Читать книгу The Girl in the Mirror - Sarah Gristwood - Страница 9

Jeanne Autumn 1597

‘You won’t be needing livery – the secretaries don’t. Just wear something neat, dark and discreet. No ruffs,’ the steward added, sharply. I nodded, as if curbing an inclination to finery, though the truth was I was only too glad to be let off an accessory that would have to go to an expensive laundress every few days.

‘Here – you might want to take this, though. You’ll find it’s something of a passport.’ It was a metal cloak badge with the Cecil crest, and as I pinned it on I felt at the same time a small tug of vexed pride, and a tiny glow of warmth. It seemed I had not just accepted a post, I had joined a community.

That had been six weeks ago, and I was finding I liked this new sense of family. I’d kept my own room in Blackfriars for the nights, of course. It wasn’t as if sharing with three other young male clerks was really a possibility. But I found that more and more often I was getting up early in the morning to walk along Fleet Street and break my fast in the hall at Burghley House, not just for the fine white manchet bread the steward occasionally let slip to our table, but for the company.

I suppose I’d always assumed that I’d stick out like a sore thumb in any group I tried to join, but on the clerk’s table everyone was an oddity. There was one old man, with his delicate small paws and twitching mouse’s face, kept on for the beauty of his calligraphy. There was one gangling youngster with a lantern jaw and spluttering speech, who read seven languages fluently. There were two silent watchful men who rarely spoke of the day’s business, though one had a passion for part singing and the other for archery, and they carried an air of warning about them. The music lover was one of the best breakers of cipher in the country, I was told quietly.

Not all the business in the Burghley household was open for all to see. But there was nothing secret about the job laid down for me, in between the routine tasks I’d be given, translating and transcribing whatever was necessary. All the world knew that Master Gerard was about to publish his great Herbal, and dedicate it to Lord Burghley. This was my first chance to read it, in the original copy, and of course I did so avidly. Some of its information seemed strange to me – I’d heard Jacob and the other herbalists speak of Gerard’s work before, and not always kindly – but Master Pointer had said that such a book, and written not in Latin but in the vernacular tongue, would be a great help to the industry. And Gerard’s vivid descriptions of the yellow loosestrife in the meadows towards Battersea, of the kidney vetch growing on Hampstead Heath, brought plant-hunting expeditions with Jacob back to me.

But Master Gerard’s health was poor at the moment and, as new plants arrived every month from abroad to be added to the records of the Cecil gardens, he couldn’t get out to sketch them easily, or to quiz the gardeners about their care. What’s more, Sir Robert had no intention of letting this new light of knowledge shine only in his own country. The Herbal was to be translated and finely bound up, with coloured illustrations and new additions wherever necessary, and then sent out to foreign dignitaries; a minor tool of diplomacy. It was a specialised task, which set me a little apart from the rest of the under-secretaries, just as surely as the small closet, with its window over the garden for a clear light, where I was allowed to spread my paints and papers. I felt so spoiled I was almost scared of it – half drunk with the freedom to borrow any book from the great library. For the first time in my life, in fabulous hand-tinted editions, I saw the plants from foreign countries spring to life in shades of saffron, cinnabar and verdigris. Maybe it was because Sir Robert’s rule over the household was so complete that I suffered no open signs of envy. Or maybe mine was a private pleasure, and the others didn’t envy me.

Sometimes I thought of Jacob, and wished that he could see me. Sometimes I thought what Jacob would say, if he could see the Herbal: I knew Master de l’Obel had begun to correct Master Gerard’s work, before its author took it back, indignantly; and truth to tell I wondered, I did wonder, when I read his description of how the barnacle geese that flock here each year spring from the shells shed by a Scottish tree. But in our age of marvels it might be foolish to query – it would certainly be foolhardy. I bent my head to the translation, industriously.

I was sent to make my bow to Master Gerard, of course – in this house they did things courteously. His brief glance made it clear he wouldn’t expect to be seeing too much of me, but if he felt any resentment, he didn’t show it. The only person in the house who seemed openly to disapprove of me was the nominal master himself, old Lord Burghley. He wasn’t there all the time – everyone knew that for years he’d been begging her majesty to let him retire, and that his greatest pleasure now was to ride around Theobalds, his country estate, on a mule, or to sit and watch his gardeners from the shade of a tree. But sometimes I would hear the clunk of his stick, and turn to see his small eyes fixed on me. Like a lot of old people, he had the habit of talking to himself aloud and once, ‘I suppose Robert knows what he’s doing,’ I heard, as he glared at me.

