The Girl in the Mirror (10 page)

We couldn’t stand stock still outside the hall, not with the servants passing by. Instinctively I turned towards the garden, my place of safety, and he fell in beside me.

He asked nothing more just then, and I appreciated that. For a few moments we strolled, silently. I expect we looked like old friends, and I suppose we were, in a way. Or the nearest I had to an old friend, anyway. He told me he’d left the Admiral’s Men that summer – ‘Other fish to fry!’ When he did put a question to me at last, it was with an air of hesitancy.

‘So, what have you been doing all this time?’

I told him in two sentences, and he nodded approvingly. ‘A decent man, Sir Robert.’ There was something there I might have questioned – he’d spoken as if from personal knowledge, not just what any man in the street might pick up about a grandee. But I was still too shaken to think about anything except my own position. I thought probably I could trust him, but trust did not come easy to me.

Someone stuck their head out from a window, and yelled for him impatiently.

‘I must go. But I meant it. I hope we meet again some day. I may be away for a time, out of the country’ – he broke off, as if he might say more. ‘But I think that we will meet, in the end, and you know all actors are a little fey.’

He smiled, and reached out a finger to tap me on the nose – playfully, as a man might to a boy. Then he turned crisply on his heel and, upright, walked away, leaving me standing there in the garden.

I made no move to follow him. This once, I would do without seeing the play. I thought probably I could trust him, I might even, in the end, find I was pleased to have seen him. But just at that moment I wanted only one thing – to be safely away.

Spring 1598

Sir Robert went away to France soon after Christmas, on what even the kitchen, never mind the clerks’ room, knew was likely to be a bootless attempt to talk to their king. The unexpected peace France had negotiated with Spain left England at every-one’s mercy, but why should their king care for that? The fact of Sir Robert’s being away so long, following the French court round the country, left Lord Essex free to take over many of his powers and duties – ‘so’, as the old clerk said sourly, ‘at least someone’s happy.’

It was strange: since I’d come into the Burghley household, it was almost as if the grandees of the land had become part of the same extended family, they were talked of here so frequently. Lord Essex, holding the reins of the Council. Lord Essex holding the hands – ‘and not just the hands’ – of too many of the court ladies. Even the queen’s reactions were canvassed, when the steward sent up our share of whatever strong ale was left over at night, though they, in this household, were discussed more cautiously.

As the weather started to warm, and the bulbs stirred under the ground, I found myself remembering Martin Slaughter. It was as if that conversation, with someone who knew both my identities, had made me look at myself differently. But like a shoot that is fooled by a false spring into rising too early, I pushed the thoughts away.

It was well into April when Sir Robert came home, and for several weeks he was so busy that I saw him only in the distance. The garden woke into life without him, though I walked and wondered, and a gardener told me fresh flowers were taken to his rooms every day. The bright purple and orange flames of crocus reminded me of Jacob, showing me a picture in Master de l’Obel’s book. That all seemed far away, today.

They were proud of their new bulbs, Sir Robert’s gardeners. I saw the Turk’s Cap, the tulip, a clear red bell on a hard stem, and the first black-flowered fritillaries. The cooks had already begun to demand the first salad forcings, and the shoots off the over-wintered cabbages to serve with garlic – they’d be tasting green rampions cooked with bacon fat in the country. It was high May when a page came running to find me, with word the master wanted to see me in his study. I smoothed my hair as best I could, and tweaked at my cuff where the cloth was starting to fray, and pushed down the questions in my head as I followed the boy.

‘Ah, Jan. Have you been well, these months? How is the work going?’ So, not a reproof, then. That was something. And Sir Robert himself seemed eager enough to get to the point, past the preliminaries.

‘I have an errand for you to do. I was speaking to my lord Essex the other day, and he was regretting that our cousins across the water didn’t rate our arts more highly. Indeed, from the treatment I and my embassy had in France, you’d think they set our whole state of civilisation low … Or so his lordship suggested to me. I mentioned the task I’d set you, as one example of my own poor efforts at remedy, and he was gracious enough to say he’d be interested to see.

‘He’s at his hunting lodge in Wanstead, with my lords of Rutland and Southampton. Set out early tomorrow, and tell the stables to give you a decent horse: you should be there and back inside the day.’

He looked at me more closely, struck by a sudden thought.

‘You do ride, I suppose?’

