Francis Leslie paid a visit to his kinsman in London at the beginning of June, shortly before the failure of the proceedings at Westminster. He had come upon a mission about certain books sent from abroad that had been held up in the capital, perhaps lost or stolen. They had not arrived as expected in Oxford. With Master Leslie’s help and useful introductions Francis hoped to discover what had happened to the precious volumes, to find them if they had indeed arrived and to take them back with him to the university.
He found the City in its all too frequent state of unrest and indignation.
‘Thou hast heard, perhaps, of this comedy our King hath staged in the Parliament house?’ Master Leslie said, soon after Francis arrived. ‘No? Then I’ll tell thee of it.’
He took the visitor into his own room, part study, part office, sat him down with a cooling drink and seated himself upon a wide-seated, floridly carved armchair opposite the young man.
‘His Majesty totters on the brink of bankruptcy,’ the merchant went on. ‘So he hath called together his faithful Commons as he calls them to their faces while cursing them in private. The election of the members hath caused scandal up and down the country, the stink of corruption rising so foul, what with bribes and persuasions, threats and promises, as to choke the ordinary citizen not involved in such matters.’
‘And the outcome?’ Francis asked, smiling. He remembered King James’s early attempts at the beginning of his reign to understand the English constitution and the utter failure of his efforts. ‘He hath received his dues? Or his pleadings? Or whatever name he gives his attempts to levy taxes?’
‘He hath not received one penny,’ Master Leslie answered, bringing his open hand down upon the table in a great smack of contempt. ‘Nor doth he lack a kind of courage. For there is a rumour of a plot by my Lord Northampton and his friends to make his Majesty give way, in fear, to some of the demands upon him, so that the Commons will vote him supply, however small.’
‘A plot!’ Francis was shocked.
‘So they say. And it may be true for there is no question the elections were in some sort rigged by the courtiers, hoping to support the King. Sir Thomas Parry was expelled for corrupt practices proved against him. They did not succeed, these riggers, for they say a greater number of radicals and hotheads appeared than were expected by false pretences and promises, maybe.’
‘But the plot you spoke of? To force his Majesty?’
‘Northampton again with the aid of Doctor Lionel Sharp and Sir Charles Cornwallis, him that was principal in the household of our lost young Prince. They were to urge speeches in the House of a violence that might anger and perhaps intimidate the King.’
‘Did they succeed?’
‘They did not King James abhors strife of all kinds, save argument and the battle of wits. Besides, the Commons is dissolved and my Lord Northampton, wicked old man, lies grievously ill with a tumour of the leg so unskilfully removed that the limb is gangrenous. They say there is no hope of his recovery.’
The news was correct. Within a week of the dissolution of Parliament Lord Northampton died, throwing the Catholic faction into disorder and depriving the King of his principal councillor.
Though the new Secretary of State, Winwood, was Protestant, as was Ellesmere the Lord Chancellor and Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General, and all were ready to proffer advice to the monarch, James clung to his old connections. He had made Suffolk his Treasurer; now he made Somerset Lord Chamberlain. Somerset also found himself Lord Privy Seal and Warden of the Cinque Ports, of which positions he was totally ignorant, though flattered inordinately to receive them. In fact Robbie Carr had reached those further heights of his ambition he had looked to achieve after his marriage. He had attained for more than most men expected of him, knowing him for a man not overendowed with brains and slow to develop wisdom, even in the hard school of the Royal Court.
Alan Carr rejoiced in his brother’s exalted rank and high good fortune. For the time being he forgot or rather controlled his mistrust of his beautiful but deadly sister-in-law. So filled was he with good humour and high spirits that hearing a chance remark about a rich cargo newly arrived from the colony of Virginia, he went to the Pool with two friends to find out more about it.
