Death of the Fox

by George Garrett

  Food, wine, idle divertissement of objects. Some artless tricks of talk, harmless as the sleight of hands with a coin. The fanlike flutter of polite, formal flirtation. All might serve for prologue. But the soul of the scene—a scene where there were neither ghosts nor confused alarms, no flags or brawls, not music or grand processions, no leaps and skips and hops halfway across the wide world, and no merciful swift passages of time by the wishing and saying—a scene to be played in a chamber to a rhythm of time as unhurried as the path of a snail in a dew sprinkled summer garden, the soul of the scene would be found in its discourse. Not so much in the words as behind the words, unspoken words within words. Which words he must use to be like the wind to blow the three of them safely to harbor. But it must not seem to be he who, cheeks bulging like a trumpeter’s at the corner of a chart, huffed and puffed them home. He must, rather, be the wind while seeming also to be blown by it. And they, meanwhile, each separately, must imagine themselves to be the source of the fair breeze that filled their own sails. Each separately must follow the invisible lines of a course of his plotting, arriving at last at the calm harbor of his choosing. All the while imagining it was there they had intended to arrive and drop anchor from the first.…

  Mary, knowing by rote the ways of English country life. Not wishing to hear more of that. Being ripe, poised to scramble, crawl like a cat (claw if need be), for any tossed coins, no matter how base their value, if they came from Court.

  Against which Bess, trained to the Court, and once upon a time, time which has never yet dimmed for her, as close to the center as can be. And without least weight of anxious ambition. Save to be prompt and cheerful and modest in her service to the Queen. To listen when the Queen desired to indulge herself in woman’s chatter. To be entertaining when it pleased the Queen to be entertained. To be decorative, yet decently inferior, when it suited Her Majesty to be set off by her maids of honor. To be one of a ring of jewels, lesser stones set around the one perfect-cut, flawless diamond.

  To do these things, which she had done well.

  And above all, to be faithful. Which she had not been. Never planning to be a country wife.

  Who had done well enough her wifely duties, the endless management of servants, care of everything from rushes on floors to next winter’s larder, from the planting of kitchen garden and herbs to the making of soap and dye, of ale, cordials, perfumes, and medicines. Who must minister to the sick and keep the healthy happy and well fed. To manage and direct more affairs each day than any sea captain, and all the while maintaining an ease and grace as if the doing were no chore at all. To be ever ready to smile upon gentlemen and ladies, coming and going; to be idle and merry with them at table; to make music on the virginal or the lute or in the singing, as if the mastery of these arts were no more trouble than the pulling on of a glove. In quiet hours to lead her own ladies and servants in works of sewing, embroidery, and needlepoint, by example, while, perhaps, someone read to them from a proper and properly tedious book.…

  Bess having escaped from that when she came to Court to serve the Queen, then finding herself forced to return to the life of a country lady.

  As in some child’s fairy tale, the Queen had punished her most exactly for breach of faith. Bess, like some princess set to spinning and spinning in a tower, her time made more difficult to bear because there was always hope in her heart that she would be forgiven.

  Yet because there was always hope, banishment would be bearable. For Bess could always reassure herself that she was a mere actor, playing the role of country wife, and that one day, any day now, it would end. Which hope gave her the freedom to play her role well.

  And Ralegh was properly punished by the Queen by the same token, the more so when she again restored him his old station. For it was to him alone that Bess could turn to whisper complaints from her pillow coverlet. And he must reassure her, restore her hopes and false dreams, knowing them to be hopeless, for the sake of domestic peace.

  As if the Queen had openly said to him: So, Oracle, you would steal a fair rose from my garden. Well, then, welcome to it. Keep it with my blessings, being ever mindful that the thorns outlast bloom.