‘Yes, sir. Badly.’ In truth, my life in London had given me little opportunity. In my restless waking dreams that night, I didn’t know which loomed larger – the impending tussle with the horse, or the man it was carrying me to see. The man who’d had Dr Lopez hung, the man who set my master at naught. The ‘man of blood’, as old Lord Burghley called him, whose violence and arrogance repelled me – but, the man who fought the Spanish as fiercely as if he’d been in the Netherlands with me, to see what they could do that day … Of course, when I got to Wanstead it was quite possible I’d only see the steward, who’d carry my drawings off while I kicked my heels in an ante-room all day. In fact, nothing was more likely; and that thought allowed me to sleep at last, uneasily.

The horse they gave me was a bit too decent. As I rode out through the lanes, and the beast twitched and baulked under my nervous hands, I was too tense even to snuff up the soapy scent of may. Wanstead was easily found, a square small house with a welcoming aspect, but as I rode into the courtyard I jerked the reins in sharp dismay. A group of men stood there, laughing at some joke, and the extravagance of their dress and gesture allowed no hope that these were mere retainers. The tallest turned towards me, his brows raised in enquiry. His long red hair and beard made him recognisable, instantly.

I stumbled off my horse and went into a low bow, the best my stiff muscles could manage.

‘My lord of Essex – Sir Robert sent me –’

‘Of course – the young artist who’s to convince the French that, if nothing else, we know something about botany.’ A groom had appeared at the horse’s head, and a household official was advancing to deal with me as befit my station, but the earl waved him away.

‘My lords, gentlemen, give us minute. Boy – a glass of ale for our visitor.’ Later I’d learn that this was part of his charm – to treat an anointed queen as though she were any dairymaid, and a clerk as though he – she – he – were Queen of the May.

He leafed through my drawings once, and then again more slowly. ‘You must see our gardens here – nothing to Lord Burghley’s Theobalds, but I believe my father, my lord of Leicester, laid them out with some small artistry.’ He turned towards a doorway in the wall, along with a dog, a beautiful silken creature, who was snuffing at me eagerly.

‘Down, Caesar! How very strange – usually he only cares for women. You must have something unexpected about you, Master …?’

‘Musset, my lord.’

He turned at that and began to question me as to how I’d arrived in this country. I don’t know if I answered as carefully as I would normally. I was too aware of the dog, still snuffing – and aware, too, of my own body. Usually I pulled on my man’s clothes without thinking about them either way. But now I could feel my breasts pressing against the stiffness of the doublet, as well as a strange tingling in my belly.

We’d passed beyond the knot garden – nothing exceptional, just as he had said, but still colourful and alive in the warmth of May. But he hadn’t kept it well – off at the side I could see the hedges round his warren quite broken down, so that every fox in the country could help themselves to his coneys.

He moved towards the pleasaunce, stooping to throw a stick for the dog, which bounded eagerly off. It was a relief to be free of its questing nose – but absurdly, it seemed almost as though my chaperone had gone away.

The path was broken by a little stream. Disdaining the bridge at some small distance, his lordship made a long stride across it. I tried to follow but, stiff after the ride, stumbled and landed clumsily. He flung out an arm to steady me, then tightened his grip as I tried to pull away.

‘I thank your lordship – idiotic of me …’ He ignored my stammering words, but held me with a long questioning look, before at last he released me. I felt as if I’d been rooted to the spot, but at least he had now turned away. There were doves calling from somewhere in the trees, and he echoed them teas-ingly, ‘Whoo-hoo’, like a schoolboy. I thought the sound would always stay with me.

‘There’s a bank here where the gardeners used to plant the small strawberries. I wonder if there are any ripe yet? Yes – I see –’ He turned back to me with a smile in his eyes, and something small and red in his fingers. As he held it towards my face, I opened my mouth, involuntarily.

My head was in a whirl. This to a boy, to a rival’s secretary? It was almost as if my lord of Essex were flirting with me. He was a married man, naturally. Though there were wild tales my lord Southampton and he –

He set out at a run, back towards the house, tugging me after. I’d already noticed he was clumsy, with the leggy awkwardness of a colt in a field, but of course he far outstripped me. There was a wall of yew, separating garden from wilderness, and as he dodged through an opening, I followed as fast as my thudding heart would allow me.

