Death of the Fox

by George Garrett

  —And she died quiet as a cut rose.

  —And so, a most satirical courtier became the distillation of all the Court had wished to be.

  This ghost, an ageless young man, ever idle and restless, courteous and cruel, unchanging child of change, this man will say no more. He touches his lips to signal silence. He smiles and, miming the blowing out of a candle, he takes a thief’s farewell, first the color fading, then the sad cold light of his eyes gone, and one last blinking of something—a jewel, a ring, a coin cupped in his palm, and darkness comes between us and is final.

  To seeke new worlds, for golde, for prayse, for glory,

  To try desire, to try loue seuered farr,

  When I was gonn shee sent her memory

  More stronge than weare ten thowsand shipps of warr.

  RALEGH—The Ocean to Scinthia

  … Well now, I call that a voyage around the world and halfway back again. Beating the sea up and down even though it was all calm sailing. All for show with flags and pennants, drums and trumpets, cannon salutes, velvet rigging and tackle and painted sails of silk. Going nowhere and back again. With all the overcharged swagger you can muster but not enough to frighten away a Dutch fluyt. All for idle show as if time in the glass weren’t sand but was gold coins and cut diamonds for my lady’s fingers.…

  … And why not? For that idle fellow, the one who was speaking his piece, he looks to be a lost Mayfly or maybe a salad looking for a dish to sit in. All his dainty colors and delicate stuflfs! Why that silly scroyle could not cross the Thames in a wherry on a windless summer’s day! Could not cross the river without the heaves.

  … Oh, I’ll grant he never did deny it. He was open enough. Open and shameless like the legs of a Bristol whore.

  … But he would try to gull anyone. Smiles and lies like a Barbary pirate with every man he meets. Excepting those he knows to be his betters. His betters … Why, for the promise of favor he will kneel down and lick boots like a spaniel.

  … And I’ll never doubt he has succeeded in the art of the Court. That is (to wit and to woo), to gull himself most of all men. Learning to live with shame and idleness by pretending. And, as all the world knows, from the great Capes to farthest Muscovy, pretending is the father of that cheeful bastard—believing. Coming to believe, he with his goat dancing and high leaping, like a goosed milkmaid, his lute playing, sword crossing, reading and writing, riding and playgoing, and like accomplishments, believing, mind you, he has managed to do anything at all.

  … I marvel at the wonder of it, ignorance wider and deeper than a Newfoundland landing, arrogance, strut of a rooster like a peacock in a barnyard, of these glowworms of Court.

  … And yet I thank God Almighty the wretch never got bee in his ear or splinter in his arse that inclined him to going to sea to seek, adventure, high deeds, good name, bags of gold, and so forth and so on. For I have sailed more than once too often with gentlemen like him. And if I ever had time on my hands to ponder it, time to think, say when all wind was scant enough to be called naught and tasks and chores were done for the moment and a seafaring man can sit on deck to enjoy a pipe and drink his beer, I have been as mixed in my feelings as any salad. Chiefly divided between pity and contempt.

  … Pity for any wretch who’s seasick while riding anchors in harbor, before we have so much as raised a pennon, let alone heaved-ho to hoist a sheet. He, green-faced as a bullfrog, and knowing his guts will have more knots than our lines and will turn more flipflops than a flying fish in the bilge of a cock boat, before we have broke ground and cleared harbor. He knowing that the first fresh gale to fill sail and the steady pitch and roll will have him lightening cargo and ballast from every port of his body. A high hollow sea will send him below to black bilge. And if we should spew a little oakum from the seams and begin to gulp salt water, why, he shall open his prayer book to say the last prayers. Will give up his ghost three times over before we can furl canvas and bear up into wind to hull. Whereupon we shall be as dry and safe as a duck in a pool.

  … Contempt for him because he is much too fine and soft-palmed to lend a hand with hauling and hoisting. Christ on the water! They will not take their turns at pumping even to save their own worthless bones.

