The Triple Goddess (54 page)

But as Carew proposed another toast, hard as she struggled to put the contemplation of what she was about to be deprived of to the back of her mind, she knew that the recent vibrant colour of her life was rapidly fading back to the grey it had always been.

‘Regarding tomorrow,’ Ralegh announced in a matter-of-fact voice; ‘ye will be relieved to know that I intend to make very few remarks before the audience. Last time, my reputation was more important to me than anything, and, knowing that my words were being recorded for posterity, I was intent upon performing well. But now nothing matters to me except my parting from you, true members of my family. The rest will be silence.’

Perhaps it was the light, but Arbella thought that Sir Walter Ralegh looked much younger.

Chapter Thirty-Six

King James arrived on Tower Green enveloped in scent and courtiers, and followed by a retinue of pursuivants, retainers, equerries, pages, and servants. Announced by a heraldic fanfare, he was escorted to the canopied gallery next to the tiered stands that had been reserved for him and his favourites, on the other side of the Green to the area that had been cordoned off for the groundlings.

The erstwhile monarch was in a thundering bad temper. If one had to be hauled back into the world for anything, from one’s demon-and-smoke-free environment—James had scraped entry into Heaven, where he lived in a bed-sit and was accorded minimum privileges—the last person he wanted to find responsible for it was that renegade mountebank Sir Walter Ralegh, whose spirit he thought he had consigned to the flames.

But unfinished business was unfinished business, under universal law, and James had no choice but to obey the recall order. What made the situation worse was that his courtiers, whose presence was also required, were tickled pink and disposed to enjoy themselves. The King’s ill humour was compounded by the way everyone was ignoring him, and his having to eject somebody’s child from his chair, whereupon he discovered that the brat had left an ice-cream cone, now melted, on the velvet upholstery where the royal bottom was due to be placed.

Although Arbella had never seen them before, the aristocrats pouring in all knew who she was. It was fun to be bowed and curtsied to and addressed formally; nobody seemed to care any more about her historical relative’s role as a figurehead of treasonous opposition to His Majesty…or, if they did, now that they were immune to prosecution they wished to manifest their approval. Despite being very taken with the genuine period costume of the upper-class members of the audience as they made their way to the roped-off Court section, Arbella was repelled by their obnoxious smell, which even out of doors was inadequately disguised by a ghastly mixture of perfumes, and the balls of civet and musk that many were swinging.

She was in a good seat, which somehow had been reserved for her, in the middle of the stands next to Carew, Grammaticus, and the Earl of Northumberland—Sir Walter had insisted on making his final preparations in his rooms alone—with whom she was talking for the first time.

Despite his noble status, because he was a prisoner Lord Henry was not allowed to sit with his peers amongst the peers. Arbella was most uncomfortable in the company of the three men under such extraordinary circumstances, and she was having difficulty in making conversation; but she gathered from his lordship’s rheumy eyes and congested chest, the inflammation and swelling of his already bulbous nose, and his frequent recourse to a large polka-dot handkerchief, and a flask, that he had come down with a cold.

This, combined with his deafness and aristocratic stutter and Elizabethan syntax and grammar and accent, made communication with someone she did not know extremely difficult.

When Arbella commented upon Lord Henry’s indisposition, he told her that he had for the past several nights slept naked in a rocking chair next to an open window, with packs of ice tied to his body.

Pressed as to his reason for doing so, the Wiz said that he had been occupied since they parted—for what point was there in going to bed?—in trying to conclude his research into whether the common cold might be cured. The Earl had a formicarium in his apartment, he elaborated, to provide him with a ready supply of formic acid, the emission of ants, to be applied in a poultice to his nose as soon as his throat became scratchy, his sinuses began running, and he started sneezing: all of had occurred at a quarter past three that morning, which of course was too short a period for any conclusive result to be forthcoming.

Defeat was a bitter pill for him to swallow, said Lord Henry: it had been a long-held ambition of his to find a solution to this greatest of mysteries, which he would have liked to bequeath as his posthumous legacy to the world…to which end he had spent the last couple of hours pounding the formic acid into pill form—and a bitter pill indeed it was, he said—to leave behind.

