The Girl in the Glass Tower (29 page)

‘I think not,’ came my prim reply. If he thought he was going to get round me with flirtation and flattery he was mistaken.

Someone squeezed on to the bench on my other side, necessitating that I shift in his direction. I became conscious of the minuscule channel of air between us. It seemed to pulsate with … with … I didn’t know what. But whatever it was, it was unsettling me.

‘I lent you my cloak.’

‘Oh, of course. Yes, I will have it returned. My maid was meant to do so but she must have forgotten …’ I was rambling with excuses and feeling daft for having misinterpreted his approach, which was entirely benign after all.

He rested an elbow on one of his knees and sank his chin on to his hand, looking back and up at me from under a ruffled brow. His affable air made me wonder how it was possible that I had mistaken him for the usual predatory courtier. He was nothing more than a well-mannered young man. But even so I felt uncomfortably hot in his proximity and wished he would go.

‘There’s no need to trouble your maid. If you tell me where to find your rooms I will fetch it myself. It actually belongs to my older brother and he’ll be furious if I don’t return it to him.’ He made an exaggerated scowl. ‘My brother can be such a brute. Older brothers always have it their way. It must be different for you, with no siblings.’

So he does know who I am
, I thought, feeling suddenly at a disadvantage, and a small bubble of indignation began to inflate in me, for if he knew who I was then he had been quite cavalier in approaching me with so little deference. But had I not enjoyed being approached in such a way? I had tied myself in a muddle and began to wonder how it could be
that everyone knew who I was, when I barely knew myself. I should have asked him his name then, but all I said was, ‘Yes, only children
are
different.’

‘None of the squabbles …’ He paused, and took on a serious air, looking down at his hands, opening his fingers out, and I noticed that someone had taken great care with the paring of his nails. ‘Well, being a younger son makes you wonder what exactly you are for’ – his tone had become bitter – ‘except to shore your family up against …’ He didn’t finish and a hush dropped over us.

I knew what it was like to wonder what you are for, but I didn’t say so, and without thinking I gave him an explanation as to how to find my rooms in the maze of Richmond Palace. Then, as quickly as he had come, he was gone, with a bow, into the melee.

Mistress Lanyer returned elated, babbling about her presentation to the Prince. ‘He was so congenial, so clever. You wouldn’t imagine he was that young.’ He had commissioned some verse from her, she said, finally adding, ‘I had the impression yesterday that you didn’t know Will Seymour.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t. Why, is he here?’

‘You were just talking to him, My Lady.’

‘That young man …’ My words dried up and I had the sensation of something malicious grabbing at my guts.

‘Yes, that is Will Seymour, he who made my introduction to the Prince.’

‘What is he like?’ It must have seemed an odd thing to ask, given I had just been speaking with him, but I found I had a sudden overwhelming desire to know. After all, that young man might have once been my brother-in-law.

‘He’s a quiet type, nothing like his father; Lord Beauchamp is an incorrigible wag.’

The term made me think of Uncle Henry, but then I was
reminded of how he was when I last saw him at Hardwick, cloaked in stony resentment –
there
was an older brother who didn’t have it all his way.

‘He’s bookish,’ she continued.

‘He is young,’ I said, curious to know his age but not wanting to ask directly.

‘Twenty-one.’

So not young enough to be my son
, I thought, confused by a tangle of unfamiliar emotions, not understanding the meaning of what I was feeling.

She continued: ‘Did you hear that the grandfather managed to prove the legitimacy of his marriage to Katherine Grey?’

‘Hertford’s marriage; but that was years ago.’

‘Forty-eight years, to be precise. You’d think he’d have given up after all that time but apparently the priest who married them reappeared and was able to testify.’ She paused, as if thinking very hard about it. ‘So those Seymours are almost as royal as you, My Lady.’

