The Girl in the Glass Tower (12 page)

‘My Lady!’ A shard of light fell through the gap in the curtains, reigniting the pain that had been hovering. I scrunched my eyes shut. ‘My Lady!’ Joan’s voice was needling. Joan was Margaret’s replacement, in a manner of speaking. I say that, for she was more jailer than companion. She had thrown a stack of my papers on the fire not long before. ‘You don’t want all this nonsense cluttering up your chamber,’ she had said of it. I suspected spite but it might have been sheer ignorance.

I buried my head beneath the covers, trying to imagine Joan away. ‘I am not well.’

Joan made an exasperated sigh. ‘But your grandmother requires you to join her. She’s waiting.’ I could hear the worry in her voice and suspected it was more her fear of displeasing Grandmother than concern for my health.

‘A minute. I need a minute.’ I could hear her tutting but ignored it, concentrating only on taking several long deep breaths. The pain in my head sulked like an ignored child. I circled my temples with the tips of my fingers, remembering the pilfered ewer of Grandmother’s best French wine that Starkey and I had imbibed in the schoolroom on the previous evening.

Such indulgence was not a regular occurrence and Starkey had needed persuading to break his advent fast, but we were commiserating his imminent departure. Grandmother had dismissed him; it was under the guise of his being offered a congregation elsewhere, but in truth it was a dismissal – part of the slow whittling away of those closest to me. Thinking of it caused my hatred to flare. Soon, I feared, she would find
a reason to be rid of Dodderidge, rendering my isolation complete.

Fragmented memories of the previous evening returned. We had made toasts, all sorts of toasts, to Socrates, to Plato and the Stoics, even to dear Dorcas, if my memory served me well. We had laughed and laughed until we could barely breathe, neither of us wanting to think of the fact of his imminent departure.

I could hear Joan riffling through the papers on my desk. ‘I don’t know what she finds to write about,’ she said to herself, though loud enough for me to hear. ‘And what’s the point if no one ever reads it.’

I held my breath to prevent myself from snapping at her. Slowly, as my thoughts assembled, I remembered the letter Dodderidge had secreted between the leaves of a book left on my pillow the previous evening. As I was retiring, stupid with drink, I had read it, or tried to.
The petals are falling from the rose and it is time to gather our forces in preparation
, Uncle Henry had written, but beyond that my memory was a blur.

All I knew was that it contained something important and deeply secret concerning my future. I racked my brains to remember where I’d put it, fearing I might have left it exposed on my desk, where Joan was now nosing about. But then I had a vague memory of having read it in bed, with a candle, whilst Joan was snoring on the truckle, of dripping wax on my coverlet, could feel the smooth discs under my fingertips. I searched amongst the bedclothes to no avail but, sliding my hand beneath my pillow, my touch met with the rough surface of the paper and relief flooded through me.

The day burned red through my closed eyelids as I surfaced, but the headache had receded to a distant throb. Squinting, I could see the sturdy shape of Joan standing over me with the light behind her, making her expression
unreadable, though her impatience registered in the clearing of her throat.

‘Better?’ Her tone suggested I had wasted her entire morning, though she had waited a couple of minutes at most for me to emerge. She folded her arms firmly beneath her great shelf of a bosom, which stretched the fabric of her dress perilously tight.

‘Yes, better. Thank you.’

‘You
do
look off colour, I must say.’

I swung my legs out of the blankets to sit upright, regretting the sudden movement as my head swam for a moment and nausea loomed; but I sat absolutely still on the edge of the bed until it died away. Warmth was spreading out into the room from the hearth. I touched my fingertip to the hidden letter once more to be sure it was truly there and I hadn’t burned it for caution whilst in my cups.
Your time is nearing
. Only fragments came back to me.

I stood, nodding my assent for Joan to help me into my underclothes. Lacing my bodice, she pinched the skin of my waist, hard enough to hurt but not to bruise; that was her way. ‘You are all skin and bone.’

‘It is the way God made me.’
Better than your great hefty shape
, I thought.

‘No more shapely than a lad.’ A bud of satisfaction opened in me on hearing that.

