The Girl in the Glass Tower (20 page)

‘I have never had my own house, so I know nothing else.’ I didn’t mean to sound embittered, but it came out that way. She had touched a nerve and I felt like poor Dorcas tossing her head.

‘I suppose you have not,’ she said, glossing over my aggrieved tone. ‘But a husband will rectify that.’ She gave me a conspiratorial look. ‘I suspect the Privy Council are poring over suits from foreign princes at this very minute.’

‘If they are, I shall be the last to know.’ There it was again, my acerbity, undisguised, the sense I had of myself as a spinster with no purpose and no place in the world.

‘Well, that is the price of status, I suppose.’ We walked on in silence for a moment. ‘I didn’t expect you to be …’ She hesitated. ‘To be so …’ She inspected me, as if seeking clues as to what might be going on beneath my surface. ‘I didn’t expect you to be so well. I had been under the impression you were –’

‘I
was
ailing,’ I interrupted, still unable to curb my brusque tone, ‘but I’m quite recovered now, thank you. I won’t be a burden …’ I wondered then if she had offered to house me or if I had been billeted with her at the behest of Cecil, near enough to court to keep an eye on, with Richmond a stone’s throw away and Whitehall a short trip downriver.

‘No, I would never think that. It is an honour for me to house the King’s first cousin. You are truly most welcome here.’ She smiled, radiating warmth. ‘You are still thin from
your illness. Never mind; we will fatten you up here. We enjoy our food in this house.’

Fatten me up for what?

The house was dark and it took a few moments for my eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom but there was a fire blazing in the hall, which burnished the panelling with coppery light. There were several people scattered about at the far end, children and grandchildren, I imagined, but the marchioness hustled me through. ‘You can meet everyone later. The last thing you need is a crowd to confront when you haven’t had a chance even to catch your breath from the journey.’

I was grateful to her for sensing my inhibition.

She led me up an ancient staircase lit with red and blue beams from a stained-glass window. Everything smelled of beeswax polish and the floorboards creaked underfoot as I followed her along a twisting corridor. She swung open a door at the end. ‘I have given you Katherine Grey’s bedroom.’

‘Katherine Grey?’

‘Her mother lived here for a time and this was Katherine’s chamber.’

I’d long been haunted by sad Katherine Grey and there she was at Sheen, making me wonder momentarily if there was an invisible pattern to fate. ‘Did you know her?’ I asked.

‘Not really, she was older than me, and by the time I was serving the Queen she was … well, she was no longer there.’ I supposed she meant by ‘no longer there’ that Katherine Grey was already imprisoned. ‘But everyone talked of her. Not in front of the Queen, of course, that was forbidden. I took her to be one of those people who made an impression, for everyone to still be talking about her so long after she’d gone.’

The chamber smelled of camphor and rosemary and the
ancient floorboards listed to one side. The bed was vast and its drapes were embroidered with scenes from the
Odyssey
: Penelope at her loom, suitors climbing in through half-open windows, pushing at the door, kneeling at her feet.

‘I will have some fresh flowers sent up,’ said the marchioness before leaving me alone with Bridget. Grandmother hadn’t approved of cut flowers; they were an affront to nature, she said.

The view from the window looked over the gardens rolling gently towards the river, a wide swathe of sun-touched silver with a pair of swans gliding by as if for show. It was a pretty, contained view, such a contrast to the vast undulating Derbyshire countryside that I’d become used to seeing framed in Grandmother’s legendary windows. Bridget busied herself with my things and we talked of Dodderidge, who would be joining us soon. I wondered why he wanted to return to my service, given I was the cause of all his troubles.

‘It’ll be loyalty, I expect,’ said Bridget. ‘Is he a loyal type?’ I had grown so close to plain-speaking Bridget that I had forgotten she’d never met Dodderidge.

‘But people are loyal to a cause rather than an individual, I think.’

‘I beg to differ, My Lady. A cause is nothing without a person at its heart.’

‘Sometimes you talk like a book of idioms, Bridget.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, but I shall take it as a compliment.’

