Sir George Villiers rose unsteadily, and the length and warmth of the King’s embrace made up for the accident. The Queen turned her back in disgust and pretended to admonish her son. The Archbishop coughed and inquired what provision his Majesty intended to make for Sir George, so that the gallant knight might be enabled to maintain himself in his new state. Would the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, for instance, be thought suitable?
At that moment the ceremony was interrupted by the delivery of a furious message from Carr. News of what was going on had reached him and he was outside the door, demanding admittance and insisting that, if false Jamie was irrevocably committed to promoting Villiers to the Bedchamber, it should be as a humble Groom rather than a Gentleman. As Lord Chamberlain, he had been entrusted with charge of the royal household and wrote emphatically that he would not sanction the higher appointment. If his wishes were not respected, he would beg leave to resign the post.
The King trembled at the threat and made no attempt to conceal it. He passed the message to the Queen, blaming her for the straits to which granting her request had brought him.
‘Appoint Sir George a Gentleman,’ she ordered him scornfully, ‘and find yourself a new Lord Chamberlain. Good riddance to my lord of Somerset.’
James shook his head mournfully and pulled at his untrimmed beard, then comforted himself by tousling the hair of his brave new knight. ‘You must not ask me to part with Robin,’ he pleaded.
‘Take Sir Robert Carey as your chamberlain,’ the Queen urged him. ‘It is a family post; his father and brother held it in Elizabeth’s time. Baby Charles will spare him for you. Waste no time. Appoint him now.’
The King’s eyes met Carey’s, and Carey knew that the appointment would never be his. The royal glance faltered and fell at the proximity of his Robin’s enemy, a man noted for violence.
‘The office of Lord Chamberlain is not vacant, but Sir George Villiers shall be a Gentleman of my Bedchamber, since the Queen wishes it. He shall have a pension of a thousand pounds a year for life.’ James spoke rapidly in a barely audible mutter.
God’s representative on earth and the sovereign lord of two realms gave a sign that proceedings were concluded and limped like a cripple from the room to enlist sympathy as a martyr and demonstrate that his gout was more painful than the Queen’s. He went hopefully with his new favourite to seek the forgiveness and appease the anger of the old.
5
No change was made in the office of Lord Chamberlain. It rested, like a Holy Grail, tantalizingly beyond Carey’s reach. Relations between Carr and the King remained those of quarrelling lovers. The state of the game between Villiers and the King was harder to discern. It became a subject for speculation and scandalous gossip.
Throughout the summer, with Carr falling steadily from favour, rumours concerning the manner of Overbury’s death grew bolder and more insistent. Just as imprisonment had transformed proud Sir Walter from the most hated man in England to the most loved, so the arrogant and detested Sir Thomas was fast becoming a martyr among the court faction opposed to the Howards. By his advice to Carey to recruit a rival favourite, he had already struck once at Carr from the grave. Now he was to strike again. The Protestant earls fanned his popularity by sponsoring the printing of new editions of his poetry, while Carey was despatched to Gloucestershire to stir his family into action.
During his son’s last illness Squire Overbury had travelled to London to petition the King that his son should be permitted medical attention. At Carey’s suggestion, he was only too willing now to petition that the cause of his son’s death be the subject of an official investigation. He confided that the body had been hastily buried, before it could be viewed by Sir John Lidcote, his son-in-law, who had been called to the Towed for that purpose. As a magistrate trained in the Middle Temple like his son, he had taken note of another irregularity. The coroner summoning the jury which returned the verdict of death from natural causes had come from the county of Middlesex, not from the City of London within whose jurisdiction the Tower lay.
With this information to add to that which he had uncovered already, Carey returned to London to confront the Lieutenant of the Tower. He went first to Lambeth and armed himself with a letter from the Archbishop’s secretary. At the gateway to the Tower he demanded immediate admission and could not be refused. This time he would be the one to conduct the interrogation. It was the Lieutenant’s turn to protest his innocence. Crossing the green, he bowed in the direction of Ralegh’s quarters - a salute of honour. Carr’s fall would surely mean Ralegh’s release.
