The Girl in the Mirror

by Sarah Gristwood

  You are always close to death in a church, but I truly understood now that there is birth, too, in the story. I felt – if not a sense of being comforted, then at least, like the moment a doctor’s opiate starts to take effect, a faint sensation of relief ahead, of where comfort might be. In those Books of Hours I’d seen, skeletons dance through the Office for the Dead. As a child I’d peered at them fearfully. But as sleep came closer I remembered there’d been other pictures from the Calendars, too – the hopeful sowing into the bare autumn fields, and the blossoms and courting couples of May.

  Wednesday, 25 February 1601

  ‘They won’t do the disembowelling bit anyway. They never do for peers – don’t want anyone to hear them screaming. It would spoil their dignity.’ It had been the gangling clerk’s attempt at comfort, and in fact it was comforting in a way. I’d always shied away from executions, or floggings, or even bear-baitings, even when it had set me apart from the boys all around, at a time when what I most wanted was to seem like one of the pack.

  When the time came to execute Cuffe, he wouldn’t be so lucky.

  This execution I knew I had to attend, but it wasn’t in the hope of witnessing a reprieve, not really. The cold of the night had cooled my brain, and I understood I’d been chasing a chimera – and making Lord Essex chase it too, may God and he forgive me.

  So now I was taking refuge in the details, like a wife smoothing the pillow for a dying husband. I wished they could have sent for a swordsman, like they did for Anne Boleyn, so he could kneel upright, not lie down on a chopping block like something out of the butchers. But they didn’t do that even for Jane Grey, nor yet for the Scots Queen Mary. So now it was dawn, with the dank, will-sapping, cold of February, and on this Ash Wednesday, this day for repentance, they’d erected a platform under the wall like something set up for the acts in a fairground so all the spectators could see.

  Not that there were so many spectators: orders of her majesty. They said it was a favour begged by Lord Essex himself, that he might die privately. I wasn’t so sure: if he’d had the chance of bawling his remorse before all London, he might well have seized the opportunity.

  That was what they were afraid of, of course. They were afraid the mood of a big London crowd would swing back too far towards pity. As it was, they’d sent two executioners – what, in case one couldn’t bring himself to do the job? And when Sir Walter Ralegh arrived, being Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners, even this hand-picked crowd murmured so loud he had to go away.

  It was soon after seven when we heard footsteps. The crowd had gone so quiet we could hear them clearly. He was all in black – a velvet cloak over a satin suit: was he afraid if he shivered in the cold, we might think he was shaking? A black felt hat which he took off as he bowed to us all. I found my nails were biting into my palms; not because I was hoping for a reprieve – any more than he was, I knew with certainty – but with wanting him to do this well. To die on behalf of those others I’d known, who’d had to die without dignity.

  One of his servants sidled next to me, perhaps drawn to a familiar face. He told me Lord Essex had been up all night praying, and he looked it; with that pallid look only the ginger-haired have. But he’d found what he had been praying for. He’d never really believed my fantasy, after all. I hadn’t damaged him too badly, and as he began to speak my hands unclenched themselves, slowly.

  ‘I beseech our Saviour Christ to ask the Eternal Majesty my pardon; especially for my last sin: this great, this bloody, this crying and infectious sin, whereby so many, for the love of me, have ventured their lives and souls and have been driven to offend God, to offend their sovereign, and to offend the world. Lord Jesus, forgive it us, and forgive it me.

  ‘I beseech you and the world to have a charitable opinion of me for my intention towards her majesty, whose death, upon my salvation and before God, I swear I never meant. I desire all the world to forgive me, even as I do freely and from my heart forgive all the world.’

  He turned to take off his gown and ruff, but he wasn’t used to undressing himself – how should he be? Confused, he called for his servant Williams, and I felt the boy beside me stir as if to move forwards. But I grasped his arm to hold him still, and the ruff was off, eventually. The chaplain whispered to him – what, not to be afraid? – and he answered gracefully. Said he had been diverse times in places of danger where death was nonetheless neither so present nor so certain as here, and that therefore he desired God to strengthen him, and not suffer his flesh to have rule over him.

