Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  Carr’s mention of the Lord Chamberlain’s office had revived Carey’s vanishing hopes. Was it indeed beyond his grasp? Yesterday he had thought how gladly he would have paid two thousand pounds for the rich pickings to be had in the Tower. Yet money had proved but part of the price. Sir Gervase was more dupe than villain. He had put himself in the hands of men - and women - who lacked scruples. Whatever they demanded, he had to do. Defiance would mean loss of office and ruin for his family. Might it not be the same when Carr fell? Would the post of Lord Chamberlain not be at Villiers’ disposal, and what might he not require of the office-holder? The Queen was shrewd and could well be proved right. With Carr supplanted and the King doting and senile, the lad Carey had picked up on the race-course at Newmarket would rule the realm. And, unlike Carr, Villiers was clever.

  Carey’s urgent business was not fabricated. It awaited him at Hammersmith at the house of Mistress Turner, about whose nefarious deeds agents of the Earl of Southampton had brought him word. She was a widow, with a respectable occupation as dressmaker at court, but she did more than flatter the vanity of women. She pandered to the lusts of men by acting as a brothel-keeper and supplier of love philtres. More than that, she dabbled in magic and blackmail and potions of all kinds, including those which Frances Howard had given to the Earl of Essex to take away his desire. This was the house of assignation where she and Carr had met secretly as lovers before her divorce.

  The half-light in her parlour was cunningly contrived and in the dimness the mistress of the house affected astonishment and joy at the sight of Sir Robert Carey. She wore a yellow dress of the latest French cut and simpered and shook her false curls at him. This was an unexpected visit indeed and whatever was in her power she would most happily do to oblige such a noble and distinguished gentleman. Only last week she had met his wife when fitting the Queen with a costume for a new masque at Greenwich. Lady Carey was the handsomest of women, yet what was life without variety?

  ‘Dalliance is far from my mind,’ he told her. Ignoring the invitation to sit beside her, he remained standing while her patter ran on.

  ‘What a man you are, Sir Robert!’ Her admiration was sweet as honey. ‘If you should change your mind, there is upstairs a young girl who has been imploring me for an introduction to just such a one as you - an accomplished courtier, a brave soldier, a man of the world in whose veins runs the best blood in England. She is the daughter of one of my girls, but her father was a nobleman. She is not yet fourteen, fair and docile and quite untouched.’

  ‘It is a poor man who must buy his women,’ Carey replied with a scowl. ‘I am growing old, but I thank God that a virgin will still part her legs for me without first hearing the clink of coin.’

  ‘A boy then. Your tastes lie the way of the King?’

  ‘Have you boys too in this house?’

  ‘In my profession I am bound to supply everything a gentleman requires.’

  ‘One particular boy is of interest to me.’

  ‘You may inspect them all. With the greatest of pleasure.’

  ‘That will not be necessary. I know his name. Bring me the one called William Reeve.’

  Although he watched her closely, she did not betray herself. Her cheeks were so thickly painted that he could not see whether the colour changed beneath. ‘I have never heard that name before,’ she told him, looking him in the eye direct.

  ‘Then send me your servant, Richard Weston.’

  She rang a bell and the man was in the room before the sound had ended. Carey could only believe that he had been stationed outside the door as a bodyguard in case of need. He stood broad-shouldered and surly-faced, the very image of a henchman of the Devil.

  ‘So this is the ruffian who acted as gaoler to Sir Thomas Overbury?’

  ‘Not gaoler, Sir Robert,’ Mistress Turner corrected him. ‘Sir Thomas was allowed none of his own men in prison with him. Richard was chosen as his body servant, and served the poor knight faithfully in his last days on earth.’

  ‘You were his sole means of communication with the world? You brought him his food and drink and passed his letters in and out?’

  Carey addressed the servant, but the man did not reply. It was his mistress who spoke.

  ‘Sir Thomas was a close prisoner. He had food and drink to keep him alive, but by order of the Council no one could communicate with him, either by word or in writing, except only the Lieutenant of the Tower.’

