The Girl in the Glass Tower (10 page)

I wanted to say she was not lucky, not lucky to sink to such despair as to bring on her own slow death. I’d heard the story many times: the Queen was incensed; so afraid of being pushed off her throne by Katherine Grey’s royal son, she had the marriage denied. The infant, little Lord Beauchamp, would have had a stronger claim than mine had he not been deemed illegitimate. I would have had another life – it was impossible to imagine a different destiny, or whether I might have preferred a more ordinary path. Hindsight cannot unravel and reweave a life to a different pattern.

‘The Queen still hasn’t truly forgiven Hertford,’ continued Grandmother.

I remembered meeting Hertford once when I was a child. He seemed a genial man, but what can you tell from a brief encounter? He’d admired my hands, said they reminded him of someone’s and looked suddenly sad, which made me think he was talking of golden Katherine Grey, trapped for ever behind her oval of glass on Grandmother’s bedside table.

‘At court you’ll find people who will try to take advantage of your position.’

I wanted to shout at her, ask her if she thought me a little fool too, but kept on nodding.

‘Give them short shrift. No one will seek to know you for yourself; remember that. If the Queen chooses to broker a match for you then we must play along but …’ She hesitated a moment. ‘Cecil and I are of the mind that we should hold off any wedding until … until later.’

She steepled her fingers, as if about to pray. ‘It will always be possible to delay, whilst appearing to acquiesce … if necessary.’ I fixed my gaze on the stoat’s ruby eyes. ‘Look at me, Arbella. I need to know you are listening.’ I did as she bid, focusing on the thin line of her lips. ‘Cecil has given me his word; he will be watching out for you.’ She softened then. ‘I know you will make a dazzling impression, dearest.’

‘I will do my utmost to see you proud, Grandmother. I assure you I have no intention of making a bad marriage, nor will I allow anyone to take advantage of me.’

‘Good; I’m glad you understand.’ She stood and led the way towards the door. ‘Your Aunt Mary will be with you. She knows how to manage court life and you will be sharing her chambers.’

The thought of those women around the Queen, remembering my long-ago faux pas – the snatched-back hand and the whispers, the sidelong glances of disapproval, the cold shoulders – made me shrivel. I supposed many of those women would be long gone but that was little comfort, for I was awake to the fact that I was not one for easy affinities with those I hardly knew – the likelihood of my making a ‘dazzling impression’ was slight – so I was glad to know that Aunt Mary would be there as an ally. I was close to my aunt; she was often at Hardwick, though there was a certain amount of tension between mother and daughter, for
Grandmother had taken against Uncle Gilbert; it was something to do with money. With Grandmother it was often to do with money; in her world profligacy was the ultimate sin and an unpaid debt, even between close kin, was a profound dishonour.

‘I suppose Margaret will be coming?’ I said.

‘Didn’t I mention, I’ve had an approach for Margaret’s hand. I’ll be sorry to see her go.’ She stroked the stoat’s pale fur. ‘She’s a good girl, and has a talent for needlework, but we can’t keep her for ever.’

‘Margaret is to wed?’ I was wrong-footed, wondering how, with my careful surveillance of Grandmother’s correspondence, I knew nothing of it. ‘What does her father say?’

‘I have written to him but he will not turn down
this
offer. It is from a much better family than theirs. Apparently the Byron boy saw her here at some hunting party or other and has set his heart. I can’t imagine why, for she is not exactly a spring chicken.’

‘Oh.’ I couldn’t think of what to say. ‘First Cousin Bessie and now Margaret.’ I could feel the dejection spreading through me. The world was moving on and I had been left behind in a childhood I had grown too large for. But, I reminded myself, I would be at court soon and, hostile women or not, my life would begin.

‘People seem to set so much store in love these days,’ Grandmother carried on. ‘It seems like madness to me, but this is a good match.’

I questioned the idea that happiness was to be found in wedlock. I had seen the misery of Grandmother’s final marriage and the extent to which she and the earl loathed each other by the end, but then Grandmother was not a woman given to compassion and even I, with my limited experience, understood that forgiveness lay at the heart of a good marriage.

‘Did you never love
any
of your husbands?’

