The Girl in the Glass Tower (28 page)

‘And Mistress Lanyer sent word.’ Bridget said this through pursed lips.

I suspected Bridget didn’t like Mistress Lanyer because she was neither a noblewoman nor a servant, nor even a foreigner. It might have been better if she’d been a Catholic, but she wasn’t that either. Bridget liked things that fitted into their proper category and Mistress Lanyer didn’t. That was precisely why I
did
like her, though I wished she were more often at court. Her husband evidently preferred to keep her for himself.

‘What did she say?’

‘She is coming to Richmond.’ Bridget rolled her eyes slightly. ‘We’d better get you ready. You can’t go to prayers dressed like that and …’

She and Margaret bustled about finding various garments, which they helped me into, finally fastening my best lace ruff around my neck. All I longed to do was sit quietly with a book by the fire, dog on my lap, but questions would be asked if I wasn’t seen at prayers. People might have thought I was hearing Mass with the Queen and it wouldn’t have done to complicate things unnecessarily. I thought back to the days before the Powder Treason when so many of her ladies would join her for Mass, returning suffused with the faint exotic smell of incense and just-blown-out candles.

I quietly took my place in the chapel, dropping to my knees, automatically uttering the familiar responses to the chaplain’s prayers. I was not really thinking of God, for my mind kept alighting on the young man from earlier, clutching his volume of Plato. I didn’t know what it was that touched me about him, but something had; perhaps it was his sad eyes, and I wondered if it was some kind of latent maternal instinct that had been provoked.

I remembered holding the newborn Princess Mary at the font, my little goddaughter who’d barely survived a year. That infant didn’t prick even the slightest motherly feeling in me, only awkwardness at the snuffling, mewling bundle that made me relieved to hand her back to the nurse. I reasoned that a woman of my age might well feel wistful about being childless for an older child rather than a baby. But though he was young, it was impossible to think of him as a child; he was a man.

Evensong was followed by supper and a play. The Prince attended, with a small entourage, but my young man (in my mind I had somehow laid claim to him) was not amongst them. I felt a little dip of disappointment; I had no idea why. There were interminable rounds of music and dancing, and just when it all seemed to be ending Queen Anna suggested a game of rise pig and go, so I was obliged stay while everyone drove themselves into a frenzy of shrieking, chasing each other about the watching chamber.

I was fit to collapse by the time I got back to my own rooms. In the anteroom Dodderidge was playing chess in thoughtful concentration with Mister Crompton, a doe-eyed, crooked-mouthed young man who kept my accounts meticulously and had joined my household on Aunt Mary’s recommendation.

‘I hope you’re not losing, Dodderidge,’ I said.

‘Alas, I am being Cromptoned.’ It was an expression we had coined, as Crompton had an uncommon talent for the game and none of us had yet beaten him, nor were we likely to. He had a way of meeting one’s gaze, his beguiling eyes filled with apology as he inevitably uttered, ‘Check mate!’

Neither Bridget nor Margaret were in my bedchamber so I undid as much of my clothing as I could without help, unpinning my sleeves, contorting myself to loosen the laces of my bodice and lifting off that infernal scratchy ruff, before
taking a seat by the hearth and picking up my book as I had longed to do all evening. I noticed that the cloak still lay where it had been left earlier and found myself pressing it to my face so I could breathe in its woody scent.

The latch clicked; I dropped the garment sharply.

‘You’re back,’ Bridget said. ‘You look exhausted. I hope you’re not falling ill again. What’s that doing on the floor?’

I felt myself begin to blush as if I had something shameful to hide but she didn’t see because she was stooping to pick up the cloak. She hung it from the back of the door, mumbling to herself that she wasn’t to forget to return it the following morning. ‘Poor fellow will catch his death if he has to join the hunting party without it.’

I affected nonchalance and had begun to comb my hair out when Bridget passed me a letter, saying, ‘I wonder, would you be so kind as to read this for me, My Lady?’

‘If you’d only let me teach you your letters –’

‘It’s no good. I don’t have the aptitude.’ This was always her response and I wondered who had drummed that belief into her.