There was a small portrait of Katherine Grey watching me from the wall beside the door. Her eyes looked out from beneath arched brows and a high, ruffed collar blossomed up about her ears. Her mouth carried the flick of a smile at its corner, making it hard to believe that this creature, clearly brimming with life, had made such a wretched end for herself.
What were you like? Did
you
inspire loyalty?
Did you ever believe you would be queen like your sister?
I asked her silently.

‘She seems nice, the marchioness,’ Bridget said, helping me into a clean shift.

‘She does,’ I replied. ‘I like her. She has no airs. Though she seemed puzzled by me, looked at me strangely. It was as if I was not what she expected.’

‘That is because you are
not
what she expected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They all thought you’d be mad as a basket of snakes. Thought it was the reason you didn’t get the throne. Everyone expects you to be some kind of slobbering idiot or crazed loon.’ She laughed. ‘You must have given them a shock, poised and beautiful as you are.’

‘Why on earth would they have thought that?’

‘It was put about, apparently.’

‘Put about by whom?’ I asked, disturbed at the idea of people saying such things of me.

‘Cecil, I wouldn’t doubt,’ was her answer. ‘He had the most to gain.’

‘Where do you find such pieces of information, Bridget?’ I was always surprised at her knowledge. For a woman who couldn’t read she was exceedingly well informed.

‘I listen!’ She tapped the side of her nose with a smile. ‘You’d be surprised the things people say when they think you are too stupid to understand.’

Later at supper, after I had met the small battalion of family, the marchioness leaned into me and quietly said, ‘I truly thought Elizabeth would name you as heir. She often talked of it, and she spoke more frankly to me than to most. I don’t know what happened. Everything changed after the business with Essex.’

I wanted to quiz her about it, to plumb her for information, but wasn’t quite sure how to form my queries. There was so much I didn’t know.

‘I’m not sure I would have made a very good queen,’ I said. I was thinking of my many conversations with Starkey about what kind of queen I would be, realizing that the myriad hypothetical aspirations I held would have turned to dust in the face of reality – all those ambitious courtiers wanting to make a puppet of me.

‘I don’t know. We shall see what happens,’ she said, closing the conversation by offering me a dish of sweetmeats, telling me her youngest daughter had made the marchpane fruits, pointing to the girl at the other end of the table. I watched them all for a while as I pretended to eat, the easy chit-chat, the bursts of raucous laughter, and wondered how I would ever fit into that new world.

Dodderidge arrived on the following afternoon. I was at the pier to welcome him. He looked gaunt, older, more stooped than ever, and with a haunted look about the eyes, but he smiled as he greeted me, saying, ‘Free at last, My Lady.’

‘Both of us,’ I replied.

We sat on a stone bench in a corner of the garden, where the sun splashed through the foliage, casting warm pools over the ground.

‘I should never have asked you to go. I regret terribly the horrors I have visited on you.’

‘No!’ He turned to me, meeting my gaze. ‘I was honoured to be able to serve you. I’m only sorry I failed so … so dramatically.’

‘None of us could have predicted Hertford’s reaction. He had seemed open to the idea at one point, or so my uncle said. But I have learned that Uncle Henry is not what I thought.’

‘I had word you were ill,’ he said.

‘I was, but I am well now.’ I could feel Starkey hovering. It was Dodderidge who spoke of him first.

‘I’m afraid it was I who implicated Mister Starkey. We had
been in touch, you see. They twisted his name out of me.’ He had dropped his face into his palms and his shoulders were quivering slightly.

‘What did they do to you?’

‘I’d rather not talk of it.’

‘Well, you are here now.’

‘Yes.’ He raised his head and his eyes were not rimmed in red as I expected but blazing with rage.

The days passed in a blur of early summer: rides out along the riverbank; a fair in the village that had all the servants in a frenzy of excitement; boat trips to see a nest of new-hatched cygnets; great tournaments of bowls on the lawn; and walks with my new spaniel puppy, Ruff, a bundle of affection. It was a blissful month. But that serenity was to be blasted open with the arrival of a letter.