‘How delightful for them.’ I felt my mouth shape itself into a sneer and then regretted it, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’ All at once I felt overheated, as if I were sickening.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. ‘You look flushed.’ She put a hand to my forehead. ‘There’s no fever.’ I wanted her not to touch me, to leave me be.

‘Would you make my excuses to the Queen?’ I stood. Will Seymour caught my eye from across the room. I looked away sharply. ‘I probably ought to lie down.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ She got to her feet.

‘No, don’t. This is an important evening for you and you must make the most of it; don’t curtail your enjoyment on my account. My women will be in my rooms.’ I took her hand and squeezed it, as others had done to me a thousand
times. But to me it was a gesture so unnatural I half expected her to flinch, or snatch her hand away.

But she merely squeezed back. ‘I hope to see you tomorrow before I leave, My Lady.’

Dodderidge waylaid me en route to the stables as I passed through the gallery.

‘How is she?’ I asked of his mare. I could feel impatience prodding at me, wanting to return to my rooms. I refused to acknowledge to myself that it was the hope of Will Seymour coming to collect his cloak that was drawing me, like a bright lure tied to a fish hook.

‘The groom’s been giving her poultices but her poor knee is still swollen up like a pig’s bladder.’

‘I’m sorry. I know how much you care for her. You must use Dorcas until she is better. Though go easy on her, she’s an old girl now.’

He was profuse in his thanks and worried about what I would do for a mount when we left for Oatlands at the end of the week; I told him I would beg the use of one of Queen Anna’s horses, as my mind began to ponder on whom I might be able to approach for funds. Uncle William perhaps, since he hadn’t recompensed me for his barony and titles were being traded for several thousand pounds. But Uncle William was notoriously tight-fisted. Grandmother had offered me a gold cup in return for that title. It was Dodderidge who had gone to the brokers in Cheapside with it; the money it raised was gone in a month.

‘You’d better get to the stables,’ I said, my impatience getting the better of me.

As I walked towards my rooms I began to conceive another begging letter to the King. My resentment simmered, for all he had to do was release my father’s lands; then my debts would be paid and my burden on the crown relieved. I would have the means to set up my own house and beg leave from
court. In the aftermath of Grandmother’s death, when it became clear that, as I’d thought, there would be nothing from her estate for me, I had baldly petitioned the King in person for the reinstatement of my patrimony.

He’d said, ‘On your marriage, Coz. Those lands will be your dowry.’

But there was no marriage – not even talk of suitors any more. I’d watched all the women at court leave to marry and return, only to leave again to birth their babies, everything moving on while I stayed in one place, my body growing old without my permission, just the tick of the clock and my writing for company. I imagined the King, once I had left his chambers, laughing with his men at my expense until their sides split.

The hearth was blazing in my rooms – the fuel thankfully came from the palace budget and not my own – and Bridget was sitting with her feet in a basin of steaming ochre liquid while Margaret Byron stood behind, combing her hair out with lavender oil.

‘I can feel a rheum coming on and the mustard will draw it out,’ Bridget said by way of an explanation. ‘I got the remedy from the Queen’s doctor’s page’s brother, so it must be a good one.’ She stepped out of the basin and began to dry her feet. ‘Oh and that fellow came for his cloak. And …’ She began talking about the chandler, that she was not happy with the quality of candles we had been sent, occasionally saying, ‘Isn’t that right, Margaret?’ upon which Margaret would agree, but I wasn’t listening. I was subsumed with disappointment, the result of having allowed my mind to entertain some absurd romantic fantasy involving a man I barely knew, and felt a fool for it.

I wanted to ask if he had left any message but feared such a question might reveal too much of what I was feeling. What was I feeling? My mind twisted and turned, ending with the
thought that two days hence I would be leaving for Oatlands with the Queen and he, Will Seymour, would probably be back at St James’s with the Prince’s party.

