The Dark and the Light

by Josephine Bell

  And so the London visit came to an end. Only Alderman Angus Leslie felt any satisfaction in remembering it. He had enjoyed having the young people in the house. He had thoroughly enjoyed listening to Francis and his academic friends and acquaintances discussing the lively state of learning in the universities and schools.

  But Francis rode home in a bitter frame of mind with his usual justification, blaming this in part on Katharine, but also most unfairly upon Lucy and her mother. He took leave of them very coldly, not understanding that his resentment came from his frustrated longing to know Lucy better rather than from the new fault Kate had led him to believe he found in her.

  Katharine herself was unsatisfied by her very brief meetings with Alan, Robbie Carr and Lady Frances Howard. She was not ready to accept that their need of her, all three, was over. She blamed Francis for ending the visit so soon.

  Lucy, hurt and grieved by Francis’s manner towards her, when she was not conscious of any fault, also grieved that the visit came to an end so soon. It was now nearly October. There would be no further sight of him at least until the New Year. She was inclined to blame her mother for her more or less open hostility to Lady Leslie.

  Mistress Butters, though thankful the visit had passed without any outward quarrels, felt no sort of satisfaction over it. Lucy had been upset. She longed to see her child married and settled but dared not bring up the subject again. Lucy, like most gentle people, was as obstinate as a mule, she considered. She would have to be humoured for a further period and the girl was not growing any younger. Nor was she herself, for that matter.

  The day after Christmas of that year Lord Rochester and Lady Frances Howard were married with great magnificence provided by King James, who could not by any means afford this latest piece of mad extravagance. His coffers were empty, but he gave the bride a present of jewels and Robbie yet another gift of valuable Crown land that he could ill afford to lose. In addition he created his favourite Earl of Somerset, so that Lady Frances could retain her title and status of countess.

  The festivities went on for the remainder of the twelve days of Christmas, with plays and masques and fireworks until the whole Court and their followers were exhausted and the citizens of London grown heartily sick of drunken brawling men invading their streets in the early hours of each morning in search of further pleasure or else a place to rest their fuddled aching heads and weary limbs.

  Some of them were rescued by their more sober friends and led away to sleep off their dissipation. Others managed their own escapes, penniless and ragged. A few were arrested by the watch to recover their wits in a prison cell and appear before a magistrate charged with riotous behaviour, assault and in a few cases wilful murder. These suffered according to their rank and station with fines, imprisonment and in some cases, hanging. Others simply disappeared, some for ever, some to be found later floating in the river, perhaps fallen there by drunken mischance, perhaps thrown in after robbing.

  But such happenings, though they gave trouble to those responsible for law and order in the City and caused annoyance to all the respectable folk whose nights were disturbed by them, astonished none. The doings of the Court were notorious, the King’s extravagance known. In any case there were parts of the City where it was not safe to wander at night without a guard. Poverty and disease and the recurrent outbreaks of the plague had made men savage where they saw no possible relief from these ills.

  The newly-named and legally united Somersets did not hear of any trouble in the City and would not have cared had they done so. If anything at all in the nature of a cloud did mar their joy in their present success it was those rumours still spreading out from the Tower, still reaching persons of note in spite of being suppressed at once by agents and friends.

  ‘We were too kind,’ Lady Somerset complained. ‘We should not have left those bunglers, Weston and the young Merston, to spread their excuses. They should have been removed.’

  ‘Abroad?’ her husband asked, nonchalantly.

  He had reached the peak of his ambition; firm favourite of the King, whose demands upon him had grown less with his marriage, as was natural; great wealth; an earldom; the prospect of gaining high positions of State. What more could a man hope for?

  He glanced at his wife and away. She wore the expression that always made him fear her. A blank white face, a mouth pinched in a little, the eyes of a beast of prey, cold, impersonal, cruel.

  She saw his quick revulsion, understanding the natural indolence that lay beneath his apparent virile good nature. The stupidity, too, that refused to grasp their continued danger.

