He reaches for lock and bolt, then checks his hand.
“Not now …” he mumbles.
“Shall I bring it back later?”
“Leave it outside the door. I will fetch it myself in a moment.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Sir Lewis Stukely turns, leaning his shoulders against the door. Looks at a clean and cheerful chamber, fire in fireplace and gold on the bed blinking with borrowed light.
He sighs a soft cat’s whisper, then goes to the window. He hears the laughter from below, then voices singing, the tingling of the cithern.
Presses his face against cold panes. Rain blows against the window, runs down the pane. It is too dark to see the shapes of trees. All that is given to look at is his own face, pressed round against glass, stricken, tight, watery.
A man is drowning out there.
Rain runs down the panes, melting his face. Perhaps he imagines it is the rain. For his eyes are full of tears.
Ralegh at the window of the upper chamber of the gatehouse, looking out on the rain of the afternoon, has pictured all this, in a shiver of time.
For, as in a dream, truth and falsehood of imagination are of no consequence. They do not matter to each other, now rivals no more. He has pictured these two by choice. There is small malice in his vision, malice of sharp sight and strong memory. They can do him no good or ill. He can wish them no ill either, though he need not deceive himself by pretending to wish them well. Let them be. Let be what will be. He has squandered a few moments of time, an idle stroll in the imagination’s marketplace. He makes no claim for purity there, but it is a condition close enough to purity to permit truth and falsehood, equal, to lie down together like the lion and the lamb.
No difficulty to imagine them.
No trouble, either, to picture Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, etc., Lord Chancellor of England, member of Council, second in precedence in all processions and ceremony only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the few men close enough to the King to have advised upon Ralegh’s present moment and, perhaps, to have had a hand in making his future.
He need not allow himself to think of that future, but he can imagine Francis Bacon in his flow of time, his present, with a difference of degree from all others.
Lord Bacon in pomp of office … Was there ever a man, except a monarch, who wore robes and chains so splendid or raised ceremony from clumsy habit to the edge of a dance? Sat in Westminster Hall, above the court on the King’s marble bench, observing, all unperturbed. His hazel eyes, changing according to the light, now sea-green, now nut-brown, seized everything without seeming to stare. A roving eye—“a viper’s eye,” some call it—never lingering on anything long, least of all on another man’s eyes.
Throughout Ralegh’s exchanges with the Commission in the Tower, even upon that occasion when it was Bacon who concluded the final session by advising him to prepare himself in case of death, he had not looked into Bacon’s eyes.
Unlike Henry Yelverton and others, Francis Bacon was likely not surprised when Ralegh appeared looking like a pitiful scarecrow. Because long ago Bacon concluded that the chief strength of men of action and adventure, their weakness as well, was the stratagem of surprise. Bacon had been near, too near for comfort, to Essex. And Essex was so captured, enchanted by the endless possibilities of his part, that he continually surprised himself.
Bacon was not taken aback any more by Ralegh’s appearance than if Ralegh had appeared as the Man in the Moon or pretended to be the King of Spain. Not needing to avoid Ralegh’s eyes, for Ralegh did not stare at him.
Their eyes did not meet even when Ralegh in a perfunctory gesture of self-defense used an argument Bacon had used to reassure him. Once, not long before the last voyage, he and Bacon were walking in the gardens of Gray’s Inn to settle a dinner. Bacon gave him the opinion that the King’s commission of command, giving him both freedom and judicial authority over others, tacitly canceled out both conviction and sentence for treason of ’03. A point in law, though shadowy and debatable. Ralegh had thanked him for his counsel.
“Of course, money’s the knee timber of your voyage,” Bacon said. “What will you do if you fail to find the gold mine?”
Ralegh laughed and shrugged. “Why, I shall lead my ships as an Armada against the Spanish flota and bring it all home, in tow, to England.”
Words which had been remembered against him.
But when he raised the point at King’s Bench, he did not look at Francis Bacon. There was more resignation than reproach in his tone of voice.
