Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  These assumptions were made by all who met Alec, either as old friends or new acquaintances. They had but just come to understand the real nature of life in Virginia and the character of those who tried to establish the colony there. Alec found this ironical and depressing, since when he left James Town the community was altogether more promising than at any time he remembered it. As for staying in England, in London, at any rate, he knew that for him it was out of the question. Before, the life there had been a series of adventures. Now he was surfeited by adventure of much more horrifying kinds. Before, he had enjoyed many friends. Now the best of them was absent, some others had died, and among them old Lady Chiltern, Katharine’s patron, who had no doubt gone to her grave cursing him.

  He still waited a summons to the Court. ‘The delay, he was told, was caused by the King’s absence at his hunting lodge in Richmond. Alec took to wandering among the warehouses on the waterfront. Though he had at first been welcomed there he now found a certain restraint and caution growing among his sometime friends, as if they doubted the truth of his pardon or feared he might take offence at a trifle and break out again. Whatever the cause he had a sense of rejection, of withdrawal that saddened him.

  He found a familiar boatman one day and had himself rowed across to the South Bank where he went to the Globe Theatre and asked for Master Shakespeare. But even this famous friend of former times was absent, though Master Burbage greeted him cordially.

  ‘Will is at home on Avon,’ the actor told him. ‘He spends much of his time there. He hath built himself a fine house, intending it for his retirement.’

  ‘Surely he still writes his plays?’

  ‘Aye, with a difference. Pericles we have had. Cymbeline. Often he shows a strange bitterness. He acts seldom. But we have new men making our plays, Masters Beaumont and Fletcher, even Ben Jonson with his Alchemist, a fine comedy.’

  Alec nodded and sighed.

  ‘I see too many changes,’ he said slowly. ‘Maybe I should not have returned. Too many faces have gone. Even the boys here—’

  ‘Ah, then, you could not expect to see them still acting women’s parts. ‘Tis not in nature. But there is one for you to remember. He is very young still, but twelve summers. But will take the great women’s parts next year, I dare swear. ‘There we have a born actor; ’s name is Dicky Robinson. Come next spring and he’ll delight thee with his Rosalind.’

  Next spring. Alec thought with dismay. Would he be still here next spring?

  Going back to Master Leslie’s house that evening he determined to find out if his audience at Court could in any way be hastened on, so that he could make plans for his future.

  ‘It would be most unwise to approach the King direct,’ Master Leslie advised.

  ‘The Prince, then? He honoured me with his favour before.’

  ‘And was wholly distressed by what he took to be thy crime, even though Malcolm suffered for it and indeed justly, since his villainy promoted it.’

  ‘I cannot then expect forgiveness from the Prince? Well, I merit my punishment and must endure it.’

  ‘Besides,’ Master Leslie went on, ignoring this unusual submission, ‘His Highness hath lately been invested Prince of Wales, he being sixteen years of age, a very likely youth, fair, strong, handsome and most intelligent’ This was done in London?’

  ‘At Whitehall Palace, with a masque in honour of the occasion. “Tethys Festival.” Last June fifth, written by one Samuel Daniel our poet laureate, designed by Inigo Jones. The Queen took the chief part, also little Prince Charles, taking the part of Zephyr. A small thin sprite of a boy, very suitable to the part, as his mother was not.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘They say Master Jones devised a costume of floating draperies to fit the character of Queen of the Fountain or some such, but Her Majesty is still so wedded to her farthingale and her ruff she would have none of it, but appeared most unsuitably in her gold brocade as usual. Seeing she hath grown excessively fat she quite swamped her fountain, as I saw myself and wondered at such an exhibition, not knowing until after how poor Inigo Jones had been flouted in his ideas.’

  But Alec did go to Court at last, in mid-December, seven weeks after his arrival back in England. There was snow on the streets, it was very cold, the assembly a relatively small one. After several presentations for various purposes Alec was moved forward towards the throne. King James extended his right hand, Alec knelt and kissed it the King bade him rise.

