Death of the Fox

by George Garrett

Haughty, now, more than condescending, self-righteous, feigning insolent stupidity. By St. Dismas, Apsley will not deal. He wants it all! He is turning it upside down so I must bargain. That’s his secret, then. Apsley is greedy as a Jew. Well, sir, Sir Thomas Wilson will not be bluffed by a lily-liver with maggots in the brain. The answer is Apsley shall have nothing. That will educate him to be … not less greedy, but more circumspect. He will profit from the lesson, though he’s most unlikely to be grateful for it.

  “No matter if my meaning passes you by,” Wilson says curtly. “It is not the first time. It is enough for you to know I have my instructions and intend acting upon them.”

  Apsley shrugging: “But I have no instructions. And until I do …”

  “These things have been promised to me.”

  “I doubt that. I very much doubt it.”

  Sir Thomas Wilson has endured much in one day. Out of natural patience and good will he has been generous to a fault, overlooking insult. But he is not a passive man by nature, and enough is enough.

  He grabs and grips the hilt of his sword.

  “Do you give me the lie? Do you dare?”

  Apsley is not smiling, but composed. His eyes, fixed on Wilson’s, are cold. His hands hang loose and easy, but he is ready to draw.

  Why, the poor man has lost the last of his wits! That’s the answer.

  “I shall give you nothing, Mr. Wilson,” he says, flat, voice cold as his eyes. “You shall have nothing here of Sir Walter’s so long as it is mine to guard.”

  “They shall not be yours for long.”

  “We shall see about that,” Apsley answers. “In the meanwhile, they and all things in this Tower are mine to hold.”

  “You are going to regret this,” Wilson says.

  And suddenly Apsley, for God knows what reasons (does a Bedlamite need reason?) laughs out loud.

  “If I had a penny for every regret I have,” he says, “I’d be the richest man in England.”

  Wilson leaves him laughing to himself, poor man. Walks out across the Yard. Poor Apsley will come to no good.

  What now?

  He cannot go to the King and make complaint. For, even if he could get to the King and gain his favorable attention, by that time all will have vanished. Or, the King may become more curious about these things. Let the King go chase English hares!

  Perhaps he should have bribed Apsley. No, he, stubborn fool, would have refused. Let him die poor then. And let that be his consolation. Perhaps they will chisel “poor and virtuous gentleman” upon his gravestone. If he can afford a stone.

  Speaking of which, what now?

  Well, first a bowl of wine to lift the spirits, to drive away the damp. And then.…

  And then, of course! He must try another tack. Perhaps to send a brief message to the Constable of the Tower, Thomas Howard, Lord Howard de Walden. Who will know nothing except the rumor and gossip. A cryptic message stirring Howard’s curiosity. Then he will dress in his best and pawn a jewel to rent a coach, yes a coach, and a pack of mounted linkboys. And when, as it will, the summons from Howard comes, he’ll roll stately there. And with never an unkind word against Apsley, mind you, only sympathy and respect, he will cook Apsley’s goose, by God, and Ralegh’s too.

  Damned if he won’t!

  Wilson kicks a clod of mud and swears. It is an old story. The life of a servant of the King, one willing to do shameful work when need be, is ever a chronicle of vague promises, most of them broken.

  Now he has to laugh.

  By heaven, the King may be the greatest conny-catcher in the kingdom. Is it not so?

  By the time he passes through Lion Gate and crosses the moat on the causeway, Sir Thomas Wilson has shrugged off disappointment and assumed the swagger of a man who can never permit himself the luxury of too much disappointment.

  Stukely, kinsman and betrayer, is riding toward the Westcountry. Driven that way, as if by wind. He has been ill at ease in the city. Lonesome, restless, he rented a post horse and set forth a day or two before.

  A hard journey this time of year, spurring his horse to pick a way through mud. Cloaked, he has pulled slant a wide-brimmed hat down against gusts of windy rain. But under that angular shadow his eyes are open, squinting ahead, his face drawn with the cold, his beard wet-beaded. He is alert, poised as a hare. Touches the hilt of his sword. Feels for the weight of the pair of pistols in a flat case, strapped beneath the cloak. He is prepared. A cold, wearisome tedious journey, in which each moment is a desperate risk.

