The Dark and the Light

by Josephine Bell

  During the months between Katharine’s flight, the taking into custody of the Somersets and the trials and executions of their assistants and dupes, Francis stayed in Oxford, waiting for news of his wife and praying there would be no further moves made to incriminate her in her absence.

  Further action against the chief culprits had little interest for him. They had ruined Kate, or rather by her obstinate cultivation of them she had ruined herself. At first he withdrew into his work and his great lonely house. Even the children brought little comfort in his mood of utter dejection. He knew he was not sorrowing for his wife, but for Lucy, whose heroism only increased his self-contempt.

  To the world of the university he must dissemble this grief, turning it into discomfort at the absence of Lady Leslie upon a prolonged visit to friends in the Low Countries. He expected her return in the spring, he told his friends. It was a sad life without her, he lied. A sad, false duplicity in which he lived, or just existed, he felt, scourging the raw surface of his inner wounds until he sometimes thought, as he wandered alone by the banks of Isis, if it would not be best to drown there and find a different pain in the suicide’s perpetual hell-fires,

  Richard rode over to Luscombe fairly often but found himself at a disadvantage, since Katharine was his sister and though he had never tried to control her ways and had as a youth resented his parents’ preference for their pretty little daughter, he had often felt that Francis neglected her real needs and had never forgiven her for the deep wrong she had done him.

  Celia felt nothing but compassion for her brother-in-law and for his children, who had always lacked a mother’s love. She also visited Luscombe chiefly to see how George and Kirstie were faring, particularly the latter, since her brother was now at school and the poor mite lacked real company, spending overmuch time with the servants.

  But news came at last, ending the long vigil, shattering the old life for Francis, tearing off the black cloak of melancholy guilt he had wrapped about himself, freeing both families for a new, hopeful life.

  Word came to Oxford, to both Francis and Richard that there was news of Katharine. Ill news for which they must prepare themselves, Alderman Leslie wrote. They must hear it direct from the source. They must come to London immediately.

  They rode off together and found Master Leslie waiting for them in Gracious Street with a foreign seafaring man who announced himself as the captain of the ship that had taken Katharine on board his vessel for passage to Ijmuiden in Holland. He spoke English fairly well but was helped by the alderman, who had learned both Dutch and Danish from those he traded with.

  The story was brief, shocking, terrible. The sea-captain was evidently afraid they would blame him for not embarking Katharine in the morning of the day she reached the Pool, but Francis told him he knew Lucy’s account of it and pointed to her arrest. If Katharine had not hidden, she had been lost indeed.

  The captain was relieved. He described how his passenger had come aboard, suffering as he thought from the exposure and fright of those long daytime hours in the dark shed, hidden under a smelly tarpaulin. But she had not complained. She had accepted food and drink with gratitude. He had expected her to be recovered by the morning; she had seemed to be sleeping quietly.

  ‘Imagine my shock,’ he said, in a voice that became more guttural than before, ‘when I discovered she was already dying and that her disease, her frightful disease, was plague.’

  Master Leslie nodded gravely. This was why he had given no particulars in his message to the two men who stood in a stiff horror, staring at the captain.

  ‘She died before nightfall. We had been becalmed and were still some twenty miles from our port. I called my bo’sun and showed him the lady. He and I were the only ones who had touched her before and after she came aboard, and then only to help her climb up to the deck and go to her cabin. Most of my crew had no knowledge of her presence, even. You understand we dare not reveal what we knew to my men, still less to the harbour officers at Ijmuiden.’

  ‘And so?’ Francis asked, knowing what would follow.

  ‘Sir, we buried her at sea. At once. It was completely necessary. We said prayers, my bo’sun and I. We wrapped her in the blankets of the bunk. She had not removed any of her clothes. We carried her to the stern and lowered her beside the rudder post. My two officers were forward on the deck ordering the sails. My third officer was below, off watch. I also. I believe none saw. None ever spoke of it.’

  ‘But the delay,’ Richard said at last, following the silence that had greeted this account.

  ‘I waited,’ the captain said, with dignity, ‘at the port, with an excuse of a damaged leg. My bo’sun also. We would not go to our homes, nor to sea again, until we knew if we should also die of the plague.’

  ‘And you escaped. Thank God for it. The bo’sun too?’

  ‘With God’s mercy.’

  ‘But how? Why? Kate was well enough when she left home,’ Francis protested.

  ‘She spent two days upon the journey from Oxford. She stayed in a poor small inn on the way. And those hours on the waterfront,’ Master Leslie said. ‘We have no epidemic of the plague just now, but there is never a year without cases. We find vagrants in our sheds and warehouses. Mayhap one had left the contagion there and poor Kate—’

  ‘It doth not bear thinking of,’ Francis said brokenly.