‘I have come to discuss Sir Thomas Overbury’s corpse,’ Carey announced to the Lieutenant without preamble. ‘Pray tell me, Sir Gervase, why you sealed it in lead and stowed it in a vault in the chapel at such speed? Did you have cause to fear what an examination of the body might reveal?’
He pitied the Lieutenant, a grey-headed man of his own age, mild-mannered and no doubt as honourable as his lack of fortune would permit.
‘You are misinformed, Sir Robert. The corpse was inspected in due form by a coroner’s jury.’
‘But not by the dead man’s family.’
‘Sir John Lidcote, his sister’s husband, was sent for but came too late.’
‘I have spoken with Overbury’s father in Gloucestershire. He has told me that Sir John came to the Tower as soon as called, on the very morning after Sir Thomas’s decease.’
‘The body was putrid with running sores. It would not keep.’
‘Yet you did not send for the nearest coroner.’
Sir Gervase shifted his glance. ‘The matter was pressing,’ he mumbled, flustered. ‘The City coroner could not be found. One or other would do. It made no matter which.’
‘That is a lie,’ Carey told him sternly. ‘According to my information, the City coroner was not only at home on that day but saw fit subsequently to lodge a formal complaint about such an infringement of his rights. Information has also reached me that Thomas Bright, the Middlesex coroner, obtained his position through the good offices of the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Suffolk, father of the Countess of Essex, to whose divorce and re-marriage Sir Thomas Overbury was so vehemently opposed. On the authority of the Archbishop, in his capacity as Lord President of the King’s Council, I must demand of you that you tell me plainly and without prevarication the names of those who instructed you to act as you did?’
Accused in his own chamber, the seat of his own power, the Lieutenant flushed and rose from his desk. He unlocked a chest and handed Carey a letter. Then he resumed his chair with a small shudder, as though in premonition of what was to follow.
‘Noble Lieutenant,’ Carey read, ‘if the knave’s body be foul, bury it instantly; I’ll stand between you and harm. When you next come to me, bring this letter again with you, or else burn it.’ The signature was ‘Northampton’ and the sight of it lit a flame of warmth in Carey’s heart. The arch-conspirator might be safely dead, but at last his criminal machinations were going to be exposed.
‘What reason do you suppose my lord of Northampton could have had for making such a request?’ he inquired gently. ‘What innocent reason?’
Sir Gervase shrugged his shoulders. ‘That was not a question I was able, or would have cared, to put to him. The Earl was not a man to be questioned or disobeyed with impunity. Will you not concede me that, Sir Robert?’
‘Yet you thought it right to disobey his instruction to return or burn the letter.’
‘I kept it for my own protection. Who would not have done the same?’
‘If you believed the reason for the request to be an innocent one, what cause would you have to require protection? If the reason be a guilty one, this letter makes you an accessory after the fact. I have been told that you appropriated the hangings in Sir Thomas’s chamber the day before he died. That would make you an accessory before the fact.’ The furnishings of a dead prisoner were one of the perquisites of the Lieutenant’s office. Ignoring Sir Gervase’s ple
ading gaze, he put the letter in his pocket.
‘You were guilty when I discovered you outside Sir Thomas’s quarters.’ The Lieutenant appealed to him openly in shame. ‘I behaved mercifully to you then. I pray you treat me likewise.’
‘You made a report which would have placed my life in danger, had I not been blessed with friends on the Council.’
‘I could have imprisoned you. With Northampton alive, you would not easily have regained your freedom. Making a report was the least I could do to injure you, consistent with my duty.’
‘Your duty! Such concern is overdue, but if you tell me all you know I will do what I can to save you. First then, your appointment. How did the post fall into your lap when Sir William Wade was dismissed so soon after Sir Thomas’s imprisonment?’
