Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [460]
Shockley had met Lord Pembroke before a few times in the town, but never on terms of any intimacy, and he was curious to see him in his own home.
“He’s not at all like his father,” Giles said. “He’s a scholar.”
It was widely believed that the first earl, though he was one of the shrewdest men in the kingdom, could neither read nor write. Not so his son.
“As for his new wife . . .” Giles had murmured, “the poets write for her to read.”
For after wisely failing to consummate his marriage to the politically dangerous sister of Lady Jane Grey, he married first one of the mighty Talbot family, and then, after she died, the extraordinary Mary Sidney.
“He was over forty and she was only sixteen, but it’s a brilliant marriage,” Giles remarked. “They live like princes.”
They did indeed. It was believed Lord Pembroke kept over two hundred personal retainers who wore his livery. His wife, though not rich, was a niece of the queen’s favourite, Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Her brother was the brilliant courtier, soldier and author, Sir Philip Sidney. And, as young Forest remarked, half the playwrights and poets of the kingdom came to Wilton as to a great renaissance court.
It was a day to remember. There were many ladies and gentlemen there, names like Thynne of Longleat, Hungerford, or Gorges, who was building a grand new house called Longford Castle by Clarendon Forest – gentry whom he seldom met. There was pleasant talk, too: of the poet Spenser who had dedicated his delightful Shepherd’s Calendar to Philip Sidney, and of Philip Sidney himself.
“He was in temporary disgrace with the queen,” a courtly gentleman explained to him. “He was here all this summer composing a poem for his sister. ’Tis called Arcadia and they say it will be a wonder when it is completed.”
Though he had no courtly ways himself, Shockley had been well enough schooled to take pleasure in the elegant and literary company he found there. He also came to understand young Forest better.
For there had been times, in the last month, when he had wondered if, despite his charm, Giles Forest was perfectly sound in the head.
It was not what he said, but the truly extraordinary manner he sometimes had of speaking.
“In my concern for the poor, Master Shockley,” he had announced, “I would neither be mistaken of purpose, neither misconstrued of munificence; I mean to work for the poor – for I am not mean; but in order that the poor may work – for I am not foolish.”
Hearing this elaborate word play Shockley had sometimes had to beg Giles to speak more plainly. Yet now, at Wilton he observed that many of the younger men who had been to Oxford had this same affectation. Almost every subject they discussed, however trivial, was treated as though it were an elaborate dispute in some court of law, with the pro and con of a sweetmeat, the weather, a fine horse discussed with equal gravity; yet at the same time, the most intricate and serious matter of politics was reduced to exactly the same intricate word games.
This Elizabethan fashion amongst the young exquisites of the universities and court had reached its height with the publication of a book by the writer Lyly the year before.
“’Tis called Euphues, Master Shockley,” a fantastically dressed youth assured him. “’Tis our bible,” he added with a laugh.
Though he could only watch these artificial manners with wonder, Shockly found the young men pleasant. They wrote sonnets after the manner of Petrarch; they practised archery – not very seriously but, they explained to him, because it developed the body: “Beauty of body, beauty of mind,” they claimed. Once he had got used to them, he thought better of young Forest.
The play was a short historical piece, and mediocre. But Shockley did not mind.
For it was just afterwards that he came face to face with Pembroke himself.
He was middle-aged and looked a little tired; but he was still a handsome man with a fine, sensitive face.
Shockley bowed respectfully. The second earl might not be as great a national figure as his father, but he was still a formidable