The Lady of Misrule (27 page)

There's a difference ?

Not really a question, but it occurred to me that I might just have an answer. Well, didn't I?

But I couldn't quite think, or not fast enough because there was the guard again, ‘Lord Guildford, sir,' his patience dwindled, observing the formalities but barely, brusquely. And footsteps: just-doing-my-job footsteps but coming none the less, to fetch Guildford. Above me, behind me, Guildford was being taken away, and I heard the intake of breath on which he turned to try to placate that guard, fend him off,
I'm coming, I'm coming
, and leave me undiscovered to make my own way back.
There's a difference?
Didn't I have the answer
to that? Shouldn't I tell him? But turning around, I caught the last of him, a blur of wool sheened with damp and a flash of stitch-heavy silks, leaving nothing above me except the sky.

I came reeling down the stairs, that day, unsure quite what had and hadn't been said, and, stopping to catch my breath in the dank stairwell, I began to lose heart. The words themselves, I kept close –
come with me
– but the tone had flown on that merciless wind. Barely sheltered by that ancient doorway, I felt dreadfully alone. What had I been thinking, scrabbling up there to whisper with Guildford? Was I going to spend my life in hidey-holes with married noblemen? After everything that had happened to me, did I really know no better? Stop it, I told myself, you need to stop it, it's nothing, it's hidey-holes and whispers and that's all it is.
Its nothing and you need to stop it.

I'd been in no mood for Goose hot-footing it up the stairs behind me on my way back to the room and regaling us before she was even through the doorway. ‘Those New Year presents?' This was for Jane, maker of New Year presents as she was. ‘Got someone to deliver them for you? You're going nowhere while there's dead dogs being chucked around.'

Jane merely closed her eyes, admirably composed in the face of such an extraordinary claim, but I was unable to be quite so big about it. ‘Dead dogs?'
Chucked around
?

And so Goose told us, as she was clearly bursting to do. The previous day, she said, at the close of Parliament, a dead dog had been thrown into the Queen's Great Watching
Chamber, its fur shaved into a tonsure. I wished I hadn't asked. That poor dog, mutilated in death into a mock-monk: everything that it had been in life reduced to a hideous gesture, a pitiless, gruesome thud on the Queen's marble tiles.

‘We won't take this Spanish marriage,' Goose trilled, ‘and she's going to have to listen to us. Just because everyone wanted her on the throne doesn't mean she can do whatever she chooses.'

Except that she was Queen, I thought, so actually she probably could.

Goose seemed to have been right, though, that Jane was going nowhere. As we edged daily closer to Christmas, no word came of her imminent release nor even of her being allowed, should she wish, to leave her room. Nor was Guildford outside again, that I saw. Not that I was looking.

A week before Christmas came a letter; Mr Partridge jovially dropping it off for Jane as if this were something he did every day, all part of the service, before turning busily on his heel and leaving her to it. Her family, I presumed: they'd written to her – had been permitted to write – because it was Christmas; there had been a relaxing of the rules, the turning of a blind eye. Jane's expression quickened at the sight of the handwriting: the writer was definitely someone from whom she was pleased to hear. And how nice for her, was all I thought as I returned my attention to our sullen fire – the colder the mornings, the meaner Goose was with firewood – but when I'd got as far as I could with it and straightened up, I saw how Jane was struck. The letter – whomever it was
from – had delivered her a body blow, yet still she was sitting there, reading it, taking it. She sat there undefended, letting it befall her.

Then, suddenly, before I had a chance to do or say anything, she laid the letter on the table and stood, although it was more a recoiling, as if wounded.

‘Jane?'

She glanced at me as if she'd forgotten I was there and I saw that she meant to respond, or perhaps even thought she had, but the impetus had already deserted her and she retreated to the window, sitting there as if put.

I stood adrift, poker in hand.

‘Dr Harding—' She gestured at the letter. ‘He was our chaplain when I was growing up,' and her eyes came to mine when she said, with feeling, ‘A sweet man.' It took her a moment to be able to tell me, ‘He's recanted,' and then I felt something of it, too, the betrayal and the loss. Her own childhood chaplain. ‘He thinks I should, too.' Hence the letter, she meant, but it was said with none of the contempt I would've expected.