Once in my nightgown I drew the bed curtains tightly round me and sank back in the dark, listening to Bridget settling herself into the creaking truckle, blowing her nose loudly and yawning. Heaven only knew when I might encounter Will Seymour again. I hustled that thought from my mind – the ridiculous yearning of a spinster for a man far too young. I imagined the humiliation were anyone to find out that I, the court oddity who recoiled at the touch of even those I knew well, had entertained thoughts of such a fellow.

Rising early to bid goodbye to Mistress Lanyer, I found her in the stable yard, bristling with optimism about the Prince’s commission; she couldn’t wait to make a start on it. Her bright mood only served to intensify my own sense of emptiness and I wished she could stay longer, but her movements, as much as mine, were dependent on the wishes of others.

Crompton interrupted us, handing me a letter.

‘Don’t mind me, My Lady; read it,’ said Mistress Lanyer. ‘It might be important.’

I didn’t recognize the handwriting and the seal was smudged beyond recognition, intentionally perhaps. Mistress Lanyer busied herself with some items of luggage and I walked a few steps away to read.

Plato said love is a good poet but I have grappled through the hours of darkness to render my thoughts in verse. However, the muse has resisted alighting, so I find myself reduced to my own clumsy prose.

When you read this I will be gone. I leave for St James’s at dawn, but it is unthinkable that I leave without at least an attempt to explain myself.

I am aware that I have been coy about revealing my identity but
this is because I am the younger brother of a man to whom you were once promised and I feared you might reject me on that count alone, given the trouble visited upon you as a result of that betrothal. By the time I gathered who you were I had already fallen under your spell, anonymously woven as we sat together alone on that riverside bench two days ago.

‘What’s the matter? Is it bad news?’ I realized only when Mistress Lanyer asked this that I must have seemed distressed. But I was not; I was overcome with a force of feeling I had no idea how to contain. I thought of our encounter by the river, analysing whether my behaviour there had provoked this. We had barely said anything, certainly nothing that might have encouraged this young man to believe I had cast a spell over him. But neither could I deny the feelings, equally inexplicable, which were seething in me – a physical sensation akin to some kind of sickness.

‘No, not bad news, just …’

I know a mere younger son can hardly pretend to be a match for a princess of the blood, but I can only hope that you might allow me to, metaphorically speaking, wear your favour and be your friend. If you find my audacity intolerable and do not reciprocate the budding feelings that I can only hope are opening in you as they are in me, then please cast me back into the obscurity whence I came and I will not exist for you.

Your humble servant, W. S.

AD 1609 on the fourteenth day of the month of May

Mistress Lanyer looked at me askance. ‘As long as it is not bad news. But what is it, My Lady?’

I wanted to confide in her, believed I could trust her, but felt so very unsure about everything, quite shaken up as if I’d been in an accident, and asked inexplicably, ‘Are you my friend?’

‘My Lady, I would never presume to call myself your friend, but you have my firm loyalty and love,’ was her response.

Her formality stung. I wanted to contradict her and say,
No, you are my friend
, but couldn’t quite find the way to put it, saying instead, ‘Look, here is Lady Cumberland’s groom, with the horses.’ I pointed to the far side of the yard where the fellow had his back to us and was hitching a pair of geldings to a litter.

Somehow the letter fluttered out of my grip. Mistress Lanyer stooped to pick it up. ‘No!’ I said with some force. But she had already seen something.

‘W. S.!’

‘Give it to me!’ I barked, holding my hand out, feeling panic rise through me.

She handed it over. ‘I only saw the initials, My Lady, nothing else. You can be assured of my silence.’ She drew her ink-smudged middle finger over her lips. ‘He is a good man.’

‘It’s not what you think,’ I snapped. ‘He’s not a man, he’s a boy.’

She smiled, with a very slight raise of the eyebrows, and said very quietly, ‘When I was eighteen and became Henry Hunsdon’s mistress, I was a woman, not a girl,’ and turned to walk towards the litter.

