The Girl in the Mirror (24 page)

I want to tell them all that even the quarrels were different, then. Standing behind her while she sat with Leicester or Hatton before her on their knees, I’d feel as if I were sharing her triumph, feel the delicious sense of power course through me like wine. Other women stood behind their husbands, but she … I’d feel their eagerness to please like the scent on the mist curling round the horses’ flanks as we rode out early to the hunt, and I’d know the reconciliations would be sunshine after rain, as sweet a luxury of affection as though they’d lain together in ecstasy.

And Essex – yes, I’d tell them, even he! In another, warmer summer I saw them once, when we were still basking in the Armada victory, on one of those summer progresses through the ripening country. I stood on the terrace and I watched them on the lawns below, Essex half walking, half gambolling in front of her as he expounded some scheme – oh, he was young, then, he always had a scheme, but he didn’t take himself so seriously. He seized her wrist, in defiance of all etiquette, and laughed as he tugged her towards the mound that looked out over the surrounding country. Perhaps they looked like a child and his nurse, but they looked like lovers too, surely?

I just heard his voice on the breeze. ‘Come on,’ he’d said. ‘King of the Castle!’ There’s a sting in remembering that one now, for who was to be king, precisely? But at the time she laughed too, and moved as fast as her skirts would allow. And at the top, as he stood behind and turned her this way and that way to see the sky and field, all blue and gold, she leant backwards onto his chest, like any girl with her lover, tumbling in the soft shining piles of hay. They say she’s a woman of head not of heart – like her mother Anne, not her aunt Mary. I say, you can’t just split people, sheep and goats, that easily.

That’s all gone now – there’s a sting even in the memory. But don’t tell me Essex himself didn’t feel her spell, once. Oh, he can exercise a magic, but I tell you this: it went both ways. Armed with that knowledge I compose my face, and set out to rejoin her majesty. She’s seated in front of the mirror – an act of defiance, that – as a maid rearranges her wig to her gesture, carefully. She does not move to catch my eye and I wonder exactly what she sees.

Cecil
November 1600

In autumn, as the fruits hang from the pomegranate tree, brought in a pot in the hopes of coaxing it through the English winter, the tough skin splits so that from the underneath you see the dark red flesh and glistening seeds, like a woman’s secret place. This is the time of year when the garden, like an ageing beauty, displays its few remaining charms with a shamefaced air, waiting for the visitor to spy out their paucity. There are a few late mulberries not yet moulding on the branch, with their musky taste and purple dye. In the kitchen garden a few yellow gourds cling to the withered vine, and the cabbages show green-grey. More colour here than in the pleasure gardens, come to that: my father sometimes grumbled I had low tastes, as a boy. Nothing out of its right order, was his creed, in nature or in society: sometimes I think he only purchased the new, late-blooming plants to please the queen, so that no one else would get ahead of him that way.

That’s what he’d say about Lord Essex, were he here. Disnatured, is what he’d say. I came to the garden direct from the court, direct from telling her majesty.

There was never any question but that I’d tell her what Essex said. The game has to be moved on to the next stage, by whatever means necessary. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing that slight brace of the back with which she meets a blow, and knowing I have made it even harder for her to greet the next day like a queen, imperviously. God knows, no man has more reason than I to know her weaknesses, to know the squalls and the tantrums that ushered in each brilliant piece of diplomacy. You’d think I’d be like the mountebank at the fairground who knows how each trick is worked – and so I am, I’ve seen behind the curtain – and yet … I was born into the first flower of Elizabeth’s England, and in some way she will always be Gloriana to me.

I have no appetite for this any more. There may once have been a moment when some tiny, surreptitious part of me would have expected to enjoy seeing Elizabeth humiliated – a moment when she was asking the whole court whatever she would do without her little pygmy. But I’ve supped too full of humiliation over the years to want to taste the dish again, even vicariously. I’ve watched the queen’s face grow leaner and her teeth blacker, and I’ve seen her technique falter. I’ve seen the cracks appear in her façade and I’ve exploited them or papered them over as necessary – mostly papered them over, I’m happy to say. I know how much it costs her to put on that face, just as Lizzie in the last months would order her maid to lace her stays tighter, as if she would hold herself upright that way.