  ‘Abroad?’ Robbie repeated. ‘Would they not be missed?’

  ‘By whom? Anne governs Dick Weston. She commands him. As for Simon Merston, Mistress Woods is responsible there. The boy hath been ill many weeks. None would be surprised by his death.’

  ‘No!’ Robbie exclaimed loudly. He heaved himself to his feet. His frightened eyes in a furious face darted about the room. ‘No more deaths! God’s wounds, there hath been one too many and that one I wish I could undo!’

  Lady Somerset saw she had gone too far. She went to him, told him he had misunderstood her, promised to do nothing but inform their most trusted servants to put down all fresh rumours as seditious lies. Treasonable lies, because Lord Somerset was the King’s friend, so any word against Lord Somerset was spoken against the King.

  ‘I think thou had’st better speak to none at all,’ Robbie told her. ‘Let the whole matter rest. There will be other news to take its place. Meanwhile do nought but rejoice in our success and love me as I love thee, Frances.’

  She was always ready for his love, even now when he had spoken against her plans for their safety. Besides, there was some sense in what he advised, in addition to the laziness that had prompted it. But scheming and inhumanity were parts of her nature not to be thwarted for long by any exercise of reason. Soon she was again at her plots and plans, her bribes and threats, until at last she decided there was no more she could do to preserve her safety.

  In Oxford Katharine passed the winter in boredom, in disappointment, and as Christmas approached with no word from London, in misery.

  When in the New Year letters and news sheets arrived full of descriptions of the wedding of the Somersets she fell into despair. She had not been told the marriage was imminent, though she had expected an invitation to attend it. So confident was she of the couple’s continuing regard that it did not occur to her they might simply ignore her as if they had never met.

  And what of Alan with his protestations of undying passion for her? Had she now no place in any of their lives? Would she perhaps never see them again?

  With a fortitude worthy of a better cause Katharine managed to hide her pain, her confusion, her bitter disillusionment. The doubts she had felt in October and put away from her as unworthy were now totally justified. Worse, she felt doubly deceived by that false renewal of friendship. If they had cast her off then she might have attached herself to some other noble house, for there had been many of the younger lords who had noticed her, even sought her out at times. She had neglected those opportunities, partly from a sense of loyalty to Lady Frances, but also, she had to acknowledge, from a feeling of fear.

  Well, now she need have no further sense of obligation. But how should she proceed, caged here in Oxford, performing her household duties, entertaining for Francis, attending with unrelieved boredom to the needs of her two lively children.

  She saw them daily, sending for them to come to her as a proof of her maternal affection. But when they came she had nothing to say to them beyond a trite question or two. She could not play with them and they did not expect it. They behaved well while they were with her; too well, she knew, as if in the presence of a stranger. Perhaps that was how they saw her, a stranger in the house. It was how she most passionately felt herself to be.

  One day, passing them with their nursemaid in the garden she heard George say, ‘Now we will play at going to see o
ur lady mother. I will be she.’

  ‘You cannot. You are a boy. I am the pretty one. I must be madam, our mother.’

  The little girl drew herself up, put on a very severe expression, said icily, ‘George, thy hands are filthy. Go wash them. I will not have thee attend me with dirty fingers.’

  ‘It was thee she spoke thus to,’ George protested. ‘Slyboots, thou’st as like her as two peas in a pod.’

  At this they broke into wild laughter and Katharine passed on, unnoticed, with rage and humiliation tearing her heart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the spring of the following year, which was an early but windy and rainy one, Richard Ogilvy rode to London to stay with his father. The old man had survived the winter pretty well, but was feeling his age more than he had ever done before.

  ‘I believe I am not far from my end, Dick,’ he said when he had his son to himself in the library. ‘Thou knows we nearly lost Giles this January of a fever that attacked us all in some degree but poor Giles worst of all. He is still but a shadow of himself. I never knew I leaned upon him so much until I found myself deprived of him. He is my memory, you must know, Dick. He is unlettered but he forgets no name, no appointment, no duty that concerns me.’