Ami waits for Hal. A cony, his favourite, is roasting on the fire. It is a long time since she cooked something like this. She has baked bread, too, with fine-ground flour that is more expensive than she can really afford. She tries to settle into her work but her mind wanders. She writes a line and scrawls it out, writes another but cannot make it scan; she is too distracted by the thought of Hal’s visit.

In writing Lady Arbella’s story things are beginning to emerge, things that begin to make sense. That day in the stable yard at Richmond had been the last time they’d seen each other; when Will Seymour arrived in Lady Arbella’s life everything had changed. She of all people deserved a little love, and though she talked rarely of her grandmother’s death Ami can see now that it had created a void that was crying out to be filled.

‘It’s inexplicable,’ Lady Arbella had said once. ‘I still feel her tugging at my strings from beyond the grave.’

And Will was a good person, not like most of those self-serving peacocks who hung around court. Ami had truly believed he would bring her happiness; that was why she sought to help them. The memory of her failure wells up.
Don’t think of that
, she reprimands, knowing remorse will overwhelm her if she does.

She opens the pot on the fire to baste the cony, filling the room with a mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat and thyme. The cat sidles over with a hopeful meow. Spooning the juices over the meat, she remembers the way Lady Arbella always refused food when it was offered to her, so discreetly: ‘Oh thank you but I have just had one …’ ‘That
is most kind but I am so very full from dinner …’ Ami never saw her eat heartily, but it hadn’t occurred to her then that abstinence could be an act of defiance, the way she took control of her existence. There was an essential paradox that fascinated her, in that while self-denial made Lady Arbella feel powerful it divested her body of force. She takes up her quill and scribbles
separation of body and self
in the margin.

Birdsong distracts her from her thoughts … no, not birdsong but whistling, out in the street. It is Hal, already standing in the doorway. He has the beginnings of a beard, a new suit, a fine one in mockado, and a starched ruff, none of which Ami has seen before.

‘Goodness, you look quite the courtier,’ she says. He allows her to kiss him on the cheek and she dares to think she might be forgiven. He smells of the aromatic fragrances that men like to wear at court.

‘I smell something delicious,’ he says. ‘Not cony?’ He goes to the pot and lifts the lid. ‘You didn’t, Ma.’ His eyes are wide and smiling.

‘You’ve got a position,’ Ami says. She hadn’t imagined it like this. She thought he’d be prickly and distant and angry.

‘I know! Isn’t it exciting?’

‘With whom?’

‘Lord Villiers’s musicians. A wage, proper quarters and everything.’ His bright enthusiasm is infectious and she is happy, truly happy for him, though it will take him away from her more often.

‘Villiers, isn’t he the new favourite?’

‘That’s right and it’s said he’ll be the Earl of Buckingham before long. And what about Somerset and that wife of his being convicted for murder? One day the favourite, the next facing the block!’

‘You’re as bad as the gossips round here,’ she teases. ‘They
barely talk of anything else.’ She pauses, remembering the young girl who became the Countess of Somerset, how sweet and bright she had seemed. Court must have corrupted her. ‘You will be careful?’

‘Don’t worry, Ma, I’m taking care not to make any enemies. I know that court is a slippery place.’

‘Of course you do,’ she says, realizing her misgivings are unfounded in his case; her boy has his head screwed on straight. ‘You’re on your way now, my darling. There’ll be no stopping you.’

‘Look …’ they both say simultaneously.

‘You first,’ he nods.

She takes a breath. ‘I know I have written as much, but I wanted to say it to your face, tell you how deeply I regret keeping the truth from you. I was wrong. I couldn’t find the right time to tell you.’

‘No, Ma!’ He holds up a hand. She notices his fine lace cuffs and he must see her looking for he says, ‘A gift!’ He pinches the lace between his fingers. ‘But I want you to know that I understand. You were trying to protect me, so I didn’t have to live with the shame.’

A wave of relief washes through her and they fall into an embrace.

