The Girl in the Glass Tower (2 page)

As Tobias had told me, there was only a single guard outside the forbidden apartments. I suppose, now I think of it, it must have all been carefully arranged, but at the time my understanding was slight. He knocked on the door with the butt of his halberd; three sharp knocks in quick succession, a pause, and then two slow ones. It opened and a hand reached out, beckoning me into the room. The latch clicked shut behind me.

The chamber was dimly lit and there was a general rustling as the women, who were scattered about, put their embroidery frames and books to one side and dropped to the floor, heads bowed. I felt a laugh pressing at my throat. I was used to the servants’ deference but these were well-born ladies and I a mere child. Unsure of the correct way to behave, I stood gawping at them for what seemed an age, wondering if I was supposed to give some command, a gesture, to indicate that they were free to go about their business. Then by some invisible cue they all rose and returned to their needlework or whatever it was I’d interrupted.

I cast my eyes around for the Queen, who was said to be a great beauty; one or two of those women were comely enough but I reasoned that a queen got on her knees for no one, save God. A pebble of disappointment dropped into me. I had expected to find her glorious, seated beneath a canopy of state, festooned in jewels and haloed in gold light, like in the cobwebby paintings of the saints that were stored away in the cupboard at the back of the chapel. Grandmother had scolded me for ‘putting my nose where it didn’t belong’ when I’d asked her what they were doing there. I was puzzled by those paintings, for I knew it was wrong to revere the saints and supposed that must have been the reason they were gathering dust in the dark.

There was a movement in the corner and a woman I hadn’t noticed heaved herself up from a prayer stand, stepping into view. She was tall as a man and stout with it. ‘Ah,’ she said, opening her arms wide. ‘Let me look at you; come, my eyesight is not what it was.’ Her voice was odd, not quite French like the dance master and not quite Scottish like the head falconer, but a mixture of the two.

I stood rooted to the spot, unsure of how to behave. This great lumpen matron dressed in black was surely not the beautiful Queen of Scotland. That pebble of disappointment seemed to swell. But then I saw something, a haughtiness in her demeanour, a spark of pride in the eyes, which made me drop in a curtsy all the way down to the floor.

‘Up, up,’ the Queen said. ‘Come and sit with me.’

The ladies hustled round, procuring a pair of chairs, which they placed by the hearth. The Queen lowered herself into one, fitting her bulk tightly between its arms, and patted her lap with the command, ‘Up, Geddon,’ for a small dog to jump on to it.

‘Mary, would you bring us something to drink,’ she said. ‘We have three Marys here: Mary Devlin,’ she pointed to a woman who was filling two cups from a ewer, ‘and two more there,’ she waved an arm in the general direction of the embroiderers. ‘And
I
am Mary, of course. There is your aunt Mary Talbot too, though we never see her these days. It’s a shame. I was fond of her.’

She crossed herself, something I had only ever seen done once by one of the stable lads; the head groom had cuffed him for it. ‘All named for the blessed Virgin.’ She waved her arm towards the prayer stand, where a painting of the Virgin, puce-cheeked with a brilliant blue gown, dandling a plump, haloed baby, was hung. Only then did I notice a large jewelled crucifix in a corner and the rosary beads that hung from all the ladies’ girdles. Everybody knew the Scottish
Queen was Catholic but, seeing those prohibited objects, things the household chaplain denounced in his sermons as the tools of heresy, reminded me of the strangeness of that other faith.

I couldn’t help but think about the stories I had heard the servants whisper, of Catholics who tried to poison Queen Elizabeth, who sought to destroy all we knew to be good and right, and the priests being dragged from hiding places hardly bigger than rat holes and taken to the Tower for interrogation. My maids often sat in my bedchamber when they believed me asleep and discussed what happened there. I would spread my limbs out in the bed and try to imagine what it might be like to be stretched on the rack. I had never questioned the wickedness of Catholics, but the Scottish Queen, smiling and petting her dog, seemed as far from an enemy as a robin from a raven.