There were other sightseers on the wharves, idlers and ne’er-do-wells, pretending to seek work but taking good care it did not come their way. Among other riff-raff, pickpockets and pimps, beggars and other rogues. But also men who had sailed from those distant lands and were ready to speak of their adventures. One of these the three young men surrounded and after hearing his tales of adventure took him off to the nearest ale-house to reward him for the entertainment he had provided them.
It was when the fellow rose to leave them that he pulled out a package from inside his shirt and asked to be directed to the address upon it. Alan read there the name of Alderman Angus Leslie, merchant, of Gracious Street in the City of London.
‘I can direct you, my good man,’ he said. ‘Walk thou beside my horse and I’ll bring you to the alderman’s house.’
‘It be the young kinsman I would see,’ the man answered. ‘He that is friend to Master Nimmo, late of James Town in Virginia. Sir Francis Leslie, I was told.’
This meant nothing to Alan Carr, but he knew the house and he knew that Francis Leslie was Katharine’s husband. If the couple was in London he would renew his intermittent affair with the lady. The prospect pleased him. He walked his horse slowly, allowing the seaman to gawp and wonder at the passers-by, particularly the women.
When they arrived at the house in Gracious Street Alan dismounted, while the seaman knocked at the door and pulled the chain of a deep mouthed bell that hung beside it.
The door was opened by Walter. He saw the man first and accepted the missive held out to him. But he also saw Alan standing in the road beside his horse and recognized him for a friend of Lady Leslie’s and the brother of the new earl.
‘My master will want to thank you in person,’ he said, hurriedly thrusting the package back into the seaman’s hand. ‘Go you within, master, while I see to this young gentleman.’
‘It was he brought me hither,’ the man answered, but he did as he was asked and soon Alan, relieved of his horse that Walter had handed over to the groom in the stable yard, joined the other in the hall and both were led into the alderman’s office where Master Leslie was working at his desk.
The latter opened the package. There were two letters inside, one for the alderman, the other for Francis.
‘Captain made the two into one,’ the seaman explained. ‘It was at the new settlement, in place of that they called Sagadohoc, that we took them from Master Nimmo. They told us in James Town where we’d find him. The new James Town, sir. Mayhap you‘ve heard they moved the town inland, up river, to better land for the farming and less pestilent sea mist to strike down the new settlers that do go there all the time.’
‘So I have heard from the Company,’ Alderman Leslie said. ‘Go Walter, bring Sir Francis Leslie hither.’
He turned to Alan, who had stood waiting, not liking to ask for Lady Leslie, but not wishing to meet her husband if he could avoid doing so.
‘My Lord Somerset’s brother, I believe, Master Carr,’ the alderman said. ‘We have not had the honour of receiving you here, but I understand you are acquainted through my Lady Somerset with my kinsman’s wife, who attended the countess at times, I believe.’
He bowed formally, as did Alan in return.
‘My Lady Leslie is in Oxford,’ Master Angus went on, still very formal, ‘but Sir Francis is here with me. Ah, here he comes!’
Walter, who had not given the names of the visitors, ushered in Francis, who was introduced, given his letter from Alec Nimmo and invited to take Master Carr into the garden while the alderman held further speech with the sailor.
Francis expected young Carr to leave at once, so began to walk towards the stable yard. But Alan, swollen as he was by his family’s preferment and also by the
ale he had drunk with the seaman, had no intention of leaving just yet. Balked of his desire to see his mistress, his latent resentment of Francis rose within him. Here was the man who legally possessed her, mewing her up at Oxford when she should with her beauty and charm be displaying both at Court. Alan’s feelings swelled within him as they paced slowly along until they broke forth in angry speech.
‘You would have me go hence, unthanked,’ he exclaimed. ‘Hurried off, as if my presence offended you! While your kinsman entertains the man I guided hither and no doubt feasts him into the bargain!’
‘Master Leslie thanked you and I do likewise,’ Francis answered steadily. ‘But Kate is not here and it was Kate you hoped to see, I think. Otherwise you would not have come.’
‘You doubt my motive in directing the seaman?’ Alan asked, his face very red.