  For he is carrying a leather bag, wrapped in plain woolen cloth, strapped to his saddle. A red leather bag with rawhide drawstrings. Red leather and upon it, in gold, the arms of Walter Ralegh, Knight. In this bag there are a few jewels, given him by Ralegh for safekeeping at the time of his arrest. When, apparently, Ralegh took him at his suggestion, agreeing to let him play the keeper and so arrest him in the King’s name. So that both would not be taken. Ralegh seemed to accept this stratagem, giving him the leather bag, and with it some rings off his fingers, some jewels from his purse.

  Stukely listened to them drop among the coins in the bag. Torches were coming toward them.

  Why, if he so readily agreed, did Ralegh wait until they had landed at Greenwich and then in the light say: “Sir Lewis, these actions will not turn out to your credit?”

  Why, also, when Stukely was rid of his charge and able to open the bag—which took some doing; he with nervous fingers and Ralegh having knotted the rawhide strings into a dense sailor’s knot—did he find what he did? Less than fifty pounds in coin, jewels of some value, but nothing remarkable. One ring having a value of sentiment, for the Queen may have given it to Ralegh. But, then, she had given him many jewels more valuable.

  Ralegh could not have been planning to escape to France with so little. Yet when the King’s men searched him, they found a few things to list still upon his person. The Fox was too crafty to pretend he was empty-handed. The greater part lay in Stukely’s bag, untouched.

  It must have been a ruse. One with two edges. On one hand, he could argue he could not have intended to escape to France with so little, no matter what French promises might be. Or, if that were not the best tack, why, come about and claim that what he had was all that remained of his wealth.

  There must be more for the finding. If so, Stukely will find it and have it too. For he has time, a lifetime, and Walter Ralegh has some hours, a few days at most. Stukely has sweet time to savor.…

  If the Fox has disposed of all or if he is, indeed, only a few coins away from being a beggar, then no matter. For Lewis Stukely has the King’s promise of one thousand pounds for his services, to be paid for his expenses as keeper. And the possibility of more, sure to come with the King’s favor. That favor will come soon enough. Stukely’s fortune has changed after luckless years. And meanwhile he has fifty pounds and a few jewels as a gift. And if it is not the fortune he has imagined—and will have—it is more than he has ever carried on an open road. A gracious plenty to kill a man for.

  The bag wrapped tight and dry in a plain piece of unwashed wool does not jingle, but is heavy with coins, and each coin is a little sun. None of them shining now. Eyes aching, limbs and joints stiff, haunch and crotch sore on saddle. And his slow horse picking her way through mud, fastidious and disdainful as a Court lady.

  He has gone far. By this time today will have come to an inn near a village. Will have entered the gate and given over his horse to a boy in the yard, with stern instruction how to care for her. And then he will have gone inside, dripping wet, blinking against the sudden, dry, warmth.

  Will have belied muddy first appearance with one gold sun, fished from hiding place and roundly rung like a little bell against the waxed surface of an oak table. One gold sun, and now he is no longer a wet traveler at an odd time of year, but instead a gentleman upon some business, affairs of the King perhaps, that will not wait for weather.

  Gold brings him the best chamber in the inn, a pewter bowl of the bes
t ale, and the promise of hot food. That coin brings a servant girl to take his dripping cloak and hang it near the kitchen fire. Brings into her sullen eyes an invitation, promises without a word.

  He keeps sword and harness. Clings to the leather bag as mother to child, and seeing their eyes—innkeeper, his wife, servants, and a few travelers near the fire—seeing their eyes, though hooded, drawn toward the sword and the bag, he feels a chill of more than the cold and wet of autumn.

  So plops down the bag with a muffled jangle on the table. A show of indifference. Sits at table, sipping ale as if all time were his servant. Makes idle talk, harsh laugh for punctuation, about foul English weather and such. Then, for all to see, he opens the case of pistols, examines them in the light. They are dry and safe and dangerous.…

  The innkeeper stands nearby, smiling, exchanging platitudes, posies, and pleasantries, and joining his laugh with the traveler’s in counterpoint, one note behind.

