The Girl in the Glass Tower (13 page)

‘Will we have a new tutor, then?’

‘Not some fellow who is fond of the birch,’ Frannie pleaded. Starkey was known for his lenience with the children.

Grandmother masticated slowly in silence, seeming impervious to the sentiment about the table.

‘There is a new man coming in January,’ I told the children. ‘But in the meantime
I
will be keeping an eye on your studies. Isn’t that right, Starkey?’

‘Wylkyn, will you vow to speak only Latin with Lady Arbella until the new man arrives?’ he said.

‘
Voveo
,’ said Wylkyn.

‘
Promitto
or
spondeo
might be more correct for such a promise,’ I corrected.

‘Will you teach me Latin too, Cousin Belle?’ asked Frannie.

‘Don’t be silly, Frances. Girls don’t need anything more than the most rudimentary Latin,’ said Grandmother, taking a slice of manchet bread, inspecting it closely, picking out some tiny impurity and sniffing it as if it might have been poisoned.

‘But Cousin Belle knows Latin,’ pleaded Frannie, refusing defeat.

‘It is different for her. She will be … well.’ She stopped, and I thought that in that moment Grandmother no longer knew what I might be. ‘It is different.’

The secret of my escape simmered beneath my skin and I wondered when my indomitable grandmother had lost her fight.

‘But different why?’ Frannie had not accurately read Grandmother’s mood.

‘Enough,’ she barked, silencing the child. ‘The sooner the new tutor arrives, the better. Arbella has more important things to do than conjugate Latin verbs.’

What things?
I wanted to shout, for nothing filled my empty days.

I rubbed at the little incision on my ankle with my foot. In some small way that sensation, the intense momentary sting of it, reminded me that I was the governor of my destiny, that I had mastered a convincing illusion that had taken in even prying Joan. It reminded me that I had the courage to set myself free whatever the cost.

I filled my plate and, breaking my food into small pieces, quietly slipped some to the dogs. They had developed the habit of lurking about beneath the table near me, where the pickings were rich. Hunger prodded insistently at my belly but I refused to acknowledge it and it skulked off like a demon in the face of a saint. No one noticed that I ate almost nothing, for the impression I managed to create was the opposite. I had learned that it is easy to make people imagine they know what they are seeing, just as Uncle Henry liked to do with his tricks.

Looking back, I have often wondered what made me thus. Perhaps it was that I had been educated for a more stimulating kind of life, prepared for greatness, and found myself an adult woman of twenty-seven, kept in perpetual girlhood, in a world bereft of even jurisdiction over my daily walk in the gardens. That feeling of emptiness, that glorious hollowness, and the artifice that achieved it, gave me a sense of accomplishment, perhaps even of pride.

Once we had left the table I made my way down to the schoolroom, seeking a moment alone with Starkey before his departure. I shut the door and, noticing last night’s empty flagon of wine in the corner, said lightly, ‘You look as if you’ve seen better days.’

He didn’t take my cue and tell me I was hardly a picture of health myself, as he might have done on any other day. ‘I can’t endure this.’ He turned his back as if he couldn’t bear even to look at me.

A silence fell, punctuated only by the faint clamour coming from the great hall where the rest of the household were finishing their meal. Grandmother employed a large entourage; she liked to think of Hardwick as her own personal court. I could hear the clatter of dishes being cleared, followed by the scrape of a table being pushed back against the wall.

‘You must make the best of it,’ I said eventually, to his black worsted shoulders, so straight; Starkey had perfect bearing. ‘Think about it; you will not be stuck here with … You can find a nice girl to be your wife.’ My voice cracked slightly.

‘A nice girl is the last thing on my mind.’ He turned back to me then. ‘I have never had any other ambition than to serve you.’ He looked like a man grieving.

‘I wish …’ I didn’t continue.

We both looked at the floor, not knowing how to fill the silence, but then I found myself surprised by a sudden and overwhelming desire to reach out and take his hand. It was cold and stiff. I rubbed it between mine to warm it up as one might a child’s. His desolation was written all over him and I had to resist the urge to blurt out the plans for my marriage; to tell him that we would soon be reunited and away from the auspices of my grandmother, that he would be my chaplain in my new life – my imminent new life – that we had a shared future to look towards; to tell him that Uncle Henry was mustering armed men to aid my escape. But I knew well enough that I might endanger him with such knowledge if my scheme went awry. The idea of Starkey withstanding a grilling from Cecil or his henchmen chilled me to the core.