  ‘Thou art not greatly changed, Master Sandy Nimmo,’ His Majesty said, smiling. ‘We are pleased with thy loyal services in our colony of James Town in Virginia. We desire to have a further account of that place at some later date.’

  He looked beyond Alec to his sponsor, who bowed in acknowledgement of the command. Alec then bowed very low and withdrew into the crowd, still accompanied by this man.

  ‘I see many of the great officers of the Crown,’ Alec murmured to him. ‘But not my Lord Salisbury.’

  ‘The Secretary of State is absent about the final building of his great new house at Hatfield,’ the man answered. ‘Here is the written scroll of your pardon, sir. I will now withdraw seeing you no longer need my services.’

  They exchanged bows, thanked one another and parted. Alec disposed of his parchment in the wide pocket of his dark brown satin breeches, part of the new suit of Court clothes provided by Master Leslie.

  He looked about him. He had watched the royal party for a while as he waited his turn to go forward. He had recognised the Prince of Wales from his position at the right hand of the sovereign though he was very different from the young boy he had known first more than seven years ago. The Prince had watched him closely during his exchange with King James, but had made no sign of recognition.

  Behind and to the left of the throne there was another group known to Alec. Foremost was Sir Robert Carr, as he now was, the former ‘Robbie’ of scandalous fame, heavy jowled now, but as arrogant as ever. There was a slighter copy of his former self beside him and behind them two ladies, one of whom was Katharine Leslie.

  She was as beautiful as ever. Alec thought, more beautiful indeed, a hard, brilliant, diamond beauty where before there had been a gentle innocent-seeming pearl. The pale gleaming hair had darkened into florid gold, the perfect skin was coarsened by cosmetics though Alec saw the colour mount behind the enamel on her cheeks as her eyes met his across the crowd, where he stood, as always, a head and shoulders above the rest. But she was beautiful; a great lady too, as she had always striven to be, secure now in her experience and knowledge of men; very sure of herself and the weapon of beauty she wielded.

  Though he was stirred by her and by his memories of her he had no wish for any closer intercourse. But as he was making his way out of the palace he came face to face with her, no doubt by design on her part. She had the younger Carr with her. She introduced him to Alec, greeting him coolly as an old friend of her husband.

  ‘So the trouble that drove you away three years ago may now be forgotten, Master Nimmo?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Aye, so, my lady,’ Alec said, not smiling. ‘King James is a just and generous monarch.’

  ‘I think you have returned to Master Angus Leslie’s employ,’ she continued.

  ‘I have a business in Virginia in which Master Leslie takes great interest,’ he answered steadily.

  ‘I am sure Sir Francis would wish to hear your news,’ she went on. ‘He was much moved to hear you lived and prospered.’

  ‘He is here? I did not see him by the throne just now.’

  She blushed again and he knew she resented this and was embarrassed by her own unease.

  ‘He is in Oxford, Master Nimmo,’ she said. ‘He is seldom in London.’

  ‘So I have learned from Mistress Butters.’

  She stamped her foot, now pale with anger.

  ‘I marvel you should listen to vulgar gossip!’ she cried.

  The young man beside her laid a soothing hand on her arm, but she shook hi
m off.

  ‘I think there is nought vulgar in the news of Francis’s whereabouts, my lady,’ Alec said, his eyes blazing in the old way that had always both alarmed and stimulated her.

  But she was herself again in a moment, the great lady, the great beauty.

  ‘You must go visit Francis in Oxford,’ she said, her voice now as cold as his. ‘He is with my brother Richard. The children—all the children—are with him.’

  She gave her hand to young Master Carr and walked away without leave-taking, without looking back.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was well into March before the roads were fit for Alec to make the journey to Oxford. He rode alone, on a grey day, the sky overcast, the trees and hedges still bare.

  The day suited his mood, but when at last he was clear of the city and breathed the country air, his spirits rose a little. He had not enjoyed the long winter in that evil-smelling, disease-ridden place, though the plague had not been evident that year, only occasional cases being reported. But Master Leslie suffered a good deal from pains in his joints and a kind of ague that reminded Alec of the usual troubles in James Town. He was able to relieve these symptoms to some extent with the medicinal infusions of cinchona bark and other samples he had carried with him from the settlement.

