The Girl in the Mirror

by Sarah Gristwood

  Actually, maybe that is the point – that Charles’ instincts were to keep the peace and protect the queen, before any calculation got in the way. Maybe the queen saw that more quickly than I. So I’m with her now at the house on the Strand – not as much to my taste as my house in Chelsea, but solid enough in its way. She even wants me with her in the bedchamber, though I stay in the background, beside the door. The man has the right to die in some privacy. When with her own royal hand she fed him his broth, I had to catch myself from jumping forwards. She was too unaccustomed to do it handily. Half a spoonful fell down onto Burghley’s white beard, but I know she saw the tenderness with which Robert wiped it away. They have strong affections, one for the other, in the Cecil family. And perhaps it was something she needed to do, however untidily.

  Afterwards, her face was damp with tears, and she called Robert to walk with her in the garden. She wouldn’t want to go out in the street, and have the people see her that way. That garden is flattened by yesterday’s downpour, and if the thought of another bad harvest, another hungry winter, fills me with a sick fury, I can only guess what it must be doing to her majesty. Nothing she can do, save declare more fast days, but the blame and the guilt will still stick. That is what it is to be a ruler, to have some power, and all responsibility. Like being a woman, maybe. Last autumn we all cheered that God was on our side, when he sent the winds against the Spaniards, but sometimes it seems that from us, too, he turns his face away.

  There’s a boy at an easel in front of a flower bed, so intent he had not noticed us until we were quite close. As he hears us at last, he starts up, bows, and backs away, Robert starts speaking about his garden, about the catalogue of plants he caused to be made, and is having translated for growers abroad, to our greater glory. The queen allows him half an ear, and I hope she appreciates the attempt at diversion, but she’s listening only distractedly. Robert may be about to lose a father, but she is about to lose her past, the man above all others with whom she shared the years, and the only one left, or nearly.

  I’ve thought, as I have to, of what this means for us, because Charles does not see these things clearly. Perhaps there is no harm in that: I like to think I have long made my deal, heart as well as head, with everything about the man to whom they married me, and a good marriage it’s been, too – well, when you think I might have been given over to something like Philadelphia’s brutish booby, Scrope. If Charles does not think of his advantage at this time, that’s the very simplicity of temperament that allows him to work with Robert Cecil the more easily. Cecil’s will be the planning brain, but as the queen’s – now – oldest councillor, the one with the most years of service, my husband will have a certain new status, naturally. For a single second I allow myself the thought of how it might be to be married to a man who made the plan himself, or how it might be if I … No point for a woman to think that way. Behind the queen, her arm on Robert Cecil’s, I climb the little garden mound, and stare out over the damp prospect. I doubt that, this time, the queen has been able to walk her cares away.

  Burghley dying here, and in Spain the spies tell us Philip is going, too, of a slow putrefaction, with his coffin placed beside the bed to set his mind on immortality. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer; though the loss of Philip will be England’s gain, I could almost swear we’re mourning for him as well as for Burghley. I was too young to know much about the alarums when he first married Queen Mary, when our queen was still a princess, but as a child in her household I swear I remember her going to the court to make her curtsey to the new King Philip, and the red velvet gown she wore that day. Everyone else from those days is gone: Mistress Ashley and the rest of the ladies, the old Queen Mary herself, of course, Robert Dudley. The thought sends a breath of chill even through me, though I’m a younger woman than she.

  When there is no one left to whom you seem young, then you are old indeed, they say. And, unless all the doctors are wrong, then in a few days’ time, that’s what will happen to her majesty. So don’t think – don’t think, I urge her in my thoughts, silently – that I don’t understand why you can hanker after an Essex, in his youthful vitality.

  Don’t think I don’t understand why to talk of the succession, as a childless monarch should, drives you into a nervous frenzy, like a dog that’s been whipped so often for barking at strangers it only has to hear the gate now to run away.

