It was heaping coals of fire upon Overbury’s head — so Overbury felt. He was overwhelmed with gratitude, shame, and confusion.
When, next morning, the Lord Chancellor returned for his answer, Sir Thomas, acting upon Rochester’s advice, politely declined his Majesty’s gracious proposal, pleading reasons of ill-health.
The Chancellor, who saw before him a lean, active young man showing every sign of vigour, was amazed, and said so, adding that his Majesty intended this for Sir Thomas’s good and preferment, and that he would be very ill-advised if he refused.
Sir Thomas shrugged, and in that impatient, supercilious way that was by now habitual to him:
“I will not leave my country for any preferment in the world,” said he.
Within three hours he was, by order of the king, under arrest for high contempt, and committed to the Tower.
Yet he was very far from suspecting that a trap had been baited for him, and that he had been taken in like a simpleton. There was no deep guile in Rochester to have suggested anything of the kind to Sir Thomas, and it did not occur to him just then that Rochester might have been merely acting upon the instructions of that wicked old father of guile, the Earl of Northampton.
It took five months of bitter and close captivity to bring Sir Thomas to a realisation of how utterly he had been fooled, to make him see that the replies to his letters which he received from Rochester, with their repeated assurances that his release was at hand, were no more than evasions, and that it was not intended to release him until such time as the events themselves should have robbed him of the means he had of thwarting them.
When understanding came to him at last, his strength had wasted in that close confinement, where no one from without was allowed to approach him, where he saw none but those who ministered to his needs.
The food procured him was dainty and appetising, proper for a prisoner of his position in the world. But he began to be taken with sickness, and saw the flesh waste from his bones until little more than skin remained to cover them, and he had scarce the strength to move. He was very ill, as was found by his brother-in-law, Lidcote, who obtained at last permission to visit him on one occasion, and a physician was desired to attend him. The physician came, was mystified by his condition, prescribed for him, and went his way.
Sir Thomas did not mend, and at last, on September 7, Weston, his gaoler, introduced into his room an apothecary’s boy, who came to administer an injection.
To this Sir Thomas submitted. He was by then too weak to think or care of what might betide. A violent sickness followed almost immediately upon that injection, and thereafter the wretched man writhed in agony for a week, until finally he died.
The world received the news of his death almost at the same time as that of the pronouncement of the divorce of Lady Essex, who thereby became the Lady Frances Howard once more. But years were to pass before the connection between the two events was to become apparent.
In November, Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, was created Earl of Somerset by his doting king, and a month later, with great pomp and ceremony, he was married to the Lady Frances Howard at Whitehall.
He had reached his highest honour, touched the high meridian of his fortunes, which thenceforward steadily declined, gradually at first, now that the place of the strong man who had been his brain and soul was empty, and finally went down in ruin to infamous extinction.
It was two years later when the first stone was knocked out of an edifice which thereafter crumbled rapidly. Sir Ralph Winwood, who was then Secretary of State, received information that Sir Thomas Overbury had come to his end in the Tower by foul means. An English lad, who had been an apothecary’s apprentice, dying in Brussels, had on his death-bed confessed that he had been bribed to administer to Sir Thomas Overbury a poisoned injection, of which Sir Thomas had died.
Sir Ralph, who was a shrewd and capable man, sought an explanation at the hands of Sir Jarvis Elvis, the Lieutenant of the Tower, with astounding results.
Sir Jarvis confessed that he had entertained suspicions of this fact; he had discovered earlier attempts to poison Overbury on the part of the gaoler Weston, who had been placed in attendance upon the prisoner by the suggestion of the Earl of Northampton. Considering the powerful people protecting Weston, and assuming him, indeed, to be no less than their agent, Sir Jarvis had hesitated to interfere in what seemed to him to be a matter of State. He had, however, done his utmost surreptitiously to save Overbury. He had brought Weston to recognise the hideousness of what he did, obtained from him a promise to desist from further attempts upon the prisoner’s life, and had thereafter kept a close watch upon him. Nevertheless, he suspected that, in a moment when his vigilance had been relaxed, the thing was done.
