The Girl in the Glass Tower (25 page)

As her eyes scanned the page, her face screwed up and she stepped towards Queen Anna, cupping her hand to say something privately.

The Queen covered her eyes, murmuring, ‘Oh God,’ and slumped in her chair, as if the air had gone out of her.

‘What is it?’ I wanted to clasp Queen Anna’s shoulder reassuringly but felt unsure about how such a gesture might be received and watched Lucy take her hand and hold it in both of her own, wishing I could muster that same kind of spontaneous affection.

‘You’d better tell them, Lucy,’ said the Queen, unable to conceal the crack in her voice.

Lucy Bedford stood straight, as if addressing an audience at a playhouse. ‘My husband has heard that the Princess Elizabeth has been taken into hiding in Coventry. She is safe.’ She squeezed the Queen’s hand once more and the Queen dropped her head into the crook of Lucy’s arm. ‘But the conspirators planned to kidnap her and make her a Catholic puppet queen.’

‘The poor child’s only nine,’ said Lady Rich.

Puppet queen
– the term seemed so innocent, so filled with charm. It made me think of that miniature queen in my fat baby hand back in the long gallery at Hardwick. The poor girl, blighted by her blood; I understood what she might be
feeling. I remembered Elizabeth, pretty and delicate, slipping her warm little paw into mine at the coronation two years before, and the way she had been transported by the choir.

As that first day wore on great crowds began to amass outside St Clement Danes for a service of thanksgiving for the lives saved on that day. We gathered at the north windows that gave a good view of the Strand, where the crowd continued to grow. None of us mentioned that it was our lives that had been spared; it was too close to the bone.

As evening fell, torches were lit and the celebratory atmosphere outside became progressively rowdy. A group gathered at the gates of Denmark House; it was hard to know if they were hostile or not. Though none of us actually said it, we were all thinking that the Queen’s faith might have made her a target for aggression. When a few began to shout and bang at the gates, it was Lady Rich who suggested Queen Anna send the guards down to distribute coins to the crowd. The gesture seemed to satisfy the mob as it dispersed, moving on to join in the building of a vast bonfire in front of the church.

Once the fire was lit, it caught fast; great tongues of flame licked the darkness and sparks popped like stars. It cast a glow over everything, making the scene below seem, with the increasingly frenzied mood of the horde, like an image of hell. I was enthralled, and even when I retired to bed very late, though I was exhausted, I continued to watch from the window. From my bedchamber I could see that a constellation of beacons had been lit all over London and out into the surrounding hills, far into the distance. Each subsequent year those fires have been lit to signify our deliverance from darkness.

The Powder Treason, as it became known, changed everything. The mere idea of such an atrocity, though it never actually occurred, existed as a reality, a canker in the English
mind, and its repetition or something like it, became a constant possibility hanging over us all.

This letter gives me a tongue; and were I not allowed to write, I should be dumb.

Ovid,
Epistulae ex Ponto

Ami is weeping silently; she has barely slept in days and papers are spread all about her bed. She is bereft, as there is no more to read, and where she hoped for answers she found only more questions. The narrative had become increasingly abstruse towards the end and she has searched for any fragments that she might have missed. Just a line to say she is forgiven would be enough. But there is nothing.

Ami had been there in the story, and then disappeared. It had been a strange revelation to find her likeness in those pages. To see oneself through another’s eyes is to see a stranger. It touches her to know of the impression she had made on Lady Arbella at their first meeting, that she had been recognized as a kindred spirit even then. She counts back. It was eleven years ago, how time has been swallowed up. Hal was a mere boy and she was making a reputation then as a fledgling poet.

Ami remembers the moment clearly, when she had spontaneously grabbed Lady Arbella’s arm, driven by an incontinent zeal for her own ideas. Lady Arbella’s reaction had been so inexplicably abrupt that Ami had almost made her excuses and backed away. But she’d seen a glimpse of something indefinable, a well of unexplored passion, curiosity, verve, behind that infuriatingly opaque exterior, and she felt compelled to discover more at any cost.