‘When things have changed’ – he must have supposed I meant at some obscure point in the future – ‘I hope you will take the position of my personal chaplain.’

‘May that day come soon.’

It may come sooner than you think
, I said silently, then, ‘You never know.’

‘It grieves me to leave you here with so few friends. You will be at the mercy …’ His words faded away.

‘Come now, have you not spent hours drumming into me the advantages of stoicism?’

He smiled then; it was a wan sort of smile but it gave me a splinter of joy. ‘You are right. Stoic I shall be.’

‘I am more resilient than you think, and though I may be bereft of friends within these walls, save for Dodderidge, I have many elsewhere.’ I began to count them off on my fingers. ‘Aunt Mary and Uncle Gilbert, Uncle Henry, Cousin Bessie. And there is you.’ I smiled then too. ‘Wherever you are in the world, I will always think of you dearly.’

He was gazing at me with a strange intensity and then, without warning, he flung his arms around me, holding me tight. I could feel the thump of his heart against my own. I had never been held in such a way; it was the way a child might cling on to its mother before a period of separation, or even the clasp of a lover. I allowed my head to rest on his shoulder; the worsted wool was rough against my cheek. I closed my eyes. Time slowed. Our hearts matched in rhythm. I inhaled as he exhaled, as if we had a pair of lungs in common, like those conjoined twins you hear of, who only live a matter of hours.

I emitted a strange, faint moan and he broke away from me abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’ His cheeks were painfully red and he could not bring himself to look my way.

‘No! I’m …’ – I stumbled over the words – ‘I’m glad of it.’
I willed him to meet my eye and read my sincerity. ‘You are the nearest thing I have to a brother.’

‘A brother,’ he snorted with sudden derisive laughter. ‘Please God, not a brother –’

I interrupted him; afraid of what he might have been about to say. ‘There is something I need you to do for me.’

‘Anything, anything – it would be an honour.’ His eyes lit up and I wondered if he was relieved that I’d prevented him from finishing his previous statement. ‘Tell me what it is I can do.’

I began to fumble beneath my skirts and was reminded suddenly, strangely, of that time back in my childhood when I changed into those voluminous breeches in the Stand Tower at Chatsworth. Catapulted briefly back to the feeling of riding astride, bareback, the force of the wind filling me with the potent sense that nothing was beyond my reach.

I pulled out the linen-wrapped package of jewels, placing it on the table beside us. ‘These are all I have of value. I cannot keep them here, for I fear Grandmother will commandeer them. Will you take them to Cousin Bessie? Did you know she’s with child? It will be nice for you to see her again.’ I was rambling to prevent myself from spilling out the true reason for this service I was asking of him.

I held out the parcel and Starkey took it with the solemnity of someone receiving the sacraments, clasping it in both hands carefully with a look of reverence. ‘What shall I tell her?’

‘To keep them safe, that I’ll be in touch and to tell no one.’

‘I am honoured that you trust me with so delicate a mission.’ He had become stiff and formal but the memory of his body pressed up to mine hung in the air.

‘I might need funds one day.’ This was the most I dared tell him. The less he knew, the less likely he would be endangered. ‘You must not breathe a word of it to anyone –’

We were interrupted by Wylkyn clattering in, calling out loudly to his sister to hurry up. He stopped and must have sensed intrigue in the air, for he said, ‘What are you doing? What is that?’ pointing at the linen bag in his tutor’s hands.

Starkey looked petrified, as if caught out by the devil himself, and a new flush crept over his face. It should have occurred to me then that he was unsuitable, too nervous, too fundamentally honest, for such a delicate and possibly dangerous mission. He opened his mouth to say something but I spoke over him.

‘It is a leaving gift from me. I thought Mister Starkey might like a few trinkets for his new home to remind him of his time at Hardwick.’

Starkey was staring at me aghast, perhaps fearing he too might be required to lie; he was a man of the cloth, after all. Or perhaps the realization was alighting on him that the task he had agreed to fulfil might somehow put him at risk.

‘What are they? May I see?’ The boy was plucking at the corner of the bag with eager fingers.

