The Dark and the Light

by Josephine Bell

  ‘He came to deliver this for Sir Thomas Overbury,’ Weston said. ‘I am on my way there now.’

  Sir Gervase held out his hand.

  ‘I will take it,’ he said. ‘There is a rule that prisoners must not receive ought privately. Did’st not know that?’

  ‘I did not, sir,’ Weston answered. But he obeyed and was not sorry to have the responsibility lifted from him, for he had grown used to delivering packages under Mistress Turner’s orders. As a rule he never learned the names of the original senders or receivers. But in this case the intended receiver was very well known to him and in view of the monotonous abuse cried out daily by the prisoner to any who entered his room, the sender might well be his former noble friend, who frequented Mistress Turner’s house and had often been reported there, against strict orders, by one servant to another.

  Sir Gervase Helwys took the packet to his own quarters. There, behind a locked door, he unwrapped it, disclosing two phials that held a colourless liquid and a small round cake coloured with saffron and decorated with sugared slices of ripe plum. The label on one phial read To be administered in ale or wine twelve hours after partaking of the cake.’ On the other phial a shorter label read ‘To be administered in milk or any bland fluid six hours after the other.’ The cake was double wrapped apart from the phials and had a card attached, gilt-edged, that stated merely ‘From a friend.’

  Sir Gervase set the three articles in a row and stared a them for some time without stirring. Then he gathered them together, stowed them in a small leather bag and holding the bag hidden beneath a heavy cloak, left his rooms again and walked across the lawns to the place where caged animals formed a collection to amuse and interest those visitors who were allowed from time to time to enter the grounds of the Tower.

  The animals had been gathered by travellers, hunters and trappers from foreign lands, a bear or two born in captivity from those used in the sport of baiting with mastiffs; some monkeys from the East, a lion from Egypt, brought there captive from the wilds of the south, a couple of dromedaries, a wolf from Central Europe, a wild cat from Scotland. The meat eaters were fed with stray dogs and cats gathered from the streets of the City and bought from their scavengers for a few pence. Other strays were often to be seen round the cages eager to snatch up any morsels of food dropped by the nobler beasts.

  Sir Gervase approached the menagerie slowly, repelled somewhat by the uneasy marching to and fro of the larger animals, for it reminded him of the human prisoners he held. He was repelled also by the strong foetid smell that lay about the place. Also by the thought of what he meant to do.

  But when he found the scavengers begin to slink away, fearful of kicks, expecting them, he moved to cut off their retreat and then, taking the cake from his leather bag he threw it towards a lean mongrel cur with flopping ears and patches of mange on its back and flanks.

  The dog turned snarling as the cake struck its hind leg. But it was on to it in a second, had bitten off half of it, swallowed this and was about to wolf the rest when it gagged, vomited up the unchewed lump, raised its muzzle in the air and howling began to leap away, twisting and turning as it ran. No sooner had the lean cur left its vomit than three others, smaller but equally starved-looking, fell upon the mess and guzzled it down. Two of them repeated the behaviour of the first dog, the third, howling dreadfully, spun round and round where it was, jerked a few times and died.

  The commotion brought a keeper to the Lieutenant’s side.

  ‘This whelp is dead of a sudden,’ Sir Gervase said, gravely. ‘Four there were, ate a substance cast down, I suppose, by a visitor. All were affected as I saw. Look you for the others. They went that way. The first of the pack went this. I must find the cause of it. There be many who complain of the stench hereabouts, others of the night calls of our collection. But if any seeks to destroy them I will find him and he shall suffer under the law.’

  The keeper obeyed the order, but without telling the Lieutenant that there had been no visitors that day. The other two of the three smaller dogs were found dead, like their companions. The larger hound had disappeared, whether into the streets or the river was never known.

  Not that it mattered. Before leaving the corpses Sir Gervase called a doctor to examine them. The latter opened the bodies, took samples and later advised the Lieutenant that all had contained a corrosive poison in large doses.

