The Wisest Fool

by Nigel Tranter

  This noisy eruption safely disposed of, a more grave and dignified group made its appearance, escorted by the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms as marshal and led by Signor Molin, the Venetian envoy. This was the corps of ambassadors, including the new representatives of Spain and the Vatican, attending their first large-scale Court function. Magnificently dressed, their ruffs fresh-starched, their stars and Orders glittering, they made an impressive sight. They had some difficulty, however, in maintaining their sober dignity when they had to pass through a sort of tournament of would-be Knights of the Bath, mounted on each others' backs and jousting with table cutlery, while the Bath King flapped his tabard at them like a hen-wife with recalcitrant poultry. The deer hounds also, now decently settled on the floor, had to be stepped over.

  There followed a pause. James, it could be seen, had left his vantage-point. Then a rather longer flourish of trumpets introduced a very small party indeed, no more than two persons, one carrying the other. This was Henry Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, bearing in his arms the four-year-old Prince Charles. The latter was decked out in splendid purple and ermine robes, his small wizened features and big eyes peering out like a monkey's. There was a dutiful cheer at this, drowning some sounds of altercation up at the dais.

  Still louder trumpeting ushered in Prince Henry, all in white and gold as usual, an upright, heartening figure, ten years old this day, full of life and youthful grace with the Garter round his slim, left silken leg. Escorting him was another Lord High Admiral, that of Scotland, the Duke of Lennox. The cheering for the popular Henry was loud and prolonged.

  A resounding fanfare cut it short, and produced the monarch and consort. But not only these two. Flanking the King were the day's bride and bridegroom, each supporting a royal arm, while Anne, a little to one side, had to carry her husband's stick for him —managing to do so in entirely regal fashion, despite being somewhat over-dressed and over-feathered. The Queen's taste in clothes tended towards the flashy side and tonight she was wearing more jewellery even than usual. George Heriot had had to deliver a casketful to Somerset House that morning, on loan for the day from his stock, most of it now decorating Anne's person wherever room could be found for it

  The Lady Susan scarcely could be accused of over-dressing, at least The bodice of her pearl-seeded gown was so low as to be practically non-existent and her already prominent breasts underpinned with whalebone to thrust them up and out, the currently fashionable blue veins thereupon enthusiastically inked in, the nipples' aureoles painted scarlet. King James rather rolled expressive eyes in some distaste at this colourful display so close under his royal nose and tended to lean more to the other side on the resplendent but distinctly dishevelled bridegroom in the azure, crimson and white of his house. It was hard to say who was supporting whom.

  The knightly tournament, still proceeding, was forcibly stilled by Yeomen of the Guard to allow the royal party passage to the dais table. Up at the head of the hall, Orkney's fiddlers started to play a lively measure, to which their lord beat time with a flagon on the table—but to which his cousin found difficulty in fitting his own and his supporters' somewhat unsteady steps, although he nodded his large, high-hatted head in genial approval.

  But, beyond the Bath postulants the ranks of dignified couchant deer hounds posed a problem and one which even the Yeomen of the Guard were a little doubtful of clearing a way through. James gave his attention to this, paused thoughtfully, and suddenly turning, disentangled himself from the clutches of the so-blooming bride with some appearance of relief—whom Anne promptly and efficiently shouldered aside—and pushed Philip Herbert away with a sort of playful exasperation.

  "Man, Philip," he said wetly. "Bide a wee. We'll get rid o' these laddies. We might as well get this by wi'. They're getting gey rough. Aye, it's been a long day, mind." He raised his voice. "Vicky! Vicky Stewart—your bit sword, man."

  It was not Lennox's Scots accent which answered him however but the louder and thicker Germanic accent of his brother-in-law of Holstein. Ulric complained, and vehemently. He had been insulted. The ambassadors' party had come in after his own, according them precedence over himself. And now the wretched Venetian envoy was in a seat nearer to the thrones than was his own. It was not to be borne. At least, that seemed to be the gist of his complaint; Ulric's English was not good at the best of times.

