The Girl in the Glass Tower (9 page)

‘Please stand still,’ said Margaret, crouched on the ground, her mouth full of pins. ‘I will never get this hem straight if you keep moving.’

‘But I’m so cold. Could we not move closer to the hearth? I know you need the light but …’ It was the sheer size of the windows that made the rooms at Hardwick impossible to heat. I secretly longed to be back at Wingfield, where the windows were of more modest proportions. But Grandmother seemed impervious to the chill and could not hide her delight at her vast shimmering rectangles of glass, fit for a cathedral, the talk of all Derbyshire.

We had been in the New Hall at Hardwick for three years, living in a cacophony of sound, stonecutters, carpenters, glaziers, plasterers, scaffolders, roofers, welders, all combining to ensure that from dawn to dusk there was never a moment’s peace. A permanent film of white chalky dust sat on every surface, finding its way into even the finest crevice, making our hair tacky and our eyes itch.

Just as she was resistant to the cold, Grandmother appeared immune to the dust and noise. I always had the impression that Grandmother’s constant building – for there was not a time I could remember when she was not overseeing the construction of one great house or another – was driven by some kind of intangible, transcendent hope, as if those grand edifices would shore her up against her own demise.

None of us understood why we had moved into the New Hall so soon, though I suspected it was because the garden walls were high, the stable block distant from the house and
the setting, perched as it was atop a high point, offered views into the distance. Anyone approaching could be seen long before they arrived.

‘I don’t suppose you will ever be cold at court. Remember the great hearths at Greenwich?’ Margaret’s eyes were bright in anticipation of my return to court, the reason for the new gown, and several others, being tailored for me.

‘How many years is it since we were there?’ I was counting back in time but there was so little to distinguish one month from another.

‘Nearly ten years,’ she said.

‘A decade!’ I felt a sudden sense that time had been stolen from me, all those years, the years of my blossoming, spent out of sight; almost twenty-six years of my life gone and nothing to show for it. But I was to return to court soon and take my place. I allowed myself to imagine the journey there; I would ride Dorcas again, at last, whom I had only seen recently at a distance, riding out with the grooms. Starkey and Dodderidge would ride with me, and Margaret, who was a nervous horsewoman, would be stuck in the luggage cart with the other maids.

Margaret stood and began to peel the pinned-together garment away from my shoulders. ‘Take this off, so I can finish it.’ She slid it down my arms, careful not to let the pins prick me, and set it aside, then dragged the fur blanket from the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m just surprised so much time has passed.’ I was thinking, too, of Cousin Bessie, who had been betrothed a few months since and had returned to her mother’s house to prepare for marriage. ‘They all grow up and go.’

‘Don’t think of that. You will be at court soon and everything will be different.’

I settled into a chair by the fire, closing my eyes, feeling
the heat on my face. ‘At last.’ The summons came at Epiphany. Grandmother had held the letter up and waved it triumphantly like a banner. ‘Your time is coming,’ she’d said. ‘The Queen wants you at court once Lent is over.’ Fabrics were ordered and a lavish new wardrobe planned as meticulously as she had planned the building of Hardwick New Hall.

As Margaret set the dress to one side, the sweep of the skirt knocked a stack of papers to the floor. She crouched to pick them up, passing them into my outstretched hand. I shuffled through the pages, reading a line here and there. I had been attempting a drama – Cleopatra – intended as an homage to the Queen, to offer her on my arrival at court, but I was struggling as to how I might convey the Queen of Egypt’s death without causing offence. Starkey and I had argued over Cleopatra’s demise. He claimed it was honour that had driven her to take her own life; I believed it was guilt; she had failed her people, after all.

‘What is it about?’ asked Margaret.

‘What, this?’ I tapped the papers. ‘Nothing really, just some ideas. Something to present to the Queen.’

‘Just think, by spring we will be at court.’ She picked up another dress from the bed, holding it up to her body. ‘It’s lovely, this taffeta. What colour would you say it was?’

‘Hmmm?’ I was still thinking about Cleopatra and her death, imagining how I might invoke the drama of the snakebite when I had never seen more than a common adder. What colour was an asp, I wondered.

‘Peacock blue, I’d call it,’ she said, momentarily confusing me. ‘It needs altering too, would you mind?’ She was brandishing her needle.