Only at the end, when the Lord Chief Justice read out the sentence, the court attentive and Bacon himself leaning forward slightly on the bench, did Ralegh look at Bacon. He raised his eyes as if in a silent prayer and appeal to heaven and caught the unguarded eyes of Bacon. Bacon looked away. Looked to heaven too. When he looked back, Ralegh was facing the judges, speaking again, no expression save one of grave attention, as if he were a judge himself weighing the merits of some argument.
When it was all done, in scuffle of rising, Bacon, slipping out with more alacrity than ceremony, was conscious of Ralegh smiling. Not at him. Nor at anyone. Unless it were at Henry Yelverton, with whom he was speaking. Smiling nonetheless.…
An odd satisfied smile, which Bacon retained without a sign, like the memory of a melody, until he was secure and settled in his coach and could at last smile to himself.
Crack of whip. Creak of coach and wheels. Bumping forward then, his mounted retainers in livery, fierce boar emblazoned on their breasts. Rumbled off for the brief return to York House. So near that from certain high windows, over the wall, Bacon could see the Great Hall of Westminster as if it were a part of his own grounds.
Lives like a king in York House. Not our King, who lives like Francis Bacon if he were King, laughing at their common spendthrift bond and saying they will both surely die beggars. Lives as well as many a king in Christendom.
There was some satiric wisdom in the King’s choice of Bacon as Regent when James journeyed back to Scotland. No man in the kingdom would enjoy more the pleasures of receiving and entertaining foreign ambassadors, emissaries, messengers, and visitors. And not even the King would do so with such extravagant display. And it would not cost the King one coin to allow Francis Bacon to represent him.
The King joked about it with Buckingham as they went north together. The King, after a little too much wine, in high spirits and good humor, suggested that perhaps a permanent arrangement could be made, whereby Bacon could continue to represent him in Court and company, with all the rabble and strangers, while the King could hunt and live the sweet life of scholar and lover.
“It would be sweet to be sure,” Buckingham agreed, “but short. Bacon would be among the crowd of beggars at your gate when the first feast day came around.”
“Is he so thin, then?”
The King, never truly able to comprehend his own need for frugality, could not be expected to see truth concealed behind bold and glittering shows.
And Buckingham, too wise to tutor his royal teacher, smiled, enigmatic and charming, until the King continued to press the question.
“Lord Bacon is a worthy man who has waited long for justice,” Buckingham said. “He will be a devoted servant so long as he serves.”
York House, high-walled, fronting the river as the river makes its southward turn. Beyond those walls lies Durham House, toward London, and, to the west, Whitehall and old Westminster. Walled around, with celebrated gardens, sturdy small houses and outbuildings for his men, his stables, and the turreted stones of York House rising like an ancient castle. And all renewed, refurbished, refurnished, and rebuilt at a staggering expense.
Here Francis Bacon was born when his father, great-stomached Sir Nicholas, was Lord Keeper. From its precincts he had been turned out, together with his brother Anthony, after the death of his father. Always after that dreaming a return, fearing that, with slender inheritance, he should never rise so high again
, unable to imagine that the dream would one day come to pass, though long deferred and delayed.
There was something marvelously satisfactory about his history. An emblem of the vagaries, the high unsearchable wonders of Fortune.
This one knowledge the two men shared.
Yet with a difference. For at his highest turn on the wheel, Francis Bacon cannot be blamed for clinging to a fool’s delusion: that there is a justice of this world.
See how he has come, always by eagerness, spurred by impatience.
Though cast adrift by the death of Sir Nicholas, with three hundred pounds a year to build upon and no place to begin building except his father’s chambers at Gray’s Inn, Bacon still had reasons to hope. His uncle was Lord Burghley. His father had served the Queen well and had kept her affection. And his cousin, Robert Cecil, who had been as brother to him, stood, frail and bent, in the shadow of the father. Both close to the sun.
The Queen showed some favor to Bacon when she moved to admit him to the Bar as a barrister without the formal delay which custom required. The envy of his fellows at Gray’s Inn was nothing to bear when balanced against the comfort of the Queen’s favor.