‘I am a poor man, as you yourself once were. My estate in Lincolnshire will not support my family, which is large, and I came to court to find the means of providing for them. I was advised to purchase the Lieutenancy as a sound investment, although I could ill afford it. I borrowed the money and paid Sir William two thousand pounds for the post. It was granted to me by the King on the intercession of my lord of Rochester, now of Somerset.’
‘For what reason was Sir William superseded?’
‘He was said to be unwell. The Tower is not a healthy place.’
‘He was said also to have attracted disfavour by obeying too strictly the King’s command to keep Sir Thomas a close prisoner. No one was able to communicate with Overbury, and those who had cause to do so had him removed and someone more pliant put in his stead. That too is being said.’
‘Whatever I did was in obedience to instruction.’
‘But whose instruction?’ Carey rapped the desk. ‘The Lieutenant of the Tower is no man’s lackey, but a servant of the Crown.’
Sir Gervase bowed his head to shield his face from the rebuke. ‘In these times,’ he muttered, ‘a man must assume that those who are near the Crown speak in its name. How else is the country to be ruled with the King always in the saddle, away at Royston or Newmarket?’ He stood to indicate that he would say no more.
‘Stay,’ Carey ordered him, ‘I have one question more. Sir Thomas’s father has informed me that on your appointment you changed his son’s keeper. His family begged that he be allowed a servant of his own, but you refused them. Tell me the name of this keeper and on whose recommendation he was employed.’
‘His name was Richard Weston. He will tell you nothing. The culprits in this affair will never be brought to justice.’
‘Name them. Name those at whose bidding you employed this Weston.’
‘Would you have me denounce the most famous lady in the kingdom after the Queen? What purpose would it serve, except to ensure my own disgrace?’
Northampton, Suffolk, Carr and now Frances Howard! Carey could not suppress his grim pleasure at the revelation. Some, however high, were not beyond the reach of justice.
‘Richard Weston I know where to find,’ he replied, his hand on the latch of the door. ‘He has earned a reputation for silence more obdurate than yours. You have told me all I sought to learn, except the whereabouts of William Reeve.’
The Parthian shot went home. The Lieutenant drew in his breath and clutched at his chest like a wounded man. He stammered that he had no knowledge of any William Reeve. Carey made no pretence of believing him, nor did him the courtesy of staying to listen to further lies.
At sunrise the next morning, impatient to make his next move and emboldened by the omen of a cloudless day, he took horse for Oxfordshire, fording the Thames at Maidenhead and Henley. Sir William Knollys, who lived at Greys, had married Frances Howard’s sister, and there the double Countess, a mother-to-be, had retired for her lying-in. The charade of virginity had ended in triumph and a loving Carr, sulking at the loss of the King’s affections, was with her.
He received Carey in the garden, slighting him with delay and no admission to the house. His greeting was wary but otherwise polite. Carey inquired after the Countess’s health and they exchanged bare pleasantries before coming to business.
‘We have known each other for many years, my lord,’ Carey ventured when they were walking, hidden from the world, between hedges of tall yew. ‘As death takes our acquaintances one by one and new men spring up, the passing of time must draw us always closer together. You have spurned me in the past, but I would be of service to you at this time.’
‘Has the sun melted your brains?’ Carr demanded suspiciously. ‘It would ill become a Carey to hitch his fortunes to a falling star.’
‘Your fall may be arrested if you accept my guidance.’
They continued their walk in silence. The yew hedge gave place to an avenue of pleached hornbeam and speckled shade. It was a setting of peace and intimacy, far from the intrigues of Whitehall.
‘So you would have me believe. Give me your counsel,’ invited Carr, ‘and I will be the judge.’
‘Befriend George Villiers. For better or worse, the King loves him. What will be, will be. Look on the young man’s good fortune with a good grace. With or without it, his rise is sure. Win his devotion by offering him your patronage.’ Carey spoke with all the earnestness at his command.