It bore a seal I didn’t recognize and was from Lord Cobham, a man I recalled meeting only once, briefly, at Hardwick, years ago. He was one of Grandmother’s godsons, and all I remember of him was a fuss he made about not having been assigned the best bedchamber. ‘That’s the kind of man he is,’ Grandmother had said of it. I never had so much as a conversation with him.

After a paragraph of spectacular fawning, in handwriting so neat it offered no character, he made the suggestion that he and ‘other noble and upright men’ believed my place on the throne more right than any other. They were ‘aggrieved on my behalf’. I should write, he suggested,

to Europe’s heads of state, promising peace, religious tolerance and my desire to be led by them in my choice of husband. That way we will remove the impostor … England won’t stomach a foreigner and he is not yet crowned, so there is a chance …

My newfound freedom suddenly crumbled. Nothing was as it seemed. I was no more free than during my incarceration at Hardwick. From there the shape of my future had seemed simple, possible. A year ago I might have been
delighted at such a thought, to fight for my throne, to wrest it from the clutches of my cousin, but not now. I had been operating under the illusion that were I simply to escape, all would fall into place; or, as Starkey might have put it: God’s plan would have come to fruition. But with the new perspective of my counterfeit liberty it dawned on me that there were invisible malign forces nipping at me as they always had.

This man I didn’t even know thought I would trust him to help me get the throne, wanted to raise an army to put me on it and then what? There was only one way that could end. I dropped the missive with a gasp, as if it had burned me.

The marchioness, quick as a hawk, picked it up, inspecting the seal. ‘Cobham?’ She sneered. ‘What does
he
want?’

I found myself pouring out the contents of the letter without a thought for caution.

‘Cobham is an imbecile. Can I look at it?’ I nodded and she read it with a frown. ‘“Befriend all the heads of Europe … Raise an army to overthrow the Scot … As the King is not yet crowned, treason is not a possibility …”’ She wiped a hand over her forehead, reading on. ‘He talks of Ralegh; I might have known Ralegh’d have something to do with it. No place for
him
either in the new regime. Cobham takes idiocy to new heights with this.’ She tapped the paper with her index finger.

‘What should I do?’ I was so thankful to have her, with her level head, to advise me.

‘Send it straight to the King and apprise Cecil of its contents. That way you cannot be accused of sedition.’ Her voice was firm and reassuring. ‘Say you do not entertain such notions. Say it in the strongest manner.’ She put an arm round me. ‘You’re shaking.’

‘I … I …’ – I could barely speak – ‘I don’t know if I can cope with more of this.’

‘You’re terrified; you poor, dear girl.’ She took me in her arms then, holding me tight until I thought I might suffocate. She smelled of dried roses.

I don’t know why I trusted her but I did, and I allowed her to lead me into a little room – ‘the garden room,’ she called it – where she sat me down, summoning one of the maids with a bell and asking for hippocras to be brought. I’d thought it only a drink for celebrations but it was good for calming the nerves, she said. Its thick sweetness clung to my tongue and made my head heavy but I stopped shaking enough to write to the King. I sealed Cobham’s letter in with mine and sent it off with one of the marchioness’s messengers.

I heard of Cobham’s arrest and Ralegh’s, among others, soon afterwards, and wondered if they would come for me. Each arrival at the priory, the sound of horses alone, sent my stomach to my throat and made my heart falter, but all that came for me from the palace was a letter, heavy with the royal seal, containing my instructions for the coronation. I was to accompany Queen Anna during the proceedings,
before all other ladies of the court
, it stated.

‘You see?’ said the marchioness. ‘The King is bringing you into the fold. He regards you as close family, first lady after the Queen. You have nothing to fear, dear. Everyone will know that Cobham and Ralegh sought to use you for their own ends.’

‘I hope that is true.’

‘Once the court has settled, you will be invited to join them, I don’t doubt,’ she said to me.

‘For my whole life I have wanted that, dreamed of it: to take my place at court; but now I am not so sure.’ I hesitated, realizing the truth of what I was saying. ‘If I had my own house I would wish it to be like yours.’

‘You flatter me,’ she said. ‘But I doubt you will live like
this. You are destined for a palace of one kind or another.’ She laughed, as if I’d been joking.

