The Girl in the Glass Tower (18 page)

I knelt there for some time; my face buried in my palms, unable to move, the demon that cursed all who loved it. An image ran through my mind: a river pool strewn with flowers, a body floating just beneath the surface, blurred by ripples, Starkey’s waterlogged features just visible. ‘No, no, no, no …’

‘My Lady.’ Bridget was at my shoulder.

‘I might as well have killed him with my own hands.’ I yearned for the release of tears but knew I was incapable. If you are dry and brittle as glass you cannot make tears. I began to feel determination building in me, a desire to render Starkey’s death meaningful; if he had lost his belief in God’s plan then I would sustain it in his stead.

In my head I was composing a new letter to Uncle Henry.

A month has passed since Hal left and a suffocating despair has crept up on Ami. No matter how hard she works – and she works until she can barely stand, until she can barely think – she cannot obliterate her guilt.

She has written to him almost daily, scratching out her pleas, but her letters have all been returned unopened. She has thought of Starkey hanging, his neck snapped by the noose. Though she never knew him and Lady Arbella never spoke of him, his gentle spirit came to life for her in those pages and died there too. In her darkest moments – she can hardly bear to think of it – she has inspected the large beam that runs the width of her chamber, calculated in her head the length of rope she might need. It is only Hal who keeps her from that sin without redemption. She has hurt him enough already.

Lady Arbella’s papers sit still unfinished. Ami tries to rediscover that sense of inspiration she’d had a few weeks back, when the story had grabbed her by the throat, but the feeling is lost. She looks at her monstrous hands and can remember Cecil, or Salisbury as he had become by then, taking her fingers, like a nurse inspecting a child’s nails, saying, ‘It is most
unusual
that a woman would seek to publish – and such subject matter.’ He clearly meant that, like the King, he disapproved.

She had wanted to say, ‘Not most unusual but
unprecedented
– I am the first,’ to throw his disapproval back at him, let him see how proud she was of her achievement, but she’d said nothing.

‘I see you have written a poem to the Lady Arbella.’ He still held her hands, continuing to inspect them.

‘I have written poems to many women,’ she’d said, but he wasn’t listening.

‘Not the hands of a laundress, are they?’

Her breath had faltered. He knew. She was not dismissed from court for offending the King, not really.

Mansfield arrives, interrupting her thoughts, walking in, as usual, without knocking. It is as if he owns her already.

‘How’s my favourite laundry lass?’

‘I’m hardly a lass.’ He approaches with a look that makes her feel naked – the wasp is back buzzing incessantly round the jam. ‘Truth be told, I’m dog-tired.’

‘Well’ – he moves up close to her – ‘the bedchamber is a mere few steps away.’ He smells different, ambergris or something. His constant pestering has worn her down and she has resigned herself to the inevitability of giving him what he wants – perhaps then she will be rid of him.

‘It’s not like you to go wearing fancy perfumes, Mansfield.’ She steps away. ‘Are you trying to impress me?’ She wonders if she is flirting with him or trying to keep him at bay.
He
certainly thinks it is the former, to judge by the look he’s wearing.

It would be so easy to submit to him. She imagines being freed from the back-breaking cycle of washing, the sores on her hands healing, all the time she would have to write and think.

‘Maybe.’ He grabs her then and kisses her firmly, his mouth suckered on to hers. She allows it, telling herself to let it happen. But she is finding it hard to breathe; the ambergris is cloying, too sweet.

‘Get off!’ Using all her strength, she pushes him violently away. ‘I can’t.’

A chair falls as he loses his footing and staggers back over the room, spitting an oath.

‘Please,’ she says, trying to gather herself together. ‘I don’t
want to make you an adulterer.’ This is not what is foremost in her mind at all, but she knows it is the best way to provoke his conscience a little. It has worked in the past with him, at least.

He meets her gaze in sullen silence, looking like a dog that has just been beaten.

‘It’s not that I don’t like you. I just think you have misinterpreted me,’ she witters. ‘I would need to feel more.’ What is she saying? She finds she can’t express herself. ‘I know you think, because of my past, that I have loose morals, but I loved Lord Hunsdon. I didn’t do it for anything but love.’

She realizes how ridiculous it is to talk of love under such circumstances and can see the disbelief scrawled over his face. What could a girl of eighteen possibly have wanted with a man beyond his three-score years? ‘Oh, never mind.’ A thick silence wells and she fears she has gone too far, but from nowhere an idea flares up in her. ‘Your boy, Edwin.’