‘Your brother is to wed,’ I said, skimming the page. ‘The girl is called Alice Riffle.’ I heard Bridget make a small noise, the kind people make on seeing a basket of kittens. ‘Do
you
never think to marry?’ I asked.

‘My father would never manage enough of a dowry to wed me to a gentleman and I’d rather be here serving you than be the wife of a tradesman. To be honest, My Lady, I’m not particularly the marrying kind.’

‘Well, that makes a pair of us, then.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. You are much in demand with all those foreign princes.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Bridget, that was ages ago. There has not been a bite on my line for years. I’m too old for all that.’

‘Queen Mary was older than you when she wed Felipe of Spain.’

I wanted to say,
And look what became of her
, for she died miserably and in want of a child, but didn’t, as Bridget often referred fondly to Queen Mary. I supposed because she was the last Catholic to rule England, though it was long before Bridget was born or even thought of. What I remembered most about Queen Mary was Grandmother telling me of the two hundred and eighty souls who burned on her command for refusing the Catholic faith.

‘The King and Cecil are minded to keep me an old maid,’ I replied, to which she huffed and bent down to pull out the truckle bed before blowing out the candles.

True to her word, Mistress Lanyer arrived the following day. I found her pacing back and forth nervously in a corner of the great hall. She had a scrap of paper in her hand and seemed to be learning something from it, as she was mouthing words with her eyes shut and occasionally referring back to the paper as she paced. When she saw me passing by she dropped into a deep curtsy, as if I were the Queen.

‘There’s really no need for that. This is not a formal occasion.’ No matter how much I encouraged it she wouldn’t give up her deference. It seemed to me out of place, given she was more than my equal in intellect, but we saw one another too rarely to easily discard the reserve of acquaintances.

She smiled widely as she rose to her feet. I was always struck by her looks – which came from her Italian father, she said – the fine wires of raven hair escaping from her cap and eyes so dark her pupils were lost in them. She seemed, beside us washed-out purebreds, as if she’d been left longer in the barrel when her die was cast. Her fingers were stained with ink as mine were; she took my hand and held it up next to hers to compare, laughing as they matched exactly, the
same tear-shaped mark on the middle finger of our right hands.

‘You’d better not forget your gloves, if you are to see the King,’ I said. ‘You know how he hates a woman who fancies herself a clerk.’

She raised her eyes comically. ‘I won’t be seeing the King.’ She might have said,
Thank God
, then but didn’t, just paused before adding, ‘I am to present a poem to the Queen. And the Prince has asked to see me. Apparently he is interested in my work.’ She couldn’t conceal her excitement; it was there in the way she was worrying at the sheet of paper.

‘So you found someone to make the introduction.’ I felt a little flat, wishing it had been I. She had mentioned to me, the last time I’d seen her, that she was seeking a way to get her work to the Prince. He was making a reputation for patronizing poets and artists and it would have been easy for me to mention her to him. It simply hadn’t occurred to me; all I’d thought of had been a wish that I had the funds to be her patron myself. I’d recognized in that moment that I was raised to expect things to be done for me but not the other way round. It made me feel thoughtless – a bad friend, but what did I know of ordinary friendship?

‘Yes, it was Will Seymour who spoke on my behalf.’

‘Seymour,’ I said. ‘You know the Seymours?’

‘Not really, but my cousin is a musician in Hertford’s household. He said he would try and pull some strings for me. Will Seymour is one of the Prince’s gentlemen, you see.’

‘He is also the brother of the man I was once to wed.’

‘Goodness, of course.’ She placed her hand over her mouth as if she had said something terrible. ‘I’m sorry, My Lady. You can’t want to have all that brought to mind.’

‘It’s long ago, now. Ancient history.’ I realized that the whole of England must have been gossiping about it back
then. It made me feel as if someone had walked in on me while I was naked. I knew well enough the virulence with which news spread when it concerned the misdemeanours of the nobility but I had never thought to apply it to my own case.

Tactful as ever, she tapped her paper, changing the subject: ‘I must be word perfect for the Queen.’

Mistress Lanyer had an appealing straightforwardness about her, a natural way of behaving around others, a thoughtfulness, an ability to ascertain what they might be feeling. It was an innate sense of how to put others at their ease that I wished I could emulate. Other people, those I was not used to, caused me to feel sharp, making impossible even a pretence of cordiality.

