She has written many times about Ralegh. And he has read each letter.
But this most recent petition baffles him. It seems to contain some knowledge he has not imagined she possessed.
He did not, could not last night read all the letters which had come to him. But, out of duty and lest he should be more ashamed, he read her latest. In her own hand. Weak and faint as her health. Weak in reasoning and rhetoric as ever, health or no. But strong in sincerity. Poor woman, she can have no more reason, no more mind than God gave her. And she who had good health, if not great beauty, can keep health and strength no longer than God intends. Yet it seems that as the body fails, the light of her spirit grows clearer. As if fever and suffering and pain may have served to refine her.
Once she could reach him with wiles and arguments, and now she can wound him, not with woman-cunning or persuasion, but by the clean stroke of purity of spirit. Which is outside the realm of reason.
How to explain the strange discontent, the wince, wound and shame of, yes, God forgive him, envy?
The words of a woman poor in health and, most curious, rich as an emperor in spirit, she who loved dancing and masques, fine clothes, trinkets and baubles, laughter and the games of children, wound him to the quick. As if, yes, she were in spirit male and had transformed his soul to female. With every thrust, then, his teeth on edge from groaning. As if, to a female soul, the road to bliss were paved with stones of pain.
Thus in her pain, he suffers most.
And all his naked failings measured against the glass of … what? not her successes, for she has succeeded in nothing much and cannot even embrace Death gracefully.… All his naked failings as man, husband, king, and ruler, measured against the simplicity of her spirit.
Late last night James Hay came to his bedchamber. Hay having ridden like a madman, or like James Hay when he has a mind to ride hard and fast, alone from Westminster to report upon the hearing at King’s Bench.
James Hay, once a handsome favorite in Scotland, now favorite no more; but made a nobleman, he has proved most noble, and time has proved him constant in loyalty. Never a proper pupil, indeed to the King, his teacher, intractable, for his spine of character was already formed, he is a surprising pride to the King, a source of gladness at heart. For if he could not teach and shape him, he could not by errors corrupt him, as he has done Robert Carr. And if Hay could not ever have learned with the quickness of George Villiers, James Hay had less to learn. He was not made to learn these things at all. Rather to serve and, in service, to teach others, even the King, by example.
Now he has become a lord and his youth has gone, but not his loyalty, his harsh honesty, his Scots wisdom.
If he made nothing out of James Hay—even titles and rewards cannot change him for better or worse—he can take credit for choosing him wisely from the crowd.
Hay, muddy from his ride and indifferent to the King’s fastidious concern for such things (why, after all this time, should he and the King play the game of strangers?), was admitted to his chamber as the King in his bed was rereading and pondering the petition of the Queen. So the King put the question to him straight, as he could not and never would to Steenie, who hovered nearby, tall and handsome in white. Do they not, behind his back, call Steenie “the King’s white mule”?
The King handed the letter to James Hay and asked him not what the words meant, which any fool could cipher, but what it was that could cause him to feel a great sadness, close to dread.
And Hay, still too vain, even in vanity constant, to carry his own spectacles, had to borrow the King’s to read it.
This pleased the King and let him smile.
“It is said that a cordial of Ralegh’s making has rallied her somewhat,” Hay said, even before he commenced to read.
“No nonsense of cordials and chemicals,” the King said. “Read the letter and tell me how it is I can translate it into such discontent.”
“The words are plain enough.”
“I take the words at their meaning.”
“The Queen has no guile.”
“Still, sir, I would have you translate it for me.”
“I am a plain man, Your Majesty.”
“I know what you are. Tell me what it is she says to me.”
“You are asking me to be a prophet.”
“Be my Daniel, then. Tell me the truth—if you are not afraid.”
Flushing with Scots anger, Hay read the Queen’s letter to himself, the King’s spectacles slipping down the bridge of his nose, his lips moving with each word. Straight through, eyes moving left to right, line by line behind glass and not stumbling or backtracking, until he finished. Then folded the letter and removed the spectacles and returned them both to the King’s hand.