‘You will be a great prize on the marriage market, although …’ She let her words trail off, leaving me wondering what had been left unsaid. Perhaps she was going to articulate something that I had pondered on, that any son of mine would have a strong claim and might become a focus for insurgency, were England to turn against their new king. The lessons of the Greys loomed large and, as I retired that evening, Katherine watched me from the wall of my bedchamber as a reminder.

On coronation day we travelled to and from Westminster Abbey by river, for plague was still rife in the capital and the streets were to be avoided. It rained – a heavy summer rain that took everyone by surprise and thundered on the canopy above us in the Queen’s barge. Queen Anna, bovine with a cloud of pale hair and breasts like blue-veined cheese, sat in anxious silence, twisting her gloves.

Lucy Bedford was beside her, a high-spirited young woman with a breathless voice and given to bursts of trilling laughter at the slightest provocation. She sat arm in arm with the Queen, close as a lover. Her familiarity seemed audacious to me but Queen Anna didn’t appear to mind. Lucy pointed out things of interest through an opening in the hangings: ‘That barge belongs to the Howards; look at the size of it!’ ‘Isn’t the Savoy Palace lovely?’ ‘Can you see Essex House, it is where …’

Lady Rich, who was next to me, threw her a granite look, saying firmly, ‘I’m sure Queen Anna knows what happened at Essex House, Lucy.’ It was said that Lady Rich was there on the day of her brother’s insurrection, that she held out when the house was besieged by the Queen’s troops. I remembered Lady Rich for her kindness to me when I’d
been turned on by that pack of women – nearly fifteen years had disappeared since then, stolen from me. Lady Rich had the look of her brother. My infatuation for Essex seemed inexplicable at two years’ remove from his death, but then he had barely existed outside my imagination and I had become another person since then.

Queen Anna wasn’t listening to Lucy though; she just kept on twisting the gloves in her lap as if trying to squeeze water from them. ‘I am not going to take the sacrament.’ She sounded like a child stating an intention to refuse a bowl of porridge.

‘Please don’t vex yourself, Highness. It’s all understood. The archbishop has made an arrangement.’ It was Jane Drummond who said this in her Scot’s burr, smoothing her hand over Queen Anna’s ermine-clad shoulder. Jane was dark and handsome and young; they were all young, save for Lady Rich. All those creased harridans who served the old Queen were long gone.

‘I suppose you know she’s a Catholic,’ whispered Lady Rich to me.

‘I don’t understand … I thought …’

‘I know!’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Converted, so all the more fervent! Her husband seems to think it doesn’t matter if she’s discreet. All the girls want to follow suit – they think it’ll bring them favour. Not me, I’m too old for all that.’

I was confused – I had so long been led to believe that Catholics were the enemy – and began to see that there was much I didn’t yet understand about the court.

‘You won’t though, will you?’ she continued.

‘What, convert? No, of course not,’ I said.

‘The King intends to implement a new lenience towards Catholics. No more fines for recusants. Probably a good thing, but let’s see how long it lasts.’

‘And isn’t there a treaty planned with the Spaniards?’ I’d
heard this talked of round the table at Sheen. It had seemed so implausible; Catholic Spain had been the enemy for as long as I could remember.

‘I think Cecil’s keen to promote it.
He’s
not done so badly for himself – still top dog.’ I wanted to ask her about Cecil, she seemed to know so much and I felt so ignorant, but she changed the subject, leaning in even more closely, murmuring, ‘She’s very obstinate; manages to get her way over most things.’ I gathered she had returned to the topic of Queen Anna. ‘She refused to travel from Scotland without her beloved “Freddie”, who was being raised elsewhere.’ In response to my obvious puzzlement she added, ‘The Scots send their children away very young, you see. James relented; she got her way, and she got her way too over her faith.’

There were so many questions I wanted to ask but we had arrived at the pier and we all had to help manage Queen Anna’s robes, acres of velvet and fur, in the rain. A canvas roof had been slung over the pier but the planks were slick as ice and several women skidded in their kid slippers. We could hear the roar of the crowd and nerves beset me suddenly.

