The Girl in the Mirror

by Sarah Gristwood

  It has been a day of revelations. To Essex, too, most grievously. He will understand now what he has done. He’ll understand now what he is – and what I am, maybe. Or maybe not – perhaps it is too much to hope that at last, after all the long years, he’ll understand what harm and what good we would each bring to our country. He will never understand how much we have in common – how close I come to understanding his lurches of spirit, his collapses into uncertainty. And what does his understanding matter anyway?

  But after all those long years – after the attacks, and the approaches, the insults, and the silences – after all those years when my tongue has been stilled from saying what I really feel, by prudence, by tact, by suitability, after all those years, I feel as if I have been set free.

  PART V

  Gardener: ‘Hold thy peace.

  He that hath suffered this disordered spring

  Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.’

  The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, William Shakespeare

  My tale was heard, and yet it was not told;

  My fruit is fall’n, and yet my leaves are green;

  My youth is spent, and yet I am not old;

  I saw the world, and yet I was not seen:

  My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun;

  And now I live, and now my life is done.

  from ‘Elegy for Himself’ by Chidiock Tichborne

  (written in the Tower on the night before his execution)

  Jeanne

  Wednesday, 11 February 1601

  The rebellion had been on a Sunday; on Monday the proclamation of Essex’s treason was printed, and Tuesday it was the word on every street. Translations of all the important documents would be sent to every court in Europe that seemed disposed to pity Essex; that was why they needed me, no time for plants today. Wednesday the peers were sent for – only they could try one of their own – and instructions were being prepared for every preacher in the land, what they should say in the sermon on Sunday. How they should make clear Essex’s guilt, and give thanks for the preservation of her majesty. But the mood in London was subdued – and at court too, I was guessing. When Sir Robert had finally come home for a few hours’ respite, his grim face and bloodshot eyes didn’t look like those of a man who’d won a victory.

  ‘Does anyone get tried for treason – and then get off?’ I tried to sound idly curious, but the old clerk’s eyes were full of pity as he looked at me.

  ‘Never, lad. Don’t even think of it. A “trial” is just what they say. What they mean is a demonstration, to prove to everyone he’s guilty and wrap the ends up neat and legal. And besides, what’s Lord Essex going to say? That he disobeyed the queen’s direct order and went waving swords around the capital just to pass the time of day?’

  ‘He said he believed his life was threatened. He said he never meant any harm to the queen’s majesty.’

  ‘He said, he said. That’s always been Lord Essex’s trouble, he’s a sight too fond of saying. And don’t you forget’ – this time, his eyes were sterner, and he wagged an admonitory finger at me – ‘who was it he said wanted to murder him? The master, that’s who. I know it’s hard, but don’t forget where your loyalties lie.’

  I bent down over my pen again, but the old clerk hadn’t finished with me. ‘You know what the old master, Lord Burghley, said? In a Council meeting, it was, and he took out his Bible and showed Essex the passage. “Men of blood shall not live out half their days.” What’s Essex now? Not long past thirty, and three score and ten the good book says.’

  I crouched down lower over the book in front of me, but my hand was too unsteady. There was nothing I could add without spoiling the page, and now even that was swimming before me. I mumbled something about needing to piss, and left the room hastily.

  I suppose, like a child, I’d been still hoping it wouldn’t happen, that I’d wake up and find it was all a dream. You’d think a child who’d seen what I’ve seen would know better – but it had all seemed so civilised, at the end, as they left Essex House that night. I suppose I hoped that meant the violence was over, for ever and a day – even while I worked on the papers they’d use to kill him, oh so civilly. When I’d stumbled out of the clerk’s room and puked my guts up in the privy, I went to the steward and told him I was sick. I looked bad enough that he believed me; or maybe I wasn’t the only one sick those days. I went back to my lodging house, where the landlady pretended to be thankful to see me. But she wanted to talk it all over, of course, to get the gossip from Burghley House hot and spicy, and it was only by pleading a fever, and the danger of infection, that I got away. Perhaps it really was a fever: I threw myself down on my bed, and let the shaking take me.