I could do nothing for Lizzie, I can do nothing for her majesty. Whatever the balm of flattery can do, she’ll take from others, not from me. But I think Jeanne has played her last part in this story: she’s been dragging around the house these last weeks as though she were sick. As though she were Lizzie. Gorges and the rest can do whatever is necessary. Gorges and Cuffe, my unwitting ally; no need to ask the countess what she’s done about Cuffe, and not just because Martin Slaughter would tell me anything necessary. We are all on the same side, or nearly. I only hope Jeanne hasn’t paid too high a price: I was told about the scene in the orchard at Theobalds, naturally. I would be little use if I could not know about a conversation like that, so close to me.

Then I think: but who am I to say her part is ended? How can I say what her future will be? The story may not have finished with her; she may be telling herself another version of the story. I look the thought square in the face: I accept the possibility. I only hope she won’t prove like those caged birds we talked about, dying outside the safety of captivity.

Jeanne
December 1600/January 1601

London had begun to feel like an armed camp, or it did if you had got yourself attached to either of the opposing parties. The steward said I had better move into the house – the servants could set a pallet again. The dark came so early now, and it was hardly safe to walk late along the Strand with the badge of Sir Robert’s livery. So at night I sat in the warmth of the hall, and found to my surprise that I was glad of the company.

I heard Essex’s crew were growing ever more desperate, but what was it to me? I’d chosen, hadn’t I? He wrote to the queen again before Accession Day, no doubt hoping to jog her memories of his glamour at the tilt, but I doubt if she was in any mood to receive his flattery. When the day came, some of the younger servants went to the festivities, but more of the household did not. It made no comment when I stayed away.

They had a play at court almost every day, that holiday, and when Twelfth Night came, the steward said a few of us could go along to see the show. ‘Not that you’ll see much except the back of courtiers’ shoulders if you keep to your place and don’t bother anybody, as I’m sure I trust you will do.’ In truth, going to Whitehall always reminded me more of making one’s way through a winding maze than it did going to a palace. So many alleys and passageways, courtyards and cubbyholes, half of them crammed with the traders and citizens who did business here every day, and all of them draughty. It took a lot of asking, and some arguing, before at last we made our way to the great hall, and shoved our way into the back of what was already a seething mass of humanity.

All I could see in front of me was a pair of blue broadcloth shoulders and the kind of ruff no one in town had been wearing these two years. A squire up from the country. I suppose the queen and Sir Robert were there, secure on a dais away from the mêlée. They had some kind of funny man to warm up the crowd, but I could hardly hear the words. If it weren’t for one thing, I’d rather have been at home – the Lord knows, no one would notice if I slipped away.

The thought of that one thing was making butterflies in my belly. I’d known what the play would be, of course; I’d thought of who might be playing. But when I saw him it still felt like a surprise to me. Or, something had surprised my heart, because it seemed to be beating strangely. I caught a pageboy as he passed, and gave him a coin to tell Martin Slaughter I’d be waiting in the anteroom when he had finished his part. I couldn’t for the life of me have stayed to watch. It would have finished me.

When he stepped through the door, his face was grave. None of the slight, sweet smile with which he used to greet me. Well, there wouldn’t be, after the way we’d parted. After the things I’d said. For once, he seemed to be waiting for me to speak, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

‘I thought of you.’ I paused. ‘I missed you.’

His whole face seemed to concentrate, as if he were listening intently. Still he didn’t speak.

‘Martin, I’m sorry.’

Sorry for the things I’d said, sorry for my folly. For being so stupid as not to see where and what we all were. Pawns in the game but players too, with choices to make: and in the end we’d made the same choice, hadn’t we? I opened my mouth, I almost began to pour out the silly story, but a tiny movement from him stopped me. There was just a trace of his smile now, though less assured than it used to be, and he was breathing strongly.

He half stepped towards me.

‘But not yet – I’m not ready –’

He sobered instantly.

‘No – I know,’ he said with a fervency that surprised me. ‘The Lord knows there is too much of this game still to play.’

