by David Elias
“Yet this is little more than a bauble against such a work,” said Lady Anne.
“The horse is fashioned after the equestrian statue of Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Would my brother should yet have the opportunity to go and see it for himself in Florence.”
“In any case, it shall cheer him, no doubt,” Lady Anne remarked, “to know that it came from you.”
“Cheer?” I turned on her. “Where is such to be found in all of this?” A current of anger surged through me; I knew not why, only that I was powerless to hide it.
“I only meant . . .”
“No sweet charm of merriment shall cure Henry of his affliction nor quit me of my purpose.”
I handed the statue to Captain Hume, who took it from me and turned to go. Having seen him to his task, I found myself in no mood to be waited upon, nor did I wish to make idle chatter, and allowed that Lady Anne and the Count might follow the Captain out and wait for him in one of the outer chambers, the better to escort him back when he had finished. I sat down in Henry’s chair, hardly aware of my surroundings, as though I might be on the brink of sleep and yet unable to cross the threshold into that world of dreams. I had not had a good night’s sleep for some time, imprisoned in a state of tiredness where I felt no more rested in the middle of the day than I did in the middle of the night. The two had become indistinguishable. I had forgotten what it felt like to fall into peaceful sleep, to wake up refreshed. I seemed something of a stranger to my own thoughts, to my body, neither of which felt entirely like mine.
A restless reverie overtook me, and I found myself in Stanwell Manor, a young girl of ten, seated at my sister Mary’s bedside in the home of Elizabeth Hayward and her husband, Sir Thomas Knyvett. I was holding her outstretched hand in mine as she lay beneath the rumpled blankets, matted hair strewn across the pillows, her small body ravaged with fever, her breathing raspy and rapid. It was plain to me that she was trying very hard to stay alive. My father had granted me permission to come and visit her. Just as he had done with all of us, he had sent Mary away at infancy to be cared for by others. He harboured an intransigent mistrust borne of treachery, a prisoner to the many imagined plots and conspiracies he entertained incessantly.
I’d only ever been allowed brief visits from time to time, but I loved Mary from the first, cherished every moment she snuggled in my arms. She would look up at me with such bright innocence that it never failed to restore me, even as the first intuitions of that darkness I should soon struggle with hovered over me. She was not yet two years of age, but already upon our rare visits we had managed to engage in such intimate and delightful exchanges as only sisters can enjoy. She was especially fond of saying my name, and I marvelled how it filled my heart to hear her utter it, what holy comfort I took from such a little thing.
I was still living in Coombe Abbey at the time, but Henry had been sent off to Magdalen College at Oxford. It had been my fervent hope the Harringtons might see fit to allow Mary to come and live with me, and I had spoken to Lady Harrington about it, promising to help as much as needed with her care, but then word came that my little sister had taken ill with a fever. The attending physicians had determined she was suffering from pneumonia, which threw me into a deep dread, for there was then, as now, little remedy for that affliction. I had already lost an earlier sister, Margaret, and before that a younger brother, Robert, both in infancy. Only a few months prior, my mother had given birth to another sister, Sophia, who had died only two days later. I was only a young girl and already I’d seen too much of dying. The Harringtons pleaded with the King on my behalf, that I might be allowed to go and attend my sister’s bedside, but my father refused. At that, Lord Harrington, to his eternal credit, took matters into his own hands and brought me to Stanwell Manor in secret.
“Mary,” I said, “it’s your sister Elizabeth, come to see you.”
She opened her eyes, two blue and darkened lakes, and a weak smile crossed her swollen lips.
“Lizbeth,” she uttered, her little fingers closing around one of mine.
“Mary,” I said, “dear little Mary.”
Her face flushed over with pain and she took in a deep breath. “I’m cold. Can I have another blanket?”
I reached down to pull a blanket over her. “There. Is that better?”
“Will you stay with me?”
“I promise.” I laid a hand upon her tiny, heaving breast. She was on fire! “I’ll be right here until you are well again.”
“Shall I get better?”
“Of course you shall. You must be thirsty. Let me get you some water, and then you must rest.”
“I don’t want any water. And I don’t want to go to sleep.”
I leaned over and kissed her heated forehead, ran my fingers through her wispy red hair, listened to her laboured breathing. There followed a long period of silence between us, with only her deep inhalations to mark the passing of time, until her breathing changed abruptly, became shallow and faint.
“It’s here,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What’s that?”
“Can you hear it?”
“I’m listening.”
“I see it now.” Mary turned her innocent child’s face up to the ceiling, lifted her head from the pillow a little, stared intently at some private surprise of great wonder.
“I go,” she uttered, and again, “I go.”
She squeezed my finger harder, eyes wide, mouth open, her breathing suspended. Then she stiffened, stiffened, into a terrible utter stillness. Never question that a heart can be torn from a body, for in witness to that aching departure was mine ripped from my chest. Yet strangely, what has stayed with me ever after is the grace and beauty of her dying.