I had no idea what to say; what could I possibly offer that would be any comfort?

‘Is it easy for me, do you think?' She frowned; she was thinking. ‘Is it easy for me, in here, to stick to my guns? Because how would it be, to be out there all alone with the whole of England turning the other way?'

I hadn't thought of it like that; I'd considered her to be the one, shut in here, who was all alone.

‘He writes as if he believes it, but you can't believe something you know to be untrue, can you?'

And fleetingly it was him for whom I felt.

‘He does know.' She spoke slowly, as if she needed to spell it for herself. ‘Or he did know,' and she was wide-eyed, wondering, ‘and you can't
un
know, can you?'

I wanted to say I was sorry, but it would be so inadequate that I didn't, and just stood there, uselessly, poker absurdly in hand.

‘He was the one who taught me,' she said. ‘And all the learning I've done since …' A quick shake of her head. ‘Well, you can do all the learning you like, you can dress it up in all the theology you like, but when I was six he walked me up to a rood screen and had me touch it, and he said, “Here, see? Wood.'”

Carefully, I laid the poker back down on the hearth.

‘ “Wood, is all it is. Just wood. Carved and painted and gilded, all very beautiful, so much work gone into it but still,” he said, “it's wood, it's a barrier there to keep you on this side of it. And on the other side,” he said, ‘are the priests, dressed to the nines and swigging the wine and keeping God to themselves.” '

I sat down on the stool.

She said, ‘I don't remember whose chapel it was – some family we were visiting, might even have been the Fitzalans – but at the foot of the screen were all these …' and she was entranced to recall them, ‘these
dolls
, really.'

She smiled at me as if she felt I might've liked the dolls.

‘The prettiest little faces. Bright blue eyes, upturned noses, red lips. Dr Harding asked me, “Who's this one, do you know?” And I did, because we might not have had saints in our chapel but we knew people who did and anyway you can never stop servants talking about saints, can you? So I said to him, “That's Saint Barbara, holding her tower. And that's Saint Ursula, with her ship, and there's Saint Catherine with her wheel.” I knew them all; there must've been twelve. And he said to me, “Aren't they lovely? All lined up with their bits and bobs and smiling away at us. But why are they here?” That, I didn't know, but I took a guess: “So we can learn from them.'”

I knew what she was going to say.

‘And he asked me, “What do we learn from them?” and I said, “How to love God,” and he said, “But you already know how to do that, don't you?” I said I did and he said, “You don't need these saints to show you. You don't need their lightning and fireworks. You have to love God every minute of every ordinary day, and, in a way, that's harder to do.” And he said to me, “All you need is this,” ' at which she placed a hand to her heart, ‘ “and this,” ' fingertips to her forehead, ‘ “and the Bible.” Dr Harding said to me, “These ladies are nowhere in the Bible. They're just stories, but we don't need stories because in the Bible we have the truth.” '

She sighed. ‘But now he's gone back on all that. Priests do matter, he's saying. And statues.' She said, ‘I wonder where they put them, the Fitzalans or whoever they were: I wonder if they still have those little lady-saints.' She looked at me. ‘Did you see them, when you were there?'

No, I said, I hadn't.

In the direction of the window, she said, ‘They've made a liar of a good man, is what they've done, and how can that be what they want?' Turning back to me, she wondered, ‘Can that be something that anyone would really ever want?' She stood. ‘What's happened to him, Elizabeth? How did they do it? Get him to write that to me like that. Is he scared? Is he confused?' Then she resolved, ‘I'm going to write to him. I won't abandon him to them. He's written to me and I'm going to write back to him.'

Day after day, she wrote that letter to Dr Harding. I'd never have imagined there could be so much to say; sometimes I wondered if she was coming up with her own version of the Bible. Whenever she wasn't actually composing that letter, she was reading for it, leafing through several books in succession, scrutinising certain pages and leaving volumes open all around her as she worked. During that time, she was all bitten lip and blotted fingers, her neck and shoulders stiff, and I was so relieved to see her restored to herself that I didn't mind that she rarely had a word to spare for me.

