The Girl in the Mirror

by Sarah Gristwood

  ‘Let me out – onto those steps over there. Let me out, I say!’ He only grunts again, and in desperation I make as if to seize an oar. This time he curses at me – I assume it’s a curse – in some uncouth language. Hibernian, maybe. But he is pulling over to the bank at last, and holding out his hand for money. It takes most of what I have in my purse, and still I leave him shouting after me. Up the dark lane between two tall merchant houses. It is as muddy as a ploughed field; I slip, and go down hard on one knee, into the drain running down to the river, with the smell of filth rising up to me.

  Into the broad street, with only the chink of lights behind shutters to keep me company. Run a little, walk a little. The cobbles strike hard through the thin soles of my shoes, and the soaked leather is rubbing me.

  Run a little, walk a little, feet like sponges, pierced with burning wires, breath coming sobbingly. Sometimes I think that I hear footsteps behind me, but whenever I stop to listen, the wind carries them away. Left onto Fleet Street, past Essex House; can I turn in there, and find someone to help me? The thought of the explanations makes my heart quail within me. And in any case, all London knows that Lady Essex has spent days trying to get into the queen’s presence to plead her husband’s case, and been turned away as if she were a nobody. They are broken reeds there – more broken than me.

  There are the walls of Burghley House looming up on the other side, and I know an impulse to turn in there, throwing my problem into the lap of the old clerk. Or Sir Robert himself, maybe. I snarl at my own folly. This is a game I have to play alone, since there is no other player on exactly the same side as me.

  Past the walls of the new house Sir Robert is having built; past York Place, where I’d visited Lord Essex that day. Charing Cross, and the straight run to the palace lies ahead, with the tilt-yard to the side. For a single second, the smell of rosemary comes back to me. But I wrench my wits away: now for the hardest part of the journey. By day the palace is like the village square, but at night it withdraws into its own privacy. And getting into the palace is one thing – it will be another to get anywhere near the queen’s majesty.

  The guard at the gate was as solid as an ox, and as impossible to push out of the way. I suppose it wasn’t the first time he’d heard a lunatic saying they wanted to see her majesty. And every frantic word, as I pleaded and protested, made him more determined not to let me even as far as the outer courtyards, where every scullion can go quite freely.

  Perhaps if I’d said at the start, coolly and confidently, that I was here on an errand for the Secretary? Too late for that now – the trick had failed me when I needed it most – and, sweat-stained, begrimed and teary, I hadn’t realised how my looks would be against me. It was with some relief that the man turned away from me to bow low to a little cortège approaching.

  ‘You’re so set on seeing the queen – perhaps you’ll make do with one of her ladies?’ he said sarcastically. True words spoken in jest: I ducked under his restraining arm and stepped in front of the litter, peering in at the window eagerly. Heavens be praised – it wasn’t one of her pretty junior maids, out for a kiss and a compliment, but useless for anything of gravity. Lined, experienced and haughty, a face not as old as the queen’s but almost as shrewd looked back at me.

  ‘My lady – I beg you – it’s urgent, truly, truly.’ The guard gave a click of exasperation and reached for me, only to be checked by a jewelled imperious finger.

  ‘Urgent for whom, young man? For you, or for me?’ Clear, uninflected, authority-packed, it was the voice of the true great lady.

  ‘For the queen’s majesty. And for Lord Essex,’ I added desperately.

  Her hard old gaze sharpened on me. ‘I think I will hear more of this. No’ – to the protesting guard – ‘you’ve done your duty, I’m sure, but this is on my responsibility. Follow me, young man. And all the rest of you, wait here for me.’ Her heels tapping on the paving stones as she set off across the courtyard towards a doorway, she paid me no more attention than if I’d been a dog at her heels, and I followed just as obediently.

  ‘Now then – first things first. Who exactly might you be?’

  ‘I am – I am Sir Robert’s man.’ Invoking his name here and now would surely come back to haunt me, but I’d do it anyway … But I must have waited too long, for like a hawk she was on to my hesitancy.

