These two days form a framework for a dizzying series of dreams, memories and visions. It covers two days – and yet it takes 739 pages to do so.
Starting from this point – three men, in the dark, remembering – Garrett weaves a sprawling, dense, tangled thicket of a book, which frustrates and rewards in equal measure, and which creates a rich panorama of early Stuart England. The book was recommended to me by another Dunnett aficionado, and I can honestly say that I haven’t read anything else like it. Raleigh himself, imprisoned in the Tower, finds himself remembering the steps which brought him there, and the lost, golden world of Elizabethan England which made his fortune and then brought it down crumbling in its wake. James I lies tormented by paranoia and doubt, clinging to the superficial friendship of his favourites and eager to be rid of Raleigh, who reminds him of the gulf between Elizabeth’s sovereignty and his own. Sir Henry Yelverton worries about serving as the King’s Attorney General, to condemn a man he can’t help but respect. It is the day that Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh) is due to come before the King’s Bench on a charge of high treason. Early one morning in October 1618, three men are unable to sleep.
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