The Girl in the Mirror

by Sarah Gristwood

  I told the soldier at the gatehouse I had a message for the Lieutenant’s deputy, and he nodded me through. I didn’t even have to say it was from Sir Robert – it was that easy. Across the bridge, and I could hear the sounds of feeding time from the menagerie below. In through the first gateway. To my left a cobbled road led between the two walls, lined with tidy offices, and I turned up it, walking purposefully. My heart was thumping as I could see his tower just ahead of me.

  But at the corner I received a check. The two storeys of the tower were set with small arched windows, but there was no sign of an entrance. Of course – I should have expected as much. Access only on the inmost side, for greater security.

  To turn right around might look suspicious, if from any of those windows someone was watching me. I ducked into a doorway. I could hear a burst of laugher from above – clerks, no doubt, while their supervisor was away – but none of the inner doors opened and after waiting a moment, trying not to think just how close he must be, I braced my shoulders and stepped out again – task done, message delivered – and walked with all the confidence I could muster back the way I’d come.

  This time, I took the path that lay straight ahead from the gatehouse, and the number of carts and people around told me this was the right way. A short distance on, there was an arch-way cut into the inner wall, and the heart of the Tower lay before me. But to the northeast, I saw with dismay, a solid mass of buildings lay around the foot of the Devlin Tower – what, did I have to find my way through them, and then maybe realise I was mistaken again, under the eyes of all the people working there? No – that can’t be right. Think, Jeanne. They’re not going to drag him in and out through wardrooms and kitchens and stables, are they? It wouldn’t be safe and it wouldn’t be proper – not with all those official visitors coming to see him, especially.

  I strained my eyes upwards – yes! A walkway ran around the inner wall. Now all I had to do was find the stairs up. But as I rounded a corner I stopped in dismay.

  In front of me was a platform, about breast high, made of crude new planks. I’d have guessed what it was for, even without the big baskets of sawdust that stood nearby. I’d never been one of those who flock to executions, but everybody knew that much. They’d scatter the sawdust thickly enough to soak up his blood, next day. The thought drove me on, as I raced up the staircase. The Devlin Tower lay right before me, only yards ahead, but two guards barred the door.

  For the first time I froze. In the two years since I’d first met Lord Essex I’d sailed through many barriers, but instinct and experience told me this one would be different. These would be intelligent men, hand picked and hard briefed that it was as much as their life was worth to let anyone in without the proper authority. And for the first time, too, it really came home to me that it might be all my life was worth, here, to be caught out in a lie.

  I stood there, paralysed, like a rabbit in a snake’s eye. Was one of the guards already beginning to stare at me? It was almost with relief that I caught a bustle of footsteps behind me and went down into a bow as a party of expensive cloaks swept by.

  ‘Jan! What in the world?’ said a voice I knew well. ‘Are you looking for me?’ It was Sir Robert, and he was holding out his hand, assuming I’d brought some message, urgently. But as his gaze hardened on my face his hand dropped, and he glanced over my shoulder with a flash of comprehension.

  I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. Either he understood, or he didn’t, and if not then I had no words to explain. Silent as I, he regarded me gravely, gesturing his companions to pass on. A finger and thumb massaged his forehead and briefly, the gesture jolted me back into the outside world, it was so familiar to me.

  The moment stretched on. His eyes found mine and, for the first time since I had known him, I looked straight back at him. Stared, really. If I’d learnt some things in the past weeks – learnt I was the stalking horse, the decoy – then somewhere I’d learnt, too, that the only way was to play the hand of cards they’d dealt you. To accept you would be used in the great lords’ plans, and use that knowledge to forward your own goals. To forge your own autonomy.

  He said something, half under his breath. It might have been, ‘I suppose I owe you that much.’ And then: ‘And after all, who knows?’ – as much to himself as to me.

  A quick crook of his finger brought one of the guards forward, but for a second I hardly understood what Sir Robert was telling him.

  ‘Ten minutes, nothing given and nothing taken away. Ten minutes and one of you – you’re the senior? then you – to stay.’

