The Girl in the Glass Tower (19 page)

‘I don’t want anyone hurt.’

‘Belle!’ His voice softened. ‘Look at me.’

I looked; his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept for days.

‘Trust me.’

A noise caused us both to turn towards the door and there was Grandmother standing tall, one hand on the jamb. ‘Give me a minute with her, Henry.’ It was not a request, it was a command, and he responded like an infant to his nurse. ‘You look terrible,’ she added as he passed her to wait outside the room.

She closed the door and came to sit beside me, drawing her chair up close. ‘It’s cold in here.’ She took off her fur wrap – that horrible dead creature with rubies for eyes – and put it around my shoulders, touching her knuckles gently to my cheek. ‘Frozen.’ She leaned back; her chair creaked.

‘He can’t be trusted. You think you know him but you haven’t seen him more than a handful of times in your life. To you he is all magic and laughter. But
I
know him and I know that you are no more than another gamble to him – his greatest stake in a life of risk. He stands to win the highest prize if he can get you on the throne.’

‘I was raised for that –
you
raised me for that.’

‘You
were
raised for that, but things have changed – things beyond my control.’ Her tone was filled with authority, as if she understood everything, and perhaps she did, with her connection to Cecil. But Cecil had betrayed me. ‘If Henry doesn’t succeed in his great plan, his wager – and he won’t, for a gambler always loses in the end – it will be
you
, not him, in the Tower awaiting trial for treason.’

‘His plan is a good one. He –’

‘Pah! Henry’s even less competent than Essex, and look what became of Essex. His scheme is not what you think it is. I know the man he came here with, Stapleton, a renowned papist. He doubtless has a ragged army of disaffected Catholics
waiting in the woods. He will have promised them you are open to conversion, dangled you as a Catholic queen to get them on his side, promised them he has papist connections abroad to put you on the throne. It will be deemed a Catholic plot and you will pay the price, my girl.’

From the side of my eye I could see Starkey hanging by the neck from a beam.

‘Why, if you risked so much, as you said you did to bring my parents together, will you not help me to wed Edward Seymour? Isn’t it the same?’

‘You must learn to assess the level of risk in any undertaking. The risk must always be worth the reward – that has been the key to my success.’ She paused, sitting forward. ‘I will make everything right, Arbella.’

‘Why should I trust you more than Uncle Henry?’

She took my hand then. Her skin was cool. ‘I may not be the most warm-hearted of women but I have raised you and been fond of you in my way.’ She let my hand go. ‘You have enough examples. Don’t be like those Grey girls, who thought wedlock would set them free. And look what happened to the Scottish Queen.’

Starkey was silenced. Grandmother’s pull was proving too great a force for me to resist. In hindsight I have often wondered if it was because I had known nothing other than Grandmother’s rule and, even though hers was a loveless regime, it was a familiar one.

I was the dog that would not leave the master who beats him.

‘I’m sorry,’ I heard myself say.

If I had been the type for tears then it would have been a moment for them, but neither of us was given to excessive expressions of emotion. That bald fact made me see I was more like Grandmother than I’d thought. I had her recalcitrance and determination and perhaps, too, her courage. She
was right, I was nothing but the cardboard queen in Uncle Henry’s three-card trick:
Follow the lady, where is she, not there no, she is here, I have her
. ‘I will ask him to leave.’

She stood and exited without another word.

Uncle Henry was incandescent with rage as he fired off questions at me. ‘Why would you listen to that embittered old hag? Hasn’t she kept you prisoner here for a decade? Have you lost your nerve? Did you think we could take you without a struggle? Do you think I mustered all those men for nothing?’

I thought he might hit me but, turning his back, he kicked out at the wall instead, leaving a mark on the whitewash and a roar of frustration in the air. Perhaps if I had sensed a fragment of true fondness from my uncle – not just that twinkling smile reserved for those he was about to fleece – the outcome of that day might have been different. It might have been worse but then again it was equally possible that Grandmother was wrong.

He stormed from the room. I watched from the low window as he traversed the garden towards the gate – those eighty-eight paces. My fingers wandered to the bag of treasures hanging from my waist, finding the weighted die. It no longer represented the brilliant mercurial uncle who would magic me away to freedom. It had become a reminder that no one could be trusted.

I took it out; rolled it, willing it to say something other than six but three pairs of tiny eyes stared up at me.

