The Triple Goddess (31 page)

‘Percy and I and Grammaticus wrapped Papa’s head and body in a rug and bore “the bits”, as he referred to them afterwards, back to the Bloody tower, which we’d been allowed to retain access to for a few days to sort out father’s effects. We laid him out preparatory to winding him in his burial sheet later, I spoke a few prayers, and we observed some moments of quiet over the body.

‘After we retired to the drawing-room, Grammaticus answered the door to a messenger with a lawyer’s letter to the effect that my mother, Bess, had applied for and been granted permission by King James to remove my father’s furniture, tapestries, and belongings from the apartment. Having endured so many years of her husband’s profligacy with her inheritance, my mother wanted everything back, and was putting us on notice that she would be coming round the next day with a bunch of her girlfriends to make an inventory before sending in the removal men.

‘In the meantime nothing was to be touched. I imagined my mother ordering in mutton pies for her helpers and crew, instead of pizza as the tradition now is when people move house.

‘Oddly enough I wasn’t surprised when Papa walked in, as it were,
capitally
restored—there wasn’t even a scar—and demanded a linctus for his throat. Since Grammaticus had fainted on the couch, I went to pour him a glass of Rhenish wine. When Henry Percy returned from gulping air at the window he announced that my mother was arriving, we presumed to gloat over the corpse, because he said she was holding the red leather bag that she had told everyone she would be carrying her husband’s head around in.

‘The Wiz further said it was clear that Bess and her female entourage were rampaging drunk: my mother was rarely to be seen without a large neat Hollands Geneva—that’s modern-day gin—in one hand, and a cigarrito in the other.

‘Because we were concerned that, upon discovering Sir Walter miraculously back in the land of the living, they would do their best to finish him off for good by chopping him into many smaller pieces, we locked the door top and bottom against them. Also, that Sir Walter Ralegh had survived his execution had to be kept from becoming public knowledge. King James was terrified of sorcery and magic, and would have created an awful stink if he’d found out and in all likelihood persecute me and anyone who had been part of my father’s circle.

‘It didn’t take long for the Earl to conclude it was the Balsam of Guiana, the Great Cordial, that was responsible, and that in all likelihood the five of us—Papa, Bess, the Earl, Grammaticus, and I—would live on and on irrespective of whatever afflictions or accidents should assail or befall us.

‘The Wiz, who to his everlasting professional annoyance had no hand in concocting the Cordial, has made it his personal mission to discover its secret, pursuing mathematical rather than chemical methods, and die in the successful attempt…by which I mean that he has dedicated himself to finding a means of purging the bane, if poison it is, of our existences from our systems--though that would be for each of us to decide on an elective basis person by person.

‘All Papa wants from life now is to die his long-overdue death. Like his incomplete
History of the World
he feels unfinished, and that an open-ended fate is punishment for a lifetime of selfishness and failure. As often as I assure him that his person and achievements have remained famous throughout the ages, he continues to be traumatized and rebuffs every attempt I make to console him. Ironically he quotes his own words from the
History
:

‘

“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, though hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two words,
Hic jacet
. [Here lies.]”

’

Carew paused. ‘You haven’t asked about Wat and Arbella Stuart, and the relationship between them.’ Carew gave Arbella another insightful look. ‘It was very real, you know.’

Arbella discovered that she was capable of blushing. ‘No. I don’t know, it seems, even centuries later, a very private matter. I think also that I’m a little afraid to know the truth. Isn’t that silly?, as if it could have anything to do with me.’ She gave a nervous giggle, which was another novelty, and wondered at how it was possible to betray an emotion that she hardly knew was within her.

Carew appeared not to notice her discomfort. ‘It was the realization that he couldn’t compete for her against the likes of the privileged and educated William Seymour, that made Wat throw himself into adventuring with my father, and to take so little heed for his safety. Wat was miserable that he had been too shy to articulate his love, before Arbella became the focus of so much attention at Court and it seemed that there were only the two of them in the world. They had danced together and been physically close only once, Wat confided in me, before the world cut in and separated them for ever.’

Arbella bit her lip and kept her expression as neutral as she could. ‘Of course, that story,’ she said, keeping her voice as clinical as possible, ‘about Arbella Stuart giving herself up in Calais Roads when she was being pursued, just as she was about to land in France, was a fabrication. It was put about that, when she was told her husband-to-be had been arrested and would not be able to follow her into exile, she aborted her plans in favour of returning to England. The conspirators against the King, who were using Arbella Stuart as a figurehead for their cause, made that version up to emphasize her commitment to the Catholic cause and her loyalty to her country.

