The Girl in the Glass Tower (40 page)

‘Calais!’ I cried. I had watched the distant vague mass slowly transform, taking on the shape of pointed turrets and high walls. We were making excruciatingly slow progress, our boat struggling and zig-zagging against the wind.

I held out my hand. ‘Look, Margaret, I am shaking.’ But Margaret was spewing over the side, again. ‘We will be on dry land soon.’

She turned a green face to me and attempted a smile. I should have been near dead with exhaustion but some kind of invisible force kept me going. Bridget had slept, like a corpse, for the entire journey; even Crompton had dozed for an hour, upright in a chair, head lolling, mouth open. Margaret had lain moaning, with her face pressed to the lip of a bucket until I prised her up, out of the putrid air below and on to the deck.

I noticed a heated conversation taking place between Corvé and his boatswain, who was pointing towards the stern. I followed his finger and saw the unmistakable shape of a boat in our wake. Light-headed with elation, I joined them, leaning out for a better view, unable to tear my gaze away from that small dark form. Where we were struggling in our cumbersome vessel with the wind against us, they were sleek and compact and bearing down swiftly. I could just make out the several pairs of oarsmen explaining their speed.

‘Will!’ I shouted. ‘I knew he’d make it.’

Crompton was at my side, grabbing my shoulders, facing me, grinning. ‘Thank God!’

His eyes glimmered. ‘Are you crying, Crompton?’

‘No, of course not! It’s the wind.’

A laugh burst out of me and, forgetting myself entirely, I snatched the perspective instrument from Corvé’s hand, placing it to my eye.

A small circle of sea appeared through the lens, a gull bobbing on its surface in magical detail. I moved the instrument back and forth, finally catching the craft in my sight, seeing clearly then the eight pairs of oarsmen and a number of men at the rear, one standing, looking back at me through an identical device. I scanned their faces, looking for Will, reminding myself he was disguised.

‘Was it a
black
beard?’ I asked Crompton.

‘Yes, yes, a big black beard and a matching wig.’

I scanned the faces once more.

‘What is it?’ asked Crompton. ‘What’s the matter?’

I passed him the instrument so he could see for himself that Will was not on board, only a small pack of heavily armed men and behind them, fluttering prettily in the breeze, was the King’s banner.

Crompton blanched, drawing an arm across his forehead and, turning to Corvé, asked how many men crewed the brig.

Corvé held up both hands, fingers spread, indicating ten, then began to bark orders at his men to angle the boat, get some wind behind the mainsail, speed us up, outrun them, but we all knew it was futile. The weather was against us and their sleek craft was moving through the water at speed. We didn’t need the perspective instrument now to count their numbers, with the eight pairs of rowers and ten others, they were twenty-six strong.

The lads had opened a chest and were pulling out pikes and swords, distributing them around. Corvé produced a pair of pistols from somewhere, tossing one over to Crompton, who began to load it.

The boat was bearing down on us, almost within range.

‘Get down!’ Crompton pushed me to the deck as a musket fired, the bullet thudding into the side of our boat.

Margaret screamed.

I crawled to the bow and grabbed hold of her, pulling her with me behind a large coil of rope. Margaret was shaking and moaning and I shouted down to Bridget to help me get her below decks.

Corvé fired into the air, a deafening warning shot, and crouched to reload. Crompton held his aim, waiting. The boatswain was barking out orders to the men to take their places. I looked around at them; they all seemed barely out of boyhood. One close to me had a peach-like complexion and round cheeks that made my heart lurch.

Dragging Margaret, I crawled across the floor towards the hold, where Bridget was waiting, white-faced.

Another shot was fired. Another bullet whistled and thumped into the side of our brig. We slid behind the mast. Margaret was shaking violently and whimpering but her fear made me strong, we couldn’t both fall to pieces. The musket fire began to come in volleys, a hellish cacophony, the scent of gunpowder filling the air; it was the smell of fireworks and celebrations.

A boy, struck on the arm, collapsed down beside us, clutching his wound. It was the smooth-faced lad, terror stitched through him. ‘I’m not ready to die,’ he cried. ‘I want my mam!’

A new volley of shots hailed on us as I unpeeled his fingers and inspected the injury, a black hole, smelling of burnt flesh, oozing bright blood. The bullet had passed clean through and even with my limited knowledge I knew that to be a good thing. ‘You’ll be all right,’ I said and, seeing the doubt on him, added, ‘really. Today’s not your day to go.’ It crossed my mind that it might be mine and, as if on cue, a bullet clipped the mast an inch from my temple
and ricocheted up, tearing through the mainsail, causing Margaret to scream again, a great, blood-curdling terrified wail.

