A few days later the Bon Aventure was lying in the river Thames, and we
had no more than cast anchor when my lord put on his richest clothes,
and bidding me to attend him, went by water to the steps leading to the
Queen's palace of Westminster. I remember that the way took us past
Traitor's Gate, the low and threatening portals by which prisoners are
brought within the Tower. As we passed my lord looked at me with a sad
smile. "I shall go that way yet, Wat," he said. And when I burst into a
passionate protest, he said to me: "Why, Wat, if you could look upon the
company which hath passed by way of that gate, you would see it to be of
the finest. I shall not blush to tread in their footsteps." But I could
not believe it, looking upon him in his garb of peach-bloom velvet laced
with silver, and the jewels of a king's ransom; and yet alas! he spoke
too truly.
I remember when we were come to those stairs of Westminster how the
people pressed to look upon him, and shouted for him, and flung their
caps in the air. If he was not in favor at the court, certainly he
lacked not favor outside it.
Even within the palace the pages and the maids of honor peeped at him,
and many courtiers thronged to welcome him, and the scullions and grooms
of the chambers looked through windows and down staircases to see him
pass, so that to me it was as though the tapestry wavered with whispers
and eyes. As we waited for an audience we saw many great men pass, but
not one fit to stand beside my lord. Then came the Queen, a shrunk,
tall, high-boned woman, in a blaze of diamonds, the ruff standing about
her spare, pale head like a setting sun, so thick it was with jewels,
and her farthingale and petticoat making a prodigious circle about her.
She had green eyes, and they were cold, and coldly she gave her hand to
my lord to kiss.
She had called him back because Spain threatened; but now he was come
she could not forget her anger. That was for the old affair of Mistress
Throckmorton. I heard the pages whispering that day that she had not
forgiven him; and one, a pert, bright lad, who won my heart because he
was so eager to see and hear of the Great Captain, told me how my Lord
Essex had in likewise nearly forfeited the Queen's favor. For he had
admired upon the person of the Lady Mary Howard a farthingale of cloth
of gold, sewn with seed-pearls, the which coming to the Queen's ears she
had demanded the garment for herself, saying that no subject should go
finer than the Queen's Majesty. But having acquired it she discovered
herself to be too tall and too broad for it, so that it misbecame her
mightily. Whereupon she cast it aside so that none should wear it since
she could not.
Of the same palace I grew sick to death. How long were we kept waiting
about its corridors till the Queen's favor should veer towards us again.
It suited not with a country lad like myself; and as for my lord, his
face grew lined and he seldom smiled: so that often, often, I longed
that the old gardening days in Youghall were come again. Nor had he yet
seen his wife and son. At last he grew restive, and declared that
Devonshire air consorted better with his humor than the dank fogs that
spread at evening about Westminster. But ere he could be gone he was
committed to the Tower on the Queen's warrant. So, sooner than we dreamt
were we come to Traitor's Gate.
I went thither with him, and together we passed the low arch. There I
was permitted to be in attendance on him, and listened often to his
cries and groans, for he could not endure the imprisonment while there
were so many glorious things in the world to be done. Sometimes he would
solace himself with philosophy and poetry. But at times his fury would
break forth so that the governor of the Tower feared for him lest he
should go mad. He well described his own sufferings.
"I am become like a fish cast on dry land," he wrote, "gasping for
breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs."
Indeed there were times when it seemed as if he would die from being so
imprisoned and confined. Trust in the Queen's pity he had not.
"There is no chance for me now, Wat," he said once, "unless it be that
one of my captains should bring home a treasure-ship to pour into her
lap, which might buy my freedom if she conceived that by that means I
might find her more. For she loves gold as other women love love,
wherefore is her face become yellower than a guinea."
It was for some such saying, doubtless, the Queen had had him cast in
the Tower. He was not one to learn guile; and, like his rival, Essex, he
was over-brave in speech as in other things.
However, that happened that one of his captains did bring home a
treasure-ship. He had been in the Tower two months, and had worn the
stone floors with his pacing of them, more restless than the lion. The
folk came to stare at him in the courtyard without. Then word came to us
that his ships were in from the Azores and had brought with them the
Spanish plate-ship, the Madre di Dios, which they had captured from the
Dons. Half a million, a million, there was no end to the guineas she was
worth. She was lined with glowing, woven carpets, sarcenet quilts, and
lengths of white silks and cyprus. She carried, in chests of sandalwood
and ebony, such stores of rubies and pearls, such porcelain and ivory
and crystal, such planks of cinnamon, and such marvellous treasures as
had never before been seen. Her hold seemed like a garden of spices, so
laden was it with cloves, cinnamon, ambergris, and frankincense.
But even then the Queen was not minded to deliver him. His chief captain
came from the mouth of the Dart, where the ship lay, to bring him his
reports; but no message came from the Queen. However, his freeing was
taken out of her hands and came not a whit too soon, for he had aged ten
years in those two months. It seemed that the usurers and dealers in
precious metals in London had flocked to the Dart upon the news of the
treasure. And vagrants from all the winds flocked thither. And between
those vultures and my lord's own seamen and men of Devon there was soon
riot and bloodshed. Then, since all means of restoring the peace seemed
to have failed, at last they took my lord from the Tower that he might
make peace.