Her reputation for aloofness was unsurprising, her rank alone, her royal blood, set her apart and she had nothing of Queen Anna’s ease with people. Ami’s heart wilts at the thought of the little girl whom no one was allowed to touch. It was no wonder she’d always seemed so brittle and odd, but
it was her difference that had drawn Ami’s interest. After all, misunderstood women are her particular preoccupation. But Lady Arbella’s writings, that intimate expression of her inner world, have allowed Ami to understand the depth of her friend’s awkwardness, the profound loneliness and the teetering on the brink of self-destruction that came with it.

She remembers well the letter that had arrived a few days after their first meeting, in which Lady Arbella had sent a few lines of verse. Ami hadn’t quite known what to make of them, there was an unruliness to her style, too many ideas fighting to be heard, as if there was something she wanted to say but couldn’t articulate.

She’d asked if she might see more of Ami’s poetry. Alphonso had seen the letter and said, ‘I don’t want this to be an excuse for more time spent at court. You are my wife; you should be here at home with me. It’s enough that you are expected to pay homage to that countess.’

She had tried to be understanding of the man who’d accepted her carrying another’s child but in subtle ways he’d always made her feel like soiled goods. Perhaps he feared she’d find another nobleman at court and make him a cuckold. She wasn’t for a moment deluded into thinking Alphonso’s jealousy sprang from genuine feeling; it was his pride that was at stake. She had hidden Lady Arbella’s letter and the others, when their correspondence became frequent. On reflection, it was that secrecy that gave the tone of their friendship something, in Ami’s mind at least, of the excitement of a love affair, though their discussions rarely traversed beyond the boundaries of poetry and philosophy and ideas.

She wipes her tears away on the bedclothes, and is lifted by the thought that there will be no more washing to do and that tomorrow Mansfield’s boys will come for their lessons. The church bells begin to ring; it is Sunday and she must
make herself ready for worship. She thinks about Hal, somewhere with the royal progress, saying his prayers in an unfamiliar chapel, and longs for a letter. Give him time, she tells herself, it has only been a few days.

The tabby jumps on to the bed with a mew and begins nuzzling at her hand.

‘You’re right, puss; it’s time I got up.’ She sweeps back the covers, scattering the papers. ‘Goodness, if Goodwife Stringer knew I was talking to you she’d be sure I was communing with the dark forces.’ That woman has been getting beneath her skin.

She dresses. It is a lonely business; there always used to be someone about to help her lace her gown but she refuses to wallow in self-pity and, going downstairs, wraps up a parcel of vittles for poor Mad Dot, who will doubtless be loitering about outside church. Now there is true loneliness, she thinks, when she remembers, with a jolt of horror, Goodwife Stringer telling her the other day of Mad Dot’s murder. That brutal event circulates her mind as she walks to church, a reminder that death can visit suddenly, giving her a sense of urgency to make things right with Hal. But their estrangement is his choice, not hers, and all her attempts to communicate have gone unanswered.

Once the service is over Ami sits a while with her eyes closed, praying to be reunited with her son, only getting up to go when the place is almost empty. Outside the day is bright and there is a fresh breeze pushing white clouds over the sky and blowing away the stench from the town ditch. A group of local women has gathered as usual and their children are running about nearby, whooping and yelping at having been released from the tedium of the sermon.

Ami spots Goodwife Stringer holding forth loudly and tries to make herself as inconspicuous as possible as she passes.
‘The countess will not be hanged, though she should,’ she hears. They must be discussing the Somerset trial. The gossips seem to be constantly picking over the bones of the affair.

‘She confessed her guilt; one rule for the nobles, another for us,’ exclaims an elderly woman. ‘The things that go on at court these days.’

‘The Turner woman hung for it, so why not the countess, since they were in it together?’ says another.

‘We ought to ask Widow Lanyer.’ Ami’s heart sinks when Goodwife Stringer beckons her over. ‘You have court connections, don’t you? What do you make of it all?’

‘My connections are all in the past. I no longer have friends at court.’ It is clear that Goodwife Stringer is spoiling for trouble.

