‘You saw it when it first came out? Or read it, maybe? Well, no matter, the printed version had all the important bits cut out.
‘This play is about the moment that started it all off,’ he continued, earnest now. ‘Richard II pushed off the throne by his cousin, starting a hundred years of civil war, ended only by our beloved Tudor dynasty. An enfeebled monarch deposed, and the deposer presented as – well, maybe not the hero of the tale, but a man of honour, or something close. Now do you see?’
I did, of course I did, and the danger of what I saw appalled me.
‘They depose the king?’ I was working my way through it, slowly. ‘With arms, with violence?’ Martin nodded at me, the way a kind schoolmaster does when his pupil gets the right answer eventually. ‘And the old king, Richard – they don’t – is he –?’ Again, Martin nodded. It struck me that he was apprehensive and excited, both at once, and, like the actor he was, registering both emotions clearly.
‘Can you believe it – someone was saying they actually wanted us to put Richard into a red wig?’ he said, inconsequentially.
‘But why ever did they agree? And what are you doing? You’re not even tied to the company.’
‘Well, they were promised an extra fee. Rather a large one, actually – and those lords weren’t to be gainsaid easily. As for me, I’m just a jobbing actor, you go where the good parts are and if you turn a company down one time, they may not ask you again too quickly.’ He had dropped the bantering manner, and as he turned away his face looked older and more wary than the one I was used to seeing.
‘No, I promise you, I’m just in this one as a player. Unless – well, perhaps you might say I owed their lordships something.’ There was a shadow on his face and with a stab of guilt I realised – yes, for the first time – that I might not have been the only one who hadn’t found decisions easy.
‘And, of course,’ he added, ‘I do have … insurance, you might say.’ He flung that reminder at me with an air of bravado, pointedly, as if daring me to remember that the subject of our quarrel had never entirely gone away. But I shook my head quickly, and he seemed to understand me. No trouble between us, not now, not with this other danger all around us. Now, the whole question of our anger seemed as outworn as the green wreaths after May Day. Now it was I, who’d always been the skittish quarry, who put my hand on his arm placatingly. He turned to clasp it with his own. It must have been the first time we moved to touch, or nearly.
I’d forgotten to ask again what part he was playing. It wasn’t the king, either of the kings (‘not for an occasional extra’ – I could almost hear his voice in my ear), but it was one of their cousins, a Lord Aumerle. Loyal to the old king, even to the point of folly. I was glad of that, foolishly.
There was one line he had that struck me as true – something about having a hundred characters in one body – as I sat (for Martin had told them to let me through up into the gallery) brushing away offers of nuts, and gingerbread, and beer. Even the vendors were excited, and though the crowd was thinner than it might be, in this huge arena, they were roaring as if they were at a bull-baiting or a tourney. Tough men they were, for the most part, with more than one scarred face I recognised from the courtyard at Essex House. I turned my cloak badge in, so no one would challenge me.
A few lines did make me wince. About Bolingbroke, the young pretender, doffing his cap to every oyster woman and charming his way into the people’s sympathy. Had Essex really found us that easy? And another, older, actor, playing John of Gaunt, had a speech about England that touched me. If you came here an immigrant you do forget – dodging the filth running down the streets, complaining about the weather and the taxes – you forget just how much it had meant to come here, and be free.
But I do remember that, as I gazed down from my height at the small figures under the big stage canopy, between the gilt lions and the great marbled pillars, I was puzzled, as much as dismayed. The main theme apart, I could see why the play would appeal to Lord Essex and his followers. This was a lament for the old chivalric England that probably never even existed. The kind you tried to recreate, when you put a girl’s flowers in your doublet and rode out to the tilt on Accession Day. It was a question about what a king was, once stripped of his majesty. As naked as – as a girl, if ever she put off the boy’s clothes that had given her an identity.