The hedge was in fact two rows of hedges, with a dark pathway running inside, and a piece of leering statuary. I halted, confused by the sudden shadow, and from behind one of the bushes Lord Essex sprang out and seized me, laughing.

‘I don’t even know your name. No, not Musset.’

‘It’s Jeanne.’ It came out, Jan, as it always did. My head was in too much of a whirl even to ask myself which name he’d heard. It was ridiculous, but behind my eyelids, tears were pricking at me. He saw it.

‘I shall call you Janny. There, now we have been introduced, we can greet each other properly.’ But this was no ordinary kiss of greeting, as his mouth came down on mine. The moment seemed to go on forever, as I felt my lips beneath his open slightly. ‘Did you know you taste of strawberry?’

Still smiling, he turned away towards the house, and I ran after him, desperately. As he looked back he laughed outright, and his glance gleamed at me.

They came out from the house in search of him a moment later, and the steward led me away, no longer baulked of his lawful prey. I was offered a bench, and some refreshment, and I took them in a daze. I sat and watched, like a yokel at a play, as another hunting party rode up and two more young noblemen strode past into the house – my lords Rutland and Southampton, a page told me. Then someone brought me back my drawings, and the horse was returned to me. This time, as if it knew I had no concern to spare, the wretched animal went quite quietly. I even found his footfalls kept pace with the thoughts banging away at me. Did he kiss me because he thought I was a boy? Or because he knew I wasn’t? I could hardly make out which of the two ideas most disturbed me.

Cecil
Spring 1598

We are reaching the days of cuckoo call, of quick summer showers, and of strawberries. Sometimes, when I’d walk in the gardens with Lizzie in these soft weeks before midsummer, she would put off the forthright air she wore for everyday, pick one of the damask roses and snuff up the scent with her mouth open. She said you got the smell better that way. I’d let my arm brush the front of her dress and smile to watch her stiffen and colour, and later, in bed that night, I’d tell her her nipples were like the berries.

I wonder if, up at Wanstead, they’d eaten strawberries, Essex and my young emissary.

She’ll be halfway in love with him by now: it is some time, if I am honest, since I first began thinking of Jan – of Jeanne – as ‘she’. But she will not need to fear discovery by the household at large: my senior staff and those servants who matter are too well trained to see what they are not required to see. This is a household where secrets are normal currency. We know everything and nothing; deal in reflection and illusion. We might as well be players, so accustomed are we to living in several different realities. A world of spies: the only true seat of privacy.

I passed her in the corridor the days after she came back from Wanstead, but she kept her eyes cast down, and hurried on past me. There was a blush on even the thin brown nape of her neck – Essex’s work, presumably. I should be glad of it – you never get under someone else’s guard without letting them under yours: a lesson for Lord Essex. And for me. The dance of seduction and betrayal is as intimate as the sex act, in its way. And the best traitors are those who have no intention of committing treachery.

High time my lord of Essex had something else to think about, from what they tell me. My absence in France gave him opportunities, and I may thank God and his own temperament he did not exploit them to more lasting effect. This Irish rebellion to be put down: he’ll box himself into a corner there. Clamour that no one but he can do the business, and then find, like so many before, that no one does themselves good in that country.

Still, Essex didn’t do badly while I was away, and the mission to France cannot be said to have crowned me with glory. It would be all to the good if something, someone – placed now, like a thorn, to fester later – were to throw my lord of Essex off his stroke, however momentarily. I would be sorry if it also threw out the balance my young garden artist holds, so very precariously. But there is no use to be had in thinking that way.

It’s more penance than pleasure, this golden season, to walk in the garden lonely. No roses, no strawberries, for me now, though I find, as I step briskly towards the house, that I’ve snapped off a sprig of honeysuckle, and the gentle scent wreathes up to greet me. I find, whatever comes of it, I almost envy Jeanne her golden day: yes of course we had someone watching the walk, and the adventure in the yew trees. I hear of every incautious letter Essex is writing. He even dares to question aloud whether princes can do no wrong, whether subjects should bear wrong indefinitely. Folly! Fool to write it, certainly. Is he a fool to think it? The whole world seems to reel and I close my eyes, but as I open them a glance at the order of the beds in the garden restores me. I gaze down at the spray of golden trumpet flowers in my hand as the steward comes to tell me my father is not so well, again, and that the physicians would like to see me.