The Queen, our mother, during all of this chose to remain at Hampton Court. How often I lamented what an uncaring harridan she was, though soon enough the experience of losing my own children should soften my judgment of her. Her husband had, after all, literally torn her first-born son out of her arms when he was but a few days old and removed him to Stirling Castle to be raised in the household of the Earl of Mar. I came to learn in later years that she fought very hard to regain custody of him, but her efforts went unrewarded. At one point she had defiantly undertaken the perilous journey to Stirling Castle on her own to fetch her baby back. But so formidable was my father’s tenure that she was not even granted a brief visitation, and was most rudely turned away at the doorstep. The episode upset her so deeply that her next two pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, and thereafter a change came over her that no one could fail to notice. Upon the birth of yet another child, she took pains to distance herself from the girl almost entirely, rightfully expecting that she should suffer the infant to be taken from her at any moment, just as young Henry had been. I was that girl.
A more benevolent daughter might have been quicker to pardon her behaviour, but it seemed to me she let her suffering hold her hostage, where a more courageous woman would see her heart find expression by an act of sheer will. As for me, I might better have succeeded at loving my own children if only I’d been more comfortable around them, but there was always something that stood between us. I had no desire to watch them lose their innocence, which by my reckoning begins with the first breath. It was easier after they had entered their adolescent years. By then the damage had been done and I could engage with them in a different way. There wasn’t so much to lose. Yet even then a mild yet pervasive anxiety ruled our exchanges, dulled the trials and triumphs to which I was witness. Why should it be so difficult to be noble?
But now I forced myself once again to take in my immediate surroundings, to become aware of myself sitting in my brother’s chair inside his study. Captain Hume might return at any moment and I wanted to be ready. I checked to see where the bronze statue had been sitting on the table next to me. My brother had developed the habit of placing the little horse
on top of whatever reading material was currently of interest to him, and now I took up the papers that had lain beneath it. They were a set of illustrations of the inner structure and composition of the human body that had come into Henry’s possession by way of a French ambassador. He had mentioned them to me, but I had not had a chance to examine them. I had never seen drawings of such intricate detail. It was as if the artist had peeled back the skin and removed the outer layers to reveal a complex network of tissue and sinew beneath, spiral tubes and oval vessels, all manner of delicate organic structures, shapes and forms most intriguing. If these were indeed accurate, I thought, and not imagined, then the hidden workings of the human creature were nothing like those depicted by earlier anatomists, for here were no spurious arrangements of wheels and cogs and gears, but a symmetry and design entirely remarkable.
The drawings had about them a sense of noble detachment, as if the artist had been intent to vanquish all sentiment for the sake of accuracy, but there was an unmistakable tenderness in their aspect, as of a deep reverence for the subject matter. Crammed and wedged into every available space were copious handwritten notes scrawled in an indecipherable hand, the lettering inverted in some way. It was not until I picked up a small mirror from the table and positioned it over the words that I discerned they were written in Italian, one of the languages my father had seen fit to let me be schooled in. I wondered what the physicians of the day, with their talk of humours and vapours, their murky terminology, would make of these drawings and their depiction of what had heretofore remained unseen.
At my urging Henry had recently brought over from Holland an instrument designed for the express purpose of magnification. The apparatus allowed me for the first time to witness with my own eyes those tiny beasties I christened “creatomies”: dozens of minuscule bodies swimming about in but a single drop of water I had collected from a nearby pond. We took turns looking through the eyepiece, equally amazed at the wondrous miniature world depicted there. And now as I sat there, a troubling vision overtook me of some such creatures travelling about, unseen and undetected, within my brother’s body, spreading throughout its entirety by way of the circulation of the blood, and by that means bringing about his disease. I sat there poring over the drawings, imagining armies of impossibly tiny beings doing battle in the small arenas and recesses depicted in these drawings, waging crusades of attack and defence entirely unseen by the naked eye, inflicting wounds nevertheless as real as those suffered on the battlefield.
And what of the inner workings of the mind? Might the struggles that took place there correlate to some unseen process in that organ we call the brain? Were its secrets also capable of being explored, mapped, vivisected? Surely within the human body, I thought, were countless hidden mechanisms at work of which we were entirely ignorant. A nagging uneasiness gnawed at me, to think Henry’s affliction might have originated in such intricate constructions as I witnessed in those wonderful drawings, entirely unknown to the physicians who attended him.
I thought of all the monies my mother and father devoted to their frivolous undertakings, she with her extravagant masques and he with his unwarranted building projects. And all it succeeded in doing was to bring them both into disfavour with the people. No doubt when Henry was king he should see fit put such monies to better use. He and I had already discussed the possibility of founding an institute for scientific discovery, to which we would invite luminaries from every country: Galilei from Italy, Gassendi from France, and yes, Sir Raleigh from the Tower.
***
It seemed like an eternity before at last I heard footfalls in the corridor and Captain Hume strode into the study.
“Come, sit.” I grabbed him by the arm the second he walked into the study, and threw him into the nearest Wainscot chair, leaned over him.
“How is my brother?”
He seemed taken aback at my intensity as I searched his face for answers. “Did you give him the letter? Does he send a reply? The medicine. He took it? It restored his spirit some?”
“Madam,” the Captain pleaded, “by your leave I shall be glad to tell you all.”
