Towers in the Mist

by Elizabeth Goudge

  But the frightful scandal that there was about her death killed Leicester’s hopes of marriage with Elizabeth. She made him Earl of Leicester and one of the greatest noblemen in the land, and she gave him his beautiful home at Kenilworth, but she could not now marry him.

  Trying not to mention the word Cumnor in conversation—it was a word that must never be spoken in Uncle Leicester’s hearing—and trying not to think about pretty Aunt Amy whenever he was with his uncle made intercourse with that gentleman extremely difficult for Philip.

  But it had to be accomplished and at the appointed time he was waiting under the Fair Gate. He had not to wait long, for constant attendance upon the Queen’s Grace had at least taught Uncle Leicester the virtue of punctuality. With a commotion of horses’ hoofs on the cobbles he came clattering down from Carfax, with a few mounted servants behind him and his trumpeter going before. His splendid figure looked its best on horseback and the sunshine gleamed on his jeweled doublet and the great ruby that fastened turquoise plumes in his velvet hat. His dark beard was trimmed to a most elegant point and his fine dark eyes, as they rested on Philip, were softened and kindly. The trumpet sounded, Satan barked like mad, a little crowd gathered and Philip ran forward to hold his uncle’s stirrup as he dismounted.

  Uncle Leicester, as he stood beside his horse with his hand on Philip’s shoulder, gracefully acknowledging the bared heads of the bystanders and the bows of Heather­thwayte, looked very grave and very intellectual. He was a first-rate actor and when he was treading the streets of Oxford as its Chancellor you couldn’t have told, from looking at him, that he wasn’t really a very suitable person for the position. . . . Though it must be said to his credit that though the classics bored him stiff he was a quite passable mathematician.

  “Well, Phil, how are you?” inquired the great man genially.

  “Very well, thank you, Uncle,” said Philip. “I hope you are quite well?”

  “Quite well, thank you,” said the Chancellor, and shifted his hand from his nephew’s shoulder to his fair head.

  Philip realized with horror that it was his duty to kneel down and be blessed. This was quite as it should be, of course, but Philip did think that Uncle Leicester might have refrained from staging a pious scene in front of all these people. It wasn’t fair, either, because if Uncle Leicester believed in God at all, which Philip thought doubtful, he didn’t allow his faith to inconvenience him in any way, so what right had he to make it inconvenience Philip?

  But there was no help for it and Philip knelt, covering his face with his hands to hide his shame. Uncle Philip blessed him very loud, in the accents of a Chancellor, and the crowd, especially its female element, was much affected.

  “Well, Phil, and what shall we do now?” inquired the Earl, as they shook off their admirers and strolled together under the Fair Gate.

  Philip thought a walk round the Christ Church meadows would be nice. . . . The meadows have always been a blessing to scholars burdened with relations up for the day.

  As they walked the trodden paths through the feathery June grass, soft and warm against their hands as the breasts of little birds, and under the trees that lifted their heavy heads only lazily to greet the south wind that was driving white clouds like sheep across the sky, they made rather heavy conversation to each other.

  Philip answered the usual avuncular inquiries as to the progress of his studies and archery practice, the state of his friends’ health and his own health, the Dean’s health and his tutor’s health, with his habitual sweet and staid courtesy, and Uncle Leicester was more enslaved than ever.

  For the Earl did really love Philip. He had a certain capacity for love, as was shown by his short-lived love for Amy and his lifelong devotion to himself, and Philip caused him to exercise his capacity to the full. He could, and did, put himself out for Philip and, with the Earl, that was the supreme test.

  “Have you done any hunting, Phil?” he asked. . . . He was always afraid that Philip’s love of study might crowd more manly activities out of his life.

  “Yes,” said Philip, “last Wednesday I hunted out at C—; I mean I hunted last Wednesday.”

  He went scarlet and fell over the long toes of his pantoffles, but Uncle Leicester didn’t seem to notice anything.

  “Stags good?” he asked.