What it wasn’t was a triumphant hymn to king-killing, or so it seemed to me. What had it led to? Each side banging the other over the head, and shouting that they were putting an end to violence that way. The deposed King Richard sent for a mirror, to see if he still had the face of majesty, and I thought that in the aftermath none of them would recognise their reflections easily. As the play came to an end, and the actors gave those stage bows that seemed always to have an element of mockery, I thought that for everyone on the stage, for each of the warring parties, this venture into dissent had ended very badly. And as they knelt down on the stage for the prayers for the queen’s safety, I wondered if I was the only one who felt that way.
And of course, there had been one moment struck me particularly. Hit home so hard, I had to turn my face away. King Richard’s queen walks into a garden, and learns her husband’s fate from the gardener’s chatter. But before she does, the chief gardener is instructing one of his underlings, the way the head gardener at Burghley House might do any day. ‘Go thou’ he says,
‘and, like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.’
The words had been written years ago, I knew they had. It was just a typically flowery poetic simile. But as I looked around the rapt audience, as they began to jostle their way out of the thea-tre, I did not understand how everyone else could hear them so hardily.
* * *
I got back to Burghley House to find the place in a fluster. The master had gone to court, and from there to a hastily called meeting of the Council. He would not be returning quickly. The old clerk came clucking towards me, when I appeared, like a hen with one chick and I was touched: I hadn’t realised he had an affection for me. For a second I wondered, as I’d never let myself before, just what he saw when he looked at me.
The urgency of the moment pushed the thought away. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘Never mind that, lad – it’s not what’s happened, it’s what’s about to,’ he said cryptically. ‘That stage play you went to – oh yes, I know – wasn’t far off a declaration of intent. They’ll send for Essex to know what he means by it. Question is, will he go peaceably?’
All around us was a controlled bustle – not so much an ant heap disturbed, as a market where every stallholder has decided to pack up simultaneously. Papers being sorted and locked away in strongboxes, windows shuttered firmly.
Sunday, 8 February, morning
None of us slept very much that night – even those who had less to think about than I did. The gates of the great house were locked and barred, but they couldn’t shut all the sounds out; and from well before daybreak – the cold late dawn that comes so reluctantly this early in the year – we’d heard in the still night the sounds of men and horses on the move. I’d slipped out into the courtyard when one cry woke me, and I’d found I was not alone to do so. Supporters of Lord Essex, coming from the south? Her majesty’s soldiery?
‘If they were coming from my lord of Southampton’s, they’d not pass this way,’ one of the secret clerks said. I think it was the first time he’d ever spoken, voluntarily.
By morning the master had not returned. ‘It’s coming, then,’ the old clerk said – grimly, and yet with a kind of satisfaction. But it didn’t come, or not immediately. Breakfast was served, albeit with scant ceremony, and some of the bolder spirits suggested going out to listen to the sermon, though the steward vetoed that one sharply.
For an hour, two hours, we hung awkwardly around, while the noise from the street told us the rest of the town was going about
its Sunday. The boys among us were getting restive: what harm if they did go out, to see what was going on? The rest of London wasn’t cowering behind its walls, was it? ‘After all, I needn’t wear my livery,’ the brightest of the pages suggested, hopefully.
This time the steward agreed, desperate for news as the rest of us. The porter opened the door and the boy slipped outside, past the scandalised faces of the household’s officers, in a scullion’s shabby anonymity.
Tensely, we waited. Not more than a few minutes to reach Essex House; a brief while to gather what news he could from the crowd around the door, and then the same time back again. Maybe five minutes if he ran, and he would run, surely? He did: arrived panting, but rosy with self-importance.
‘A party of lords – no, not the master – went inside half an hour ago. They didn’t come out again, but from the sounds of it all Lord Essex’s men are forming up inside the gates, and I thought I’d best get away.’ His self-confidence faltered slightly, and the old clerk patted his shoulder reassuringly.
We looked at each other. Essex’s men would be heading to the court and we lay right in his path. No one spoke, as we all strained our ears.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Nothing. Could the boy have been mistaken? ‘They were getting ready, honest they were,’ he protested, almost tearfully.