  ‘Indeed? Then doubtless you’ll know that the Secretary is even now with her majesty.’ Caught in my own trap I just gaped at her, my eyes welling, shamefully. Thank God I hadn’t said that he’d just sent me. ‘Come now – what’s the real story?’

  So I told her – or told her the bare bones. I couldn’t think what else to do, and perhaps her habit of command had laid a spell on me.

  ‘Let me see this famous ring.’ It looked dull and old-fashioned in her hand, and she eyed it dispassionately. ‘You can leave this with me.’ I must have started forward to snatch it back again, because a flash from her eyes stopped me.

  ‘What did you think I was going to do? Usher you into the queen’s presence?’

  ‘My lord said – I was to give it to the lady Philadelphia – Lady Scrope,’ I corrected hastily. I had the feeling I had startled her.

  ‘For Lady Scrope, is it? Then you can certainly entrust it to me.’ She turned her head and the flickering candlelight showed hair that still held a glint of red in the grey. Did she mean? – she must do – I gazed at her dumbly. Her tone sharpened, as if her patience were running out.

  ‘I said, you can leave this to me.’ A gleam of amusement, like winter sunshine, softened her face momentarily. ‘You don’t, after all, have very much choice. A word from me will have you thrown out into the gutter, or worse. And without me, you or your precious ring have so little chance of reaching the queen tonight, you might walk into the kingdom of heaven more easily.’

  She looked at my face, and relented just a little. ‘I dare say in the end you’ll understand that you’ve not done too badly. I assure you I will do what is right, and you’ve fulfilled your promise, as nearly as might be. Neither you nor his lordship were really pinning too many hopes on this, I trust?’ She held up the ring, contemptuously.

  I shook my head. I knew there was an ambiguity in her words, but great waves of weariness were washing over me, churning my gut as though I were on the sea. I’d been chasing a chimera through the streets of London. I wished I could go to sleep, and the thought of waking did not interest me.

  The old lady – I still didn’t know her name, but her air of authority made her old to me – nodded her head sharply, as if satisfied, and gathered her skirts to sweep out of the room. ‘Go home, child,’ she said, not unkindly.

  I jerked out a bow, and stumbled after her back towards the gate. I was not going home – I was not sure where home would be. I was going, if I could find a better waterman to take me, back to the Tower, to find a corner where I could crouch down for the rest of the night, and wait for the events of the next day.

  Katherine, Countess of Nottingham

  24 February, night

  It’s done – no it isn’t, that’s the trouble. I still could take the ring to her majesty. No decision’s been taken, not one thing has happened yet, to stop me doing just that – or nothing outside my head. I tell myself it’s too late at night to disturb the queen, but of course that’s just idiocy. It’s the fear that’s gripping my guts and rising in my throat; oh, not at dealing with the boy, that was nothing, I hardly saw him for the anger that was in me. What, Essex get away with it, would he?

  The fear is at what I have done. Am doing. Will have to go on doing, every hour and every minute through this night until dawn has come and I know the guards will have brought Essex from his cell and there’s no doing anything different, for anybody.

  I plump down onto a stool and wrap my arms around my belly. So, what, I change my mind? I put everything I’ve worked for away? I take the ring to the queen and then what, pray? Do I really think she’ll call the whole thing off, for a piece
of trump-ery jewellery? Always assuming the boy’s story was true anyway.

  All that would happen is it would make tonight harder for her, give her a heavier load of regret to carry. And she’d blame me for putting that on her, I know she would. Anyone knows that, who was around when they forced her – when Charles helped to force her – to sign the death warrant for the Queen of Scots. I’ll never forget the day they told her that had been done, and her shrieking out one minute that she’d lost her sister-queen, and the next, that Mary should have been dealt with secretly.