  The executioner knelt and asked for his forgiveness. It’s the tradition, but it is horrible to me. ‘Thou art welcome to me. I forgive thee. Thou art the minister of justice,’ Essex said. He knelt down in front of the block, and the straw under his knees rustled comfortably.

  He took off his black doublet to show the waistcoat underneath, red as blood. They offered him a blindfold but he waved it away.

  ‘O God, creator of all things and judge of all men, I humbly beseech Thee to assist me in this my last combat. Give me patience to be as becometh me in this just punishment inflicted upon me.’

  With the chaplain leading him, he repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Some spectators joined in, though some looked away. Some were sobbing – not that this was a hysterical market crowd, but the childishness of those words touched me to the core.

  ‘Our Father …’ He repeated for a second time the bit about forgiving his enemies. The chaplain prompted him again and said over his belief, the Credo. This was being dragged out almost unbearably.

  ‘O God, give me true humility and patience to endure to the end. I ask you all to pray with me and for me, so that when you see me stretch out my arms and my neck on the block, and the stroke ready to be given, it may please the everlasting God to send down his angels for me.’

  He lay flat in the straw and fitted his neck into the groove, turned his head sideways. I could almost feel the unaccustomed edges as if on my own flesh. They say Katherine Howard sent for it to practise with, before her execution day.

  One of the divines told him to begin the Fifty-first Psalm: it was in everyone’s mind that he would not be allowed to finish it. He knew it too.

  ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of Thy compassions, put away mine iniquities. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.’

  Perhaps he couldn’t endure it any longer, but he flung out his arms and cried: ‘Executioner strike home. O Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’ At least, that’s what he was saying. I completed the words in my head.

  He was still talking when the axe swung down. He didn’t move or speak again, I thank God, though the first stroke seemed to only strike into his shoulder and the crowd groaned in sympathy. It took three strokes in all before the head was severed completely. The executioner held the head up by the long hair, in a ritual gesture of triumph, and called out ‘God save the queen!’ but it was in silence that we all moved away.

  I walked back to my lodging like someone in a dream, looking neither to the right nor the left. I have an idea that someone spoke to me – the merchant from the house next door – but if so, they got no answer. I’d never expected the ring to work, that much was a certainty. I don’t know whether it even reached the queen; I don’t know whether the whole tale itself was just another of Lord Essex’s fantasies.

  But one thing I did know: he’d asked to be returned to her favour a dozen times before; a dozen times he’d shown she couldn’t safely agree. This much I knew – and I almost felt I’d come to feel a bond with her, or perhaps that was just another of my mistakes – Elizabeth was not the woman to gamble her country’s fate on a trumpery piece of jewellery.

  As I flung myself down on my bed full clad, I understood at last that my mad run yesterday hadn’t been born of hope. I’d been running as you run in a nightmare when the wolves are at your heels. Running, as you run in childhood, to run your confusion and your fea
rs away. Running out of my mouth the taste of betrayal; that I no longer even wanted Essex alive and free, that I no longer believed in his vision nor felt his spell. Running to do his bidding, to give him this one last feeble chance, not out of love but pity.

  I slept like the dead and I must have slept for hours. When I woke, the light was fading in the sky, and I found to my surprise that I was hungry. I ran down the stairs, not even pausing to wash my face, then caught myself up as I reached the street, paused a moment, then retraced my steps more slowly.

  In my room I checked there were no peering eyes, then got a knife and levered up the loose floorboard where I kept my money. I took something else up, too – the fingered note the porter at Burghley House had given me.

  In the street I went direct to an inn where food would still be served, though the place would normally be too expensive for me. I craved food, strong and savoury. They brought me a slice of salt beef and mustard with the wine, while I waited for the broth, and the mallard boiled with cabbage, and the coney stuffed with pepper and currants and steaming with gravy. They brought me a dish of warmed sweet cream, with rosewater and ginger to make it spicy.