  “Splendid,” said Philip.

  “Where did you kill?” asked Uncle Leicester.

  They had killed in the great park at Cumnor and Philip, in misery, and again falling over his feet, changed the conversation by asking Uncle Leicester what he was doing in Oxford.

  “Ah!” said the Earl. “What do you think? I am sounding the University as to the expediency of persuading the Queen’s Grace to visit us next summer.”

  Gone was all Philip’s staidness of demeanor. He crowed and leaped like a small boy, and even seized Uncle Leicester’s sleeve and shook it slightly. “The Queen?” he cried. “Will the Queen really come to Oxford?”

  “I have taken her to Cambridge,” said Uncle Leicester, “and now it is high time she came to Oxford.”

  “You oughtn’t to have let her go to Cambridge first, Uncle,” said Philip reproachfully.

  “Cambridge claims to be the older University,” said the Earl.

  “It’s not now,” said Philip eagerly. “Not now that we’ve discovered that King Alfred founded us.”

  “How did you make that out?” inquired the Earl with interest.

  Philip waved an airy hand but disdained explanation. The magnificent edifice of historical research, built up by those imaginative historians on whose word Philip had it that King Alfred founded Oxford University, looked well but was difficult of explanation to the outsider.

  “He did,” said Philip briefly. “And you shouldn’t have taken the Queen’s Grace to Cambridge first. . . . Not when you’re Chancellor of Oxford.”

  “You forget,” said Uncle Leicester, “that I am also High Steward of Cambridge.”

  It was true. Uncle Leicester experienced no difficulty in combining these two honors, together with any benefits that accrued thereto.

  “Will the Queen come to Christ Church?” asked Philip.

  “If you wish it,” said his infatuated Uncle. “We’ll lodge her at Christ Church, shall we?”

  “When?” gasped Philip.

  “Next summer,” said the Earl. “And you and your friends shall amuse her with a masque in the hall.”

  Philip was pink with emotion and his eyes shone like stars. For the first time he almost loved Uncle Leicester. It was something, after all, to have an uncle who could twist a queen round his little finger in this way.

  A postern gate let them in through the city wall into Merton College, and they wandered through the old, irregular buildings that lacked the plan and pattern of the other Colleges because Merton was the mother of them all. Her buildings were no more than a few old houses, and the church of Saint John the Baptist, adapted to the use of that first little band of twenty scholars who in the thirteenth century came there to fulfill the intention of their founder, Walter de Merton, that they should fit themselves by study and prayer for life in the great world. Philip, by whom the great world must be entered in a short time now, remembered them as he passed under the embattled tower and the great gateway, and looked up at the carving above it that showed Christ, with the dove over his head, coming to Saint John the Baptist to be baptized. Philip knew what that carving meant in connection with Merton . . . . Christ, too, needed to be prepared.

  5.

  From Merton they walked to Oriel. At this point Philip usually took the visiting relative up Shidyard Street to High Street, and so to Saint Mary’s, but Uncle Leicester knew Oxford as well as Philip did, and anyhow, with Aunt Amy buried in Saint Mary’s, one couldn’t very well go there. . . . He stood for a moment on one leg and wondered what on earth to do next with Uncle Leicester. . . . The q
uestion was decided by the sudden appearance of Giles and Faithful from the gateway of Canterbury Inn. Emerging at the double they all but ran into the Chancellor, retreating only just in time in a paroxysm of bows.

  Philip presented them to his uncle as two of his best friends and the Chancellor regarded the younger of them with growing horror. Giles was passable as a friend for his nephew but this ugly, flap-eared, shabby boy, with the huge head and no breeding at all, was impossible, utterly impossible. Really Philip should be more careful where he bestowed his favor. He seemed to have no sense at all of what was due to his position. Uncle Leicester had had occasion to speak of this to him before, and it seemed he would have to do so again. . . . While chatting to the two boys with kindly condescension he fixed Faithful with a cold and fishy eye.