‘Cavendish, I loved Cavendish’ – her voice was clipped, as if I’d made an accusation – ‘the father of my children,
your
grandfather.’ She looked at her pearls.
Pitter-patter
, they went, like rain on glass. The stoat stared on at me with red eyes. ‘Yes, I loved him. But don’t you be fooled by love. You are destined for greater things.’

‘I am not the type to be taken in by love.’ I said it, but still somewhere buried deep in me, in a place I barely dared to look, was a notion that love might offer some kind of transcendence, a way to invest meaning into life and paradoxically a path to freedom. But I knew little of love. For Grandmother, love, even of her children and grandchildren, was a transaction. I was not so naive as to think that her affection for me wasn’t bound up in what I, or more accurately my royal blood, might add to her carefully constructed empire. That was just her way and it was impossible not to admire how she had employed it to best use.

‘Perhaps not,’ she replied. ‘But you have a tendency to be unpredictable.’ She closed the conversation firmly by standing and moving to the door, giving me no opportunity to defend myself.

There were a number of workmen busying themselves in the gallery, which was a mess of open cartons and strewn packing straw. Paintings were stacked against the walls; I saw familiar glimpses, a painted dress I vaguely remembered being worn by Mother, Aunt Mary’s neat, be-ringed hands, half the Queen’s face.

For a moment Grandmother and I stood in the doorway unobserved. Margaret and the two women were down at the far end, sitting on the floor with the children, Wylkyn strumming at a lute and Frannie singing in her sweet, reedy voice. Dodderidge and Reason were about halfway down, standing
in front of that portrait of me as an infant, with the miniature queen in my hand. They appeared to be in disagreement about where it should hang, with Mister Reason complaining I should be on the right-hand side of my father rather than the left.

I had never seen the portrait of my father before, wondered which of the Shrewsbury houses it might have hung in. He was a stranger to me and looked young, which he must have been, for I knew he had died aged only twenty-one. At first glance it appeared as if his heart was bleeding but it was a rose embroidered on his doublet, a Tudor rose, I realized, noticing its white centre, stained yellow with age. That was to remind the world he was the great-grandson of the first Tudor king. So in a sense the rose did signify blood, the blood that was mine too.

‘She is crooked. She needs to drop an inch on the right,’ said Grandmother, pointing at the picture of me.

I shivered and wrapped my shawl more tightly round my shoulders. The gallery faced east and held sixteen of Grandmother’s immense windows, so even the fires raging in the two great hearths seemed to make little impression on the February cold. Casting my eyes about the space, at all those painted relatives, I imagined that tangled web of kinship, into which I was tied, like a knot that was impossible to undo.

‘I don’t want that in here.’ Grandmother pointed to a portrait of the Scottish Queen propped against the panelling. Dodderidge swiftly turned it to face in.

No one spoke of the Queen of Scots and it was Starkey who had explained to me what really had happened to her, how she had been the focus of Catholic conspiracies to oust Queen Elizabeth and had been deemed too great a risk to remain alive. I wondered if the same fate might befall me; after all, was I not also incarcerated for fear of insurgent plots? He must have seen something scribbled over my face
as he’d said, ‘It is different for you. She instigated the insurrection that brought about her downfall and, besides, you are not a Catholic.’

‘But people still seem to think me malleable enough to be converted.’

‘If they knew you they wouldn’t think such a thing, would they?’

The Scottish Queen’s words ran through my mind unbidden:
The Catholic faith is the true faith; it is the only path that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven.

‘None of them know me.’ I’d replied. ‘I am something they conjure up in their heads.’

Margaret began to sing a round with the cousins. I caught her eye and she smiled, making me sad with the thought of her imminent loss. Through the vast window I saw a wagon lumber round the curve of the drive in the distance, watching its slow trundle towards the stable block. As it neared I recognized the horses. ‘Your things from Chatsworth have arrived.’

‘My tapestries.’ Grandmother clapped her hands together.

Dodderidge whispered to me, ‘Your uncle Henry will be furious.’

I pictured Uncle Henry’s handsome face, livid, watching on as the last of Chatsworth’s treasures were bundled on to the cart and tied down with canvas. Grandmother had been stripping Chatsworth to furnish Hardwick for years.

‘Chatsworth must be quite emptied out,’ I said.