“Well, what is the woman trying to tell me?”
“I think she is trying to tell you that you shall find more felicity if you shrink your ambition.”
“You are more cryptic than she is. Speak plain.”
“You ask me to make light of obscure matters, to speak of feelings she cannot name. And to find words for my own feelings.”
“I ask, nay I demand, out of love and loyalty, nothing less than that.”
Hay cleared his throat and looked directly into the King’s eyes. The King unblinking, observing indeed that the beauty of James Hay’s eyes, sad as a hound’s, had not vanished.
“From the edge of her grave, which in her pain and fever she has peered into, your wife speaks out of love. Speaks of love and charity. She chastises you, Sire, and thus you feel the shame she intends. She tells you that you have wandered from the true path and are lost. And the pity of it, for she loves and pities you, is you have erred and strayed in the name of a great good dream. She says your dream is an illusion.”
“Speak more and more particular.”
“Ah, that’s the burden of her message to you. She says you have sacrificed felicity and with it your humanity for a general love. And in so doing you have lost the power to love anything.”
“What in God’s name is that supposed to mean?” the King snapped, feeling a flush of anger and striving to suppress it.
“Meaning, Sire, you shall live better and die well by simple acts of mercy and particular love, that you shall be more blessed by these common things than if you should succeed in bringing a peace to the world for a thousand years. Which, Sire, she has seen in her vision of the grave, you shall not accomplish.”
“She is ill, it is true. In her illness she imagines death. But she has not yet seen it.”
“It seems to the Queen that she has,” Hay answered.
“And you, James, what do you say?”
“It is not for me to say, not to speak of feelings, but to act out of reason and to advise, when need be, in matters of policy.”
“You have always thought well of Ralegh.…”
“Not always,” Hay interrupted, and ignoring the King’s frown: “Let us be truthful on both sides. I changed my opinion of the man at Winchester all those years ago.”
“Changed to a contrary opinion and have not changed it since.”
“I have not found occasion to.”
“None of his offenses, his tricks and jests and stratagems have so much as chipped the pedestal of your certainty.”
“I do not make sculpture of my opinions. When I have reason to change my mind, I shall speak out.”
“I do not doubt it,” the King said. “You learned the trick of plain speaking when you were a young dog. It is too late to amend it now.”
“We are older,” Hay said. “It is too late to amend many things.”
“Very well, James. I shall not badger you more. Except … You will speak, you say, on policy. I call on you to do so now.”
“Your Majesty,” Hay said with a sigh, “you are so set in your policy that nothing I can say will alter it.”
“Christ’s bloody wounds! No man dares presume to read me like a book. If he does, he deceives himself. I say to you, James Hay, t
hat you are together with my Queen in this. Both of you would rather serve a fox than your King.”
In his anger the King had closed his eyes. Opened them to find James Hay kneeling by the bed. His head bowed. His jaw tight and his neck above the limp, sweat-stained, mud-flecked ruff, as red as a fresh-boiled lobster.
“If it pleases Your Majesty, believe that,” he said, not looking up.
The King swallowed spit and sat up, swung around to put his hand lightly on James Hay’s shoulder.
“Tell me what I must do,” he said softly.
Hay not moving to look up again.
“Go and find the prophet Daniel. Perhaps he will answer you.”
“Begone, then!” the King cried out. “Go and be damned. But I warn you. Beware the next time you come to the lion’s den.”
And Hay bowed himself out of the chamber.
The King controlled tears until the door was shut and bolted. Then turned his face to the pillow and wept.
Thank God for Steenie’s gentle hand on his back. Otherwise he might have wept all night long like a child. Like himself as a child.…
“He was most uncivil,” Steenie said.
He turned over. Allowed Steenie to prop some pillows behind him, accepted a handkerchief to dab at his eyes and blow his nose. Feeling much relieved. Not so much by these attentions as by the purgative of tears.
