Death of the Fox

by George Garrett

  Safety in numbers? Witness her life, ever threatened. It is not the mob with dirty hands and stinking breath that kills a prince, though if foul breath and stink of bodies could kill, no prince could live long in England. No, it is the single bright-eyed Bedlamite, a crazed one with a loaded dag or a sword or a stilleto—God’s wounds, a table knife will do!—whose face is lost in the field of faces, who can send the prince’s soul to eternity in an instant. Or it is the cold-blooded plotter, coming out of the darkness where plots are hatched, like a serpent after the sleep of winter, warmed by the fire of occasion, concealed among a flock of sheep in his sheep’s clothing, who strikes for the throat like a wolf.

  There is something we have forgotten.

  (No, I have not forgotten. I have allowed myself to imagine I had suppressed the rebellious memory of it when, in truth, I have failed.)

  We ride again up the tree-lined roadway to Theobalds, the procession moving at a walk through flashes of sunlight and leaf-dappled shadow toward the high archway. Drums and trumpets. Our many hooves make a powder of dust.

  Light blasts like silent cannon firing at us. It is the explosion of light against the glass of Theobalds.

  Our eyes begin to smart and water. Or is it tears that cleanse dusty cheeks?

  The King wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He wipes them dry and holds up his head proudly as they ride through the arch.

  On the broad stairs they stand waiting, these noblemen and great men of England. They are servants now, not enemies. We have nothing to fear. They stand, a gaudy marvel grouped on the stairs, unarmed and smiling a welcome.

  Supposing we had possessed the power of arms? Let us imagine that the alliance with France or with Spain had come to pass. And we have come at the head of a mighty Scots army. We have come this far, to Theobalds. And here stand these men of England to surrender to us.

  Unarmed, defenseless against us, here is more power and more wealth than all our armies and ordnance.

  We could accept the abject surrender and order this place razed to the ground. Just as we have commanded destruction of Fotheringay Castle, where the English tried and executed, nay, murdered the captive Queen of Scots. Where they killed the royal mother of the King.

  The King could command that this place be razed and burned, even the ashes scattered in the wind. Or he could accept it as his new possession, dumb with admiration.

  Either way the King would weep.

  We dismount awkwardly, even with assistance of skilled servants. Someone with an ewer of scented water and warm towels helps the King to wipe the dust from his face.

  Led by the pigmy, Cecil, the Englishmen kneel to greet their King.

  Among them, bowed and kneeling, one head is higher than the others. One face, handsome, cruel, and composed, with veiled eyes and slight, ironic smile, startles the King. It seems to float above the others.

  Presented to him, the King tries to ease an awkward moment with a mild jest, a pun as much at his own expense as the other’s. “Upon my soul,” the King declares. “I have heard rawly of you.”

  He says nothing in reply. His face is an unmoving mask. His satiric smile is painted there.

  But the others laugh politely, and the next man is presented to the King.

  He will not answer the King then. He waits for another time. He waits until after the feast and the tour of Theobalds, when the King, borne on the wings of high spirits, faces them all again in the presence chamber.

  The King makes a compliment to the company. The King says that now he has seen this place and seen them assembled together, he is deeply grateful. The King thanks God that he was not compelled by circumstance to try to gain the throne of this kingdom by force of arms.

  “Would God you had done so,” Walter Ralegh says aloud.

  And there is a prickling silence.

  The King tries to speak, but his throat is choked with phlegm.

  The King … no, it is not he, it is I, I alone in the face of that company, speaking in a hoarse, broken voice.

  “Why? Why do you say such a thing?”

  “Because,” he answers, eyes brightening, smile white against his beard, “then the King could have known his true friends from his enemies.”

  I close my eyes.

  No, I mean to say the King is able to laugh and lead the others in light, coughing laughter. The King does not shrink.

  But I … I am naked and defenseless and … ridiculous. I leave the paper, playing-card King in my place there. I back away from him and their laughter—do they laugh at me?—covering my shame. I run.