  They gave me two days’ grace and the weekend as well before Monday morning, but then the steward sent a messenger, early. There were piles of papers needed translating; the lawyers, examining scores of the rebels, were producing more and more statements. Unless I was really gravely sick – and the tone said, I’d better not be – then I should come into work at once. The trial of Lord Essex was to take place on Thursday.

  I walked to the great house in a kind of trance. Twice I saw a brown head I thought I recognised, and that was the one thing that could rouse me. Or the turn of a shoulder that for a second I thought spelled Martin Slaughter, but it wasn’t he. I suppose it was no surprise that an actor who’d taken part in that Richard II might find it prudent to be out of town these days – even an actor who had insurance. Even one who had done service to the men, and women, in authority. Accidents happen, at times like the present. If a man of no great name is snatched up by the system, it may not always be convenient to release him easily. The manager of the company had been brought in for questioning, though to everyone’s surprise he had been set free.

  But I looked for a brown head anyway.

  Thursday, 19 February 1601

  I thought at first it would be like the last hearing – then I saw it wasn’t. This was terrifying, the more so for the grandeur of the place, Westminster Hall, and from the cramped upper chamber where the clerks huddled, I could see light falling the way it does in church, and snarling stone beasts, and roof timbers that must have been old when this queen’s grandfather crossed the sea.

  Two of our clerks were joshing with the Westminster boys, and they, enjoying their role of host, made no bones about opening up flasks of ale, as if they were settling down to a play. But I clung like death to my share of the tiny window, my fingers gripping the stone. Craning, I could just about see the judges on a bench below the dais chair, and the peers lining up on either side of them, to make three sides of the square. The doors were flung open and they led in the two earls, Essex and Southampton. The commoners would be tried with far less ceremony.

  In front of them paced a uniformed officer carrying – I saw it with a twist in the guts – an axe, its blade turned outward and away from them. They kissed each other’s hands and embraced – of course, in the Tower they’d have been held separately. He was dressed well, as I saw with an odd sense of relief, and looking around him proudly. I could see Cecil’s brother, the new Lord Burghley, among the peers, but there was no sign of the Secretary.

  They listened to the indictment against them. ‘Do you plead Guilty or Not Guilty?’

  ‘Not Guilty.’

  Sir Henry Yelverton was speaking first, sonorously: ‘… very rebelliously to disinherit the queen of her Crown and dignity … my Lord of Essex can no way excuse nor shadow this, his rebellious purpose, nor turn action to any other intent … a man’s own conceit and an aspiring mind to wish honour …’ He wondered they didn’t blush to be so forward as to stand their trial without confession; he might have been telling off a child in the nursery.

  The Attorney General came next, detailing every gift, every office Lord Essex had had of her majesty. ‘But now in God’s most just judgement, he of his earldom shall be Robert the Last; that of a kingdom thought to be Robert the First …’

>   That was to suggest he’d wanted the crown himself, and didn’t he, really? That was the thought we’d all tried to suppress, that was the thing no one until now would say. The other clerks applauded the hit, as if it were a mock duel in the sporting gallery.

  But this was a game Lord Essex, too, could play. The Attorney General was acting the orator, he said, and abusing their lordships’ minds with slanders. Could he and Lord Southampton not answer the charges as they heard them, or they might not remember properly.

  I didn’t understand; I had to understand. I looked up frantically, and found the old clerk peering over me.

  ‘They have to answer all the charges together, at the end, one by one and in the right order. They’re not allowed to write them down, either. I know, I know, but in treason trials, it’s always done that way.’