Given that rhinoviruses were too complex a subject to broach at this point, and that hundreds of years later there still was really not much to report, Arbella merely nodded and shook her head in sympathy.

It was not only the Earl who had not slept. Grammaticus, who appeared unperturbed by the imminence of his departure...either that, or he did not place as much trust in his lordship’s calculations as the others...had retired early hoping for a good night’s rest. Instead, he had been kept awake by late-night carousers outside the building, and the sounds of revelry and bawdy songs from the Tower’s taverns; which, although they had only been licensed to remain open until one o’clock, had ignored the order and were still serving drinks at sunrise—with the microbrewed ale, and rum-based Ralegh cocktails proving most popular.

Sensible of Arbella’s almost uncontainable disquiet, while everyone was arriving and talking nineteen to the dozen about the amazing turn of events, Grammaticus was most solicitous towards her, and did his best to distract her from her grief by pointing out various important figures and recounting the various plots and scandals that they had been embroiled in.

As he was doing so, a very hung-over-looking Elizabeth Throckmorton Ralegh arrived, and was shown to a privileged seat under the royal box’s striped canopy. King James, who was in better humour now that the ice-cream on his seat was covered with his Lord Chamberlain’s cloak, doubled, ermine trimmings up—the ironic Ralegh analogy was not lost upon His Majesty—favoured Lady Ralegh with the realignment of the lips that in Scotland passes for a smile…which Arbella attributed to James’s acquaintance with her ladyship’s publically acknowledged disavowal of sympathy with her husband.

The most liberal application of powder and pearls had failed to disguise the red weals on Bess’s shoulders, which had been caused by a precautionary over-tightening of the knots that had restrained her yesterday.

When her ladyship spotted the Ralegh party, absent the guest of honour, she looked down upon them with a hatred that cut through the air like an acetylene torch. Before she sat down, she held aloft the red leather drawstring bag in which she had always intended to carry around her late husband’s head, and which she was now keenly anticipating putting to its designated use, and shook it triumphantly.

Grammaticus, who was familiar with the Earl of Sandwich’s inspired invention, had brought with him several packages of slices of bread with chopped liver between them, to sustain them through the ordeal. But since none of them could stand liver, to Grammaticus’s chagrin they all declined on the grounds that they were not hungry; whereupon Grammaticus remembered that he did not like liver either.

More welcome was a large Thermos of coffee, “with a drop of something in it”, as the retainer described it while pouring the liquid into four plastic cups. After Arbella took a sip, she said that she could not taste the coffee for whisky, which she did not like; whereupon Henry Percy, who had already emptied his own flask, took her cup, quaffed it in a single draught, drained his own, tossed the cups over his shoulder into the lap of someone Arbella thought looked familiar, and pronounced himself fully recovered from his cold.

Arbella also noticed that all the Lloyd’s underwriters who had subscribed to the Ralegh contract were there, together with members of their staff, which she took as a great compliment. When she pointed this out to Carew, who was sitting on the other side of her to the Earl, he told her that at Sir Walter’s instigation and insistence he had arranged for the jewels that had been purchased with the proceeds of Colonel Barkstead’s Treasure and investment return from the Rothschild Bank, to be deeded to the Corporation of Lloyd’s.

An accompanying legal document stated, Carew said, that the collection was the gift of the heir of an anonymous donor, long deceased, who had consigned the chest to a vault at the Bank of Scotland in 1695, subsequently transferred it to Barings in 1762, and then to Coutts, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Included was a requirement that the best pieces, provenance attached, be displayed in a room similar to that devoted to Vice-Admiral [of the White Squadron] Horatio Nelson, which was to be named the Sir Francis Drake Room.

The remainder was to be sold, and the monies added to Lloyd’s Central Guarantee Fund, for the benefit of policyholders. It was requested of Lloyd’s that it appoint a committee of trustees to oversee the collection: a list of names of those who were to be asked to serve was supplied, and Black Jack Newbold was not one of them.