I must shape my own coat according to my cloth, but it will not be after the fashion of this world, God willing, but fit for me.

Arbella Stuart, Letter to Sir Henry Brouncker, Ash Wednesday 1603

I was unprepared for the impact the Queen’s death would have on me. It was like a blow to the head, leaving me senseless for a time, for the force that had invisibly defined my existence, my entire purpose, was gone. She named James on her deathbed, coerced by Cecil, some said, and as a result I was free, or so I believed.

Had I done nothing, the outcome would have been the same. My struggle to escape; the effort it had taken to force the return of Brouncker; the scheming; the risk – none of it had made any impact. It had given dear, loyal Dodderidge a most terrible ordeal, but the greatest and most futile sacrifice had been the loss of Starkey. Looking back, I have come to understand that some fractures can appear to mend, but leave an invisible fault line, a place of fragility, and Starkey still whispers to me even here, now, beckoning, and I long to go to him.

The violent upheaval that had hung over the country, on tenterhooks in fear of civil war, hadn’t occurred; the Catholics, who apparently had such a long-held fervour to see me enthroned, melted away into the crevices of England. England seemed to forget that James was a foreigner, the son of an executed traitor. In the end, it seemed, I was not worth fighting for. I was not male, and after half a century of female rule, England had no more appetite for a woman on the throne. God’s plan had died with Starkey.

I was twenty-seven years old and had never truly experienced freedom; I hardly knew what to do with it and, as an animal that has spent its life caged feels safe only within the familiar confines of its prison, I took my first steps tentatively.
That fearless boy-girl who had ridden, flying, bareback all those years ago was not the same hesitant wraith who, reunited at last with Dorcas, took a sedate walk around the home farm. The mare seemed to sense my nervousness in the saddle and plodded obligingly, gentle as a lamb. A person can be broken just as a horse can.

She knew me, even after a decade’s absence, whickered and snuffed, blowing hot breath into my collar, as if we had ridden out only the day before. I recognized the groom who led her to me; a man in his middle years, with cropped steel-grey hair. People age, but their eyes don’t change.

‘Tobias?’ I said, remembering our play-fight at the Chatsworth Stand Tower. ‘Have you been here all along?’

‘I left for a time, My Lady, but returned a few years back. I’ve been taking good care of this girl for you.’ He scratched Dorcas behind the ears. I was wondering if he was our friend in the stables who had been running errands. ‘Well, I am most grateful to you, Tobias. Dorcas is very dear to me.’

‘Will you be riding her or taking the carriage on your journey south?’

‘I’ll be riding. Make sure she’s well rested, won’t you.’ It was in that moment that the full realization settled on me, with a strange ambivalence, that I would at last be leaving Hardwick. It had been my whole world for more than a decade and it dawned on me that freedom meant having no home of my own. I would be dependent on the kindness of others, for I had no great means, only that paltry package of jewels in the care of Cousin Bessie. Grandmother had settled almost nothing on me, James refused to release the Lennox lands that were rightfully mine and I was obliged to beg a stipend from the royal coffers. To that end I wrote letters to Cecil, who held the key, pleading that the new king bestow a living on his impecunious royal cousin.

Grandmother came to the door to see me off. It was an
awkward moment and I was glad to have Aunt Mary at my shoulder for moral support. We said goodbye rather formally, as if I’d been a houseguest, and although I hadn’t expected an embrace I’d thought perhaps a peck on the cheek might be forthcoming. But we stood, neither wanting to be the one to step forward. Though it was spring and quite warm, she was wearing the white stoat with those infernal eyes, but rather than unsettling me as they always had, they reminded me that I would no longer be scrutinized.

She made an attempt at something that couldn’t quite be called a smile and I felt suddenly, strangely rueful about all the trouble I’d caused, when she’d cared for me and protected me in her own way. I would have liked to articulate my gratitude but as I began to speak, so did she.

‘I wanted to …’ She paused and I felt she was going to say something, an apology, an expression of love, or regret. My heart was on the brink of opening and I remembered Starkey saying,
An apology is a powerful force for healing even the greatest of rifts, but most difficult to arrive at
. We looked at each other. She was clutching her pearls. ‘You can take the carriage as far as Wrest Park. I have no use for it for a week or two. I’ll send one of the boys to bring it back.’

