by Robert Nye
‘Hear this,’ I said. ‘I propose that we return to England by the way we came. Our first landfall shall be Kinsale, in Ireland. Those among you who have reason to fear the gallows will be free to quit my company once we reach there. You understand? I demand your loyalty as far as Ireland only. Is that agreed?’
It was agreed. I think, with gratitude.
*
And so the ship sails on. Under a dead sky, close to the wind, cleansing foregone, the water in our casks fast turning foul. What bread we have is mouldy and as hard as stones. My bones creak with the cold. My heart is bare of any hope at all. Our backs to Newfoundland, we face the Atlantic crossing. The crew go about their tasks like men in a dream. I have promised to save their necks, but not my own. Eastward we go, with a veiled moon mocking us. That mockery of a mutiny seems over. Head picks his dirty teeth with his dirty fingernails. Tonight I believe I have only the prospect of my death to look forward to. It is enough. I was always in love with absolutes.
*
Yet today is your birthday, dear Bess, and that I love too.
Birth and death are the absolutes. A birthday is beloved details.
So you enter your 53rd year. Where? At your own house in Broad Street, most probably. I think of you there, sitting perhaps alone in the dining room now, your eyes in the candlelight dwelling upon those exquisite pintado hangings, printed cottons we purchased from the East Indian merchant. Will you eat a morsel of rich comfit cake? Do you wear your purple kirtle fringed with gold? (The one that’s cut low on the shoulder; how I wish I might bend now to kiss the freckles there!)
Your servant Alice will have set the dish of gooseberry creams on the great oak table. There was never a birthday when you did not enjoy your gooseberry creams, even when I was imprisoned in the Tower, even when (as now) I was not there to share them with you, an expanse of salt water between us. Cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, sugar, rose-water, and eggs - you see, I remember the seasoning. Good cold gooseberries lying in rounds upon the thick cream. You pick each one daintily, using the pure silver pin. Such pleasure. Your lips have it first, then your tongue, then your teeth, then your throat. You remember how once we halved a dish of these same cream-enriched gooseberries in the Temple Fields at Warwick on your birthday? There was a pageant being performed for the Queen’s delight - a sham battle between two bands of men in two mock castles, with much noise of mortar-pieces, calibers, and the odd harquebus. Fireworks, squibs, and balls of fire in the April evening. Her Majesty, in fact, was bored, and didn’t bother to hide it. (She never much cared for the sound of shot from that day when she was sitting in the royal barge on the Thames in company with the French Ambassador, and a madman called Appletree fired at random upon her party, narrowly missing the Queen and hitting one of the watermen.) As for us - that birthday of yours we spent in the Temple Fields - the pageantry is not what I recall now. I recall how you fed me your gooseberries and I fed you mine. These parched lips ache for your touch then. If my eyes should go blind, my lips would always recognise your fingers.
You ascend the wooden staircase, your blue-veined hand rests lightly on the balustrade. There is a fire in the grate in our bedroom. You sit before the looking-glass, and you unbraid your hair.
Out of turn, out pf time, but in tune, I remember our first meeting. It was at Christmas, 1584, just before the night when the Queen made it crystal-clear to Hatton that I had now supplanted him as favourite - which she did by the incident when she tried to wipe a smut of soot from my face with her own well-licked handkercHicf (but I shall come to that soon enough). You were nineteen years old, an orphan, your father once Ambassador to France. You were newly sworn as Elizabeth’s youngest Maid of Honour, elected to that high company of Vestal Virgins which waited on her Majesty in the Privy Chamber. As such, it was your business to bathe the Queen and to dress her, to play for her upon the dulcimer, the clavicytherium, the lute, the viol, the rebec. Then there would be the endless games of cards and the nightly chatter. You had to let the Queen win her hand of cards, but cleverly, for Elizabeth never liked to think she won anything by default. As for your conversation, it had to be witty and graceful, quick, full of verbal resource, never too serious yet certainly not vulgar or trivial either. The Queen demanded elegance in all things. The misshapen in body or mind, whether female or male, were the only ones unwelcome at her Court.