  If she were just my cousin, instead of the queen, I’d put my arms around her in the carriage home, and say something silly. Instead, I sit there reminding myself to make sure her ruffs go to the Dutch laundry since none of the English cleaners starch them properly; and thinking about whether I’ll be able to slip away to Chelsea some time – I don’t trust that new confectioner – to see they’re preserving the summer fruits properly. I sit there with my eyes cast down, while she turns a still, hard profile away.

  Jeanne

  November 1598, Accession Day

  Lord Essex had to come back to town, of course. He had to, to take his place as one of the black-cowled mourners at Lord Burghley’s funeral. I’d been there too – we all were – though he didn’t see me. The old lord would really be laid to rest in his own church at Stamford, up to the north, but her majesty had decreed that there would be a great mourning ceremony in Westminster Abbey. They had as many of the household there as possible, to do him honour – or ‘to make a show’, as the most malicious of the clerks put it bluntly.

  No one had looked more sorrowful than Lord Essex, but the clerks weren’t the only ones to whisper he was sorrier for himself than for the loss of Lord Burghley. Down in the kitchens they were shouting it, over the sound of the cleavers and the kitchen boys, that the trouble continued between him and the queen. He actually dared say he wanted an apology. And the real question wasn’t just how they’d make up, or when – it was how we were all to go on as before, when a subject set his rights and the queen’s on terms of equality.

  They had to find some way. The news from Ireland was worse every day, and while Lord Essex was wanting to take an army, swearing he’d hang the rebel Tyrone from the country’s highest tree, the queen was holding back.

  ‘Well, you can’t blame her,’ the malicious clerk had said. ‘She’s never liked sending a man off to lead a war – shows who’s got the balls, besides the question of money. But this time, if she gives Essex an army she must ask herself what he’s going to wind up doing with it.’

  I’d kept my head down while the talk was going on, but at night I realised that I didn’t know, either, just what Lord Essex would do with his army.

  This was no golden harvest year; the corn had been snapped up for the tables of the rich, and by October the poor were already baking bread of beans and barley. The weather had worsened sharply as autumn wore on, and when the odd day did come of chilly sunshine, we’d snatched at it like greedy children who’d known the gift of light would soon be seized away. As Accession Day approached, I’d told myself I might not go, for all we knew Lord Essex would be a challenger. But when it came to it, of course, I shrugged my shoulders and allowed the other young clerks to persuade me.

  The crowds and the vendors were the same, and the awnings flapping in the wind overhead, and the sand underfoot. But I fancied I felt a special anticipation in the air. Everyone there knew of Lord Essex’s quarrels, and I felt a prick of irritation at him for making himself a motley. Maybe it wasn’t irritation so much as jealousy. I’d kept it close to my heart, that he’d been so open with me in the garden that day. But I’d come to realise that, like a beggar with his sores, he showed his moods to everybody.

  I felt a tug at my elbow, and it was the gangling clerk. ‘Come on – they say there’s going to be something to see.’ The grandees were beginning to arrive – my lord of Nottingham the Lord Admiral, a youthful earl or two, Sir Walter Ralegh the Captain of the Guard, with his men bravely decked out in plumes of orange and tawny.

  But they’d hardly taken their places when a titter arose,
from those nearest the gateway. They were carrying Lord Essex’s scutcheon, with rows of men marching behind, decked out in … orange and tawny. Ralegh’s colours. More men, taller plumes, and the crowd were enjoying it hugely.

  I turned away, with a tinge of sadness. I knew, of course, that his lordship and Sir Walter were no friends, but this seemed so – petty?

  I wasn’t the only one who thought so. ‘She won’t like that. He won’t do himself any good that way.’ I started – I hadn’t even noticed that the old clerk had joined the party. I craned round to peer to the royal gallery near at hand – this was a better place than I’d managed for myself when I’d come to the tilt as a lone boy, and I could see that the waiting gentlewomen were paving the way for her majesty. But of the champions themselves there was no sign. They were still hidden behind the bleachers, and on a sudden impulse I sprang up and raced back down the stairs, drawn as surely as if I’d been a fish on a line in the garden pond, and he playing with me.