  ‘In such a dose, sir,’ the doctor said, ‘as would have killed a man, unless he had been treated for it straightway.’

  ‘That doth not surprise me,’ Sir Gervase answered. ‘We surmise here it was intended for our lions, who with their roaring make the night terrible to timid souls who live nearby.’

  The doctor went away, surmising a far different answer. The poisoned corpses were burned, the phials poured out into the Thames and then crushed and the fragments drowned too. But Sir Gervase Helwys could not dispose of his own fears so easily. He knew very well the likely source of the poison and its intended victim. If he disclosed this knowledge, however privately, he could not hope to keep his present post. He was an inveterate gambler, an old soldier. He knew he had been chosen for these qualities. So he suppressed his fears and perplexities and continued to gamble.

  News of this incident, in a very garbled form, very wide of the truth, came to Gracious Street with Lady Alice Bacon, much to Mistress Butters’s amusement, though the tragedy behind it wrung Lucy’s tender heart.

  ‘My Lady Shrewsbury must make them shake in their shoes,’ Mistress Butters said. ‘I hear she was a prime complainant of the lions’ night disturbance, but angry too for the miserable death of the wretched dogs. His Majesty had great temerity in shutting her up. And for what, Lord save us?’

  ‘For a kind of treason. In his Majesty’s eyes at least. For helping Lady Arbella Stewart to marry where it was most undesirable,’ Lady Bacon answered.

  ‘But it was a legal marriage,’ Lucy protested. ‘The poor lady was not allowed a husband before, seeing she was so nearly related to the royal line—’

  ‘And must needs choose and that so obstinately, the match quite certain to be forbid her, since it placed her, doubly for any offspring, in direct line to the throne.’

  ‘Is that a crime? We have lost a most desirable heir and have only poor Charles, a weakling, so they say—’

  ‘Hush, child!’ Mistress Butters cried in alarm. ‘’Tis treason to speak so. What dost know of these matters of state? Not but what I grieve for the poor lady, ’scaped as she was from Lambeth and ta’en again at sea, when the young husband had made good his escape to France.’

  ‘They say her reason is affected,’ Lady Bacon told them. ‘But I know naught of it. Only that she is to stay in the Tower on a charge of danger to the State, and Bess of Hardwicke, too, for aiding and a betting. And that I know because Sir Francis, bless him, must prepare the case against her in the courts.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ sighed Lucy. ‘And poor Lady Arbella, too.’

  ‘There would seem to be a curse upon these Stewarts,’ said Mistress Butters, but added piously, ‘God preserve them though, for we have none else to rule over us.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Lady Bacon agreed.

  But Lucy said nothing, having her thoughts upon that other Sir Francis whose image dwelt always in her mind and heart. And upon sad love and partings and broken hearts and her own unfulfilled desires.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The strange story of the poisoned dogs found near the Tower zoo spread quickly among all ranks in service there, and both grew and altered with the telling.

  But the principals held their tongues. The Lieutenant was anxious not to jeopardize his position; neither was Richard Weston. The doctor who examined the dead animals was content to give a verdict of poison and this upon surmise, for he based his conclusions upon the symptoms and behaviour of the victims and upon some signs of dire irritation of the stomach lining. But the result had been too sudden, too complete to make these conclusions worth more than a common
sense guess. Sir Gervase Helwys had told him the poisoned food must have been intended for the wild animals. The doctor was quite willing to take his word for it. He had no wish to be mixed up in a criminal scandal. Proceedings of all kinds at the Tower had a horrific background in history, he remembered. And so excused himself from any further part in the matter after having set out in writing his hiring to examine three whelps for sudden death and the results he found. Sir Gervase readily added his own signature to the document below that of the physician.