‘No, Wylkyn,’ I said, trying to keep my voice firm and steady. ‘It is to be a surprise for Mister Starkey. Don’t you think it will bring him more pleasure to open it when he has arrived at his destination and then be reminded of us all at Hardwick?’

‘I suppose so.’

Only then did I notice Frannie leaning on the doorjamb watching us, sucking on a strand of hair that had fallen free of its ties. ‘What? What will be a surprise?’

‘Nothing,’ said her brother with a dismissive wave. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He reached up to a shelf, taking down a measuring stick. ‘We are going to measure the long gallery. Mister Reason and Mister Dodderidge cannot agree on its length,’ he added, before rushing from the room with his sister in his wake, leaving me hoping he wouldn’t mention my supposed gift to Grandmother.

‘Don’t make too much noise,’ I called after them, mindful of the fact that Grandmother had forbidden them from going up to the gallery unaccompanied. ‘And don’t forget we are supposed to be conversing in Latin.’

‘Are you truly willing to do this?’ I asked Starkey, once we were alone again.

‘I couldn’t be more willing.’ He seemed to have gained a new composure, which gave me confidence. ‘You know I am ever your most loyal servant.’ I remember having the fear then that I might never live up to the expectations he held for me.

I have thought often about fate. When you have been bred for a particular destiny, it is hard to change the course of it, like an arrow, once aimed and fired its flight is predisposed unless something should stray in its path.

‘One day I hope to be in a position to reward your loyalty.’

He was holding the jewels pressed to his chest as if they might have imparted some special power to him.

‘I do not seek personal reward, only that you find your rightful place.’ Despite everything, Starkey had never given up his belief that the throne would one day be mine. But the idea of wearing the crown, embedded in me from infancy, had become an abstraction; it was the hope of liberty that drove me. Uncle Henry’s marriage plot was my lodestar; indeed, my desire to escape the confines of Hardwick was greater than my fear of the grave potential consequences of the plot’s failure.

I watched as Starkey cached the jewels on his person. That done, we stood a few feet apart, enveloped in awkwardness. I wanted to step towards him and return to that glorious embrace in suspended time, but a spontaneous act cannot be repeated and I found I couldn’t muster the courage.

‘It will be cold on the road. You will take care not to catch a chill, won’t you?’ The bathos of my words made me sad
and all at once I couldn’t bear the idea of him spending Christmas with strangers – not with me.

‘At least it will be frozen rather than muddy.’ He seemed pleased too, to be able to resort to banalities about the weather.

Unfamiliar emotion was ballooning in me, threatening to make itself known. ‘Have you packed your things? I could send Joan to help you.’

‘That old witch?’ He looked at me in mock horror and his eyes glinted briefly with humour, forcing a laugh from me.

‘Write to me,’ I blurted out.

Neither of us wanted to leave first, as if by doing so we might destroy something fragile, like new-blown glass shattered, but I girded myself and moved towards the door. ‘I shall watch you leave from the gallery window.’ I felt my resentment build at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to ride the length of the drive with him, nor even see him off at the stables. As consolation, I clung to the thought of my imminent freedom with dear Starkey back by my side.

Someone is whistling in the street. ‘Hal,’ says Ami under her breath, rushing out of the door. And there he is strolling along, bag slung over his shoulder, lute hanging from his hand.

She waves, calling out to him, noticing how he stiffens at the sight of her. ‘If you’d sent word you were coming, I’d have been better prepared.’

‘I thought you knew I’d be back today – two weeks.’ He shrugs, allowing his dark hair to hang forward, so he doesn’t have to look at her as he passes by to enter the house.

‘Without word I wasn’t absolutely sure …’ She follows him in and shuts the door. ‘I didn’t expect you so early. I’ve no small beer and I haven’t started making the bread yet.’ She is thankful that she finished off the final load of laundry and delivered it to Mansfield’s house before Hal arrived.

He makes a cold little huff in response as he lets his bag drop to the floor. She takes his lute, placing it carefully on the high shelf. She’d like to hug him but senses it is not a good idea.

‘I’m not staying long. Been asked to go on progress with the King’s party. Leaving at dawn.’

‘But that’s wonderful news.’ She pastes on a big smile and throws her hands up to hide the disappointment – though how would she have hidden her penury and her new working arrangements if he were to have stayed? She would have found a way to explain, but there is no need now. Besides, she
is
happy, for this is a great honour. ‘I knew they’d recognize your talent.’