  And if she did call it off, for God’s sake, then what about Essex? Is he just quietly going to go away, and cause no more trouble to anybody? No: this is, it is, my duty. But when I take a gulp of wine it’s like vinegar in my mouth and I’m shaking as if I had the sweat. My cold turned to an ague, maybe. I wouldn’t give the ring to Philadelphia, for her to decide, even if she were at court. This one is for me. Only I thought I’d done enough already; but what had I done, really? A word to a player, a hint it would be as well Lord Essex were encouraged to show his hand quickly. Later, a present to that same actor, but what of that? His father served mine faithfully. And he’s a decent, sensible man, who’d see why this was necessary.

  My old nurse always said a secret untold would turn sour in your belly. Years ago, I’d have to make her words into a goblin story to take the fright away for Philadelphia, but who is there now to tell a story for me? Think; think of something else – what her majesty should wear these next days. Not crimson, no, nothing red, blood-red. The blackwork sleeves, perhaps. The fine needlework reminds me of the Queen of Scots and her endless embroidery, but that’s just an irrelevancy. No – nothing funereal. The white knitwork kirtle with the pink tufts, or the carnation and white? No, the beaver colour with green she had last winter. It wouldn’t do for her to look too gay.

  I want – who do I want? Charles? This would be even harder for him than for me. It’s foolish, at my age, but the thought of my parents washes over me. My father, not as he was at the end, doting on his young mistress, but how he used to be. It’s too silly, at my age, but I feel more like a child now than I have for fifty years – a child, or an old lady. It’s silliest of all, when you consider the facts, but do you know what I wish? I wish Philadelphia were here to comfort me.

  The ring is still lying there on the table. I feel as if it is looking at me. Into my box, with my children’s first teeth, and a lock of the queen’s hair, and a piece of unicorn’s horn that Robert Dudley once gave me. I will, I must, get rid of it soon – into the river, maybe. But not right now. I’ve done all I can do for now, and it feels as though the effort may be the death of me.

  Jeanne

  24 February, night

  It was the longest night of my life. Or maybe the shortest, I don’t know. As I bowed myself out behind the tapping of the dowager’s heels – past the porter, who pretended hardly to see me – I suppose I thought the night’s adventures were at an end. My whole being was focused on the Tower. Like a dog shut out behind a door I yearned to be near him – not from love (I understand that word better now) but more as though I wanted an answer. I needed to tell him that I had done his bidding, that I had done my best. I wanted him to tell me he knew it, that I wasn’t guilty. That I was free. Oh, I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but if I could get as near as possible, if I could spend myself just that bit further, then even the pain itself might ease the tightness in my chest to some slight degree.

  I hadn’t enough money left for boat fare in my purse, though this time the tide would have been with me, and the river passage would have been quick and easy. I hardly remember the walk for I think I’d passed beyond weariness by then, but in the end I reached Blackfriars and the western edge of the City. My room wasn’t far away, but I could no more have roused the landlady, made some glib explanation, than I could have made conversation with a red savage, if one had appeared in front of me. Besides, every muscle – every clenching ache from my shoulders through my spine – told me I had to be by the Tower when dawn broke.

  How to get around the City walls? To circle up through the north, and in the dark without a light … My heart sank within me. Down by the water, there’d be cargo boats moving, to take advantage of the tide. If I tried them all, surely I’d find one who’d give me a lift to the City’s eastern wall; if not for the few coins I had left, then for very pity. The fourth boat I tried had been carrying hides, and it smelt like a tallows merchant, but the owner, though silent, must have been kindly. He let me off by an old water stair, and told me as long as I went quietly, no one was likely to see.

  I’d planned to huddle down in some doorway, but in the end, the cold defeated me. Towards the small hours of the morning a dank wind came up off the river that seemed to stab to my very bones. I didn’t dare go far, but if only there were somewhere I could get out of the air. Behind loomed the great bulk of All Hallows, and though they’d have locked the body of the church for sure, there might be a porch. Maybe even a bench where I could stretch out, without the chill of a stone floor striking through me.

  I don’t know which was more comforting – to be out of the wind, or the presence of sanctity. Sunday mornings with Mrs Allen, and feeling the sun warm through my clothes as we came out into the daylight, after. Christmas, when the church was ablaze with lit candles; and the well-known words of the litany. I hadn’t thought of these things for a time, but now I mouthed them over, telling each sonorous familiar phrase like – like my grandmother, in the first part of the century, before all the changes, might have told over the beads of the rosary.

