Towers in the Mist
Page 38
All day in the hot blue sunshine,
On quivering, tireless wings,
The lark between earth and heaven
Ceaselessly, joyously sings.
But now at last she is sinking
Down to her nest.
So turn to your rest, my lady,
Turn to your rest
And dream.
The scarlet lamps of the tulips
Are fading and burning dim,
Faint as the sun that is sinking
In softness o’er the world’s rim,
Draining the world of the color
At night’s behest.
So turn to your rest, my lady,
Turn to your rest
And dream.
From somewhere beyond the drawn curtains, that stirred in the breeze from the open window, came a sharp ping, as though a string snapped, and a voice whispered softly but clearly, “Damn!”
This was no fairy lover but one whose mortality was much in evidence. Quick as a flash Joyeuce slipped out of bed, flung her cloak round her and scuttled to the window, thanking her stars as she scuttled that little short of morning or the last trump could wake the children. “Nicolas!” she whispered, slipping behind the window curtains and leaning out to him. . . . How bright the stars were, big stars and little stars, as though every angel and cherub had thrust a fist through the floor of heaven to take a look at her and Nicolas. Surely the stars were auspicious tonight, and every little rustle in the garden was a whisper of friendship. . . . She remembered how once she had dreamed that Nicolas and Diccon had entered the gates of fairyland while she had been shut out. She was not shut out now. The song of her lover had drawn her inside those gates and they had clanged behind her with the sound of chiming bells. “Oh, Nicolas!” she breathed.
“Good, wasn’t it?” said Nicholas, cocking a bright eye at her as he fitted a new string into his viol. He took her ecstasy as a tribute to his musical prowess, and was pleased, for upon the Dean telling him that he lacked concentration in labor he had spent the best part of an hour in work upon his song, and thought highly of it. “I wrote the words and music. And there’s more to come, too. Amongst other men’s songs I could not find one that I liked enough to sing to you, and so I said to myself, ‘Fool, write your own.’ There are no tulips out yet, of course, but there will be when I sing it to the Queen.”
“Will you sing it to the Queen?” whispered Joyeuce with a little tremor of disappointment in her voice. . . . She had hoped this song was all her own.
“Under her window, at night,” announced Nicolas. “And she will labor under the delusion that it was written for her, and be so flattered that she will promise me my heart’s desire, like a Queen in a fairy tale.”
“What desire?” breathed Joyeuce.
He stood up straight under her window, his head tilted back and his bright eyes fixed on hers. “To take you to Court when we are married,” he said.
Joyeuce slipped down on to her knees, her elbows propped on the windowsill and her chin in her hands. She could not speak for excitement but her eyes were as bright as two stars.
“And when we are tired of Court life we will go home. You will like my home, Joyeuce. It is built of gray stone, with very tall chimneys that carry the banners of the wood-smoke so far up into the sky that when Mistress Joyeuce de Worde is at home people miles away will know it, and be glad. It has wide windows with diamond panes that let in all the sun by day and catch a star in each pane by night. There is a beech wood behind the house, and a garden full of lilies in front of it, and when you are my wife there will be no Spring Wash.”
“But, Nicolas,” protested Joyeuce, “one must wash.”
“The servants will wash,” said Nicolas grandly. “But you, Joyeuce, will walk up and down the grass paths between the lilies with your husband and listen to the verses he has written to the brightness of your eyes.”
“But there always must be domestic tasks,” insisted Joyeuce, dazzled but still doubtful.
“Of course there must be,” said Nicolas, suddenly serious. “And sickness and accidents and losses and old age. But everything has several sides and I will teach you to see the funny side of them all, and you will show me which way round to turn them to make of them stepping stones to God. . . . Which reminds me,” he added inconsequentially, “that I have not proposed to you again. Will you marry me, Mistress Joyeuce Leigh?”
