The Girl in the Mirror. Sarah Gristwood

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СКАЧАТЬ had trotted into the arena, and was making the circuit of its brightly painted wooden walls with something in his hand held high.

      ‘It’s a glove – they always do it,’ said my knowledgeable neighbour. ‘They put word out that Lord Essex would be sending early, to get a gage to show he rides in honour of her majesty.’ Indeed, the jewelled figure at the window of the royal gallery was holding up her hand, to acknowledge the tribute graciously. But the play wasn’t over, so it seemed. As the herald left, a good-looking youth in the same bold colours took his place in the arena, and looked around until he could be sure he had all eyes. He struck a pose, and began to declaim, though high up as we were the wind whipped his words away.

      Three figures followed him, and knelt at his feet, in dumb show asking him to choose between them. The first, a soldier, was tall and armoured. It could have been anyone. It could have been Ralegh. The second drew a ripple of laughter from the crowd. It was barefoot in a hermit’s robe, but my neighbour hissed in my ear that the long beard and the staff were those of Lord Burghley. The laughter grew louder as the third figure, in a statesman’s dark clothes and waving documents of policy, leant sideways to hump one shoulder high in the air. I couldn’t make out Robert Cecil’s face, but he seemed to be bearing it quietly.

      As the actors took their bows, to roars of approval, my eye was drawn to the end of the lists. A knight was watching there, in red-and-white livery. ‘The colours of love,’ said my knowledgeable neighbour and I stared – I wouldn’t have put him down as a man for heraldry – until I saw he had a printed bill, like they might hand out for a play.

      The knight’s helmet was still off; I could see his hair and beard were tawny, and that his face was turned not towards the players but to the queen’s majesty. As the actors left the lists, he bowed his head to let the squire put on the metal headpiece, and snapped the visor down. Both knights were ready, their great heavy lances resting on the ground, waiting for the sign. It was the queen who gave it – an arm held up, a glove fluttering down, and the slow thunder of the horses’ hooves making the ground groan in sympathy.

      It was Essex’s opponent who fell, and a great sigh went up from the crowd; I knew men were running in from the sides, and that he wasn’t hurt, or not seriously. But my eyes, now, were on the royal gallery. I was too far away to see properly, but in my mind’s eye I saw the tiny figure tense, the hand clench on the window frame as the great metal spikes steadied to hit home. I knew now what I’d come for, and I’d found it in the queen’s majesty.

      ‘Something more than a man – and something less than a woman,’ Lord Burghley had quipped, famously. Something else, at any rate. Something else, like me.

      But I’d learnt another lesson, and one I put aside, uneasily. The queen watching Lord Essex was like Mrs Allen, waiting for a letter from her son, on business across the sea. Or Kate down the street, watching her man clambering drunk into the wrestling ring on fair day. Hopeful and fearful, proud and angry. A woman, for all she was queen, and statesman, and old, and majesty.

      Cecil Autumn 1595, Accession Day

      I’ll laugh about it later with Lizzie. I hold on to the thought of her forthright face, I imagine what Lizzie would say if she were here. Lizzie will say anything to anybody – ask her how much she paid for her gown, and she’ll answer you honestly. When I first saw her at court, I asked my cousin to find out whether my disability revolted her, before I asked if she would marry me. She reminds me of it – regularly – and every time she does, I could swear the twist in my shoulders grows slightly less. I know a little of the ache goes away. She says she married a man, not a set of muscles. If she were here, what would she say?

      I do not say, my time will come. I see a future with Lord Essex riding high: I see a future without Lord Essex in it. I plan for all contingencies: that is what my father taught me. If my father were here, if he’d been well enough today, he would be brushing off the mockery as though it were no more than a few drops of rain on his miniver collar. When we meet in the hall tonight he may speak of it, but only if there is need.

      He may say, it’s good that Essex is going too far, the queen doesn’t like her officers mocked too publicly. He may say, one of our men in place should be told to feed his lordship’s vanity. Or he may wear that disapproving look, that puffs out the pouches under his eyes and makes his years hang heavy, and say that we should damp down all comment, a period of quiet would be good for the country.

      On the whole he is unlikely to say anything: as he grows older and his hand starts to shake, he assumes everyone will agree with him and I do, actually. How would I not, when he trained me so thoroughly? The one thing he is certain not to say is, Don’t let it hurt you. Flattery is for fools, vanity is for women, that’s what he’d say.

      Thank God for Lizzie.

      My ruff feels too tight around my neck but I know better than to lift a hand to ease it. There are too many eyes on me, watching for the least sign of discomfiture. I can see Southampton grinning spitefully. I remember him as a child, always trying to keep up with the older boys. I can see Francis Bacon, his profile turned away from me. He’s never forgiven us for that business over the Attorney General’s office, he’s linked his fortune to Essex’s chariot wheels, and it will be like the clever fool he is if he gets dragged the wrong way. But he won’t entirely be enjoying this – the same blood runs in the veins of both our mothers; at rock bottom we are family.

      In the convoluted world of the court, there may even be some who believed we Cecils had a hand in writing Essex’s little story. My father has been painting himself as a hermit for years, asking leave to retire and tend his garden. And one thing we all learn at court, a veil of enmity can cloak allies as easily as a show of friendship cloaks enmity. They may think I have the subtlety, or the courage, to make fun of my own misshapen form, to consider the sting was a price worth paying to have made the queen laugh out loud.

      I should be flattered by their thoughts, probably.

      Essex himself is riding around the ring, that victor’s lap of honour where they hold the horse’s pace down so its oiled hooves flick up the dust contemptuously. As he passes he looks at me with a hot urgent eye. It was always that way, ever since he was young, one of the aristocratic orphans, like Southampton, raised in my father’s house. He’d do something outrageous, and then he’d come to peer at you, in his tall gangling way, looking for – what? Shock? Approval? Envy? Reassurance that you’d forgive him, come what may?

      Perhaps now it is my jealousy he wants, for me to acknowledge that my feeble arm could never even bear the weight of his lance, so I give it to him, dipping my head a little and smiling slightly, like a fencer courteously acknowledging a hit.

      Smiling is easy: my father always taught me to praise in public, and criticise secretly. Sweetness is easy: it is easy, actually, as I look at Essex, but why? Absurd, irrational, but there is something in the sight of that tall, trotting figure that melts some of the sore frozen core in me.

      Perhaps that is something I will not say to Lizzie.

      Jeanne Winter 1595–96

      Around Christmas Mrs Allen’s cousin, the theatre man, sent word he wanted to see her. They’d been given a gift of clothes from some grand lady that needed altering to make players’ costumes, and she was clever that way. She took me along to help carry the bundles, and I went with more than usual alacrity. I was feeling restless since that day at the tourney – as if my little hole in the wainscot were no longer enough for me. It was not to the theatre we were to go today, but to the great lady’s house in Chelsea. The troupe had been hired to put on several shows during the festivities. It was the first time I’d actually been inside such a place and I looked around, wide-eyed, as we СКАЧАТЬ