  The landlord asked curiously if I’d had good news, and for a moment I blushed crimson. Half London was looking over its shoulder today, and I was behaving like a small-town spend-thrift up to town for the holiday. I paid my bill and went out, down through the Exchange towards the Pawn, where the milliners sold their ready-made garments, pausing only at the seam-stress’ booth and the apothecary. By the time I got back home I could feel exhaustion coming like a lover to claim me. I slept at once, and dreamlessly.

  Epilogue

  For though the Soul do seem her grave to bear, And in this world is almost buried quick, We have no cause the body’s death to fear, For when the shell is broke, out comes a chick.

  From ‘Nosce Teipsum’, Sir John Davies

  Cecil

  Thursday, 26 February 1601

  It is one of those bright early days when you can fool yourself winter has really gone, and spring is here to stay. Lizzie used to have a ritual for days like this. She would go around the garden, pouncing with triumph on anything already out – snowdrops, a sprig of witchhazel, the fat sweet early violets – and bring them into the house, gloating over them, as if to salute their bravery.

  My man tells me that this morning Jeanne stopped to buy violets, on her way.

  Of course I’ve had someone following Jeanne – for everyone’s safety, you might say. That ring, now: I doubt it would have done harm even had it reached the queen, but as so often in the course of these events, my intervention was unnecessary. The countess will never mention it, and neither will I. Some gardeners dislike the self-sown plant, the happy accident, but that has never been my way. And after all, I think we might safely agree that the process of Essex’s end had a momentum of its own – a snowball, rolling unstoppably down the hill, once given the first push by his folly.

  It was a good man I’ve had to follow Jeanne, these last two days. She won’t have had any idea he was nearby. He was too discreet to show any surprise when he told me what he saw this morning – or too experienced to feel any, maybe. The only time he blinked was when I asked: Did she look pretty? That did shock him, oddly enough, or perhaps shocked him coming from me.

  So: I have let her go, or the machinery let her go, and now I have other fish to fry. Next week would not be too early to send an approach to James, discreetly, discreetly. We are in the endgame now of her majesty’s reign, but there is every hope it will be possible to move on in safety. I plan for the future, but I find myself also bound to the past, as surely as Essex with all his outworn dreams of chivalry and glory. A nice irony there, no doubt. I shall appreciate it, eventually.

  I will take care not to think of Jeanne again, not unless it is necessary, though if she continues with Martin Slaughter I suppose she may come my way. I wish her well, I hope her happy – to know yourself is the most valuable education: those old men, with their manuals of advice, that’s what they should say.

  But that is all. It must be. I shall go into the garden, and smell the witchhazel, and I will go to the bed where the violets grow, and I will not let myself be overwhelmed by the memories. Now that my father is dead I am laying out my own garden at the new house across the Strand. This place belongs to my brother now, but no doubt I will still walk here frequently. I will not be able to stay away.

  Lizzie.

  Jeanne

  26 February 1601

  I woke to a morning of sharpness, but of sunshine. A morning when you know the ripe of the day will offer just an hour or two’s pledge that spring is on the way. That though it’s felt as though the ground would be frozen forever the thaw must come eventually. A morning that might tempt any Londoner to take the air. I yelled to the kitchen boy to bring me hot water; yes, I’d pay the extra fee.

  The fine soapballs I’d brought last night were scented with lavender. I’d bought and I’d bought, yielding to all of the shopgirl’s suggestions, and some of my purchases were strange to me. A water with chamomile and wormwood in it, and a paste of alum to rub under the arms. A linen bag to rub over my teeth, filled with ashes of rosemary. A tiny twist of paper filled with orris root powder had cost more than the rest put together. I rubbed it over my chest and behind my ears, gingerly.

  I pulled the linen shift over my head first, and only the fineness of the fabric gave me pause. I shivered a little, as the silky coolness touched my skin. The whalebone stiffness of the bodice felt not unlike a doublet, though I had an impulse to clutch at my bare expanse of chest, in all its immodesty.