  ‘I think, sir, she did not suffer, it was so quick,’ the sea-captain consoled.

  ‘Let us hope it was so,’ Richard added. This roused him to exclaim, ‘My father!’

  ‘I have not sent a message there,’ Master Leslie told him. ‘I thought you should go—’

  ‘At once,’ Richard said. ‘None but I must break this news to them.’

  When he had left Alderman Leslie too went away leaving Francis alone with the captain.

  ‘There was nothing of hers you bring to me?’ Francis asked. ‘No trinket, ring—nothing at all?’

  ‘You will understand,’ the other said heavily. ‘We dared not touch her. For fear of the contagion. We saw by her face—we had seen plague—we dared not—only to wrap the body about, roll it in the blankets—as a shroud—We said prayers—’

  The man’s distress was plain and Francis understood it. His life, the life of his family, his crew, his ship, his business, all put in hazard by this unwanted stranger. Why should he do more than he had done? He had done finely, with true compassion and solid Dutch sense.

  ‘It is well,’ Francis told him, giving him his hand and adding a blessing. Then remembering, he said, ‘I must owe you for your work, for my wife’s passage, for the risk you took and the loss you suffered later when you could not sail.’

  ‘You owe me nothing, sir,’ the captain answered. ‘The business was with Master Leslie and it is discharged.’

  ‘Then may I add a small memento to prove my gratitude,’ Francis said, pulling off a ring he wore that Doctor Ogilvy had given him upon his marriage. The captain had not been able to save Kate’s life, God had ruled otherwise, but he had saved her honour and the honour of her house, which included himself.

  The man thanked him, evidently both pleased and touched. He tried to put the ring on one of his fingers, but those strong members were too thick for it. He grinned, put it away in a pocket and said his wife would wear it instead and in any case he could not be seen aboard his ship with it on.

  When the sea-captain had gone Francis went in search of Lucy. He found her sitting in Mistress Butters’s north facing parlour, trying to sew at a piece of embroidery, but making very little progress. She had been much moved, he saw, but was now calm. When he entered she got up mechanically to make her usual formal curtsey, but he was near her as she straightened up from it and taking her in his arms, he drew her close.

  There was no need for words between them. One look at his face as he bent over her, releasing the love he had suppressed for so long, told her all she needed to know. She hid her joy against his shoulder, feeling it unseemly to display it after tha
t day’s shocking news.

  Francis, still holding her, said, ‘Thou hast been told? Kate is dead.’

  ‘Master Leslie gave us the news when he left you just now with the captain.’

  ‘Walter will know it, no one else in this house. Richard is gone to the doctor. The old man and Giles will know the truth. No one else in that house. No one in the world at large must hear of that—that—’

  ‘No one shall,’ she said very softly, knowing he meant her to preserve the secret from her friends and particularly from Lady Bacon. ‘I promise.’

  He kissed her gently, almost absent-mindedly, his thoughts turned again most painfully to the extinction of that perfect loveliness that had beguiled him, against all reason, against the death of all ordinary affection for so long.

  ‘I go back at once to Oxford,’ he said, releasing her, but added, ‘I will come again very soon, my love—my dear, dear love.’

  Richard reached Paternoster Row in a very troubled state of mind. Doctor Ogilvy and his wife had suffered severely during the past winter, taking the prevalent fever as badly as Giles had done once before, but not making a like recovery. In fact since Katharine’s flight the old scholar had seemed to take very little interest in life or in the work he had enjoyed for so long and performed so well. He had at last given up his school teaching but this had not helped him to recover his strength. Richard shrank from his mission with loathing. He loved his father. He must deal with a hideous blow that could well be fatal.

  Giles opened the door to him and drew him in hurriedly with a very secret air.

  ‘This is most providential, sir,’ he whispered. ‘I had no knowledge of your intended visit. I was not told.’

  ‘On purpose, Giles,’ Richard said. ‘Master Leslie sent for us, for Sir Francis and me.’

  ‘There is news, sir? Lady Leslie—’

  ‘Is dead, Giles. Hath been dead these three months and the news hath but just come to us. How shall I tell my father? How will he bear it?’

  Giles had reeled against the wall when he heard Richard’s first words. Now he grasped his arm, babbling that he had feared it since they had heard nothing: that Doctor Ogilvy had been convinced she was no more, had waited only to be told of her end to follow her into the grave: had said to him, only that morning—

  ‘But come, sir, he is in the library. He has been there since daybreak, when I had the fire made up anew for him, neither eating nor drinking—neither speaking nor looking—’

  The poor man broke down into sobs, clinging to Richard for help in his distress, trying to repel the dread conclusion he knew already was the truth.