He goes to the cupboard, opening it, picking up a piece of elderly cheese. ‘There’s nothing to eat here, Mother.’

‘No, I was saying, if I’d known when you were coming …’

He leans against the table and begins to pare the rind off the cheese. ‘You never told me you were dismissed from court by the King.’

‘It was a while ago.’ She senses she must tread carefully. ‘It didn’t seem to matter.’

‘And that’s not all you’ve kept from me, is it?’ It was surely impossible that he knew the other reason for her dismissal. ‘Rumours about my paternity.’

Ami swallows, partly relieved that it is not the other thing – mired in shame – that she has to explain. ‘I wouldn’t listen to them if I were you. You know how people will invent stories – particularly at court. Just nonsense.’ Why is she lying? She has become tangled in her own untruths.

‘So I am
not
Lord Hunsdon’s bastard?’

‘Hal, please.’ She can’t bring herself to deny it fully. ‘Please don’t be like this. Let’s not allow some idle tittle-tattle to spoil the fact that you are home.’ She stops short of reminding him he is all she has – he knows that. But she sees something shift in his demeanour. The tautness drops off him. He flicks his hair back and smiles, bright as lightning. He has chosen to believe her. He was always like this, could never hold on to a sulk for long, and it makes her quite giddy to see that smile again, the ghost of the gappy, babyhood grin that melted her heart every time. It’s the same even now he is a young man, that welling of love, that feeling that she must rein it in for fear of smothering him.

‘You know they talk of you a good deal in Queen Anna’s chambers. Your poetry is greatly admired there. I didn’t realize you were so …’ He stops and seems to puff out a little. ‘You are well known, Ma.’

‘They still talk of my work at court?’ It fills her with joy to think of her lines being read, thinking of the Queen’s women still discussing her poetry even after such a long absence. It makes her feel she is still part of it all.

‘It made me so proud, Ma. I wanted to butt in and tell them I was your son.’

‘I hope you didn’t.’

‘Of course not; I know my position.’ He smiles again. ‘But’ – he pauses – ‘why, if you are so celebrated at court, did the King dismiss you?’

‘He was offended by the content of my work. That I sought to defend Eve and other women he deemed indefensible.’ Hal has a crease of incomprehension running vertically between his eyes. ‘And King James doesn’t approve of educated women. His wife is not of the same mind.’ It is only part of the truth but she cannot tell him the rest. Her secrets and lies press down on her.

The tabby jumps on to the table and Ami reaches out to push her off but Hal grabs her wrist. ‘What’s happened to your hands?’

Ami tucks them away beneath her shawl. But Hal pulls the garment aside, exposing them, chapped and raw as hunks of meat and this only after two weeks of washing.

He looks at her, questioning.

‘It’s nothing.’ She wraps him into a hug, so he can’t see them. ‘How happy I am to have you back.’ She is always struck by the size of him, for in her imagination he is still the small boy she raised. ‘So you are going on progress with the royal party. I am so proud of you.’ She leans away to look at him. ‘To think, my little boy playing for the King.’

Fleeting annoyance passes over his face, reminding her that this truce is fragile. He will not have liked being called a little boy. She wants to ask if he will be paid for his services but is afraid he will read the worry written all over her if she brings up the subject of money.

‘Just as your grandfather did. It was King Henry on the throne in those days.’

‘The music master has increased my fee by a ha’penny,
which is not much but I feel sure that it will lead to patronage of one kind or another. There are one or two noblemen who have made noises. It is my flute-playing they like, rather than the lute. The place is overrun with lutenists but pipers are more rare.’

‘None play as well as you, of that I am sure. Those lords and earls will be falling over themselves for your talent. Be patient, my darling.’ She lets him go, still taking care to keep her hands hidden. ‘I have a few eggs. I’ll boil them for you to be going on with. I hope they’re feeding you well at court.’

‘You should see the quantities of food they serve, whole sides of venison, great knuckles of pork, poultry I never knew existed, and every day, not only on feast days.’ His eyes are bright with it all.

