The Girl in the Glass Tower (3 page)

Dodderidge, who had accompanied me on the journey from Derbyshire, came to a halt at a pair of carved doors and consulted the piece of paper on which a steward had drawn a crude plan of the corridors of Hampton Court.

‘I believe we are here, My Lady,’ he said, and must have seen the anxiety on me for he added, ‘Don’t worry. The Queen won’t be there, just some of her ladies, and besides, your aunt will be arriving from London within two hours at most.’

‘Can’t you come in with me?’ I knew full well it was a futile request, that one didn’t invite one’s retainer into the Queen’s rooms. Grandmother had made sure I understood the courtly protocol to the letter. We had made a brief visit to court the year before, when I was still only twelve and might have been forgiven for not knowing exactly how to behave. Anyway Grandmother had stuck to me like gum Arabic to ensure all went smoothly. But this was different; I was to stay for three weeks with Aunt Mary for company. It was on our arrival that a messenger came to announce my aunt’s delay on the route from London.

On the long ride south I relished the idea that Grandmother thought me old enough to conduct myself properly alone. I felt fully adult, mounted on my new horse, Dorcas, a coal-black mare, a hand higher even than Dodderidge’s imposing mount. Dorcas was young, too big for me and too wild according to almost everyone, though when I rode her she was docile as a kitten and made me feel capable of anything. But the minute I dismounted in the yard and Dorcas was led away by a groom, my nerves gathered.

‘No … wait,’ I called to the lad, who stopped, turned and dipped his head, sliding his cap off. I ran over. ‘She will need a good drink before she has her oats, and not too many as she’s prone to colic if she eats too much after a journey …’ I was babbling. When the horse dealer first brought Dorcas into the yard at Chatsworth and she sidled over to me, whickering and nudging her soft muzzle into my shoulder, I knew she was mine. They say you know instantly with a horse, like finding a kindred spirit. Grandmother had taken some convincing but had relented eventually on seeing how obliging the mare was with me, how at the slightest command she would do my bidding. Riding her was the closest I could imagine to flight.

‘Understood, My Lady,’ said the boy, who, I noticed, was tapping an impatient foot. It hadn’t occurred to me that he must have had a dozen other horses to see to and that the delay might bring him trouble. I hadn’t been raised to think of others’ needs and was blithely inconsiderate back then. I wrapped my arms about Dorcas’s broad black neck and rested my head against her, breathing in her scent, leather and sweat, closing my eyes for a moment before allowing the lad to lead her off towards the stables, feeling the wrench of her departure.

Had I not been where I was I would have followed them. Grandmother had said I was too old to always be larking about in the stable block, that I needed taming and to learn how to comport myself like a lady. That meant being shut inside most of the time doing needlework as far as I could tell. My embroidery skills were frustratingly poor, so I’d begun to spend more and more time with my tutor, translating passages from Latin to English and then to Greek, which Grandmother approved of. Since I was to be queen one day – though at the time the idea seemed both intangible and, if I thought about it too deeply, quite terrifying – my education
was of the greatest importance. But even my fascination for learning didn’t quite eradicate the lure of the stables.

Dodderidge was waiting patiently – I never knew a more patient man. He was scrutinizing the plan, occasionally glancing up towards the building as if to assess which windows matched up with the route we were to take to the ladies’ rooms. A man approached him to ask where my luggage was to be taken. Dodderidge towered over the fellow. (Dodderidge towered over everyone and, though he was still quite young then, he walked with an old man’s stoop that only served to make him seem taller still, and meant that his fine fair hair flopped forward permanently into his eyes.) He counted the bags and chests as they were carried off towards my aunt’s rooms and sent my two maids in their wake.

He and I marched side-by-side up the steps and into the great hall, where a crowd had gathered about a troupe of musicians, and on past the guards, who nodded us through into the watching chamber, where groups of well-dressed men played cards and dice and servants threaded their way about busily. Beyond was a clamour of people all seeking entry where we were going, their way barred by more guards who stood aside sharply to admit us when Dodderidge informed them who I was. The long gallery was tightly packed with milling courtiers dressed up like a muster of peacocks. As we moved through at a funereal pace I became aware of the curious glances and could hear two girls in whispered conversation behind me.