“Then do so, in the name of Heaven. I want to hear everything. How looks he? What did he say?”
“When first I entered he was in restless slumber.”
“Why say you restless?”
“He was wont to toss his head from side to side upon the pillows and softly moan.”
“I trust you sought to ease his discomfort.”
“No more than to seat myself upon a stool at the foot of his bed and there take up my viola da gamba to play for him.”
“But where’s the comfort in that? Did you not see your way to his bedside, take his hand, find some means to lay a hand upon his forehead?”
“Madam, these things I did, though not at first.”
“But why not?”
“Your Highness,” the Captain implored, “I am trying to tell you, but you must give me leave to make answer. I was cautioned by Dr. Mayerne, who made a great show of his authority, that if I overstepped my bounds it should bring an end to my visitation. I was to refrain from speaking to the Prince, as he might be suffering from delusions and his words should not be taken at face value. Indeed the man’s precincts were such I wondered how I should manage to get near your brother at all.”
“I might have known. I tell you it shall come to a head between us. He afforded you no privacy, then?”
“He laid claim that upon your father’s express wishes Ferrabosco, as Groom-in-Extraordinary to your brother, should be present in the chamber with me at all times. Then of a sudden your brother moans and thrusts out his hands, limbs stiffened, and cries out in such pitiful bursts that Ferrabosco rushes from the room to fetch that same Dr. Mayerne, who has given him in turn instruction that he shall be summoned at such a moment of crisis. Still he posts one of the Yeomen to stand guard inside the door, to whom he gives instruction and so takes his leave, whereupon I take up my instrument and begin to play, tortured at the agony of your brother’s turmoil, though the music seems to take its effect and after a few moments he is somewhat becalmed.
“Now a peacefulness comes over him until he quietly raises his head from the pillow and utters, ‘Who is here?’ I rise from my chair to make answer, step toward the bed. The Yeoman looks to intercede and thrusts forth his halberd. I plead that he shall show some mercy, at which he looks upon me of a sudden with such close inspection, then at the Prince, then back at me, and thus he speaks: ‘Can this be that same Captain Hume I fought under on the battlefields of Scotland?’ I give over that I am indeed that man, at which he concedes I shall command him as one soldier to another, and he will stand down and dutifully obey.”
“This is providence indeed.”
“Such bonds are ever forged upon the battlefield as no man can unmake.”
“All well and good, but to my brother. You went to him?”
“‘Captain Hume,’ the Prince utters, and reaches out a frail hand to take mine, ‘it is good of you to come, but how is it that you visit me and my dear sister does not?’”
“This wounds like a dagger. I take it you explained the situation.”
“Be assured I told him you had done everything you could.”
“But tell me how he looks. I would know his appearance in every detail.”
The Captain’s eyes turned down and a pained look came over his face. “I fear I have not the skill to convey such to your satisfaction.”
“Say,” I said, “and let me be the judge. Tell me what you saw.”
“Your Highness, they have shaved his head.”
“That’s for the chickens,” I said, “which they flay open and lay upon the skull to draw out a fever. A last resort. Their so-called remedies are bankrupt. But Captain, what of the confection? Did you manage to give him some?”
“I withdraw from my pocket the items you sent, Your Hi
ghness, and as soon as your brother sees the statue of the little bronze horse, he raises his head from the pillow to take it from me, looks upon it as though it were a priceless treasure, runs his fingers over it, clutches it to his chest. ‘My sister sent it,’ he says as though to himself, at which he holds it again out before him to gaze upon it with great fondness, as though it were a living thing. Next he spies the letter you sent and takes it from me with trembling hands, plays his fingers over the fine gold threads, then tears open the paper. He goes to read but falls back with a sigh and confesses that his eyes fail him, entreats me rather to read it out to him, which I proceed to do after I have brought a candle to give me some much-needed light. I pause from time to time and note his expression, at one moment cheerful, the next solemn, and at the last there upon his cheek a tear streams down which he will not deign to wipe away, but caresses instead the little bronze statue, his eyes now seemingly fixed on some distant image known only to him.”
“This tears at my heart. I’ll hear no more.”
“Madam, forbear I beg you, for I think he wept with joy to hear your words.”
“Proceed.”
“Now again I go to offer up the cordial, but he pushes it aside, clutches at my collar and pulls me close, bids me be quick, that the time is short, takes from beneath his pillow this paper and hands it to me.
“You mean to say you had this the whole time?” I tore it from the Captain. “Why have you kept it from me so long?” I opened it to see there my brother’s unmistakable penmanship, though scrawled and barely legible:
Dear Elizabeth,
Forgive me that I write with such an unsteady hand, but my heart is to blame, for it beats with great irregularity and will of a sudden speed with impossible haste, fill my head to bursting with pulsing blood and heat, then slow as though to cease altogether, leaving me gasping for air. Havoc reigns so within my body that I am feverish one moment and cold the next, one instant exhausted and another bursting with frantic energy, as though some unknown force had taken over the reins of my being. How else to explain my thirst though I dare not drink, my hunger though I shrink from the sight of food? I am a stranger to sleep, and have not the strength to rest.