‘I should like to wear the green velvet today.’ I said this knowing Joan would have to fetch it from downstairs. ‘I would like to look my best for Starkey’s last day.’

‘You two are thick as thieves. You’ll miss him,’ she said with a sly smile. ‘Why don’t you wear the rose damask? It suits your complexion better than the green. Particularly as you look so unwell today.’ Joan was mistress of the backhanded compliment.

‘It must be the green. Green is Starkey’s favourite colour.’
This was a lie, I had no idea what colour Starkey preferred; we had far better things to discuss.

‘Anyone would think you were sweethearts, the way you talk.’ It was framed light-heartedly but not meant so. Perhaps she believed that was the reason for his departure.

She made a final, half-hearted attempt to promote the pink dress, fully aware that I was not often amenable to persuasion, and left the chamber muttering ‘stubborn as a mule’ under her breath.

Once the door had closed behind her I took the letter to the window. Uncle Henry’s florid hand brought a smile to my face but the content was serious.

My dearest and most beloved Royal niece,

It is my understanding that Cecil is negotiating to wed you abroad and my mother is inexplicably in his pocket. This will undermine any hopes of you ever fulfilling your purpose. We must prevent this if your cousin James is to be overcome in his hopes to take the throne that is yours.

Our perfect solution lies in a proposition from Lord Beauchamp. He has offered one of his sons, probably the oldest, Edward, for marriage. A match such as this would seal your claim incontrovertibly.

The Seymour boys have enough royal blood to make a suitable union with you. As the grandsons of Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford, they are the only Englishmen I know of who do. Two Tudor lines would be entwined. The Seymour line may be illegitimate, though I happen to know Hertford is determined to prove it good. He would know if he was properly wed to Katherine Grey and there are many others who believe the union was sound.

The petals are falling from the rose and it is time to gather our forces in preparation. There will be a window of time when the rose is almost withered in which you can wed with no risk of repercussion,
for heads will all be turned the other way. If your cousin is proclaimed it will be too late and too dangerous.

I can only assume, and hope from deep in my heart, that you are willing. Your time is nearing, a mere matter of months, I’d wager, and you must be prepared to leave Hardwick at a moment’s notice. I will have everything in hand. There are a number of influential nobles who, when it becomes necessary, will gather to counter Cecil’s faction and the Scottish claim and back yours. Few will want a foreigner on the English throne. I will begin discreetly mustering support and plan to gain the Earl of Hertford’s favour; that will shore us up and doubtless bring others to our cause.

I ask you to send what things of value you own to a safe place, as you may find yourself in need of funds once away from Hardwick.

I await your word of agreement, your loving uncle, Henry Cavendish.

XX Dec –AD 1602

A buzz of anticipation traversed the nape of my neck. We had heard of the Queen’s failing health from the usual lines of communication between the court and Hardwick – a constant back and forth of messengers on the Great North Road. The entire country had been quietly on tenterhooks, waiting, preparing.

I imagined that ‘window of time’, a period of limbo when the Queen would be reaching out to death, not quite gone but neither in a position to crush my Seymour marriage with her practised force and before Cecil had a chance to bundle my cousin on to the throne. For the first time my fate seemed tangible. It was my window; I was perched on its ledge, ready to fly from it to meet my future.

Casting my gaze out across the gardens I saw a pair of doves cooing to each other on the roof of the gatehouse. It seemed like a sign, though I was not a great believer in omens. Thinking about Hertford and his own doomed marriage to
Katherine Grey, I wondered whether his intentions in that had been driven by ambition or love. But things are never so clean cut, for surely love and ambition are often bedfellows. I had cause to believe he would be sympathetic to my situation, having lived through something similar himself. I did not know him, had met him briefly once at court, but felt an affinity which I assumed he shared, for did I not have the same Tudor blood as his long-dead wife running through my veins?

The idea of fighting for my legitimate claim had ignited a spark in me. After all, I had been raised knowing it was the sole purpose of my existence. What truly stirred me too, aside from the idea of the crown, was the adventure of such an endeavour, the fact that I, who had lived a life entombed, with no jurisdiction over my future, was taking hold of my own destiny.

