The Girl in the Mirror

He held out his hand. ‘May I see?’

Dumbly, I passed over my sheaf of drawings, barely remembering to jerk down into a bow, and he leafed through the pages, those brows raising slightly.

‘Impressive. Do you work for Master Pointer? In what capacity?’ He gestured me to fall in with him as he walked on. ‘My constitutional. If I’m taking you from your art, you must forgive me.’ He knew I’d come in his way on purpose, of course, but he was a polite man – polite in his soul – and he didn’t let the knowledge intrude.

As he walked he questioned me – my skills, my situation – and I answered him with a sense of inevitability, so completely had it fallen out as I had dreamed it. Though it was my penman-ship first caught his eye, it was my languages that seemed to interest him most. He’d ask me for the names of plants in French and Flemish, as well as Latin, as we passed by. He spoke to me of the great plant hunters from earlier in the century, of Turner and Gesner and of Mattioli before them, and of who was like to take up the mantle of Plantin in Antwerp, now that his great printing centre under the sign of the golden compasses had passed away. He spoke of his own commission to John Gerard, the surgeon and collector who’d had the ordering of the Cecil gardens, to produce the first great English Herbal in almost half a century. I was devoutly thankful to Jacob, and to all the evenings, since his death, I’d spent in solitary study.

‘I may be able to find a use for you, Master – de Musset?’ Of course he pronounced it correctly. ‘If Master Pointer can spare you, naturally. Come and see my steward tomorrow.’

When I went back next day, I didn’t see the steward, I saw Sir Robert himself. But I was then too new to the game to realise that was extraordinary.

Cecil Summer 1597

I walk in the garden more and more these days – even when it’s wet, even when it’s too hot for comfort. It’s the only thing that makes the pain go away. Well, not go away, but step back a single pace, still snarling, like a dog when you pick up a stick and wave it menacingly. Round the beds, like a soldier on a route march, ticking off the success or failure of each plant in my head, like nature’s own litany. Rosemary for remembrance, the last seed heads of the heartsease pansy … Lizzie would give my bad arm that little shake that seemed to loosen more than it hurt me and tell me I was a secret sentimentalist, for all the rest of them thought I was so canny.

Lizzie.

I’m not alone in the garden this time, though usually the gardeners absent themselves now. I suppose one of the secretaries has tipped them off, tactfully. There’s a boy – at least, he looks no more than a stripling, brown-haired and neat, without being finicky. He’s standing in front of the Marvel of Peru, and he has a paper and a stick of charcoal in his hand, but from a certain self-conscious stiffness in his stance, I know he’s waiting for me.

I would have gone over anyway. Always know everything that’s happening in your household – and for your household, read the whole country, or as much of it as you can manage. That’s another thing my father taught me. And, never ignore any thing that comes to you. You never know where you’ll find an opportunity.

I hold out my hand for the paper he is working on. ‘May I see?’

He hands over his sheaf of drawings, silently.

‘Impressive. Do you work for Master Pointer? In what capacity?’ I gesture him to fall in with me. As we walk I question him, and I believe he answers me honestly. There is something held back, of course, there always is. If there weren’t, he would be too simple to be of much use to me, and I can use him – on the garden records, certainly. New plants are arriving every day. Gerard’s indisposition is likely to be lengthy, so the physicians say, and it would be a crying shame if our records were to remain incomplete, and his book left with only English eyes to admire it. I ask the boy for the names of plants in French and Italian as we pass by. He speaks Flemish too, which is less ordinary. It only takes two sentences for him to tell me why.

It carries me back ten years to that first journey, my first taste of a diplomatic mission, and me barely past twenty. I’d gone to the Netherlands in an older man’s train, to see if Parma could be bought off, with the great Armada on the way. It hadn’t worked – no one ever thought it was likely to – but the time bought was something. What I remember most wasn’t the negotiations, nor even the hard riding that made my shoulder ache, but the inns where they served up half a herring as a feast, and then stood around to watch as we ate it, and the miserable state of the country. That was when I truly understood that peace in a land matters more than anything. That it is worth dying for – or arranging others’ deaths, if necessary.

I should like to help this boy, apart even from the question of his use to me. Never dismiss your kindly impulses – they can be as useful as any other, so my father used to say. My father used to do a lot of saying, before age made him as twisted as me, as twisted as Lizzie just before she –

‘Come see my steward tomorrow,’ I tell the boy. Pointer won’t make any trouble – he’ll understand the value of a friend at court, to make sure all the Cecil business doesn’t go any other firm’s way.

There’s a discreet bustle by the house. I’ve dallied too long, and someone needs me. I set my shoulders as I turn back – as set as my shoulders are able to be. I will take our business off my father’s hands where necessary, and when business fails me, I will keep my mind firmly fixed on the trivialities. The gardeners should be getting the seeds in now, if we’re to eat green vegetables again before May: folly to say you can’t plant before spring, just because that’s how it was done in their grandfather’s day.

But sometimes I think that the two weights, my work and my grief, will be enough to crush me. Now, though, there’s the faintest breath of relief – a tickle, at the corner of my mind’s eye. I’m not sure what it was but there was something – something about that boy.

PART II

I am melancholy, merry, sometimes happy and often

unfortunate. The court is of as many humours as the

rainbow hath colours, the time wherein we live more

inconstant than women’s thoughts, more miserable than

old age itself and breeding both people and occasions

that is violent, desperate and fantastical.

Letter from Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex,

to his sister Penelope

We princes are set on highest stage, where looks of all

beholders verdict our works; neither can we easily dance

in nets so thick as may dim their sight.

Letter from Elizabeth I to James VI of Scotland

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.’