The Girl in the Glass Tower (7 page)

I crept silently through the upper corridor, feeling my way along the walls in the dark, finding the indent in the panelling marking the door to Grandmother’s study, lowering my hand down and across to meet the latch. Its click sounded loud as a gunshot and I stood, breath held, to make sure I was alone.

Embers glowed in the hearth; I fumbled for a candle and touched its wick to them, grateful for the vague light it threw out. Grandmother’s desk was a mass of papers and somewhere amongst them was a letter from my cousin James of Scotland. Dodderidge’s whispered words repeated in my mind:
It is in the pile of correspondence to the far left
. He had said there might be something of interest for me contained in that letter but that he had been unable to get his hands on it without arousing suspicion.

In the five months I had been at Wingfield my universe had shrunk to the size of a dolls’ house and, like a dolls’ house, the front of my small world could be removed and its inner workings thoroughly inspected. I was watched constantly: Grandmother watched me and Cecil watched her watching me and the Queen watched Cecil watching her watching me. I supposed that the Catholics intent on spiriting me away watched invisibly too. That threat was to lurk interminably in my life.

Under this regime of scrutiny I felt impelled to shed light on events obscured from me. My secretive nature blossomed and I became adept at spycraft, seeking information, listening to the servants’ gossip, loitering outside half-open doors, finding ways to cast my eye over Grandmother’s frequent
private correspondence with Cecil before it was balled up and tossed into the hearth.

Dodderidge, who believed it my right to know what was being arranged on my behalf, helped me in this espionage, acquiring information on Grandmother’s paperwork for me. She occasionally enlisted his services for letter-writing, giving him access to her private papers. My security was much discussed, and my education, as was the question of who was to pay for it.

I shuffled through the stack of letters, listening with one ear for sounds outside, eventually finding the royal seal of Scotland. I scanned my eyes down the neat paragraph:
The Lennox inheritance will remain under my jurisdiction
– he referred to my father’s bequest, which by rights should have come to me years before –
for the time being. It is not without problems … there are others who might be have equal right to it … the Lady Arbella is not of age … It is a Scottish title and she was not born here in Scotland so the inheritance is problematic …

It would seem he intended to continue withholding my patrimony. Perhaps he felt it was a way to pull my strings. But I perceived an irony at the heart of his words, for the fact that I was born in England made
me
Elizabeth’s heir rather than him, despite his being male. I replaced the letter, disheartened. This espionage gave me the illusion of power but truly was nothing more than an exercise, for I was incapable of changing my circumstances.

Beyond the window it was still dark but the first birdsong told me dawn was imminent. I blew out the candle, careful to leave everything exactly as I’d found it, and crept from the room and back into the pitch-black corridor. Surprising myself, instead of turning left towards my bedchamber I turned right and took the stairs, carefully, one hand clutching the banister. I could hear the night-guard’s snores and saw him, in a pool of light from his lamp, slumped forward over
the table, head cradled in his arms, halberd propped beside him.

I slunk past and, not giving a thought to the fact that I wore only my nightgown, slipped silently as a ghost out through the door. Clinging to the darkest corners under the walls, where even the trickle of moonlight couldn’t reach, I made my way, as if magically drawn, towards the stable block.

A reassuring earthy smell assaulted my senses as I entered. Horses shifted in their stalls and one or two of them looked out, curious as to who was skulking about in the gloom. But Dorcas knew me; she puffed out a low whinny as I approached – it was not the first time I’d paid her a clandestine visit.

Once I was in her stall she pushed her muzzle into me, her usual greeting, puffing hot breath, nostrils flared, into the crook of my neck. Gaining a foothold on a joist, I climbed up on to her broad back, lying forward to rest my head against her withers, humming quietly, imagining the pair of us galloping over the heathland alone, sensing her excitement as she lifted her head to scent the breeze. Her body rolled beneath me as she got into her stride and soon we were one creature, flying towards the future. My fantasy reached an abrupt halt, interrupted by the reality of my situation. ‘I can’t stay long, girl,’ I whispered, ‘or they’ll notice I’m gone.’

