The head groom listened, accepting his master’s words, but disagreeing with them. Everyone knew the late Lord Salisbury had amassed a great fortune in bribes and impositions and pensions from abroad, notably from the hated Spaniards. Everyone knew of his commerce with women, of his harshness to his near relations, his greed, his arrogance. Wilf must go, of course, and the other servants be warned. Young Master George was no longer a baby. It was no longer a jest to make him repeat obscenities in his baby talk. He was a little lad now, as sharp as his father, most like, but not so gentle as he: maybe as wild as my lady.
The agitation and misgiving in Oxford scholarly circles meant extreme boredom for Katharine. Also a growing restlessness. She could not relieve this by frequent visits to her brother’s house, for the same spirit prevailed there. Celia, her sister-in-law, shared her husband’s feelings and thoughts to such a degree that talk with her was very little different from conversation with Francis or Richard.
Fortunately for Katharine her father and mother paid a visit to their son in late June. She was able to gain her mother’s sympathy over the King’s departure from Woodstock after the death of his Treasurer. Both their Majesties had returned now to London, Mistress Ogilvy told her daughter. The Queen, much improved in health, was gone to her own house, the King to Eltham, where he was hunting the deer with his usual energy and enjoyment. Upon this news Katharine decided to go back with her parents herself to London, not to Alderman Leslie’s house, but to her own old home.
‘Leave this new mansion?’ Mistress Ogilvy exclaimed. She had been much impressed by the style in which the Leslies now lived. She knew that the old laird in Scotland had seen fit to endow his elder son with a portion in lieu of the Scottish inheritance he had given up to his brother. It must have been substantial, Doctor Ogilvy had told her, but perhaps the alderman had also contributed to the building of the new house. In any case Kate must not now risk falling out with her husband.
‘Leave thy new fair home?’ she repeated. ‘Is that wise, child? Can’st count still upon Francis’s complacency?’
Katharine assured her that all was well. She had had her way, spending the whole of August at Paternoster Row, meeting Alan very often, but his brother and Lady Essex not at all, though she often inquired for the countess quite openly.
Francis took her fresh defection very calmly. He welcomed her back early in September and then told her, equally calmly that he meant to be in London in October himself.
‘I will stay with my Cousin Angus,’ he told her, with a kind smile. ‘Dost look to go with me or be thy friends surfeit of thy company?’
Katharine reddened. No surfeit where Alan Carr was concerned. Satisfaction served only to increase his appetite.
‘And the children?’ she asked, to cover her passing confusion.
‘Will stay here. I agree with what you said a while back. George hath need of a tutor. I have arranged for a certain young scholar, aspiring to enter the church, to attend him three mornings of the week.’
‘He may learn his letters, but what of his deportment?’
Francis looked at her pityingly.
‘You would have the poor moppet placed in some great lord’s household to acquire the manners of a page? That fashion declines fast, Kate. Besides, the manners of our present nobility do not much commend them to gentry of serious minds, such as ourselves. What great house would you suggest?’
She knew that he mocked her with his earnest voice and serious-seeming attention, so she turned away to hide her sudden anger.
‘If I should send George away at all,’ Francis went on, ‘there is only one household I might consider he would find of advantage to him.’
‘And that is?’
‘Sir Francis Bacon’s new home Verulam at Gormanbury. With his cousin’s death he will hope for more rapid advancement. It is said Lord Salisbury had much to do in keeping him out of office for so long, though never averse to picking his fine brain whenever it suited him.’
‘Bacon is of the Chancellor’s faction,’ Katharine said, stung by this suggestion. ‘Moreover his wife is much disliked for her ungracious manner and waspish tongue.’
‘She visits Mistress Butters in Gracious Street, who hath a very good opinion of her.’
‘A waspish tongue and a most uncivil manner, sir.’
‘I have no knowledge of it.’
‘Naturally, since Mistress Butters favours her, and Lucy, I have been told, was at a school with her before her marriage. Young birds of a feather—’
‘Have a care, madam, how you speak of my—kinsman’s friends.’