‘What about him?’ His eyes narrow. He seems angry or confused, as if she is trying to trick him.

‘Would you like me to teach him his letters?’

‘What are you getting at?’ Suspicion is crawling over him.

‘I could teach him to read in lieu of my debt to you.’ She can’t believe she has not thought of this before, that her education is a resource she can tap. Suddenly her world, a world that had been shrinking only moments before, seems to expand as if filling with endless possibility.

He looks, with his open-mouthed stare, as if she has suggested she roast his offspring for supper.

‘And what would any brats of mine want with books?’

‘If they can read, well, they will never want for employment. They could go up in the world.’

‘So there are no tumbledown houses in London, are there, Widow Lanyer, no roofs to mend?’ The sarcasm doesn’t suit
him. ‘There’ll be plenty of work for
my
boys until kingdom come.’

‘But if they know their letters and numbers they won’t be easily fleeced.’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m –’

‘Of course not. You’re nobody’s fool.’ He relaxes a little, seems to have decided it wasn’t an insult. ‘But we all want the best for our children, don’t we?’

She hopes his silence means he is considering her proposal.

‘Letters
and
numbers?’ He turns to face her and she knows she has gained the upper hand.

‘We could come to an arrangement about the numbers.’

‘I have three boys of the right age. The rest are too young, and the girls, I don’t want my girls being ruined by book learning.’

Ami wants to snap back a retort but holds her tongue, just says calmly, ‘For what I still owe, I will teach your eldest lad his letters and if you want the others taught, and want them to know their numbers too, then perhaps we can reach an arrangement.’

He looks at her and then at the floor, seeming to cogitate. Maybe he is trying to calculate the value of what she is offering; after all, learning cannot be weighed like a bag of nails.

‘Knowledge is priceless.’ She pauses for her words to sink in. ‘So do we have a deal?’ She holds out a hand.

His face breaks into a sudden smile and he laughs, saying, ‘Well, I must say there are no flies on you, Widow Lanyer,’ taking her hand and shaking it firmly. ‘It is agreed.’ He hesitates then, looking surprisingly sheepish. ‘I’m … I’m sorry for what … you know. It was unforgivable …’

‘There is little in life that is truly unforgivable, Mister Mansfield. With some things it can be best to pretend they never happened.’

She senses that her magnanimity is making him feel like the smaller person. Forgiveness can be a powerful tool, for it leaves an adversary morally indebted. It was Henry Hunsdon who taught her that.

‘You have a heart, Widow Lanyer; I’ll say that for you. I’ll send the three boys on Monday. The littlest is only six. Is that too young?’

‘Not at all. The younger the better.’

She opens the door for him, to find Goodwife Stringer on the stoop with the tabby held by the scruff at arm’s length. Ami suspects she has been listening, or trying to.

‘Good morning, Mister Mansfield,’ she says, tilting her head to one side, with a smile spread over her face. He mumbles a greeting and excuses himself, striding away down the street. The smile turns to a sneer directed at Ami. ‘Your cat has been getting at my hens. They’ve stopped laying.’

Ami takes the tabby, apologizing, holding her tongue rather than suggesting that it might have been the recent thunderstorms that have stopped her hens producing.

‘Still alone?’ She is craning past Ami to look into the house, casting her eyes about.

‘My Hal is still on progress with the court.’ She resists the temptation to slam the door in the woman’s face.

If she is impressed she hides it well. ‘Do you know about Mad Dot?’

‘What about her?’

‘Found beaten to death.’

‘Good Lord!’ She thinks of the poor woman searching in perpetuity for her dead children – a kind of hell. No one would wish such a violent end on a person but perhaps it was a release.

‘Someone overheard her talking to the devil, you know.’

‘Terrible business.’ Ami will not be drawn into talk of witchcraft. She knows only too well that her words might
end up twisted. Suspicion alights so easily and she is already regarded as an oddity.

Goodwife Stringer begins to walk away but as she does she turns. ‘You’d better take care.’

Ami wants to challenge her, ask what she means, but she doesn’t want to add fuel to the woman’s fire.

Once the door is closed she sits a while, relishing in the thought that there will be no more laundry. She thinks of Hal, feeling for the first time in the last month a sense of calm, realizing that all he needs is time and that the more she pursues him the further out of reach he will put himself.