‘I have not considered it,’ Francis answered coldly.
‘Kate would have considered it. And very favourably,’ Alan cried, making no further attempt to control himself.
‘I refuse to understand you! I refuse to speak with you further!’ Francis was by now shaking with rage but he spoke as coldly as ever.
‘I see that my poor Kate spoke truly of you!’ Alan shouted. ‘She hath a good excuse for her actions, though she be nought but a—’
Francis’s blade flashed from the scabbard. Alan leapt back, drawing as he did so. The clash of steel sounded through the house and garden and men came running.
It was a short fight, an unsatisfactory ending. Francis, who wore a sword as part of his normal dress, but never expected to use it except perhaps in an unlooked for street attack, was in poor practice and moreover furiously angry at the open insult to Katharine.
Alan was a few years younger than Francis, not quite out of practice because he played at sword craft with friends at Court. But he was equally angry and rendered unsteady by his recent drinking.
However, in the few thrusts and counter thrusts before they were stopped Alan managed to disarm his adversary. He had Francis at his mercy, but he had no wish to kill the fool, as he regarded him. He would only lose Katharine altogether or be even more involved with her. As a widow she might want to marry him, the last thing he desired of her. Besides, such a deed would be murder, according to the King’s new law. So he made a half-hearted lunge at the helpless man, pushed the point of his sword into Francis’s upper right arm and withdrew it again as the helpers seized them both, disarmed both of their swords and the pistols they wore at their belts and took them back into the house.
Alderman Leslie was deeply shocked. Never before had men indulged in a brawl in his garden, he said. He did not wish to hear the cause. He was only thankful his servants had prevented a greater mischief. Master Carr would leave at once from the stable yard where his arms would be restored to him after he was mounted. He would never again be received in that house. If he attempted it he would be denounced to the Law for illegal duelling.
Alan knew the danger, for the King was very particular in his abhorrence of the act. Though Francis had drawn upon him and he had but defended himself, he knew very well that he had provoked the man and that purposely. He had expected a more feeble answer from the scholar. Well, he knew better. But as he rode away from Gracious Street he had no thought of giving up Katharine as lost, forbidden, unattainable. Her husband’s courage in his unhandy response was simply an added spur to his desire. It gave his mistress an added value. There would be increased pleasure in any future encounter he might have with her. Which he hoped would be soon.
Meanwhile Francis, when he had explained the whole incident to Master Angus, repeating the insult and his own reaction to it, had risen from the chair where he had been placed by Walter and had attempted to leave the room. But his right sleeve was soaked with blood which had left a stain upon the chair and now fell freely to the floor. And as the alderman exclaimed in horror and got to his feet, Francis fell fainting half-way to the door.
Chapter Seventeen
It was more than two weeks before Francis was fit to ride home to Oxford. Master Leslie insisted upon bringing in a physician to attend him, one who would be discreet in his inquiry as to the cause of the wound. Doctor William Harvey was pleased to be of service to one who was such a kind friend to himself and his merchant brothers in the City. But he declared it a case for a surgeon, since he felt himself to be competent only in giving general advice for the treatment, ordering the diet and restoring the patient’s spirits that were very low, owing to his excessive loss of blood at the outset.
‘Which was thine own fault, sir,’ Doctor Harvey declared roundly, ‘for not declaring this—accident—when it occurred.’
Francis smiled at the physician but gave him no explanation, only an apology.
‘I believe it is a general fault of mankind,’ he said, ‘to wish to cover up their ills from physicians, lest they hear of worse pains they may expect from those complaints.’
‘True enough,’ Doctor Harvey agreed. ‘Nevertheless in the case of—wounds—such as thine, instant attention may overcome a number of dangers.’