She noticed the pause, the swift recovery. Well, they were his friends, the two women. And Lady Bacon was much at court. Katharine left her husband to sit in her own room, brooding upon the possible dangers presented by this connection. The next evening she told Francis she would like to go with him to London for a few days, but would not wish to spend the whole winter there.
‘Nor I,’ Francis told her. ‘Two weeks, maybe three. Come if you wish. There are matters you may relieve me of.
Certain goods of our own to be sorted out and parcelled up to return here with us. I have not given it much attention, but Mistress Butters plagues me with it whenever I see her. Lucy will help you.’
Katharine laughed very scornfully.
‘Seeing I now command your household here without any noticeable trouble, I think I may sort out a few items of linen, blankets, old clothing and the like without need of assistance. A very simple task. I would not dream of demanding Lucy’s help, except perhaps in the parcelling.’
In this way matters were settled. Francis now very much regretted his weakness in offering to take Katharine with him to London. His last visit to Gracious Street alone had been altogether enjoyable, a most peaceful interlude, filled with interest of all kinds. He had spent several whole days in Paternoster Row with his father-in-law, discussing the state of affairs at the universities and in the schools. Great changes were taking place in both, to keep pace with the changes in the general state of learning and the widening of outlook both on the question of the ancient books, the established religion and philosophy, but also upon the newer forms of science.
At Alderman Leslie’s house there had been one particular gathering that had given him so many new ideas he had sat for the best part of the two next days thinking over the implications of all he had heard and arranging his thoughts into some sort of intelligible whole in order to present them to his college on his return to Oxford.
The alderman had several acquaintances in the business world of the name of Harvey. They were brothers, five in number, sons of a yeoman of Kent, whose trade lay with Turkey and the near east. They lived all together in Saint Laurence Poulteney near London Bridge. Also they were brothers of that William Harvey who had been called to examine and advise Lord Salisbury in the first months of his fatal decline.
William was the only member of the family who had distinguished himself in a learned manner. So the brothers, who admired him for his achievements, looked after his worldly affairs, and saw that he never lacked support for his researches into natural laws.
‘Will takes more thought to the organs of those lesser creatures he dissects and to their functioning than to the disorders of his patients,’ one of the brothers told Francis.
‘For all he is a consultant physician at Bart’s Hospital,’ another added.
William remained silent, but smiling. At dinner, however, when he was seated beside Francis, he spoke quite freely and naturally about his work, explaining how he had begun it during his period of study in Padua.
‘It is a great and thriving school both of law, medicine and natural philosophy. I was led to make many experiments in the anatomy of corpses, confirming and in some small measure adding to the work of such great men as Vesalius of Brussels, Fallopio, Fabrizio d’ Acquapendente.’
‘He was made a doctor of medicine in Padua,’ broke in one of the brothers, ‘and is now one of our Fellows
of the Royal College of Physicians.’
‘But it is true I do continue my work on the modes of action of the bodily organs,’ Doctor Harvey added.
Alderman Angus Leslie said, ‘Ask him for his views on Galileo, Francis. That great mathematician had an equal interest in the action of heavenly bodies. His fear of his persecutors hath robbed the world of even more discoveries. And his calculations have astonished the learned everywhere, have they not, Will? An outlook putting quantity before quality. Am I not right?’
‘Right upon Galileo’s assumptions, yes,’ answered Harvey. ‘Perhaps I should go further. But I am founded upon the great Aristotle, who to my mind hath never been equalled, far less supplanted.’
‘The good Doctor keeps to the facts he observes,’ the alderman told Francis later when the Harveys had gone home. ‘I must say I scarcely follow his accounts of his work that seem often blasphemous. I have heard him say he regards man as a ‘‘great mischievous baboon’’. But he never ceases to discover causes and as God made him and others besides of like mind, we must accept His purpose though we do not understand it. There can be no evil in it, for he does his duty as a physician to sick persons. He does no harm in the world.’