I reluctantly left my fur cocoon and she helped me into the garment. The fabric was stiff, and edged with gold braid that scratched at the skin under my arms.

‘I’m going to have to take it in.’ She sighed. ‘You have thinned down since we last tried it.’

‘It’s Lent!’ I snapped, regretting my tone, adding, ‘I suppose I’d be bound to lose weight during Lent,’ to sound less as if I was defending against an accusation. If I’d told her I liked the way my body was, lean and flat, or that I enjoyed the feeling of my clothes being loose, like a boy’s, she would have thought me out of my mind.

‘I’ll add some tucks. That should do it.’ I watched her as she worked. There was nothing thin about Margaret, Lent or not. She had grown into a soft-cornered woman who was watched by men and pretended not to notice.

‘Never mind,’ she continued, her voice muffled by a mouthful of pins, ‘think of the feasting at court. We will be well nourished there.’ But I was thinking that, with so many people dining together at court, it would be more difficult for anyone to monitor what I was or wasn’t eating, as they did at Hardwick. ‘I
will
be coming?’

‘To court? Of course, you are part of my household.’

‘Do you remember the Earl of Essex carrying me when I fainted?’ She sounded breathless when she said this and I wondered if she had been conjuring up abstract fancies in her head about the earl, as I had for more years than I cared to count.

‘How could I forget?’

‘Will
he
be there?’

‘Didn’t you know? He is to be tried for treason.’

‘Treason?’ Her mouth was an O and I could see her dreams crumbling in the forlorn expression she wore.

‘He tried to raise an army against the Queen.’ I left it at that, though the situation was far more complicated. The near decade of my incarceration, so interminably long to me, suddenly seemed such a short time for the earl to have risen so high and fallen so low.

I had discussed it at length with Starkey. ‘There are rumours Essex has chosen to back James of Scotland’s suit for the English throne,’ he’d said.

‘I very much doubt that,’ I’d replied. Essex wanted me on the throne; I knew it in my bones. He was my champion; he’d said it himself.

‘Anyway, if it is true, the earl’s demise weakens your cousin James’s suit for
your
crown.’ There was a quiet passion in Starkey for what he termed my ‘cause’, which I suppose was what it was, given I was not the only one who believed themselves to be England’s heir. There was my cousin James, of course, but he was a foreigner, and the Seymours, whose legitimacy was in question; my flaw was being female, I supposed. That my claim was the strongest never seemed in doubt and I didn’t consider then the fact that the small world of Hardwick was not representative of the wider world outside its gates.

I never once had the impression that Starkey’s support of me was motivated by self-interest, it was more his desire for justice and the proper order of things – virtues which he held in high esteem. He talked often and with conviction about Socrates’ death; a noble end, he called it, ‘an end that upheld justice above all’. He believed Essex should do as Socrates had done and end his own life.

‘And damn his immortal soul?’ I asked, deeply shocked by the thought.

‘He is already damned,’ was Starkey’s blunt reply.

‘The Queen will forgive him.’ I felt sure of it. She had already forgiven Essex more than once and I was sure she would do so again, refused to entertain any other possibility. ‘It is said he is like a son to her.’

‘The Queen has been too magnanimous with the earl,’ he’d replied. ‘There was always a sense of inevitability that he would eventually turn on her, as Caesar’s favourites turned on him.’

‘When I am queen, I too hope to be loved rather than feared,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose that is a failing of femininity?’

He had laughed at that. ‘A failing? I don’t think so.’

‘But women tend to forgiveness.’

‘Do you love God or fear Him?’ Starkey surprised me with his question.

‘Both, I suppose,’ was the answer I came to.

‘As God’s envoy on earth you will inevitably be feared. It is how you choose to wield the power of it that will determine the kind of queen you are. That is your challenge.’

His words made me feel my exile painfully. My lack of an example to emulate had become a constant concern; I had only theoretical notions on which to base my beliefs and still feared I might abruptly find myself on the throne and at a loss. Had I been at court, I might have become accustomed to the everyday machinations of statecraft, groomed for the role I would one day take, rather than having to glean my knowledge from watching Grandmother run her estates, or from books and thousand-year-old exemplars. I questioned the sense in educating me so vigorously only to keep me in the dark about matters that had me at their heart but Grandmother seemed to feel I was still a child. It was as if she hadn’t noticed the time slip away. Perhaps from her great age there was little difference between fifteen and twenty-five. But at last I was going to court and all that would change.

