The Girl in the Glass Tower (35 page)

‘God has made up His mind for us.’ I smiled and put my hand on his sleeve. He didn’t pull back, but nor did he quite reciprocate, just stood still, not meeting my eyes, his inner conflict apparent in the rigidity of his jaw and the slight tremor I felt beneath my touch.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean we have made an infant – you and I.’

It seemed to take a moment to settle in. His eyes widened as if something had startled him, then he dropped like a dead weight into the chair and sank his face into his hands, murmuring, ‘Oh Christ!’

‘Look at me!’ I snapped. ‘Where are your guts?’ He looked up and I slapped him smartly across the cheek.

He held his palm to his face in shock and then took my hands and pulled me down on to his lap. ‘I’m so filled with shame. I wanted to defy them all and … but … I was afraid.’

‘Shhh.’ I stroked his hair and rested my head on his shoulder. ‘It takes courage to admit one’s fear.’ I had heard someone say that once. ‘It doesn’t matter, for now we don’t have a choice.’

‘I thought I would die of longing for you.’

We were wed on the twenty-first day of June in my chambers at Greenwich Palace, making our vows in front of half a dozen witnesses – not a soul would be able to deny our nuptials and deem our offspring illegitimate.

The following morning I began to bleed.

Will believed he had dislodged our baby in the consummation of our marriage; no matter how I tried to convince him that no fault lay at his door, I was unable to pull him from his sorrow. For myself, I could not find a way to grieve for such an abstraction, a thing so small and invisible, nothing more than a clot, a thing that had served its purpose in bringing us together, a thing God had chosen to take back.

‘There will be more infants,’ I told him, and whispered stories of how our life would be, the children we would have, the home we would live in, how the gardens would grow and which books would adorn the shelves of our library. ‘We have each other.’ And slowly my husband emerged. His love
for me made mine seem paltry but I loved him in my own way; I still do, very much.

Tap, tap, tap.
The renovations continue beneath my rooms. My head swirls. I put my quill down on the desk; I have amassed a stack of written paper and wonder if anyone will ever be able to decipher my scrawl, blocks of it half scratched through, crossed out and written over, up into the margins, asterisks and arrows here and there for guidance. Am I the only one with the key that unlocks my inky marks?

Bridget is sewing quietly at the other window. I see her glances flick my way. She is concerned about me. I have lived with her long enough to interpret those looks. But of course it is not Bridget; Bridget is no longer with me. Perhaps I might stop telling my story at this point. It seems fitting for it to end in marriage – unless it is a tragedy, of course. What did Aristotle say about it?

I listen for Starkey but his whisper is very faint. Does he say,
Happy endings satisfy ignorance
? I don’t know what he means. Beyond the window, on the lip of the opposite roof, a squabbling flock of pigeons has gathered. My hand is cramped from writing. I hold it up, fingers spread, smutted with ink. My wedding ring is loose; I have a sudden fear that it might slide off my finger unnoticed and fall between a crack in the boards. I take it off, kiss it and cache it away in my bag of treasures.

When I look back on that time at Canon Row, the spell they call the honeymoon, the cocooned time before our marriage became public, I think of it as my moment in Paradise.

Ami’s thoughts keep returning to Lady Arbella’s baby that never was. Had she not been carrying that child, it seems clear that the marriage would never have been. Was it God’s intervention? she wonders. But there is so much she cannot find a way to understand about the mysterious actions of God – little Peter’s death, for example.

The vicar had rolled out the usual excuses at the funeral; how it is a great fortune to be called on by the Lord so young, to be one of the chosen few. Ami had her doubts about that, just as she had her doubts about God’s intervention in Lady Arbella’s marriage, given the ultimate outcome of that event. The usual precedent for such stories of misery is the trials of Job, but Ami refuses to see Lady Arbella’s relentless adversity as a test of faith; it seems to her too convenient an explanation.

It occurs to her that such thoughts, not exactly doubts, but a questioning of the Scriptures certainly, would make her even more the subject of market gossip were they voiced aloud. Her mind swirls around ideas of how to depict the absence of that infant. She reads the scrawled fragment once more, the text spiked with unexpressed sadness:
an abstraction, a thing so small and invisible, nothing more than a clot
.

She writes a few lines of verse but screws the paper up, tossing it aside, standing and picking up her wrap, with the intention of taking some air to clear her head. But as she opens the door Goodwife Stringer is upon her, pushing her with some force back inside.

The woman shuts the door and stands, feet apart, back to it, looking at Ami with what can only be described as disgust.

‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’ says Ami, her outrage simmering.

‘There are one or two things you need to explain.’

Only then does Ami notice that several other people are outside, looking in through the window like ghouls.

Goodwife Stringer’s arms are folded firmly over her bosom.