  Heretically, my mind roamed over the church as it must once have been, before the old queen’s father had the saints and the painted statues stripped away. I’d seen some of what had been saved from the wreckage – the odd torn page come up for private sale, or two Books of Hours in Cecil’s library. Calendars and offices, painted borders of poppies and pansies, and tiny figures disporting themselves among wreaths of ivy. Prayers to the Virgin, the queen of heaven robed in blue, enthroned with her baby on her knee, or seated on the grass like a simple country girl while the angel came to whisper in her ear. Her long gold hair, and the faint flush on her cheeks. My mother, Maman, letting me help comb her long hair, and the feel of daisies in my fat fist and my mother seated on the grass, pointing out the pimpernels and speedwells to me …

  I hugged the cloak, the thick black cloak with the Cecil insignia, more tightly around me. I wondered if it had been a bright scarlet, if it would feel any the warmer. There was something about the feel of the wool under my fingers, something that made it less familiar and ordinary. I heard a voice in my head – could it be my father’s, speaking from my memory? ‘Here, Jeanne, feel my cloak. Now feel this silk – do you feel the difference? It’s beautiful, hein? Fit for the nobility.’

  The press of the wooden bench under my back was like the feel of the deck as we lay, on the boat that brought us to England, Jacob and I. I had taken care not to think about these things for years. It was as if the different parts of my life had been like the compartments in a garden knot, and now the different plants in each were breaking through and running riot inside me. As if the new space inside my head, the space that effort and exhaustion had made, were being filled by something both foreign and familiar.

  Perhaps there’d once have been a statue of the Virgin, looking down above my head. Perhaps, in the darkness, there was one still, watching over me. I thought of how small a part women had played in my life, and for the first time I saw that as an oddity. Maman gone so early, Mrs Allen who had never managed to play a mother’s part to me. For a moment I thought of the old queen, absurdly. I had not known much of the kindness of women, and I hadn’t known how to be kind to myself. Here in the empty dark I faced the knowledge squarely and without pity. The nearest thing I’d found had been in a man who knew what it was to play a woman’s part. I wished I knew where in the city Martin Slaughter was this night, and whether he was thinking of
Lord Essex. Or of me.

  In all those years alone in the world, I had always kept fear at bay. Too much feeling had been a luxury, but now terror washed over me. Men had died screaming for less than I had done, and who was there who would save me? I thought Sir Robert had always wished me well, but I knew that he had other games to play. I thought of Martin Slaughter, but what would he be able to do if the old lady gave me over to the authorities? He was no all-powerful lord but a cog in the machine, like me. And what price even a lord’s power, today?

  To think of Lord Essex brought no comfort. He was already a ghost to me and not because he was to die the next day but because the man I’d imagined I’d been close to had never been alive, not really. But thinking of Martin Slaughter did bring some relief. A kind of warmth, a feeling that beyond this nightmare of the dark there would again be the warm ordinary light of day. Cog he might be, but he seemed to pick his own path through the world, and to do it surely. There were lessons I could learn from Martin Slaughter, things that he might teach me. In the silence, it came to me I’d already begun to learn and this fear was part and parcel of the tutor’s fee I had to pay.

  I saw it, like a pattern laid out in front of me. I saw that everything that had happened had worked out as the government – as Sir Robert – had planned it to. England would keep its good order, and how could I be sorry? I knew what bad order could do. I’d tried to disrupt the pattern but I doubt I’d succeeded, and it didn’t matter. I’d done what I was supposed to, I’d been true to what was in my nature, and that was something, too. You can graft old apple stock onto new, you can train pears into fan shapes against a wall, but any gardener knows in the end plants grow as they have to, and any attempt to thwart that need will fail eventually. My head would always be with the Secretary, but I could no longer pretend I didn’t have a heart as well. If I had a future after this night’s work then perhaps I could start again and live as I was meant to. Live, in the understanding that other people had their own life’s vision too.