The Girl in the Mirror (9 page)

We sent word the queen would see him as soon as we’d dressed her, but he’d have known as well as I do that wouldn’t happen quickly. She sat still while we adjusted her wig, and pointed out where the white paint on her chest was looking patchy: I had the feeling she was jibbing, like a nervous horse, at having to face what might come this day. She made us try on three different gowns, until I for one could have screamed with the tension, but I think she put on strength with the finery. She signed me to stay as the girls left, and Burghley gave me a terse nod as he came in.

It was brusquely, almost with a sense of familiarity, that he said a dispatch had come in and that all the rumours are true, another Armada really is on the way. We had, after all, been here before – what, three times since that first appalling time, since Leicester’s death, since Tilbury? I swear, the first thing I felt was pure exasperation. Dear God, does Philip never learn? If he’s so sure he’s doing God’s work, does he never ask himself why God’s winds don’t allow him to succeed, once in a while?

But of course it’s serious, it has to be taken seriously. The more so for the fact that every year, every false alarm, tires us as much as it must tire the poor starved and taxed Spanish peasantry. We have more ships than we had before Tilbury, but we also have less energy. And all I could think is, why now? Why couldn’t they, why couldn’t fate, have just given these few days to me? As we pace the Privy Garden so fast the girls hustle to keep up with her majesty, I am in a bustle of anger that makes the crisp October air seem hot to me. I’ll admit that stupidity has always irritated me, even with my children when they were young.

If these messages are true, Spain’s fleet will be on the seas by now, while Essex let their treasure ship pass by, full of bullion from the Americas, through a sheer stupid piece of vainglory. It’s the thought of that bullion that’ll be working in the queen, making her anger rise up like bile, even more than when we first heard the tale of Essex’s folly. It’s the Cadiz voyage all over again, but worse – too serious, the possible results this time, for anyone to forgive him lightly.

We don’t know it all yet, and the queen won’t let her real anger out, not immediately. Like wine laid down, time only ripens the taste of her fury. But I’ll admit the fatigues of the last few days are getting to me. The crunch of the gravel under my boot only echoes the harsh sound in my head, and when the girls lag behind to giggle or exclaim over a late flower, I take it on myself to call to them not to be so lazy, and not delay her majesty.

Cecil
Autumn 1597

The burst of friendship was never going to last. That was foreseen, naturally. But what has happened since the fiasco of this last voyage has an air of irrevocability. Essex is sure, now and forever, that Ralegh and I are his enemies: he will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. But more, he is convinced every man is against him. Every woman too, maybe.

Even if he thinks it, fool to show it so clearly. The queen has always been impatient with folly. But more than that, she is growing suspicious, and you don’t raise a Tudor’s suspicion lightly. I must try, again, to persuade Charles Howard to take Essex’s insult quietly. Yes, even though Essex is trying to get them to reword the very patent of poor Charles’ earldom, so that Essex can claim credit for the whole of last year’s Cadiz victory. Yes, even though the queen wavers over granting Essex another honour – what, Earl Marshal? – that would let him outrank Charles’ brief position as the premier earl in the country. ‘Your very patience shows your strength,’ is what I’ll have to say. ‘Believe me, the queen will appreciate you the more that you were willing to put aside your own grudges for the country.’ Briefly, I toy with the idea of speaking to Charles’ wife, but perhaps no word of advice is necessary to that shrewd lady.

What is it that Essex really wants? Just – just! – to be first in honour with her majesty? Or – there are things it’s treason to think, or to say. Yes, even for a state secretary, who must consider all things clearly.

Now he’s sulking at Wanstead, his house in the country. More folly – it’s another of Ralegh’s new aphorisms: distance breeds suspicion. The prince is most mistrustful of the mighty subject they cannot see. Absence magnifies your faults, and makes forgiveness come more slowly.

Where there is suspicion, there must be certainty. Not action, not yet, but it will come. There is a man: Ralegh’s cousin. I have begun to consider Ralegh differently. He bristled up like a country squire when one of the jesters had a touch at him the other day – oh, nothing so crude as a mockery of his Devon burr, but a strut of the walk that made the court smile knowingly. He looked baffled and angry, like a dog when it knows it’s being laughed at – but all the same, I begin to have a new respect for his abilities. It was he who brought this cousin, this Sir Ferdinando to me. Ferdinando Gorges, what a name. I hope I never have to give it to her majesty. But the man has the touch of tarnish on him, the readiness for things to go badly.