  … No matter if captain and master are good men and order the gentlemen to pull and work with every man aboard. No matter either if the crew is so thin and sparse from fever and flux or wounds that every breathing soul must labor day and night to keep us afloat. No matter, this fellow will be of less value than the youngest ship’s boy on his first voyage out. Though the gent can read Latin and name Hebrew kings from Saul to Herod and backwards again, can tally numbers as swift and sure as a merchant of Levant and always to his own advantage, he will never live long enough to name the lines of a ship. Whereas that ship’s boy, a fortnight out, will know the names and proper places and uses of three hundred odd ropes and lines, know how to do and undo the knots of them too, and can find them in pitch starless dark of a misling night. And if that ship’s boy does not and until he does, by God, he shall learn not by his slow brain but by his quick bare arse, instructed by the very thing, a knotted rope in the hands of the boatswain on Monday morning.

  … In a crowd, even aboard a yare ship, well mannered and well mastered, these gentlemen flowers can turn a bone good voyage into a stickle disaster.

  … Ask the fellow. Where does he think he came by any of these things he loves so much and lives for? Where did he get his silk and satin stuffs, gold and silver for his purse, spices and condiments to flavor his food and give him a thirst, the wines that make him thick-tongued, walleyed, and merry? I have shed a pint of sweat for every thread he wears to Court.

  … Not pride says that, but truth. For there is nothing that I know of to equal hard labor of sailing a great ship.

  … No matter, though. It is better for all that the likes of him live long and safe and comfortable—ashore. For thereby, among other benefits, many an ordinary English mariner shall live the longer and safer afloat.

  … But pray do not believe him without some salt of doubt. He can talk as sweet as a sucket. And I would not take the word, unquestioned, of that lewd rogue who came out to speak first, rusty crowbait calling himself a captain. Neither of them knows much and the both of them together would have to confess on the rack of true judgment that they have settled nothing of great shakes in their time.

  … It was the best men of England, the best men in the world I’ll venture, your English seafaring man far from home who kept home secure and hearth burning. He put plate on the table and half the food to fill it. Put goods and stuffs in markets. Fought the wars, for the sake of peace at home, in both peace and war. While others, like Yorkshire pigs at trough, swilled down profits and grew fat and sleek. They fed the flesh that hangs on their bones, by his hard labor. Dressed and adorned themselves in brave rags and rare cloths he brought home. Likely then to go forth and tup the sweetheart, wife, and daughter of an honest seafaring man. For the sport of it. His thanks left behind, fruit of the womb, a child to mock the seafarer’s old age. If he lives to have an old age.

  … And nowadays, in the reign of the King, they will call us traitors and felons if we sail with France or Venice or the Dutch or Moors—who have of late come this far and to Ireland, too, searching for fair-skinned women for the markets, and with renegade Englishmen to pilot them. They will call us not Englishmen. Forgetting all we did before. Believing that we should go beg for our bread—and without a license to spare the whip and jail—instead of doing the honest work we know and do well.

  … Nowadays they will have us join a throng of pressed men, hopeless rogues and criminals, and try to keep their rotten, leaky, ill-kept, short-rationed stink-timbered coffins, that they call the King’s Navy Royal, afloat. And will have us to do this for wages which would not keep one of the King’s beagle pups fed.

  … Sail out with rigging, courses, and tackle as old as the Armada. Some say the biscuits and the beer in the casks were ba
rreled then, too. And every mariner must have a file for his teeth like some Gold Coast cannibal to chew the King’s rations. And if, say, the captain and the crew will take an honest prize or two and divide shares among them, according to custom, why, they will be named pirates and end up hanging in chains through six tides of the Thames.

  … No, by the wounds of bloody Christ on the Cross, I would as lief pilot a ship of Barbary Moors to take on a squealing white-fleshed cargo, be they English or any other kind, as to beg on a public highway or rot my brains in the taverns, where, with good fortune, I may hoard one cup of watery ale for half a night.

  … Devil take them all, the courtier, the soldier, and the merchant too! He with his face as round and ruddy as a pompion, counting profits I earned for him at the price of my best years.