‘The Catholics would not agree to that,’ Francis said. ‘They persecuted Galileo in the name of their infallible Pope. They will still have none of his new ideas and his calculations.’
Following this meeting Francis discussed William Harvey’s work with Doctor Ogilvy before he went back to Oxford. The old man was interested in a general way, because the new research seemed to fall in with Sir Francis Bacon’s precepts in his great work The Advancement of Learning.
‘Yet Doctor Harvey takes little heed of Bacon,’ he explained to Francis. ‘Perhaps because the latter casts doubt upon Aristotle and Harvey will have no argument against that luminary. Perhaps too, because Bacon, having such a genius for wit, for imagery, for the pure art of his writing, the plain honest naturalist harbours suspicion of him.’
‘It may be so,’ Francis agreed, laughing. He had for long taken much delight in Bacon’s literary excursions as well as in the clear meaning of his legal summings up.
All this had taken place in the previous year. Now it was October more than a year later, the days drawing in, the nights getting colder, rain adding to the discomforts of travel about the City and in consequence of all this, tempers growing short.
Katharine had, as usual, made instant contact with the Court and found herself welcomed gleefully by all her old friends, chief among them the Carrs. After all it was but a month since she had been with them. Alan had lost none of his fervour, Mistress Anne Turner arranged their assignations in her house, no one discovered them or if any did kept it to himself.
After two weeks of quite separate activities, Francis declared they would be returning home in three days and asked if all was ready.
‘All will be so,’ Katharine answered. ‘Mistress Butters hath our goods laid aside all of a piece. I have but to check them over.’
‘That is well,’ Francis said. ‘You will be pleased to hear I have an invitation to an audience with his Majesty that includes yourself and is to be followed by attendance at a masque.’
Katharine smiled with pleasure, agreeing that they were much honoured by the invitation. It would be no bad thing, she thought, to be seen with Francis in apparently close, amicable intimacy. It would confound rumours, stifle scandal.
She called Lucy Butters to help her check over and parcel up the linen and blankets for travel to Oxford. In her satisfaction she told the girl about the invitation to meet the King and be entertained by the masque.
‘A work of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, Sir Francis says,’ she went on. ‘One that hath been performed before this year and gained so much praise they have to repeat it.’
Lucy grew pale but said nothing. Later that day she came to Katharine when the latter was alone and said, ‘My lady, I must speak to you very privately.’
Katharine said, ‘Well, you find me alone. Speak on.’
‘It is about the masque your ladyship will see in company with Sir Francis. My lady, it is indeed the repeat of one performed already once this year. It was performed on a day in February, the day your ladyship was stopped by snow from returning here but went to Doctor Ogilvy’s house in Paternoster Row.’
‘What of it?’ Katharine asked.
‘Doctor Ogilvy and Mistress Ogilvy too believe the masque you saw was Master Shakespeare’s ‘‘Tempest’’ that was first played over a year ago.’
‘You are very sure of this?’ Katharine said, to gain time, for she saw what was coming.
‘Yes, my lady. My mother and I did see this play when it was first performed.’
‘You saw it?’
‘By the kindness of my Lady Bacon. Alice, my Lady Bacon, was at school with me, my lady. She visits us when she is able.’
Katharine knew this, though she now deliberately pretended surprise.
‘Should I have known? Perhaps I did and have forgot, since it concerns me so little. But we wander. You came to me with news of the coming masque, not of Master Shakespeare’s play.’
‘But your ladyship told them at Paternoster Row you had seen ‘‘The Tempest’’, when the masque you had witnessed was one by Ben Jonson and that is the one your ladyship will see tomorrow night.’
‘So?’
‘My lady, Sir Francis must by now be aware of the discrepancy. I came but to warn your ladyship.’
‘Of what? My inattention to the masque, such that I mistook the author of it? Or my parents’ ageing that made them mistake my description?’
Her cool, taunting argument hurt Lucy more than plain anger would have done. She lost her head. She said, ‘My Lady Bacon knows you were not there!’