‘Who is she?’

‘It’s the Lady Arbella Stuart.

‘Looks like a Tudor with that red hair.’

‘All the Stuarts are Tudors; didn’t you know?’

‘How so?’

‘Her great-grandmother was Margaret Tudor, the eighth
Henry’s sister. She was wed to a Scottish king – surely you know that?’

It was a strange thing, hearing myself talked of like that, and as Dodderidge shepherded me through and people dipped as I passed, I sensed myself fill with importance, beginning to understand what I had been raised to know but had never yet felt: my elevated position in that courtly melee.

Once beyond the long gallery and past more guards the place became quite empty of people, save for the odd scurrying servant. The web of corridors necessitated frequent consultation of the plan, and as we passed into ever more private areas my nerves began to prod. I might have turned and run but the carved doors were opening and Dodderidge was handing me in to the usher, who announced me loudly – ‘The Lady Arbella Stuart’ – so there was no going back.

The room was of quite modest proportions and contained a dozen women, none of whom I had set eyes on before. They were all decked magnificently, making me understand why my maid had insisted I wear the embellished gown I was trussed into, and I thanked her silently for her bullying. I was hustled around, inspected thoroughly by curious eyes, and introduced to all present, but my nerves made their names slip out of my head. I wished desperately for the formidable presence of Grandmother – Grandmother who knew all the rules – when only minutes before I had been luxuriating in my freedom from her.

‘How is dear Lady Shrewsbury?’ said someone.

‘She is exceedingly well,’ I replied.

‘Too busy building houses to join us at court, I suppose.’

‘She
is
very busy,’ I replied. Someone less green than I was then might have noticed the slightly disapproving tone. People, I learned later in life, could not quite reconcile themselves to success, particularly in a woman, and always sought subtly to undermine it. Those women would have been acutely
aware that Grandmother, though she was the countess to one of England’s greatest earls and a friend of long standing to the Queen, was born a Derbyshire squire’s daughter, albeit one with a canny instinct for making the right connections: she had married-up four times and amassed great wealth with her astute dealings. Despite her humble origins, she had the ultimate trump card in me, for none of those blue-bloods at court had a granddaughter who was heir to the throne. But I was oblivious to that complex web of hierarchy then.

I finally landed on a bench.

‘Aren’t you to be matched with the Duke of Parma?’ my neighbour, an ancient lady, the Countess of somewhere, had asked me.

I couldn’t think of a satisfactory response. It was the first I’d heard of such a match and my insides began to shrivel at the idea of being sent off to a foreign court to wed a stranger. I was floundering for a response when, thankfully, the ancient countess continued. ‘I thought the idea was that a marriage contract between the Queen’s heir and the Spanish King’s cousin might put an end to his plans to invade.’

‘That is likely,’ I said, pleased with my non-committal answer. No one had spoken to me directly about marriage or anything else, but Grandmother had impressed upon me the importance of always appearing as if I knew exactly what was going on and to ‘act like the heir to the throne and don’t smile, it will make you seem meek and ingratiating’. The talk of imminent invasion had even reached Derbyshire and the servants chattered about it constantly, but then I suppose they’d all known the Queen of Scots in one way or another and the Spaniards were, by all accounts, bent on vengeance for her death. She had died a traitor, or a martyr, it depended which way you saw it.

That day, a year earlier, when the news arrived of the Scottish Queen’s execution was indelibly inked into my memory.
I’d overheard my step-grandfather, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had witnessed the event, discussing it with his steward:
… butchered her, hacked at her neck. It was inhuman. To do such a thing to an anointed queen … I will be damned for it. I wish she had never fallen into my orbit
. I was horrified – that kindly woman I’d once met, hacked at as if she were nothing more than a length of timber. The earl had her little dog beneath his arm. I recognized it, remembered it sitting on her lap and her hand squeezing mine, the warmth of her smile. Nausea washed up my body.
And this creature
, the earl continued,
will not leave off pining. I can’t bring myself to drown it
.