‘That’s as may be, but you must have an opinion on it.’ Ami’s prying neighbour casts a look round the other women for approval. ‘Do you think the Countess of Somerset used sorcery to do away with that Overbury fellow?’

Ami wonders how the discussion took a sudden turn from equality of justice to the dark arts and suspects that Goodwife Stringer has another aim in questioning her. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.’

‘Really?’ says one of the women. ‘I heard different.’

‘Well, you heard wrong. Now, I must bid you good day.’ She makes to leave but Goodwife Stringer takes her arm, insisting on walking with her as if they are friends.

‘I feel obliged’ – she speaks in a low voice – ‘to warn you.’ They are linked at the elbows, close enough for Ami to smell the onions on her breath.

‘Warn me of what?’ She senses she is stepping into hazardous territory.

‘Some people are saying you have bewitched Mister Mansfield.’

‘But that –’

She interrupts: ‘He
is
often at your house. And … well, it is being put about that you are unable to pay your debts.’

Ami cannot tell if she is accused of being a witch or a whore and feels her hackles rising.

‘Dill and Birdy say you weren’t at the backfield Thursday, Friday
or
yesterday,’ she continues. ‘I felt I had to defend you.’

You
defend
me
? Ami wanted to shout in the pause that ensued.

‘I told them you must have come into some money. Is that right?’

‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You’ve all got it wrong.’ Ami’s heart begins to beat rapidly. ‘I am going to be teaching the Mansfield children. There is nothing more to it than that.’

‘Ah, teaching the children.’ From her tone, Goodwife Stringer clearly doesn’t believe a word of it.

‘Yes, I start tomorrow.’ Her voice comes out high-pitched and unnatural, as if it is a lie.

‘I felt sure there was a simple explanation.’ The goodwife smiles, revealing a row of snaggled teeth, before adding, ‘But you can’t stop ignorant gossip. Some people can’t see any difference between a person who writes poems and a person who writes spells.’

Ami is not in the slightest bit reassured as she peels off to her house where the tabby is waiting in the window.

‘That cat’s very attached to you,’ the goodwife calls over from her own stoop.

‘It’s just a mouser,’ Ami replies, regretting it instantly as her terse tone has made her seem on the defensive.

Once inside she bolts the door and stands, leaning against it, until her heartbeat subsides, before pouring herself a cup of strong beer and drinking it back in one go, putting the morning’s events to the back of her mind. They are just silly mistaken chinwags, and she has done nothing wrong.

She looks around at the papers scattered everywhere,
collecting them up. A few lines catch her eye:
I think now about Mistress Lanyer, here where I have ended up, unfolding the ragged leaf on which she wrote that poem, reading her faded words, and emotion jostles me.

Emotion jostles me
. What does she mean? It is the sole reference she has been able to find that gives a clue to Lady Arbella’s feelings, in the period after Ami had wronged her. She flings the paper aside; despair begins to creep up. She had believed with such conviction that somehow these words on the page would offer up something definitive, even perhaps an absolution, but all she has is:
emotion jostles me
. It is infuriatingly opaque, could mean anything: hatred; regret; rage; anguish; love.

The moment of understanding comes to her in a sudden rush; a sense that there is a way to make amends. Her fascination with this story is because in some way it is her story too, and all women’s – and so it must be heard. Ami has been many things – mistress, wife, mother, laundress and tomorrow she will be a schoolmistress – but she is above all a writer and that gives her the power to breathe life into her friend’s story.

Ami had thought there was no
Tragedy of Philomel
, that it had been lost, or never written; but now she sees that this – this jumbled collection of fragments – is that story, only told in an unexpected way. It is the story of a woman silenced and with her pen Ami will give her a voice.

Now she feels it, that lost inspiration gushing back into her as if life is being breathed into something half a decade dead. She rummages in her writing box for a quill, paring its worn end to a point and slicing it across at a perfect angle, before removing the lid from the inkpot, dipping her pen into the thick dregs and smoothing out a blank sheet of paper on the table. At last she begins to write: