Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Read online

  Books by George Garrett

  THE REVEREND GHOST: POEMS

  KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

  THE SLEEPING GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS

  THE FINISHED MAN

  IN THE BRIAR PATCH

  ABRAHAM’S KNIFE AND OTHER POEMS

  WHICH ONES ARE THE ENEMY?

  SIR SLOB AND THE PRINCESS

  COLD GROUND WAS MY BED LAST NIGHT

  DO, LORD, REMEMBER ME

  FOR A BITTER SEASON: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

  A WREATH FOR GARIBALDI

  DEATH OF THE FOX

  Portions of this book were first published in the following periodicals: Contempora, EVENING PERFORMANCE, Copyright © 1970 by Contempora, Inc.; The Georgia Review, GHOST AND FEVER and SEBASTIAN IN THE LOOKING GLASS, Copyright © 1970, 1971 by the University of Georgia, respectively; The Southern Review, THE APPLE TREE, Copyright © 1971 by the Louisiana State University; Mill Mountain Review, RIVERRUN, Copyright © 1971 by Irv Broughton.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79–139022

  Copyright © 1971 by George Garrett

  All Rights Reserved

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5186-3

  v3.1

  FOR SUSAN

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Three Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Four Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Five Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Six Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Seven Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Eight Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part Nine Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Note

  First of all, and finally I hope, this is a work of fiction. It is meant to be. It is not supposed to be in any sense a biography of Sir Walter Ralegh, although, naturally enough, there are a great many things about his life and many parts of it which are retold here. There are important and celebrated aspects of his life, true and false, but part of his fame and of our history, which are not so much as mentioned in this story.

  There are any number of fine biographies of Ralegh, written by scholars of distinction. As far as we know now, most of the facts that can be gathered have been; and the biographies of Ralegh written in our time are excellent. I would especially recommend: Willard M. Wallace’s Sir Walter Raleigh (1959), Margaret Irwin’s That Great Lucifer (1960), A. L. Rowse’s Ralegh and the Throckmortons (1962), Norman Lloyd Williams’ Sir Walter Raleigh (1962), and, most recently, The Shepherd of the Ocean (1969) by J. H. Adamson and H. F. Holland. And there are many other books and studies of the man and his works and of those imagined times, some of them superb, done in our age by scholars without whose skill, dedication, and wisdom we should be left with only the dimmest recollections, faulty and distorted like the memory of a dream, of a great age and the people who lived brightly then.

  I dislike prefatory notes as much as anyone else. That this is here at all is an admission of one kind of failure. I wanted to make a work of fiction, of the imagination, planted and rooted in fact. I wanted facts to feed and give strength to the truths of fiction. It seems wrong, then, not to be truthful at the outset even though, as in all free choices, there is a price to be paid for the privilege.

  GEORGE GARRETT

  My lost delights now cleane from sight of land,

  Haue left me all alone in vnknowne waies:

  My minde to woe, my life in fortunes hand,

  Of all which past, the sorrow onely staies.

  RALEGH—Farewell to the Court

  Sir Henry Yelverton lies warm in a great curtained bed, half awake, hearing the sound of breathing, the rustling of his servant, Peter, who, just or unjust, can sleep like a dog at any time, content in the trundle bed set at the foot of his own. It is past one o’clock. He has heard the sound of chimes and bells, near and far, and in far from perfect agreement, announcing the new day. Bells and the hoarse barking of a dog in the court beyond his chambers.

  Past one but not yet two o’clock. At two his servants will be up and about. At three he will be wakened.

  Cold beginning of a day in October. Chilling outside, beyond these chambers. That time when even the most ancient stones seem alive with strange sweats and humors. Time when fog along the river gathers, musters, and begins to march, soundless and veiled, a slow, solemn procession into narrow streets and low places, claiming possession of both banks of the river and soon owning all of London, Southwark, Westminster, the fields, roads, and suburbs for miles around.

  Past midnight and a day is new, but he cannot recall the sound of the cockcrow. When would a cock crow on such a day? And without a chorus of crowing how would ghosts know when to breathe their last sighs, to shrug and go to ground?

  Better, since he cannot sleep well, to lie easy and warm, and to think about the day to come.

  The dying fire will be rekindled and refreshed, will spit and mutter and begin to dance an English country dance. Candles will brighten the chamber, driving the remnants of night into nooks and corners, casting new shadows on the ceiling’s beams. By that dancing fire, on the hearth, ewer and basin of fresh water, lightly scented, will be waiting for his ablutions. And on the rack before the fire his clothing will rest dry and warm.