‘I don’t have to explain anything at all to you,’ she says, wishing to God that Hal was still about, but she supposes that Goodwife Stringer has waited for his departure to make this confrontation. She stands her ground, despite the fear filtering up her body.

‘As a friend …’ The woman’s voice is smooth with insincerity. ‘I feel I have to warn you.’

‘Warn me about what?’

‘The Mansfield boy that died. They are saying it was the work of the devil.’

‘For pity’s sake! Who is saying such a thing? The poor child was sick.’

‘What’s this?’ Goodwife Stringer is inexplicably crouching to pick something up from the floor and Ami realizes, with a jolt of dread, that it is the scribbled verse about the miscarried baby, which could so easily be open to misinterpretation.

In silence the woman opens up the paper, casting her gaze over it.

Ami’s heart thuds.

‘What does it say?’ she asks, and Ami realizes with a gush of relief that of course she can’t read well enough to decipher it.

‘It is only a rather poor piece of verse.’

Goodwife Stringer lets the sheet float back to the floor. ‘And how do you explain this?’ She rummages in her apron and pulls something out.

‘My honey jar!’ Ami exclaims. ‘What are you doing with that?’

‘Do you think me a cretin? This is no honey jar.’

‘Of course it is.’ Ami is in a tangle of confusion. She can hear the people outside murmuring. She prays for Hal’s return but he won’t be back until late, for he has a performance tonight.

‘You dosed the boy with this.’

‘Yes, to soothe his throat. He was suffering from the croup.’

Ami steps forward to take the jar and it slips from her fingers falling, breaking open, golden honey seeping out over the dirt floor. They both stand in silence, looking at the mess, until Goodwife Stringer says, ‘You know as well as I that it’s a witch bottle.’

‘What in heaven’s name is a witch bottle?’

‘They said you would deny it but everyone knows you have bewitched Mister Mansfield and seen to it that the boy died because of what he knew of your wickedness.’

‘This is utter madness.’ Her mind is flailing as she realizes that the force of imagination can make invented things appear real, and if enough people believe it then it will be so. Goodness knows, as a writer, she should be aware of that. She can’t help remembering the poor woman hanged as a witch a few weeks ago, how all the locals had been thrilled by the occasion, and is suddenly cold to the bone.

She looks up to see Edwin Mansfield standing in the open door and others behind him, neighbours, people she recognizes from the market. Panic begins to take hold.

‘Edwin,’ her voice is pathetic, pleading. ‘Tell her she is wrong.’

But Edwin turns tail and is gone.

They came for Will first. There were two of them, whom I knew vaguely from court. They were polite, as if it was a social visit. Will offered them French wine from his cellar, which they accepted. We sat around the table and Rodney poured it out into the glass drinking vessels. He’d had to wipe the dust from them, so rarely were they used. They were all smiling and making light conversation but I was aware of the number of henchmen outside, more than would be normal for anything but an arrest.

‘Why have you come?’ I asked, not caring if my baldness was rude.

‘The Privy Council would like a word with …’ – he looked back and forth between Will and me – ‘your
husband
.’

Will stood, saying, ‘Let’s go, then,’ seeming, thankfully, uncowed by what he was to face.

Rodney helped him on with his boots and cape and they were gone, their wine barely touched. From the window I watched them mount their horses and leave. I stayed there pressing my skin against the cold glass, hoping against hope to discover that some mistake had been made. I waited for several hours, just me and my watching self, refusing to move until Bridget prised me away and into the bedchamber.

I lay awake all night, with each sound: horses passing, the rumble of a cart, the bark of a dog, giving rise to hope and leaving grim disappointment in its wake. I lit a candle and unfolded the square of parchment containing that lock of stolen hair, bringing it to my nose in an attempt to capture the ghost of his scent. Time crept until eventually the cock started to crow and the servants began to bustle about, a boy
was whistling in the yard and the cook was banging pots below.

Just as I was dressed they came for me. I didn’t make any pretence, just got my things, asked Crompton to tell the groom to ready Dorcas and Dodderidge to take care of Ruff. How simple a dog’s life is. If I had the chance to come back I would choose to come as a dog.

I don’t remember the route we took, can barely remember being up before the Privy Council, only that they wanted to know why Will had denied we were wed.

‘I can only suppose he was afraid,’ I told them, and gave specific details about the ceremony: who witnessed it, which chaplain married us and held out my hand so they could all hum and hah over the ring. The King seethed as I defended my husband and both Nottingham and Uncle Gilbert looked desperate with concern. I knew there was nothing they could do to help me.

The King said: ‘Mister Seymour will have plenty of time to ponder on whether it was a wise decision to defy Us now he is in the Tower.’

I flinched inside but would let nothing show on my exterior, just fixed my gaze on my glowering cousin to show I was not afraid. I noticed on the faces of the Council that none agreed with the King’s harsh response to my marriage. Even Cecil looked apologetic and dipped his head sympathetically as he told me: ‘You are to be taken into the custody of Sir Thomas Parry, at Lambeth.’