Sir Ralph laid the matter before the king, and received James’s orders to proceed in it, but with caution and secrecy.
How far James suspected the implication of his minion — now Earl of Somerset — does not transpire. Whether a couple of years earlier, apprehensive for his favourite, he would not have ordered Winwood to drop the matter, is also a subject for speculation. But it happened that by this time he was becoming a little weary of Somerset, who was growing haggard in looks, careless in dress, irascible in temper, and subject to fits of moodiness and sullenness, where earlier he had been so comely and sunny.
Matters were made worse by the rise of a rival star in that handsome youth, George Buckingham, who had been deliberately thrust upon the King’s attention. And, Somerset’s jealousy being fired, he abandoned himself to a petulance that was almost feminine, upbraided, and at times even reviled, his king, who, though disposed to be long-suffering with his favourite, was growing very weary of this.
And now follow in quick succession, each incriminating the other, the trials of Weston, the gaoler, Sir Jarvis Elvis, Mrs. Turner, and Dr. Franklin, a wizard.
The Earl of Northampton would have been of the number, but that he had cheated justice by dying before these matters came to light. From the proceedings against these prisoners, each of whom was tried and hanged in turn, was drawn the dreadful, sordid story of that crime. All is disclosed, partly from their admissions, partly from old letters which were seized. How Mrs. Turner had procured for my Lady of Essex the services of the wizard Franklin, to ensure her, by means of incantations and witchcraft, the love of the now Earl of Somerset, and the withering of her then husband.
The waxen and leaden images employed in these loathsome, uncanny rites were displayed in court, to the deadly shame of my lady, who in her despair had lent herself to such foul practices. How poisons had been obtained by Mrs. Turner from Franklin and others for her ladyship, and how her ladyship had used these in tarts and jellies which had been sent to Weston to be given to Sir Thomas Overbury. How, when some of these measures had been frustrated by Sir Jarvis Elvis, so that the poison reaching the prisoner was not enough to make an end of him, Mrs. Turner had, on the countess’s behalf, bribed the apothecary’s lad with twenty pounds to administer a poisoned injection, to which Sir Thomas had finally succumbed.
When all those lesser criminals had been swept away to the hangman, came the turn of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, who were already in the Tower.
Somerset had been at Royston with the king in the previous October — just before the trial of Weston — when he received a summons from the Lord Chief Justice to go up to London for examination. He had until then refused to take the matter seriously, for the full facts were not yet disclosed, and he protested indignantly against the insolence of this summons. But James, who still showed him every tenderness, pacified him.
“Thou must go then, for if Coke send for me, I must go, too.”
Anon, accompanying him to the waiting carriage, James wept over him, embracing him and praying him to make haste back.
Yet, when he was gone, the king was heard to sigh and say:
“I shall never see thy face more.”
Somerset went up to London arrogantly confident.
He went to learn the truth about the woman to whom he had sacrificed his friend, the beautiful child-woman who, when brought to trial in the following May, pleaded guilty to these revolting charges of witchcraft and murder, and yet, such was the magic of her beauty, filled the court with compassion.
Her disillusioned husband’s trial followed. The case against him was weak, and had he been more master of his wits he could have rent it into shreds and triumphed over the enemies envy had made for him, enemies who stood gloating now over his downfall, his peers assembled there to judge him.
Oh, to have had Overbury then! Overbury, with his swift wit, his acute penetration, and his perfervid rhetoric. Overbury, to have revealed the hollowness of these charges, to have drawn sharply the line of my lord’s association with his wife and her infamous uncle, and to have vindicated his own innocence.
Instead of Overbury, there was Overbury’s last letter to him from the Tower, written when Overbury had no illusions left that he was being juggled by his former friend, fiercely upbraiding him his falseness and broken faith. And this letter was being read to him. Its closing sentence thundered through his tortured brain:
“So if you will deal thus wickedly with me, I am provided that, whether I live or die, your shame shall never die, but ever remain to the world to make you the most odious man living.”