Francis had no answer to this. He agreed to accept the attentions of a surgeon, who was called, examined the arm, pronounced the damage done to be serious but not fatal either to life or indeed to any future disability. He applied a healing unguent, brought the sides of the cut together with a bandage that stopped any further bleeding, and to keep the arm from all movement at first, bound it to a short splint and supported the whole limb in a sling. Neither he nor Doctor Harvey advised cautery. A clean knife, the surgeon said, with emphasis upon the word, driven through a gentleman’s clothing, should cause little suppuration, and might even heal cleanly, given complete rest and the regime advised by the physician.
So Francis was brought to health and strength again in spite of a growing impatience to be back in Oxford. He had completed his mission in London before the duel. His pupils and others at the university waited for the books he was to deliver to them. And though the short encounter with Alan Carr had been quite successfully hushed up Francis still smarted with shame for his own poor showing in it and for his humiliation on Katharine’s account.
Her duplicity had been made perfectly plain to him. Young Carr seemed to accept it as something normal, perhaps amusing. Her reputation at Court might be no worse than many others’ among the ladies who thronged that licentious community. It made her no less his wife, him no less her cuckolded husband. For he had no doubt now that she had betrayed him with insolent young Carr, this ill-bred, dissolute cur whose name fitted him well.
He endured the days of total rest in bed with a fierce kind of acceptance that could not be called patience and earned him a mild rebuke from his kinsman.
‘Thou dost frighten my good Mistress Butters,’ the alderman told him. ‘This unmannerly silence, this closed face, alarm her. As for Lucy, she dare not come near thee but weeps alone for thy altered ways to her mother and herself.’
‘I would not appear discourteous,’ Francis answered slowly. ‘Nor at all ungrateful to you, sir, for your continued goodness to me in all things. I will make my apology to Mistress Butters. This delay in my return hath troubled me too much, I fear.’
It was not the delay alone, Master Leslie knew. It was the young man’s always regrettable marriage. He went away cursing Kate’s perversity, her silly mother’s malign encouragement, her poor father’s lack of understanding of his daughter’s character. They had spoiled the girl because she was their one surviving daughter and because she was beautiful. Sighing a little Master Leslie praised his own state of bachelorhood. These dire mischances could be avoided, as he had avoided them. At a cost, perhaps, yes, at a cost.
Mistress Butters accepted Francis’s apology in her usual warm-hearted way, blaming herself for not making sufficient allowance for his suffering and the inconvenience the wound had caused him. With his altered manner fresh in her mind she sought out Lucy, told her of the marked improvement and invited her to visit the conv
alescent with a book or a game to divert him.
‘What game would amuse him?’ Lucy asked. ‘He doth not play at cards. Chess, he favours, but I play so badly he would not enjoy it.’
‘Piquet, then. Or backgammon. I have seen him at either, time and time again.’
It was very plain to Lucy when she arrived in Francis’s room with the backgammon board that he was prepared to have a game with her since she wished it, but was not expecting to gain any pleasure himself from the exercise.
However his surgeon had that morning put a plain dressing on his nearly healed wound, advising that it be now allowed to dry up and the bandage left on until it separated of its own accord.
‘Nor need we keep the splint,’ the surgeon told him. ‘But the sling I should advise for a while longer.’
‘I must return to Oxford,’ Francis told him firmly.
‘Then ride left-handed and keep the right hand in the opening of the doublet to support the arm. You will be accompanied by a groom?’
Francis nodded. He remembered the first time he had ridden to Oxford, succouring a party of actors who had been set upon by a highway thief. How different was his life now: how far more prosperous and less happy. He was still thinking of this when Lucy came in shyly with the game. His softened heart went out to her in pity and the love he tried in vain to beat down, but when he spoke this effort made his voice seem harsh, even unkind.
‘You see me released from my strait-jacket,’ he cried, showing her his freed arm. ‘Near three weeks but we need fear no further trouble, my man said, only a trifle of stiffness.’
‘Master Nimmo would have brought it through the danger more quickly,’ Lucy said, trying to smile.
The Dark and the Light Page 17