  ‘I think he will recover his strength quite fully by summer,’ Richard answered. ‘It is you, my dear father, I am more concerned about. I wish you would give up this teaching and come to us in Oxford. There you would find as much learned interchange as you could wish for and Master Bodley’s library grows apace.’

  ‘Thou wilt have all my books when I am gone,’ Doctor Ogilvy reminded him, looking about him sadly but with a certain pride in his lifetime’s collection. ‘I would not be parted from them until that time.’

  It was the only answer he would make to any further hint from Richard that he would do well to retire from his school work. In fact, as his son came to realize, he was already too old to make a change. Apart from a decaying memory and a certain feebleness of movement he was as full of interest in life, particularly in the life of the intellect, as he had ever been. Under the stimulus of Richard’s presence he even consented to dine with Alderman Leslie at Gracious Street, where certain City magnates were to meet the governors, founders if living, and principal teachers of City schools to discuss current affairs in education and future plans for it.

  Dinner was to take place at the house in Gracious Street, to be followed by the meeting at a nearby hall. It was an occasion for men only. Richard suggested hiring a coach to convey himself and his father thither.

  ‘Nay, son,’ Doctor Ogilvy said. ‘It would break Thomas’s heart to see himself and our horses set aside for a hired conveyance. I have always ridden when I have not walked. We will ride and take Thomas on his own nag, since Giles is not fit for it. Besides, Thomas will see to the beasts while we eat and talk.’

  ‘Will you not find it too tiring?’ Richard asked anxiously. ‘I think it is perhaps time you owned a coach and then my mother could pay her visits in comfort.’

  ‘Comfort!’ Doctor Ogilvy laughed. ‘A coach! A farm cart is as comfortable. But I agree. Poor Mary goes not abroad these days for she can no longer sit a horse. But a coach! Nay, Dick, I could not afford it. Besides, these days to be fashionable and own a coach one must have too a couple of running footmen. There they trot, poor clowns, in their mud-spattered livery, in time with the horses. I’d be ashamed to degrade men so, making them run beside me while I sat within, doing nothing, not even in charge of the horses pulling me.’

  ‘I think they do not resent it,’ Richard said. ‘There are many occupations more arduous by far than running by a coach. They are, besides, fed and clothed and housed. No mean advantages in this City.’

  But Doctor Ogilvy was not to be persuaded. He did not consider riding a horse a form of exercise. For all of his life he had used a horse as a normal means of progression and so he still used one, even though he now needed some assistance in mounting.

  The dinner was interesting and lively. It did Doctor Ogilvy good to listen to a variety of views on education that depended as much upon the cost involved in buildings, their repair and maintenance as in the cost of those who taught in them and the equipment they used for the lessons. It was a healthy enlargement of his outlook, one he had tended to forget as he grew older, though he had given it much serious thought in his young days.

  From discussing schools the talk turned naturally to hospitals, also expanding and in need of greater financial support with the development of fresh knowledge and new methods.

  ‘What his late Grace, King Henry, did for the barber surgeons, giving them their own charter, separating them from the Barber’s Company, should now be done for that growing body, the apothecaries,’ a short, stout merchant declared. ‘They be bound to the Grocers still. There was a time when their remedies could be said to come under such goods as grocers provide, but in these days, most certainly they diverge. They diverge hugely, I say.’

  The short man was applauded for his speech. He was followed by another who declared, with a dry humour, that if some of the goods dispensed by some of the apothecaries were sold by general grocers they would make their fortunes from them.

  ‘By increasing their own powers or diminishing those of their rivals?’ asked a third.

  There was a laugh, cut short by a few indrawn breaths and followed by a silence. Alderman Leslie turned the conversation in a new direction.