  Odd music, two harsh crows whose laughter is accompanied by a young traveler near the fire who has taken up a cithern to pick some chords.

  The servant girl, across the room, eyes him and licks her lips and brushes a strand of hair away from pale blank eyes. Eyes of blue and like an English springtime sky; she watches him, wet-lipped, pink and white, wild strawberry and fresh thick Devon cream, in firelight. And he can feel sap in his loins before the innkeeper’s wife gives the girl a flat slap across the bottom to send her back to kitchen chores.

  Behind him a tread on the stairway. He turns, his right hand releasing the pewter bowl and twitching, flexing on the table—like a crab on the sand by the sea.

  It is a servant, an old, slow-moving man, who has carried his saddlebags up to the room and now announces, sepulchral and black-toothed, that the fire is burning, and his chamber is in readiness, if it pleases him.

  Driven from London by loneliness, he must now, though lonely beyond the telling, go up and be alone.

  Declines a second bowl of ale—perhaps later. Asks that his supper be sent upstairs. Rises, stretches, feigns a yawn.

  “Well then, sir,” says the innkeeper. “I shall send Margaret along to help with your boots.”

  “Margaret?”

  “The serving girl, sir. She who took your cloak to dry.”

  Stukely, too, can feel the coming of springtime, envisioning the birth of glory from the sea. It shivers him. But fear in his bones is stronger. No, that will not be necessary. Tips a nod to the innkeeper and turns to the stairs, burdened with his bag and the case of pistols.

  Halfway up the stairs, he hears part of a whispered question among the travelers by the fire; and he thinks he hears the young man’s voice in a broad Devon tone say: “I think it must be Sir Judas Stukely with his bag of traitor’s gold.”

  Did he hear that or not?

  To turn back or not?

  To risk his earnings and his life. For a word or two which he may have imagined?

  He mounts the stairs to the chamber, hearing one final dissonant chord from the cithern, a raucous clownish noise bloom in the room, then wither into silence as he shuts the door behind him, locks and bolts it.

  Scabbard and hanger on a wooden peg. Naked sword on bed. Pistol case on top of the chest nearby. Boots … His boots are glued to his feet.

  Christ our Savior and Redeemer, what pleasure it would be to have that dark-haired, blue-eyed, pink and white, lute-shaped country girl, kneeling upon her haunches, warm as fresh-baked wheaten bread, to help him out of his boots. Shining logs of fire behind her as she kneels warming her wide soft bottom and that downy nest, soft as fur of a blind mole, of private places.…

  A pitcher of ale, or, better, now that he is coming to Westcountry, of cider, warmed, no sweetening needed. Perhaps some cinnamon to give the taste a teething edge.

  Strong Westcountry cider. Fume and essence of apple. Nay, more essence of earth distilled from the roots of the gnarled candelabra of the apple tree. Earth and the sweet clean rain. Branches, twisted, dark as thorns of a rose. Trunk and branches year after year fruitful. And at the last to make a delicate aroma when laid upon a fire. As if the element of fire could drink up the history of an apple tree and then dance, drunk and abandoned, in fiery costume, flames of orange edged and centered with blue. Alive and decked in blossom, how the bones of that tree filled the air with perfume. Then came the bees, tuning in several voices like a case of Italian viols. And in early autumn from tight wens and fists the apples seized the essence of sun, becoming four in one, earth and air and fire and water, swelling to taut pouting satin finish. Within lies white packed sweet of the fruit, even as the flesh of a brook trout, a fruit compounded of all elements, to shiver a tongue with sweetness. Sweet down to the center, bitter core with its five slick seeds, so small, to be spat out on the earth. And each of those seeds containing the mystery of all apple trees. Trees and many seasons reduced to a tiny button, on the tongue. To be spat out between the teeth.

  Good cider is the spirit—as the high head of a fountain, brief shimmering where air and water mingle together, is the visible voice of all waters—of many apples, many seasons, many trees. A man might be drinking smoke and swallowing flames as mountebanks do at the fairs.

  How it all comes back to him as he comes closer to home. Comforts of an English inn. Visions of apples, nuts, and good cheese. Scent of roast on the spit in the kitchen. Idle consort of low voices and laughter. Someone singing and the fire lively.