  ‘Yet letters passed.’

  ‘Richard would never disobey an order.’

  ‘If he has a tongue of his own, will he tell me, then, what orders he received and from whom? His appointment was a strange one, and I have sure knowledge of letters passing.’

  ‘As you are a gentleman I beg you not to press him, Sir Robert. He was appointed by the Lieutenant and is answerable to him alone. Even if he were free to speak, he is a plain man without a long memory and these events took place many months ago,’

  ‘A lady’s name has been mentioned in connection with his appointment.’

  Again there was no start or hint of guilt. Weston stood deaf and mute, as Carey had been warned he would do. Mistress Turner’s alarm was simulated.

  ‘Name no names in this house, I implore you,’ she exclaimed. ‘A single indiscretion would lose me every one of my clients.’

  Carey rounded fiercely on the servant. ‘I have been informed that, when he became ill, Sir Thomas was given enemas by an apothecary’s apprentice from Lime Street near the Tower. After the last, administered one evening, he spent the night in agpny and died at daybreak. The name of the boy is William Reeve. He has disappeared. If you value your life, tell me where that apprentice is to be found.’

  He could as fruitfully have attempted conversation with the trunk of an oak tree. No threats were likely to open Weston’s mouth nor move his steady gaze from his mistress’s face. If the report that she practised black magic was true, she might well have cast a spell on him. Only at a sign from her did he come to life and then it was to leave the room.

  The dimness had darkened into deep shadow and the two of them were scarcely visible to each other.

  ‘The last enema was poisoned,’ said Carey, ‘as were the jellies and tarts sent to the prisoner from outside the Tower and fed to him by your retainer, not to keep him alive, but to murder him. Poisons are not readily procurable, but you deal in them as you deal in flesh. If you wish to save yourself from Tyburn, you must quit your falsehoods and make a full confession.’

  ‘You wrong me,’ she protested, ‘and I take it ill of a gentleman to bully a poor woman in such a manner. Do you take me for an apothecary? I have no skills in the science of medicine. Where would I obtain poisons, even were I to have a use for them?’

  ‘That I will answer. From Simon Forman who, fortunately for you, has died, and from James Franklin, who has not. Since you are bent on discovering the extent of my knowledge I will oblige you further and reveal the name of the lady of whom I made mention earlier. She was then the Countess of Essex and is now the Countess of Somerset.’

  ‘What is this wild talk? Should I accuse myself and others falsely? You can have no evidence, for there is none.’ This time her alarm was real.

  ‘Evidence I have: what I lack is proof. For that I require the testimony of Master Reeve, and you, Mistress Turner, will now help me find him.’

  He removed the bell from the table where it stood and placed it in a corner. She watched him uncertainly while he locked the door, until he made his intentions plain by hitting her in the face.

  ‘Mercy for the love of our Lord!’ she cried, outraged as much by his behaviour as by the blow itself. Court dignitaries did not stoop to strike their inferiors in rank. They ordered others to commit violence on their behalf. Carey thought how shocked this brothel-keeper would have been had Frances Howard chosen to do her poisoning in person, instead of through the employment of agents.

  He hit her again twice, one hard punch sinking into each painted cheek in turn.
She fell to the floor whimpering and he kicked her as he would have a common cur. She cringed away and started crawling towards the bell. He hauled her back by her hair until it came away in his hands, and then he seized her plump legs.

  ‘Mercy,’ she begged a second time and he hit her once more, muffling her cries with a blow across the mouth with the back of his hand. What mercy had she shown?

  It took a rough half-hour to make her more frightened of him than of Frances Howard. Yet, when the truth came, all she could tell him through her swollen lips was that William Reeve had been smuggled out of the country. He would be in one of the Channel ports, waiting until it became safe to return. Carey left her half-conscious on the parlour floor, brushed past her sentry in the corridor and rode back to St James’s, where he washed the blood from his hands and devoted the rest of the evening to playing chess with the heir to the throne.

  ‘Sir George Villiers has been here currying favour,’ said the Prince. ‘I prefer the Earl of Somerset.’