‘Stop,’ I said, taking both her upper arms firmly, ‘just stop. Rip me off a length of your petticoat, the cleanest part, to serve as a bandage.’

She wriggled out of her undergarment and began to tear off a strip, seeming a little calmer with a task to focus on.

Another volley of shots cracked, smoke billowed, men shouted, as I wrapped the bandage tightly round the boy’s upper arm. ‘Make a sling from your scarf,’ I instructed Margaret who was grey with fear.

Through thick grey smoke I saw a rope fly high through the air. On its end was a hook, which lodged itself under the lip of the brig.

‘They’re boarding,’ shouted Crompton. ‘We can pick them off as they climb.’

Corvé staggered, tripping over something, sending his gun skittering over the deck towards me. I picked it up, sensing the power of life and death in its weight.

I stood.

Corvé was gesticulating wildly, indicating I should toss the arm back to him, and behind him a rank of deckhands gathered brandishing a motley assortment of weapons.

I saw them for what they were, a few petrified boys, not even men, who thought they were simply sailing to France. They would be maimed, killed, for what? So that some woman they didn’t know could have a taste of freedom. The smoke was making my eyes smart; I wiped them with my sleeve and, tucking the gun into my breeches, bellowed, ‘HOLD YOUR FIRE!’

I walked forward, out of the shadow of the mast.

‘You’ll get yourself killed,’ screamed Margaret, tugging at my leg. I shook her off.

There was a lull in the fire as the men began to climb the ropes. Crompton had his aim. I ran, swiping my arm at him, feeling strength I didn’t know I had come from nowhere.

‘Don’t fire!’ I cried.

‘Are you mad?’ he screamed.

I pointed my pistol his way, shouting, ‘Drop your gun!’

‘Steady.’ I saw real panic in him as he took a small step towards me.

‘Leave it,’ I said firmly in Grandmother’s voice, as if commanding a dog. ‘If we try to repel them it’ll be a bloodbath. Do you truly want this on your conscience? I will not risk innocent lives being lost on my account.’

He slumped and dropped his face into his hands, reminding me of the moment I’d first told Will I was carrying his child.

I grabbed Margaret’s undergarment and walked through the smoke towards the side of the brig, arm up, the flag of white petticoat dancing from my fist signalling my surrender.

Hal holds open the door, ‘Close your eyes, Ma!’ He takes her arm and guides her inside. ‘Now you can open them.’

It is a spacious chamber with a brick hearth and windows set high on both sides. There is space enough, she estimates, for five rows of four desks. She can see them there already, a pupil at each, girls as well as boys, studying quietly. In her mind she can smell the ink and hear the soft scrape of chalk on slate. She is walking up and down occasionally, offering advice or standing at the front, all eyes on her, conjugating a verb in Latin.

‘And through here,’ Hal calls her from a doorway at the far end. She follows him through into a smaller room bathed in light. There in her mind’s eye she sees Joyce sitting cross-legged on the floor with a circle of little ones, singing a numbers song.

She had suggested to Joyce a few days earlier, that she come and help her in the school.

‘A school? A proper school?’ she’d exclaimed.

‘It was Hal’s idea.’ She watched the girl light up on hearing Hal’s name. ‘He’s found me a building near St Giles.’

‘Near St Giles,’ she repeated, as if she couldn’t find words of her own, then said more quietly, ‘and you want
me
to help you with it?’

‘I hope you will say yes.’

‘If Fa allows it, then I’d love nothing more.’ Joyce turned away then, so her face wasn’t visible. ‘Is he spoken for?’

‘Who?’ Ami was momentarily confused. ‘What, Hal? Goodness, no.’

‘Ah,’ said the girl, looking up again, trying to conceal a smile.

Ami had wanted to ask Hal about Joyce, after seeing them together that day, but at the same time didn’t want to interfere.

She watches him pace the room counting, measuring its length.

‘This couldn’t be more perfect,’ she says.

‘And there are three large rooms upstairs too.’

It seems too good to be true. ‘And the lease?’

‘It’s a fair price.’ He begins to list the costs but she interjects.

‘Tell him I’ll take it.’ Through the window she can see the agent loitering in the meadow out front.

‘I reckon I can haggle it down a little. The place does need a lick of whitewash.’

‘I’m sure you can, with your talents for negotiation.’ She brings a hand to his shoulder. ‘Given the amount you levered out of that Cheapside jeweller for my trinket.’