‘There’s no need; I was planning to ride and we’ve got the luggage cart.’

I saw a small flutter of disappointment move over her face.

‘I see.’ The pearls clicked like gaming counters.

‘We’d better be off,’ said Aunt Mary, ‘if we are to make it to Newstead before dark.’

‘Yes, you’d better,’ said Grandmother, and I turned, numb, to walk those eighty-eight steps to the gatehouse, where the horses were waiting.

It didn’t take me long to find my confidence in the saddle and Dorcas responded accordingly, picking up her pace to
ride ahead as we used to, once we were on to the soft ground. I began to unfurl. The air smelled crisp and grassy and the trees all sported their brilliant spring coats, new and fresh, giving me a sense of things beginning.

Margaret Byron was at Newstead. I was pleased to be reunited, even if only for a night. She had made me a pair of embroidered sleeves as a gift, her needlework exquisite as ever, and talked unceasingly about her baby, who was with the wet nurse. The only time she mentioned her husband was to say, ‘I’ve given him a son, so he’s happy. That was what I was for, after all.’ I didn’t say it, but I wondered where the passionate Margaret had gone, the girl who was in love with love. Perhaps she had realized that love comes to nothing in the end.

On we travelled towards Wrest Park, where we were to stay a few weeks with Cousin Bessie. My wings unfolded slowly, aching from lack of use. On the first morning I woke before dawn and, for the simple reason that I could, I went to the stables, tacked up Dorcas and rode alone out in the woods in the half-light, breathing in the dank scent rising from the loamy ground. The trees made dark shapes in the vagueness of early morning and the floor was spread with a muted carpet of bluebells.

Dorcas pricked her ears and we stopped to listen to a nightingale – the hopeful herald of summer. It inevitably brought back Ovid’s tale of Philomel from all those years before at Hampton Court, but even that miserable memory was outsung by the nightingale’s enchanting refrain.

You are truly free
, whispered Starkey,
as Philomel was finally free in her feathered coat
. Starkey followed me everywhere, in each current of air, each cracking twig, each unexpected palpitation of my heart. For years my world had been the walled garden at Hardwick, where nature was clipped and carefully arranged, so that dawn wood, silent save for the song of a single bird, was an Eden to me.

Further joy arrived in the shape of a communication from Dodderidge:

I am released without charge and would like to return, if you are willing, to your service.

He mentioned nothing of the hardships he had endured on my behalf. Even I, confined as I had been for most of my life, knew that interrogation could be brutal, especially for one of no particular consequence.

News came thick and fast to Wrest Park, messengers travelling back and forth with the latest on the whereabouts of the King’s party. Our evenings were spent mapping my royal cousin’s progress south through England towards the capital, all the nobles vying to play host to their new monarch, hoping for a position in the royal household.

From Wrest Park I was to go not to court, because plague kept everyone away from Whitehall, but to Sheen Priory, the residence of the Marchioness of Northampton, a woman I knew barely at all. She had served the old Queen in her youth at the same time as Grandmother. It was an odd kind of freedom really, for letters from Cecil directed my fate, dictating where I would go and when.

It was summer by the time I arrived at Sheen. The going had been light and we’d made good time on the road south, reaching the ferry across the Thames earlier than expected. The house was ancient and rambling, its red brick bathed in sun and its windows framed by creeping greenery. The gardens surrounding it were an unkempt riot of colour. As our boat slid silently alongside the wooden pier I saw a gardener in a wide-brimmed straw hat, bent over a cluster of sweet peas. She was cutting the blooms off with a large pair of shears and tossing them into a basket nearby. It was like a
scene from Arcadia and I half expected a shepherd to appear with his flock.

I stepped from the boat and peeled off my travelling gown, filthy from the road, handing it to Bridget.

‘Do you think I should change?’ I asked her, suddenly awkward, unsure of myself in that unfamiliar setting, realizing how unaccustomed I still was to the world beyond Hardwick.

‘Do you think that is her?’ Bridget nudged her head in the direction of the hatted woman, who was making her way towards us.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She was teasing me as a way to put me at my ease, I supposed. The woman had taken her hat off and was waving it. I couldn’t understand why a gardener would be approaching us, clearly intent on making a greeting. Grandmother would have been mortified had her own staff behaved in such a way.