  I run, clumsy as always, through halls and chambers. Laughter pursues me like hounds.

  The rooms are empty of anyone. Only myself and savage laughter.

  When I look at objects they fade, wither, fray, and melt. The house is melting wax, and I burst outside running in the maze of the garden.

  I have escaped laughter. I am safe here. I can hide at the center of the maze.

  I stumble on paths. And as I go the garden changes as if touched by frost. Leaves fall, flowers die, no birds sing. Fountains cease to flow.

  But it is not cold. It is hot as a kitchen. I am burning alive.

  I come to the center. A defaced statue, ruined, holds an empty, leaf-stained basin. I fall on grass to weep, silent.

  And then I hear the rustling of her dress. I cannot see her. But she is here, close by me. If I could see her I could touch her.

  If I could touch her, I could seize her throat and stop her laughter.

  She is laughing like a witch. I hear the laughter of witches.

  “See, see, what I offer you,” she says. “I give you the gift you have waited so long for.”

  I look and see nothing.

  “Here is the crown,” she says, this dead Queen who will not die. “But remember, every crown is a crown of thorns.”

  I cringe and wait for the fire and ice of the murderer’s blade.

  I want to die.

  It is true, her gift is a crown of thorns.

  Scent of the unseen river, odor of the moat in the close chamber. But there is a fire and a drowsy servant to keep it alive through the night. His quarters on the Destiny were smaller and closer by far. Lord, how he pitched and rolled there with guts all awiggle like snakes in a fire.

  Here in the walls of the Tower the earth stands still.

  Sometimes, though, a whiff of the river’s air brings with it the feeling of the tide running, comes into clouds of fever and rouses him with a palpable belief that he is aboard ship somewhere, now or years ago.

  He has lived in closer quarters with less comfort many times before. Has lived well enough out of a cedar chest that two men can lug. Has slept harder and rougher than on this narrow frame, slung with ropes and padded with thin mattresses. Has more than one time found a place for himself in straw, or upon cold ground and stones. To waken stiff—and thorn-jointed, heavy-limbed as a lead doll. Many a pallet and bed, made in length and breadth for men of ordinary stature, has been too small for him.

  That was long ago. That was in youth. Youth, a time when without wishing, in spite of hard use and abuse, suppleness of joints and limbs returns, as easy over the body as the heat of spirits or strong wines will spread through the flesh. Like dawn in the Indies, freshening all, bright and fair, rich with promises and first breezes stirring, bearing faintly the scent of spices and blossoms.

  Now any warmth which touches his flesh—when the warmth is not the inner fire of fever—is like the last red glowing of an autumn sunset.

  It is right and proper, with the justice of poetry, that he should simplify himself. Being slowly, continually reduced of more baggage and encumbrances until, at last, flesh and bones shall come to simplicity, being reduced to nothing.

  Naked we entered into this world.…

  The matter of comfort. Comfort, as everything beneath sun and moon, has a paradoxical heart. Even in a great bed, in a house like Durham or Sherbourne, with not an enemy in this world,
he would suffer now and suffer much the same.

  When a man grows old …

  When a man grows old, pains come home to roost. Sad tough fowl not fit for stewing. When a man first feels the gripping fist of age and acknowledges that such fierce clenching will never again slacken, not loosen until the soul is loosed, then, still innocent, he regrets the loss of comfort and good health. Would be a poor fool not to, no matter how foolish it may be to regret what is gone for good and to add to discomfort by chafing against necessity. The man regrets. Complains and rails against necessity. Yet comes to live with it, lawfully wedded. And comes, perhaps, to add the grace of some style to his complaints. Sternly suppresses rebellion of foolish wishes. Puts down the idle desire to be restored and to live wasted time again, or to suffer his losses and wounds twice over. Time offers neither pardon, mercy, nor reprieve. And to live dead time again would be to suffer the same gnawings, tossings, and turnings, if not worse.