You were eating strawberries dipped in wine. The clock was tolling midnight. One, two, three, four The great clock of Whitehall, with its groaning dying sound on the stroke of twelve. Outside, the streets white with snow, and more snow falling. I came into the Privy Chamber unannounced. I expected the Queen to be there, but as it turned out she was not. I should have guessed, perhaps, that she’d be at her devotions in her private chapel. Christmas, the dead season, always brought out what little religion Elizabeth allowed herself to possess. But I do her wrong. She was a Christian monarch. No doubt she kept a tight rein on her impulse in that direction because she could never forget the example of her father. Henry the 8th, Defender of the Faith, had been insatiably religious. Lust and superstition do not amount to morality.
It was a cold night. The draught puffed the wood-smoke down the chimneys and the tapestries flapped against the walls. You sat there surrounded by candles that seemed to bow their long flames to your beauty. Yes, Bess, you were beautiful to me then, in the candlelit Privy Chamber, glancing up startled and innocent, a strawberry between right thumb and forefinger, red wine trickling down to stain your white brocaded dress. Your beauty was not in your face or your posture or in anything of outward show. It was like a fire that burned in you yet consumed nothing. A durable fire. Your mortal aspect its shadow.
‘She is not here, Captain Ralegh,’ you said, smiling, and finishing the strawberry. ‘She is not here, the one you come to seek.’
I bowed. I brushed the oak floor with my feathered hat.
‘Oh but she is,’ I told you. ‘It is only that a moment ago I did not know that I was seeking her.’
You said nothing. You sat licking your wine-stained fingers, staring at me. It was then that I noticed the blue and the black of your eyes. Sweet bitter iridescence. Two colours in one look. I admit I was fascinated - and more. How curious our bodies are! I could feel the short hairs prickle in the nape of my neck. The chamber was not warm, but I swear that I was starting to sweat. It was not lust. Nor was it fear. You must know what it was. I have spent my whole life since then trying to be true to it.
There was a silver jug on the long low table. A silver goblet stood on a linen cloth beside it. You would have set them there for the Queen’s last nourishment before retiring to bed. Elizabeth always liked to drink a goblet of warm milk before she slept.
I crossed to the table. I took up goblet, jug, and linen napkin in my hands. I knelt at your side. Before you had time to protest, I poured some of the milk from the jug into the goblet, and grasped your stained fingers, and dipped them into the milk.
I washed your hands in the milk.
You were frightened. You whispered: ‘But what if her Majesty—?’
‘You can fetch a fresh jug,’ I assured you. ‘Fresh milk, another cup, a clean napkin.’ I was drying your fingers with the crisp white linen. When I finished they were as white as snow, as soft as silk to my touch. I did not let go of your hands. Your hair smelt like honeysuckle.
‘There,’ I said. ‘Not a trace remains of your crime.’
‘My crime, sir?’
‘The Queen’s strawberries.’
‘Those were not the Queen’s strawberries. They were mine.’
‘I stand corrected, madam. But now the strawberries are you, and you are the Queen’s.’
You stood up swiftly, withdrawing your hands from mine. ‘I wait on her Majesty, yes. I belong to no one.’ Your blue eye seemed to laugh at me, your black one was cool and sharp in its appraisal. ‘What of you, Captain Ralegh? To whom do you belong?’
‘To myself,’ I said. ‘So it seems we are well matched,
madam.’
‘You think so? It appears to me only that you make far too free with the Queen’s milk and her Majesty’s Maids of Honour.’
I placed my hand upon my heart. ‘I swear by Our Lady of Strawberries,’ I said solemnly, ‘you are the very first Maid of Honour I ever did wash in the Queen’s milk.’
‘And the last?’ you said, wantonly. ‘Come, sir, I am sure that having performed the office once you will now grow quite addicted to the practice.’
I scratched my cheek, pretending to consider this suggestion. ‘That could be pleasurable. It depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
‘Madam, on how the other Maids of Honour eat their strawberries.’
You blushed. In that moment you looked very young. Very young, very vulnerable, yet not innocent.
You whispered: ‘I must go and change my dress.’
I nodded, considering the wine stains. ‘I apologise. I did not mean to startle you at your secret feast. What is your name?’
‘Elizabeth. Elizabeth Throgmorton.’
I must have frowned. I did not want you to have the same Christian name as the Queen.
