‘Not in my garden,’ Master Leslie said. ‘We grow all that’s needful for the table, the store room, the cupboard.’
‘Aye, sir, we do indeed,’ Mistress Butters said. ‘But there be many have little room for herbs or none at all. These the apothecaries make for us and supply with more speed, more skill too, than many a physician.’
‘They must work very hard,’ Richard said, ‘if they are in such demand, trading so well and easily.’
‘They have assistants,’ Mistress Butters told him. ‘Apprentices.
They train the boys in the preparation and mixing of draughts, infusions, inhalations, clysters and the rest. It is a skilled trade.’
At the word ‘apprentice’ a silence fell upon the rest of the company. Doctor Ogilvy remembered that Master Leslie had begun to speak of inquests in connection with apothecaries when the conversation had drifted away into the nature of healing. The alderman had been about to speak of deaths, not cures. Poison, not placebos.
But it was too late now to revive this subject. The old man finished his wine, expressed his genuine and grateful thanks for Master Leslie’s hospitality and turned to Mistress Butters with renewed thanks and inquiries for Thomas with the horses.
‘He should have all ready now,’ she said, leading him away.
But Richard, having also proffered his thanks and taken his leave, caught up Lucy on the way to the stable yard and stopped her.
‘Mistress Lucy,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, but I must ask a very pertinent question of you. This talk of apothecaries and poison and apprentices. There is some particular, is there not? Some special story in the minds of these men of the City. They are not the ignorant, gullible mob, ready to believe any nonsense they are told. They are serious, levelheaded men of business. What is this scandal, this dire business that silences them if the talk approaches it?’
‘It is the death of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower,’ Lucy answered.
She had paled a little as she spoke, but her words came quietly, with no hesitation, but very low.
‘And the apothecary?’
‘One Master William de Lombell. At least—well yes, that was he the poor knight consulted at the end.’
‘And the apprentice?’
She whispered her answer.
‘Hath disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? Why?’
‘Because he was sent with a clyster at Sir Thomas’s own request. The day before it—happened.’
‘The day before Overbury died?’
She nodded.
‘And then disappeared. Is he in hiding in London? In the country? Abroad? Or hath he died with his knowledge in him?’
She shook her head, made no answer. Doctor Ogilvy’s voice came to them, calling for Richard. He caught Lucy’s arm as she turned from him.
‘One question more. Where learned you all this?’
For the first time she hesitated.
‘There have been rumours since the day of his death, Sir Thomas’s death. From the Tower throughout the City. From the Court—’
‘Lady Bacon, I suppose?’
She did not deny it, nor confirm. But her pale face flushed and her eyes filled with tears.
‘I would not have this spread—I would not hurt—’
Richard stared at her.
‘But you have said no word of any but Overbury and an apothecary of his own choosing and a missing apprentice. Was the choice in truth not Overbury’s, but his friend’s, his great friend’s, Somerset’s? Or Somerset’s wife?’
‘Go! In God’s name, sir, go!’ Lucy said, appalled at these questions, these names that were no longer spoken aloud in that house. ‘I have said nothing, sir. Nothing you must repeat anywhere! For all our lives! Nothing!’
Doctor Ogilvy’s voice could be heard again but nearer. Lucy fled.
Richard said nothing of this conversation to his parents during the last days of his stay with them, but after he reached home again he told Celia about the meeting with the city magnates to discuss wide questions of education and about their later misgivings over the rise of the apothecaries and the specific cause, according to Lucy Butters, of these fears.
‘If she is right I think Francis should hear it,’ Celia said.
‘Because Kate was so much attached to the new Earl and Countess of Somerset?’
‘Exactly so. She was Lady Francis Howard, was she not, of very doubtful fame? Even Kate had certain reservations about her. Devotion, admiration for her beauty, even more for her station in life, but a very real fear peeped out in her discourse from time to time.’
Richard smiled at his wife. She could always be relied upon for a sure judgement of the character of those she dealt with, one without malice, too, an unusual virtue in a woman.
‘Thou knows my sister better than I do myself,’ he said, putting an arm about her waist as they walked under the trees in their garden. ‘Perhaps the Lady Frances, too. I cannot think, if she be mixed in some fresh villainy, that she would allow Kate to take any part of it. Certainly none our sister knew of. But I agree Francis should know how scandal raises his head to inform rumour and the two run about London hand in hand as so often.’
He took the opportunity when he and Celia with the children visited Luscombe Manor one afternoon in the following week. Katharine was in the house receiving an unexpected visitor, the wife of one of Francis’s colleagues. Celia, with the Leslie children and the nursemaids of both families, had gone off to the little stream at the bottom of the field to net minnows. The two men were for a time alone.
Francis listened to a very full account of Richard’s time in London. The educational part of the latter’s story interested him very greatly, but the rumours brought a frown to his forehead and a deep anger to his dark eyes.
‘What care I for the death of this arrogant knight?’ he said bitterly. ‘How doth it concern me?’
‘There is a growing concern in the case. It is thought the man was poisoned. An apothecary’s apprentice hath disappeared.’