“Bless you, boy,” the King said.
“It is blessing enough to be with you,” Steenie answered.
He looked into the young man’s unlined, open, handsome face, the luster of his eyes. Too young, too beautiful for guile yet. Guile’s a game for him. His duplicity is innocence. He could hope the young man would live long and do great things.
“He should never have so presumed upon friendship,” Steenie was saying.
The King stiffened slightly.
“Do not, even out of love, be critical of James Hay,” he said. “He speaks truth and that’s the rarest thing in this world.”
“I meant no offense. I only wished to say …”
The King thinking: For God’s sake not another quarrel tonight. Then smiling on the boy.
“Nor I,” said James. “Only that you can learn something from James Hay. Learn to tell a true and loyal servant.”
“Then I shall strive to be like him.”
The King laughed. And the young man frowned slightly, puzzled.
“Spare me that,” he said. “One is enough.”
Then added, touching the smooth cheek of the young man gently with the tips of his fingers. “He was never, even in his best days, half so handsome as you.”
“He has beautiful eyes,” Steenie said.
“Ha! You noticed that, did you? You are becoming more observant day by day. Which pleases me. But, Steenie, pray do not be captivated by a pair of eyes.”
“How can I? I am your captive. Now and always …
Now in the morning on horseback he would make a peace with his old friend.
“Hay!” he calls out, turning into torchlight, seeking a sign from the dark. “James Hay?” Then by his title: “Doncaster? Who has see Doncaster?”
There is no answer from courtiers and servants. They turn their heads to look for him too.
“Where can he be now?” the King calls out.
Into the silence breaks a reedy voice.
“Why, since he is not here, there can be but two places for him.”
“Where, then, poor snake?”
“Perhaps he has gone to his grave and reward. For ’tis all the fashion for the great ones this year.”
True, true enough. This has been a year of death. Bishops have dropped from place like overripe fruit. But there are always more bishops. But God knows the lords of England have been dying as if a noble title were a listing on the plaguey bill. Four gone in October alone: Lord St. John of Bletso, Lord Rooper, the Lord Delaware dead in Virginia, and the Lord Clifton, who took, his foolish life with a little penknife. A war could do no worse.…
“Dead? You say dead?” the King hears himself asking in a cracked voice.
No answer. Courtiers and servants are silent. They look everywhere except at the King.
“Answer me, Archy, or in God’s name I will cut your tongue like a crow!”
Anger restores the tone of his voice. Anger’s the best purge of fear.
“Nay, Sire, he is not dead.”
“Where then, fool? You said he might be in two places.”
“It was a poor jest. Blame it upon the spirits I have drunk.”
“Let me judge the merit of the jest.”
“My Lord Doncaster was up and gone toward London while the Court slept.”
“Why?”
“There are two possible causes. Perhaps he has gone to celebrate Lord Mayor’s Day and drink free claret from the conduits, being a true Scotsman and troubled by the waste.”
The King manages a grim smile.
“And the other?”
“Even a good Scotsman may lose his wits if he tarries too long in the Kingdom of Fools. ’Tis said there shall be a showing of the head of John the Baptist in Westminster Yard. And he, the poor fool, does believe it.”
“Let him believe it and be damned!” the King says.
And now in control of warring factions of feeling, he can force a loud laugh and indulge himself in the pleasure of hearing it echoed by false and flattering courtiers. Which false laughter spares him from any shame at his own.
“A cup of spirits for my jester,” he says. “And …”
Turning to the huntsman all in green.
“Your Majesty?”
“Kennel up the dogs. There will be no sport today,” the King tells him. Then, to the others, studious in impassivity. “Prepare yourselves for a journey. We shall go to the Queen.”
Someone gasps in surprise, but not at what he has said. That gasp is echoed and all, servants and courtiers, huntsman and jester, clear in torchlight or hidden, look to the sky.