  Later he must act his part as the King’s Attorney General. Over the barrel-stave bulk of his body and the layered clothing he will wear against the cold, he will be clad in the robes of his office, black and of damasked silk, tricked out with decorative tufts, and worn open in front in the new style; and all overtopped (alas for a full round face and head) with a traditional bonnet—large and ample of brim. All these have been cleaned, sponged, and brushed. He will wear the robes of office with pride, not so much of vanity as out of respect for the office of service and for the honor of his dead father—Sir Christopher, “the silver-tongued,” the poet of Parliament, once Reader here at Gray’s Inn, Sergeant at Law for the late Queen, and toward the last of his long life serving the King as a judge for King’s Bench. Sir Christopher was a man of greatness and an orator, never brief. One who did not cultivate the austere virtues of brevity.

  The son, shadowed by the father’s reputation, lacks his father’s brilliance. Caution has become his style out of necessity. He has taught himself; for each time he has allowed himself the luxury of fluency, he has paid a price for the indulgence. Because of some loose words not so long ago, it has cost him a pretty penny, more than the ordinary price, to circumvent the King’s favorite, Buckingham, and gain title to this post he had earned the right to by good service. He paid heavy ransom for incautious words. But he has managed to salvage some honor; for he made his gift directly to the King and amused the King thereby. And thereby learned and proved at one and the same time that Buckingham is not without some limits in his influence.

  And so on t
his morning Sir Henry will be wearing his honor and the honor of father and grandfather before, manifest in a black shiny silk robe. And, more than that, he shares in the abstract honor of the office of Attorney General, the true sense of which coming to him most strongly from the example of a predecessor, Sir Edward Coke. Coke scrupulously observes the ancient customs and ceremonies of the law, large and small alike. Coke makes much of the appearance of all the lawyers and officers of the courts. Coke is as strict in honoring the sumptuary traditions as in the observing of precedents. Coke loves the gnarled English law as no other living man, at times a blinded, smitten lover, but as faithful as he is ardent.

  “Blessed with such a wife as Edward Coke has,” says the voice of gossip, “what other choice would a man have?”

  Well, there is some truth in that, sufficient to fuel the fires of idle tongues. If his wife were born to be neither faithful nor loving and obedient, still he could be all of these to his true love, the English law. They might smile behind his back or behind their lazy palms now that Coke has lost power and luster. But though he cannot suppress an inward smiling, Yelverton will not be so incautious as these others, or, for that matter, so ungrateful. For high or low, wherever the creaking wheel of Fortune turns him, however blown or becalmed by winds of chance, Edward Coke knows the law as no other man. And he will be, as long as he may live, a man to be reckoned with.

  Still, Edward Coke is not a man to be followed in all things. Not by any means.…

  Great men rise above their peers like the tallest trees of the forest. Proud, but first to catch the eye, and therefore soonest to be cut down. And down they come with a groan and brief thunder. When they are gone there is only a rotten stump and an empty space of sky to prove they have ever been there.

  Yelverton has learned to seek what is to be found, what is there for a man able to curb appetite and weakness and to school himself in virtues appropriate to himself. Others may find fault with him, name his caution cunning. Those upon whom fortune seldom smiles can call him merely fortunate and curse his luck. These vain opinions do not matter now. Such as these can do him no mischief or injury.

  Slow and sure, like a crude, sturdy, high-wheeled baggage cart rattling along the English roads, the world’s worst excepting Scotland’s and barbarous Ireland’s, he is moving forward with all his goods intact. Not those others, raging or lazy, struggling and straggling knee- and hip-deep in mud, pulling and tugging bulky swayback rented nags behind them, forever cursing foul weather and bad times, can trouble him awake or asleep.

  But there is another sort to deal with now. These, bold and shimmering as midsummer gnats, call modesty a mask, define caution as weakness, and assign the cause of it to faint heart. It has been said in jest that Henry Yelverton responds to the least words of the King “as to a thunderbolt or the roaring of a lion.” Which, true enough, amuses ambitious men. But Yelverton’s solace against the echo of imaginary laughter is in this thought: he serves the King and the King is not displeased with him.

  In the balance he has been well rewarded for his service. He has every reason to anticipate his good fortune will continue. And if he lacks the armor of that higher wisdom, prudence, he can always be worldly wise. Armor may shine, scoured and bright, in parades and tournaments, on feast days. But in the brute wars of the present age it is no proof against a mere musket ball the size of a grape.

  Caution is his strength, then, and no cause for fear, but good proof against it. He need not be afraid.

  And yet …

  And yet he would blithely sell shares in all his future at a bargain, if he could someway be spared the necessity of performing his duty to the King on this one day.

  Surely by now, Henry Yelverton is thinking, Walter Ralegh has discarded the luxury of hope. Or if not—for we live as much by hope as by faith and charity—he will at last have tossed aside his peddler’s sack of tricks. Ralegh must see clear that his best hope for life lies in humble submission.

  No matter, his dancing days are done. What possible harm can he do? His power to harm has been squandered with his hopes.