  The examinations continued; the men who’d egged Essex on. Not blaming him now, precisely, but trying desperately to suggest it was all a misunderstanding and they at least had meant no harm, whatever those above them in rank might secretly have planned. Francis Bacon was one of the leaders of the prosecution, and he spoke especially eloquently. One Ferdinando Gorges deposed that the rebels’ plans had been laid three months and more, and told of a meeting where information was exchanged, between himself and his cousin Walter Ralegh. I could see Lord Essex’s face grow pale, and then fiery. He demanded Gorges should be called before him, and asked the court ‘to consider who they be that testify this against me. They are men within the danger of the Law, and as such speak with a desire to live, but I think they have much to answer for between God and their souls and me.’

  All day it went on, until I felt as if my brain were floating away from my body, though when someone tried to offer me the ale flask, I pushed it away. Then a name roused me – or perhaps it was the hiss through his teeth of the old clerk above me. Yes, that was it … Cecil’s name again, and from behind a screen our master himself stepped forward, theatrically.

  He can’t have known it would come to this – could he? – but he was speaking as well as if he’d conned his speech in play. Or perhaps, as he stood opposite Essex at last, he was saying the things he’d waited all their lives to say.

  ‘The difference between you and me is great; for I speak in the person of an honest man, and you, my lord, in the person of a traitor. The pre-eminence is yours, but I have innocence, truth of conscience and honesty to defend me. I protest before God, I have loved your person and justified your virtues. I told her majesty that your afflictions would make you a fit servant for her, attending but a fit time to move her majesty to call you to the court again. And had I not seen your ambitious affections inclined to usurpation, I would have gone on my knees to her majesty to do you good; but you have a wolf’s head in a sheep’s garment.’ His voice was shaking slightly.

  I’d almost missed the accusation that had moved the master so deeply. Essex claimed Sir Robert had said to one of his fellow councillors … that no one in the world but the Infanta of Spain had the right to the Crown of England? It sounded more than unlikely. But Cecil was falling on his knees, and demanding that they fetch the councillor – Sir William Knollys, it was – and that he shouldn’t be warned what the matter was but fetched out of her majesty’s presence if necessary. That they should tell the queen if she would not send Sir William, then he, Cecil, would rather die at her foot.

  It was Sir Robert as I’d never seen him before, flamboyant as Essex himself, but speaking with a terrible sincerity. It was as if a quiet brook had burst its banks. As if we’d never seen him clearly before.

  Sir William came, looking flustered, as well he may. Yes, he remembered the conversation, about that banned book on the succession, and the Secretary had just been saying what impertinence in the author, to place the claim of the Infanta so high … Lord Essex flushed scarlet as Cecil turned on him again.

  ‘I stand for loyalty, which I never lost. You stand for treachery, wherewith your heart is possessed. I have said the King of Scots is a competitor, and I have said the King of Spain is a competitor, and you, I have said, are a competitor. You would depose the queen. You would be King of England …

  ‘I beseech God to forgive you for this open wrong done unto me, as I do openly pronounce, I forgive you from the bottom of my heart.’

  Essex was rallying. ‘And I, Mr Secretary, do clearly and freely forgive you with all my soul, because I mean to die in charity.’

  The peers went out for half an hour, and their return was anti-climactic, except for the ceremony. All twenty-five of them, from the lowest in rank upwards, placed their left hand on their right breast and said ‘Guilty’. Not that anyone expected them to say differently.

  The Lord High Steward faced the earls, where they still stood proudly. ‘You must go to the place from whence you came and there remain during her majesty’s pleasure, from thence to be drawn on a hurdle through London streets, and so to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged, bowelled, and quartered. Your head and quarters to be disposed of at her majesty’s pleasure and so God have mercy on your soul.’

  A minute ago my lord Essex had said he knew it was no time to jest, but he cracked one all the same. That in life his poor quarters had been at her majesty’s service all over the world; and it was only fitting they should still be so in death. He declared that never would any man die more cheerfully.

  The blade of the axe was turned towards them as they paced out, firmly, to be walked to the Tower. One phrase he’d used was sticking in my mind. ‘I owe God a death,’ he’d said. I didn’t understand it, but it made a kind of protest in me.

