The Girl in the Glass Tower (38 page)

It was Hugh Crompton’s spare suit of clothes I wore beneath my dress as I walked out of the house in East Barnet on an early June afternoon, accompanied by one of the grooms. I bade goodbye to Dodderidge at the door, leaving Ruff in his care, promising to send word as soon as we were settled.

‘You
will
take care, My Lady,’ he said, his voice stumbling slightly. His eyes were filmy with age and his hair was all but gone.

‘I’ll send word as soon as we’re settled, so you can join us.’ He seemed unable to speak. ‘I’m so grateful –’ I began, realizing the inadequacy of those words in return for a lifetime of service.

‘No need … I … I …’ His long fingers hovered.

I took hold of them and pressed them to my heart saying, ‘God bless you,’ and we walked to the door together in silence.

It was a mile and a half’s trudge to the inn where Crompton was waiting for us and, having spent the best part of three months in my bedchamber, I felt the effort greatly. But I gained strength from the thought that in a few short hours I would be safely away at an abbey in northern France with my husband, imagining the moment of seeing him in the Blackwall Inn that was our rendezvous. The idea of freedom had become so abstract it was impossible to conjure in my mind but I felt its imminence in the way one can sense a change in the weather.

If I was afraid I had no sense of it as we walked wordlessly along the grassy Barnet lanes, serenaded by birdsong and the
bleating of lambs. The sensation of the breeches against my legs as I strode along invested me with a sense of potential, as if the world was mine for the taking.

Crompton was in the lane outside the inn and guided me into the deserted stables, shutting the door behind us, leaving the lad on watch outside. The smell of dung and horse reassured me – it was an honest stench. Dorcas greeted me in her usual way, nudging my shoulder, inviting me to scratch the mound behind her ears. Her muzzle was flecked with grey but she wore her age lightly and must have sensed my exhilaration, for she began to shake her head, raring to be off. ‘Soon,’ I whispered, ‘soon, girl.’

‘Here,’ I said to Crompton, removing my cloak and turning my back. ‘Unlace me if you would.’ He didn’t mention his awkwardness at performing such an intimate task but he held his breath as he untied me and then swiftly stepped away to make busy in a large bag in the corner, from which he pulled a spare rapier and belt.

My dress slid away leaving me in my doublet and hose, or more accurately Crompton’s doublet and hose. I held out my hand to take the sword, buckling it about my waist, enjoying disproportionately the weight of it and the metallic rattle it made as I moved. He then passed me a wig of mousy curls, which I fitted on over my own hair. Dorcas watched on curiously. ‘How’s that?’ I asked.

‘Just.’ He carefully tucked a stray lock of my hair beneath the wig and handed me a black hat to put over the lot.

‘Will I pass?’ I drew the rapier and thrust it into a hay bale, striding forward.

‘You might carry yourself in a more masculine fashion, My Lady.’

I laughed then. ‘You cannot call me that.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Amusement flicked across his mouth. ‘What, then?’

‘Charles.’ I didn’t hesitate to give him my father’s given name. ‘Call me Charles Bell.’

‘So, Mister Bell,’ he said, suppressing a smirk, ‘watch me and then do as I do.’ He walked several paces along the stalls, legs apart, shoulders swaying, elbows slightly bent and hands half fisted.

I did as he did, finding my swagger as I moved, learning it as one might a dance.

‘That’s more like it, Mister Bell,’ he said. ‘We’d better be off. It is twelve miles to Blackwall, where the others will be waiting.’ He and the groom led the horses out.

I rolled up my dress and stuffed it into one of the saddlebags, tightening the girth strap, adjusting my stirrups, and led Dorcas out to the mounting block, stopping as I was about to swing myself up, grabbing Crompton’s sleeve. ‘Tell me this is true, that I am not dreaming.’

He turned those doe-eyes on me saying, ‘It
is
true. You will be with your husband and away by nightfall.’

I felt a great surge of elation, a profound sense of something beginning, as a mother must feel at the birth of a baby.

It was inevitable that, as soon as I was mounted, astride, I would be catapulted back to the only other time I had ridden in such a manner, dressed in a man’s breeches. The life I had only ever been able to understand as moving in circles, arriving relentlessly back at the same point, stretched out, became a spiral, moving on and up, revisiting the past differently each time, with a sense of progress at last. Dorcas responded to this new me with a flick of her tail and moved into a trot.