The day stretches out before her, empty, hours of daylight, so she picks up Lady Arbella’s papers, taking up where she left off, allowing the story to get beneath her skin, finding once more, at last, that prickling of anticipation that things obscured will be revealed. She reads voraciously, hoping for answers, stopping only to cut herself a hunk of bread and a slice of cheese, returning to her chair at the window to continue reading as she eats, until the story possesses her and time is of no consequence.

Uncle Henry’s reply was swift in coming. Bridget fumbled in the folds of her skirts, pulling it out. It was crumpled and smeared with dirt but I recognized his writing. We were at the back end of the knot garden behind the high yew hedge that obscured the view from the house. I was aware we hadn’t much time before Joan, or someone else, was sent out to see what we were up to, out of sight like that.

I had folded my grief up and stored it away, but Starkey whispered to me constantly.
Where are you?
I whispered back. In the orchard beyond, the apple trees were in full March bloom and the optimistic blue of the sky was clear save for the occasional white billow of cloud. That, with the doves
coo-currooing
from the roof of the stables and the hopeful chatter of the finches flitting about the hedge, made spring seem almost within reach.

I unfolded the paper.

Your star is rising, Arbella. We will go ahead without Hertford’s support. Beauchamp is in agreement. The Queen is ailing. They say her mouth is so ulcerated she can barely eat or drink. Your time is coming. Seymour and his father are waiting for us … I have armed men mustered all around you … Come to the gatehouse at midday tomorrow and we will get you away.

I looked at Bridget. ‘Tomorrow at noon, I will be spirited away.’ I walked on, out of the shadow of the yew. Inside I was effervescing. ‘My escape is planned. You can tell our friendly page boy to go to my Uncle Henry with the news that I will see him tomorrow as planned and tell the lad in the
stables to make sure Dorcas is ready, saddled up for me by noon.’

‘May God go with you, My Lady,’ she replied and I turned to see her drawing her finger across her front from left shoulder to right.

My suspicion began to stir. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘You were crossing yourself.’

‘Why would I do that?’

I began to doubt what I’d seen. I was light-headed from lack of nourishment; I had kept my vow, nothing had passed my lips and with each refusal I felt my power flourish. Brouncker’s return had become inconsequential but I continued my stand so as not to arouse Grandmother’s suspicion. She knew my will was not so easily broken. ‘Of course, why –’

‘I was only wrapping my stole more tightly. Do you not feel the chill?’ She tucked the ends of her shawl into her girdle. ‘There, that’s better.’ She thrust her hands beneath it with an exaggerated shiver. Of course she was cold; I was layered in furs but she wore only that thin woollen scarf. ‘Did you think me a secret Catholic?’ She made a laugh, as if such a thing was entirely absurd, and I felt silly for allowing my imagination to run away with me. ‘It is no surprise you are on edge, with the news of …’

‘My escape,’ I whispered.

‘Exactly.’ We walked on back, counting the paces from the gatehouse to the door – the path I would take in the opposite direction the following day when Uncle Henry arrived – eighty-eight steps and he would be waiting at the gates with Dorcas to whisk me away.

Staff supper was being laid out in the great hall, servants scurrying to and fro laden with dishes. As I passed I threw Uncle Henry’s letter into the fire, stopping briefly to make
sure it caught. I tried to imagine my freedom, able to conceive it only in abstract sensations, wings spread, the wind beneath them, flying up.

I walked on through the hall and up the stone flight of stairs, past the tapestry of Job’s dead children, to the private rooms where family supper was about to be served.

‘You look better,’ remarked Grandmother. ‘That walk must have done you good. You have some colour in your cheeks again.’

I pretended to smile at her, as if offering peace. ‘I needed some fresh air after being cooped up in my chambers for so long.’ There were a thousand things left unspoken beneath our falsely bright exchange.

The new chaplain said grace and we sat. Uncle William offered me bread, which I refused. The chaplain, a bald man with a large nose, was attacking his food, masticating with his mouth open. I looked away. The children were snatching up titbits from each other’s plates when their mother wasn’t watching. She ate delicately, in small mouthfuls. Uncle William piled his plate and gorged himself, dirtying his moustaches, mopping every last residue of sauce with his bread. Grandmother talked more than ate, making forced conversation about a recent land acquisition and trying to ignore the fact that I was sitting beside her like an exclamation mark, while hunger gnawed silently at me, making me stronger. The dogs looked at me hopefully, through habit, but they eventually slunk down to where the children sat.