The cloak fell back from her shoulders as she leaned out to him. He jumped upon a garden seat that stood there and his hands came creeping up the wall towards her as they had done at the other window nearly a year ago. They clasped her wrists, and slipped up her bare arms under the sleeves of her white night shift, caressing them. “Now I am only your betrothed who must stand under your window,” he whispered, “but soon I shall be your husband. . . . Soon. . . . Soon. . . . Now you must go back to bed, Joyeuce. I will sing you the rest of my song and when I get to the last word you will be asleep. Do you hear? Fast asleep.”
His hands slipped down her arms and obediently she turned away from the window and ran back to bed. She jumped in and lay childishly curled up, her cheek resting in her hand upon the pillow. There came again those soft faint notes of music, like a bird talking to itself, and then the voice of the fairy lover singing behind the trees in the tapestry.
The wind that laughed in your garden
Has wearied and dropped asleep,
Leaving the lilies his playmates
His whispered secrets to keep,
The lilies in golden-crowned white
Royally dressed.
So turn to your rest, my lady,
Turn to your rest
And dream.
Wrapped in her mantle of twilight,
Her cloak of silver and gray,
Night the great mother steals downward
To banish the burning day.
Her voice comes clear in the stillness,
“Now sleep is best.”
So turn to your rest, my lady,
Turn to your rest
And dream.
Holding out arms of cool comfort
To her children, whispering low
Of that dark, deep, peaceful silence
That only her sleepers know,
The merciful night is holding
Earth to her breast.
So turn to your rest, my lady,
Turn to your rest
And dream.
By the time he had reached the last word she was, as he had told her to be, asleep.
Chapter 15: The Queen’s Grace
Where are all thy beauties now, all hearts enchaining?
Whither are thy flatterers gone with all their feigning?
All fled; and thou alone still here remaining.
Thy rich state of twisted gold to bays is turned.
Cold as thou art are thy loves that so much burned.
Who die in flatterers’ arms are seldom mourned.
Yet in spite of envy this be still proclaimed,
That none worthier than thyself thy worth hath blamed;
When their poor names are lost, thou shalt live famed.
When thy story long time hence shall be perused,
Let the blemish of thy rule be thus excused:
“None ever lived more just, none more abused.”
LINES ON QUEEN ELIZABETH. THOMAS CAMPION.
1.
THE summer term was upon them again, lovelier than ever, more vibrant with life, overflowing with happiness. This year every beauty seemed intensified. The shining gold of the kingcups beside the streams was more brilliant, and the fritillaries grew taller than usual, holding their frail bell heads high above the fresh green grass, covering the meadows where they grew with a pale amethyst mist whose beauty caught at the heart.
The primroses and violets clustered more thickly in the hedges. The anemone stars alighted in every wood and fluttered delicately poised, tiptoe for flight, silver in the sunshine, snow-white in the dusk, gone like a flight of butterflies almost before there had been time to worship their beauty. When bluebell time came they seemed to pour over the world in a flood, enameling every little knoll and beech-crowned hill with heraldic azure, flowing through the woods in winding rivulets of blue, gathering in every hollow in deep pools, throwing out their intoxicating scent to every breeze that it might be wafted to men’s noses and drive them mad with joy. . . . Yet not madder than the birds, who shouted from every bush and tree until it was a marvel that their bunched, vibrating, feathery bodies could hold together with the noise they made.
And, as always, it was gone so soon, this time of the bluebells and the shouting birds to which one looked forward all the year, gone before the bewildered senses, besieged by a thousand scents and sights and sounds of intoxicating beauty, could take firm hold of the miracle and hold on to it in possession. “Next year,” sighed tired men and women, still exhausted by the griefs and the hardships of their winter, and sorrowing afresh to see the bluebells faded and the anemones flown clear away, “next year I shall have clearer eyes, and a more awakened spirit. Next year spring will come again and next year it will not catch me sleeping.” Yet, if they had bothered to remember, they had said the same thing last year, and would say it again next year. Spring was always so swift, so miraculous, that man was caught forever unaware.