  A voice, hoarse as the cry of a winter crow or a jay in springtime leaves. Rough as the lick of a cow’s tongue. With a lifelong habit of speaking loud and clear to be heard above wind and slapping waves, heard in wind and weather, amid the slow groans and creaks of timbers and flapping of sails and whining chords of wind-fingering lines and shivering mast and crossbar, heard once, and understood once, or not at all.

  A tavern or alehouse full of such voices would be louder than a clash of infantry, and sometimes as dangerous to life and limb.

  Out of the darkness of dreaming comes first the voice. Next comes an odor. Oh, you can smell him before you see him. Not only the sour odor of flesh much sweat-soaked and rarely washed clean, for that scent could as well be the ghost of many a man in England, except the most fortunate and fastidious. Nor the sweet, sour, and dry odor of rough and ready clothing, tough as shoe leather but so worn and weathered, so sunned upon, misted, rained on, frozen stiff as body armor, that now it hangs loose and patched and faded, half rotten, shredding away like the flesh of a fugitive from an old lazar house. Nor even the lingering presence, shadowy odor of bilge water. An odor of dark foul stuff at deep bottom of hull, black sand and black water where garbage and scraps and refuse find refuge, together with the excremental humors of those on board who slip below rather than dare to perch, high and bare-arsed, on the rolling, ducking, pitching, spray-splashed beak and head before the bow. All this corruption distilled in sand of the ballast, becoming a liquor darker than ink, horrid as witches’ brew, until even the captain on his high poop astern can smell and breathe nothing else. And then that ship must be cleaned and rummaged entirely. Not only the odor of bilge water, though a trace of that will follow him to the grave. But most, beyond all the others, the thick-sweet odor of pitch and tar. Coming from his ceaseless work. Tar that gives him a name. Tar that has colored his hands and arms and gone so deep it will never be gone until the marrow of his bones has turned to powdery earth again.

  … St. Paul in the storm! You tell more lies than any Dutchman I ever knew! Though ignorance pardons you for it. But I cannot keep silent, with all due respect. True, we never had fine bathing tuns fit for a lady to scrub in. Nor wasted fresh water on such things. But we washed with salt water as often as able, in fair weather and calm. And we washed our clothing as well. And picked it clean of lice and vermin. And looked to our mates, picking each other’s vermin where we could not reach or see. And in foul weather, why the rain and wind did a scouring job, right down to the slick of the bones, on every man.

  … And when we went ashore, in a town or a strange place—sometimes even on hostile shore, with guards set about us and boats and oars handy—we filled our casks with water from stream or creek, and then, given time, we stripped down and bathed and scrubbed our garments.

  … Not to be sweet as roses and rosewater, mind you. But for the sake of health, and to rid ourselves of the vermin you find on every ship, be she ever so clean, those pests which swell up as big as peas and beans. Will drink a man dry of his blood, without a regular rummaging of himself fore and aft.

  … And even in worst weathers, when there is nothing to do but work or sink, the sea coming over the bow and the waves on deck, the rain and the sleet and snow will keep a man washed down, clean as a lord, if he’s working above or between decks. And if he must go below as naked as old Adam to man pumps, though he may be splashed by black bilge, he’ll soon be washed clean with seawater.

  … No, I say, a seafaring man, like it or not, is bound to be washed by water more than any other man in England, be he a farmer or a great man in a manor house.

  … If I give off some faint smell in the dark in my seagoing garments, then it must be the pitch and tar. But when I go ashore to spend my money and take my pleasure, it will be good strong ale, cider, and spirits a dainty nose will mark. Together, I hope, and hope until I die, with the powders and sweet perfumes of a good respectable whore.

  … Here I stand, a voice only. And here I shall stand until you have at least looked upon my home—the ship I spent my life on. I will be invisible until you have some picture of the ships we sailed, lived in, and died on. I am no fool. I have no expectation any man alive can come to picture her truly. I know you cannot, any more than I can sail myself into the future. But take one look and let yourself think on the simple things.

