Death of the Fox

by George Garrett

  I take it Job did not end his days in sackcloth and ashes to commemorate his sufferings.

  As the old Fathers, reading the text of the world, did find some signification in each separate thing, each bird and beast, leaf and bole, the quiet stone and the crawling slug worms beneath it, until all of Creation, every grain of sand and blade of grass, became a living dictionary of the enigmatic language of eternity, so it is, by simulation, with things made by art and craft of man. Which, however carved or melted and alloyed, beaten, wrought, twisted into cunning and curious shapes, gilded and painted and polished, retain their original character and essence.

  Our imitations are celebrations of Creation. All that we have made or ever will make until time ends is proof that Creation is inimitable. Never before my lifetime in England had there been such music of all kinds to hear. Strangers called us the most musical people in the world. Whatever they meant by that, good or ill, I take it for a sign that our age was singing a new song.

  Nevertheless there is a sense in which our music was enchanting and delusive; for none of us were angels.

  This show, this masque for all to behold was (and remains in present memory) a digression, a diversion from the changeless naked truth of a man alone with himself and the eternal verities, the laws and theorems of change, which say to a man in possession of his mind that as in the life of a man, as in the seasons of a year, as in the times of a day, from dark to dark, so goes it with all things. With every tick of the clock the world grows older; and the finest chimes toll the death knell of another hour.

  Right reason will teach even an ignorant savage that there can be nothing truly new under the sun.

  Though strange men should descend upon us from unknown places as far as the moon, coming in flying ships and chariots, yet upon the breathless, wondrous moment of their arrival they should become our equals; and all of us would be subject to the same immutable laws of the world’s mutability.

  There is nothing new, undreamt of, under the sun. What is under the sun comes under the power and majesty of Nature’s laws, the sentence of which is continual change and decay.

  If Providence has ordained for this kingdom or the common kingdom of the earth another thousand years to live, yet shall the earth be no better then, merely one thousand years older than it is now.

  Meaning, my son, that the world cannot truly be renewed or restored. To stumble upon Eden now would be to discover that hallowed plot of ground is no younger than the yard beyond my windows here.

  Yet, you will say, do we not have springtime every year, do we not see how the earth brings forth harvest in fall? Just so. Yet in all seasons, as in the life of man or the span of one day, all things grow and bloom in the sun and then go to darkness and cold. Our harvest here is winter, though the brave shows of springtime do always revive us.

  A world continually revived, but never renewed or restored.

  To the preachers who gloss the world, all our springtimes are similitudes and betoken, by their marvels, the marvel of eternal life, changeless and timeless. Revealing by these signs, as Holy Scripture does with words and signs, how out of death comes quickness, that if a man die, he shall live again.

  And we can believe it to be so, holding firm to faith against the whispering witnesses of disbelief.

  To the man of the world, pagan or skeptic, who will gloss the events of the world for the world’s meaning, if he think deeply and truly, he will not look for any renewal or restoration. Which he can plainly see can never be. But rather he shall see that the law of Nature and the world is made with some wit and, as well, the craft of some juggler whose hands are quicker than eyes. It is the law of the world that we shall be revived, given occasion and courage to endure yet another turning of the seasons. Stoic, epicure, or cynic, he will find his solace in this truth, whether it be bitter or sweet to him.

  The world deceives us, by this measure, though we remain free to deceive ourselves or no.

  What then of this old age of beautiful things, the things made by and for man from the stuffs of the world? The pagan poets and philosophers, perceiving that the world can only grow older in time, divided all time into four ages, each of a baser metal than the last. And there is much truth in the figure. Yet it can never be truly apt while the world still lives. For if the history of man has its ages like the seasons, then, like the seasons, they must turn and return, be revived as well.

  If my speculations have any truth, it lies in this: that we saw everything, except these things, while we floated on that time. I imagined a past too shabby to be remembered. And I believed I had succeeded in relinquishing all claims upon the future and was therefore free of it.