‘At least have a sip to drink,’ said Uncle William.

‘Thank you, I won’t,’ I replied.

Grandmother wore her exasperation openly and I gloated inwardly, feeling my escape almost at the tips of my fingers.

Eager to return to the privacy of my room after supper, I made an excuse and floated away, light as air. Joan tried to follow me but I sent her on an errand. Sitting at my desk, I
began to write, scribbling out my thoughts as fast as I could think them, until my hand ached. The act of writing helped me to focus my mind on the preparations for the following day’s journey.

Starkey’s ghost hovered, for the plan that had begun with the valuables he’d delivered into Cousin Bessie’s safekeeping was coming to fruition; I wouldn’t allow his death to have been for nothing. I whispered as much to him. He whispered back:
God’s plan, it is God’s plan
.

A twist of anticipation tightened in me. I would wear the plainest dress I had, to avoid unwanted attention, and would cover myself with a hooded cloak. No one would question such a garment at that time of year. The only concession to sentiment I would take was my small bag of treasures. I tipped the little pouch out, inspecting each item: the bell from Geddon’s collar; the tear of glass, which magnified things, made the invisible visible; Uncle Henry’s weighted die that only rolled a six; and the Agnus Dei, blessed by the Pope. It glowed in the candlelight as if lit from within.

‘What’s that?’

I jumped, surprised, and the object fell from my fingers, rolling over the floor.

‘Bridget, you gave me a fright, creeping up like that.’

‘What is it?’ She stooped to pick it up, tossing it as if it were a coin.

‘Nothing, just a thing the Scottish Queen gave me when I was a child.’ How could this girl, so cavalier with a sacred object, be a secret Catholic? I reprimanded myself inwardly for having allowed my imagination to run away with me earlier in the garden.

‘I’d be careful who sees this; it looks like a popish toy.’ She held it out to me, meeting my eye. ‘No need to worry about me, I won’t tell anyone, but please take care.’

I began to list all the things I would need for my journey
when Bridget asked: ‘Have you ever wondered what it is like to just be an ordinary woman?’ She paused, adding in response to my obvious puzzlement, ‘To not be a princess of the blood?’

‘Someone asked me once what I would like to be if I were a commoner.’ A little current of air riffled the papers on the desk and I knew it was Starkey.

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said I’d like to be a groom.’ I was thinking of being reunited with dear Dorcas the following day, wondering if she’d know me after all these years.

‘But you’d need to have been born a boy for that.’

‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because all women who are not princesses imagine what it would be like to be one.’ She laughed then. ‘Silly, isn’t it? Now, I must make sure you have a few necessaries for tomorrow.’ She began to busy herself about the chamber, adding as an afterthought, ‘Now that I know what the life of a princess is truly like, I would not wish it on my worst enemy.’

It was another bright day and the sun was almost at its highest point. I stood in the shade of the portico, looking down the path – eighty-eight steps to the gatehouse – listening out for horses. I thought of Uncle Henry’s armed men in the woodland around Hardwick, down in the valley, unseen – dozens of them, he’d said. I would knight them all when I was queen. I could hear the clank and clatter of dinner inside. ‘If you will not eat you may not sit at my table,’ Grandmother had ruled, and I knew I had won. Little did she know how she played into my hands with that punishment. The thought buoyed me up, made me strong. Hunger twisted through my gut – I was never more alive. I wondered what the Queen was feeling with her ulcerated mouth. We were both starving – she to death, I to life.

I heard them, at first a faint thrum, becoming louder, the rumble of hooves and jangle of tack, slowing and coming to a halt at the gates. Through the arch I could see three horses, one was Dorcas, saddled up and riderless. Uncle Henry dismounted; I couldn’t see his companion. My anticipation began to buzz as if I’d been colonized by a swarm of bees. Starkey whispered:
Go, go, this is your chance – fly away, Philomel
. I made my way forward. Uncle Henry was talking to one of the guards, gesticulating forcefully; it turned quickly into what appeared to be an altercation. A young man, one of the pages, ran past me towards them and I could only suppose that Grandmother was surveying the scene from her window above.

