The Girl in the Glass Tower (15 page)

I caught a look of confusion that passed between the two men and I was no less puzzled than they by her words, but then was suddenly struck with the thought that perhaps she had discovered my secret plan. It could easily have mired her in disgrace, toppled her empire; we might all have been up to our necks in charges of sedition if things went wrong.

I’d known it before, of course, but it was only then, there before the broken urn, I fully realized that my plan – a princess of the blood marrying without royal assent – could easily be construed as high treason and that the consequences might well be grave and far-reaching.

I imagined Grandmother distancing herself from me, shrugging me off like an unwanted garment as I went to the block. Grandmother would do whatever was necessary. She was a survivor; there had never been any doubt of that.

‘When was it you stopped caring for me?’ The words spoke themselves without my permission and I wished I could take them back. Dodderidge was making a gesture with his hand, flattening it and lowering it, as if to say,
Don’t make it worse
.

‘When you disappointed me,’ was her answer. As she said it she seemed to forget her distress over the broken urn, investing her voice with its usual firm authority. ‘When defiance became your watchword.’

‘I’m sorry, Grandmother. Truly sorry.’ I was not sorry, either for the loss of that urn or for being the source of her disillusionment. Ripples of anger moved through me but I focused my mind on my escape, and was convinced then that she remained in the dark, for had she known of my secret plans she would not have been talking of disappointment and defiance but of betrayal and treason.

‘I have lowered my expectations in respect of you,’ she said as she made to leave the room, indicating that Reason accompany her. ‘See to it this is dealt with, would you, Dodderidge.’

Once she had left, I leaned back against the cold wall and expelled a cloud of breath, closing my eyes to gather myself. Even then I was trying to think of ways to regain Grandmother’s approval, refusing to see the futility of such an aim.

‘It is likely she’s short-tempered from lack of sustenance,’ Dodderidge said quietly. ‘Once Christmas is here and there is meat on the table she will be in better humour.’

I opened my eyes. ‘I doubt it.’

We stood in silence a moment, he looking at his hands. They were fine and long, the kind of hands a musician would envy.

I walked over to the door, closing it. ‘Can I trust you?’

Those hands rose towards his face, flapping. ‘Do you need to ask? Of everyone under this roof you can trust me the most, My Lady. I have served you for more than twenty years.’

I thought about it then; I couldn’t remember a time when Dodderidge was not with the family; I knew him better than I knew any of my uncles. ‘I need you to perform a service for me.’

I noticed a spark ignite in him and he stood straight, towering over me, his stoop forgotten. ‘Whatever you ask is my command.’

‘It is a matter that requires the utmost delicacy and one which might distance you from my grandmother.’

‘It is
you
I serve.’ He looked so very solemn, like a man on the eve of a battle.

I took the paper from beneath my clothes. My breath quivered. ‘I need you to go to the Earl of Hertford at his house in Tottenham. Uncle Henry has promised a good horse to take you there. He says it will be stabled at the sign of the bell in the village tomorrow. You must request a private audience and then explain to Hertford that I am offering my hand in marriage to his grandson Edward Seymour. Impress upon him the importance of his support for this union. Ask that he send Seymour here to Hardwick, although’ – my mind was whirring – ‘he must come not as himself, but –’ I paused to think – ‘as a man with land to sell. Grandmother will not be able to resist that.’

Dodderidge was folding and unfolding those long hands, ‘What of the risk to you?’

‘Never mind that.’ I saw the concern written clearly on his face. ‘Uncle Henry has everything under control.’

‘Royal permission?’

I nodded, not wanting to lie to him but neither wanting to worry him further. ‘I’m relying on you. Are you sure you can do this?’

‘But …’ he hesitated and I feared he would change his mind. ‘Who will watch out for you here with both Starkey and me away?’

I was touched by his caring and had to force a wave of sadness into submission. Not an hour went by that I did not think of dear Starkey. ‘You will not be gone long. I can manage to look after myself. And Aunt Mary is here.’

‘I am glad of that …’ He hesitated. ‘But even so …’

‘Please tell me you will do this.’