Thus Overbury had prophesied, and that prophecy crippled now his lordship’s wits, robbed him of all defence.
He was found guilty, and sentenced, and he went back to the Tower, but not to die. Weston, on his trial, had said that the little fish would be taken and the big ones escape the net. That was another prophecy fulfilled. Somerset and his wife received a Royal pardon.
Their enemies accounted this an excessive mercy on the part of James. But in reality it was an atonement than which none could have been more bitter. They departed together from the Tower to go and hide their shame in the country, leaving behind them all the glories they had known, bereft of power, and became now objects of contempt. Their love was dead, and abhorrence — the abhorrence that comes of too much evil knowledge — now the only bond between them, who for love’s sake had schemed and laboured so unremittingly and unscrupulously.
Her ladyship did not long survive. But Robert Carr lived on to a ripe old age, despised and forsaken of all save the ghost of his murdered friend, the man who had been the keeper of his soul, and who in death may well so have continued.
THE RED OWL
Royal Magazine, August 1900
My Lord Cardinal was beside himself with passion. His face was livid; his dark eyes seemed full of uncanny yellow flames, and his long, white fingers kept tugging at his stiff grey beard, which almost seemed to bristle as I watched him.
“I will find the hound,” he muttered. “I will find him if every house in Paris has to be torn from its foundation!”
I had earned during my thirty years of life the reputation of a brave man, quick alike with sword and tongue — but upon this occasion I fear me that I belied my reputation.
In a moment of levity, spurred by the praises of Richelieu, which I had heard fall from the lips of one of those cardinalists whom I hated, I had dared to vent my feelings in a poetic satire of twenty stanzas. I had called my poem “The Red Owl,” and albeit my craft as a poet was of a sorry character, the secret detestation in which the Cardinal was held by many of those who cringed in fear about him, rendered my verses more than acceptable. Before a week was spent they were lisped by every court-gallant and guffawed over by every soldier, whilst within the month there was not a scullion in the whole of Paris who did not know them by heart.
The affair grew serious. An ill-advised dog of a musician, named Rouget, set an air to them as harsh and discordant as the words themselves; nevertheless — so inexplicable a thing is public taste — that air was being yelled in every wine-shop, and hummed in every ante-chamber.
The storm had burst the night before. His Eminence was playing chess with the King at the Louvre. With one of his bishops he had imperilled Louis’ queen, and as he lay back in his chair to await the Royal move, some pestilent croaker must perforce pass under the window singing that infernal song.
The Cardinal pricked up his ears at the sound, then turning to Saint Simon who stood at his elbow:
“What is this new air that seems so much in vogue at present?”
A dead silence followed the question, during which the twitching of St. Simon’s face was fearful to look upon. Then a page who stood by the door was apparently taken ill. He clapped his hand to his mouth, from which there came a stifling gurgle, He staggered, caught his foot on something, and crashed against an ornamental suit of armour, dragging it with him to the ground. Not content with the noise he had made in falling, he lay on his back emitting shriek after shriek of wild, unearthly laughter.
Nothing is so contagious as mirth. In the twinkling of an eye the train which that accursed page had fired wrought irreparable damage, and the suppressed merriment of the company spluttered for a moment, then exploded.
Now, whatever Richelieu may have been, he was not a fool. His piercing eye scanned each distorted face with a look of contempt, which told me that he had more than half guessed the riddle of their amusement.
It is a mystery to me how I contrived to remain in the room without betraying myself by my sober countenance. Fortunately the Cardinal’s scrutiny of those about him was brief and contemptuously careless.
Without a word he calmly turned his attention once more to the chess-board, and waited for the King to move. But when the game was over, he got himself a copy of the verses in one of those mysterious and far-reaching ways at his command.