  We lived in a false garden, forever new and changing. Of our own devising and the Queen’s. A time of color and wonder in England from which even the poorest and most humble were not quite forbidden or spared. They crowded the gates and witnessed it too.

  Time was as the tides of the river for us. We rode it, floated upon it like the Queen’s barge. Her barge was a glorious thing with gleaming brightwork, awnings of cloth of gold, silken pillows and lacquered oars, and it was pulled steady and skilled by a crew in royal livery. Her barge moved down the river, fireworks fountaining explosions overhead, kettledrums beating, trumpets sounding proud and clear across the water. Her barge in moonlight, riding the Thames, that is a proper figure for our time.

  And now that time seems to have been brief. And now that lost world seems idle and foolish. I could curse it for a false, illusory, chimerical, bewitched, enchanted lifetime. I could easily curse myself and my wasted days.

  Except …

  Except where I sit now I can still hear the faint lost echoes of the music, the broken consort that we danced to.

  Except I can close my eyes and call up balmy spring evenings, light moon gilding roofs and spires and gables and towers in London and casting coins on the river. Moonlight on the river, where, smooth as in a dream, torchlit, brilliant, fireworks making new stars in heaven, the far pure call of trumpet and the kettledrums like distant thunder, there (behold!) comes her barge—and ours.…

  All memory is vain and foolish and all history compounded of many memories, therefore all the more vain and foolish. Yet a man could do worse than to remember such times.

  True or false, it was a glorious springtime. True and false, the joys of springtime are sweet to know and sweeter to remember.

  I am able to relinquish them now, but not without regrets.…

  Quite suddenly Ralegh discovers that the afternoon is almost spent. There is a faint intimation of distant sunset. The ship’s glass on his table has run out unnoticed.

  He must hasten to finish a letter he has not yet really begun. All he has managed so far is prologue.…

  He feels a chill and sees that the fire has dwindled to dying ashes.

  Calls curtly to the servant. Who makes apology and goes to fetch more wood.

  Ralegh fears that chill. He fears that his fever and ague will return. Will make him tremble on the scaffold. If he must mount it in the morning …

  Ague or not, he must not tremble, lest enemies take comfort and friends should be ashamed.

  Irritation, a single fear, and one deep concern. Concern how to bring this letter to an end, properly and evenly, so that it will work no harm on the child. Concern that no conclusion can save it or spare the boy. Concern that, like any witness for himself, even the guilty in confession of guilt, he has portrayed himself in a flattering false light.

  Perhaps he should not leave the letter at all. Leave the boy to his mother’s loving care and the love of God.

  Perhaps he should give it to Bess and let her hold it until she judges him of an age to read it. Yet then she must read it herself. It could wound her more deeply than the child.

  He cannot ask Bess not to read it.

  Dear Bess, forever curious as puppy or magpie, she could never leave a sealed letter alone. If she promised, she would have to break that promise or have maggots
on her brain. Better she should break the promise than try to exercise restraint and go half Bedlam. But if she breaks a last promise, dear Bess, good woman, she will make a giant of her guilt; then make a masque of her contrition. Spare her that. Spare me the thought of it.

  Let the dying ask few things of the living. The dead can be remembered and sometimes honored, but are beyond credit and debts.

  The servant returns and stoops to build up the flames with new logs. Ralegh rises, speaks to him more kindly and gains a smile in return. It does not matter, but he would hate to cause him sorrow for his failure to keep a fire alive on a man’s last day.

  Or is it that at all? Is it not, just as likely, more vanity? He does not wish this man, not quite a stranger, but not truly known, to remember him in any way but kindly. Perhaps …

  If so, pure folly. The man has a life to live. If lucky, he will serve another, stoop and build up the fires of another master and forget this one as easily as he shrugs off his bad dreams. Forget the first master as a dog does, and be happy, almost as happy as a dog can be. It would be better, less vain, more honorable to encourage the man to enjoy what may happen. Making it easy to forget this afternoon.