‘I suppose’ – someone suggested hesitantly – ‘they couldn’t have gone the other way?’
Katherine, Countess of Nottingham
8 February, morning
The damned litter ride here last night, and me snuffling with a cold every inch of the way. It cost me a physical pang to leave my house at Chelsea, and not just for the warm bed that no one there would drag me out of. I’d had the feeling, which is absurd, that at least that was left to me.
But the message from Charles had ordered me to come to court at once, for safety. Then we none of us had much sleep last night – in fact, going to bed at all was little more than an empty gesture towards normality, a sign to the half-hearted that there is nothing in this rumour of rebellion. But on the whole I think Cecil and Charles had the best of it. They could stay up, watching, quietly. Last night the Council sent for Essex and he refused to come, saying he feared trickery, that he’d had warning there was a plot for his life. He refused to come, and that is enough, surely?
We could not afford to move too soon. No queen who plans to hold her throne can be seen to arm herself against her subjects until there is the direst necessity. Until it’s clear she is defending herself against a few individuals, not threatening the rights of the majority. But before dawn, Cecil’s spies brought word the courtyard of Essex House was filling up with men, and as her majesty broke her fast, with me standing behind her and trying not to sneeze too audibly, she agreed word should be sent to the Lord Mayor, to catch him before the sermon at St Paul’s. He should let Essex in through the City walls and then close Ludgate behind him. He should prepare to defend the City. Essex House is full of angry swordsmen, and we at Whitehall are not an hour away.
They sent men Essex would not see as enemies – this much they allowed his fears – but sent them with the queen’s full authority, to demand to know his intentions, and warn him that if he did not settle his complaints in the way of the law, things could only go gravely. Now she’s set the maids to sewing, though I doubt there’s a stitch there that won’t have to be unpicked, but it gives the appearance of the ordinary.
I’d been watching for Philadelphia among the ladies. No sign, and I asked one of the maids in the end, quietly. The girl said that Lady Scrope had asked leave to retire from court a few days ago, and at first I thought, Thank God, she’s learning sense at last. Then I thought, But where has she gone, and to keep what company?
Robert Cecil has done well. Not even Walsingham, when he was alive, could have arranged the flow of information more efficiently. Hardly have the first of the deputation’s attendants come straggling back from Essex House – to say they were barred at the door while the lords alone were allowed in, with just a single servant – than news comes, from the first of the nondescript men Cecil’s had posted all around London.
The lords are still inside the house – prisoners or hostages, effectively – but Essex and his friends are on the move. Cecil’s man could hear the crowds inside the courtyard calling for the deputies’ blood, and crying ‘To the court!’ Each one of us stiffens, imperceptibly, and Cecil jerks a command to one of his lieutenants. Orders will be going out to summon all available men from Westminster and the villages. But there is no denying, until the muster is complete, Whitehall is defended but poorly.
Several of the gentlemen around are putting hands to their swords, but the queen shakes her head to still them. ‘The grace of Him who placed me on this throne will defend me on it,’ she says clearly. But another one of those shabby men, who’d never have got past the guards without the Secretary’s pass, is whispering in his ear, and the sharpness of Cecil’s face does alarm me. The queen sees it too.
‘What is it? Quick, man.’
‘No, not that.’ He’d know we were all expecting the enemy at the gates. ‘They’ve gone to the City.’
Jeanne
8 February, midday
They must have gone the other way. But why, in God’s name – why not the court, why into the City? Surely they can’t think to take the Tower, with just a couple of hundred men?
‘They must be expecting more troops there.’ It was one of the younger officers who spoke, and the old clerk cried him down instantly.
‘Get along with you! The City’s always been queen’s territory. They don’t care for pretty faces and romantic battle cries, they just want things kept quiet enough they can go on making money.’
‘All the same, he must think he’ll get help there. There’s no other reason for heading east.’