  ‘The Earl is not to be trusted,’ Carey warned him, deliberately advancing a knight to leave his king exposed. ‘He conspired against your brother and now causes your father distress. But shortly he will trouble him no more.’

  ‘When I am King I shall allow no man to trouble me,’ said the Prince, puzzling over the board.

  ‘Your Highness must learn to mate,’ Carey told him, making his move for him, ‘but not, if you would have your subjects love you, with the Infanta of Spain. Soon you will be the leader of Protestant Europe.’

  6

  Carey’s ride to Edinburgh had made him famous. His visits to Greys and Hammersmith were unremarked but their results momentous. English agents were ordered to scour the Channel ports for the missing apprentice and Carr, feeling the breath of his enemies on his neck, took fright.

  He ordered Sir Robert Cotton, lawyer and antiquarian scholar, to prepare a general pardon for him. This, so he claimed, was a recognized precaution taken by falling ministers to protect themselves against the vengeance of their adversaries. Cotton assured him that Wolsey had obtained one from Henry VIII, and James declared himself agreeable to granting his Robin this last indulgence. It was to be the price of being left in peace with his daily more dearly beloved Villiers. ‘Christ had his John,’ he told the scandalized Archbishop in justification of his wayward love, emphasizing at the same time the divine attributes of kingship: ‘Christ had his John and I have my George.’

  Others were less amenable to the pardon. By the King’s command it received the stamp of the Privy Seal. Since Carr himself had the office of Keeper, no opposition was encountered there, but the document had then to be brought before the Council for endorsement with the Great Seal of England, whose Keeper was Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. Standing on his dignity, the old man announced, in the authoritative voice which he had once employed in instructing ignorant jurymen, that the Great Seal must not be used to place a subject of the realm above the law. Such a proceeding would be contrary to the established laws of England and would make a mockery of all his long service through two reigns as a law officer of the Crown. His conscience would not permit him to be party to it.

  He declaimed at length, while Carr sat opposite him, head bowed, white-lipped with anger, and the King, gracing the Council Chamber with one of his rare appearances, fiddled impatiently at the head of the table.

  ‘Pish, man,’ he admonished his Lord Chancellor, ‘look more closely at your conscience and see whether it calls on you to address your sovereign thus. If in the old days it was judged right for a cardinal to solicit such a favour and for King Henry to grant it, why should I not make a similar dispensation for my lord of Somerset? God knows, he has served his master more faithfully than Wolsey served his.’

  ‘With your Majesty’s permission I will make so bold as to answer that question,’ Ellesmere began, but James interrupted him. Accustomed to lecture and preach at others, the royal schoolmaster did not take kindly to being treated to a lesson.

  ‘Am I or am I not King of this realm?’ he spluttered, showering the table so that the Archbishop at his side drew back hastily. ‘Am I or am I not the fount of all justice? Is it or is it not my royal prerogative to determine whether a man suffers for his crimes or whether he goes free? You embark on a dangerous course, my Lord Chancellor, if you would deny us the power of exercising mercy. It is not as though my lord of Somerset has even been accused of any crime. Let us have no more words. Your sovereign commands you to seal that pardon.’

  In the face of the King’s displeasure Ellesmere remained dogged, obstinate as only a man could be whose career lay behind him. ‘I grant that a general pardon is not without precedent,’ he conceded, ‘but not so the terms. The pardon extended to Cardinal Wolsey did not embrace the crime of murder.’

  ‘Murder!’ The King looked at Carr, startled.

  ‘It is a long and ill-written document,’ said Ellesmere severely, ‘but I have taken the trouble to read it with care. There is mention too of treason.’

  ‘I have not studied the document for myself, Jamie,’ said Carr, ‘but I ordered it to be drawn up in accordance with precedent. I am satisfied that my instruction has been obeyed.’ He spoke easily, showing his old familiarity and ignoring Ellesmere and the rest of the Council.

  ‘Very well. Let it pass.’ The King rose to his feet to signify that the meeting was at an end.