‘Will it not rouse the earl’s suspicion to be approached by
one such as me? I am not of his standing. A mere retainer, an ordinary man … It is not correct. He may be insulted.’ He was still folding and unfolding his hands. ‘Would your uncle not be a more suitable candidate?’

‘Uncle Henry is so unpredictable and you – you are uncommonly resourceful, Dodderidge. I know you will find a way to convince him. I am sure anyway that Hertford will be as keen on this idea as I am … as we are. After all it will set his family back up where they belong. Remind him of that.’

He took the letter between the tips of his finger and thumb, as if it might burn him, and slid it out of sight into his doublet. I hadn’t noticed before that his clothes were quite shabby and threadbare in places.

‘Can you borrow another suit of clothes?’ I realized what a silly thing it was to say, for no man in a forty-mile radius was likely to be as tall and lean as Dodderidge. I wished I had the means to send him to the tailor in Nottingham on his way south but I had little, and even less since I’d sent all my valuables to Cousin Bessie.

‘I have a doublet put away that was made for my wedding. I wonder if it might still fit me.’

‘Your wedding? You are not a married man, Dodderidge.’

‘I lost my wife when you were still a girl.’

It is easy to forget that those who serve you have lives of their own in which you play no part, and it struck me then that, although Dodderidge knew everything about me, and had served me for years, I knew almost nothing about him. I wanted to ask what had happened, how had she died, had he loved her, yet all I found myself saying was, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was long ago. Time is a great healer.’

The truth of his platitude resonated with me, for the death of my mother, the cause of utter devastation to my seven-year-old self, had lost its potency over time and thoughts of her had become entirely abstracted.

‘I’m sure the doublet will do. The earl will certainly be more given to agreement if you –’

‘If I look the part.’

‘See, we are like an old married couple, finishing each other’s sentences.’ I said this to lighten the atmosphere, which had become burdened with the weight of the events that would shortly begin to unfold. He looked wistful and it occurred to me that marriage to such a man, a kind man, might make a person very happy.

I rarely thought of happiness; it was not something I had been raised to expect.

A pair of servant lads arrived with brooms and a large carton to clear up the broken urn. ‘Take care with the pieces,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it can be put together.’

I sank to the floor to inspect a large shard, painted with what I realized only then was the apple from the tree of knowledge. ‘Goodness! It is the fall of man scattered here.’ I held up the fragment for Dodderidge to see and we both began to laugh. ‘How Starkey would have loved the irony.’

The lads looked from us to each other, shrugging in bafflement at the sight of the pair of us heaving and snorting with laughter, and I was filled with hope, as if the whole world was conspiring towards the success of my mission.

Ami slumps against the table with the miniature of Hunsdon in her hand. The thought that she has lost her son’s trust once more is too much to bear. She has become so trapped in her own web of guilt and secrets and half-truths she can barely find the strength to answer the tap at the door. She stands, tucks the offending miniature of Hunsdon out of sight, and calls, ‘Just a moment,’ before splashing water over her face and wiping it dry on her apron. She will not give Mansfield the satisfaction of seeing her brought to tears.

But it is not Mansfield on the stoop with a bag of soiled linens; it is a young boy and she can tell by the look of him, the square face, the tawny shock of hair, that he is Mansfield’s son. He puts down the bag just inside the door and loiters, just as his father does, as if waiting for something.

‘Do you want a slice?’ she points to the half-finished pie that she and Hal had enjoyed the evening before. It will not keep so she may as well share it.

He nods. She cuts a slice, handing it to him. He mumbles a thank-you, eating silently and quickly, as if he hasn’t had a square meal in days.

She watches on, remembering Hal at that age. He couldn’t get food into himself fast enough. Thinking of him is a physical pain, skewering down into her. ‘Like it?’

He comes up for air, nodding. ‘It’s … it’s … Ma’s pastry is heavy as lead.’ He covers his mouth, seeming embarrassed that he’s insulted his mother.

‘I’m sure she’s too busy with all your brothers and sisters to find time for cooking pies.’

‘I help her sometimes, but not when Fa’s about. He says
it’s not work for a lad. That if I’ve got time on my hands I ought to be chopping wood, not cooking.’