Consider that he had not even had to contend with the rivalry of his well-loved brother. Anthony was off on the Continent, and, for obscure reasons, seemed likely to remain there.
Not knowing, then, that Anthony, though distant, was closer by far. Not knowing Anthony served Burghley and the Queen as a trusted intelligencer.
Bacon took his seat in Parliament in 1584, and, young though he was, he raised his voice clear and loud.
Alas …!
For he meddled. Meddled in matters of the subsidies the Queen sought, and in matters of religion, and at a time when his words could win only her disapproval. For which he can now blame youthful ambition. But must blame her for her failure to understand that these faults came not from an irrational flaw, but from youth, from ignorance of her true wishes. For which he should not be called ignorant; Burghley himself was often deep in doubt.
But she frowned and her frown lasted for her lifetime.
It was Jack Harrington who said that when she smiled it was the purest sunshine, but when she frowned it could be like a perilous black storm at sea.
Bacon never knew the Queen well. No man did, it is true. Francis Bacon was among the least knowing, but he should have known her better.
“He will sometimes stutter like a new-clipped crow,” the Queen had said. “What does he want?”
Bacon was too impatient. And until it was clear not only to her, but also to Francis Bacon himself, what it was he was impatient for, there was no other course of action but for her to do nothing, to keep him waiting, and to doubt him very well.
And so his time did not come for thirty years. He was useless to her for the rest of her life.
No, not entirely so. He performed some service, when he served Essex. Again likely to have been seeking to advance his foundering cause, his own advancement, the advancement of Francis Bacon, by means of association with Essex. But, early or late, Bacon must have been in the service of Cecil. That would be the manner of Cecil, and not too difficult to arrange. By then, Anthony Bacon had come home, and Francis had learned the truth of his brother’s vocation. Then Anthony died.
Bacon had come to blame Lord Burghley and his son for his bad fortune. Could blame the Queen, most secretly. Could blame her, but not so bitterly. For she was a woman. And women were, as all the world knows … But Bacon knows nothing of women. He knew enough to assure himself that one word from Burghley or from crooked Robin could have vaulted him over any obstacle placed between him and his just deserts.
Bacon has ever been a man of quick mind and of depth, breadth and power, capable of enterprise, even, perhaps, greatness, if not frustrated too long until, like a wounded limb, he shriveled from disuse. Bacon possessing, with a difference, the mind of his kin, the Cecils. But Bacon could never muster all his forces to a single task. He could not harness himself and patiently plow one furrow, then the next, never doubting the harvest would be his.
He could discern the hand of the Cecils in his misfortunes. First father, then son held him back by refusing to question the Queen’s judgment. But she had passed no judgment against him. She had suspended judgment, awaiting more evidence and proof. Still, she might as well have condemned him and consigned him to oblivion, when his own kin stood mute.
Before he moved into Essex’s favor, Bacon distrusted them both. After Burghley’s death he came to hate Robert Cecil.
What he cannot have considered was Robert Cecil’s knowledge of him. Cecil knew him as a child knows the alphabet. Cecil reckoned all that Bacon was and might be. In one sense Bacon was inconsequential. Likely, without assistance, to trip and fall in impatience or panic. And his panic and fear growing; for he had twice been subjected to the indignity of being arrested for debts.
Yet Cecil knew his cousin possessed an ore which could be mined and smelted and, assayed, might prove the equal of his own. Before he was a man, Robert Cecil had learned there was no purpose in the luxury of doubting himself. Yet this made him keener, more alert, willing, patiently, prudently, to tax his powers to utmost limits. Let no man question the courage of Cecil. Trusting himself and his trust increasing as he grew in knowledge and experience, if not in wisdom and stature, which anyway do not serve any man at Court, he never feared to use any man, even an enemy, to advantage. Like his father, he hated waste. Was willing, then, to wager that he could defend himself from any dangers incurred by relying on another whom he did not trust.