  Ellesmere rose too. He hurried round the table as fast as his legs would carry him and sank to his arthritic knees, his joints creaking as he begged to be relieved of his office. It was a charade. Backed by a majority of the Council, he knew that the King could not afford to let him resign on such an issue. To manipulate a divorce commission was bad enough; misuse of the Great Seal of England would bring every lawyer, parliamentarian and radical out in full cry against the alien house of Stuart.

  ‘Pass it you shall,’ the King shouted in fury, kicking like a child at the suppliant hands of his Lord Chancellor as they clutched at his spindly legs.

  ‘If it please your Majesty, there is other business. A matter of some gravity has come to light.’

  The speaker was Mr Secretary Winwood, who had been sitting silently in his place at the far end of the table. From there he could see out of the window, across to the banqueting hall and down into the Great Court, which was alive by day, and most of the night, with a stream of humanity passing to and fro between the street beyond the court gate and the passage leading to Whitehall stairs and the river. He had preferred watching this scene to witnessing the quarrel, although none of the words escaped him. Unlike the Cecils, he practised detachment.

  In preparing the agenda for Council meetings he would determine what the outcome of each item should be. He would lobby the Protestant lords in advance but rarely would intervene in debate or seek to reverse a wrong decision. His skill in Council lay in timing. He had proved himself adept at moving on to the next business before further discussion could lead to disagreement or an unwanted conclusion. Now he intervened firmly, confident that a victory had been won by the Lord Chancellor. For all the King’s bluster, the general pardon would not be sealed. Not a single voice had been raised among his Privy Councillors in support of it. The Duke of Lennox was not one to lend a helping hand to a successor. Even the Howards had been struck dumb. The aged Lord Admiral was wearing his grim Armada face and Lord Treasurer Suffolk busied himself shuffling his papers like a worried clerk. If even the Lord Treasurer was deserting his daughter and son-in-law for fear of criminal association, then they were doomed indeed. Winwood coughed to bring the meeting to order. His next words would make their doom doubly sure.

  ‘There has been a confession to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury,’ he announced.

  There was a stir throughout the chamber, but Carr sat unmoved, like an effigy. It was the King who turned pale. This time he did not look at the favourite, but signalled to Winwood to proceed.

  ‘An apothecary’s boy has confessed to accepting a bribe of twenty pounds t
o administer a poisoned enema. It seems that Sir Thomas did not die from natural causes, but from a dose of mercury inserted into his body through the anus.’

  ‘Is this boy to be believed so readily?’ asked Carr in mock amazement. ‘Produce him, Mr Secretary, and let us question him.’

  ‘He lies in Flushing, too ill to be brought to London. His confession was made only because he seemed at the point of death.’

  ‘Where is his signed statement then? Let us see it; although for what reason we are being asked to give credence to the hallucinations of a dying boy, I for one would wish to be informed. Without doubt you speak the truth when you say he lies in Flushing.’

  ‘There is no written statement, my lord, but Master William Trumbull, his Majesty’s envoy in Brussels, has himself brought word of this. He is at this moment in the privy gallery awaiting his Majesty’s pleasure.’

  ‘I will not speak with him,’ said the King, anxious to be gone. ‘False rumours are the plague of England.’

  ‘Failure to investigate such a report would be open to misinterpretation,’ the Archbishop warned him. ‘An allegation of the murder of Sir Thomas while in the Tower is a reflection on your Majesty, at whose command the prisoner was committed and in whose custody he lay. Not only the envoy but also your Lieutenant in the Tower must be interrogated. If there is truth in the charge, the Lieutenant has failed in his duty and should be relieved of his post without delay. The advice which I tender Your Majesty is to command Sir Gervase to reveal what he knows of this matter to Mr Secretary, who will then inform the Council at our next meeting whether there is corroboration for this tale.’

  ‘His Grace would have us act too hastily,’ Carr protested. ‘If we seem precipitate, will that not be taken as evidence that we believe the truth of what may be no more than an idle story? That way lies the encouragement of wagging tongues. Can this be what his Grace desires?’