  Just so he must guard against that other unruly crowd: vain wishes for the future. For what may be or never be, but is not now. To live with his aches and pains is sufficient exercise without yoking himself to new dangers. A man can learn that much and then learn to move, to walk like an old man, yet still to hold up his head, keep shoulders square; and when he must offer complaint, in public or in his heart, learn to do so with style.

  That is not the last, of course. Not by an ocean voyage it is not. There is yet another step or two to take to the top of the crumbling tower of himself. Another chamber to lie in before the last candle is snuffed out.

  And one not often imagined; not known by many men. Not men like himself, who toss their lives and fortunes in one hand like a tennis ball. Most of these die young. Those who do not, who stumble into the bitterness of age, die never knowing what he has lived to learn. At the last, that rusty iron age of man, there is a stone of weariness cold and heavy where the heart was. And yet there is also a new light-headed indifference to all, to past and future, to present pains and folly. And there is thirst. Not a thirst for pleasures which have been drained and are sour dregs. Much simpler. Pure and simple as spring water, dancing with light, sweet as the earth is sweet. Not that fountain of perpetual youth which Spaniards clanked in sweaty jungles and died in searching for. Nor a thirst for ever more subtle elixirs and cordials, though surely those exist, can be found or contrived, mysteriously, from what God has given us. No, rather something sweet and simple.

  Imagine, after a long voyage, water in the casks dwindling, diminishing, foul and bitter, coming at last to landfall, quiet haven. Drop anchors. A boat of ragged men rows him through surf to nudge the shore. A white sandy beach. He walks across it alone toward a waxy clump of green where surely there is water, pausing to scoop a scallop shell from the sand, to brush and blow the grit away. Steps into the shade of green and into a clearing. And there is a spring, round as an eye, clear as a looking glass at the edges. He kneels at the edge, bends to dip water with the shell and to drink it, savoring the taste drop by drop, from the rim. It cools his tongue. Sweeter than wine is the water he takes from the shell. A toast then. Praise the shell and raise a salute in honor of the element of water. To water … And isn’t that the name the Queen gave him? Who gave a name to all she loved. She called him Water. To water, then.…

  Looking down to see himself reflected in the pool. And seeing … A wide blue sky with clouds. Clouds slow moving like a fleet of ships in a fair wind. Clouds and sky and then, sudden, darting, the wide-winged graceful shadow of a white seabird. But the man has vanished. Sky, clouds, the flashing shadow of one lovely bird, come and gone. But in the mirror of the pool no face or form returns his stare. Behind him a wild bird cries out. Cries once and then there is silence.

  He is not afraid. Enormity of silence is his delight and instruction now. As if his five senses had changed places. As if what he had tasted was the essence of quiet. As if a blessed quiet came to him like water made into music, the perfect music of silence.

  He wakes up drenched in sweat, crawling with chills and fever. Calls to the servant to fetch a cup of wine and a candle and to build up the fire. The servant lights the candle from the fire. He brings wine in a silver cup and holds it while Walter Ralegh, whose hands tremble, drinks. Then he turns and heaps more faggots on the fire until the chamber glows.

  The sweat-dampened bed begins to dry. Fire crackles and the fume of the wine warms. Ralegh smiles at the vanities of an old man. In the dream he drank from a scallop shell. Awake he sips wine from a cup his servant could not earn in ten years. Why not simple pewter or a beggar’s tin cup? Because, he thinks, I am proud. Because I am not one of the blessed saints. Because, vain and proud and sorely in need of redemption as I am, I prefer to sip wine from a well-made cup. What matter, what waste, when that drink may be my last?

  But no man is without paradox. Walter Ralegh blows out the candle because the fire gives light enough. Why waste a good wax candle?

  Head to pillow now, soft groan of settling. Eyes closed. Not dreaming, not awake.