I still, even after all these years, have the bell from Geddon’s collar in my bag of treasures – small objects that bring me a thin kind of comfort.

The ancient countess was looking at me, waiting for me to say something else. My vague response was clearly not enough for her. ‘I’m not entirely sure I would relish marriage to a Catholic,’ I offered, feeling rather pleased with myself, for Grandmother had pressed upon me the importance of advertising my faith. The old woman nodded approvingly.

Another voice entered the conversation. ‘
Something
must be done, for that Spaniard’s armada is almost built, and he will send it our way; you mark my words.’ This was my neighbour on the other side, who was fidgeting with her fan. Fidgeting was another trait that, like smiling, revealed weakness and which Grandmother insisted I conquer.

‘We are to hear a story from Ovid, I believe,’ said the countess, ignoring the fidgeting lady as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

I knew a little of Ovid, enough to be aware that most of the stories were deemed unsuitable for someone of my age, and so a little flame of anticipation lit in me. At thirteen, any glimpse into the mysteries of the adult world is a thrill and I was not to be disappointed.

A woman walked forward to stand at the centre of the chamber with an open book in her hands.

‘I don’t know her. Who is she?’ asked the countess.

‘Henry Hunsdon’s mistress. Musician’s daughter, I think,’ replied the fidgeter.

‘Gracious me, she’s young enough to be his granddaughter.’

I found myself captivated by that woman who was someone’s mistress, a fact that made her seem to my young and cloistered self immediately a little dangerous. Her hair was black and thick and glossy as Dorcas’s mane, and her eyes too were dark, set deeply above the angular planes of her cheeks and framed by arched brows. In contrast, her skin was pale, but nothing like as light as the almost blue-white complexions of most of the women in the room. Her difference to them was striking, making it hard for me to tear my gaze away from her, and I wondered if that was beauty.

She began to recite. Her voice, as richly captivating as her looks, drew each woman listening into the story, as if falling under a spell. The poem told of the marriage of the King of Thrace to Procne, one of a pair of sisters. It was not a myth I knew, which gave me hope that it might be one of the unsuitable ones, and as it unfurled it became clear that this was so. The King of Thrace’s uncontainable attraction to his wife’s lovely sister, Philomel, led him to ravage her. I felt a forbidden thrill tug at me, the story winding about my imagination, as Philomel vowed her vengeance:
for this wickedness full dearly thou shalt pay … my voice the very woods shall fill.

I felt the room garner behind that imaginary heroine, each one of us inside her mind craving revenge, willing her to shout her attacker’s crime from the treetops. But the reader paused, leaving us suspended an eternal second, before continuing.

… That drawing out his naked sword that at his girdle hung,

He took her rudely by the hair, and wrung her hands behind her,

Compelling her to hold them there while he himself did bind her.

When Philomel saw the sword, she hoped she should have died,

And for the same her naked throat she gladly did provide …

A shift of timbre in her voice and all at once the entire listening company had flung their hands over their mouths in shock.

… And with a pair of pincers fast did catch her by the tongue,

And with his sword did cut it off. The stump whereon it hung …

Did patter still. The tip fell down and quivering on the ground

As though that it had murmured it made a certain sound …

The fidgeting lady to my left emitted a horrified howl, ‘He cut out her tongue,’ and grabbed at my arm.

I snatched it back, shaking her grip away. ‘Don’t touch me!’ It came out as a shout, sufficiently loud to silence the room. All eyes turned, causing my face to burn and my heart to clatter and making me wish for Grandmother’s wing to hide beneath.

‘Why ever not?’ asked the countess.

Grandmother’s careful schooling ran through my head and I quoted her verbatim: ‘Because I am to be queen and it is correct to seek my permission before touching my person.’

A few snorts of laughter erupted around the chamber and the countess said, ‘
That
is not how we do things here at court. Almost every one of these ladies here has royal blood of one kind or another …’ She continued, talking on about Edward III and his thirteen children, but I wasn’t listening. All I was
aware of was my burning skin and the whispers and cupped hands and flickering glances.