‘’Tis not unusual. Many of these young fellows find their masters too tyrannical or the work is not to their liking or they are idle or they seek a more adventurous life.’
‘This would seem to have been a thought too adventurous. It is believed the young man was removed for his action in the case.’
‘What was his part in it?’
Richard explained.
‘Where got you this—fairy story?’
‘From Lucy Butters. She had it, I suppose, though she did not confirm it, from Lady Bacon.’
‘A likely source!’ Francis raged in sudden fury. ‘A very likely source. God rot her for a lying bitch!’
Richard was astonished and affronted.
‘She did not want to tell me, but I insisted. You wrong the girl.’
‘Nay, I do not. What can have possessed a great man, a great genius such as Sir Francis Bacon, to take into his life such a purveyor of coarse gossip, evil slander, malicious exaggerations! And to foist it all upon a silly wench, who can think of nought but spreading the mischief—! I cannot think of this without anger. Celia knows of it? Who else?’
‘None here but yourself,’ answered Richard, holding in his own annoyance at his friend’s outburst. ‘You must remember that Lucy’s care is for your family, for the alderman and for yourself, which includes your wife, who is my sister. I would have you remember this before you condemn her.’
‘I think she hath always envied Kate for her favour in high places,’ Francis answered, deliberately wounding himself with this false surmise. ‘In hinting ill of the Somersets she hints at a fault in Kate. I will have none of it. Or of her, in future.’
But the anguish that spread over his face as he uttered these bitter words told Richard more than he had already guessed. However he only said, very quietly, ‘I still think you wrong the girl, but have it as you wish. I have told you because I am sure Kate should know of it, as a warning. This I believe to have been Lucy’s intention.’
‘Given to Richard as a warning?’ Katharine asked, opening her beautiful eyes very wide. ‘Of what, pray? Am I supposed to have dressed as the apprentice at the orders of my Lady Somerset? Or to have forged the message to Doctor Franklin for the clyster?’
‘Doctor Franklin?’ Francis was puzzled. ‘Richard hath no name for the apothecary. Know’st a Doctor Franklin? How so?’
Katharine regretted her blunder but she smoothed it away.
‘Why, yes. My Lady Frances spoke of him sometimes. My Lord Rochester, as he then was, employed him. That is how I know the name.’
‘Dost then conclude it was the apothecary Franklin, well known to both the Somersets, may have poisoned poor Overbury?’
Katharine showed herself very shocked.
‘Indeed, I do not. I spoke in jest—’
‘Murder is no topic for jest.’
Katharine began to be frightened. But she told herself there could be no occasion for it.
‘We must then blame little, silly, malicious Lucy,’ she said. ‘For putting forward these patent lies in the hope of compromising me. Was I not here in Oxford with thee all those months before the divorce? Did not Overbury’s death surprise us when the news of it came late to us here?’
She did not tell him how Alan Carr had warned her not to speak of it to her patrons when she met them later. Nor did she remind Francis of their later total neglect of her. But she looked at him with that calm innocence she knew so well how to assume. It could no longer truly soothe him. In fact it increased the pain he felt over Lucy’s interference, her dangerous assumptions.
Seeing this reaction, though she did not fully understand it, Katharine was pleased. Later in the year, she determined, she would go to London herself. She must see Alan again, she must hear from him if there was any truth at all in these wild rumours. Meanwhile she must endure the boredom of her life in Oxford with a good grace and lose no opportunity of lowering Lucy’s esteem in Francis’s eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
Because the question of how Sir Thomas Overbury died concerned so deeply the new Earl of Somerset who was considered to have been the unfortunate man’s dearest friend, the whole matter was kept from the King. At least, those loyal subjects nearest to the monarch who included both the Somersets, put out their best efforts to keep James in ignorance.
No one knew if they had succeeded. It seemed highly improbable, for the King delighted in gossip, especially if it were based upon scandal. But not upon the abhorred subject of illness. He had, of course, like all others of lesser degree than his own, heard grisly tales in his time, particularly in his own dangerous youth. But now that he flattered himself he had brought peace and prosperity to his country, for he ignored his own state of chronic bankruptcy, he saw no reason why his intelligence should be affronted and his kind heart wrenched by descriptions of suffering brought on in many cases by the sufferer himself.
So, having subdued his immediate, secret, horrified reaction to Overbury’s death and hearing no more of it from those about him, he turned his attention and that of his councillors to the pressing question of the succession, depending as it now did upon the young Prince Charles. A Spanish marriage, he decided, to take the place of a similar proposed match brought to a sad end by the death of Prince Henry. A Spanish marriage, the negotiations to be concluded very swiftly, very secretly.
The Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, was surprised to find England’s king still so anxious to secure the Spanish connection. He knew how very unfavourably such a proposal would be received by the general public of this uncivilized, beefeating, beer drinking, loutish country. Since the unfortunate, unexpected failure of the great Armada in the late queen’s reign, Spaniards had found little true hospitality, even in London. They were no longer openly feared, they were on the whole openly despised. But the fear was there, underneath the later bombast. A Spanish princess, however well-endowed, however beautiful, would have to possess the courage of a young lioness with her first litter to withstand a public appearance in the City of London.