  James looked somewhat taken aback, opening his mouth and licking slobbering lips. He peered at Anne, suspiciously. She it was, indeed, who, having quickly become tired of her brother's manners, habits and conversation, had ordered that the Venetian Nicolo Molin, whom she found witty and amusing, should be inserted between Ulric's seat and her own. She could hardly explain this there and them The King muttered something placatory and gestured vaguely.

  This would by no means do for Ulric who was drum-full of wine. He raised his unclear voice higher.

  The royal party exchanged accusatory glances and looked unhappy.

  "Quiet, man! Sit doon!" A great roar suddenly exploded upon the company. "Doon, I say. The King's Grace commands it." Surprisingly, that was the Earl of Orkney, pointing a forceful finger at the Serene Highness. And at the pure and simple menace in that order, Ulric gulped to silence and sat down heavily—before recalling that one did not sit in the presence of a standing monarch, and heaved himself to his feet again, but unspeaking.

  James cast a doubtfully grateful glance at his cousin. "Aye, well," he said, and turned to find Lennox at his shoulder with the drawn sword. The Duke was still the only man allowed to draw a sword—even though it was a specially blunted one—in the royal presence indoors. Gingerly the King took it, and swung on the candidates for knighthood.

  But the interlude with Duke Ulric had allowed these high-spirited and semi-intoxicated sprigs of nobility to revert to their playful antics. In anticipation of their new status they were now busy knighting each other with knives and forks, and making an increasing noise about it, assured of the well-known forbearance of their liege lord where young men were concerned. The King's genial injunction that they should come and kneel before him went unheeded, probably unheard.

  James repeated his summons, waving the sword about unhandily—but to scant effect.

  Abruptly, without warning, the entire situation seemed to explode in their faces. A bellow from the dais was followed immediately by a paralysing crash as a full flagon of wine, hurled with accuracy, smashed into the midst of the posturing postulants, shattering into a hundred fragments and splashing the contents over them all. And promptly the deer-hounds rose in savage baying threat.

  "Silence, bairns—for the King's Grace !" the Earl of Orkney yelled. "Doon, I say! Doon, by God!"

  Whether the last command was to his hounds or to the knights-to-be was not clear—but complete silence and stillness descended forthwith on man and beast alike.

  All but holding their breaths, everyone including the monarch stared up at Orkney. In two brief gestures, Patrick Stewart had established himself as master of the great unruly gathering. He flicked a stubby finger at his cousin to continue.

  "Ooh, aye," James said, goggling at his shaken and wine-splattered young friends. "Just so. You're no' hurt? Any o' you? Kneel you, then."

  Ah eyes warily on the dreadful ogre from the North, and his dogs, the eleven candidates hurriedly knelt in a ragged row, nervously dabbing wine from faces and persons, evidently much sobered. Taking the sword in both hands, James tottered down the line not so much striking blows on each bent shoulder as dragging the blade indiscriminately over heads and bodies muttering 'Dub thee knight, dub thee knight, dub thee knight,' as he went. He said it approximately a dozen times, and it is probable that most if not all of the postulants received some touch of the steel, some to their dire danger. At the end of the row, panting, the King added, "Arise—aye, arise all o' you. Guid knights ... to life's end. Up wi' you. Now—where's our Charlie?"

  The Dean of Westminster stepped forward, fine in his Bath robes,
bowing, with an open book, to proceed with the rest of the ceremony—for there was a great deal more to the investiture of Knights of this ancient Order than merely bestowing the accolade upon them. But James had other things on his mind and was in a mood for dispensing with unnecessary ceremonial. He shooed the Dean away, and then turned to do the same for the now standing eleven.

  "Off wi' you," he said. "That's it. Awa' wi' you. I want Charlie."

  "He is here, Sire," Lennox assured, from behind.

  The new members of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, finding themselves no longer the centre of attention, and thus dismissed, were only too glad to escape. Making a variety of bows to Majesty's padded back, they hurried away. However, both Bath and Garter Kings of-Arms perceived difficulty, and exchanging glances, hastened after the new but departing knights, gesturing for them to halt. They managed to stop them near the door.