  Thinking: Once when I was Captain of the Guard I saw a man who was about to be hanged curse his wife and children and even give his dog a stout kick in the ribs at the foot of the gallows. And the dog flew tail over head and howling into the crowd. And the crowd hated him for it and jeered and threw stones and rubbish. Even the hangman, who is too often the only charitable soul present at an execution, seemed to be angry. And the wretch refused to pray in public. When he was asked if he had any last words to say, he first cursed them one and all and damned their eyes. And then, as if to settle accounts, he said this: “My mother always said I would die with my boots on. So I now give her the lie!” Wherewith he pulled off his boots and threw them away into the crowd before he swung.…

  The man was not only courageous, he was almost chivalric.

  A dying man should leave no one saddled with his memory.

  But having come this far, figuring his final vanities to be beyond cure while he lives, he must try to finish the letter. Holds his hands over the fire. Rubs them and flexes his long, stiffened fingers.

  “There it is now, sir.”

  Looks to see his man standing at the window.

  “What is that?”

  “The sky is clearing, sir. And I can see the first star.”

  “May it give you good fortune,” Ralegh says, “and bring us a clear day tomorrow.”

  “An’ it please you, sir.”

  The servant leaves the chamber.

  Now Ralegh stands at the window observing. True enough, the first jewel in the night sky, bright even though the day’s light is not entirely gone. The last faint sign of sun is subtle, pure as the first flecks of ripeness on the skin of a peach.

  What a color that would be to wear! A young and joyous color, the color of promises. He would wear it, if he could, and cut a fine figure on Lord Mayor’s Day.

  But on this day, seeing the sun dwindle, he must not imagine sunsets, but the sunrise of a morning world. For to think again of his son, to wrestle with words and to finish speaking to him, he must write literally by renewed firelight and candlelight, write from a sense of sunset, bearing always in mind, in imagination, the vision of remembered dawns.

  He moves back to the table to sit and write again. To write swift and hurried. Time has claimed his consciousness. He is enthralled by dying light, by the chimes of Westminster’s clock, and dim tones from the porter’s lodge below—tones like birdsong (perhaps the porter’s wife keeps caged birds in imitation of her husband)—unseen, as if in bush, copse, hedge, or tree, sudden and strange.

  Time is a hard sound of hooves on a dry road in summer.…

  He’s young and poor again. Off from London to Oxford with a lifetime before him, and all the world’s a dusty unread volume.

  Hears a drumming sound, sudden and loud and near behind him. Leaps aside, staggers, falls into the ditch. Looks up (a head full of pinwheels) to see, huge and flecked with sweat and lather, leather flapping, glint and shine of bit and snaffle, spur and stirrup, eyes rolling, horse and armed rider, lean as a shadow or ghost; armed rider and galloping horse, dust-powdered, magnificent, huge against a turning sky (for he lies still in the ditch where he has fallen), as once the horse and the conquistador in shine of armor must have seemed, no, they were, in his dreams.

  Sound on the hard-packed, sun-dried road as of distant drummers; a puff of dust like far cannon; a breathless leaping for life. And out of dust emerging, tall as trees or masts or towers, that lean apparitional rider and horse; here and then gone forever into the roil, an arras of dust.

  He rising from the ditch, brushing his clothing, touching a stiffness which will soon be a bruise, and the dust still falling, fine as a cloud until he can see only dust, breathe only dust. The Sandman dusting his five senses to the sleep and dreams of a child.

  “Even so is time …”

  He bends and writes quickly, a hasty scribbling. Hoping perhaps this last will mean something to the boy. May salvage some portion of a father’s good intentions.

  Day is dying.

  Bells call over London and Westminster to announce the triumph of time.