  On the advice of Mistress Butters he took his samples with him to his private audience with King James. But the King was not impressed by them.

  ‘Herbs! Potions! Unguents! Clysters! Hae ye no found anything of real value in that unprofitable distant land of ours? What o’ the silk? The silk we commanded them to cultivate?’

  ‘It couldna be done, Your Majesty,’ Alec answered, using the form of address he found was now habitual, and falling back into the Scots way of talking the King had never lost. ‘There be no mulberry trees for the worms to thrive upon. A substitute was sought, but without success.’

  ‘And Roanoke? What of the lost colony?’

  Alec described the stone, the theories, the lack of any further clues. When he mentioned Raleigh, whom he knew to be still imprisoned in the Tower, the King’s face darkened.

  ‘No gold, no silk, a trifle of silver. What use to us is this demanding and very expensive colony?’

  ‘It is a fine country,’ Alec answered, but could not find words to describe his feeling for the extent and grandeur of those vast forests, great rivers, the wide bay into which they flowed, the mountains and waterfalls that barred the path of exploration.

  Exploration, he thought, as he rode forward on the muddy road towards Oxford. How could any man, living his life in this fertile, gentle, much-populated land of southern England, imagine what that word meant in Virginia? How begin to describe it to him? The King had listened but learned nothing; his greed for gain disappointed, that was all. The Prince of Wales, sending at last for Alec, was more eager to hear, showed his old interest in illness and accident and remedies for such, listened with eager horror to tales of native cruelty and then, ignoring Alec’s private life or unwilling to hear it, wished him well in his new life and brought the interview to an end.

  Perhaps, Alec thought, when the young man became king he would take a proper interest in that far-distant struggle. Perhaps he himself had failed to promote interest because he had already begun to lose interest in his turn. Master Leslie had hinted at a partnership. Though London town oppressed and disgusted him, the alderman’s house was very comfortable. He had suffered from privation and danger for so long that the contrast had at first stunned, then repelled, but now delighted him. So much so that, four months after his return, he found the settlement further off, less important, less compelling, moving away into a past he had outgrown, as he had outgrown his youth—

  He changed horse at Reading. Crossing the Thames there for the second time he smiled to himself at the narrow stream, one of England’s largest rivers. He remembered the great width of the James River, the Potomac, the Powhatan Creek, even. But again he thought of them as very far away, things visited, remembered, and now docketed where they would lie henceforth in memory. He thought of Captain John Smith, who had returned after a troublesome voyage, had recovered from his accident and lived now in retirement, writing a book of his experiences. To visit the captain would bring the settlement too near, so he had shrunk from it and only now realised the reason.

  ‘This second day of his journey to Oxford broke in sunshine, a pale sun in a sharp blue sky. But it shone on almond blossom in the gardens of the old convent at Littlemore, pink blossom against grey ruins, with the spires of the colleges grown near and high.

  As he moved on from Littlemore he thought of Mat Scrivenor with sadness and then, with a sudden pang of alarm and pain, of Polly. Polly, his wife, mother of his child. How little he had thought of them since his arrival back in England. How shamefully little! Why so?

  Master Leslie had expressed interest and surprise when he had learned the history of the Sugdens, perhaps too a little disapproval of what he must consider a misalliance. He had not mentioned Alec’s wife in any subsequent discussion of his future.

  Mistress Butters had been sympathetic, but guarded. After his failure to hear of Francis from Lucy Butters he had confided his fears and feelings to her mother, who also knew of the younger Francis’s bastardy. She accepted the father’s remorse without comment, but was very firm as to the boy’s relationship with his foster-father.

  ‘Sir Francis loves the child. I trust, sir, you will do nothing to upset him on this score.’

  ‘I’ll not be taking the boy away to Virginia!’ he had cried passionately. ‘I’ll not harm him in any way!’