  Meanwhile James found the Earl of Nottingham behind him, bearing his small wide-eyed son. He grinned at the mite, tweaking its ear.

  "So there you are, my mannie. Bide you still, now—and we'll get this by wi'. Nae bother, mind. Toby, man, are you there?" "Here, Sire."

  "Aye, well. You got a guid hold o' him, man Nottingham?"

  "I have, yes," the Lord Admiral declared stiffly.

  James, who had been using the sword to lean on, now brought it up to waver about his little son's head. Nottingham jerked his own grey head back sharply, with the point only an inch or two from his eye.

  "Stand still, man," his lord commanded. "This is fell difficult Dinna jink about, that way. Now—Charles Stewart Duke o' Albany, my son, I do dub thee knight o' this maist Honourable Order o' the Bath, preparatory, aye preparatory, to your investiture as Duke o' York." By this time he was resting the sword partly on the child and partly on Nottingham's shoulder. "Arise, Sir Charles. Stewart—and be thou a guid, true and proper knight until thy life's end. Aye." Thankfully he lowered the blade—and Lennox had to be quick to catch it before it fell altogether. "Now, you, Toby Mathew, man. And guidsakes, be short about it!"

  Dr. Tobias Mathew, Bishop of Durham, deputising for the Archbishop of York who was old and ill, was a genial and witty cleric—the same who had greeted James at Berwick Bridge. He recognised that prolonged histrionics and the normal ceremony of investiture were contra-indicated here and now. Nevertheless the occasion called for certain form and dignity, however abbreviated. He raised a beringed hand, therefore, and launched into prayer, with a fine cathedral intonation. Not everyone was. prepared for this, and there was some background noise, especially from the new knights held up near the door, and also from a group near the head of the right hand table, where Philip Herbert had abandoned his bride to get involved in a card game with certain other courtiers. Fearing that Orkney might feel called upon to intervene again, James coughed loudly—and the Bishop, assuming this signal to be aimed at himself, brought his invocation to an even swifter close than intended, and proceeded in a more conversational tone to the next and indispensable stage of the programme. This consisted of a number of formal questions put to the new duke anent his good intentions towards the people and province of York, his support for the archiepiscopal see, his steward ship of the secular revenues thereof—large, which was why James was in such haste for this investiture of his second son, when the first was not yet created Prince of Wales—and so on. To all which questions the Lord Admiral answered in the affirmative, for the child, in a bored voice. Finally, he repeated the ducal oath, made to dukedom and monarch, after the Bishop.

  This over, James himself took the ducal coronet, gold-studded with gems, and placed it on the little boy's head, where it settled to rest on his ears. "Geordie's made it ower big," he observed—to add jocularly, "Och, but you'll grow into it! There you are now, laddie—you're Duke o' York."

  "Hail, Duke of York 1" Bishop Toby cried—though only one or two took up the salutation.

  The child, who had been entirely docile throughout, smiled beatifically when his mother gave him a kiss—however much the Lord Admiral puffed disapprovaL

  At a sign from Garter King, the trumpeters blew a fanfare, and to the notes of this the Admiral paced away with his charge, flanked by Yeomen, to join the other waiting Knights of the Bath, and so to march out of the hall in some sort of procession.

  The King sighed his relief, and grabbing his stick from Anne, used it to poke a route through the deer-hounds on his way, at last, to his seat up at the dais table, where the flagons stood ranked.

  He took off his high hat and sat down—and everybody else was thankfully looking forward to doing so likewise once the Queen was seated, when Anne, escorted through the dogs by Lennox, reached her husband's side and stooped to whisper in his ear.

  "Eh? Eh? Waesucks—to be sure. It had escaped me—aye, clean escaped me." fames looked round for something convenient to bang on the table, but his queen tapped his shoulder and pointed to the trumpeter behind his chair. "Blow, man—blow," he commanded.