All but the King. Who knows what they have seen. The long bright sputtering arc, like a rocket, of a dying star falling across the sky. He need not look up to see it. It has been a year of omens.
Oh, it is true, to be King among fools a man needs only half wit.…
Jerks reins, digs spurs, lashes flank with whip. And the horse leaps and away he gallops toward the stables, alone for once, startled others coming behind him in shouts and confusion. Let them chase and catch him if they can.
The wind bathes him and he feels his lips form a grin. As if he himself were the horse gripping the cold harsh bit, biting the snaffle, wincing from the sting of the spurs.
For in that we foreknow that the sun will rise and set, that all men born in the world shall die again, that after winter spring will come, after the spring, summer and harvest, and that according to the several seeds that we sow, we shall reap several sorts of grain, yet is not our foreknowledge the cause of this or any of these. Neither does the knowledge in us bend or constrain the sun to set, or men to die.
RALEGH—History of the World
Beginning of the second day.
More than these last are up and about, and many preparing the affairs of the day to be. In all of England only a few will be still sleeping and dreaming; for all must live for the hours of the day, whether sunlit or twilight-shadowed from sunrise to sunset by autumnal weather. To live by day they rise, light candles and torches, begin tasks and chores, breakfast, and await the dawn.
Last hour before dawn. Time for the crowing of cocks. And time for wandering ghosts to break obdurate silence and speak, if ever, before they are harried back to the cramped space of the grave.
All who are awake have the common future of this day to share. And even now the mysterious cipher of the day, of their future time, of all future time to the ending of time, is written, not in some ledger, not in a magic mirror, not in the entrails of sacrificial beasts or the omens of stars and birds, but in hearts and bones, in all and every part of the book of the natural
world. And, though the future is written there and some of the living, wise or simple, know it to be so, there is not one man alive, not the wisest, who can read a word of the cipher of the future and translate it.
Some study the stars, conjunctions, oppositions, dominance, and submission within the twelve signs of the zodiac; the shape and shadows of the moon; the color of the rising and setting sun; or the wandering of planets, brightness or diminution of most distant stars.
Some, who are scholars of light, will study the tints of candlelight, lamp, and lantern, firelight in its flaring and dying away. Some listen for the screech of the night-hunting owl, the reedy music of ravens, bass notes of bullfrogs, cry of crickets, muttering of parrots in their cages. Some look to the elder tree, where Judas hanged himself and thus, oddly, sanctified. Study the mushroom or the trembling aspen. Have both ears alert for the sound of a prowling gib-cat; just as in May and early summer there are folk who will ask the cuckoo the secret questions and then count the answering cries to know the number of years they shall have for living.
All these ways and many more of seeking the signs of the future. And since every man alive must wonder, whether or not he has hopes and wishes, all men are seeking to find where fortune and necessity may lead them next. Adam was the first of these seekers, and no doubt the last man will be last.
All are seeking, have and will so long as they live, and none will find it until it arrives.
In adversity now, in strict and simplified condition, Walter Ralegh is spared from this common expense of spirit. And what was once a young soldier’s way, to live most keenly here and now by chosen deferral of the future, has remained his own. Long since he concluded that Fortune (that fantasy of men) is not a subject of foreknowledge. If so, Providence, which is no fantasy, is beyond powers of reason or imagination to comprehend. Why would God be so careless as to cloak his enigma in the sounds of a few birds, in the actions of stars or the habits of common plants? Since no man since Adam has understood these holy mysteries, then only the most ignorant or vain, in this age of iron, can assume himself to be chosen and gifted above all mankind to know. The wisest know only this—that the mystery is there, written on everything and in the hearts and bones of the living. From Ralegh, who can imagine only an alternative, single and profoundly simple—he will live or he will die this morning—to the King of England, who believes it is his duty to imagine something of the future of his kingdom into times beyond any imagining.
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