The laying out of plans, the agent’s consent, is like a seduction and, like seduction, it goes slowly. Small agreement by small agreement, until the final consent is a surety. Then a bargain that lies dormant like a seed in the earth: not knowing what the crop, or what the cost, or who in the end will pay.

The autumn is coming in. As I stroll in the garden to clear my head, the corrupt sweet smell of rotting leaves accompanies me. Often, I see the boy Jan sketching, and something about the nape of his neck, thin and vulnerable, almost reminds me of my daughter Frances. There is a figure waiting in the shadows by the door – one of the two secret secretaries. Of course, he wouldn’t have sent a page this time.

‘Sir Ferdinando is here to see you, Sir Robert.’

Quickly I nod. ‘Good. Take Gorges to the study – I’ll be with him directly.’

Jeanne
Winter 1597

Sometimes – quite often – when I was drawing in the garden, I’d find Sir Robert was by my side, and stopping to speak to me. He didn’t spend all his time here, I’d learned – much of his work was done in the Duchy of Lancaster offices across the Strand – but he used to walk in these gardens very regularly. He’d rarely touch – he wasn’t one of those great garden owners who had to know better than the gardeners did – but his dark eyes were everywhere, quietly. He’d always stop by the aviary, and scatter a handful of the seeds that were kept ready nearby. Sometimes he’d raise his eyebrows in invitation, and pass a handful of seed to me.

‘Do you like the birds?’ he said one day. I knew him well enough by now to be aware that his most banal questions were the ones with the layers of meaning behind them, but I had to answer.

‘I’d like them better if they were free.’

He nodded, as if I’d said something intelligent – or maybe just something expected, and his was the intelligence, for having foreseen it so accurately.

‘If we set them loose now they’d be back for their food next day – those the sparrow hawk had spared, and that hadn’t been mobbed by their wild fellows.’

‘At least that would be their decision.’ I didn’t know why I was arguing the cause of liberty so passionately. I didn’t know why he was talking to me this way. But as he moved on, he gestured me to walk with him, our footsteps crunching on the icy gravel, our breath mingling on the frozen air. We must have looked like brothers as we walked there – he couldn’t have been much more than a decade older than me – but his containment, and the experience that wrapped him round like a cloak, made me feel like a callow child and, childishly, I found myself blurting out more than I meant as he asked me more about my upbringing and my family.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gravely, when I told him how my parents died, and he led me on to speak of them, as I had done so rarely. How my father had always said he wanted to become the finest silk merchant in Antwerp, and how my mother joked she wanted a house with a garden, where the flowers would be brighter than all his woven finery.

‘And you? What do you want, Jan?’ I stared at him, dumbly, all my newfound ease of speech, all the pleasure of reminiscence, vanished like smoke, instantly. It wasn’t just the boy’s name he’d called me – the reminder that, while I kept my secret, there could be no true intimacy with anybody. A reminder that, while I kept my secret, I couldn’t dream a happy future with a girl’s dream or a boy’s. It was those things, but it was more. I’d never, you might say, allowed myself to want – not for anything more lasting than a sweet or a sunny day, or for the toothache to go away. I’d lived like the beggars in the streets, not wanting anything more than the food to get by. I felt inadequate, naked and ashamed, as Sir Robert stood there, eyeing me quietly. Then, with a slight twist of his lips and an inclination of his head, he allowed me to slip away.

They kept Christmas well in the great house. I’d found my way into the kitchens soon after I’d arrived. Even the dogs turning the spits were too busy to talk for long, but I don’t think they minded seeing me, especially after the master cook stopped shouting at the scullions long enough to fling a thin foreign book at me and demand I translated a recipe – leg of lamb it was, in the French way, its meat minced with spices, suet and barber-ries, and stuffed back into the skin again. I thought it sounded nasty, but the cook was pleased.