  Left to his choices at this supper he might have wished to talk of the pleasures of country life, hunting and hawking, planting and harvesting, glory and sadness of the turning seasons of an English year. Pleasures and sorrows of a life as old as time in this changing world and likely to change little while kingdoms rose and fell. Not Edmund Spenser’s allegorical pastoral vision. Nor Marlowe’s painted picture which would turn country life into a masque. Yet something of both, together with the cry of the cuckoo in May and the sweat and weariness of a long day in the saddle, and of the unhooded falcon freed from wrist and climbing into a clear sky to fly in wide circles and dwindling music of its bells and to fall like a thunderbolt upon its prey.

  And damp and smoky winter nights by a fire. A good book to read or a game of cards with friends. Nuts and dry fruit to nibble. Smoky ale to drink.…

  It was a fable. He had chafed against the country, even as he relished its pleasures.

  Thomas would not have heard a word of it. One place is the same as another to him.

  Both ladies would wish to hear of the Court: one who has imagined it, the other who lived there, then spent years there in memory and in hope.

  But above all and most deeply (and here he must gag his own feelings) he was concerned in love for Bess. For whom sorrows had multiplied. Concerned not that all sorrows could be lifted from her, but that she should continue to have the strength to bear them. Which she in truth possesses in full measure. But, a woman, she must be reminded of this, must be told that in his eyes she has shown fortitude and patience. And that against those virtues, her little follies, her complaints against the hundred darts of petty misfortune, weigh less than the downy tail feathers of a tame duck.

  Her need now was to be reminded, though it be for the hundred hundredth time, how he had loved her young, loved her well and lusty then; yet loved her still and more so because of those things which time cannot deface. Yet never implying that to this day he does not see her as he had in that first lusty light. And not to suggest, even as compliment, that she had not shown and he had not known even then the fine glow of her inner character. This last a respectful bow to the vanity of a woman whose vanity, in truth, is no more of her than the paint on her face, whose modesty is as much of her nature as her bones.

  He had known nothing of her nature or her character then. Had taken her, as he had taken others, with no more thought than a ram tupping a ewe. Had taken her to be, like the others, more witch than woman, able to offer much harm and no good. When she swelled with his seed, he had taken her to be his lawful wife.

  Later came to know her and to love her.

  He could disregard Thomas for the time. Neither harm nor help from him until his belly rebelled and surrendered to satiety.

  Wonderful wasted hours at playhouses might be summoned up to serve him.

  John Lily was no help. His people were beautiful, but moonlight for blood. And there’s no moon tonight.

  Kit Marlowe would not have troubled to write this scene at all, not for love or money, unless it were indeed Balthazar’s feast and could end with all the clamor and fury and rapine of the invading army. Kit must have a mighty subject for his grand, surprising lines. He had been the most gifted of them all. But had never trusted enough the power and magic of a simple wooden stage.

  To be truthful Kit had not lived long enough to refine his gift. Dead in a Deptford tavern brawl. Murdered by one of Whitgift’s agents. And all of it—as always in these things—obscure, a tangle. It was part and parcel, though, of the same shadows they had raised against himself, the charge of atheism and “the school of night,” etc. But he and the others were safe in the knowledge—even in disfavor with the Queen—that the Queen would not permit them to be touched. So they touched one and killed him, poor Kit Marlowe, who, a gentleman and proud, would stand
behind no man for safety. And the truth of it so tangled that even when he returned to favor, Ralegh could do nothing to right the wrong. But the memory of it lies heavy in him to this night. For he must believe Marlowe was killed—because he was vulnerable—as a warning to himself and Northumberland and the others, even Thomas here, all of whom were safe. No point in warning them. And the greatest waste to kill a poet who could have brought much honor to England.

  Once, in those days, William Shakespeare might have made such a scene, though it would have to be set in some distant and improbable kingdom. Swift, quick-handed, he could have pulled amazing toys from a fulsome peddler’s pack. Concealing all brevity, all rude and rough places, behind a rainbow of words. Leaping past dumb silences with laughter. Would light upon the scene like a new-made butterfly, passing on to the next. Might have tried it and done it with facility once. But not for this age when tastes have changed.