‘Not the Tower for me, then?’ My tone was glib. It didn’t suit the occasion and several of the Council looked at me with pity. I remembered hearing that when Katherine Grey was in the Tower, and Hertford held there too, they contrived to spend time together, must have bribed the guards, and conceived a second infant there. I supposed my cousin was ensuring such a thing did not occur again. It seemed my
life was unfolding in a similar pattern to that ghost of mine whether I wanted it or not.

It was only then, thinking of Katherine Grey and the baby she had birthed in the Tower who was the father of my husband, that I thought of that sprout of a child Will and I had made and truly mourned it. All at once my emotions were coming at me like musket fire and I felt a shortness of breath as if the floor might be suddenly pulled out from under me. I wanted to tell them that we had wed for that infant but couldn’t bring the words to the surface.

Cecil approached as I was being led out. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. I wanted to ask if he was sorry for everything: the betrayal that took my throne from me and gave it to another, for his duplicity, or just for failing to persuade the King to offer me lenience on that day.

‘Your apology is worth little if you cannot shore it up with action,’ I said with Grandmother’s voice. He seemed downcast. Perhaps he felt guilty; I hoped so.

It was Nottingham who took my arm and guided me down the privy steps to the pier. ‘I’m so very sad it has come to this, my dear. The King had made his mind up. There was nothing I could do.’ He helped me into Sir Thomas Parry’s awaiting barge.

Nottingham looked old; he
was
old, I supposed, he had already seemed ancient when he’d taken me under his wing at the trial in Winchester seven years before. Seven years in the purgatory of court.

Uncle Gilbert rushed down to the pier just as I was embarking. ‘I will petition him,’ he said, breathless from running. ‘I’ll get word to your aunt too. We will do everything we can.’

I looked out into the water, watching the oars slap and suck, thinking of William downriver in the Tower, imagining what might happen if I slid into the depths, whether my
clothes would be heavy enough, clogged with wet, to drag me under. If it had been winter I might have gone quickly, my body paralysed with cold; but it was July and balmy, the oarsmen were singing and people waved, doffing their caps to see Sir Thomas’s barge go by.

My first thought on arriving at Sir Thomas’s Lambeth house was to get word to Will. I knew that Mistress Lanyer used a laundry maid who was occasionally employed at the Tower in some capacity; she had mentioned her once as being a magician with ink spots on linen. With this in mind I hoped she might be able to find a way to get my letter through without arousing suspicion, for any letter sent by the usual channels would be sure to be read. Of all the people I knew, I believed Mistress Lanyer had sufficient mettle; moreover, she was not part of the court, no one would think to question her.

I wrote a short missive to Will, telling him where I was and insisting that he did not lose faith.

…
I will appeal to my cousin and you must do so also. Hold hope that we will be reunited before long.

Your ever-loving wife, Arbella Seymour.

A little splinter of defiance burrowed its way into me on writing my name thus. I folded my letter inside a note of explanation for Mistress Lanyer and asked Crompton to deliver it to her in Bishopsgate.

‘You seem more buoyant than I might have expected, given the circumstances,’ he said.

‘My cousin only wants to make an example of me. That is all.’ I said it, and it was what I believed, but there was that other part of me, a darker self, the self without hope, who had imagined being swallowed into the wet jaws of the Thames only an hour before.

My letter found its way to Will, for there was a reply in my hands even before Bridget and Margaret had unpacked our things.

Thank the Lord to have news of you, my dear sweet wife, and to know that you have not sunk into despair. Your word has invested my desolation with a glimmer of light.

Do not worry yourself on my account, for I am not under close guard. I have pleasant rooms, Rodney is with me and I have the run of the courtyard gardens and frequent visits from my brother Francis.

I shall petition His Majesty on both our parts, appeal to his belief in the holy institution of marriage. You may well be right in saying he only intends to make an example of us and will give us our liberty if we show sufficient humility and remorse. We must have patience, my love.

I live only for the moment that I can be in your sweet company once more. Your faithful and ever-loving husband, in this life and the next, W. S.

AD 1610 on the ninth day of the month of July

Summer gave way to autumn and my hands became cramped with writing letters of appeal. It was as if the forward trajectory of my existence was to ever be frustrated, with time folding back on itself, back to the Hardwick of 1603 and my pleas to Elizabeth, begging her clemency. The King’s pity was not forthcoming and Queen Anna, though she privately supported me, regretted that she could not disobey her husband. But I held on to the last vestiges of my hope.

Other letters passed up and down the Thames, from the Tower to Lambeth, which were surely passed over by Cecil’s eyes. They contained the banal details of our health with exclamations of affection between husband and wife and little more. But they served to conceal another correspondence,
secret missives, sent with the help of Mistress Lanyer, in which we plotted our escape.