Nevertheless King James persevered. Spain was rich with her treasure ships continuing to bring wealth from the fabulous islands of the West Indies. His own colonies, though they persisted, according to infrequent reports, did not send riches of any comparable worth in spite of repeated exhortations, even commands. So a Spanish bride for Prince Charles was much to be desired.
Not all of King James’s thoughts were given to this problem of high statecraft. A more personal matter engaged him. During July of the year following his Robbie’s marriage the King had visited Apethorpe, the seat of Sir Anthony Mild-may. He had been there before, it was a favourite stopping place on a progress to the Midlands. At Apethorpe for the second time Sir Anthony had presented to his Majesty the young man named George Villiers, of good family but no fortune, of pleasing manners and strong ambition, who had, once before, made a strong impression upon the King. In fact he might be a very perfect replacement for Robbie Carr, the married man, no longer young enough to satisfy his royal master, quite apart from the favourite’s altered way of life.
The King succumbed at once to his new attraction. He could hardly do otherwise, subject as he was to encouragement from both factions in the State. For the Catholic Howards, though loyal still to the new Somersets, particularly Lady Frances, had good reason to push Robbie a little further still from the monarch, while the Protestant party, horrified by what they suspected concerning their sometime supporter, Sir Thomas Overbury, wished likewise for the King’s sake, and hoped fervently for Robbie’s replacement.
In the City of London these moves and calculations were unknown or at any rate disregarded. A far more important matter in the eyes of merchants, burghers and their like took up their time and ravaged their emotions. In April the King summoned a parliament, tried to woo it, failed to impress it, admonished it severely, in this failed again and dissolved it, all in the course of two months. It is no wonder that he turned to his new attraction in July.
It would have been better, many thought afterwards, if the parliament had not been called at all. The members knew the King disliked them for their rugged obstinacy as much as they disliked him for his personal extravagance, and the profligacy of his Court. Most of them understood and reverenced money; in James’s hands it melted away like ice in the sun. Yet he dared to call them together simply to ask for money. They were determined to deny it him.
Sir Francis Bacon, now Attorney-General, had advised the calling of this parliament. He was shocked by the extravagances at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth and so soon after, a mere ten months, at the marriage of Lady Frances Howard. Had James not already rewarded his favourite enough that he must reduce still further his main asset, Crown land, to provide a wedding gift? Was it not known that this Lord Somerset had offered to lend his Majesty money, during one of the latter’s recurrent financial crises? The whole thing was repugnant, ludicrous, tragic. Bacon feared the Commons would have none of it, he told his master, unless very carefully, and sympathetically handled.
So King James stood up before them and made two speeches, both including much that Bacon had tried to teach him, but which failed to convince his hearers. This was not surprising, because Bacon had failed to convince the speaker either, which fact was only too apparent. Though he had called this parliament to make it grant him the money he needed so urgently, he spent some time in telling the members how much he deserved their respect and love for his integrity, purity, clear mind and affection for them all. He t
old them he had called them to discuss the increase of Popery. This made no impression upon those who knew perfectly well that he favoured the Catholic party more than the Protestant. He told them that he wanted to secure the succession upon his daughter Elizabeth’s infant son, supposing Prince Charles, like his lamented brother, should die without issue. This had very little effect upon men who had heard rumours of a proposed mariage for Charles with an Infanta of Spain.
The question of money came third and last in King James’s speech. He made various excuses and explanations for his crying need and appealed again for the love and loyalty of the Commons in the spirit in which he regarded them.
But in vain. The members saw through these protestations, especially where the eloquence of the King’s language came most obviously from the pen of the Attorney-General, who advised his Majesty and whom the Commons were not very pleased to have sitting in their Chamber. King James had put forward his three subjects for discussion and agreement but he had not put forward even one concession in return. He had argued that his prerogatives were by no means oppressive, but when they asked him to give up impositions he had become furiously angry, swore he would die rather than renounce the ‘flowers of his Crown’ and turned down all requests that hinted at any withering action against these blossoms.
Threats and counter threats passed between the loyal Commons and the loving monarch. The position became intolerable to both sides. So, when James realized and at last accepted the fact that he would get no money until he gave up rights he considered sacred, he dissolved the parliament only two months after he had called it in being.
One result of the eight weeks’ upheaval was, however, of value. The office of Secretary of State had not been filled at once after the death of Lord Salisbury. First the King himself, then the Earl of Northampton, as chief of the Councillors, had tried to do the work and failed miserably. But then the office had been given to Sir Ralph Winwood. When the parliament was called James made much of this appointment of the former ambassador in Holland. His Majesty thought very well of Sir Ralph Winwood, he told Parliament, for it was he who had smoothed the diplomatic way in the negotiations for the Princess Elizabeth’s marriage. He belonged to the Protestant faction. This, the King said, clearly made him acceptable to the strongly Protestant Commons.
The Dark and the Light Page 16