‘He was a remarkable man, your father, and …’ She can’t quite find a way to say it. ‘And you were … you were made in love.’

‘I know, Ma. I just needed a bit of time. Anyway, I’m starving. Is that cony cooked yet?’

She watches him as he lifts the heavy pot from the fire and can’t quite believe he is the product of her own body. They sit at the table eating their feast and Ami asks him, ‘What changed your mind?’

‘I met someone at court who used to know you. He told me how exceptional you were as a poet and what a wonderful
friend you had been to him. I confided in him and he opened my eyes.’ He takes a rolled napkin from his pocket and unfurls it, producing a fork. He must see her surprise as he says, ‘Everyone’s using them.’

‘Who is it, this new friend of yours?’ She carves up the rabbit, flesh falling easily from the bone.

‘Will Seymour.’

‘Will Seymour is back?’ She is stunned as if he has slapped her. ‘He talked
kindly
of me?’ Her mind is whirring, the past resurfacing, remembering Will Seymour’s rage when he had shouted at her:
If this fails, I will never forgive you
. His anger was frightening.
How can he think kindly of me?

‘He sends you his best.’ Hal is munching on a forkful of meat, dipping his bread in the juice. ‘Delicious … Says he’d like to visit sometime; has things to talk to you about … refused to be drawn on it … all very mysterious …’ Hal stops, fork in air. ‘What’s the matter, Ma?’

‘Nothing, just that I’m surprised to hear from him. You can tell him, when you next see him, that I’d be very glad of a visit.’ She is keen to change the subject, wonders if she would really be glad of a visit, for it will surely rake up her guilt. ‘Would you like to see some of the letters your father sent me? I thought they might help you understand a little about who he was.’

‘I
would
like that, yes. May I take them back to court with me? I have to return tomorrow but I’ll be back next Sunday.’ She nods with a smile. ‘I found out he was the old Queen’s first cousin.’ His eyes bulge in amusement. ‘Who’d’ve thought it – I’m from royal stock! There are people at court who seek my favour. They think me someone worth knowing.’ He laughs as if it is the funniest thing he has ever heard, and perhaps it is. Ami laughs with him as he cuts himself another slice of bread and passes one to her. ‘So what’s been going on in Clerkenwell since I’ve been gone? I can see you’ve been writing.’

‘I have, yes, and I’ve been teaching some local children.’

‘Teaching – I’d wager you’re very good at it.’ He reminisces about when she first taught
him
to read, trying to remember the name of the primer they used, delighted when she gets the very book down from the shelf. ‘And what else, what gossip?’

‘Goodwife Stringer has been a nuisance.’ She doesn’t want to worry him with the full extent of her disquiet concerning the neighbour: the threats veiled in friendship, all the talk of witchcraft. ‘Won’t leave me alone.’

‘I shouldn’t worry about that old stoat, she’s always got her nose in everyone else’s business.’

At that moment there is a knock at the door and Ami is so sure it is Goodwife Stringer that when she opens it to find Joyce she is quite shocked.

‘I was hoping I might make some more progress with my learning,’ she says. ‘But you’ve got company.’

‘This is my son.’ Ami steps aside so Hal can be seen. ‘Hal, this is Joyce Mansfield, one of my pupils.’

Hal stands up and seems to puff himself out a little as young men do in the presence of a pretty girl. He makes a little bow and Joyce looks embarrassed.

‘I won’t disturb you. I’ll come back another time.’ She has turned and trotted off before Ami can invite her to join them.

Hal continues telling his stories from court and Ami silently gives thanks for his return, but thoughts of Will Seymour fill her head, making her guilt flourish like mould on a damp wall. She can feel her past wrongdoings pressing up against her, suffocatingly close, and the idea of a confrontation is filling her with unease. She would like to tell Hal that on second thoughts a visit is not such a good idea but that would only arouse his suspicion, and that is the last thing she wants now she and her son have declared peace.