  The Lady Frances Howard was surprised, even shocked, by the failure of the material she had bought through Anne Turner from Apothecary Franklin. Weston, it appeared, had not actually seen his prisoner eat the doctored cake and could therefore not say, truthfully, whether Sir Thomas had eaten it at once or laid it by to eat later or neglected to eat it at all. Perhaps he had thrown it out of the window and the dogs had found it there and borne it away to the space beside the imprisoned beasts of prey before falling upon it themselves. Lucky indeed, if this were the case, since the story going about had no connection with any human prisoner and that included Overbury.

  Lady Frances determined to seek help in other quarters, this time without the assistance of her friend Anne Turner. So she disguised herself in poor clothes and a cloak with a wide hood and made her way to a house outwardly respectable, beyond the City walls at Aldersgate. The house itself was small but well maintained. A young maidservant answered Lady Essex’s knock and led the visitor to her mistress.

  ‘You do not know me, Mistress Woods,’ Lady Essex said, ‘but I know you and I know that they call you ‘‘Cunning Mary’’ because you are able to produce the means of—of supplying happiness to those who employ you.’

  Mistress Woods chuckled. She was an old woman, wrinkled and ugly, but her fine eyes remained clear and took note of far more than she acknowledged.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ she said and lifted a hand to restrain Lady Frances, who had started back at this form of address. ‘Pardon me, my lady, but rank shines from your ladyship’s face. Tell me how I can be of service and I will do my utmost to oblige your ladyship.’

  She would indeed, Lady Essex thought, and would make her pay top prices for that special effort on her behalf. But needs must when the Devil drives, she told herself, with a full appreciation of that common saying.

  Mistress Woods saw the evil humour spread in a smile over the fair face under the hood. She had now made a very good guess of the purchaser’s identity. She knew it was dangerous to have any traffic with her, but greed prevailed, a bargain was struck, money passed, the visitor went away as quickly and quietly as she came.

  A week later a young man, Simon Merston, arrived by water at the Tower. This time the tide was favourable very early in the morning, not as in Weston’s case, in the afternoon. A light mist had lain on the water all the way down river and it lay upon the grounds of the fortress when the boat came in under the arch of the watergate.

  Simon Merston stepped ashore, carefully holding level a dish on which he had been nursing six tarts during the voyage, often peeping under their cover to look at them.

  He looked at them again now, which annoyed the boatman who was waiting for his fare. It was not the same that had rowed in with Mistress Turner’s package some time before, but a casual self-employed fellow, who ferried passengers for a living.

  ‘I see I must ask thee for my fare,’ the man said, becoming angry at the delay. ‘Pay me, lad, so I can go my way. Greed holds thy purse, I see. But I wager the tarts be not thine or why carry them to this place?’

  Young Merston became flustered. He tried to open his purse without putting down the dish, but only succeeded in shaking the fragile tarts so roughly that the syrup inside them leaked out on to the platter. At this the boatman laughed, making so much noise that the lad became fearful lest someone should emerge from the mist to find out what was taking place. But he managed at last to pay his fare and the boatman pushed off and rowed away.

  And now Simon was left with a dish on which the six damaged tarts lay in a red pool of syrup that overflowed the edge of the platter in several places. He had stepped on the covering cloth that had fallen to the ground. The present he was asked to deliver to Sir Thomas Overbury’s keeper was no longer in any fit state to be presented as such. Besides, at that very moment Merston heard a footfall ring on stone and guessed rightly that the proper guard of the watergate was approaching.

  In desperation he sought to improve the appearance of his charge before asking whoever came to lead or direct him to Keeper Weston. So he rapidly licked up the syrup from the edges of the dish and from his fingers, folded the cover anew and set it over the tarts and turned to go towards the place where the footsteps had stopped and a voice was repeating, ‘Who goes there? Stand and answer!’

  ‘One Simon Merston,’ he called out, took two paces forward, tripped over the stone border of the paved landing place and fell headlong.

  This time the pewter dish fell with a clatter, the tarts shot off into the river together with the cover and Merston lay groaning, less from pain and shock than from disgust with himself for the total failure of his mission.

  He lay, with closed eyes, trying to restrain tears of mortification, until he found himself plucked up, stood on his feet and shaken to and fro.