‘Your parents chose a Scottish name for you; not really a name you think of for an English queen, is it? But just as well you are not a Mary too. That would be most confusing, though I would like to think you had been named for me. I suppose that would have been too much to expect, given that I am such a wicked woman.’ She emitted a small, bitter laugh. ‘But I am so very glad to have this chance to see you, Arbella.’ She reached out and squeezed my hand tightly.

My first instinct was to snatch it back. It had been drummed into me from infancy that I, as royalty, must never be touched without permission, but I reasoned that would not apply to a queen and so left it sitting limply in hers. She smiled openly and warmly. Grandmother never really smiled, though she often told me she loved me; she said a smile made a person seem meek. I wondered about that, for the scriptures said meekness was a virtue, that the meek would inherit the earth, but Grandmother was not to be questioned.

She was strict and inflexible and capable of turning a
whole room to her attention just by clearing her throat. By contrast, the Scottish Queen’s smile made me feel safe and, in some peculiar way, though that royal aunt of mine was a complete stranger and an enemy of sorts, profoundly loved.

‘I am to be moved to Tutbury and it occurred to me that we might never be under the same roof again.’ She sighed, sinking into her seat, like an ancient house settling. ‘Tutbury is hell itself.’ She crossed herself once more.

Leaning in close enough for me to smell the aniseed on her breath, she continued, ‘You see, I have always thought of you as something like a daughter. My son’ – her voice cracked as she said it and I was aware of all the women craning in to listen – ‘I fear my son is lost to me.’

‘I am sorry for that.’ I meant it from the bottom of my heart, thinking of my own mother and how even death could not break our bond.

‘My little James, your cousin, the King of Scotland’ – her tone was momentarily hard and then softened – ‘what a bonny infant he was.’ She gripped my hand very hard. ‘His mind has been poisoned against me.’

I didn’t know how to reply, just repeated, ‘I am very sorry for that.’

‘Now, I
know
you have been raised in the new faith, my dear, but you are yet young. What age are you? Nine, I think. Am I right?’

I nodded.

‘Fresh as a new shoot.’ There was that tender smile once more. ‘I want you to remember this. Whatever you have been taught to believe, the Catholic faith is the true faith; it is the only path that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven.’ She placed her palms together as if in prayer. ‘Despite what has befallen me, I know it is God’s plan and I have faith in His wisdom. If He had meant for me to have the throne of England, then it would have been mine – I suspect He has other plans for me.’

I had never heard anyone talk of God in such a way; it was as if the Queen knew Him intimately, as if He was her own father. God for me was something intangible and frightening.

‘It is my hope that one day, my dearest child, you will see what a comfort the true faith is. Ask your Aunt Mary, Mary Talbot, she will tell you.’

‘Aunt Mary?’ My head had begun to churn with all that new information.

‘If the English throne was not my destiny then it is surely yours and when you have achieved it, I will be up there watching over you and your Catholic England.’ She had a beatific look on her face as if she had been visited by a host of angels. ‘You are my hope, Arbella.’ With that she released my hand again and took something out from beneath her gown, a small wooden box, which she opened, removing a flat elliptical object from it. ‘I want you to have this, as a reminder of our meeting.’

I took it. It was like a ring without its shank; one side was a smooth disc of red stone, on its other, set into a bed of gold, was an oval of translucent milky substance bearing the impression of a lamb. I didn’t know what to say; it seemed so very precious.

‘It is an Agnus Dei,’ she told me.

‘The Lamb of God.’

‘You know your Latin. Good girl.’ There was that smile again, deep and inviting. ‘It has been blessed by His Holiness the Pope,’ she whispered, ‘and will protect you. But do
not
let anyone see it. I’m afraid these days an Agnus Dei can visit trouble on its owner.’ She sighed and the smile disappeared. ‘But earthly trouble is sometimes the price we must pay for heavenly grace.’

I wanted to ask what she meant, how could it at once protect and visit trouble; but I said nothing.