  Maybe Ben Jonson could do it, would do it now if the price was right. And he would set them where they are, the gatehouse of Westminster, and call it by name. Would have them speaking much like themselves, too.

  But Ben, for all the humors of his comedy, would not let the scene be comic if he knew what the end must be. Ben’s a poet, true, and a bricklayer, soldier, and scholar. The latter by hard labor. But he will not mix laughter and tears. Honest artificer, he hates to cut against the grain of the wood.

  If there are to be tears (says Ben) then let them flow, and let them be noble tears. Make sweet Bess, pretty Mary, hungry Thomas, and weary Walter Ralegh into four noble Romans. Set them upon the ancient, honorable pedestals of gravitas and pietas. Let them speak in well-laid verses with the measured sonority of Seneca.

  And let them keep talking till the world falls asleep.

  None of these poets could write the part for him now. But as these poets never refrained from nipping and foisting from the living and the dead, especially each other, so he would as lief cut their purses to take whatever he could use.

  The picture of himself cutting their purses—Marlowe indifferent, he’ll cut someone else’s; Jonson outraged, ready to brawl; Shakespeare in anguish, echoing Job’s lamentations—made him laugh out loud at table.

  “What makes you so merry?” Bess asked.

  “I was recollecting afternoons at the playhouse long ago.”

  “I have often thought Wat would have been happiest as a common player,” Bess said. “In his youth he spent more time at the playhouse than in church.”

  “I have not yet seen a stage play in London,” Mary said.

  “You must go there for moral instruction,” Ralegh said. “You can hear more good sermons at Bankside than St. Paul’s Cross.”

  “The girl won’t go to hear sermons,” Thomas said. “What became of your good Canary?”

  “I am sorry to tell you, Thomas, I drank it all. With some help from my servants.”

  “Well, the clary is not bad, if that fellow will fill my glass.…”

  No one to write a scene for him. He must seize the subject by the ears. Ride on it like an ass. Summon up time and tide of youth. Waken Bess’s memory of happy times, yet not to wound her. Delight the girl, but glut her hungers as he fed imagination’s fuel.

  Turning to paradox instead of the proud jog and trot of poetry.

  Began then:

  To converse upon shining but not to ask where are all the silks and brave things we loved

  To rejoice in fragile delicate intricate pleasures shimmering like spiders’ webs in light and air

  To feed as once we fed on pure light and air like magical chameleons like Indian orchid flowers

  No mention how we fed upon each other like cannibals until we were consumed by our own appetites

  Call up beautiful brief daylong dream life of an April butterfly and song of the summer nightingale in velvet dark

  Not say how silence wounds when song has dwindled and died

  Celebrate stage plays and masques and triumphs and pageants and progresses by land and water

  arrivals and departures and ceremonies and orations and songs and speeches and trumpets and cheering crowds

  Not to ask who can remember now the words of last year’s player kings and player queens or all the brave deeds of the playing-card knaves

  Not needing to recall that the ending of each progress was a mock funeral all draped in black and mourning

  that each arrival prefigures a departure

  that triumphal arches are torn down and where conduits flowed wine by miracle is water again

  To praise costumes and clothing and to bathe the bodies of the dead and of our dead youth again in silks and satins and furs and gold chains and jewels

  Not reminding what moth and rust and rot have spared can now be seen on the faded costume of a child’s doll

  or that the finest of those jewels are worn by strangers

  To speak of clothing and so to call up nakedness

  an old man made of dry sticks flesh of dry figs

  from that unspoken emblem call forth the grin of the skull in the dark

  How in dark no man can tell white mare of a Court lady from Southwark whore

  To celebrate triumph and pomp and glory of the world in shared memory of happy times

  Not to ask where haunts felicity now

  Better seek to recover the song of summer’s nightingale

  More likely to live off the fruit of a cypress tree or scour a blackamoor clean as milk

  than find consolation in things which once consoled

  Bess through memory to make her smile and forget woes

  For the girl a solace imagining while she is spared the loss of what she has never known