‘I think it
is
her,’ said Bridget. ‘Look at her air of authority. I’d better make sure the luggage is dealt with.’ She turned back towards the barge where the lads were unloading. I wanted to grab her hand, make her stay with me, so I wouldn’t have to confront the stranger alone. Despite my years, I felt no older than an infant clinging to its nurse’s skirts.

The woman was calling out, ‘Wonderful, wonderful to see you have arrived safely.’

She wasn’t young, in her fifties perhaps, with the soft plumpness that sometimes comes with age; but she looked magnificent, her complexion translucent white, almost blue, hair the colour of quince jelly, threaded with silver, everything about her awry, her dress loosened so it drooped away from one round, freckled shoulder. I thought of Grandmother, how different she was, not a hair astray, primly laced, nothing out of place, and her abhorrence of freckles.

I began to walk to towards her and when I was near
enough I saw something in her expression, a scrunch between her brows, suspicion perhaps, or concern, I couldn’t tell which.

‘I trust your journey was not overly arduous, Highness.’ She dropped into a curtsy. Despite her unconventional appearance, this was a woman clearly accustomed to the requirements of precedence.

‘No, no … please,’ I stammered. ‘There’s no need, really.’

‘All those years serving the old Queen’ – she smiled again, broadly, baring a set of small straight teeth – ‘old habits die hard.’

‘I am so very grateful to you for your hospitality.’

‘Oh, look, here come your horses.’ She pointed out towards the river and the ferry lumbering across. I could see Dorcas tossing her head frantically and the groom trying to calm her. ‘I can’t blame them getting nervous on that contraption. They’d probably rather swim over.’

I was unsure whether she was joking and couldn’t think of what to say. I had become so unused to people I didn’t know and at Hardwick Grandmother had always provided a buffer between myself and her guests.

Our hostess led me through the gardens, and whereas I’d thought them unkempt at first sight I realized that their wild beauty was governed by an almost invisible organizing principle. The deliberate informality was so unlike the harsh symmetry of Hardwick that I felt once more as if I had stepped into a land of fable. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, wishing I had come up with something less banal.

‘It is a wonderful bower, isn’t it?’ That look had returned; as if I were a puzzle she was trying to solve. ‘Do you like my ornamental cherry?’ She pointed to a sapling, gangly as an adolescent, close to the riverbank, the earth freshly dug at its base. ‘I thought it would look rather lovely by the water.’

‘Ornamental – it won’t bear fruit?’

‘Its sole aim in life is to give pleasure.’ She stroked its trunk, seeming wholly enamoured with her spindly tree.

‘Lovely,’ I said, but the idea of planting a fruit tree just to look at, indeed to talk of it as if it had an aim, was incomprehensible to me.

‘I expect you would like to change,’ she said then. ‘I have given you rooms overlooking the river – thought you might like to watch the comings and goings.’ Then she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a cowherd. A pair of hounds appeared magically from the undergrowth and followed us towards the house. ‘Did you bring any pets? These two can be rather territorial but they’re harmless enough.’

I found myself telling her about the little dog, Geddon, that had belonged to the Scottish Queen, who had attached himself to me when I was a girl and wouldn’t let anyone else near.

‘There might be a puppy for you,’ she said. ‘One of the spaniel bitches is whelping. All the ladies at court have little dogs. They make a frightful mess, chewing the chair legs and pissing on the tapestries.’ She laughed and I supposed I looked shocked, for she said, ‘You must think me vulgar.’

‘Not at all,’ I replied. In truth I liked her ease, her light conversation.

‘I’m not English, you see, so I can get away with it. My lax behaviour can be put down to eccentric foreign ways – even after decades here and two English husbands I am still Swedish to the core. I think the Queen – the old Queen – liked me the more for it. I was fond of her; but it was easy to be fond of her if you were one of the ones she chose to like. The others …’ She didn’t finish and I remembered Elizabeth – how ferocious she had seemed to me at times, how small and intimidated I had felt beside her.

‘I didn’t really know her.’

‘You were hardly given a chance, kept locked away out of sight all those years. I never could understand that.’ She was absently twisting a lock of hair around a finger. ‘She was a very jealous woman
au fond
.’ I had never heard anyone talk of the Queen as a person beset by ordinary emotions. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘I hope you will feel at home here. I know what it is like to be in someone else’s house. It can be hard to feel at ease.’