Less than three years later the Queen of Scotland was gone. I wondered if she had been executed because she no longer had the protection of her Agnus Dei.

Tap, tap, tap.

My fingers wander now to the silk purse that hangs from my girdle containing my treasures: the weighted die that Uncle Henry gave me once, to remind me things aren’t always as they seem; the tiny bell from Geddon’s collar; the fold of parchment containing a lock of my husband’s hair; the smooth crystal drop from the glassworks at Hardwick; the scrap of paper bearing Mistress Lanyer’s poem; it is about me, but a me I no longer know. Right at the bottom, beneath everything, is the Agnus Dei, blessed by the Pope. It has not protected me very well.

Tap, tap, tap.

A sheaf of papers lands on the table with a thunk, sending out a billow of dust. It is tied with a length of faded ribbon that might have once been crimson. Motes jig and twirl as if alive in a shaft of sun that falls through the open window. Ami feels a sneeze build then dissipate at the back of her nose.

‘What are they?’ She puts the loaf she is carrying by the window to cool and picks up the papers.

‘Smells good.’ Hal reaches out to break a piece of bread off. She slaps his hand away, laughing.

He smiles that bright smile of his and taps the papers in her hand. ‘From Lady Arbella’s effects.’

‘Lady Arbella.’ She carefully lays the papers back on the table, fearing they might disintegrate beneath her fingers.

Her son seems distracted now, whistling and searching for something, patting down his doublet, then delving in the large leather bag that hangs on the back of the door, then in the chest, his head disappearing. ‘A man I know was charged with clearing out her rooms.’ His voice is muffled. ‘He thought you might be interested in them; said he remembered you’d dedicated a poem to her. I told him you knew her once. You did know her, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ she says.

Her mind wanders back to the last time she saw Lady Arbella. An image springs up from the past, that distant gaze, the russet frizz, an echo of the old Queen, scraped back and tamed beneath her cap, her sharply pronounced clavicles and thin graceful arms. They were in the stable yard at Richmond Palace; it must have been more than a decade ago. Lady
Arbella rarely looked directly at anyone which earned her, wrongly, a reputation for aloofness, but she had cast an indecipherable look at Ami and asked, ‘Are you my friend?’

Ami remembers the formality of her reply: ‘My Lady, I would never presume to call myself your friend, but you have my firm loyalty and love.’ A flash of sadness had scudded over the other woman’s face. It made Ami realize how lonely life must be for one so highborn, how much she must have yearned for ordinary friendship, and she regretted having not simply said, ‘Yes, I am your friend.’ Friendship had seemed impossible in the gulf of hierarchy that separated them, but there was no doubt that that was what it was.

Ami feels the old tangle of remorse; deep in a neglected part of her heart she knows it was she who caused the final misfortune – the greatest one. She had longed to beg forgiveness but it was not to be. In the end she failed her friend. She can hear those words, can still hear the rage in them:
If this fails, I will never forgive you
.

Hal continues, pulling her out of the past: ‘He said he’d get nothing for them, so you may as well have them.’

‘Are they letters?’

‘I don’t know, not letters, just scribblings, I think.’

If not letters then Ami feels sure she knows what they are. It was she who suggested to Lady Arbella that she take Book VI of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
and turn it into a drama. They had discussed it many times and Ami had sent her early drafts of her own poetry, but she had never seen a word of Lady Arbella’s
Tragedy of Philomel
. She’d concluded it was never written. But here it is.

She takes a cursory look at one or two pages and lifts the sheaf to her nose, imagining some vestige of her friend’s scent has remained, but the prevailing smell is of dust. The dense text is a painful reminder of how long it is since she herself has set down words in any meaningful way. Not since
her book was published four years ago has she been able to write, no matter how great, how desperate, her desire. It is as if her muse has deserted her irretrievably.

She has suspicions that the thicket of guilt entangling her is to blame; but with the arrival of this – a bubble of hope expands in her – she might find a release from that and with it the inspiration to write once more. She is tempted to sit down now and make a closer study, but would rather wait until she is alone, for she is sure that once she starts to read she will not be able to stop.