I watched the pair of doves take flight, their tail feathers fanning out beautifully as they opened up their wings. I was stimulated not by the notion of marriage in and of itself but by what such a union would bring me. It would raise me to my rightful station and even if it didn’t succeed in setting me on the throne it would set me free.

I destroyed the letter and, with those funds in mind, took up my casket of jewels, emptying it on the bed, picking out the few prized pieces; they were all the wealth I owned. Had I come into my father’s lands on my majority, as I was meant to, I would not have needed that meagre collection of trinkets. It was my cousin James who persisted in keeping my inheritance from me. Grandmother had petitioned him on my behalf for years. I reasoned that James didn’t see it in his interests to furnish me, his rival, with sufficient riches to buy the kind of influence that might challenge his own ambitions.

I bundled up the jewels into a small cloth bag, tucking it beneath my petticoats. Then, taking up a length of linen and
my embroidery scissors, I sat hunched on the floor and carefully made a small incision above my ankle. It was a monthly ritual. I squeezed the lips of the cut, catching a few drops of blood on the linen, watching it blossom out into the weave of the fabric.

After mopping the tiny wound, I discarded the bloody cloth in the linen basket, and was putting on my stockings as Joan returned. I smiled at her. ‘You seem better,’ she said as she helped me into the green velvet.

‘I do feel a little more like myself.’ She tightened my laces while I plaited my hair and coiled it to my head, fastening it. All the time I could feel the pouch of jewels pressing against my thigh.

‘There you are.’ She handed me a lace-edged cap. ‘Lovely.’ To see us you might have thought we were the best of friends.

As I’d anticipated, she picked up the linen basket, holding it on her hip, sifting through its contents with her opposite hand.

‘Can’t the servant maid do that?’ I said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She had the bloodstained linen between the tip of her finger and thumb. ‘Your courses are on time to the day. You
are
lucky. I can never tell from one month to the next when mine will appear.’

The idea of Joan’s monthlies horrified me. ‘I have been blessed with regularity.’

She had no idea that my courses had stopped long since. Joan was saying something; I wasn’t listening, was watching the rolls of her chin wobble as she spoke. The sight of her flesh made me feel cast in steel, slender and deadly as a sword. In my life, as it was then, with its margins so narrow, such a seemingly small deceit as the pretence of my courses was a great triumph and its effects poured into me, filling me with courage to execute the greater deceit that was looming.

As I entered the withdrawing room, the dogs greeted me, tails waving lazily. Grandmother was silhouetted in the window and there were various members of the close household scattered about the room. Starkey was reading, Dodderidge was in conversation with Mister Reason and the little cousins were playing draughts in the alcove.

As I approached Grandmother she snapped, ‘You missed morning prayers.’

‘I’ve been out of sorts.’

She looked me up and down. ‘You seem perfectly well to me.’

In the garden below some men were busy reshaping the winter beds, transforming one of them from the form of an A into an E, so they spelled out, rather than AS for Arbella Stuart, ES for Elizabeth Shrewsbury – Grandmother’s initials.

I couldn’t help saying, ‘How convenient that both Stuart and Shrewsbury share an initial. It will save the men a good deal of work,’ and made no attempt to hide my sarcasm.

She sighed with pursed lips and ran her hand down the length of her pearls, reminding me of my own treasure cached beneath my skirts. ‘I trust you are feeling better now.’ There was not a splinter of sympathy in her tone, only irritation, but what use was sympathy to me anyway. ‘Let’s eat. We have all been waiting.’

We gathered at the table and Starkey said grace. I felt Grandmother stiffen with annoyance when he stumbled slightly over one of the prayers.

‘This is the last grace you will say for us,’ I said once we were seated, feeling intensely the tug of imminent separation.

‘I wish you would stay longer,’ said Wylkyn.

‘An opportunity has come up.’ Starkey was falsely bright. ‘And in life opportunities are to be gr—’

‘Grasped with both hands.’ Wylkyn was unable to resist finishing Starkey’s oft-used saying.

‘We can’t keep him here for ever,’ I said. ‘That would be selfish.’