‘I
have
seen it. Oh, I remember the banquets in Queen Elizabeth’s day. Goodness, you couldn’t have conjured up such sugar artefacts …’ She is struck by the memory of a sugar castle – its fine detail, each roof tile a separate painted square, each window a minuscule transparent pane, the delicate turrets topped with tiny banners, so lifelike they appeared to flutter in an imaginary breeze – demolished, as if destroyed by cannon fire, by the end of an evening.

They compare stories of excess, each trying to outdo the other, and Ami is glad the attention has gravitated away from her secrets. There will be more washing tomorrow; she can feel each great basin of water hefted from the Fleet, all the wringing, all the beating, all the heavy lifting, her aching bones and those awful women making it all the more difficult.

She is thankful Hal won’t witness any of it if he is leaving at dawn. She remembers the royal progresses, the bustle and excitement of them, the servants run off their feet, packing and unpacking, dismantling and rebuilding furniture, their great convoy trundling through towns and villages, people
lining the road, hoping for a glimpse of the royal party. How she loved to explore the unfamiliar houses, losing herself in winding corridors, happening upon libraries with books stacked to the ceiling, where she’d steal a half-hour alone. She remembers, too, the conversations with Lady Arbella, in stolen moments, in which they would discuss poetry and writing, exchange their work. Ami sought advice about her defence of Eve and between them they would scrutinize all the biblical stories about wicked women to tease new truths out of them. They talked of Philomel too, and how that tragedy symbolized the ways silenced women found to be heard. It was a perfect project for Lady Arbella, who always seemed to her to be a woman with much to say but to whom no one listened. Thinking of her leaves Ami hollow for the absence of that affinity. The loss of a friendship can be every bit as devastating as the loss of a love. Particularly when it is lost through one’s own fault.

‘We shall have a feast of our own, Ma. I shall go out to the market and buy one of those pies you like so much.’

Inexplicably she feels tears pricking at her eyes and moves to busy herself by the hearth so he doesn’t see.

‘Did you find anything of interest in those papers?’ he asks.

‘Goodness me, yes.’ She thinks of little else as she scrubs and squeezes and beats the dirt out of endless stacks of filthy linen. Her raw hands are the proof of her shame. But the lack of candles and the density of the text means she is making interminably slow progress. She is like Tantalus, the fruits at her fingertips yet just out of her grasp. ‘It’s not what I’d thought.’

‘What had you expected?’

‘A drama. I knew she had worked on one once – a tragedy.’

‘What is it, then?’

Ami is at a loss as to explain exactly what it is. ‘Scenes
from her life, I suppose. Very personal … and sad. It would bring tears to a glass eye.’

‘You
are
funny, Ma, taking such pleasure in misery.’

She had never thought of it like that. ‘It’s not that I enjoy the misery; but it brings inspiration.’

The cockcrow wakes her. She hears something, someone, moving downstairs. It is not the cat; the tabby is beside her curled on the pillow. Fear paws at her; she imagines an intruder, wondering how she will defend herself, until she remembers, through the fog of sleep, that Hal is home.

She lies a moment, luxuriating in the warmth of her bed, refusing to think about the three loads of washing that will be delivered in a while. Instead she thinks of preparing a breakfast for Hal before he goes on his way and drags herself down the stairs.

‘Good morning, my darling boy,’ she says as she stoops under the lintel at the bottom. But the place is empty, Hal’s bag is nowhere to be seen and his lute is not on the high shelf. ‘Hal?’

She goes to the door, looking up and down the street. But it is empty, save for a few chickens pecking about and a stray dog sniffing in the gutter. She walks along a little and calls his name again.

‘He went off with his bag.’ She turns to see Goodwife Stringer, who has appeared from nowhere, standing arms folded. ‘Did he not bid you goodbye?’

She gathers herself. ‘I expect he didn’t want to wake me.’ The woman looks unconvinced. ‘He’s going on the royal progress.’

‘Even so, you’d have thought he’d bid his ma goodbye.’

Goodwife Stringer is looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something, but all she wants is to get inside and see if Hal left her a note. ‘I’m very busy, please excuse me.’

Inside, there is no note but there placed, accusingly, at the middle of the table is her miniature. It has the inscription

Henry Lord Hunsdon
♦
Aetatis Suae 68
♦
Ano D 1593

spelled out in gold on a bright blue background running round the curved edge of the image. She sinks on to the bench, looking at her grotesque hands, dropping her face into them, and begins to weep, feeling her fragile world crumble to extinction.