I walked on, counting my paces:
ten; twelve; fourteen
. I expected my empty body to feel weightless, to float, but on the contrary it was as if my bones had been poured with lead; I could barely put one foot in front of the other. Nevertheless, from somewhere I found the strength to shift myself down that path –
thirty-six; thirty-eight
– past the flower-bed now shaped in an E, with its new plants, fresh and green. E for Elizabeth, S for Shrewsbury – the A for Arbella was there in the lawn still, like a ghost, where the sparse pale turf had not yet quite married with its lush neighbours. I walked on, my heavy, heavy legs pleading with me to stop, telling me it was impossible.

The page had turned and was making his way back to the house, presumably for orders. I didn’t mean to, but I looked up then and back – like that couple in the Bible who were turned to salt – to the central window; there she was, a familiar black shape in it, calling me like a lodestar, making me lose my resolve. I stopped the page. ‘Tell her I would like to talk to my uncle, at least.’
You don’t need her permission any more
, said Starkey,
fly away
. But asking permission was a habit; I was unused to the idea of freedom. The boy ran into the house
and had returned to me before I had taken even a dozen excruciating paces:
forty-eight, fifty
. The guards had multiplied and formed a line across the gates.

‘Your uncle may enter, but alone.’ The boy’s face was red. I couldn’t tell if it was the result of his running or embarrassment at being the one chosen to play a part in the denial of my freedom. He continued on to relay Grandmother’s message to the guards. One of them stepped forward, raising his line of sight to where she was framed in the window. What would she do? Make a gesture like Caesar, the thumb pointing up or down, to dictate whether I would live or die?

I resisted turning this time, kept my eyes on the gates and watched as the line of guards parted to allow my uncle through. I was rooted to the spot, so light-headed my attention began to wander and I imagined the birds were talking to me, warning me; the doves on the roof were purring the word
da-da-dangerrrr
. I could not tell where the menace lay, out there beyond the gates or back behind the glass.
Fly away
.

Uncle Henry looked red-faced and worn, paunchy, older. Thin straggles of grey hair hung from beneath his hat. Of course he was older; I hadn’t seen him for a decade. He had never before greeted me without a smile. That day was the first time.

‘The bitch has given me half an hour with you,’ he spat, taking my arm and helping, almost lifting, me, towards the house.
How strange,
I thought,
that I am such a great weight, bones of lead, yet to him I am light as the finest glass, glass so fine it would shatter in a breath of air
. My mind wouldn’t stop perambulating off in different directions, only occasionally alighting on the sensible thought that it was folly to have embarked on such a journey having ingested nothing, nothing at all, in three days. I might have felt cleansed as a saint but I was in no fit state to go travelling about the country.

We passed through the great hall, where forty-odd pairs
of eyes watched us in silence from the dining tables: estate workers, servants, embroiderers, grooms, most of whom I’d known since childhood, all wondering what was happening. Bridget was there; Bridget knew. Uncle Henry rattled with arms, a sword hanging from his belt, a dagger beside it, a pistol tucked into his doublet. We threaded our way through the tangle of passages to the schoolroom, where Starkey’s spectre flitted about, like a draught that made my heart billow.

I sat, at last, in the high-backed chair beside the barren grate and listened in a daze to Uncle Henry explaining what would happen. ‘… We can storm the place. I have enough firepower out there. I have only to give my signal and mayhem will be loosed.’ His eyes blazed in anticipation.

‘People will be hurt,’ I muttered, seeing only then the reality of what I had agreed to: that it would be a battle, that people would suffer, may even be killed.

‘What did you expect? That you could simply walk out of the gates?’ His fist clutched the pommel of his sword.

That is what I, in my naivety,
had
expected: that Grandmother’s resolve would be magically overcome simply by the sight, the mere thought even, of Uncle Henry’s armed men. But of course Grandmother was not cowed by anything. How could that fact have not occurred to me?

‘Don’t go faint-hearted on me now, Belle.’ There it was, the glittering smile I remembered. ‘Think of it. Wed to Seymour, the pair of you will be unassailable.’

‘Yes, unassailable,’ I said, hearing Starkey:
You were bred to it; it is God’s plan for you
.

‘That’s more like it.’ He began pacing the room. ‘This is what will happen. You will come to the gate to see me off. I will give the signal and my men will be here, quick as a trice, to deal with the guards. They are waiting … ready for a fight.’