‘Will you stay long?’

‘Sadly, no, My Lady,’ she said. ‘I am on my way to Cookham, to the Countess of Cumberland.’

I wanted to tell her I longed for my own house so I could be hostess to her and we could write great treatises together on the virtues of female poets, but it seemed pointless to wish for the impossible when I couldn’t even afford a new horse for my steward.

My disappointment must have shown for she said, ‘I know. It’s a shame, isn’t it?’

Mistress Lanyer’s poem was a success with Queen Anna who unpinned a pearl from her hair and folded it into the poet’s hand, saying, ‘We shall have to ask you to write a masque for us to perform, don’t you think?’ She turned to Jane Drummond. Jane nodded in agreement. ‘What shall we ask you to do?’ Her eyes were back on Mistress Lanyer, who was about to reply when Queen Anna said, ‘Cleopatra!’

‘An Egyptian theme,’ said Jane. ‘I can imagine it already.’

I was thinking it would give them an excuse to parade
about half undressed whilst Mistress Lanyer was trying to explain that she only wrote poems, not dramas. But her voice was drowned in the din of the women, who had been joined by Lucy Bedford – just back from birthing her fourth – discussing the imagined Egyptian masque.

As soon as the opportunity arose, Mistress Lanyer sidled away to return to me. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It will all be forgotten by morning and she will be commissioning Mister Johnson to write a masque on the bare-breasted Indians of the New World, or something like it.’

Mistress Lanyer laughed. ‘You are quite the wit, My Lady.’ She laughed so very easily and I could never understand whether she was laughing at me or with me. I certainly hadn’t intended to be witty; I was merely stating what I believed to be the facts. The Queen’s ladies liked nothing more than an excuse to put their bodies on display.

‘Oh look, here they come!’ Mistress Lanyer stood up suddenly and turned towards the door. A hush fell over the chamber and everyone got to their feet as the Prince and his party made their way towards the Queen.

The Prince nodded to me as he passed. Our shared love of literature had made us close; he had the warmth of his mother and none of the brusqueness of his father and I believed Queen Anna was right when she said, as she often did, that ‘her Freddie’ would make a perfect king. He was imbued with a rare appeal that seduced strangers unwittingly, and when he went out in public the cheers were deafening, more so than the muted applause directed at his father. It made me wonder what the King thought of that, if it made him feel unstable on his throne. We could never have imagined then that the Prince had only three more years to live.

There was dancing. With so many young men to partner them the excitement of the maids was palpable. I watched
them all, casting bright eyes over each other, whispering, tinkling with laughter, high colour in their cheeks, as they tripped about the chamber to the music. Had I been brought up in such an atmosphere, I wondered if I might have been different, warmer, less abrupt, easier to befriend. We are all the products of our past, as Aunt Mary liked to say. The atmosphere at Hardwick certainly didn’t foster merriment and if there was dancing, some ancient earl had usually been foisted on me, for none of the younger men was ever of high enough rank for it to be deemed correct. I had only realized once out in the world that correctness was Grandmother’s preoccupation and nobody, not even the King, cared as much as she had about rank.

At some point in the evening Mistress Lanyer was taken to be presented to the Prince, suddenly losing her composure, hands fluttering nervously as she tidied her hair and straightened her clothes.

‘You look perfect,’ I said. ‘Besides, he is only a fifteen-year-old boy, not so dissimilar to your own son, I expect.’

She puffed out a breath. ‘You’re right. He’s just a boy. I don’t know why I get myself into such a state.’

‘He’s a sweet lad,’ I added. ‘And he loves poetry, so you have nothing to convince him of. Try and forget he’s the heir to the throne.’

She offered me a wan smile as she was led away, and before I realized what was happening someone had planted themselves in the seat she had vacated. It was the beautiful young man from the previous day, proffering a smile, displaying those impish eye teeth.

‘I believe you have something of mine,’ he said.

I was confused, didn’t know what he meant, and the strangely intimate tone in which it was said suggested, absurdly, that he might be about to tell me I had stolen his heart. The very idea horrified me. I concluded that he’d
probably discovered who I was and thought me a good candidate to press the King for some favour on his behalf.