she said softly, “that was in ’97. You had left the Church by then. You spoke of the Jesuits with nothing but contempt. Were these Catholic men who aided me to trust you to help a Jesuit escape?”

  “You mean . . . were you to trust me.”

  Her eyes took on the look he remembered from his childhood, a look that said she knew of his wrongs but loved him still. “Yes, if you would know. I was not sure I could trust you. Why should I have thought otherwise?”

  He chided her for not knowing he could be counted on, told her he liked to see no man, Jesuit or not, tortured and confined to the Tower. “But these Jesuits,” he added, “do you not see the path they lay out for our young men leads to the scaffold? Do you not know the Jesuits play into the hands of Cecil, Topcliffe, and the rest, giving such tormentors good excuse to ply the manacles and the rack?”

  She gave a little shrug and said, “Thus is it ever among the faithful. Are they to cease being holy because others are cruel?”

  “No. But they might cease urging men to the torture chambers.”

  She tilted back her head in thought: a little shift in posture Jack had seen a thousand times but hadn’t thought about in years. Somehow it made him at once love her and miss her company even as she sat before him, made him feel the weight of all those years apart.

  “I think,” she said, “many who are caught have done no wrong. Others have committed crimes for the benefit of the Church without the good fathers’ blessing. Such men have acted on their own. Those who find a scheming Jesuit behind every hedge look upon the world through eyes of fear. And for this the faithful suffer, the Jesuits most of all.”

  They sat quietly while the embers glowed in the fireplace. The rain slanted against the shutters. After a time Jack asked, “Did you know Father Gerard returned to England for a time?”

  “No,” she said. “I thought he stayed in Rome after his escape.”

  Jack shook his head. “I spoke with him not a fortnight since.”

  She smiled. “Back for more, is he? I might have known.”

  “I told him it was madness.”

  She asked how he had come to meet Father Gerard, and he told her what he could. Then Jack said, “He heard my confession. He absolved my sins.”

  “Praise be.”

  Jack closed his eyes and said quietly, “Mother, I have such doubts as I quake to look upon.”

  “Not all doubts are sins.”

  “Hm. Father Gerard’s words exactly.”

  She reached over and patted his hand. “Well. I will pray that God settle your doubts.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Will you pray the same for yourself?”

  Jack promised he
would. After a while he asked whether she knew any Englishman calling himself Guido.

  “None, I think,” she said.

  “I heard the man was in Sir William Stanley’s employ.”

  “Oh. Well, you might ask Sir William.”

  “You know him?” She spoke as Stanley’s familiar, as if he might be sitting in the next room.

  “Oh, certainly. He has dined here often enough.”

  “So he is near.”

  “Yes, near enough. He commands a Catholic regiment camped hereabouts. If you like, I will send word to him. Maybe he can join us here.”

  Jack thanked her and asked her to write him. They talked awhile longer, mostly about King James and his court. Jack assured her he had little enough news; since his marriage he had enjoyed hardly any commerce with courtiers. He thought of Lord Hay’s nephew, the Scotsman whose pate he had bloodied at the Savoy. Apart from Jack’s encounters with Robert Cecil, about whom he said nothing to his mother, the young Scotsman was about as close as he had come to the court.

  They watched the embers fade, and when the air grew chill they went to their beds. Jack had insisted that old Burr take the truckle-bed in Chute’s room. Jack’s pallet amounted to a straw mattress on the floor of the little room that doubled as his mother’s library and sewing closet. Thanks to Kaatje, the mattress had been covered with linen and two thick blankets. But the flagstone floor beneath the mattress was hard and cold, his sleep fitful.

  Francis Wolley sat with his brow pursed, the creases in his young forehead an unaccustomed thing. He idly opened and closed the latchet of an ornamental mulberry-wood box on the small table beside his chair. Anne watched him, remaining silent.

  “Well,” he said to her at last, “I’m not surprised the raven-eyed, the dragon-livered Lady Bedford would not hear of it. But you must know that neither can I simply hide you under my cloak and deposit you in Queen Anna’s chambers. She would have my head. Now, if it were the old queen. . . .”