  I turned my back on the lists themselves, and dodged round behind the back of the stands, to where the squires and the grooms would be making the knights ready. Down at this level, the noise was overwhelming, with the shouting of the boys and the stamping and whickering of the restless horses, but Lord Essex was already mounted, a little apart from the crowd, sitting loose in the saddle as he waited, idly.

  I slowed as I approached him, unsure what I could say. Unsure whether he’d even remember me.

  ‘Why, hello, Jan. Have you come to wish me luck?’ His squire started up, with a warning face, from where he’d been checking the point of the great lance, but Lord Essex waved him away. I was drinking in every detail of him. He looked tired – I’d heard that he’d been ill in truth, besides the diplomatic illnesses he’d used to get round her majesty.

  ‘You’re not wearing a favour this year,’ I said idiotically. ‘You haven’t got her majesty’s glove.’

  ‘I haven’t, have I?’ It was stupid of me to have reminded him, at this of all moments, how everyone knew he’d lost the queen’s favour, but that didn’t seem to worry him. Quite the reverse. He’d seemed to be drooping a little when I’d come up, detached from the scene; more like a crusader knight on a tomb than someone who was going to spur his horse into those lists and win a crashing, snorting victory. But now he was rousing, opening up like a plant in the sun under the flattery of my memory.

  ‘You’ve seen me joust before? Then you’ll know the rules. And you’re right – I should have a token. A knight should tilt for the favour of some lady.’ His voice lingered on the last word and my breath caught, half in anticipation and half in fear. His dark eyes were dancing as he beckoned me closer. The smell of the sweating horse was in my nostrils as I came to stand by his armoured knee.

  ‘Who do you suppose I should ask to give me one, my Jeanne Janny?’ His voice was quiet, but alive with mischief as he gave me my girl’s name, the French way.

  I’d been out in the gardens that morning, and found a bush of early blooming rosemary. I’d tucked a sprig into my doublet, telling myself it was best to have some clean scent by, in case the smells of the crowd grew unhealthy. I couldn’t have moved my fingers towards it, even had I dared. I was as paralysed as a rabbit in front of a snake. It felt as if I hardly breathed as slowly he stripped the metal gauntlet from his hand, and slowly reached out his long white hand towards me.

  My eyes were still fixed on his face as dimly I heard the herald’s trumpet sound. With a shout of alarm his boy sprang towards him, helmet at the ready, and I stumbled out of the way. As the great roan clattered past me I looked down at my doublet, at where the sprig of rosemary used to be.

  Katherine, Countess of Nottingham

  November 1598, Accession Day

  I do not actually watch as the queen raises her arm and unclenches her fingers, letting the glove fall solidly to the sand, heavy with its embroidery. I merely make a mental note to see that, this time, they clean it carefully. How many Accession Days is it now? It can’t be far off forty, though in the beginning we didn’t celebrate them this way. Once, long ago, we gave her such a wisp of a thing to throw that the wind all but whipped it away, but after this many years we’ve learned how to do these things properly.

  I can see the queen’s hands clench on the railing as the hoof-beats take up their rhythm, and, reluctantly, I turn my attention to the joust. Long past the time when my husband might take part, and I thank God neither of my sons are competing today. It takes skill to get a horse straight into a canter from a standing start, but Essex knows his business – in horsemanship, at any rate. Bad luck, I know – the curse, on the curser – but I can’t help half wishing him a fall. Not a serious one, naturally. Just enough to slow him down, to give a check to his career, and one for which no one could blame her majesty. Or say she was an old lady now, blind to genius and opportunity. One to make him walk cautiously for a few weeks. The way the queen walks today. The way I am beginning to walk myself – I can give a good decade to her majesty, but I swear I’m beginning to grow as old, in sympathy.

  Then again, after all those births – five large Howard babies living – you’d be lucky if you were left walking as easily as you used to as a girl; it’s the kind of thing the queen used to ask me about, once upon a time, when she’d keep me in her bedroom talking late into the night, and what was I supposed to say? They were all desperate for her to marry and produce an heir, and if it cost her life, well, so long as the baby was a boy … I told her the truth, the bad and the good, the so very good, but I don’t suppose it made any difference to her, really. I don’t suppose it made any difference, full stop. She may still have the figure of a girl, even without the whalebone stays. But no one could say she hadn’t suffered in other ways.