  So once again the imperative summons to attention rang out— and retained everyone on their feet. Lolling in his chair, the monarch waved a vague hand. "See you," he announced, "there's another matter. Important. It's my royal pleasure to welcome to this my Court a man you'll hae heard tell o'—aye, a notable man. Frae Ireland. Hugh O'Neil, Earl o' Tyrone. He that would ca' hansel' King o' Tyrone, if I would let him!" He chuckled, and raised his voice. "Enter, Tyrone," he called. "Wi' another."

  A side-door opened at the foot of the hall, and, from where they had been waiting all this time, two men marched in, arm-in-arm. They made an odd pair, for one was a red-headed giant with a bushy beard flecked with grey, and a wild eye, his clothes hung about him anyhow—the principal leader of the long Irish campaign against domination by Elizabeth's England; the other, a slender, dapper dandy of a man half his age, in the extreme of fashion, with a supercilious cast to his pale features—Charles Blount, eighth Lord Mountjoy, Elizabeth's Lord Deputy of Ireland, who had succeeded the ill-fated Essex. They had difficulty in adjusting to each other's step, these two—as to much else, indubitably— but continued to pace forward arms linked nevertheless, by royal command.

  Astonished, enthralled, the huge company stared at the great and terrible rebel of the line of Ulster, bogey for so long to the English, destroyer of cities and armies, slayer of the innocent; and at the elegant who had gained eventual victory over him, where Essex and all others had failed.

  Stalking unevenly, they came up to the dais, and bowed in approximate unison.

  James put on his hat again, and nodded to them genially. "Aye," he said. "Right satisfactory. A symbol o' happier times. Cedant arma togac. Welcome, Hughie. Welcome, my Lord Mountjoy. Here you see the kindly fruits o' peace and amity. Sic volo, sic jubeo For thirty years there has been stupid war in Ireland, wi' thousands dead. Now, on my royal command, that's by wi'. There'll be nae mair o' it, I tell you. And these twa are the sign and seal o' it. Loving each other!" Even James himself could not but grin at that interpretation of the pair's attitude before him. "Aye, love we'll hae, no' hate and bicker, in my realms. Mind it. Wars and bloodshed I'll no' abide. In token whereof I make proclamation, proclamation d'you hear that, Hugh O'Neil, Earl o' Tyrone, has my fullest, freest pardon and remission, and a' styles, titles and lands declared forfeit are restored to him. A' men will show him fullest respect—on penalty o' my wrath. Aye, and Charles, Lord Mountjoy—you I hereby appoint and create Earl o' Devonshire, for your guid services. Your patent and bit belt you'll get later." He took off his hat once more. "Aye, then—that's it. Awa' to your places. God be thankit, that's done. We can now set to. This is by way o' being a wedding feast, mind. For my honest gossip and guid friend, aye amicus usque ad aras, Philip Herbert, and his bit lassie. We'll set him on his way, and right warmly. Bring on the meats.. ."

  * * *

  As a banquet, perhaps it was less successful than some—whatever else it was. The prolonged delay had not improved the cookery; moreover it was possibly a mist
ake to have had the wines on the tables beforehand, for hungry folk had had to fill in the time and put something into empty bellies. As a result, many had lost interest in the food by the time it arrived, and some were not in the best state to appreciate the good things to come. And there were very good things to come, undoubtedly.

  It was a fairly late hour before the last of the twenty-odd courses was over, and not a few, including James himself, would have been glad to forgo the masque to get down to the final climax. But this was Anne's contribution to the evening, and she had spent upwards of three thousand pounds upon it, with the newcomer Inigo Jones, talented protege of the Earl of Pembroke, designing the setting and decor for Ben Jonson's theme. Moreover, there had already been something of an upset about it all, for the Earl, a man with cultural leanings, had himself written and designed a masque for his brother's wedding, called Juno and Hymenaeus, unaware that the Queen was intending the other for this night It was unthinkable that all should be abandoned now—especially as it was important that royal marital harmony should be seen to be maintained, at present.

  Towards the end of the feasting, then, with performing bears dancing to the music of a gipsy band, the Queen and some of her ladies, who were to take part in the masque, slipped away.