  … Picture a good stout ship, yare and well found. And while you look remember we sailed her to Newfoundland, Virginia, Panama, Guiana, the farthest Capes, made the icy ports of Muscovy, Aleppo and Basra, even Java and the coast of China. We hauled up our anchors, hoisted courses and sailed out of English harbors. And then, most of us and most of our ships, sailed everywhere and back again. Came home sometimes empty, light- and high-riding, and sometimes fat as a female rat, full to hatch covers and overflowing the deck with cargo and prizes.

  … Picture her in harbor or river, anchor lines out fore and aft, bobbing gentle on calm water.

  … And not to worry about the proper names of this and that—our jeers and carthapins, knavelines and all the like. I’m not the boatswain to beat you black and blue. You shall never know my craft and I’ll never know yours. Which is fair exchange, I say.

  High-charged, high-riding, made of solid English oak. From Devon, if possible, though more and more made from the timbers of Ireland, from the Baltic, bought from Poland and even Muscovy. Made from oak timbers, each from a whole tree and the trunks of the trees worked into planks in the shipbuilder’s yard. But properly seasoned first. Then fastened with stout wooden spikes and treenails.

  Small and squat to the eyes (though she is lean compared to the old vessels they call the round ships), with the length of her keel about three times the measure of the beam. Divided in three parts, forecastle, waist, and aftercastle. Beyond the bow and the sharp beak, is the bowsprit, a thin mast for a single square corse—the spritsail. Forecastle, set back from the beak, is small and low and for storing of cables and tackle. There are no cabins for the mariner; he’ll sleep wherever and whenever he can; on open deck when weather allows. Aftercastle looms over the waist with a high poop deck, and has cabins for the officers.

  The rigging is three masts, sometimes four in the largest ships: foremast, with foresail and topsail, stepped up from the forecastle; mainmast with mainsail and topsail set in the waist; and a mizzen, aft at the aftercastle, lateen, for steering and maneuvering. Together with the spritsail, there are six sails to work with. Some larger ships will have top gallant corses for foremast and mainmast, and sometimes a second slanted lateen rig, aft of the lateen mizzen and called the bonaventure mizzen.

  This ship is steered with a whipstaff below, attached to the rudder. Steered by compass and commands. Lookouts are topmast in large crows’ nests, and when wind is fair a man perched or lashed on the bowsprit.

  Masts are slender, delicate to the eye. With light, slim spars of not much more length than the width of the canvas they hold. Sails furled and spars aslant, the rigging is a row of winter trees to a landsman’s eye. All draped and webbed, the shrouds and tacklings, stays and braces, ratlines for climbing; and ropes from thinnest ratlines to huge cables for the anchors are hemp cordage.

  Slender m
asts and light spars; for the spars, which have no footlines, can be lowered and raised by muscle in weather too rough to sit high astraddle there. Topmasts may be struck. And in the worst storms a whole mast can be chopped away to ease the roll. Can be replaced by cutting and rounding off a tall tree thousands of miles from home.

  The ship is so simply made that any part of her can be made anew, if necessary.

  Come close and she is higher and smaller yet, a smooth sided, fat hull, bulging wide at waterline, then tapering, curving upward and thinner, with at least one row of painted ports, red and black, for guns. Often with more gunports than guns. And some are not ports at all, only painted squares. The planked hull is not painted from the water to the wale, but dark from thick staining; for it is paid with coatings of tar and oil and resin and turpentine. Dark-stained and smooth, rising to sudden brilliance at the wale; the upper and outer works are bright-painted in designs of red, blue, yellow, and green. But no fine carving or gilding there. And at the peaks of masts and at stern, flags, pennants and pennons, the arms of the owner, the flag for the nation, cross of St. George for England …

  … If you are speaking for me, you are wasting your living breath. And what’s more precious than that? I cannot comprehend the good of it unless the huge glass of time is reversed and the living must once again become square-rig, galleon sailors.

  … We had our craft and our reasons. Our vessels handled well for the men who knew the craft and obeyed the ways of wind and water.

  … It’s true, strong winds made trouble. We could beat up and down, tacking, for days at a time in a fresh gale and finally arrive nowhere for all our pains. And, running with wind, we must let out and belly corses like great sacks of air. Losing thereby, some swiftness. But not losing our rigging.