She offers him another slice. ‘In the King’s kitchens all the cooks are men. You can tell your father that, next time he complains.’

‘Is that true?’ He looks at her, making no attempt to hide his curiosity. ‘How do you know?’

‘I have spent some time at court.’ She holds out her ugly hands. ‘Not that you’d think it now.’

‘What, in the King’s laundry?’ He seems impressed at the idea that the woman who washes his shirts might have also washed the King’s.

‘No, not the laundry. In the Queen’s chambers.’

He makes a face of disbelief.

‘I wrote poems for the Queen and some of the great ladies.’

‘Poems?’ He picks up one of the written papers from the table. ‘I wish I could read better.’

‘Do you not go to school?’

‘I did, but Fa says the schoolmaster is crooked and that my time is better spent learning a trade. “With a skill you’ll always have work,” that’s what he says. Once he took me up the bell tower of St James’s. “See all them roofs,” he said. “Each and every one of them’ll need mending one day.”’ He pauses, dipping his head to look at the floor. ‘But heights frighten me.’

‘I don’t much like heights either,’ she says. It is not particularly true but she wants him to feel better about his confession. She knows well enough that boys don’t like to seem weak. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Edwin.’

She writes
Edwin Mansfield
on a piece of scrap paper. ‘You can read that, I assume?’

‘Of course.’ He is a little indignant.

‘Well, that is a beginning. Let’s play with the letters a bit. What is this?’ She writes ‘win’. He reads it out loud. ‘And if I take the D and put it at the end?’

‘Win–d.’

‘That’s right.’

He looks as pleased as if he’d invented the wheel, and they continue for a while making words out of the letters in his name until he becomes restless. ‘I’d better go. Fa’ll be wondering what I’m up to.’

‘You better had, then.’

‘If I come back, will you show me some more?’

‘Certainly, if there’s time.’ She likes the idea of feeding this hungry young mind, feels it might bring her something meaningful. It reminds her of when she taught Hal his letters. Though when she will find the time, she doesn’t know, given she has no time even to read.

Just as he is about to leave he turns back and says, ‘If you wrote poems for the Queen, then why are you doing our washing?’

It jolts her in the way only the bald truth can. ‘You may well ask.’

He lingers in the doorway waiting for a proper answer. She thinks of her youth. It was far from typical, the spirited life she’d led growing up in a family of musicians; the house always filled with song; the visiting poets and composers and actors; the lively arguments – such freedom she’d had, so unlike other girls. And when that was cut short by the death of her parents so suddenly, to have had the fortune to be taken under the countess’s wing, to have had an education and access to a world beyond the reach of most.

Lady Arbella springs suddenly into her mind. How opposite their lives had been and yet they had a profound empathy, a shared love of ideas, of the written word. It makes her feel urgently, despite her dramatic downturn in fortune, the
desire to spread her knowledge, to make it all count for something.

‘Fate can sometimes take a curious turn. I lost my husband and he had squandered all our money, so now I am a poor widow and I have to earn a shilling where I can.’

‘Oh,’ he says as he slips out into the street and she is left alone with her guilt.

As she prepares for her day of work she runs through the letter she will write to Hal. She will explain that she didn’t want him to feel burdened by the stain of illegitimacy, that she wanted him to have a sense of family, rather than always feeling he belonged elsewhere. She had seen noblemen’s bastards at court, noticed how they were always slightly sneered upon and never quite fitted. She didn’t want that for Hal. She prays he will understand.

‘Dodderidge has been arrested.’ Grandmother stood at the centre of the chamber with contempt scratched over her face.

I had to muster all my self-control to keep my poise and show nothing of the mixture of emotions – fear, guilt, dismay – coursing through me, causing the fragile structure of hope that had buoyed me up in the previous weeks to collapse.

‘That is terrible news. Of what is he accused? Are you sure? Dodderidge is the most honest man I –’ I was burbling, like a person with something to hide, so I staunched my words but could not dispel the image of Dodderidge in his best wedding doublet, crouched terrified in the corner of some filthy cell too small to accommodate his tall shape.