  ‘What’s this?’ the guard said. ‘What did’st say was thy name? What’s doing here at this hour? How came thee hither?’

  The questions, fired in rapid succession, filled Simon with terror. He stammered out a feeble explanation that seemed to the guard to be no explanation at all. So he hauled him off to the Lieutenant’s rooms where he was held for two hours until Sir Gervase Helwys, unwillingly roused at such an hour, condescended to see him.

  In the interval Merston had time to get his story into better form. Clearer, that is, but still peculiar. He knew where he was to deliver the tarts and to whom. He could not say where they came from.

  ‘Cannot say or will not?’ demanded Sir Gervase.

  ‘Cannot, sir, I swear it!’

  The young man was most emphatic. Also he did not seem to be very well, the Lieutenant thought. He was pale, he was sweating, he retched from time to time, but without vomiting. All rather extreme expressions of a natural fear of being detained in such a place as the Tower of London.

  But the tarts had gone. This part of the story was true, at least. The guard had seen fragments of pastry in the river and a dirty bit of white linen. At low water they might be able to recover the dish, which must have sunk.

  So in the end Sir Gervase released Simon Merston. He told him he must never come there again by water but by proper admission at the main gate. He must tell his employer this. The boy swore again that he did not know who his employer had been on this occasion. He had been given the job by a young friend, or sometime friend, for he would cast him off from this hour.

  Merston swore a third time he would obey. In fact he promised he would never again set foot inside the Tower. He repeated this to Mistress Mary Woods, to whom his false friend took him, giving her a very garbled account of the failure of his mission. Then he went home, feeling unaccountably ill and took to his bed where he stayed for six weeks, slowly recovering from an illness no one understood. He lost his hair and his nails in the first weeks and did not recover them for months. He knew, or at least guessed, the syrup from the tarts was responsible. But he told no one except Mary Woods and this as a kind of threat to her safety if ever she tried again to employ him in such a manner.

  Sir Gervase Helwys had no difficulty in deciding that here was a fresh attempt upon Sir Thomas Overbury. But again he was in a dilemma. His masters controlled his employment; his masters desired to remove Sir Thomas. He had been fortunate in avoiding trouble of any kind so far. He did not expect to be fortunate for ever.

  Nor was he. His orders to watch and guard the watergate were obeyed; there were no more surreptitious arrivals there with presents of food for Sir Thomas. But the prisoner, who was al
lowed certain named visitors, insisted upon seeing them and could not be persuaded otherwise even by careful hints that he would be better off, safer in fact, in solitude. At any rate for the present or until his imprisonment was made legally valid or until he was released.

  Overbury was astonished by the Lieutenant’s veiled suggestion that there could be any, besides the King, who wished him harm. He still could see no insult in refusing a position abroad that would part him from his dearest friend, Robbie Carr. And though he had warned Robbie against his intention of marrying the Lady Frances Howard when she had secured her divorce, he was too vain, too self-assured, to imagine that those qualities he warned his friend of could be turned in deadly earnest against himself.

  So visitors, mostly acquaintances, mostly from the Court, came to cheer and encourage the obstinate young man and from time to time brought gifts of sweetmeats and other dainties, sometimes offered on behalf of Lord Rochester, more often left upon his table and found by him after the visitor had gone away.

  These visits were usually, but not always, followed by outbreaks of illness, usually gastric. Sir Thomas put them down to his confinement, the bad air of the place so near the river, that was little more than a great sewer. Or else he blamed them upon his troubled state of mind. His anxiety was great seeing the lack of success of his lawyers, who seemed unable to bring his case properly before the justices, though the time allowed for his imprisonment without a proper charge and conviction was long since past.

  Then again, when he had supped upon a spiced, jugged hare, washed down with a present of burgundy wine and had spent the night in vomiting and looseness of the bowels, he had complained to Weston of the cooking at the Tower and demanded to see the Lieutenant to further his complaint in a personal interview.