‘He said it was the finest stone he’d seen in a month of Sundays. I didn’t exactly need to squeeze it from him. His eyes were popping out of his head.’

‘There will be plenty to set everything up, in any case, and a fair sum left over.’ She is struck, and not for the first time, by the worth of that raspberry-sized piece of matter that had lived so long beneath her floorboards. It is a good feeling to have prospects, a woman of her age, a widow, with a nest egg, and there is enough even to settle Alphonso’s old debts.

Outside, a deal is agreed, she shakes hands with the agent. It is a new start.

‘Life is a series of beginnings and endings,’ she says to Hal as they walk away, back towards Clerkenwell. ‘It’s funny,’ she adds. ‘All along I had the means to settle my debts, yet didn’t realize it. Had I known the true value of that jewel –’

Hal interrupts her, saying, ‘Perhaps it was meant to be.
You might never have come to teaching if you hadn’t needed to earn your living.’

‘I suppose not.’ She wonders when he became so wise.

‘How’s your writing coming along, Ma? Are you nearly done with it?’

‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she replies.

She cannot find a way to explain that the truth is untidy, how the story has begun to crumble beneath her fingers. She has been struggling to order it into a legible form. Arbella’s account had, towards the end, become even more convoluted and fragmented; like a dreamscape it had lost its coherence, become a string of impressions and feelings – and memories.

Tap, tap, tap.
I try to write but my hand struggles to hold the quill just as my mind refuses to hold my thoughts. Most of what I write is illegible and the rest is smeared by my sleeve.

I tip out my bag of treasures, rolling the die that always lands on a six – three pairs of black eyes, set in ivory, watching me. I unfold the paper containing my husband’s hair, bringing my nose to it. His scent is gone. Nestling in my palm is the tear of glass to represent all the tears I have never shed. I wonder if I shatter it, will those tears be spilled at last? I hold it to my eye and the world is transformed, all its straight edges curved, small things enlarged. I slip my wedding ring on to my finger. It is too big, even for my thumb. Soon
I
will be transformed.

Soon.

I will fly away.

I read Mistress Lanyer’s dog-eared poem:
Rare Phoenix, whose fair feathers are your own
.

I feel my feathers sprouting in the prickle of gooseflesh about my shoulders.

I ring Geddon’s little bell to take me back, but the bright chime puts me in a place I do not want to go, where my Scottish aunt’s neck is hacked at like a piece of timber.

And there it is, that small traitor, hiding at the bottom of the bag. I pick up the Agnus Dei between the tips of my fingers, as if it might burn me, and fling it from the window.

It is four years now that I have been throwing it away. Each morning it is returned to the ledge. I am cursed by it. It whispers to me of the one true faith. Starkey tells me to resist it, that it is testing me.

The lieutenant, Wade, had found it amongst my things when I first arrived. He said it spoke of insurrection.

‘I am no Catholic,’ I told him.

‘We shall see,’ was his reply. He placed an elbow on the arm of his chair and cleared his throat. ‘The Countess of Shrewsbury, your
Catholic
aunt, will be here within the day.’

‘Aunt Mary has been arrested?’

‘Indeed,
My Lady
’ – he said it as if I didn’t deserve the title – ‘the aunt that would have put you at the heart of a papist plot.’

‘You are not speaking the truth. My aunt never wanted anything more than to give me my liberty.’

‘I fear you delude yourself, My Lady. It is what everyone says.’

‘Everyone can be wrong.’ I could see
he
wasn’t a man who liked to be wrong. The up-pointing moustache, carefully curled, spoke of his vanity. Yes, he would be too beset with pride to like being proved in error. ‘If she is coming here then I will ask her myself.’

‘I’m afraid I cannot allow that. But
I
shall draw the truth out of her.’ The way he said it made me crumple a little and think of all those others who had served me and might be having things drawn from them.

‘Perhaps
she
will know why you have a trinket blessed by the Pope in your possession.’ Lieutenant Wade was known for having drawn the truth out of the Powder Treason plotters. People said he had a nose for papist insurrection.

‘What of my servants, Crompton, my women?’ I imagined Bridget and Margaret somewhere working on that embroidered woodland scene they began in Barnet.

‘They are being held elsewhere.’

‘They have done nothing save what I demanded of them. They cannot be charged guilty of obedience.’ I could not
bear to think that those I held dear, those who were loyal, had lost their freedom for me. I wanted to ask about my husband but my throat had become choked and the words would not form.

My harpies have returned and with them dear Doctor Moundford. He looks at me with a face so sad I would cry if I were the crying sort. But instead of bringing tears his look turns my insides out.