  Outside let it rain for forty days and nights and what care we, who live on the sides of a rainbow?

  There was an apple tree beyond the window, high and small, in the chamber where he slept as a boy. When the last leaves, gone with sun and green memories of shade, had withered, and the branches stood glistening, then came the wind springing like a cat; and the tree thrashing, tormented; he shivered thinking of the gallows tree where wicked men died and dropped their last sweat, where flesh shredded away and eyes were sweetmeats for beaked birds; and bones groaned together, rubbing like dry sticks. It’s a mad thing, and memory of it rises as it did then, but more baffling. For he has seen much of the world now, and need not fear dead earth beneath the bones of a hangman’s tree where not even a mandrake root will grow.

  A mad thing though: how that apple tree became in wind and rain a gallows; and then in a dissolving transformed into a thrashing, dying man, his face and tongue black, eyes bulging, pearls of sweat falling, foul stuff on his legs. Do not look. Do not! Looks.… Looks to see, huge and clear as a rising harvest moon, not body now, but the face of the dying man. Do not look to see whose strangling wild face! Looks to see it is his own face. Cries out.

  Someone must come to comfort him with a lullaby.…

  Christ’s bloody wounds, not that! Let the servant girl come and comfort him out of old memory. For it’s farewell country cider and welcome to the best wines in cups of alabaster rimmed with gold, or cups all in gold showing a frolic of naked nymphs to the pipes of a shepherd boy.

  After lean years, here comes the time of fat harvest. And here’s the first indisputable sign.

  He unravels again the rawhide knot of the bag.

  He has done well. Let no man deny it. He has served King and country. His kinsman will die or will not die. Which is none of his doing, according as God and the King will. He has done well and is going home. He has a bag of gold, seeds more rich and powerful than any apple’s, from which a crop of golden grain will rise and shine in imitation of the sun. From which he can, if he so wills it, own a thousand apple trees. Let apples spoil on the limbs, fall and rot into earth. Let them live only to perfume the air.

  He has his bag of gold, hard earned, well earned.

  His kinsman, who in a time now gone, could plant a thousand kinds of trees, will die or not die.

  If he dies, God rest his troubled soul.

  If he lives …

  Best not think of that. If he should live, should be pardoned for past service or out of pity, then what good will a whole sea chest of gold coins
be? Life would not be worth a smudged penny.

  He empties the bag upon the bed.

  Faces of King and Queen; the King with laurel wreath, the Queen with small crown and stiff ruff. And on the other side the arms of England. Pure fire from bowels of earth, dug and set free by burning, poured molten in a glittering tongue to mold and form these images of glory.

  Among the coins are a few jewels: a pearl, an emerald, some chips of diamond like fragments of frozen sunlight, and one small ruby like a single drop of blood.

  Why, like a poor mumbling fool, has he been dreaming? There’s not only this first installment, but the King’s promise, good as gold and twenty times as much, and here is the Destiny still lying at Plymouth. Disposable goods there. After all, he is Vice-Admiral of Devon.

  He will seek out the doddering, dazed Lord Admiral at his home before the news from London has arrived. Can that old man still hear thunder? With the influence of the Lord Admiral, he can proceed at once to selling cargo, fittings, and stores of Destiny before Bess Ralegh or other kinfolk have chained it down in links of litigation.

  Why hadn’t he planned this before?

  No matter. Do not disparage inspiration. There is still time.

  He will rise at midnight and ride away. Danger of the road will be less then, in truth, than proceeding by daylight. Someone at the inn will already have passed the word, and by dawn half the cutthroats of Devon will be laying their ambushes for him.

  Well, though those bloody rogues rise up with the cock, he shall be long gone.

  Home by daylight. Eat a country breakfast. Gather men and ride to call upon the old, slow-witted Lord Admiral. Before suppertime in Plymouth, he’ll be done with it. And the devil take his Devon kin! He’ll find another place to live in peace and leisure and call that home.

  Lighthearted, he plunges his hands into the piled coins.

  Winces and shivers, for the coins are cold.

  A knock, soft on the door.

  “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  “It is Margaret, sir. I have brought you your supper.”