‘The truth was that she was still on the ship and unable to receive any news.’

Carew nodded. ‘Although Lady Arbella knew that there was no future for her in France, she was pining for the simple life that she used to lead, and wanted to disappear and resume a normal existence. She mourned Wat and missed him as much as my father did.

‘She was a brave lass, and it was very sad that she ended her days in the Tower. Her husband went on to be pardoned by James and achieve great preferment, being showered with titles during the remaining fifty years of his life.

‘You shall be interested to know that the Lieutenant of the Tower allowed my father and Arbella to meet in private, at night after the Ceremony of the Keys. In doing so the Lieutenant was taking a great risk, for if one of the Yeomen Warders had sneaked and the information came to the ears of someone at Court, the Lieutenant would have found himself an inmate of the Tower, and a very short-term one.

‘Papa has never said anything to me about what he and Arbella talked about; but once, while he was in his bedchamber, I saw a couple of sheets of paper on the floor in the main room that had fallen from the desk.

‘When I picked them up to put them back, I saw there was a poem on them, which I read. It was written in Wat’s hand, and the pages were bloodstained, which meant they had most likely been tucked inside his hauberk when he died.

‘Perhaps anticipating his end, and out of guilt at breaking the filament that connected him and Arbella throughout their separation since childhood, in the poem Wat transposes her death for his by casting himself as Orpheus, who of course legendarily lost the opportunity to reunite himself for ever with Eurydice by turning around to look at her, as he had undertaken not to do, before they were both out of Hades and back in the Upper World.’

‘Did you read the poem?’

‘Not only that, I committed it to memory and sent it to Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, who used the Italian lines in his collaboration with Gluck on the opera
Orfeo ed Eurydice
. Should you like to hear it?’

‘I would, very much.’

‘

Che farò senza Eurydice?

Dove andrò senza il mio ben?

[What will I do without Eurydice?

Where will I go without my love?]

There is no Muse can teach me

The skill to win my happiness again.

O dio! Rispondi!

Io son pure il tuo fedele.

[Oh god! Reply!

I am still thy faithful one.]

I mistook you for the sun

—Your light behind distracted me—

And I sent you back to Tartarus

This time unredeemably.

Ah! non m’avanza

Più soccorso, più speranza...

[Ah! There comes to me no

More help, no more hope…]

You were still in darkness,

Guided by my lyre…both of us

Aware there was no recourse,

No second chance, should I turn

To admire the beauty for which

I had pacified the Dog, charmed

The Ferryman, soothed the Judges

Of the Dead, and even had stern

Hades so disarmed that he desisted

From torturing the damned.

All I had to do was demonstrate

I was proof against enchantment…

I, who could entrance the wild beasts

With music…show I could remain aloof

Though I could cause the rocks and trees

To dance—gifts I owe

To Apollo, and Calliope the Muse.

But I turned before you reached

The Upper World, and, eager as I was,

My devotion cannot excuse

My losing your life

As its banner was unfurled.

Now I compare us to those ancient

Mountain oaks in Thrace,

Still standing as I left them

In the pattern of a dance:

You as you left me with love

In your shadowed face; and I

Eternally wrapped in your infinite glance.

’

There was a short silence before Carew resumed. ‘Now then, aren’t you brokers supposed to have business to place? If you’ve got a risk you want to show me, now would be the time.’

*

As they danced together, at some signal

In the light-scattered dark I noticed that

Their hands had discreetly changed position,

So that instead of clasping palm to palm

Their fingers were interlaced and locked.

His other arm was round her waist, and hers

Upon his shoulder; and, whilst their bodies

Were apart and not a word was exchanged

Over the beat of the music, they each

Gazed calmly into the distance, forward

Into some year of jubilee beyond

The ghosting faces and changing shapes,

Far into space beyond the lights that arced

Where they ran mute across the universe.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Caught off guard, Arbella knocked her slipcase off the box. Carew bent to pick it up and handed it back to her. In a daze she watched herself taking out Oink’s fishing fleet risk, opening it, turning it around and sliding it across the desk to him.

Immediately she wanted to snatch it away. It was not good enough for him, and she was certain that he would apologize, fold it up and return it to her with a pitying glance. Especially since her porcine boss, Oink, had taken the enormous liberty, like Clotworthy Blandblind’s tonner broker, of writing in the rate that he knew he could sell to the client, thereby maximizing Chandler Brothers’ brokerage commission.