A sharp piece of me has broken off and is lacerating my guts.

Moundford drips his tincture into my mouth.

I drift.

The harpies recede. They watch me from their perch beyond the window. Is it they who return the Agnus Dei?

But I don’t feel sure of anything.

‘Just a sip of caudle,’ Moundford is saying. He holds a cup and a spoon. It reeks of milk and nutmeg. I shake my head and shut my eyes; there is my Will, free. He smiles his impish smile and blows me a kiss before flying away.

Aunt Mary came to my rooms.

‘I was told I could not see you.’

‘I bribed the guards. There is always a way if you are resourceful.’ She was dishevelled as usual, and smiling, which reassured me.

‘Oh God!’ was all I could find to say. I was so very pleased to see her but not pleased she was in this place with me.

‘Come, sweeting.’ She opened her arms and I fell into them, a child once more.

‘Where is Will?’ My voice was muffled. I didn’t feel able to let her go, wanted to keep my face pressed into her shoulder with its scent of powder and musk.

‘His escape succeeded. He is with friends abroad.’

‘Thank God.’ I had an image of him mounted, galloping into the distance. He looked well on a horse, straight-backed, poised, manly.

‘The King is ailing,’ she said.

Deep in my heart I sinned by wishing him dead. I knew, had long known, that if Henry Frederick came to the throne I would be released – I would have all I ever wanted.

‘Listen,’ she said in the faintest of whispers. ‘Don’t lose hope. There are people who will liberate you from here. I can arrange it.’

‘What people?’

‘You don’t need to know, sweeting.’

My gentlewoman puts a plate of bread and ham on the small table beside the window.

‘Doctor Moundford says I must try and encourage you to eat.’

I pretend I haven’t heard and say, ‘Do you know, Nan, that your husband used to wear my glove in his hat?’

‘I do know,’ she replies.

‘A long time ago.’

‘He still has that glove. It is a family treasure.’

I wonder if she can be trusted. She takes her food and begins to eat, spreading the bread thickly with butter, folding the ham inside it, stuffing it into her mouth as if she is starving. My stomach turns. When she isn’t looking I peel strips of ham and drop them from the open window, where my harpies sit waiting. They make me think of the dogs beneath the table at Hardwick.

It takes all the force I have.

‘Nan, can you tell me what became of Bridget and Margaret. Were they released?’

‘Long ago,’ she replies, as if I have asked that question countless times, which perhaps I have.

‘You’ve been writing again, I see.’ She speaks with her mouth full and I have to avert my eyes.

‘I have written myself into existence.’

I must have said it out loud for she says, ‘Yes, yes,’ like someone humouring a lunatic. I have given up trying to prove I am not mad.

Mary came again. It was just after we heard of Prince Henry Frederick’s death. We both wore black sashes. ‘They are saying he was poisoned.’ Mary’s expression was indecipherable, a calculation that would never be solved.

‘Who would do such a thing? He was so well loved.’ I thought of that glittering boy, bursting with life, the hope of England. I wished in that dark part of me that I could have exchanged myself for him, imagined making a pact with God that allowed him to live and me to die in his place. I was not afraid of death, for I knew Starkey was waiting for me, and all my hope had withered away with the end of that glittering boy.

‘That family has many enemies.’ Again, that puzzling look.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘It is my family too.’

‘His death puts you closer to the throne, sweeting.’

I would rather have not thought of that, for surely it made my freedom less likely than ever.

‘Just that sickly, lame boy Charles and Princess Elizabeth lie in your way now.’

‘Stop it.’

‘The Princess Elizabeth’s nuptials will still go ahead in February, despite her brother’s death,’ she said. ‘I feel it in my bones that the King will grant you a pardon. Isn’t it a tradition for the King to grant pardons at a royal wedding?’

My dead hope shifted slightly and I began to mull over what I could sell to raise the money for a dress – for dresses.
I still had those paltry pearls; they would be worth
something
. I would need to look the part on my return to court.

‘It will be a
Protestant
wedding.’ Aunt Mary’s disapproval was visible in every fibre of her being.

‘What do you mean by that? Of course it will be a Protestant wedding.’

She doesn’t elucidate. ‘It’s time we do what needs to be done.’

It was as if she spoke in a language I had never come across before. ‘Do what?’

She picked up the Agnus Dei from the window ledge and, taking my hand, unfolding the fingers, placed it in my palm. ‘Let’s not pretend any more … It is the only path to the Kingdom of Heaven.’

My breath was loud in my head. I had heard those words before. It was the Scottish Queen who spoke them and this:
I will be up there watching over you and your Catholic England.