My days of riding out had come to an end. Very occasionally I was allowed to put Dorcas through her paces in frustrating circles in the home paddock, under the careful eye of the head groom, the steward and several others. There are limits to the enjoyment of performing a passage or a capriole or a perfect lead change when there is no opportunity to take a gallop at the end. It was for my own safety. I was not to walk beyond the garden walls and even within I was to be accompanied at all times. The stables, though inside the walls, were out of bounds because of the constant deliveries
and comings and goings. It was thought someone might find opportunity to snatch me away.

A distant door banged and footsteps approached, a stable lad up early, I supposed. I slipped silently off Dorcas’s back and pressed myself into the gloom. The footsteps neared. Dorcas shifted and scuffed a hoof, sensing tension in the air. I folded myself further into the recess.

The bolt shot back and there before me in the half-light was Grandmother, white-faced, with her rotund steward, Mister Reason, at her side, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

‘Good grief, Arbella, we’ve been worried sick. I have a dozen men out looking for you. And in your nightgown. You’ll catch your death.’ She turned to Mister Reason, barking, ‘Fetch a blanket, for goodness’ sake.’

The man scurried off and I emerged from my lair to face my fate, mumbling an apology.

‘Dear girl, you are blue.’

I looked at my hands and saw she was right – I must have been out there longer than I realized. Only then did I feel the October cold and began to shiver uncontrollably, holding my arms about my body. Reason returned with a great itchy horse blanket. ‘Not that filthy thing,’ said Grandmother, removing her own shawl and wrapping it round my shoulders.

‘This really has to stop,’ she said as we crossed the yard towards the house. She didn’t sound angry, just concerned. ‘What on earth were you doing out there this time?’

‘I miss Dorcas,’ was my reply.

‘What, that horse?’ She seemed astonished that I could have developed such a fondness for a dumb quadruped, but how could I explain the sense of peace and comfort I had in Dorcas’s company? There was no logic to it, and Grandmother liked logic. I knew my secret visits to the stables were over. ‘Mister Reason, would you see to it that Lady Arbella’s
bed is moved into my own chamber.’ She turned to me again. ‘It’s for your safety, you know that, don’t you.’ It was not a question.

I felt my world shrink further – aged seventeen and I was to spend my nights in my grandmother’s chamber.

‘We’ll talk about it later, dearest,’ she added as we entered the hall. ‘There is something I must see to.’

In my rooms Margaret was on the edge of the bed, crying, her face buried in her hands, shoulders hunched and quivering. Ten-year-old Cousin Bessie looked at me with a shrug and upturned palms, indicating she had no idea what the matter was.

Margaret was a passionate girl, given to tears, but emotional incontinence unsettled me. I hovered over her, unsure what to say when she blurted, ‘He’s leaving, I can’t bear it.’

‘Who’s leaving?’ I asked.

‘Morley, of course!’ She revealed her face, wet and red.

‘Morley’s leaving?’

‘I can’t bear it,’ she wailed again.

Bessie was rubbing her back, saying, ‘Show us how you can take off your shift without removing your gown,’ to distract her from her misery. It was Margaret’s trick and never failed to make her laugh.

‘What will I do?’ Nothing was going to ease Margaret’s despair.

Morley was my tutor, and though we had never particularly warmed to one another I admired his quickness of mind. He had given Margaret a few lines to recite in one of his elaborate staged productions and she had talked of him unceasingly, blabbing nonsense:
He looked at me a certain way; he dropped his handkerchief deliberately for me to pick it up – you were there, Bessie, you saw; he sat next to me at prayers
. Margaret had grown into one of those wholesome girls with an unthreatening prettiness and top-of-the-milk skin
who attracted cow-eyed looks from most of the young male staff but never from Morley, though she refused to acknowledge his indifference.

During those one-sided conversations, Essex lurked in my thoughts, surprising me occasionally. I was sure he would come one day and everything would change; he would rescue me from my captivity and from the inevitable marriage to a stranger in a foreign court. I don’t know what I thought would happen to his wife. I don’t think I went so far as to wish some misfortune would befall her, but perhaps I did – I can’t remember. The callow longings of youth pale once a few years of life have been lived, but back then, at Wingfield, I had so few small joys to attach my thoughts to and Essex was one of them, Dorcas another. Each, I realize now, represented some kind of freedom.