I didn’t care so much for the dairy, or the game larder where they hung birds of every size, ready to be stuffed one inside the other, from the quail to the turkey – nor even for the confectionary, with its candied mock flowers, its cloying marchpane and gilded subtleties. But they soon got used to me in the main kitchen and they’d tease me with tales of what I could expect in summer. Asparagus in a butter and ginger sauce, sweet potatoes boiled in wine, fresh sheep’s cheese and French Angelot. Pies of artichokes with bone marrow and dates, and the crisp, watery cowcumbers, of which I had heard but never tasted. Against the outside wall, the gardeners sheltered pots of herbs, to make sallats for Sir Robert even in winter and dress the celery they’d nursed through the cold days. The smell of the rotting manure came up from the melon pits – ‘Though if we’re not careful the master will be eating them raw as soon as they’re ripe,’ the under-cook said, ‘instead of baked in milk, the proper way.’ The household laughed at Sir Robert’s tastes, but they laughed affectionately.

Until I came here, I hadn’t known that I was greedy. But now I was glad to know that the whole household would be welcome to the feasting, each of the twelve days, and if in so huge a household the best dainties couldn’t be served to all, we surely wouldn’t go hungry. At this liberal season we were welcome to the roast meats, and the stuffed carp, the marrow with its toasts, the soft sugar suckets made from carrot and green walnuts, and the hard comfits of orange peel and caraway. And welcome to the company. The thought of hours spent alone in my little Blackfriars room, that seemed smaller and dingier than it had done, no longer held any appeal for me.

There were entertainments almost every day, though Sir Robert wasn’t always present himself, and neither was Lord Burghley. The waits with their old songs, a troupe of Italian tumblers, and one night there was to be a play. They shut us all out of the hall that day, to allow the actors to make all ready, but I caught two page boys peeping through the window above, and sent them on their way. And then, I admit it, took just a single glance myself.

‘Oh dear – the biter bit,’ said a voice behind me, mockingly. I turned, to meet a wide mobile mouth twisted in a smile, and a pair of brown eyes that sparkled indulgently at me. There was nothing else remarkable in his features, nothing that would stick in the memory. And yet, somewhere, surely …? The same understanding was dawning on his face, but he was quicker than me.

‘Jan? Is it really you? Don’t you remember me? Mrs Allen, and the scarlet doublet – oh, years ago, it must be.’

I did. I did remember now. The slim actor who’d told me stories of the great houses, the one who been kind to me. But it wasn’t pleasure I felt now at the sight of him. That would come later, maybe. It was something more like terror. This was my old life come face to face with my new, and I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready. Fast as one of the counting house clerks clicking the beads on an abacus, my brain was running through what I’d said then, what he knew, whether there was anything that could harm me. I didn’t usually feel like someone with a secret, so used to it had I become, but this had thrown me. No, it was all right, it was surely all right, he’d known me as a boy. Hadn’t he? Had Mrs Allen ever said anything to her cousin, feeling that just that once, in that lax company, she could let herself go, and would her cousin have thought the story worth passing on to anyone else in the party?

Something of this must have shown in my face, and no wonder either, for he was grasping my arm urgently.

‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. ‘It’s all right, Jeanne.’ He said my name the proper way. ‘The first thing you have to learn as an actor is that you are the person you decide to be.

‘It’s all right. Really.’ He shook my arm slightly for emphasis, and moved to shield me as a serving man passed by. The pounding in my chest was slowing down, and I understood that yes, maybe it would be.

More of the memories were coming back. He’d shown me his face paints at that house in Chelsea after we’d got back from the long gallery, and he’d made me laugh, and he said he wasn’t really a rogue and a vagabond, because he was a member of a regular company. His name had been –

‘– Martin Slaughter,’ he reminded me, and I looked at him in a kind of apology, for who was I to have forgotten such an exotic, while he remembered me? Except that he didn’t look exotic as he stood there – just a brown-haired man with a malleable face, whose age could be anything from thirty to fifty. I remember he’d told me that there were two sorts of actors, and one played off their own personality ‘and the other decided to be an actor because they haven’t got a personality, and I’m afraid that’s me. This way, I can be anybody.’ I remembered now, I remembered him talking to me this way. Talking idly, as I’d thought, in this vein, and I realised he must have known then, or half known. It’s just that I was older now than I’d been when I first met him, and I understood more of what lay behind his words.