  Without another word to me, he turned down the stairway. I will never know whether he acted from compassion or calculation. Both, maybe. He was a man who’d learnt to use even his most private impulses in the service of his country. They’d got so much information out of Essex already, but this man of all others knew his lordship capable of surprise and there was always the chance he was a lemon they had not yet squeezed dry.

  It had been only a few days since I’d seen him in the courtroom, but the first thing I thought was that he’d changed. Perhaps it was just that I expected the nearness of death to have put some mark upon him – but it wasn’t that, precisely. It was something else, something I mistrusted, and I stared it in the face, his face, even as he was saying ‘Janny!’ He sounded surprised, but not too surprised; I think he sounded pleased, but I don’t know. I was too busy staring at the invisible enemy.

  I’d never realised how much I hated that saintly look. That glow, of the fool who dreams of martyrdom as a goal, not an outrage against their humanity. I’d never used the word hatred to myself, when I saw it on a preacher’s face of a Sunday. But I hated it when I saw it now. No wonder he hardly thought to ask what I was doing there. It seemed natural to him the whole world should come to admire his sanctity.

  ‘I wanted to see you again,’ I said lamely, conscious of the guard who had slipped in behind me. ‘Before …’

  ‘Before tomorrow, yes, of course. I’m glad to see you, Janny. I wish I could see all those I knew before, in the days of my vanity.’

  I couldn’t believe he’d said it. He sounded like one of those hellfire Puritan preachers, if there’s no one in authority around to sweep them away.

  ‘I mean’ – I said it brutally – ‘I wanted to see you before you die.’ I swear that just for a moment there was a flicker on his face, and I knew I had to fan it the way you do a tiny flame, before the fire has had a chance to catch. ‘I mean,’ I stumbled again, more gently, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that it ended this way.’

  ‘No! No, you mustn’t be sorry, Janny. I thank God for it every day. God knows what danger and harm it would have brought to the realm if we had succeeded. I didn’t understand. My folly and my vanity blinded me. My sins are more in number than the hairs upon my head, but the Lord saw to it that our intents went astray, and now Mr Ashton has shown me the right way. I am become another man.’

  A gust from the window ruffled the papers on his desk, and he turned to weight them, carefully. This was no prison cell they had him in but an apartment furnished adequately enough, if hardly with the grandeur he was used to.

  I looked at him in something like despair. I wished with all my heart I could be out of that room, up with the crows on the battlement if necessary, just to think what it was I needed to say. Why had I come here? What had I been hoping for – some sort of quietus? Some reassurance, if not that he was all right, then at least that I had not missed the chance to serve him in any way?

  Well, I had it now, didn’t I? Against all the odds, against all reason, here he was, telling me all was well with him, even though he was to die the next day. Die in the straw, like an ox in the shambles, to lie in cold earth and to rot … ‘No!’ I almost shouted it at him, and the guard half started forward. ‘I won’t let … It can’t be …’

  Not, I can’t let it happen. Not that, precisely. More, I cannot stop them swinging an axe into the flesh of your neck, just wh
ere your skin is whitest when your hair falls away. Your blood will pour out like wine from a fountain and I cannot stop it, even though I cannot bear to think that the sawdust will soak up all your glow and all your energy and all your fantasy.

  But I can try to stop you dying with a lie on your lips, the only lie that matters. I can try to stop you swearing that this is right, that you don’t want to feel the spring as it quickens, and the firm flesh of the next pretty maid to come your way, and eat strawberries and dream a future for your country. I can make you admit that life is the great gift of my God, or yours, or the God of your Papist allies, or even of your precious Abdy.

  He’s looking at me with the ghost of that gleaming smile of his, underneath the sanctity. I take heart from it. There must be something that can touch him. I gaze round the room again as if for help, as if the decent furnishings might offer me something irresistible with which to tempt him, but even if we were the palace itself, I know that trying to urge pleasures on him will not be the key. There is nothing martyrs love better than to wave the pleasures of the world away. Absurdly I found I was wishing Sir Robert were there, with all his long knowledge of Lord Essex. I know this man so little, really. I pushed the foolish thought away.