‘The contents of that house belong to
me
,’ snapped Grandmother. ‘They are mine to do with as I wish.’

‘But Uncle Henry –’

‘Don’t talk to me of your hopeless uncle. He’s a wastrel, as you well know. Had I not brought those things to Hardwick they would have already been sold to fund his habits.’

Nobody spoke, though Reason rearranged his big hands and murmured a noise of agreement in the dense silence.

I could never understand Grandmother’s loathing of her eldest son, for to me he bristled with charm, much more so than his dull, upright younger brother William, who was inexplicably the favourite. I missed the Uncle Henry of my childhood, who would burst into a room, captivating its inmates, always with a surprise of one kind or another: an unusual feather, a puppy in need of an owner, a new card trick.

Since the great schism between mother and son, the exact source of which remained obscured to me, I rarely saw Uncle Henry. Though I was the recipient of secret letters, just affectionate and newsy missives, but prohibited nonetheless. I hoped there might be one in the hands of the carter bringing the tapestries.

‘Would you excuse me, Grandmother?’ I felt suddenly oppressed by my illustrious relatives watching me from the walls. ‘I should like to take some air before it turns dark.’

‘I suppose so.’ She seemed reluctant. ‘Mister Reason can accompany you.’ I saw Reason shift uncomfortably at the thought of trailing his bulk round the damp gardens with me.

‘Could I not go alone with Margaret, just this once?’

Grandmother sighed. ‘I don’t see why not. Mind you wrap up, though; I wouldn’t want you coming down with something. You are far too precious.’

Margaret and I made our way around the perimeter wall of the gardens – a walk tedious in its familiarity. I glanced towards the house, where I could see the ever-present shape of Grandmother watching from the window. No doubt looking out for armed men bent on my abduction, concealed in the surrounding woods. After nearly a decade of what amounted to imprisonment, I questioned whether such a thing was likely, though Grandmother never let her
guard drop. I supposed she was not prepared to risk the prize fruit she had waited a lifetime to ripen.

‘First to the hedge,’ I cried, picking up my skirts and running into the long grass, more for the pleasure of irritating Grandmother than for the simple joy of feeling the wet blades about my ankles. I could imagine her indignant huff leaving a cloud of condensation on the window and knew it would not be long before Reason was dispatched to curb our fun.

We ran for the partial cover of the yews. I could hear the puff of Margaret’s laughter at my shoulder but I was too fast for her and pulled away towards the dark shape of the ancient hedge. The garden passed in a blur; I felt the pleasing hammer of my heart and the chill air kissing my cheeks, imagining Grandmother:
A young lady must conduct herself sedately.
What if I’d not been born a lady, if I’d been a tinker’s daughter, or a farmer’s I wondered, would my life offer more joy?

I asked myself if I would give up the pleasure of reading and writing for an ordinary life – of course not and, besides, a farmer’s daughter was no more free than any other woman. It was men who had freedom. My foot caught on a root. I landed in the soft mulch, unhurt, bursting with laughter and then laughing more at the thought of Grandmother’s disapproval. I rolled over and lay flat, looking at the sky through the mesh of branches.

‘Are you hurt?’ Margaret cried, breathless from running.

‘Not at all.’ I was grinning like an idiot in my bed of dirt.

‘Your dress!’ She had fixed her eyes on my overskirt. ‘It is covered in mud.’

Sitting up, I saw the pale silk was smudged with black loam and that it was clogged in the embroidered border. I laughed but Margaret didn’t join me and I realized that perhaps she was sad to see her fine needlework ruined. ‘Never mind, it will brush off.’

‘May I help you up?’ She offered a hand tentatively.

I nodded, and she pulled me to my feet.

‘You are too thin,’ she said, reprising her refrain from earlier. ‘You don’t weigh a thing.’

‘I cannot help that.’

She pulled back to arm’s length, meeting my gaze with raised eyebrows. ‘Your courses have stopped; you can’t hide it from me.’

‘Nature does as she pleases,’ I replied, but it was a lie, for I had tamed nature to my own ends by sheer force of will, imposed androgyny on my body. The thought of it made me feel capable of anything.

‘You are to be wed,’ I said, to change the subject.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It seems quite clear to me.’ I felt suddenly bitter about it all, not pleased for Margaret in the least.