  Yet there’s some truth in that old saying—any baited cat may turn into a lion.…

  At least Yelverton is well prepared for the man and for the business at hand. The latter being of no complexity, a simple hearing, rehearsed and its ending already written down, beyond any blotting. There are some problems of law, certainly; for there is no precise precedent for this action. Or if there is, he knows of none and must rest in faith that Coke, who has been brought back to serve on the Commission, will determine the most expeditious means of managing the affair. Yes, Coke would know if there were precedent for or against the King’s strategy.

  Yelverton can deal with questions of the law and answer them. And as for the man, well, he has the fortunate advantage of Coke’s example and experience years before to guide him. Not to follow the selfsame path made by Coke’s large footprints, but to find an easier way of his own.

  For weeks now he has kept near at hand, for study at any free or idle time, a careful fresh document copied by his clerk, in clear secretary hand, done from dusty notes made at the time—“The Trial of Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight, For High Treason, At Winchester. The 17th of November, 1603, 1 JAC. 1.” Has read it and studied it, weighing each word as if he were an assayer of precious metals. And having weighed and valued, he has also glossed it, large and small, as once the ancient Fathers glossed texts of Scripture. He has seen things, made note of subtle turnings and shiftings, which Coke, being engaged in the combat of the trial, thrust and parry, could not properly have seen at the moment of happening. And clear enough Coke did not foresee …

  Which speaks nothing of failure. If Coke could not have foreseen how the trial would change beyond strategy and expectation, then no man could. Coke knew his man well from the old days, especially in the last Parliaments of the Queen. And in those important trials of the first year of the King’s reign he was meticulously prepared.

  Prepared for everything. Except what in truth occurred.

  Yelverton has not only gone deep into the record of the trial of fifteen years ago—and to satisfy himself has skimmed the words again this night before snuffing out his candles—he has also summoned up the times, the very days, blustery, wet and cold, the place and the people, so many of them dead and gone now. It is like a stage play he has seen many times, always performed by the same company. He can play any part in it by rote and, better than many players, with understanding.

  He can at any time, as he does now, dozing, half dreaming, waiting for clocks to strike, hoping for cockcrow, close his eyes and bring back that time and place, and people it with ghosts …

  Plague, worst in memory, raged in London. Stalked the streets like the drunken soldiery of a conquering army. Thousands dying and bells of their departure rang round the hours day and night without ceasing. Thousands dying and other thousands, all who could so do, fleeing the contagion.

  The King was crowned with brief ceremony and left at once to find a healthier place.

  A bad time and a bad omen for the new reign, some were saying. Others said it was punishment for sins of the past reign, a purging. What was beyond all debating was that London was on fire with sickness. The living lived as if the world were ending on the morrow. The sick and dying, maddened, sought to infect the living, to drag all into the darkness with them.

  The Court was at Winchester, seat of old kings, and there Ralegh was brought to stand trial at Wolversey Castle.

  The end was sure from the beginning. In a case of treason, given sufficient clues and evidence, and above all the will of the King, who hated and feared Ralegh enough to believe in his guilt, there could be only one verdict. A trial was necessary, but it was a play, a ceremonious ritual.

  The ending was anticipated by most. The King could have asked for no better occasion to assert his authority. Ralegh had been close to the late Queen. She had used him and she had rewarded him splendidly. Hated and envied furtiv
ely before, Ralegh could now be hated openly. When he was being taken from London toward Winchester by coach, hadn’t crowds gathered, risking contagion of plague, to curse Ralegh? They threw sticks and stones, mud and filth, and, appropriately, tobacco pipes at him. They surged against the guards, and his life was in hazard. In the face of which even his calm seemed arrogant. It was said he had smoked his pipe. Just as he had once leaned from a window puffing and content when the Earl of Essex freed spirit from flesh, parted company from his handsome head.

  Perfection of that story: James loved Essex and hated tobacco.

  Ralegh compared that crowd, people of London, to a pack of barking dogs. True or false, it sounded like the man.

  Perhaps, it was rumored among superstitious rabble, the death of this man would serve as a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the past age. The judgment of the plague might be lifted. Peace and plenty would follow.

  So Ralegh had entered the hall in Winchester a hated man and a doomed one.

  A place, town, high castle, cathedral, with, by image and association, half the history of England there. Haunted with memories of dead kings.

  The hall had been built by the Conqueror. And at the western end, high on the wall for all to see, hung a round table—Arthur’s table, in fact or fancy. No matter, no distinction between the one and the other, when common faith is given freely. It had been new-painted, restored and placed there by Henry VIII. It was not an extraordinary exercise of imagination to picture the ancient kings grouped around it, for once, in death, of equal power and precedence, like Arthur’s legendary knights. And, staring down with an enigmatic scowl, Henry himself. Eager to see and to judge the power of the Stuarts.

  A high-ceilinged hall, with a vaulting of wooden beams. A row of twin tall slender columns joined by pointed arches running down the length. Rich with shadows. And, from deep-set, painted, warlike windows, sudden and dramatic shafts of light.