  Richard put him away very gently and went to the library where he found his father sitting in his chair before the fire as Giles had described, his breakfast untouched on a tray beside him, his eyes closed, his face calm and still.

  So he had gone without enduring that last distress, Richard thought. He himself had been spared dealing the blow that would surely have broken his last link with this sad world. He knelt to pray for his father’s soul and to thank Almighty God for this mercy. He prayed too for poor Kate, whose punishment however deserved had been terrible but swift. He prayed that he might be spared the loss of a child, understanding how his lack of siblings except for one absent soldier brother he scarcely knew, had contributed to Kate’s special position in her father’s heart. All families suffered in this way, but so far he had escaped, for which blessing he thanked God afresh. Then rising he comforted Giles, swore him to secrecy about Katharine and went upstairs to break it to his mother that she was now a widow.

  Poor Mistress Ogilvy was overwhelmed. But Richard, having disposed of the house in Paternoster Row, installed his mother in rooms of her own at the Oxford house, where Celia looked after her for the rest of her life. At first she complained at Kate’s continued absence, but as her mind gently lost memory and reason she began to call Celia Kate and was happier again.

  Before the end of that year Francis and Lucy were married in London from the house in Gracious Street. George and Kirstie were present at the wedding. By this time they had been told of their mother’s death abroad while on a visit to friends. They had seen so little of her and both disliked and feared what they had seen, so they welcomed Lucy without any sort of reservation. She had played with them freely on their London visits. Now they would have her always at Luscombe.

  Many of Lucy’s friends, including Sir Francis and Lady Bacon also attended. Present too were a number of Master Leslie’s friends. City magnates and others. Doctor William Harvey came, famous now for his recently declared discovery concerning the circulation of the blood.

  On the bridegroom’s side a fair gathering of Oxford scholars, dons with their wives, fellows, lecturers, readers, and of course Richard and Celia also made the journey to London. Many of them were eager to meet Doctor Harvey, who had joined the increasing number of advanced men of science now actively pushing forward into new knowledge and breaking down the old walls of superstition and so-called revelation.

  After the reception in Gracious Street the guests went away, leaving the newly-wed couple and the Leslie children alone with their host and Mistress Butters. They were to spend the night there before leaving for Oxford in the morning.

  When the last guest had gone Master Leslie said, putting an arm round Mistress Butters’s waist, ‘And now I have a further announcement to make. Since Lucy could not endure to have her mother set over her in her new home, and I could not endure to lose a friend who hath ordered my house so perfectly for so many years, my dearest housekeeper hath consented after much persuasion to become my wife.’

  He waited for the exclamations of the others, their praise and congratulations, the following round of kisses to subside, then said slyly, his eyes on his future bride, ‘As Bacon hath said, a young man’s wife is his mistress, in middle-age his companion, in old age his nurse—’

  He got no further, for Mistress Butters threatened to box his ears and Francis and Lucy collapsed into laughter and ran from the room.

  Luscombe Manor was refreshed, enlivened, enthralled by the new young mistress, who ruled there gently but with the reasonable order in which her mother had trained her. The university found her greatly to its liking, so Francis made new friends and being wholly fulfilled at last found his work more enthralling than ever.

  Walking by the little stream a few months later, Lucy being pregnant with her first child, they talked of the old days when Francis had first come to study in London and live with Master Angus.

  ‘I scarce saw thee then,’ he teased her. ‘Being head over heels in calf-love for my poor Kate.’

  ‘And I saw no one else but thee,’ she answered, ‘from the first hours of thy arrival. I lived for those days when I had a word of greeting. They were few indeed.’

  ‘Yet I took thee and thy mother over to Bankside to the play. Was it ‘‘Hamlet’’ or ‘‘Twelfth Night’’?’

  ‘“The Merchant of Venice’’,’ she answered promptly and added, ‘Alas poor Master Shakespeare. He was not old. Perhaps he had more plays to give us yet. Or more of his great poems.’

  ‘I think not,’ Francis said. ‘He is not long dead and already they criticize his work, find fault with his theatre, have give up his plays for these blood-boltered tragedies of Master Webster and Master Tourneur.’

  ‘We will think not of them, but remember Master Will, for he reminds us of true love,’ Lucy told him.

  ‘Of our own true love,’ Francis said with a deep thankful sigh. ‘That I did think until lately I should never know.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1971 by Geoffrey Bles

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2156-2 EPUB
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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2155-5 POD

  Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1971

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