  The guards by the door are wooden-faced as toy soldiers, but I swear I could think they were urging me on. No one in this country really wants him to die – yes! That’s it.

  ‘But my lord, the country …’ Without conscious thought, the right word had come to me. I had the key in my hand now, and I would turn it remorselessly. ‘My lord, we need you. England needs you. We all know hard times lie ahead’ – even here, I couldn’t bring myself to name the queen’s death directly – ‘and there has to be someone with a vision, someone who can see beyond the everyday.’ Fleetingly I thought again of Sir Robert, but I stamped down the idea of disloyalty. ‘You say you’re not the man you were. Think of the ways the man you are now might find to serve her majesty!

  ‘My lord, you have to live – or at least, you have to try! If you fail, you fail, but at least then you will have done your real duty. My lord, is there nothing you can say? Is there no way?’

  I could feel something growing in him, as surely as shoots were growing under the ground. I tried again.

  ‘My lord, think of the horror of it – a civil war. My lord, think of the play.’ Richard II, and what can happen when the ruler is weak and the succession uncertain, but more than just the play’s message came flooding over me with that memory. I saw a slim brown figure, and a familiar face under actor’s paint. But I also saw the eagerness on the faces of the crowd at the Globe that day, and the smell of spiced ale on the damp wind, and the noise, and the frenzy. He felt it too, I knew he did. I had run out of words, but I stood there staring at him with a frantic intensity.

  In the midst of my outburst, he had half turned away. I could see he was tugging at something on his hand, but he would not look at me directly.

  ‘There is a ring – a ring that she once gave me.’ The queen’s ring, then. There could, here, only be one she. ‘She said it would always stand as a token of what there was between us. That it was a pledge I could call on, sure as money in the bank. I suppose’ – his face twisted in a spasm of self-mockery – ‘I must have been complaining of my poverty.

  ‘If you got it to Lady Scrope at the court, the lady Philadelphia, then maybe –’ Now he was the eager one. ‘Sister-in-law to the Lord Admiral – you’ll have seen her, surely?’

  I hadn’t, but I wouldn’t have said so for the world. Already the brief flame I’d kindled was fading. Lord Essex shrugged, and the gleam of energy in his face died away.

  ‘But it was a long time ago, that gift, and I expect her majesty only gave it because she didn’t want to give me money. She always found a way to say no gracefully.’

  ‘It’s worth a try! Anything is. Give it to me, my lord – I’ll get it to Lady Scrope, or else to her majesty.’ Eagerly I started forward, but the guard was in my way.

  ‘Easy, now, lad. Nothing given, nothing taken, that’s what Sir Robert said. I’m sorry, my lord.’

  Essex made a graceful little gesture with his hands, slipping the ring back on his finger. ‘No matter, soldier. You’re just doing your job. There, now, Janny. I hope you’re satisfied. I tried, didn’t I?’

  I stared at him, speechless, afraid the bile that was rising in my throat was going to spew out of me. It wasn’t only the disappointment, it was the guilt washing over me in waves like the tide of the sea, a wild reverse of feeling so abrupt it made me dizzy. What had I done? What gave me the right? He’d been content to die and had I taken that comfort away?

  ‘You see, Janny?’ He was speaking to me as to a child, gently. ‘When you walk out of that door, nothing goes with you, except the love that made you come to visit me.’ There was the faintest possible emphasis on door, and from behind the guard’s shoulder, he shot his eyes to the window, meaningfully.

  I don’t know how I got out of the room in the end. The guard helped me, unwittingly.

  ‘My lord – I’m sorry – the bell will be ringing shortly. This lad had best be on his way. They’ll be locking the gates,’ he added in explanation, as we both looked at him blankly.

  Lord Essex half held out his hand to me, than let it drop. Heaven forbid the guard should get any ideas that way.