  Faithful withdrew a little behind Giles and looked down at his feet. The thoughts that passed through the Chancellor’s mind were quite clear to him and he was too ashamed to lift his eyes. As he stood there he could actually feel his head swelling out and his ears getting larger and his clothes shabbier. His shoes, he suddenly noticed, had two slits in the leather, and as he looked at them the slits widened to gaping, mocking mouths. . . . You are ugly, they said, you are hideously ugly. Your father was a thief and your mother was a slut out of the streets whom he did not bother to marry. You will never tell anyone that, but it is true. Why don’t you go back to the gutter, where you belong? What are you doing, masquerading as a gentleman in the streets of Oxford?. . . If Faithful could have moved he would have run away, but his feet were so busy laughing at him that they would not take him.

  “And where are you boys off to?” inquired the Chancellor genially.

  “To a verse reading, sir,” replied Giles, “in Walter Raleigh’s room at Oriel.”

  “Is it permissible for an old fogey such as myself to come too?” inquired the Chancellor. In the full flush of his splendid prime as he was, thirty-three years old and looking less, it delighted him to refer to himself as an old fogey and to watch the vehement denials that sprang into the eyes of his companions. And he liked the companionship of the admiring young. Even though their admiration might he based upon ignorance it was consoling after the truthful comments of one’s knowledgeable contemporaries.

  Philip, Giles and Faithful looked at each other a little doubtfully.

  “Evidently it is not permissible,” said the Chancellor with some pique.

  “I am sure Walter Raleigh would be honored, sir,” Giles hastened to assure him. “Only before the verse reading starts he is to put the last touches to a chemical experiment.”

  “Indeed?” inquired the Chancellor with interest. “What chemical experiment? And is private experimenting with combustibles in one’s rooms allowed by the University authorities?”

  The three politely ignored the last question and concentrated upon the first. “Walter Raleigh thinks he has discovered the correct formula for a Great Cordial or Elixir,” they explained. “Applied externally to base metals it will turn them into gold and applied internally to the human stomach it will prolong life.”

  “In other words,” said the Chancellor, “your friend has discovered the secret of perpetual youth.”

  “Yes,” they said.

  “Say no more,” laughed the Chancellor, “but lead on,” and ignoring Faithful he put his hands upon the shoulders of the other two and swung them round towards the gate of Oriel. . . . Over their shoulders they exchanged anxious glances with Faithful trotting behind. . . . What, they wondered, would be the penalty for blowing up the Chancellor?

  They entered under the archway and into the quadrangle of the College, founded by a Rector of Saint Mary’s and built up round the lovely old house of La Oriole. Raleigh’s room, where a choice gathering of the younger poets met every Sunday afternoon, was on the north side of the quadrangle, high up, and the little party mounted the narrow stairs in single file, tingling with mingled anxiety and expectation. . . . Perhaps, whispered Faithful to Giles, who was just in front of him, it would be all right after all. They were a little late and it might be that Raleigh and the poets were already blown to pieces. One must hope for the best.

  But no sooner had he expressed his hope than a terrific report reverberated over their heads. Philip, who was leading, recoiled upon the Chancellor and the Chancellor upon Giles. “The Great Cordial!” ejaculated Faithful, as Giles in his turn recoiled upon him and the whole party of them slithered into a dusty heap upon the stairs, Faithful at the bottom.

  The Chancellor, fearing loss of life, extricated himself at once from his undignified position and raced on up the stairs, two steps at a time, the others stumbling after.

  Raleigh’s room was filled with smoke and strewn with the bodies of prostrate poets. Through the haze the Chancellor could dimly see a table piled with phials and tubes, and a tall boy stirring some evil smelling concoction in a big bowl.

  “It’s all right,” announced a cheerful voice. “I know what I did wrong.”

  “I very much doubt if it is all right,” said the Chancellor sternly. “All these young gentlemen appear to be dead.”