‘What is he accused of?’ she repeated back to me. ‘Why don’t
you
tell
me
, Arbella?’

Aunt Mary, standing behind her, looked at me with a finger pressed over her mouth.

‘How could I possibly know?’ A twinge of pain nipped at my side, below my ribs, not a pain I knew, no ordinary colic. Dodderidge’s haunted face imprinted itself on my mind’s eye.

‘Don’t be disingenuous with me. Do you think I don’t know when you are lying? It was I who raised you.’ Grandmother fingered her pearls. ‘You are completely transparent to me.’

I could not stop thinking of Dodderidge festering in a cell on my account – how doubtful he had been about the mission – and the gentle pressure I had exerted on him in the
full knowledge he would not refuse me. ‘Where is he being held? I hope he has not been hurt.’

‘If you cared for his well-being you would not have involved him in your folly.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ I knew she could see through my feeble deceit by her look, which penetrated like a shard of glass through flesh.

‘You sent him on a mission to the Earl of Hertford with an offer of your hand in marriage to the earl’s grandson.’ I was wondering how she knew this; I had been so careful, so discreet, but there was a hole in my ship and I could feel myself sinking, cold water moving up my body. That strange pain continued to nip.

‘Have you any idea what kind of danger this places at our door?’ Grandmother continued to shuffle her pearls. ‘Goodness knows, I have tried to make you aware of the threats, tried to protect you from all this, Arbella. Think of Katherine Grey, think of what you risk with your recklessness.’ She brought a hand to her forehead. ‘And as for poor Dodderidge …’ Pausing, she stepped forward, so I could see her expression, which wasn’t angry, as I expected, but full of distress. ‘Well, if he hangs for aiding an attempted treason, his blood will be on
your
hands and we will all be brought to our knees.’

Aunt Mary closed her eyes and the colour dropped from her face.

‘Treason.’ I repeated, lost for words. My bodice was pressing too tightly against my ribs.

‘You know as well as I that with your blood, what you proposed to Hertford is treason.’

The rage that had been welling in me found its sudden release: ‘A curse on my blood, then,’ I shouted, ‘for it is that which means I am kept here a prisoner for fear someone should fix their ambition on to me and threaten Her
Majesty’s throne.’ I couldn’t stop. ‘You have never cared for me, only for what I can bring you. Is it not enough that you came from nothing and now own half the county, that you, a nobody, will end your life as the Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury, rather than plain Mistress something-or-other –’

She slapped me sharply across the cheek. ‘How dare you speak of me like that … I, your kin, your grandmother.’ Her voice was a low, controlled rumble. ‘I did not have the privilege of birth that you had. I had to work for what is mine and you … you would waste your birthright on a disgraced family like the Seymours …’ Her voice trailed off and I saw in that moment that she was jealous, jealous of her highborn granddaughter. Jealous in the knowledge that, however hard she worked to achieve her position, she would never be what I was. And in spite of that I had become as useless to her in achieving her dreams as gunpowder left in the rain.

‘Have you never thought that I am a human being, made of flesh, not simply a receptacle for that Tudor blood you prize so greatly? I believed you cared for me once but –’ A sudden stitch split my side. I gasped, collapsing to the floor, feeling the rasp of the rush matting against my cheek.

Grandmother stepped away and went back to agitating those infernal pearls. ‘Joan, Mary! Arbella is having a turn. Will you help her to her chamber.’

The pain had me in its grip, making my breathing shallow and in turn making me light-headed. I longed to pass out, to be free from the agony even for a moment, but the stabbing kept oblivion beyond reach. I tried to collect my thoughts.
Breathe, breathe, deeply, evenly
. In my mind I began to count backwards from a hundred. It was a method Starkey taught me once, a way to tolerate the intolerable.
Ninety-nine; ninety-eight; ninety-seven
… I was writhing on the floor, suddenly aware of the scent of harvest emanating from the matting,
pressing my nose to it for distraction.
Eighty-five; eighty-four
… The pain intensified, as if I were clasped in the jaws of a monstrous beast.

‘Shhhhh, shhhh, sweeting; be still.’ It was Aunt Mary cradling my head in her lap, stroking my hair. ‘It will pass.’