Will would contrive to substitute himself with another. He would receive a visit from his brother Francis, whom I had never met. They would swap clothes; he would slip out in plain sight and take a barge to Lambeth, where we would spend the night together. I drew a plan of the house marking the best route to my rooms and told him the shifts of the gatekeepers, which ones liked to doze off after a shared flagon of ale. I was not tightly guarded. Everybody knew that, like my husband, I was too easily recognized to make an attempt at escape. It was all mere fantasy, a fiction with which we buoyed our spirits, but it was a dangerous fiction and those letters were to be burned on reading.

The days became short, the hours of light truncated and the lonely nights stretched out unbearably. I lay awake, acutely aware of the passage of time, my life passing unused, as if I were a splendid suit of clothes never worn, left to fade and become food for moths. I sat often at the window, fur-wrapped against the winter chill, watching the moonlight on the river and the dark silhouettes of the boats slipping by, like barks on the Styx. I talked to my ghosts, to the Scottish Queen and dear Starkey and Katherine Grey.
How was it
, I would ask them,
in the moment you met your end? Were you afraid?

On one such night I saw a small craft slip up to the bank that abutted the gardens, not to the pier but another place hidden in the rushes. I heard a whistle then a response, a slight rustling, the faint crunch of steps. I felt my breath catch in my throat, as my imagination grasped at things – the whisper and click of a door below – and then nothing, just the usual night sounds, the creak of the old house breathing and the distant shouts of the rivermen. The door to my chamber sighed and there was Bridget, confusing me, as I’d
thought her asleep in the truckle bed, lighting a candle from the embers of the fire. Will was with her.

‘I thought I’d surprise you.’

I stood and reached out my hand, expecting it to pass right through him, but it met with the woollen surface of his cape and then with the warm ungloved flesh of his fingers.

‘How?’ I whispered.

‘Francis is asleep in the Tower. It was easy … almost too easy.’

‘Your brother Francis?’

He nodded. ‘We are uncommonly alike.’

My first thought, even before thoughts of love, was of escape. ‘Let’s flee now. Take a boat upriver …’ But as I said it I realized that there was nowhere to go in England where we would not be found, unless we were to live out our days in a priest hole.

‘Come, Belle. We must not lose hope of the King’s mercy. You said it yourself: in time he will give us our freedom.’

‘But if we need to, it is good to know –’ I stopped myself, as if saying it might curse things.

‘Good to know, yes. But we will not need to.’

I was then beset with a pressing concern. ‘But you will have to return. How will you get back in without causing suspicion?’

‘Vex not, Belle’ – I was unaccustomed to being the one who needed reassurance and it occurred to me that Will’s imprisonment had made a man of him. ‘It is all planned. Mistress Lanyer, what a woman she has turned out to be – such resourcefulness. She will meet me in the morning and we will go in together with the laundry cart. I will pose as my brother Francis and she will be a woman come to bring me fresh linens. The laundry is the means by which your letters come to me.’

‘What if –’ I began, but he silenced me with a kiss.

Every night I yearned for his return but he didn’t come. The risk was too great and if we were to ever gain clemency from my cousin we had to be seen to be compliant.

I knew before the month was up that we had made another infant. I recognized the symptoms that I had so wilfully ignored on the previous occasion. I ate ravenously, so much so that Lady Parry began to comment.

‘Goodness, anyone would think you were eating for two,’ she said at the dinner table one day. ‘You shall have to curb that appetite once advent is upon us.’ She was a twitchy, birdlike woman who, I could tell, didn’t like the warmth with which her husband treated me. Hers was a frosty demeanour that paid correct respect to my status but little else. She picked at her own food in a manner I recognized, eating almost nothing yet giving the opposite impression.

I noticed Dodderidge’s eyes shift about the chamber and wondered what he knew, whether Bridget had told him something, and felt a prickle of panic. Had the fellow who mans the jakes seen Bridget emptying out the pans of morning vomit? Had Lady Parry’s seamstress noticed the inserts Margaret had sewn into my dresses?

My gluttony had been noticed; it was only a matter of time before everything else became apparent. It struck me then, something I had refused to entertain, that the end result of my condition would force some kind of change upon the King. But what that change would be was impossible to know. I didn’t dare write to Will with news of it, for fear of the letter falling into the wrong hands. What could he have done anyway, save fall to despair?

As time went by, and the curious looks of the Parry household became hard to disregard, the impossible nature of my situation began to crystallize, casting shadows of doubt where there had been such a sense of optimism only weeks
before. I stopped eating, rediscovering my own discipline, as if I could overcome my condition that way. It created a strange competition with Lady Parry.

‘Here, My Lady,’ she would say, passing a great dish of sweetmeats my way. ‘These are most delicious.’