Katharine too, more from fear than anger, was also losing her head. With her action came more easily than words. She stepped up to Lucy, eyes blazing, and with the back of her hand struck her hard across the face.
‘That notorious mischief-maker!’ she cried. ‘Wouldst take her word for truth? Wouldst dare repeat it to me? Out of my sight, insolent wretch, or I’ll have thee thrown from the house in disgrace!’
Raging inwardly, sobbing at the injustice that had met her genuine if foolishly misguided attempt to help Lady Leslie, Lucy fled to her own room. No one must know of this unhappy encounter, not even her mother. Most certainly not Lady Bacon, whose general awkwardness and rude tongue were all too clearly disapproved at Court.
But above all, Francis himself must never know she had quarrelled so fatally with his wife, lest he should come to know the cause of it. If he remembered at all with anxiety the night of the snowstorm, probably the matter of the masque had nothing to do with it. She had wanted to make this quite safe by telling Lady Leslie of her mistake. The wrath that had overwhelmed her made all her suspicions, formed at the time on no clear evidence, blaze up like fresh twigs on a fire. Evasion and then guilty rage. At least her ladyship would disclose nothing. As for herself she hoped she had suffered enough punishment. So long as her loved one had nothing added to his perpetual hurt she would continue to endure to the end.
Chapter Seven
‘Anne, my faithful friend,’ said Lady Essex to the most important of her creatures, ‘I have once more a great need of thy advice.’
‘Upon a very personal matter, my lady?’
‘Very personal and yet not concerning mine own body. Say rather the matter of my marriage, my union, the which is no union properly understood—You take my meaning, Turner, dost not?’
‘Seeing you speak thus of the union and the body I know it doth not concern my Lord Rochester, for that union—’
‘Be silent, madam! Tongues have been cut out for slander of a similar kind.’
Mistress Turner paled a little under her paint and powder. She sometimes found it difficult to see Lady Frances, as she always thought of her, in the standing of a countess, for she, being a gentlewoman by birth, had spent many of her
younger years with the daughter of Admiral Thomas Howard, famous for his exploits at sea and only in comparatively recent years elevated to the Earldom of Suffolk.
But there were few hangers-on to the more sordid and muddied fringes of the Court who knew more about my Lady Essex than did Mistress Turner. The knowledge was reciprocal. It stood each in very good stead, for neither could feel completely free at any time, but each was in a position to blackmail the other, but never dared use her power. Lady Essex held a superior position in the eyes of the world, but Mistress Turner had command of superior forces in human terms. Also she felt she could rely upon the loyalty of these people, whereas Lady Essex, as all knew, would sacrifice anyone, even her present lover, to preserve herself from the threat of danger.
‘My advice is entirely at your ladyship’s command,’ she said. ‘My Lord Essex—’
‘Is not so feeble as I would wish him to be. Not that he attempts any longer to come to my bed. But he boasts again of his adventures with women. He hath even displeased the Prince with his coarse tales and been rebuked by his Highness.’
Mistress Turner laughed.
‘I marvel his Highness continues their friendship. Did they not quarrel once and the Prince called him ‘son of a traitor’ and young Essex drew upon him or made to do so?’
‘That was years ago, after our ill-fated, ill-contrived marriage, when we were too young to foresee the misery ahead, two captive lives with no means to strike off our bonds—’
Lady Essex stopped, leaned towards Mistress Turner and said in a very low voice, ‘Except with thy help, sweet Anne. A further supply, maybe a larger dose. If we can shake him into some sort of confession of his difficulty. He must not seem to be ill—nor be it. I want only to establish his impotence and not only towards me—that might be simply wilful—but with those other women he swears he enjoys. You understand, Anne?’
‘I understand, Frances,’ Mistress Turner replied with a bold look. ‘I understand thy need but not how to satisfy it. I had the last medicine, drops was it not, to add to his wine, from Mistress Mary Woods, but now—’
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