  Cecil

  Thursday, 19 February, night

  Of course it’s long dark when I get home, and the torch boy dares make a grimace of incredulity when nonetheless I turn towards the garden. But I employ no stupid children in my house: he looks again, and realises this is not the day to flout me. Just as well – out of the savagery in my breast tonight I could tell the steward to order him whipped, and I could do it gladly. But I am a civilised man – all I do, when once the door is unlocked and we’re out in the faint moon, is to take the torch from the boy’s hand and order him away. At least if I stumble in the darkness there will be no one to see.

  The crunch of the gravel under my feet sounds loudly on the still air. I pick a path less with my eyes than with my memory. But the very forms of the plants are different in the darkness – a flowerbed bled away into shadows, a bush grown into a bogey – and the strangeness, as much as the quiet, begins to soothe my ragged nerves. Forgive me, would he? Every soul under God has need of forgiveness in the end, but for what I have done against Essex, let no soul here on earth judge me.

  My eyes are growing accustomed now, and I can make out the harsh straight line of the clipped hedges of rosemary. I crouch down, settle the stem of the torch into the earth, like a child making a sandcastle, and brush the flat of my hands over the crisp spikes, though the air is too cold to set the scent free, and I have to crush the needles between my fingers to carry it away with me.

  The flame of the torch flickers on a clump of snowdrops, just beginning to drop their heads: there’ll be daffodils here later. I press further, delicately, with the palms of my hands and the sharp spears of their first folded buds press back at me. After the daffodils, the fritillaries, still under the earth: a garden in winter is like a coded message that only a gardener can read clearly. I press down on the earth again, and well tilled though it is – my labourers know their work – a mixture of clod and pebble meets me. Essex and his ilk were always fond of picturing the Cecils, the pen gents, as new men, themselves as the ancient and honourable aristocracy, but this is older than either of us. A garden is about the future and the past too: always has been, always will be.

  The chill of the earth is seeping into my bones: they’ll be surprised when I go back into the house with my knees all muddy, like a schoolboy. We are finding new ways to label and define our plants: will we ever be able to see huma
ns differently? To look at Essex, and see not just a catalogue of virtues corrupted into vices, but a different compact of possibilities? To say that, just as a garden has its exotics and its native wildflowers both, its clipped neat hedges and its flowery meads, so people can be one way or be another and to be other does not have to mean to be at enmity? In the garden a fountain spurts water from a hidden jet, and we aren’t up in arms at the deception – instead we exclaim at the novelty.

  If my father were here, he’d say that the moonlight had got into my brain. Now he is dead I’m having a new house built for myself across the Strand, and I wonder if, when I move there, his voice will be with me as frequently. My father would say that the only change is decline and the only future is eternity. That God has ordained the order of things, and the fantasy of improving it is as impious as the attempt to destroy. God and the queen love unity. So do the people, the godly. It is only those with malicious and private purpose who seek to corrupt and destroy what is manifest so clearly. Better to hold my mind to the now and the necessary. I have won a victory today, and if I feel I bared my heart to the whole court, I did no more than what was planned and necessary. I brush the earth from my hands as I move back to the house, turning my thought to Mr Abdy Ashton.

  It is true, tares have to be torn up, or they would choke the garden. My father would have said it, and my gardeners would agree. But the battle between thistles and garden flowers is not personal. Was it personal, with Essex and me?

  Katherine, Countess of Nottingham

  Friday, 20 February 1601

  They’d have killed Charles as well as Cecil if they’d reached the court, and they were all set to storm the court until Gorges turned the idea away. Gorges – I wonder, now. Ralegh’s cousin, isn’t he? But too many cooks haven’t spoiled this broth so far: it takes warp and weft to weave a cloth, anyone can tell you that much, or anyone who’s worked with fabrics. We will not need to speak of this: if Cecil still has any games afoot with Gorges he can certainly play them out without any help from me.