Yet this year there was little time to grieve for vanished anemones, for no sooner had they flown away than the hawthorn was out, piled like snow along the hedges, and then the apple blossom was pink and white in the orchards and the wild cherries were tossing their foam on the hills. And then the wild roses were in bud, and stumpy purple orchids grew sturdily in the fields, and after that no one knew what happened in the country outside the city because they were imprisoned in their own gardens, enslaved by the charms of their own roses and carnations, enraptured by their canterbury bells and purple pansies, bowed to the ground in worship before their lilies.
And the city itself seemed to rejoice more exuberantly than usual in the flower of the year. The towers and spires, that had been so often heavily darkened by winter rain, seemed again light and airy things spun out of mist and sunshine, and the bells had a merry note. There was more talk than usual in the streets and singing and laughter floated out from every window. . . . For the Queen was coming. . . . When? When? asked every voice. Soon, they said. Next month, perhaps. This summer. When she comes there will still be red roses to strew before her, and tall lilies to bow like courtiers beside the garden paths that her feet will tread. The leaves will be still green on the trees and the birds will be singing. There will be tapestries hung from every window and a great shouting in the streets as she passes by. . . . And surely to goodness, they said, becoming slightly irritated as the weeks went by with no date fixed, the Queen’s Grace having already changed her mind about it seven times, the woman will come to a decision some time.
But the irritation was only fleeting and the mood of exaltation remained. For she meant so much to them; she was more than a woman, more even than a Queen; she stood to them for all the happiness and inspiration of this new age, for all its release and promise and newborn beauty. The older men and women remembered their country as it had been when she came to the throne: persecuted, humiliated, its only vital life the flame of martyrdom; they remembered how they had turned in despair to a young girl to save them. And she had saved them. She knew how to make herself the inspiration of men and women of good will. She was valiant, and they re-kindled their courage from hers. She was wise, and wisdom seemed to them once more a thing worth striving for. She had shown them how to save themselves and they saw in her the very figure of salvation.
And the young loved her too. She was witty and beautiful, she loved laughter and the singing voice, and all the fair and gracious things, the poetry and music and dancing that had wilted and died, lived again because she loved them. Perhaps the scholars did not understand, as they trooped to their verse readings on Sunday afternoons and learned to thrum the zither and the viol in their rooms, that their new understanding of beauty would not have been theirs had Gloriana not sat upon the throne of England. Perhaps the young girls did not realize, as they put on their farthingales of rose color and azure and buttercup-yellow, and danced the pavane at evening when the moon shone and the candles were lighted in the halls of their homes, that they would not have looked so fair and felt so happy had the Queen’s Grace not possessed a hundred dresses and a foot as light as their own. They might not understand, perhaps, but they saw in her all beauty and all grace.
And the Oxford merchants were prosperous under Queen Bess. People were not so occupied with their troubles, these days, that they could not stop and gape in front of a shop window. The amount of gaping that was done now, compared with the gaping that had taken place under the late Queen, was phenomenal. And they did not only gape, they came inside and bought too, for a light heart always makes a heavy spender; it is not content, your light heart, with the unseen glitter of its own merriment, it must show it to the world in the outward symbols of flower-like draperies, dew-drops in the ears, and golden shoes that will tap out the heart’s joy in the figures of the dance as radiantly as summer showers beating upon the thirsty earth. Is not the earth arrayed freshly in beauty every year, cry the light hearts, because of the joy that is in her? Then give us your silks and satins and velvets, your gold chains and pearl drops and ruby stomachers, your carpets and perfumes and spices, that we in this new age may be as fine as the old earth in her springtime garment. . . . And the merchants gave, receiving the equivalent in good hard round gold pieces, and saw the Queen’s Grace as a veritable Midas who had let loose this sweet rich flood of gold that ran so obligingly into honest men’s pockets. . . . And the young men, their sons, who left the city of Oxford to sail under the flag of the Merchant Adventurers that they might bring back from the lands beyond the sea the rubies and pearls, the carpets and perfumes and spices that the light of heart were calling for, may not have realized what an impetus to adventure had been given by the adventurousness, and the covetousness, of the Queen herself; they may not have realized, but when the capstan was manned, and the sea chanties were sung, and the great sails of their ship leaned for a moment against the sunset before she sailed over the rim of the world, their homing thoughts went back to her.