‘You go in after the Queen,’ said Lady Rich, pushing me forward. It was an honour but I felt self-conscious with all those eyes on me, wondering, given I had never been seen in public before, who on earth I was to hold precedence over all the other women. Or, it struck me like a blow to the gut, were they thinking:
There is the one Cobham and Ralegh would have seen on the throne
? I had to force my mind off the trial. My presence there had been requested by Cecil, in Winchester, where it was to take place in the autumn, though he had assured me my testimony would be
only a formality
. Formality or not, I still felt clammy and nauseous when I thought of it.

Despite the rain, which showed no sign of relenting, drenched crowds lined the route as we made our way to the
abbey, but once finally inside we found it was half empty. Most who were meant to be there had been delayed by the weather. Queen Anna looked strained and weighed down by her damp robes and James, who must have arrived only moments before us, was seething with anger, as if he thought God had deliberately sent the downpour to mock him.

I had never seen my cousin before, only portraits. He was smaller in life, rather mean-looking I thought, but perhaps that owed much to his foul mood on the day. The royal children were there, stiff with brocade: the nine-year-old Prince Henry Frederick and his sister, Princess Elizabeth, younger by three years, though not baby Charles. They looked lost and small in the great expanse of the abbey. A woman I supposed to be their nurse thrust them at me and Elizabeth pushed her warm little hand into mine. I looked at the woman, questioning. ‘Her Majesty said they were to sit beside you at the front.’ In fact their presence made me feel a little more at my ease, as if I now had a role in the whole thing.

The Prince looked at me and smiled. Even at his tender years I could see the startling appeal that was lacking in his father. There was a great fuss about the King’s train, which was so copious the guests had to be made to stand back to accommodate it in the aisle. I realized only then that it had been more than forty years since the old Queen was crowned and most there could never have witnessed a coronation before.

Throughout the ceremony the latecomers quietly filtered in and before long the place was hot with life. The smell of damp wool pervaded, mingling with the incense and, even from the front, the archbishop couldn’t be heard clearly over the continued thrum of rain. True to her word, Queen Anna didn’t take the sacraments, which caused a murmur of disapproval, pews creaking, amongst the ranks of Protestants. The choir were magnificent, like a host of angels. I had never
heard the like, was quite transported by the sound, and so, it appeared, was little Princess Elizabeth beside me, closing her eyes to listen.

When it was done with and we’d made our way back to the barge, Queen Anna collapsed into her seat with a sigh, and called me to sit beside her, whispering in her accented English, ‘The crown was heavy as a brick and the holy oil smells foul.’

She leaned in so I could sniff her temple; it reeked of something rotten. ‘Must’ve been ancient. They used the last of it on me. When Freddie is crowned I suppose they’ll have to make some more. I wonder how that is done. Do you suppose they bring it from Jerusalem? Who will bless it, do you think? The Pope must’ve blessed this batch a hundred years ago.’ She touched a finger to her forehead and then, as if remembering the sanctity of it all, she crossed herself. It was peculiar to see such a gesture made openly.

‘I expect it will be blessed by the archbishop,’ I said.

‘Of course … the archbishop.’ Then she smiled, revealing a line of pink gum above her teeth. Though I knew she was about my own age, she seemed to me quite childlike with the babble that had replaced her previous anxious silence.

‘Will we make a Catholic of you, Arbella?’ Queen Anna laughed to make it seem a jest but I suspected she was at least partly serious.

‘I think not,’ I replied, sounding as firm as was possible without causing offence.

‘Have you not heard? I always get my way,’ she added flippantly.

I wondered if she was really too dense to realize that, were I even thought open to conversion, the whole house of cards she lived in might have threatened to topple.

The King was due to leave on progress after his coronation, to avoid the plague, but before he left he sent for me. I had
hoped I might discover an affinity with my cousin, despite the past; he was a man of learning and I imagined we could perhaps enjoy each other’s company. But as I approached I began to feel increasingly anxious that he would bring up the trial.
Only a formality
. I kept repeating Cecil’s words in my head but didn’t feel particularly reassured.