‘Sir George Villiers, Gentleman of the Bedchamber’ - Carr rolled the words round his tongue and spat them from between his teeth like pips - ‘is a brazen hypocrite and thief. He fawns on me, importunes me to accept him as my very humble servant, and all the while steals from me. I have told him that I will, if I can, break his neck, and of that he may be confident - as I am that he would, if he could, break mine. On the Border, where I was bred, we recognize an enemy. I am not one to be deceived. I reject the proffered hand of a Judas, whether his or yours.’
The heat of the sun had not melted their animosity, it seemed. Carey stifled his anger with difficulty.
‘Be wise, my lord, before it is too late,’ he advised. ‘What rises must fall. Royal favourites are no exception. Mark what happened in the time of my cousin Elizabeth and of her father before her. In those days former favourites fell under the axe or were expelled from court into the wilderness of banishment. King James is more merciful and I would have you spared what I myself have suffered. The Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Montgomery and others whom the King has loved are no longer close to the royal person, but they live at court with honour and riches. They made neither demands on him nor powerful enemies. They chose not to linger in the path of their successors. In relying on the generosity of the King, they were not disappointed. You are the richest of all - in money, lands and love. Would you throw everything away?’
‘Ask rather whether I shall allow everything to be seized from me. That is not my nature. God knows it and so shall the world. You have made your purpose in coming here clear as the sky: it is to persuade me to resign my offices so that you may become Lord Chamberlain in my place, as the Queen desires. Then when you and your friends and their puppet Villiers have enforced the King’s subservience, you will trump up charges against me and have me stripped of all I possess.’
‘If I were appointed Lord Chamberlain and a member of the Council,’ said Carey, ‘you would enjoy my protection. On that you have my solemn oath.’ He was conscious of the presumption as he spoke, but his ambition would not be restrained.
Carr sneered in his face. ‘So that is the way the land lies! You have procured this lewd youth from some house of pleasure to satisfy the King’s basest desires in the cause of your own advancement. Away with you! Your errand here is wasted. Do you forget my wife’s family? The house of Howard is my protection now. Try as they will, my enemies cannot bring me down. Howards or no Howards, the King would not dare. Good day to you, Sir Robert.’
‘You mistake my purpose and your own position,’ Carey told him, holding his ground. ‘Dismiss me if it pleases your lordship, but before I take my leave you may wish to learn that I came in friendship to bring you warning. Those responsible for the death of your good friend, Sir Thomas Overb
ury, are about to be brought to trial. The guilty have little time left to make their accommodations. That is all. Convey my respects to your Countess, if you please. I trust that the child will be a boy and that he will live to enjoy the earldom of Somerset and your hard-won estates at Sherborne.’
He turned on his heel. Carr sought to detain him with anxious questions, but he declined to say a word more. He had ridden forty miles to give this Scottish dunce a last chance and had received nothing but insults for his pains.
‘My wife will not forgive me if I allow you to depart without entertaining her with the latest news from court. Stay long enough at least to dine with us.’
The Earl of Somerset was pleading like a little boy, but Carey’s heart had turned to stone. ‘It is a pleasure which I must forgo,’ he said. ‘Other urgent business awaits me and I have to be in St James’s with the Prince by nightfall.’
As they returned towards the house, he plucked a rose at random from a trellis. June had been dry and was dying parched, and the petals of what he had taken for a fine bloom were curling at the edges. Overblown, he told himself, a past beauty like the creature beside him. He threw it to the ground and picked another, white and crisp and fragrant, bursting from its bud like the young Villiers.
The London road was dusty. He wore the second rose in his cap and passed the hours in the saddle reckoning how long it would take for the drama of Carr’s downfall to unfold. If the buzz from the bedchamber were to be believed. Villiers had learned a trick or two which Carr had never mastered and the King was more in love with him than he had ever been before. The dissolute Earl of Montgomery would have been an able teacher. Ageing and failing in health, James was clutching at youth. This was the last and greatest passion of his life. Was it surprising that Carr was too blind to see it? What did he mean by declaring that, Howards or no Howards, the King would not dare to deprive him of his offices?
Disgrace And Favour Page 20