  ‘What did that fellow mean?’ Doctor Ogilvy asked Master Leslie later, when they returned from the general meeting to the latter’s house to recover their horses.

  ‘Let Thomas get your mounts re-saddled and come in again meanwhile and I will tell you,’ the alderman said. ‘I think you should know what has been taking place among the apothecaries here in London and what has been said of them.’

  He told the Ogilvys of the known sale of aphrodisiacs and their opposite depressants and of the disquiet in the City over a number of inquests that had taken place upon men and women suspected by their friends, sometimes by their relatives, to have succumbed to poisoning.

  ‘Too little is known as yet of the mode of action and consequent effects of the more subtle substances,’ Master Leslie explained. ‘But all too often in the case an apothecary hath been consulted rather than a physician. So it seems these grocers, as we should still call them, are become doctors of medicine, though they have none of the training or qualifications to act as such.’

  ‘That is not new in history,’ Doctor Ogilvy said. ‘There have always been so-called wise men and wise women too, who gull the innocent, the stupid and most cruelly of all the true sufferers longing for relief for themselves or their loved ones.’

  ‘They think to invoke God’s mercy through a healer as those of old sought it from the Lord Jesus and received it,’ Richard added. ‘But miracles are not so easily come by today.’

  ‘And Our Lord is not here to perform them,’ Master Leslie protested, somewhat shocked at this impersonal discussion by the two scholars. ‘It smacks of blasphemy in my ears to compare a traffic in poisons, a profitable traffic moreover, with the sacred accounts of faith and cure in the lifetime of Jesus Christ.’

  Doctor Ogilvy rose to go, a little offended by the blunt way the alderman had put an end to an interesting discussion. He did not regret the afternoon’s meeting which had been most inspiriting and its conclusions and declarations even hopeful for his profession. But he would not stay to be misunderstood.

  He looked round for Richard, but the latter had sprung up and gone to the door, for Mistress Butters was coming into the room followed by Lucy and a maidservant carrying glasses, wine and sweetmeats. Richard relieved Lucy of the dish she was carrying and placed it by the rest on the table.

  ‘Your groom is delayed by a twisted buckle, Doctor Ogilvy,’ Mistress Butters said. ‘He works upon it with our own man and will be ready very shortly. But I thought it best to report this, sir, to relieve any natural impatience you may feel.’

&n
bsp; ‘And occupy my visitors to prevent any such developing,’ Master Leslie said, with a laugh. ‘Trust my lady housekeeper to provide for all our comforts.’

  ‘You spoil us, madam,’ the old scholar said with a very formal bow. ‘But I fear we overstay our welcome.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ Master Leslie objected. ‘Doctor Richard, persuade your father to sit again. These ladies would hear how you have spent the day. We are very grateful for your company, both of you. Since Francis went to live and work in Oxford I do confess I miss the academic presence in my house. And I doubt not Mistress Butters and Lucy miss it too.’

  So the Ogilvys sat down again, accepting a glass each of wine and Richard a plate of sugared plums preserved from the autumn before.

  Master Leslie gave a short description of the business dealt with at the meeting, cutting all financial detail as being unsuitable to women’s ears and understanding. Doctor Ogilvy, whose mind was still turning over the strange position, dangers and powers of the profession of apothecary, spoke again on the subject.

  ‘These men would be considered in the position of a physician, who assesses an illness, recognizes its cause—’

  ‘We hope, but have no certainty of that,’ interrupted Richard.

  ‘—cause, prescribes a cure and provides it from his own shelves. Do not cut in upon me, Richard.’

  ‘I apologize, sir.’

  Mistress Butters, who had listened attentively, now spoke.

  ‘I have long thought in this way, Doctor Ogilvy. These men are more easily approached, they attend with less ceremony, less pretension. And in many cases they stock those remedies well known to us housewives who used to dry and preserve and bottle them for ourselves when we lived in the country and grew our own herbs. But now lack these—’