  Feel of slick slender quill in my fingers. Color of ink and whiteness of paper. Color of fire and candles. From below muffled voices, odors of cooking in gatehouse kitchen. Footsteps, horse hooves, a slow walking below the window. Flicker of passing torchlight. Feel of rough wood at tips of fingers. Faint odor of last wine, dregs in silver cup. Light film of taste of wine on my tongue. Scratch and rustle, light as hems of silk on stone floor—pen point on page …

  I am awake and alert. I wait the arrival of my wife, your mother.

  My son, be kind and loving to her. Once she wore cloak and mantle of beauty as fine as any you will ever live to see. She has suffered much and known many disappointments, but out of fires has come refined into that most precious thing—a true and good woman.

  She shall have the cloak and mantle of all my mortal love and I pray God the memory of it shall be solace to her while she lives.

  I’m awake and alert again.

  I have lived long and never been more alive.

  Day of St. Simon and St. Jude draws to close.

  Music of this world dies and we dance on all, all, and each to echo and memory.

  Old and mysterious saints, Simon and Jude.

  Simon called the Zealous, so not to confuse him with Simon Peter.

  Jude so-called to distinguish him, faceless as he is, and also by St. Mark once called Thaddaeus—a great-chested, stouthearted man.

  Martyred in far Persia, which I have never seen except on a map and by words of travelers.

  I choose to believe it is there.

  St. Jude who asked the question (which has no answer) of our Lord at the Last Supper: “Lord, how comes it Thou will only reveal Thyself to us and not to all the world?”

  St. Simon patron invoked in desperate causes and cases.

  St. Simon, bless me. Bless mother and son.

  English proverb says drowning man will catch a twig. So be it. St. Simon, bless us three, father and mother and son.

  In peril, as all who live must live in danger always, I turn to Scripture for the Festivals of all Martyred Saints.

  To find first Job. Whose tribulations were great. But he bore them.

  Job who out of suffering speaks to us here and now. Remember the words of God’s good servant, Job. They may lift or shame you into that solace which is peace beyond understanding.

  “Oh, that my words were now written, that they were printed in a book!” Job saith to us. “That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. Though after my skin shall worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behol
d, and not any other, though all things shall be consumed within me.”

  Gospel lies in Luke in sixth chapter, where our Lord preaches beatitudes.

  Terrible beauty and truth of.

  Love that beauty, paradoxes of blessings and curses on the world.

  Let us remember together.

  “Judge not and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and ye shall not be condemned. Forgive and you shall be forgiven.”

  I shall pray for you later tonight, my son, and in the morning. When you read this later, I ask your prayers as well. Pray for me. Pray for your dead brothers, Wat and Damerei. Pray health and peace for your mother.

  Pray for the dead and leave them to the Lord.

  For the world, I leave you a small inheritance and less wisdom.

  Do not think much on my own guilt or innocence or the justice of the world. Live and think only that justice is in the world. Believe that.

  Small wisdom and that only in old words. Words no more than sweet comfits to lighten the taste of dust on the tongue.

  Nothing stings like the serpent. No pain greater. Bear it.

  If a bush should burn and the flames cry out, bow down.

  If ever a stranger wrestle you, do not let go until you learn his name.

  If after long voyages, tossing and fever, you find a new continent, plant your flags proudly. Stand tall. Send forth a dove.

  Rarely the fruit you reach for shall return your love.

  Written in love and for the sake of the fellowship that time has denied us, upon this holy feast day in the gatehouse of Westminster, year of our Lord 1618.…

  Walter Ralegh, Knt.

  The thirsting Tantalus doth catch at streames that from him flee.

  Why laughest thou? the name but changed, the tale is told of thee.

  RALEGH—Translation from Horace

  Bess Ralegh does not come to Westminster alone. Cramped in the coach with her are Thomas Hariot and a woman, a Throckmorton cousin named Mary, come to London not long ago from the village of Weston Underwood in Buckinghamshire. Mary is a tall and handsome young woman, as tall as Bess, and possesses everything she needs to win at the world’s game except a proper dowry.