‘Do your friends call you Bess?’ I enquired.
‘I don’t have any friends, Captain Ralegh.’
I smiled. ‘Then good night, Bess,’ I said.
You snatched up the silver goblet and jug, and the soiled linen napkin. You half ran from the chamber. You forgot in your embarrassment the nearly empty bowl of strawberries floating in wine.
When your little footfalls had ceased to sound in the corridor I fished one blood-red strawberry out of the bowl, held it up against a candleflame to enjoy its brightness as well as the texture of it rolled between my finger and thumb, then popped it in my mouth and ate it whole.
*
I did not sleep that night. Nor did I look any further for the Queen. I spent all the hours till dawn composing six lines of verse. When I had finished I knew that I had not finished. The poem was not complete. To complete the poem I would need to know you better. I knew that, my dearest Bess. And the knowledge did not displease me. By God, it did not. I never looked forward more to completing a poem.
Anyway, the six preliminary lines. They were these, and you will know how they transposed and translated those details of our first encounter:
Nature, that washed her hands in milk
And hadforgot to dry them,
Instead of earth took snow and silk
At Love’s request, to try them
If she a mistress could compose
To please Love’s fancy out of those.
By Love’s fancy I meant of course my own. The poem is not very good, as it stands, and it was not much better by the time I had finished it. As if that matters.
*
How did we keep our love a secret from the Queen? The answer, of course, is that in the long run we did not. But from the night of the strawberries to the time when Elizabeth discovered that I had made you pregnant, and then secretly married you, is a period of some seven years. Seven hard years of passion and pretence, when in public we had to be distant and circumspect, each of us feigning indifference to the other, not so much as a lingering look or a smile permitted to be shared when anyone else was present.
What helped us, I suppose, more than anything, was the Queen’s belief that I belonged only to her. When I met you that Christmas Eve of ‘84 I was already her man in the sense that I had taken Hatton’s place and danced through the door. You knew this, Bess. You did not know what it meant. I never told you. I never told anyone. Well, Elizabeth is long dead now, and it seems sure that soon enough, when this voyage ends, I must join her, follow the Queen again, only this time in the dance of death, through the final door, and into that chamber where all dark secrets shall be known in the infinite light.
I have thought much on this matter: Whether or not it is best that I go to the grave with my lips sealed fast on the subject of what things passed between me and the Queen. Tonight I have reached a decision. It is right that you should know. The knowledge will hurt you, dear wife, but it is my belief that the ignorance has hurt you more. Not knowing, you must have imagined me never truly yours - not least in those seven years when we were compelled to conceal our love from the eyes of the world. The truth may be less than you think, in which case I rejoice. There again, it may shock you and cause you to revile my memory and also Elizabeth’s. I must pray it will not. And I ask you to pray for me, when all this is made known to you. Pray for the soul of Walter Ralegh, a poor miserable sinner. Yes, and pray for the soul of that poor miserable Queen as well.
You may not read these words till I am dead. If so, forgive me that small cowardice as well. I did try once, in bed, to tell the truth to you. You will recall? That night of your dream, the night before I sailed. You had fallen asleep before the words were out of my mouth. Blessed sleep! But how do I know that your dreams concerning this are not blacker by far than the reality?
What I shall write is not for Carew. Not yet. Not ever, perhaps. I leave that to your own discretion. My own feeling is that it were better he should never be told. The true story is something I owe you. And if I loved you less, and your heart was not as great as it is, then I swear that I would withhold it even from you, Bess.
Your birthday, and I cannot offer you gifts— What would I give you, darling, if I could?
Strawberries, yes. Sweet strawberries out of season. The very strawberries of our first meeting soaked in the best wine of our days together. You told me true. They were always your strawberries, Bess. Elizabeth Throgmorton’s, Elizabeth Ralegh’s. They were never the Queen’s. They were never Elizabeth Tudor’s.
Idiot, I hear you say. Would he give me only what’s already mine then?
My dear, what else is there?
I would give you myself. Once again. I would give you my heart.
*
As when we first made love. As when you stood against the tree in the dark of the garden. ‘Sweet Sir Walter!’ you cried. ‘Sweet Sir Walter!’ And when the danger and the pleasure grew their highest: ‘Swisser Swatter Swisser Swatter!’ Bless you, Bess.