Hal continues to rummage, still whistling. She is struck suddenly by his looks; he has become a man, dark and chiselled, whilst her back was turned.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Those new strings for my lute.’

‘I strung it for you yesterday.’ She crosses the room and takes the lute down from the high shelf where it lives with a jumble of other instruments, passing it to him. She cannot play very well, though she should, for she is the daughter, sister, widow and mother of musicians, but she can string and tune a lute faster than any of them.

‘What would I do without you, Ma?’

‘I’m sure you would manage.’

It is
she
who would not manage, were Hal to go. He is bound to want to wed before long and then what will she do? She cannot bear to think of herself as one of those burdensome mothers-in-law, sharing these two cramped Clerkenwell rooms with her son and his bride. She pushes that worry aside; Hal has no mind to marry just yet.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘The tabby’s caught its first mouse.’ He is pointing to the corner where the cat is eviscerating a small carcass. Hal had rescued the tabby a few months ago from the water butt and brought it back to life, letting it suck milk from the corner of a linen cloth at hourly intervals.

‘She’ll be earning her keep soon,’ Ami says. ‘Come on, you mustn’t be late for the music master.’ Taking Hal’s hand, she can feel the calluses on the pads of his fingers, the result of a decade of teasing sounds from catgut.

As he throws his coat on she sees a flash of his father in his profile, not her husband, Alphonso, who died three years ago and left her deep in debt, but his true father, the man she loved and spent her reputation on.

She still feels a sense of loss when she thinks of Henry Hunsdon, though he is long gone; she never garnered that depth of feeling for her husband. But Alphonso gave her respectability and a name for her son; for that she is grateful. Mind you, he was paid handsomely for the favour. She often wonders if she was right to keep Hal ignorant of his true origins. And that is not all she hasn’t told him; he is not aware that Alphonso left her without two pennies to rub together. That was the reason she had to leave the spacious house in Bishopsgate for these mean lodgings, though she’d told Hal the old house was too much for her to manage and too full of ghosts. She doesn’t want him beset with worry when he has the chance to make his mark in the world.

She will manage – she always has – but in the time since Alphonso departed, her debts have escalated and the trickle of money that came from the sales of her book has run dry.

‘Have you packed everything you might need? Not forgotten your clean stockings, your blanket in case it’s chilly at night?’

‘Ma!’ He is disgruntled. ‘I’m not an infant!’

‘I can’t help worrying.’

‘Well, don’t. I can very well look after myself. I am only going to court, not to the moon.’ His tone shifts and he adopts a look of concern. ‘You won’t be lonely, will you?’

‘No, of course not.’ She takes a breath, girding herself for his departure. ‘This will keep me occupied.’ She points to the
papers on the table, feeling a whirr of anticipation, wondering what they might contain.

‘They said the Lady Arbella was cracked in the head, is that right?’

‘You don’t want to believe everything you hear. Now go. You’ll be late.’

She carries his lute to the door for him and, picking up the cat, stands watching as he walks away, feeling her heart tighten.

Goodwife Stringer lumbers by, hefting a large basket of apples, and flashes a slanted look Ami’s way. The houses on this street are pressed tight up against one another, like crowded teeth, and their neighbour cannot keep herself to herself. Barely an hour goes by without an encounter with Goodwife Stringer.

‘Boy left home, has he, Widow Lanyer?’ she says, putting her basket down with a huff of breath. Her sculpted features make her the sort that might be described as handsome, but the effect is spoiled by a permanently welded scowl.

‘He’s only going for two weeks.’

There is something a little hostile about the woman’s tone, which puts Ami on her guard. Goodwife Stringer is well known in the parish for putting her nose in other people’s business.

‘All on your own, then?’ she pauses. Ami says nothing, just maintains her position in the doorway, straight as a sentry. ‘I s’pose you know that a witch is to be hung later.’ The woman’s eyes move slowly from Ami’s face to the tabby in her arms and back again. ‘They say
she
had a cat that spoke to her.’