‘Why is he leaving?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ sobbed Margaret.

‘I think –’ Bessie began and then stopped herself.

‘What, Bessie?’ I was suddenly curious, as her expression was a puzzling combination of embarrassment and fascination.

‘I can’t say it.’

‘Go on.’ Even Margaret had stopped blubbing to listen.

‘He was caught in an embrace with’ – she was speaking through her fingers and couldn’t look at us – ‘the gentleman usher – the tall one.’

‘It’s not true!’ exclaimed Margaret, wearing a look of disgust.

I said nothing but thought it seemed plausible. I’d seen him exchange looks with that usher several times and had once watched the fellow pass Morley a letter in the garden after nightfall and conduct a furtive whispered conversation, which I was too distant to hear. I had read the Greeks and was more accustomed to such things than my companions.

I went to the window and, as if it had been staged, could see Morley clamber up on to a loaded cart in the stable yard. ‘He’s on his way.’ I said. The girls joined me to watch as he trundled slowly off, with Margaret leaking more tears and muttering about not even having said goodbye. I was not sad to see him go. He was a good enough tutor but I never felt he really cared much for my education. His mind always seemed to be elsewhere – on the gentleman usher, I supposed.

Later, Grandmother called me in. She’d been at her desk, over which were the unrolled plans of the New Hall at Hardwick – her great project. It was to be the emblem of her success, a towering palace of glass, lording it over all of Derbyshire.

She stood and moved to the front of the desk to stand before me. Morley had behaved in an ‘unacceptable manner’ was all she said of his departure. ‘But never mind about that, what I am concerned about is you, my dear.’

Behind her, meeting my eye, hung the portrait of me aged nearly two. I was square-faced and tightly trussed into a dress that I thought I remembered, being unbearably stiff and itchy, though surely I’d been too young for such a memory. In a fat paw I clutched a doll in the form of Queen Elizabeth.

For years that miniature queen lived on a high shelf in the nursery, far out of reach. I coveted her like nothing else. I had other dolls, beautiful creatures, exquisitely wrought, but I didn’t want other dolls, even then there was no allure for me in girlish playthings and I took greater pleasure in imagining a stick was a sword or a broom a hobbyhorse; but I wanted the miniature queen. My infant mind had long machinated on how to achieve my aim and one day the perfect opportunity offered itself. When Nurse and all the maids were called to the kitchens to help with some drama, leaving
me alone, I dragged up a stool and climbed on to it, stretching as far as I could to get the tips of my fingers to the edge of that little queen’s skirts. She fell, exposing a wooden stump where a pair of legs should have been.

Looking at the portrait of my younger self I was revisited momentarily by the overwhelming sense of disappointment I’d felt on discovering that the little queen’s exterior perfection was not matched by what lay beneath – a plain peg of wood, barely even sanded. I hid her and later gave her to Grandmother’s favourite hound Apollo, who took her out into the paddock, shredded her fine clothes and gnawed at her shapeless timber body until she was unrecognizable. The miniature queen’s disappearance became a nursery mystery that was never solved.

‘I know it has been difficult for you, with all the restrictions,’ Grandmother said. Her pearls, outsized and sheeny, clattered as she poured them from one hand to the other. Her voice was soft, the voice she rarely revealed to anyone but me, and sometimes to Aunt Mary and Uncle William, her favourite child, a fact she never sought to hide.

‘I understand why it has to be like this.’ An image of Dorcas with that cadaver slung over her back came to me and with it the palpable fear on Grandmother’s face in the carriage as that shot was fired. ‘It’s just’ – I felt I had to say it – ‘I feel like the Scottish Queen shut away …’

She looked at me and tilted her head. ‘Dearest, it is not remotely like that. She …’ – Her tone changed, was suddenly laden with disapproval – ‘that woman was a traitor, a Catholic who sought to unseat our Queen with her treachery.’

A vivid memory of the Scottish Queen swilled through my mind, her warm smile and her words:
The Catholic faith is the true faith; it is the only path that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven
.

‘But how is it different? I have lost my liberty as she did.’