Sixty-one; sixty; fifty-nine
. I looked at Aunt Mary and up at Grandmother and Joan standing over us like shadows, unable in that moment to remember who they were, feeling panic engulf me like a bore of cold water, loosening me from reason.
Forty-four; forty-three
. Aunt Mary’s hands were soft and warm; she slowly unpicked my fingers one by one from where they clutched my side. I felt her fumbling at my laces, slackening them, and her other hand slipped beneath my bodice, slowly, firmly stroking back and forth.
Twenty-two; twenty-one; twenty; nineteen
.

‘Fetch a measure of laudanum,’ I heard someone say.

I suddenly retched up bile, as if my body was trying to rid itself of a poison. Someone flapped about with a cloth, attempting to mop it up. It was bright yellow as a buttercup, or a lemon, or brimstone. I became aware of a low rhythmic moaning sound that was escaping from deep in my body and I felt Mary rocking me gently back and forth. She was softly humming a tune that was familiar but I couldn’t remember where from.

I lost count of my backward numbers, lost all sense of things, lost myself, entirely, possessed by the agony emanating from deep within me. Someone held a spoon to my mouth, pouring liquid in. I felt the cold trickle of it run down my throat. The moaning continued, and the rocking, and Aunt Mary’s gentle stroking until eventually the pain began to dull and slowly withdraw, a snake slithering into the undergrowth.

I must have finally fallen unconscious for I came to in my bed with Aunt Mary still at my side. ‘You are back,’ she said. ‘My poor sweeting. How are you?’

My head was swimming pleasantly and the pain had receded to a faint echo. ‘Who are all those people?’ I asked, looking towards a crowd of faces hovering on the other side of the chamber.

‘We are alone. It’s the tincture playing with your imagination.’

I looked again and they had gone.

‘Dodderidge!’ The memories came flooding back and with them the awful realization that everything had gone irretrievably wrong and Dodderidge had paid the price. ‘Is there news of him?’

‘Why don’t you sleep some more and we will talk of it all later. You are in no state –’

‘What is this?’ I touched a cross that hung on a fine chain from her neck, felt the cold of silver against my fingertip. ‘A crucifix?’

‘You are imagining things again, sweeting.’ It disappeared, or did she tuck it away? ‘Why would I wear a crucifix?’

I could not think of a reason why Aunt Mary would wear such a thing. But then again I could not think of a reason for anything, for my mind was flickering with improbable thoughts, landing on each one momentarily before fluttering away, leaving only a vague impression that could not find words to be described.

Somewhere it occurred to me that I might be muddling her with that other Mary, the Queen of Scots. Hadn’t
she
said to me once,
Ask Mary Talbot
? My thoughts swirled and drifted, unable to catch hold of anything, my head like butter on a hot day. ‘It must be the poppy.’ But I’d felt sure of the cool touch of metal against my skin.

An image of Dodderidge alighted. I tried to hold on to it before it flitted off, finding words to attach to it. ‘What happened in Tottenham?’ The words sounded strange on my tongue.

‘You are in no fit state.’

‘No.’ I heard myself, firm, resolute, clear, quite unlike my buttery head. ‘I
must
know. How did Grandmother find out?’

‘Hertford was not as amenable to the idea as we’d believed …’ She hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t be burdening you with all this now.’

‘Tell me!’ I said, surprised once again at my firmness. I was using all my willpower to stop myself from drifting away.

‘He alerted Cecil at once and placed Dodderidge under lock and key.’

‘Cecil.’ I tried to focus on what I was hearing. ‘So the Queen knows. What has
she
said of it?’ I felt the world draw tightly around me.

‘She has said nothing.’

‘Nothing.’ Was ‘nothing’ good or bad? I could not tell. Did it mean she was truly coming to the end of her days, or … my thoughts were wandering again and I could think only of Katherine Grey, that bright-eyed feather of a girl, trapped behind the oval of glass on Grandmother’s side table, starving herself to death with grief. ‘How do you know this?’ I forced my mind to focus.

‘Cecil wrote to Mother; I saw the letter. Sir Henry Brouncker has been ordered to question you.’