I ventured to mention it to the old clerk. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, twisting his hands below his pointed face, so that I almost expected to see whiskers twitching above a grain of corn, ‘he’s like that with everybody.’ And even for Lord Burghley, it seemed, in the end it was enough that Sir Robert had a purpose for me – just how good or useful a one would become clear eventually.

Katherine, Lady Howard, Countess of Nottingham October 1597

There are patches of time when too much seems to happen, so that in the end you feel punch-drunk, like a cheap fighter in the ring at the end of fair day. It was only yesterday, the twenty-third, that the queen paused on her way back from chapel, and handed to my husband the patent that made him Earl of Nottingham – and me the countess, naturally.

Of course we knew that it was coming – the queen herself had been in a little ripple of amusement when she beckoned me to walk to chapel with her that day. But even so there is something about the moment: I couldn’t step from my place in the queen’s train to be beside my husband, but after so many years of marriage, I could still feel his joy. The ceremony was all it should have been – I wished my father were alive to see. He once said these things were the nearest a gentleman could get to the drama, and of course he loved a play, and players – Lord Hunsdon and his Lord Chamberlain’s Company.

The earls of Shrewsbury and Worcester presented Charles, Sussex bore the cup and the shiny new coronet, Pembroke lent his robes and Robert Cecil read aloud the patent he had drafted, with a convincing gravity. Time was, no doubt, when any Howard would have been glad to see a Cecil done down, when we’d have stared at the idea of any friendship between these jumped-up pen gents and the old nobility. But one must try to move with the times, and new enemies make new allies. And of course these days, it’s hard to tell who is the old nobility. Look at my family – which means her majesty’s. And Robert Cecil, unlike others I could name, has always behaved with respect towards my husband and I.

So the next morning should have been good, and ordinary, surely? Maybe I would have had a chance to enjoy my new honours, maybe I would have gone around the court a little, to savour the greater depth of the bows that greeted me. Maybe – for one has, after all, experience in this world – I would, underneath, have felt a little flat, as often one can do after the event, but I’d sent for my sister Philadelphia and surely, at the very least, I could have enjoyed having her see me in my day of glory – she may have been grabbing everyone’s attention ever since she was in the nursery, and her husband may be the tenth Lord Scrope, but he isn’t an earl, and entitled to wear the purple, is he?

Well, enough of that. Everything was in train for my husband to preside over the new session of Parliament today. Instead what happens? A galloping messenger to say Lord Essex’s ship has been sighted off Plymouth, so we’ll have him trying to explain his latest folly, and trying to take the gloss off our new honours in any way he may. Oh yes, and as if that weren’t enough, they say a Spanish fleet is once again on the way.

Of course the two things are tied together. Essex’s job was to smash the Spanish fleet in the harbour, and ensure our safety. Instead he sets off on a wild-goose chase, all around the seas.

For Essex to disregard his orders is no new story. Sometimes when I reckon up his transgressions, I am frightened at the tally. None of the others, not even his stepfather, would have dared break the rules so frequently and I cannot help worrying, as on a sore tooth, at how the queen has let him do it with impunity. Whether her indulgence has become a habit, whether it’s that his battle cry seems to sound with the voice of half the young men at the court, and the sheer clamour makes her weary? Whether, even, the noise makes her doubt her own judgement or whether – my mind just touches on the thought – there is (was? is) something about his young man’s urgency? Something she allows herself to feel, and just for a breath I remember a time when feeling seemed easy.

Anyway, as any politician knows, the outcome is half the story: oh, you don’t get to be queen’s lady all these years without being a politician, in your heart. Essex was to have gone after Spanish treasure, yes, but only after he had destroyed the Spanish ships in their harbour. Then again, if the fleet had failed to sail, as fleets had failed before, if the treasure had proved rich, then maybe he would have been forgiven, even by the queen, though I for one would have kept the tally. Instead we have still a fleet to face, and barely a groat of prize money.

I knew it was bad when the boy came so early to say Burghley himself was waiting to see her majesty. He’s an old man now, and you wake early as you get old, but to face the day is another story. I knew it was bad, since he was here so that Robert wouldn’t have to be. Bad news rubs off on the man who brings it, and it’s only when you’ve been together as long as Burghley and the queen that you acquire a measure of immunity.

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.