  Rolling fog forms the shape of a man. A long-faced, horse-faced, sallow-colored little man, puffed up like a bladder in fat clothes. Large, soft, busy, suspicious eyes, arched by miserly brows. Lips soft and full as a woman’s, pursed primly between his mustache and beard. And no wonder, for when he forgets his lips, the short lower jaw falls slack and loose, and behold, there lies a raw tongue, heavy enough to be served upon a plate, an enormous, surprising tongue which drools a dew of spittle on his beard. Pale hands fidget and twitch to no purpose. Unless it be some secret stuttering hand talk of deaf-mute Spanish gypsies. Flutter like dying wings and say nothing. He seizes them to still them, as if they were not his, but were a pair of animals, each with a life of their own.

  Out of fog he walks forward. Is he imploring or beseeching? The walk’s a duck’s waddle or the rolling gait of a dancing bear. The eyes are sad and troubled. They sometimes roll up and away like a clown’s.

  Ralegh would applaud if this were a monster from a masque. In the theater should such as he enter to parade the boards, Ralegh would join the groundlings and gentlemen in hoops of laughter. But this is neither an allegorical monster nor a clown with a pudding face.

  Out of the fog of half dreaming comes James I of England, his king, the man who will have his head.

  Yet Ralegh, face against pillow, grits teeth in a grin. If the encounter were real, he would show nothing. In a prison chamber he can turn to the wall and grin to himself. He would strike his servant a blow and knock him to his knees if that man shared his amusement.

  There is a logic to the figures and images of these dreams and visions, which, though freed by fever, are authored by no one but himself. His secret smile is in part for the sad clown he has conjured up and now dismisses; for his amusement lies in the discovery that the separate figures of his visions are plucked out of the past as random strange objects lifted by sleight of hand from a mountebank’s purse.

  The dream is now, but is a full fifteen years old. It has taken this long to arrive. The truth of dreams, like an English army with an English general—Essex in Ireland?—will not be hurried. Comes on to the slow beat of its own drums, ponderous and implacable, to arrive and proclaim the lifting of a siege long forgotten in a war long lost.

  Fifteen years ago he left the hall at Winchester, flanked and guarded by the same yeomen he had once sworn into service and commanded as captain; until the new King, wisely, replaced them with men of his own. Left the hall, already a dead man by law, but, behind his proud composure, feeling almost drunk with joy. As if by magic his youth and strength—and he was past his prime then—had been restored to him. The crowd made way, stood aside and stared in awe and honor. He might have been a victorious conqueror at the head of his army.

  But that was the folly, the delusion of his feelings. A young soldier’s intoxicated joy after a battle to find himself alive and whole. What if the field is strewn with the stiff and stinking corpses of comrades? He is alive. He is Ach
illes, the invulnerable. Nothing can touch or harm him, the world is new and beautiful. He would laugh out loud if it were not unseemly. Yet that crazed mood will pass before he has pulled off his muddy boots, and, alone, the young soldier will turn cold, sweat, tremble like an aspen leaf, and weep in secret for fallen comrades. And, out of pain and gusts of fear, he will weep for himself and a world gone gray with age. His tongue will turn dry and thin as a leaf in November. Gulping, gagging, he will hold up a bucket of ditchwater, water for horses, and drink it like nectar.…

  No longer young, he left the hall in youth and had not climbed three steps of the steep twisty way to the top cell of the ancient tower of Wolversey before age bent him with a cudgel blow and every bruise he had earned in a lifetime was new, each scar itched like a healing wound. Gagged then, but did not puke in the presence of comrades, his guards. Stumbled on the third step as the stiffness of his leg, the crippling wound from Cadiz, made him wince.

  A heavy hand, firm and hard, helped him keep his balance. A rough beard brushing his ear, whisper of words, hoarse whisper.

  “Easy now, Captain. ’Tis a high climb to the top and no hurry. Let’s all go slow and save sweat.”

  Steep and round and around to that topmost cell. Wondering why the King would want him there with a bird’s-eye view of the castle yard and all coming and going. For a safety? He could be secure and out of sight and seeing in the darkness, dank straw, and excremental stink of a lower dungeon. Wondering what the King had in mind by having him placed in adequate comfort with clean air and as much light as autumn could give any place there, with windows where he could see as far as the light allowed. And would be seen.