‘To question or interrogate?’ As I said that Mary’s face was horror-struck. ‘I’m just naming it for what it is.’ I knew well enough that Cecil’s men did not merely question, not when treason was suspected. ‘Cecil was once my champion.’

‘Not any more. He supports your cousin James’s cause now. That much I know. With Cecil behind him, James has become an unstoppable force.’

‘But my wedding was to change all that.’ I was trying to remember why my wedding would change things, but couldn’t grasp any sense of it. ‘What will happen to me, Mary?’ My voice sounded small, like a child’s.

She took my shoulders and looked me directly in the eye. ‘It is a setback. That is all. A setback. You shall have your wedding.’

I scrutinized her face for signs that she truly believed what she was telling me, finding nothing there but doubt and apprehension. I sensed my head clearing a little but the price of that was a resurgence of pain, pecking at me, tearing out gobbets of my flesh. ‘And Uncle Henry?’

‘He has gone to talk to Beauchamp to see what can be salvaged.’ I saw the hope ignite in her as she said it.

‘Lord Beauchamp?’ Her hope did not catch hold in me. If Uncle Henry was prepared to show his hand then things must have been worse than Mary suggested. I tried to imagine them, Hertford the grandfather, Beauchamp the son and Edward the grandson, but couldn’t; I didn’t know what they looked like. My mind was repeating
the throne or the tower and nothing in between
, like a Greek chorus. ‘What is the reach of Beauchamp’s influence without his father’s backing?’

‘We do not know yet, but many won’t support a foreigner such as your cousin James wearing the crown. We may have a tentative friendship with Scotland now but most Englishmen will always consider the Scots as the enemy.’

‘But Beauchamp cannot muster the nobility as his father can, surely?’

‘It is possible.’

My face scrunched up and a groan formed in my throat, as the pain returned in earnest.

‘More tincture?’

I nodded, murmuring, ‘Just a half-measure.’

I heard the chink of the spoon against the phial.

‘We must get you better for Sir Henry Brouncker,’ she said, but her words were not making sense.

‘Who is that?’

‘Never mind, sweeting. Try and sleep.’

‘Will you stay with me?’

‘I will be here by your side all night.’

‘I mean longer, not just the night.’

I heard her hesitation. She cleared her throat. ‘Gilbert wants me back in Sheffield.’

‘Does Uncle Gilbert know?’ My mind was turning to butter once more and I couldn’t remember who knew about my secret affairs, whose side everyone was on.

‘No, and best he doesn’t. I can’t stay too long, for it might arouse suspicion.’

I felt my hand grip hers as if I were a drowning woman clinging to a tuft of grass on a riverbank, which made me think of the girl in that play, what was her name? ‘The girl who drowned.’

‘What did you say?’ she asked.

‘The girl in Mister Shakespeare’s play who drowned herself. You told me about it. You saw the play.’

‘You mean Ophelia. Why are you thinking of that?’ Her voice was soft. ‘It was a sin, to take her own life, even if she was a fiction.’ She stopped, stroked my hair away from my face and rearranged my coverlet. ‘Don’t think of that; turn your mind to happy things. Remember when you were small and Gilbert was teaching you to ride. He mounted your pony to demonstrate something, – I can’t remember what – and it bolted.’

Mary was laughing and I had a memory of Uncle Gilbert, vast, like a titan, on Dancer, his feet almost touching the ground but my laughter kept slipping away from me, revealing the image of Ophelia that lay beneath; Ophelia with the face of Jane Grey. She was holding her severed head up above the water to prevent herself from drowning, the gore spilling, making clouds of vivid pink; and then she was not Jane but the Scottish Queen, who evaporated to leave Katherine Grey in her place, fragile, emaciated, slipping slowly beneath the surface.

‘Was Katherine Grey a sinner too?’ I asked.

‘What made you think of her, sweeting?’

‘She refused to eat.’

‘That is not considered a sin. I believe she had a proper burial. Let’s not talk of that; it’s the poppy addling you.’

I shook my head sharply to expel those dead girls.

‘Stay a couple more days, I beg of you.’ I was still gripping Mary’s hand.