‘I doubt that’s true.’

Goodwife Stringer is silent and continues boring her through with that stare.

‘If you have something to say to me …’ Ami can feel
tendrils of wariness reaching up her body. There has been a frenzy of suspicion about witchcraft since the Scot James took the throne and it can catch like wildfire. Any nail that sticks up must be hammered down.

‘I
do
have something to say to you, Widow Lanyer.’ Her eyes fix on Ami’s. ‘I suppose you won’t be happy till you have turned the world on its head with your
poetry
.’ She says the word as if it is an expletive. ‘If Eve is free of sin, as you choose to believe, then why did God give us women the pain of childbirth? I ask you that.’

Ami knows it is futile to engage in theological exegesis but can’t resist asking, ‘Have you read my book, then?’

The woman stutters, clearly wants to say that she has but can’t quite seem to allow herself the lie. ‘There is no need to read it. Everybody knows what it says.’

‘Well, if you know what it says then you will be aware that I do not suggest that Eve is without sin. I merely propose that Adam is the more culpable for being the stronger and yet still allowing himself to be led to temptation.’ She shouldn’t really bother, for such women will think what they want. Besides she doubts whether Goodwife Stringer can read more than a grocer’s bill, so her opinions must be based on hearsay, and there has been enough of that.

It was inevitable that her book, like the women in it, would be misunderstood. In court circles it was celebrated for its subtlety of thought, amongst the women at least. But four long years have passed since she visited court.

The Chief Minister, Salisbury, had taken her aside and told her: ‘The King does not welcome women who get above themselves. Your poems have caused offence to His Majesty and, acting on his royal command, I am expelling you from court.’

Queen Anna had shown Ami some kindness, told her she was very sorry, that she and all her women found her poetry
‘marvellous’, but that she had no influence with her husband and his decision was final. As a consolation the Queen had offered her a jewel, a large ruby set with pearls, as a parting gift. A ‘nest egg’ she had called it. Ami keeps it safe, beneath a floorboard under the bed. It is the one thing the debt collectors will not get their hands on.

Goodwife Stringer has begun to shuffle from one foot to another.

‘I am sure you are busy,’ Ami says firmly. ‘I wish you a good day.’

‘Indeed!’ The woman seems incapable of even forcing out a goodbye as she picks up her basket and trundles off, muttering something under her breath.

Ami shuts her front door, having to use all her self-control to resist slamming it, but as she remembers the sheaf of papers on the table her anger disperses. She opens the shutters fully to allow in more light and cuts a slice of bread for herself. It is still warm and soft enough to need no butter, which is just as well for there is none. She crams it into her mouth and takes another slice, enjoying the fact that she is alone and has no witness to her greed; it is a comfort and she has blessed few of those these days.

The shaft of sun has shifted and falls directly over the papers on the table as if they are haloed. In a moment of fancy Ami sees it as a sign, laughing inwardly at herself for indulging such whimsy. She turns over the sheaf, where is written
The Lady Arbella – TO BE DISCARDED
.

She sifts through the ream, casting a cursory glance over each page. It is not the
Tragedy of Philomel
she’d expected, that is immediately clear. Some of it is written in a beautiful precise hand, but most is tangled and illegible, scrawled manically as if written in desperation to expel something. Like an exorcism; Ami is surprised at her analogy, wonders where it came from. There seems to be no chronology but some of the
pages are dated and she tries to impose a semblance of order over them.

Excitement begins to prod at her, for this document is better than that unwritten tragedy. The disjointed and barely decipherable pages seem to recount a life, Lady Arbella’s life. It slowly dawns on Ami that she might discover, somewhere in these pages, what truly became of her dear friend. Also, hope springs up suddenly – and with it those excoriating words:
If this fails, I will never forgive you
– these scrawls, like a code to be broken, could reveal whether Lady Arbella had ever found a shred of forgiveness for the friend who failed her.