‘Well, he must know whether he’s been promised help or not,’ another of the clerks said sensibly. I left them all squabbling there, and slipped away upstairs into my small chamber. A dreadful presentiment was beginning to take hold of me.
It wasn’t that I wanted the rebels to win – how could I? Right and safety lay only one way, with the queen and the Secretary. But absurdly, irrationally, something in me fought against the growing conviction his dream had been nothing but folly … What was I, I berated myself fiercely, a doting mother who calls everyone to praise her toddler’s spirit, even while she smacks him and takes away his toy?
The door was pushed ajar. The old clerk stood there, and his rheumy eyes looked at me sadly. ‘The boys have been out again,’ he said, ‘and one of them’s come back already. Essex is going towards the City.
‘He’s going towards the City and he’s crying out at every man he meets to join him, and hardly a one of them has. A couple more lords have brought a few retainers, but the City folk are pointing and laughing like it’s the parade on fairground day. The pity of it, lad, the pity. Oh, he’s wrong, wrong and dangerous. But all the same –’
Just then there was a noise like a rumble of thunder. We stared at each other, and ran back down to the courtyard, the clerk’s old feet stumbling on the way.
‘They’re putting barricades at Charing Cross. Essex won’t get to Whitehall easily.’ The court had put up its defences, and we were outside them. I suppose I wasn’t the only one to be struck by a sudden sense of vulnerability. Almost of hurt – they might have sent us to safety! – but I shoved that thought away.
‘Did you hear what he’s been saying?’ It was one of the younger scribes, shouldering his way up to us and speaking indignantly. ‘He’s been shouting out that the master has sold the country to the Spaniards. That he’s done a shabby deal, the Infanta will inherit the country.’
‘No one really believes that, lad,’ the old clerk said wearily. ‘And you’d best take care – no one can speak of her majesty’s death, unless it’s treasonably.’ There was a banging on the outer door, and the other of the venturesome pages tumbled in.
‘He’
s gone to Alderman Smythe’s house. No one knows why. But they’re carrying food and drink upstairs.’
‘All this fuss,’ someone called mockingly, ‘just for a dinner party!’ A titter of jeering laughter ran around the courtyard, and the old clerk and I looked at each other miserably.
Cecil
8 February, midday
They will make for the City; it’s always gratifying to see things work out as they were planned. But, if I’m honest, it is more than that: there must always be an element of doubt, no matter how carefully things have been handled, no matter how strong the assurances given. If I’m honest, it’s more even than that: when the trap that you have set springs shut, there is, there must be, a moment of fierce glee.
Gorges carried his argument that they couldn’t take both court and City, we knew that early. His meeting with Ralegh on the river: two cousins meeting in secret, each trying to convince the other to change sides, or that’s what it looked like. Where do you hide an acorn? In a forest. Where do you hide a real secret? Under a veil of pseudo-secrecy. The other plan, their first one, could really have been a danger: infiltrate the court with the lesser-ranking and less conspicuous men in the conspiracy; spread them out through every department of the palace, then move on a pre-arranged signal. A practicable idea, or nearly. But Gorges convinced them it would never work. He said what they needed to do, instead, was to confirm that there really would be support from Essex’s allies in the City. He knew that would inflame his lordship, of course, to suggest that there might be any bound to his knowledge, or his popularity. I expect he hoped also to get the allies’ names: he couldn’t be sure we had them already.
Of course, when we sent the lords to Essex this morning, it will have flushed him out like a partridge from its covey. He’ll have jumped to the conclusion we had a spy at his discussions, and it makes no matter he guessed rightly. When the truth works so well, there is no need to lie. Ralegh says their trouble is they’d been thinking too long, that dangerous enterprises never work that way. Well, it’s not been my experience, but there are different sorts of danger. That’s what he says, and there’s just enough of a similarity there that I’d trust him to judge Essex’s mentality.
The Girl in the Mirror Page 20