  As I reached for the petticoats I gritted my teeth. I was moving into unfamiliar territory. As I hooked them into place they fell too limply. Oh yes – ‘the bum-roll’, as the assistant had told me, grinning mockingly. Man, woman or hermaphrodite; I could even manage a brief giggle, now, over what she must have thought of me. A top petticoat with a coloured panel at the front; dressing as a man, I’d had it easy. I yanked my way into the dress until a snagging of the embroidery made me halt, and then I went more slowly. I turned to face myself in the glass, and a woman looked back at me.

  It would be a day of promise, outside. This time of year, when February is turning to March, every day brings something new. In the garden there are the first of the Lent lilies, and the swell of bud on the grey apple branch, and the men are taking the sacking off the tubbed olive trees. When we walk out into the fields there will be new buds on the primroses, lamb’s tail catkins shaking yellow in the breeze, and the first of the celandines a golden glory. Even if the tall trees are still bare, there will be the red filament of blossom on the young elms and new leaf sprouting on the little hazels. Spring starts from the bottom up, and that seems right to me.

  Just for a second I thought of Burghley House, where every tree was a known friend. I knew in my bones Sir Robert would be out there, noting every new bud with his careful eye, whatever else might claim the Secretary’s attention on such an important day. But the garden at Burghley House was not the only garden in the City. In the churchyard at St Helen’s some City father had paid for them to plant up the nodding bulbs of spring, in honour of his wife’s name day.

  People would be out early today, alive in the spring sunshine. Even yesterday, as I went about my purchases, I’d felt a kind of tremor in the blood. Sometimes, in the garden, I’d wonder where the spring comes from – pushing blindly through the frozen earth, fighting the cold every inch of the way – but something of the same was happening in me. The spring comes too slowly to register as a miracle until suddenly it overtakes you on your way. This was a day when you could look at the bare boughs of a tree, and know that the sap was working secretly. The dress I’d bought was apple green. ‘Made it for a young lady up from the country,’ the tailor had said confidingly. ‘But the money isn’t there to settle the bill, so I can let you have it cheaply.’ Perhaps it was light, for so early in the season, but the panel on the
underskirt was the pink of blossom, the fabric was embroidered with sprays of tiny leaves. I fingered it delicately. I’d seen a girl yesterday on her young man’s arm, face aglow with a warmth that had nothing to do with her thin clothing, and as I gazed in the mirror now, she seemed to be smiling along with me. I’d had a sense I’d never really felt before, of how much pleasure was to be had in this city – if you knew how to take it, and how to share it, maybe. Of how men and women did lean together, laugh together; and if there were still secrets and shadows in their world, well, sometimes they laughed anyway.

  In the country soon, those first fragile pokes of primroses will turn into fragrant platefuls of the palest gold, and curved green spikes will spring up overnight; the cuckoo pint, the Lords and Ladies. Then the moment when the world at your feet becomes a carpet of emerald, and cherry is white on the trees. A moment when the spring looks back at you from far down the road ahead, and she too is laughing over her shoulder, kindly.

  There is a portrait of the queen at the house on the Strand, a treasure of the Cecil family. She wears a low-cut white dress, edged with gold and embroidered with spring – heartsease pansies and cowslips, honeysuckles and gillyflowers. A rainbow showed in the sky overhead, to admire a timeless beauty. She herself might be old now, but the portrait would shine out for all eternity. The embroidery on her skirt, of watchful eyes and listening ears, told a darker story, but I pushed that thought away. I pulled fine wool stocking up my legs, stepped into shoes of red Spanish leather. We were none of us spies today. Not in a world where, as the weeks move on, we’ll be seized by the first scarlet advance guard of poppies, and the gold of the buttercups will make rich men of us all. When summer will bring days when the air itself is so heavy you should be swimming in it, languorously. Oh, the summer may be bad again, sure enough, the harvest poor and the people sulky. But there’ll still be a few days like these. There will be.