It seemed that half the world was about the treasure-ship, and my lord's
ships. There came to greet us at our journey's end that Lord Cecil of
whom I had heard so much. I trusted him not, and I was rejoiced that he
should see the passion of welcome which awaited my lord from his men of
Devon. It was well that it was so, for my Lord Cecil reported upon it to
the Queen.
"I assure you," he wrote, "all his servants and his mariners came to him
with such shouts of joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them
in all my life. But his heart is broken, and whenever he is saluted with
congratulation for liberty he doth answer, 'No, I am still the Queen of
England's poor captive.' But I vow to you his credit among the mariners
is greater than I could have thought it."
My Lord Cecil was well disposed to my lord, albeit his cunning eyes and
old, wise face made my youth feel of a sudden cold. The Queen harkened
to him, and we were returned no more to the Tower; yet those two months
of impatient fretting had set their mark upon my lord.
After this we sailed up the Dart to that Manor-house where the Lady
Raleigh dwelt with her son. And again there was a very sweet interval of
peace. I have now but to close my eyes and see again the red-brick ivied
house, with its chimney-stack dark against the sky. The swallows are
wheeling overhead, shouting and playing with one another. The rooks are
coming homeward across the evening sky. On the green and velvety bowling
green young Walter and I are playing at bowls. There are roses on the
terrace and a peacock spreading his tail. Below these is the garden with
its box borders, its roses and pinks and pansies; its fountain where the
goldfish swim round and round, and its mossy dial. Further yet is the
orchard, and beyond it the deer feeding amid the trees, and further
still the river, and apple-orchards, with maids and men a-gathering
apples for the cider brew. But I look not so far. My eye rests with my
heart upon my lord, when he goeth between the box-borders in sweet
converse with his lady-wife; and I watch him till young Walter rallies
me as a poor comrade and player at the game.
Often my lady would take me apart, and bid me tell her of my lord when
he was in Ireland. Of those years she was never tired of hearing; and
when my tongue or my thoughts would grow slack she would grow impatient
with me. Yet I think my love for her lord pleased her. She was a little
lady, and the brightest ever I saw, with cream-pale cheeks and the
liveliest of black eyes. I could not wonder that for a time she lulled
to sleep my lord's desires for America. Very pitiful she was towards the
havoc their long parting and the trouble and the imprisonment had
wrought in him, and would stand a-tiptoes to smooth the wrinkles out
with her dainty finger.
The Lord Cecil was now my lord's friend at court, and to him she writ
beseeching that there might be no more voyages, at least for the time.
"I hope for my sake," she writ, "that you wilt rather draw Walter toward
the East than help him forward toward the sunset, if any respect to me
or love to him be not forgotten."
So we remained in peace, and young Walter and I flew our hawks and
played at the ball, and fished and swam to our hearts' content. And
dearly as I loved my lord, I came to love his son hardly less. He was a
brave lad of Devon, this Walter Raleigh, tall as his father, and nigh as
comely, yet innocent and quiet, with the country innocence and quietude,
because by reason of the Queen's displeasure he had abode all his years
in those sequestered ways; yet skilled in all such manly and courtly
arts as became the son of his father; so that he was as good with a
sonnet as at swordplay, and could dance the pavane as prettily as he
could loose his goshawk. And for all his innocence was not unfit to face
a rough world; and for all his quiet kindliness was as brave and as
quick to fight as any gallant ever I saw.
My lord looked on at our comradeship well pleased. I heard him ask my
Lady Raleigh one day if we did not make a gallant couple, at which my
lady pouted, and said he was loving me in Ireland when she and her Wat
were forgotten. "Nay," said he, "that never was, Sweetlips; but he
comforted me something in my loneliness without wife and son." Then my
lady called me to her, and kissed me like a mother, and vowed that she
loved me for what I had been to her lord in those Irish years. She
changed quickly in her pretty humors; but there was no change in her
constancy and kindness towards me any more than in her lord's love.
After that we went eastward for a season to the village of Bath, to
drink at its springs, which had been discovered to be sovereign remedy
for many ills. It was my Lady Raleigh's will to make her lord well
again. "As though, Bess," he said, "you could turn backward the years we
have been parted."
And I left the Manor-house with grief and pain, for never again, I
feared, should we have a season of such peace. My lord was not one to
abide long in peace; and certainly the Bath waters as they restored his
strength restored also his passion for adventure and turmoil, so that my
Lady Raleigh in healing him but defeated her desire of keeping him with
her. For after a time he seemed no longer quiet and well-content. And he
had yet not only his share of the treasure-ship, though I doubt not the
greater part was poured in the Queen's lap, but he had also my Lord
Boyle's purse to draw upon.
Then as he was becoming restive, yea, straining as a hound strains at
the leash, and declaring that he would sail before the mast if he might
none other way, one of his captains, Popham by name, and a stout old
sea-dog from the harbor town of Plymouth, brought him letters writ by a
Spanish captain to the King of Spain, and captured by the English ship.
Reading them my lord seemed as he would choke with fury. I knew how my
lord's heart turned to Guiana, the golden country. And these letters
reported that the Governor of Trinidad had annexed this same wondrous
land in the name of King Philip. Then, even my Lady Raleigh saw that it
was no use seeking to hold her lord any longer; and she bade him go,
with so sweet a grace and so high a spirit that she proved herself even
a worthy mate for the Great Captain.