  “Fright,” said Raleigh laconically, bending over his bowl with nose held between finger and thumb. “They’re all cowards and skunks. . . . And who are you, sir, anyhow?” He suddenly raised his head and saw who it was. “The Chancellor!” he gasped.

  But he was at a loss for only a moment.

  “The Chancellor,” he roared at the prostrate poets, dealing out a few kicks to right and left to awake them into reverence. Then he dashed to the windows, opened them to let out the smoke, bowed to the Chancellor as though a visit from him were a thing of everyday occurrence, removed Fulke Greville, who was prostrate upon the best chair, from there to the floor with a sweep of his right arm, removed a whole windowful of poets who obscured the view with a gesture of his left arm, seated the Chancellor and raised the whole confused gathering to its feet in a corporate bow all in the twink­ling of an eye.

  A young man who will go far, thought the Chancellor, and could not find it in his heart to offer any further rebuke. Instead, with his scented handkerchief to his nose, he found himself offering his condolences.

  But Raleigh, emptying the Great Cordial out of the window and summoning a few poets to help him stow the basins and phials under his bed, waved them airily aside. “A mere error of judgment,” he said. “Next time I shall succeed.” His voice was vibrant with determination and his eyes shone as he launched forth into a glowing description of the golden age that was coming. . . . When there would be no more poverty, no more sorrow, no more sin.

  A shout from outside interrupted his eloquence and sent him bounding to a window. Below in the quadrangle stood the Provost and other dignitaries of the College, outraged and indignant at this wrecking of their Sunday siesta by the noises and smells of Hades. This was not the first time, they said, that Master Walter Raleigh had disturbed the peace of Oriel upon the Sabbath, although he had been informed again and again that diabolical experiments upon the holy day were not permitted within the precincts of the College. They would be obliged if he would descend and give some explanation of his conduct.

  “Sirs,” cried Raleigh, bowing very low, “I regret that I am unable to do so. I am about to entertain the Chancellor at a verse reading.”

  Such incredulous noises greeted this statement that Leicester was obliged to show himself at the other window. “I crave your indulgence for this young man,” he said to the astonished Provost in arrogant yet honeyed tones. “Any unpleasant aroma that may have titillated your nostrils, or slight sound that may have assaulted the delicate tympanum of your ear, were unforeseen accidents in a humanitarian effort for the betterment of the human race that, I think, should be commended in a son of Oriel. Master Walter Raleigh and his friends, following in his footsteps of the great alchemists of all time, were searching for that Elixir that shall turn all hard metals, ye
a, even the hearts of reverend and learned men, to soft and merciful gold.”

  The Provost glanced from the splendid but most unacademic figure of the Chancellor in one window to the equally splendid figure of Walter Raleigh in the other. . . . Adventurers both. . . . He bowed coldly and withdrew with his following.

  Leicester once more settled himself comfortably in his chair for an hour that promised to be fruitful of entertainment, and the poets, with a deep sigh of expectancy and a rustling of papers, settled all over the room like a flock of birds. It was a beautiful room, furnished by Raleigh regardless of his father’s expense, and now that the smoke and the smell were cleared out of it, and the Sunday afternoon silence and sunshine came into their own, it made a fitting background for the poets who sat in elegant attitudes, on the floor and on the chairs, attentive, as were all men always, to Raleigh’s slightest word or glance.

  They were a likely looking lot of youngsters, the chancellor thought as he looked round the room, drinking in the adulation of their eyes and of their quick, panting breaths. The sun poured in, lighting on fair heads, dark heads, yellow heads and ginger heads, all of them sleek and shining after the Sunday brush. Their snowy ruffs made the perfect setting for young faces and the subdued colors of their best doublets, plum color, dark green, dark blue, violet and russet, seemed to accentuate the vivid­ness of their eyes and hair. . . . How the young do shine, thought the Chancellor. . . . Surely this lot had already drunk of their Elixir, for their youth lay upon them like a bright polish, as triumphant as the sheen of the spring world in early morning. It looked inviolable, impossible to tarnish, shouting aloud to the world that life was good.