  For Thomas the memory of talk more heady than wine and nights when stars moved with precision to his new-found laws

  For himself some solace in pleasing them all and forgetting himself in present and future

  Some solace in knowledge that the emblem of fame clad in gown of burning tongues is false

  Those tongues burn with a fire of lies

  Music is solace but silence is consolation

  To celebrate the glory of the summer nightingale

  To rejoice in the triumph of silence

  To wake an old dream out of memory

  To remember the joys of dreamless sleep

  “But if you live to be a hundred, I shall be very old and ugly,” Bess is saying.

  “My eyes will be weak and my touch will be fine enough to distinguish flame from ice. If you are tough-skinned as old leather and have more lines than a pilot’s chart, I’ll never know it. I’ll close my eyes and imagine you are young and smooth as ever. As much milk and honey as your cousin there.”

  “You can never make a compliment without being satiric.”

  “I would change my ways for you if I could, Bess. But I fear I am too old.”

  “I’ll wager you never spoke in such a teasing fashion to the Queen.”

  “You can be sure of that, Bess.”

  “Then why to me? You loved the Queen and I think she loved you well enough.”

  “Perhaps …”

  The chimes of the clock ring and the bells begin to toll midnight. Unable to speak against the tolling, he lowers his lids a little to study her. At last she is—perhaps it is the wine-most deeply serious. Which must not be.

  “It is true,” he says, “I loved our Queen. But I took you, Bess Throckmorton, for my wife. And that was the wisest thing I ever did. I shall say the same thing in my hundredth year.”

  Bess smiles again. “Do not take credit for the actions of others.”

  “Why, what do you mean by that?”

  “It was I who chose you, Wat, and long before you knew it.”

  “Well, then, I thank you for it. And I thank God.”

  Noise below. A cry from the guards. Sound of horses and a squeaking coach.

  “Our kinsman Sir Nicholas Carew has sent his coach to fetch us home again.”

  “You must thank him for m
e. And tell him the wheels of his fancy coach need grease.”

  Rising, gathering together of things, brief preparations at the looking glass.

  And here is a servant, sleepy-eyed, with their dry cloaks.

  “Ladies,” says Thomas Hariot, standing by the window, “it appears Sir Nicholas has half a squadron of mounted men to see you home. With your permission I shall remain and smoke another pipe before I leave.”

  “How will you go?”

  “A walk will clear my head.”

  “In the night?”

  “Lady Bess, nobody will rob a scholar by daylight or dark. Every rogue in London and Westminster knows me for what I am—a daft fellow with an empty purse.”

  “Lend him a sword and pistol, Wat.”

  “I would, if I had either.”

  “No need,” Thomas says quickly, even before Bess can regret her mistake. “I have a fine old rusty blade I left with the guard below. It will not slice butter or wound a mouse, but it is something terrifying to behold.”

  The two ladies, cloaked against the weather, are ready now. He bids farewell to fair Mary.

  “Remember, I will have my pearl back and a kiss to boot at dinner.”

  She does her little curtsy; her swelling breasts making the same sweet promise as before. And she descends the stairs.

  Thomas is at the fireplace staring into the fire.

  Ralegh stands a moment by the open door, smiling, holding Bess’s hands.

  “Pray for me if it will make you sleep better,” he says. “And then sleep well.”

  “There is something I did not tell you, Wat. I have received a note from Council saying I have permission to bury your body.”

  The smile does not waver as he bends down close to kiss her.

  “It is well, dear Bess, that you may dispose of it dead,” he says. “You did not always have the disposing of it alive.”

  She starts as if to answer something, but as always, there is no answer to his irony, even when it is gentle and loving. So she smiles and shakes her head. Then turns away quickly so that he will not see her eyes fill up with tears.

  He thinks he will call after her, say something more, give her the letter for the boy. But he watches the back of her hooded head disappear down the stairs.