And the University saw in the Queen the patroness of the Guild of Learning. For her visit had a specific purpose. She was coming, so she had said, to assure all scholars of the royal favor. She herself loved learning; she could dispute in Greek or Latin with the best scholars of her day, going on so long that they were finally reduced to coma. She sympathized to the full with the learned men who were trying to bring back to the University its ancient glory. And so they loved her. She was the symbol of their aspirations.
There was something mystical in the quality of the love that awaited the Queen in these summer days. The people of the city were like Joyeuce on the morning of May-Day, standing at her window and wishing that what she so confusedly loved and longed for might take physical form and come to her. They too loved, and were aware that they loved not only learning, adventure, music, laughter and beauty, but the something behind and in all these for which they could find no name. It was an intense relief to pent-up emotion to see a human figure as the symbol of it.
2.
After changing her mind nine times in all the Queen finally chose for her visit the month of August, the month when the University term would be over and the scholars gone home to help with the harvest. The University tore its hair and the city made very little effort to hide its discreet delight in its discomfiture. But there was nothing to be done about it. The Queen’s visit was to Oxford as a University, and the whole University must be there. The scholars must stay wh
ere they were, every man jack of them, and the harvest must go to the devil.
The scholars made no objection. Very little work was required of them, indeed very little work had been required of them since the beginning of term, for the atmosphere of the whole city was not at this time conducive to work, and they threw themselves into a perfect orgy of ecstatic preparations.
These reached fever-point at Christ Church, where the Queen’s Grace and her Court were to be fed, lodged and entertained for six whole days. On her arrival there was to be a great service of thanksgiving. On one night there was to be a Latin play, on another night an English play, on a third night a stag hunt in the quadrangle; and the rest of the time would be spent in eating. As the great day drew near it would have been difficult to say who were busier, the scholars in the great hall feverishly rehearsing their plays or the cooks in the kitchen down below roasting droves of cattle whole before the great fire, baking scores of lark pies and creating a hundred elegant confections crowned with sugar sailing ships, doves and cupids. Upstairs and downstairs alike the sweat poured off earnest faces, for it was August and the weather was hot, and the tumult and the shouting were so severe that no man could make himself heard until he had yelled himself purple in the face and was dripping like a saturated sponge.
Backwards and forwards across the quadrangle there flowed never-ending streams of University dignitaries, divines and city fathers attending the discussions that took place all day and most of the night in the Dean’s study, driving the Dean so distracted that he had no doubt at all that the great day of the Queen’s arrival would find him incarcerated in a hospital for the demented. . . . For the discussions that had to take place between town and University engendered a good deal of heat. . . . At what point was the town to be in charge of proceedings, and at what point the University? At what street corners were civic authorities to deliver English speeches, and at what corners University authorities Greek and Latin ones? And if the Queen’s Grace replied to every speech in the language in which it was given, and at very great length—as was her erudite but distressing habit—how long would it take her to get from the North Gate to Christ Church? And if they did not know how long her progress would take, how could they fix the time for the thanksgiving service in the Cathedral? These questions were not settled easily, nor without discreet wrangling, the noise of which was at times so severe that it almost drowned the noise of all the choirs of Oxford practicing together in the Cathedral for the thanksgiving service; and this latter noise was at times very great indeed, tending as it did—authority being for the most part absent in the Deanery—to develop from anthems in crescendo to pitched battles in the aisle between the choir of Christ Church on one side and all the other choirs upon the other, refereed by the choirmasters, who brought prayer-books down upon the heads of the combatants with very little effect.