‘Will he go to the block?’ asked Margaret. For an instant I didn’t realize she meant Essex; I had been too caught up in my own thoughts.

‘The Queen will pardon him, as usual.’ An image of Essex, splendid and smelling of hyacinths, swooped down on me. It made me think of the myth in which Hyacinth died, trying to catch a discus, in an attempt to impress Apollo.

Margaret said nothing, going back to tacking tucks into
my dress, silently, with only the gentle hiss of thread pulling through stiff fabric.

A soft knock interrupted us. ‘My Lady?’ Margaret opened the door and Dodderidge swiped his cap off, revealing a sparse growth of hair, a visible indication of time passed. ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you.’ He seemed afraid he might be disrupting something grave and important rather than the mundane business of fitting dresses. ‘But your grandmother would like you upstairs. The pictures that arrived yesterday are being hung.’

Grandmother was pacing the great high chamber, wrapped in her favourite fur, a white stoat with unnerving ruby-set eyes. She was not alone; a couple of her women were inspecting the newly painted panels, two men were lugging a crate through into the gallery and my little cousins, Wylkyn and Frannie, were whispering and giggling about something to one side.

‘Margaret, would you take the children next door,’ Grandmother ordered. ‘I’d like a word with you alone, Arbella.’ She sent the women with Margaret and Dodderidge was to help oversee the unpacking of the pictures. ‘Make sure the men handle them properly. I don’t want any damage. Mister Reason is there but …’ She left her words floating. Reason, though fiercely loyal, had become elderly and ponderous and we all knew he couldn’t be relied upon to supervise properly the efficient unpacking of Grandmother’s precious artefacts.

The chamber was a vast square space as high as it was wide. New rush matting had recently been laid, giving it the scent of late-summer meadows, which was quite at odds with its grandeur. That scent pervaded Hardwick and whenever I caught a whiff of straw in the years to follow I was always transported back to those cold and splendid rooms.

The immense windows flooding the space with light made
the greatest impact, even in February when the sky was blanketed with a thick layer of gruel-grey cloud and the sun hadn’t been seen for months. They framed a vista that rolled away for miles, making the house seem perched on the edge of the world with a view of infinity. The room had an effect, a way of making its occupants feel intimidated, except, I supposed, for Grandmother, who must have looked out of those windows and known she was queen of all she surveyed. Derbyshire was her realm.

She said, ‘Can’t you put some gloves on or something?’

I held my hands out, opening my fingers. They were covered with ink.

‘I don’t know what you find to write about.’

‘Just poems, stories … things.’ I wrote primarily to fill time in those empty days that stretched out for ever, creating worlds to inhabit in my mind, places where things happened. ‘I have been writing a play about Cleopatra to offer to the Queen.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said through pursed lips. ‘Can’t you embroider her a pair of sleeves or gloves instead?’

I didn’t reply.

‘I wanted to talk to you. There have been things on my mind and with you going imminently to court … well … you have been so long here, I wonder if you are fully prepared for the …’ She hesitated, closing her eyes as if to search for the right word. ‘The potential dangers you could face.’ She shuffled her pearls.

I still said nothing. I knew well enough that there were moments when Grandmother was not to be interrupted.

‘I have been thinking of Katherine Grey, your mama’s godmother. She was a dear friend, God rest her soul.’ I tried to imagine Grandmother with such friends, women to whom she might have confided her secrets, but the idea would not fit. ‘It’s many years ago now, but you must know
her story.’ I nodded and followed her to the dais, where there were two embroidered velvet chairs set under a canopy. We took one each, I balancing tentatively on the edge of mine, she seeming enthroned, her years belied by her poker-straight posture. ‘Like you, she had royal blood, a quantity of it, her sister Jane had been queen after all …’ She paused, seeming to cast her mind back. ‘In the end Katherine Grey was a little fool, driven by passion. She wed herself to the Earl of Hertford and went to the Tower for it, carrying his son. It is treason when a princess of the blood weds without permission.’ She stopped to clear her throat before fixing her gaze firmly on me. ‘Desire is a demon; it will possess you, my girl, if you don’t take pains to resist it. Katherine Grey was lucky not to go to the block like her sister.’