‘I am Charles, Charles Bell,’ I whispered over and over to myself, rising in the stirrups rather than being bucked up and down sitting to the side. How comfortable it was, moving, as if Dorcas and I were a single animal, through the lanes, lush and verdant and smelling of recent rain. Out on the heathland she lifted her head and without any
girding, found a residue of strength in her old body, powering forward away from the others like a three-year-old. I tried to hold her back but she was having none of it and we were subsumed together by an overwhelming sense of velocity, our combined pleasure effervescing as an unstoppable force: a comet shooting over the sky, an arrow fired from a bow, a bird soaring, a lead bullet whistling towards its fate.

‘I am Charles Bell.’ My mind ran through the stages of Will’s escape. He would be already dressed in his black wig and beard and the ordinary suit of clothes; word would be out that he had been laid low with a toothache; Mistress Lanyer was probably with him already, helping him dress; Mister Rodney would be in place nearby, with horses. I was already on the boat, could feel its rocking motion under my feet, and a laugh fluttered in me at the thought of how Will and I might appear embracing, both disguised as we were, like the King and one of his young men.

After an hour’s hard riding we came over the crest of a hill and there was the Thames, an unrolled bolt of silver cloth, with a cluster of ships gathered about the little port at Blackwall. To the south, at the place where the river looped round, was the dolls’-house shape of Greenwich Palace containing the miniature King with his tiny court, all oblivious to the covert happenings a mile downriver.

Bridget was out in the yard at the inn to greet us. The place smelled of fish and water and escape. I slid down from Dorcas, feeling a wave of tired elation as my feet hit the ground. I handed the reins to the groom with instructions for her care. I kissed her velvet muzzle with its flecks of grey and whispered, ‘See you soon, girl.’ I refused to consider the possibility that we might not be reunited.

‘He’s not here yet,’ Bridget said. She had the knuckle of her index finger between her teeth.

‘Will?’ A void began to open up in me.

‘He’s late.’

‘He’ll come, I’m sure.’ But my certainty was far from robust and Bridget knew me well enough to see that. Neither could she hide her worry; it was there in the constant glances towards the road and the chewing of her fingernails. It was unlike Bridget to be so perturbed. But still, despite the hollow feeling, I could sense him pulling towards me like the tides, as if we were drawing together by the power of our combined wills.

The inn was dingy with low ceilings and mean windows stained dark from grime and tobacco smoke. Someone was playing a pipe in the corner, tapping his foot. Men were milling about; the oarsmen, I was told. They looked hardy enough to row us all the way downriver, through the night, to where our brig was waiting in the estuary.

The waterman introduced himself, calling me ‘sir’, scraping his cap from his shiny pate. This was a netherworld in which no questions were asked. But I was secretly pleased that I had passed so easily for a man at close quarters even if it was dark as midnight inside that inn. Crompton spread a map on the trestle and pointed out exactly where we were headed. I ran my finger along the curves of river bobbing with rudely sketched boats, to where it opened out, past Gravesend and Tilbury on, far, far on, beyond the village of Leigh, further still to where the river opened its jaws wide. Someone had drawn a crude sea-monster, a galleon and little triangular waves. Crompton pointed to a cross in ink. ‘There is our brig.’ That elation boiled up in me again.

‘We must be mindful of the tides. We can wait an hour, an hour and a half at most. We’ll be rowing all through the dark hours as it is,’ said the waterman.

‘He’ll be here.’ I had never felt more sure; I could feel him approaching.

Bridget led the way up to a chamber where Margaret was waiting. She smiled at me, tilting her head, looking up from under her lashes.

Bridget began to laugh. ‘You thought she was a fellow. It’s our Lady Arbella under that hat.’

Margaret reddened, mumbling a denial.

‘Always did have an eye for the fellows,’ I said, laughing, remembering that young girl who was so easily swayed by romance as I lay down on the bed with its greasy upholstery and listened out for the sound of horses arriving in the yard below.

‘Take a little rest, My Lady,’ said Bridget. ‘We have a long night ahead.’

I was too excited to sleep. Each sound outside had me up from the bed and at the window. ‘He is coming by land, is he? And not by water.’

‘By land, I think.’

The window on the other side gave on to the little port, a few ships out in the deep water, a curve of pebbles with a few upturned craft and a pier where two small boats were tied. One was stacked with luggage; I recognized my trunks and one, in a distinctive red tooled leather, I knew to be Will’s. I remembered it from those three blissful weeks at Canon Row. How distant that time seemed now, but I still had the memory of his hands on my body, it had become part of me. ‘Everything has been thought of,’ I said.