  ‘You have your own family there,’ Mistress Butters reminded him.

  And now Virginia and Potty and little Anne, called after Mistress Laydon, had grown so far away from him he had scarcely considered them at all of late and only now because he had remembered that other lost friend, Mat.

  But Francis was not dead, though he might still be lost. Alec rode on into Oxford town in a very real state of dread. Also with a new fear of seeing that son who loved Francis and whom Francis loved.

  He need not have feared. His arrival was expected, but both Francis and his brother-in-law were at work in the colleges where each taught the young undergraduates and also conducted their researches into their several subjects. Instead of meeting them at once Alec was taken into the garden of Master Richard’s pleasant house where his wife, Celia, with a nursemaid, sat watching five children at play on the grass this fine spring morning, while a sixth lay sleeping in a wooden rocking cradle beside them.

  When she saw Alec approaching Mistress Celia sprang up and bobbed him a short, demure curtsey. But her inner excitement got the better of her. She moved quickly to him, both hands extended.

  ‘We had news from Doctor Ogilvy that thou would’st visit us, Sandy,’ she said. ‘I may still call thee by that name, I hope?’

  ‘Ay, madam,’ he answered, his voice breaking with the quick emotion that had overwhelmed him at her eager welcome. ‘I would I could look for a like greeting from’—he meant to say Francis, but the name choked him—from thy husband.’

  She was serious at once, still holding both his hands and looking up very kindly into his face.

  ‘Richard understood the whole from the beginning,’ she said carefully. ‘As I do. So we need not speak of it. Only of our pleasure that the King hath granted thee justice and mercy. And that thy venture to those parts was successful. And that thou art safely home again.’

  She turned to lead him to the house, leaving the nursemaid in charge of the children. But he checked her, pointing at the lively tumbling group, two girls and three boys, the boys of about the age, maybe, of young Francis, his son.

  ‘These be not all thine, I reckon?’ he said, trying to smile to cover his anxiety, not wishing to offend.

  ‘Heaven forbid!’ she answered laughing. ‘That dark-haired boy and the smaller of the two girls belong to Francis; they have the Leslie features, have they not? The three tow-heads
are mine, also the babe in the cradle. Ogilvy as to their colouring, all four, but the younger two favour my own father’s family.’

  Again she turned towards the house, determined to forestall the question she had not the heart to answer. For she had seen the anguish in Alec’s face when she had named all the children and his own was not among them. But Francis had forbidden her to speak. Besides, she had no wish to do so. The matter lay between the friends, if they could still so be called.

  It seemed they could. Richard Leslie was home first. He took Alec into his own room, lined with books, manuscripts and other papers lying in piles upon a fine strong oak gate-legged table. He listened to Alec’s description of his wanderings, but broke off when he heard a step outside the door.

  ‘I think it will be Francis,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave thee with him. He is changed, you must know. But so art thou, my poor Sandy. God be with you both!’

  He was through the door before Alec was well upon his feet. Francis came in.

  He was not so changed in appearance that Alec did not know him. But, even as they stood staring at one another, it was apparent that the Inward change was very great Indeed. His boyhood, too, was over as was Alec’s. He, too, had suffered, had endured, had survived, weathered, hardened, but not shrivelled, Alec saw, thanking God for it.

  Francis had prepared a speech for this encounter, much as he prepared his lectures for his pupils, with the same aim of tiding over an opening, a beginning, that must promote interest, contact, acceptance, before the criticism of resentment of one in an inferior position could spoil the combined effort of teacher and taught.

  They had not moved since the door closed behind Richard. Francis stood just within it, Alec beside the chair where he had sat talking.

  Francis said, ‘It was an evil bastard parted us, Sandy, putting us all in peril. He paid with his life for his part in that plot, that miscalculation, whereby he and his familiar, Kenty, sought to establish power over you. It is an innocent bastard, thine, stands between us now. I had not foreseen the possibility of thy return when I forgave thee in my heart. But I do not take it back. In my betrayal thou took the lesser part.’