‘No,’ I said. My voice came out more forcefully than I expected. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

The Agnus Dei was still in my palm; a circle of red. It reminded me of that sailor’s bullet wound or – the thought shocked me – a holy stigma. I remembered hearing of nuns who manifested stigmata at Easter time.

‘But you want to be free.’

‘There is no such thing as freedom.’ Only as the words left my mouth did I understand their meaning as an intrinsic truth.

‘You become increasingly opaque,’ she said, before she got up, kissed me on the forehead with the words, ‘Think about it,’ and left.

The gun salute in celebration of the royal wedding caused plaster to drop from the ceiling of my room. The church bells rang and there were fireworks. I made Nan put my new
dresses away in the trunk so they wouldn’t mock me. In the night I’d heard them talking about me, whispering into their frilled sleeves.

I had asked to be moved. There was a new lieutenant, Elwes, who questioned why I should want to leave the best rooms in the Tower. I didn’t tell him it was to get away from Aunt Mary, who could see into my window from her balcony. I didn’t want to be part of her scheming – all those stories and secrets weaving back far into the past, back to the Scottish Queen.

My new chamber was round, with deep-set window alcoves and a view of the river far below. Escape would be impossible from such a room. I would be safe from Aunt Mary. She sent letters hidden in my food but I threw them on the fire without reading them.

All that time, all my life, I’d believed her to be something other than she was. I was nothing but a cause to her. If I thought too hard about it I might truly have become cracked in the head, as they said I was. I heard the talk, even shut in that place gossip found its way in.

Wedding fireworks lit up the sky in the distance towards Whitehall. A whisper went round that someone in the Tower had been pardoned. It was not me.

‘These rooms housed Lady Katherine Grey, long ago, when she was here,’ the lieutenant had said when he showed me to my new quarters, smiling as if he thought the fact would please me.

‘I know Lady Katherine.’ He looked at me strangely when I said that and I didn’t think it worth explaining.

Tap, tap, tap.

‘Nan,’ I say. ‘When will they stop hammering down there?’

‘They stopped a month ago. Listen, it is silent.’ I can see the concern on her face. She can hardly bear to look at me.

‘But I hear it.’

I am very weak; it takes a supreme effort to lift my fingers from the bed to my cheek. Pain echoes through me perpetually.

‘Do you?’ She says it like someone talking to an infant.

I stroke the side of my face; a down has sprouted there. Perhaps I am finally becoming the boy my family once wished I had been.

She pulls back the covers and, averting her gaze, deftly removes my soiled shift, moving my body easily, as if I am a puppet. I am reminded of Margaret, deep in the past, who was able to take off her shift without undoing her gown. It used to make us laugh. It is a long time since I laughed.

Nan replaces the shift with a clean one. It smells of grass. I suppose it is summer and everything has been laid out on the lawn to dry. The scent takes me back to Hardwick and that miniature queen with the wooden stump beneath her skirts, the first great disappointment of my childhood.

‘In heaven’s name, I wish I could persuade you to eat something.’ Nan’s eyes are dewy and bloodshot. I feel her hand cradling my own.

‘Shhh,’ I say. ‘Don’t cry, Nan. It is what I want – what God wants.’

A harpy is perched near the window. Black feathers, red lips, sharp teeth, black eye. I watch it through the cracked pane. My vision is blurred but I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. It moves towards the place where the window is ajar and drops something from its mouth on to the sill, then opens its vast wings, momentarily blocking out the day, before soaring up and away.

I squeeze Nan’s hand. ‘My body is not my
self
.’ She looks baffled, as if I am speaking in Greek.

Starkey is beside me.
Do you remember when I asked you, years ago, what kind of queen you intended to be?

‘Of course I do. “A just queen,” is what I replied.’

You may not be Queen of England but you are queen over the realm of your body. You have the power to mete justice to your soul and set it free
.

Nan is talking in murmurs with Doctor Moundford. They are trying to find ways to save me but their efforts are futile, for I have already won this battle.

Despite the frailty of my body my mind is robust.

If you give yourself liberty you also set your husband free
.

Very quietly, I whisper to Starkey, ‘I know what is right.’

I have that image of Will galloping into the distance. He rides Dorcas. It makes a flower of elation blossom in my breast.

Doctor Moundford and Nan loom over me. A hand covers her mouth but it can’t hide her grief. I want to tell her that I am setting myself free, that it is an occasion for joy, that I am taking my life back, but I find I can no longer speak.

They retreat. I hear their footsteps recede.