‘That’s your aunt,’ said Margaret, ‘and Bridget and Crompton.’

I felt shored up by all these people, prepared to do so much for me.

There was a kerfuffle in the yard, hooves on the cobbles. ‘They’re here,’ cried Bridget.

‘Better get ready.’ I crossed the chamber to the window. There was a party below, men dismounting but no one I
recognized. I remembered Will would be in disguise too, in his black wig. My breath fluttered and caught in my throat. One had black hair; he looked up. ‘No,’ I said, my heart dropping. ‘It’s not them.’

I remained at the window and watched the sky begin to take on the pinkish hue of evening. Crompton came up. ‘We can’t wait much longer, My Lady.’

‘Half an hour, just half an hour.’

His face looked strained, his mouth drawn. He looked as I felt.

The half-hour was gone in an instant.

‘He’ll come on later,’ said Bridget.

‘Of course he will,’ I replied. I was keeping the hollow feeling at bay, but only just.

The stairs creaked as we descended. Crompton was paying the innkeeper and all the men were gone, out and into the boats, I supposed. None of us said it but we must all have been entertaining the possibility that Will had been caught and wondering whether there was a search out for us already.

No
, I reasoned silently; if he had been caught he would say he intended upon a conjugal visit at Barnet, he would slip the lieutenant a gold piece and all would be back as it was. That is what I told myself, refusing to see that such a scenario would mean I was striking out alone.

We left a man to wait for Will and made for our boat. The oarsmen were sullen and grumbled quietly about the late hour as we embarked. There was a flock of seagulls carking and swooping around a heap of waste nearby. One perched on the pier, close to us. It was vast, with a vicious hooked yellow beak and a swivelling eye, like a white devil. We cast off and moved out into the river and the men began to sing as they found their rhythm. Once in the fast-flowing middle channel I felt the wind, sharp on my skin, flicking the ties of my cloak against my face.

‘He’ll be just behind us,’ said Crompton.

If the men wondered what I was doing, a fellow sitting in a huddle with the maids at the back, they said nothing. I turned to watch the sunset, a glorious palette of pink and orange splayed out over the sky. My neck became cricked I gazed for so long, watching out for the sight of Will approaching. Each distant speck became a boat. The men rowed in silence, their song having petered out, so the slapping rhythm of the oars and the heave of breath were the only sounds; even the wind had dropped on the silent river. Before long it was too dark to watch for boats. The waterman lit the little lamp at the bow and it was soon the only spot of light in the gloom, that and the gibbous moon that occasionally peered out through a crack in the cloud.

In the dark Starkey began to whisper, but his voice was indistinct and the rocking motion of the boat must have sent me to sleep, despite the flapping in the pit of my stomach, for I woke to find us docking at Tilbury and Crompton in a whispered altercation with the waterman.

‘We must push on,’ he was saying.

‘My men have been pushing on all night. They need to rest a while, have a drink.’

‘Let them have their drink,’ I said, surprising the two men who’d assumed me still asleep. I hoped that a short delay might give Will the opportunity to catch us up, or if not him then a messenger with news. Surely Mistress Lanyer would have sent word if there had been a hitch. All my instincts told me he was out and in my wake, I felt him nearing. I know now that my instinct was true.

There was a rowdy crowd outside the tavern by the docks. It sounded like a cockfight or something similar. ‘I will stay aboard with my women,’ I added. ‘You go with the men to make sure they don’t desert, or drink themselves into a stupor,’ I said to Crompton.

‘No need to fear for that. I’ve kept back their fee.’

‘You think of everything, don’t you?’

‘I had to offer them double to continue. But happily I had something set aside for contingency.’

‘You see, everything!’ It made me realize once more the complicated choreography involved in my flight and I was thankful I had such competence on my side. ‘I am grateful to you. To you all. I will reward you for your loyalty when …’ I stopped. The part of me that watched was whispering in my ear of the uncertainty of my future, how I would be eternally dependent on the hospitality of family and friends on the Continent. When
would
I reward them?
There is an ulterior motive to their loyalty
, said that part of me,
a darker aim to see you crowned, or if not you then a child of yours
. I tried not to hear, to listen to Starkey instead, urging me on, but the voice of my pessimism was loud.
Is it your hope or theirs?