Happy Pardoe, wearing his camel-hair topcoat, was attended by his disconsolate entry girl Regina, who had welts on her bare arms and neck to match those on Bess’s shoulders. Mad Max was talking to Ego, and spitting into his good eye. Bill B, blushing furiously, had just asked that a note, addressed to “The Vision in red”, be passed along the lines to a lady-in-waiting in the royal section, inviting her to Sunday lunch with him and his mother.

When she received and perused it, the lady rose, blew Bill B a kiss, and gave him a thumbs up to signify her acceptance.

Black Jack Newbold, looking tanned and insouciant, had a mackintosh draped over his hands and was sitting between two burly men in reflective sunglasses, who, though they were dressed in plain clothes, looked as though they might have been from Scotland Yard.

Cadger was furtively discussing business, against Lloyd’s regulations which prohibited underwriters from dealing off-premises, with an unhappy-looking broker whom he had just relieved of a silver fountain-pen.

Shipshape Sharples had been brought in a wheelchair by his entry boy Simon.

Even the new Chairman of Lloyd’s, Erskine Dodge-Bullitt, Dumdum’s successor, was in attendance, presumably for public relations purposes.

Observing Mr Nysely and Mr Duesitt amongst the Lloyd’s representatives, and not recognizing them, Dodge-Bullitt frowned, and instructed his special assistant to ask them come to his office immediately after the ceremony.

Last to arrive was Bullion Bill Goldsack, escorted by a bevy of women clad in skin-tight gold lamé suits. At least that was what was initially thought; but as everyone craned to look and trained opera glasses, lorgnettes, and monocles on them, there was speculation as to whether they might in fact be naked and painted, in the manner favoured by Ian Fleming’s character, Auric Goldfinger.

The possibility of this caused several dowagers in the royal section to call for smelling salts and stronger pairs of glasses.

The public area was full and had been since dawn, owing to the Lieutenant having given ticket-holders permission to camp overnight outside the Middle tower. Cockney hucksters were doing a brisk trade in Ralegh memorabilia: there were Ralegh mugs, Ralegh tee-shirts, nylon cloaks embroidered with his initials, potatoes that had allegedly been signed by him with a felt-tip pen, tins of Ralegh tobacco, fake silver and imitation meerschaum pipes carved in the great man’s likeness; and models of the great man with trigger-detachable heads, and optional extra cloaks in different styles.

When the executioner, “Headless” Hotchkiss, arrived on Tower Green, he was cramming into his mouth the last of six hot dogs purchased from the food concession stand at the entrance, which he had coated with extra onions and liberal quantities of mustard and ketchup for that all-important last-minute burst of energy.

Celebrity that he was, Chop-a-Block Hotch disdained the mask or hood that more conventional butchers wore to preserve their anonymity on such occasions, and let his golden curls and blue twinkling eyes display to advantage.

All of the lower class spectators rose to their feet and gave him an ovation, and he was mobbed by admirers asking him to sign autographs, which he good-humouredly did with a stick of charcoal, messily owing to the condiments on his fingers. Some of the girls gave him slips of paper with their addresses on them, which he stuck in the pouch of his leather apron; and a number of children who had slipped through the security detail of Beefeaters clamoured to be allowed to feel his muscles.

Having made his way with difficulty to the block, Master Hotchkiss withdrew his double-bladed axe from the pile of straw around the station’s base, to huzzahs of appreciation from the crowd. Then he went through his familiar and much imitated warm-up routine, which commenced with swirls of the weapon around his head to loosen the muscles.

Pausing between repetitions, he addressed the audience regarding how the upper torso had to be relaxed, and the axe-handle rubbed with resin, and the hands dusted with silica, and correctly positioned on the shaft; to remember that power began in the lower back and was transferred to the shoulders, as the hips swivelled and the arms rounded the blade through its arc, from as high as possible behind, with the head kept steady and eyes fast on the target, and brought down vertically at maximum speed between the first and second vertebrae.