Next day I was visited by a lieutenant of Richelieu’s Guards with a message from His Eminence that I was to attend him at once at the Palais Cardinal.
Albeit we were in June, a cold shiver ran through me at the summons, which I dared not disobey.
And that is how I came to find myself in the unenviable position whereof I write, face to face with the irate Cardinal, who threatened to have the author of the verses I had written broken on the wheel.
It restored in part my courage to find that I was unsuspected, and that Richelieu had merely sent for me in the hope that what he pleased to term my astuteness would aid him in his search for the culprit. I may mention that he held a great opinion of my judgment ever since I had unmasked that plot against his life which is known as the “Conspiracy of Pont St. Michel”; for, at the time of that conspiracy, I had held a lieutenancy in his guards which I had since relinquished in order to accept the commission in the dragoons which the King had graciously accorded me.
It was owing in a measure to that erstwhile appointment of mine in his guards that His Eminence still continued to honour me by employing my services. I had it in my heart to wish, as I stood before him now, that I had left the conspirators to carry out their work unmolested, for I knew him too well to expect mercy for the poor poet who had held him up to ridicule, and struck so deeply at his pride.
“Have you read the verses?” Richelieu inquired suddenly, holding up a copy of the fateful manuscript.
“I have not, Your Eminence,” I answered without a blush.
“Then do so, Rouvroy,” he said, “if you have the patience, which indeed, I doubt in a man of your taste. They are abominable drivel. I can understand the popularity they have attained in the wine shops, for I could swear that they were written by some drunken soldier, and, what is more, written when he was drunk, if one may judge by the stumbling rhythm.”
My blood boiled at the sneers he thus launched upon my work, and in the heat of the moment I so forgot myself as to remark:
“I thought them smooth enough, your Eminence.”
He eyed me for a second in blank surprise.
“I understood you to say that you had not read them,” he remarked coldly.
The sweat seemed to burst through every pore of my body as I realised how unhappy had been my remark.
“But I have heard them sung in the streets, Monsigneur,” I hastened to explain.
“Ah, true, true,” he murmured; “and you told me nothing of it, Rouvroy! That was unkind of you; we might have had this fatuous minstrel ornamenting Montfauçon, or pondering over some fanciful translation of the ‘De Profundis’ in a dungeon of the Bastille, ere now — eh?” he cried with a chuckle that made my flesh creep. “But never fear, Rouvroy, we shall have him yet — this writer of epics — and when we have him” — his tone became a snarl, and his hands tightened viciously over the manuscript he held— “we will break him on the wheel — will we not, Chevalier?”
“Indeed I trust so, your Eminence,” I answered with a shudder.
Thereafter he questioned me closely concerning the poem, and he seemed disappointed to find that I could throw no light upon the matter. In truth, what with his questions and his disappointment he angered me not a little, and had my position in the matter been a less delicate one, I should have asked him whether he desired to insult me by counting me among the spies he told me that he had at work. As it was I deemed it best to preserve a smiling countenance, until, in the end, he grew sick of my ignorance, and dismissed me, giving me his ring to kiss, and murmuring a valedictory “benedicat vos.”
Now, albeit, when I left the Palais Cardinal my thoughts were gloomy enough, in the evening I found myself making merry with half-a-dozen roysterers at Valençon’s, and turning my interview with Richelieu into a pretty story, which provoked many an uproarious burst of laughter.
And when I depicted the Cardinal’s rage (without yet betraying my authorship), my uncle, the Duc de St. Simon, who was present, was the only one who took no part in the hilarity my narrative excited. On the contrary, his stern face became sterner as we became more boisterous.
He took an early opportunity of speaking to me alone, and then I noticed that there was an ominous solemnity in his manner.
“Claude,” he said, laying his hand upon my shoulder, “you were unwise to write that satire, but you must be mad to make a jest of your interview with the Cardinal. ’Tis a sorry business, nephew, and I marvel greatly that you have the heart to laugh and make merry over it when at any moment your life may pay the penalty.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 506