21
23 April
Fog. For two days now the ship has been wrapped in a clinging grey shroud of it. We must have run some six hundred miles eastwards into the Atlantic, our position being 40° west wanting three minutes in a latitude of 51° north. This leaves a good twelve hundred miles of bad ocean between my Destiny and whatever other destiny awaits me at the end of the long voyage home. To be brief, this foul fog is most welcome. I could drift for all eternity cloaked in it.
The wind died six days from Newfoundland. We are all but becalmed, drifting along with the Gulf weed, soundlessly, drearily, the vessel no more than another rank piece of flotsam at the mercy of the currents. Everything about us seems possessed by this fog and at one with it. Fog above, fog below, fog ahead, fog astern, fog to starboard and port; our empty sails look fashioned of fog, the grey seas also. This singular dull diffidence of the elements suits my mood. If I go ând stand on the poop deck, above the coach where Mr Burwick has his cabin, the front parts of my ship are quite invisible. Fog blots them out, I am absolved from their care. At the same time, I note that there is a quality of fog at sea which causes near objects to loom larger than in fact they are. Ropes look as thick as snakes, the water dripping from them appears to my eyes like great globules of poison. Black knot-holes and splinters in the deck on which I walk seem big as cinders from extinguished fires.
If the basest clods among my crew had ever truly intended to carry their mutinous ambitions to any end, then the past 48 hours would have brought them out into the open, that’s for sure. A blind ship, half-asleep, fumbling along through pestilential obscure Atlantic vapours, could readily be overrun, and her commander disposed of. They could have cut my throat any night - though it might have cost them a few throats of their own, since Sam King now stands guard at my cabin door. If they shrank from outright murder, then
they could have cast me adrift in an open boat with just my few remaining gentlemen for company. They have done neither, and all such danger seems out-moded, out-manouevred. The truth is that by open dealing I showed up their Richard Head as a common coward, one of those born to moan and scheme below decks but to run like a startled rat when confronted by his betters. I am an old hand at dealing with the Mr Richard Heads of this sad world. Elizabeth had rats in the holes at Whitehall.
My promise that all felons can make themselves scarce once we drop anchor in Kinsale has struck a sort of bargain with the lot of them. They realise, I reckon, that I have promised no less than to save their wretched necks, on condition that they help me to risk mine. It is a just exchange. Its irony affords me bleak delight.
*
I sit writing by a candle in my cabin. I know that outside now, by night, the fog itself seems stained black, with not a solitary star to be seen in the sky, and the very lanterns at our mast-heads glinting like the eyes of vultures - pale blue in the film of fog which clouds them. All is still, all is calm, the only sound the occasional creak of a timber, the call of the men on the night watch or their coughing as the fog sticks in their throats, with here within the cabin the slow steady scratching of my pen across these sheets of virgin paper.
Virgin.
Virginity.
More absolutes.
But how strange are the human details which they may
hide!
The Greeks believed that Astraea, the goddess of justice, was the last of the deities to quit our earth, and that when she returned to heaven she became the constellation which men still call Virgo. My Destiny is guided by no star tonight, either virgin or whore, while my hand must write a story more peculiar than any in the Greek mythologies.
I write for truth’s sake, for my wife and myself. I tell of the Queen. Of the Queen and Walter Ralegh.
*
There was a comet that appeared over London in the course of that summer. I mean, the summer of 1583. I was 29 years old. Queen Elizabeth was twenty years older. Things happened in the great world, to be sure. The Earl of Desmond was slain in a skirmish; that was the end of his rebellion, with Munster reduced to a desert and some 30,000 Irish perishing of starvation in the last six months of the war. Galileo, at Pisa, is supposed to have been discovering the parabolic nature of trajectories - which he did by dropping shot from the Leaning Tower. There was an English expedition set out overland for India; nine years passed before it ever came back. In that August John Whitgift was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury; he put down the Puritans, riding everywhere attended by great squadrons of horse, more like a general than a clergyman. This, I suppose, is what I would write about if this was a history book. But I’m not writing history. I speak of what happened to me.