Ralegh knew that Cecil had made good use of him in Essex’s downfall. Too tedious to rehearse. Except in its similitude to the use of Bacon. Plotting not so much the downfall of Essex as the possibility of it, Cecil managed to commit Ralegh to make a peace between the two and then to bring all three together for a time. Simple and beautiful. Should Essex ever threaten Cecil, Ralegh stood between them. Should Essex succeed, then Essex was Cecil’s friend. Should Essex fail, then Cecil would have earned the Queen’s praise for diligence and still would not have forfeited the favor of James VI of Scotland. Whom he was already flattering, indeed serving.
But Robert Cecil was never one to rest content with less surety than he could obtain. Paradoxical, perhaps, for a man much addicted to gambling; willing to gamble recklessly upon schemes to make money. In imagination the paradox can be resolved. Gambling for recreation was comfort to a man who was as single and concentrated as a burning glass; a release from mind and from that weary, uncomfortable, unbeautiful body like the expense of his lusts upon healthy, well-fed, comfortable, perfumed bodies of Court ladies. As for Cecil’s buying and selling of lands, his enclosures, strict rents, trials and errors, and investment ventures, to survive at all he had no choice, but to gamble on these things also.
Enter Francis Bacon, steaming with indignation, brought to boil by impatient years. The sort of man Essex would trust and need.
Cecil summoned Bacon to learn a first lesson in the trivium of politics. Cecil called for his cousin, demanded and won service from him.
In return for what? Promises, together with some palpable, slight signs of thaw from the Queen. To whet his appetite and to prove Cecil’s power. In all of which the Queen may or may not have played a knowing part. An ignorance of some affairs was her protection, and her surety with Cecil. If one of his schemes came to disaster, he could suffer for it alone.
Within such bonds of understanding, trust is a luxury.
Moreover Cecil could demonstrate the folly of the common belief that Essex held the Queen enthralled, and that Essex’s favor was a patent to hers.
It required no dexterity for Cecil to convert his cousin from an enemy into a servant.
See what he gained thereby:
Item. An intelligencer in the camp of Essex. Trusted by Essex. Cecil trusted none of his spies. He used them, weighed and sifted the news they offered, always reckoning that it might be false.
It
em. Should Bacon prove useful, it would be Cecil who would profit most.
Item. As for James of Scotland, he could be diverted from Cecil, whom he needed, and therefore would be grateful for any reasonable occasion not to ascribe the fall of Essex to a trusted servant, diverted to others, including Francis Bacon, as false friend to Essex and intelligencer for the Queen.
Indeed Francis Bacon was singled out at the trial of Essex from among many double-dealers to be the very representative of clever double-dealing. And Bacon was forced to write a little book in self-defense—Apology in certain imputations concerning the Earl of Essex. Which may not have persuaded any man already convinced against him, but sold many copies in St. Paul’s Yard.
Item. Should Essex succeed in a plot or restore himself in favor of the Queen, Bacon, having deceived Essex, would be a most likely sacrificial victim.
Item. For small rewards (but to the hungry soul even bitter things are sweet), Bacon would discover that he had compromised himself. Regardless of the chronicle of events or their ending. With the game over, all cards tossed on the table, one last grinning knave would stand out, despised by Essex, distrusted by the Queen, and doubted by the King of Scotland.
Thus, ever graceful and simple, Cecil gave succor to a needy cousin and finished, once and for all, it seemed, Bacon’s hopes for future advancement.
To coat medicine with honey is an old device. A child will swallow it for the sake of the sweet. But for Robert Cecil it was more satisfactory that those to whom he gave the medicine of this world should know the taste of it truly as they swallowed it down. For one thing, they would never ask him for honey again.
So long as Robert Cecil lived Francis Bacon could not have prospered. And he did not.
Consider how in the fullness of his present felicity Francis Bacon still remains the pawn of his little cousin, gone to dust and corruption. No man is haunted save by himself. And yet a dead man may, indeed, triumph over a living.
Consider this: Bacon in the fullness of long-sought felicity is, without knowledge or assent, a triumphant creation of his cousin, Robertus Diabolus.
Death of the Fox Page 39