‘What do you mean?’ I meant: Don’t tell me you’re still there; for all I hear, Cuffe now needs no urging. I meant: When I saw you playing here at court, I hoped at least that you were out of it.

He answered the thought more than just the words: I remembered how he’d always understood the things I didn’t say.

‘I am, I’m out of the Essex House set, anyway,’ he said swiftly. ‘I’m back to my trade, acting on the boards instead of off them. Just your straightforward freelance rogue and vagabond, no more mixing above my station with the nobility. Or their secretaries.’ He flashed me the smile, but sobered instantly.

He cocked an ear to the great hall again. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll be on in a minute. Will you – will you meet me tomorrow? We can’t talk properly here.’ I made myself nod, though my heart was beating uncomfortably. But then Martin himself sounded younger, less certain in his dealings than he used to be with me.

‘Meet me at the eastern gate,’ he said. ‘No, not by St Paul’s. We’ll go for a walk – get right out of town.’

‘But, Martin’ – despite myself I was laughing – ‘it’s January. We’ll freeze.’

He grinned. ‘You little city girl. It’ll be beautiful. You’ll see.’

He’d told me, sometimes, about his long slow journeys through the English country, and how an actor in a strolling company got to know the banks and hedges of his land as intimately as a farmer, or nearly. How some make a kind of hobby out of getting to know every inn along the way – ‘And Master Henslowe, he did nothing but fret about what was going on at home – bored us all to shreds with how the spinach in his garden should be coming up, and whether his wife would have got his stockings dyed!’ But others chose instead to turn their eyes on the green book that lay around them – the plants you could crush and wedge into your boot to ease the pain of a blister, the tiny changes that told you to seek cover, since a storm was on the way. He’d said once, joking, that he would show me, but it was an altered country he showed me today. Snow had fallen in the night – I wasn’t sure he’d be at the gate, but I went all the same. His face cracked into a smile of relief when he saw me, and he led me into a world where the very sunlight fell differently.

It was a world where every sense seemed heightened. Where the green of lichen on the tree trunks glowed emerald against the whiteness and a puff of wind blew fine snow dust out from the bushes so that it was like walking through a cloud. In the dykes the water had frozen into blue-green swirls, bubbled like the glass on a windowpane, except one pool where a long tendril of bramble blew in the wind to stir the surface, as a man might stir his spiced wine with his finger. It was so silent that when we stepped from path to snowdrift, we could hear that the crunch under our feet came differently. I didn’t want to speak, but there were things we had to say. I waited for him to take the lead, but he seemed reluctant, today, and in the end it was I who broke the silence, nervously.

‘You’re right – it’s good to be out of the town. Good to be out of all of it, I mean, really.’ He was still silent, and I turned to him, anxious – prepared almost to be angry. ‘Martin, you are out of it, aren’t you? You’re not still – I mean, Cuffe, everything I’m hearing –’

He flung out one hand to halt me, reassuring. ‘I’m out. Well, out of that business anyhow. You know actors mix it by trade, we’re never out of trouble entirely.’ His grin faded quickly.

‘But Jeanne, I’m not sure anyone in London is going to be able to stay out of it, the way that things are going.’

‘Is it so bad? Really?’ Bad, I meant, as nobles’ quarrels were bad. Bad for the people like us, who could die without even knowing why.

‘Oh Lord, yes. As bad as it can be. It’ll come to blows. I can’t see it ending any other way.’

‘Real rebellion?’ I almost whispered the word. ‘He wouldn’t, surely?’

‘You know he would. He almost did, in Ireland. Take care of yourself if it comes, Jeanne. I don’t suppose you could …?’His voice faded out.

‘Could get away?’ I shook my head. The house in the Strand, the lodging house at Blackfriars – the thought flashed through my mind of the Pointers in Twickenham. But I had nowhere to go, not really. He knew it. His hand brushed mine, just briefly. But there was something else – I was thinking aloud, in the way he seemed to make me. ‘I don’t want to go, anyway.’

He nodded, but the few feet between us seemed wider, suddenly. It had begun to snow again. The fat soft flakes came only lazily, but the white hill slope before us stood out, now, against a dark grey sky.