  Back along the walkway, and down the short flight of steps. Don’t rush so as to draw attention, but it’s safe to move fast and openly. Past the scaffold with barely a glance and across the green, just another visitor at the end of the day. It’s only as I approach the inner gateway that my pace slows. This is the dangerous moment, but there’s a steady trickle of workmen and delivery vehicles heading home, and that will help. The luck is with me – there’s a vintner with a load of barrels trying to get in, the fool, and the guards are fully occupied swearing at him that the Tower is closed for the day. I lounge in the lee of an empty cart, glance around as if I’m cursing the delay, then shake my head and turn determinedly to my right, up the alley between the walls, shaking my head as if to say, Better things to do than hang around here all day … I feel as if someone’s drawn a target on my back, like the circles on the butt they use to practise archery. I’m braced for the shout, the ‘Hey, you, what are you doing?’ but no one tries to stop me.

  There are lamps in the alley, but it’s easy enough to dodge between them. The patch of deep shadow at the foot of Devlin’s Tower reaches out to embrace me. Eagerly I stare upwards, where a crack of the window is still open to the night air – what did he do, complain of a smoking chimney?

  How am I supposed to let him know I’m here? I can’t risk a shout. A bubble of hysterical laughter rises in my throat. Perhaps this will be the end of the adventure – I’ll just stand here all night, silently, until they open the gates again in the morning to let in the spectators to see Lord Essex die.

  Like a gift from nowhere, the memory of that June day in the gardens with him comes back to me. The Lord alone knows what sort of dove’s call I can make, but I give it a try. ‘Whoo-hoo …’

  The sound that answers me seems loud as a shot. It’s the chink of metal on stone. It seems as if every door in the alley must open and men come out to see what’s happening, but no, I’m alone in the darkness as I grope around the cobbles frantically. Oh God, if there were one thing more absurd than to stand all night waiting, it would be to fumble until dawn, fruitlessly.

  Thank Him, thank Him, the ring is there under my trembling fingers. I look at it almost incredulously, plain wrought gold surrounding a dark carved head. It seems as though it should be more extraordinary. With the token clutched safe in my hand I speed, openly this time, back towards the gate where the guard is standing, key in hand. Good naturedly, he waits a moment.

  ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’ I grimace, and clutch my chest, melodramatically, coating a layer of fake panic onto the real terror below. As I walk more slowly across the drawbridge, I hear the Tower shut be
hind me. Safely past the outer gate and the minute I am out of sight, I’m running as if my own life depended on it.

  I’m not even sure why I’m running – don’t know how much faith I put in his romantic story, the kind of thing lovers tell themselves at night, that fades in the cold light of day. But it isn’t day, it is night and I am running: running for my own salvation, running for all those others I’d not been able to save. Running to be set free.

  When the first stitch comes in my side, I slow down enough to think more calmly. Of course you don’t run from the Tower to Whitehall, not if you’re in a hurry. There are steps down to the river, just nearby, and with luck there’ll still be a waterman waiting for trade, to take me the direct way.

  There is a waterman – a sullen fellow, but burly enough, I am pleased to see. He hardly waits until I am well in the boat before pulling out onto the river, but almost at once I can see the reason for his alacrity.

  ‘What is it? Why are we going so slowly?’ I can hear the faint rhythmic splash as the oars dip in and out of the waves, but we seem to be labouring only to stand still. ‘What is it,’ I try again, ‘the tide?’ He only grunts in reply; the fellow seems barely to speak English, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to let a fare get away.

  I sit in the prow, in an agony of frustration, every muscle as tense as if I could push the boat upriver that way. Dear God, long minutes have passed already, and even the creek mouth where the Fleet joins the Thames is still an eternity away.

  I have to sit it out that far – by now, they would have locked the City gates for the night and once inside, I could be trapped till break of day. But the minute we’re past Blackfriars and the mouth of Fleet, the minute we’re outside the walls … What time do they retire for the night at court? Surely not early. For several long minutes more I endure, eyes fixed on the eddies in the dark water, almost glad of the cold for taking my mind off the way that time is ticking away. But it is no use, I can bear it no longer.