  When I glance around the younger ladies, the chits are all gazing at the tourney, with eyes like my lapdog if I hold a bone up, slowly. It’s Essex, languishing his way around the ring again, needless to say. The queen has seen it too. Her thin lips are clenched under the paint, and the pale winter sun shows the lines on her face too cruelly. So many years of these chits of maids, with their follies and their fancies, it makes me weary. Thank God I’ll be home for a few days soon, at my own house in Chelsea.

  Cecil

  Winter 1598–99

  ‘Wish the king no evil in thy thought, nor speak no hurt of him in thy privy chamber; for the bird of the air shall betray thy voice, and with her feathers shall bewray thy words.’ It says so in Ecclesiastes, and our best theorists agree. But the birds of the air may as well have help: especially since we can’t yet be sure whether evil is wished to the queen, precisely. Indeed, when Lord Essex declares he needs an army to take to Ireland, I’m not sure he himself formulates his thoughts too clearly.

  My father said that there were three sorts of traitors: since he died, I’ve found myself mouthing his sayings more frequently. Those ‘discontented for lack of preferments’, those who couldn’t afford to live quiet at home, and the bankrupt merchants. By merchants, he meant those buying and selling more than goods. By merchants, he meant anybody. Perhaps he was too sweeping, putting it all down to money. But in some ways, Essex is all three.

  A conspiracy must be laid out and tended like a garden. A plot for a plot, but only schoolboys congratulate themselves on their word play. Nor, of course, would I use the word plot for the simple precautions I am taking: and I doubt Lord Essex tends anything carefully.

  I listen to the rumours Essex has been in touch with Tyrone, just as I will later listen to the drone of the bees, which tells the keepers to get their skeps ready. I observe the wilting patch where the queen’s affection for him has faded, and I consider whether anything else could be planted there more usefully. I see the weeds sown by his lordship’s determination that his officers in Ireland shall be his men only – but these tares I shan’t pluck up too quickly. I think of the snares the gardeners set, before the rabbits can get the young seedlings. And I think of how Lord Essex set himself up so none ot
her could be given the Irish captaincy. I think of how he may be regretting it already.

  Jeanne

  Spring 1599

  He wouldn’t set out until after dinner, bound for Ireland with his army. One of the secret clerks broke his silence for once, to say that it would be a miracle if his lordship set out at all – but truth to tell, there wasn’t much of a secret about that. Every ale-drinker in every tavern had been talking for weeks about how Lord Essex was having second thoughts. It wasn’t just the impossibility of the job, though no Lord Deputy had ever managed to tame those wild Irish kerns. But they were talking, too, about how he’d told the Council he was armed before but not behind – ‘Saying while he was gone, our master would stab him in the back! Quite openly!’ It had been one of the pages reporting the tale, wide-eyed, in the kitchens, and the cook slammed his pot lid down with unusual vehemency. The old clerk said something damping, when he heard, about getting the tutor to thrash some grammar into the boy – but the fact was, everyone had heard of his lordship’s accusations. And I don’t think I was the only one, even in our house, to have divided loyalties.

  The day he was going dawned fine and clear – the kind of day you dream of as Easter approaches. The people would have a choice of blossoms, if the crowds wanted to throw flowers in his path as he left. The country women in the streets were already selling great balls of cowslips smelling like honey, and any children who ran out early to the woods could bring back the wreckage of frail wilting windflowers and the last of the daffodowndillies.

  No one actually said that we were all free to go out and watch that day, as Lord Essex and his troops rode out. Perhaps, in a Cecil household, it was the kind of thing you didn’t really say. But as I looked around the hall at dinner, there were a lot of trenchers being mopped up briskly, and more of the fish than usual went back into the kitchens. It might still be Lent, but the scullions would have a feast day – if they themselves hadn’t already tumbled out onto the streets.