The letter-writing occupied her right up until the first day of Christmas and then even took the day itself, which, when we got to it, seemed to me as good a way as any to spend it. During those last days of Advent and on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we declined invitation after invitation from the anxious and dutiful Partridges. Or I did, because that was my job. She was ill, was our excuse, and I wanted to keep her company, which, surprisingly, turned out to be the truth. She
needed me, I told them. I had to remind her time and time again, ‘You're ill.' Because although the business of keeping the Partridges at bay fell to me, I needed her help. The sound of anyone on the stairs was her cue to sit forlornly at the fireside or rush through to lie on the bed. ‘You're ill, remember? Too ill even for Christmas. And you need me. But you're not ill enough to need a doctor.' I hated worrying the Partridges and did my best to pitch it so as to spare them as much as I could. It was tricky, it kept me on my toes.

Not that the Partridges themselves could come up in person to check on us. Mrs Partridge, in her condition, couldn't risk catching whatever was supposed to be ailing Jane, and nor should Mr Partridge be in any position to pass it on to her. So, no Partridges for us, for a whole week, not even on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day – for which they sent up various thoughtful treats – by which time mercifully we were also free of Goose and her rampant scepticism because she was allowed off to her sister's for the season.

Goose's replacement, lugubrious old Mrs Dunch, was the one relaying those frequent enquiries from the Partridges but she was relatively easy to placate and send back on her way. She seemed to believe anything we said, unlike Goose.

When I'd asked Jane why she didn't try to convert me, she'd said it would be a waste of her time to work on one person alone. For Dr Harding, though, she more than made the time. Or perhaps her efforts weren't strictly for Dr Harding alone, because who knew how many hands that letter might have to pass through to reach him. Because what
had Jane once said to me about books? There are always copies,
words spread
, was what she'd said. And what had Guildford said about her changing the world? Well, maybe that was what she was trying to do, during those dead-end December days, while I stood guard.

See?
I'd have loved to be able to say to Guildford,
see?
We two girls, here, in our little room, changing the world,
and you'd better believe it.
It was during those dead-to-the-world late December days that I started to care, and I wished Guildford could've known it. Jane's battle wasn't mine – it didn't mean much to me and probably never would – but I was glad she was fighting it. That was what was different: I was glad, at last, that Jane was Jane.

But then we really were ill, as if we'd wished it upon ourselves; it came for us as if to serve us right for our lie and to show us what being ill really meant. Jane first, then, a day or so later, me. Head, throat, chest: everywhere that should have been filled with breath was instead a slough of snot or phlegm. Everything ached, even my scalp. And now I was laid low, Guildford's absence badly bothered me. While the remaining days of Christmas passed us by, I kept compulsive, surreptitious and pointless company with his absence as I would with the socket of a recently pulled tooth.

The year turned, and after Twelfth Night Goose was back. ‘Thirteenth day,' as Jane put it when we heard her advancing up the stairs. She burst into our room pink to the gills with one of her stories. The high-and-mighties, she said, had
arrived from Spain to sign the royal marriage contract but, riding up to their London lodgings, they'd been pelted with snowballs. And how she'd have loved to see that, as she set about Susanna, wiping her down because we didn't know how to manage a fire, and look at the smoke-smuts that had accrued while she'd been away! ‘Them on their oh-so-fine horses scrambling for cover, and everyone laughing.' She slapped at the elders. ‘Thinking they can come here and we'll just roll over. Well, that might be
her
idea of a good time …' The Queen, presumably. ‘And you know what?' She stopped, veered alarmingly close to me, her face revealing too much of its various rims and linings. ‘I reckon they could've thrown just that little bit harder, those boys, and closer, and icier, and driven those Spaniards back down to the docks.' She grinned. ‘It would've worked, because the Queen can hardly pitch an army against schoolboys, can she.' The exertion with the cloth had brought on a raucous sniff, and I feared that in her distracted, excitable state she was going to wipe her nose with it. ‘She can send an army down west but not into a crowd of schoolboys.'