The Girl in the Glass Tower Read Free Page B

but I said nothing.
    Less than three years later the Queen of Scotland was gone. I wondered if she had been executed because she no longer had the protection of her Agnus Dei.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    My fingers wander now to the silk purse that hangs from my girdle containing my treasures: the weighted die that Uncle Henry gave me once, to remind me things aren’t always as they seem; the tiny bell from Geddon’s collar; the fold of parchment containing a lock of my husband’s hair; the smooth crystal drop from the glassworks at Hardwick; the scrap of paper bearing Mistress Lanyer’s poem; it is about me, but a me I no longer know. Right at the bottom, beneath everything, is the Agnus Dei, blessed by the Pope. It has not protected me very well.
    Tap, tap, tap.

Clerkenwell
    A sheaf of papers lands on the table with a thunk, sending out a billow of dust. It is tied with a length of faded ribbon that might have once been crimson. Motes jig and twirl as if alive in a shaft of sun that falls through the open window. Ami feels a sneeze build then dissipate at the back of her nose.
    ‘What are they?’ She puts the loaf she is carrying by the window to cool and picks up the papers.
    ‘Smells good.’ Hal reaches out to break a piece of bread off. She slaps his hand away, laughing.
    He smiles that bright smile of his and taps the papers in her hand. ‘From Lady Arbella’s effects.’
    ‘Lady Arbella.’ She carefully lays the papers back on the table, fearing they might disintegrate beneath her fingers.
    Her son seems distracted now, whistling and searching for something, patting down his doublet, then delving in the large leather bag that hangs on the back of the door, then in the chest, his head disappearing. ‘A man I know was charged with clearing out her rooms.’ His voice is muffled. ‘He thought you might be interested in them; said he remembered you’d dedicated a poem to her. I told him you knew her once. You did know her, didn’t you?’
    ‘That’s right,’ she says.
    Her mind wanders back to the last time she saw Lady Arbella. An image springs up from the past, that distant gaze, the russet frizz, an echo of the old Queen, scraped back and tamed beneath her cap, her sharply pronounced clavicles and thin graceful arms. They were in the stable yard at Richmond Palace; it must have been more than a decade ago. LadyArbella rarely looked directly at anyone which earned her, wrongly, a reputation for aloofness, but she had cast an indecipherable look at Ami and asked, ‘Are you my friend?’
    Ami remembers the formality of her reply: ‘My Lady, I would never presume to call myself your friend, but you have my firm loyalty and love.’ A flash of sadness had scudded over the other woman’s face. It made Ami realize how lonely life must be for one so highborn, how much she must have yearned for ordinary friendship, and she regretted having not simply said, ‘Yes, I am your friend.’ Friendship had seemed impossible in the gulf of hierarchy that separated them, but there was no doubt that that was what it was.
    Ami feels the old tangle of remorse; deep in a neglected part of her heart she knows it was she who caused the final misfortune – the greatest one. She had longed to beg forgiveness but it was not to be. In the end she failed her friend. She can hear those words, can still hear the rage in them:
If this fails, I will never forgive you
.
    Hal continues, pulling her out of the past: ‘He said he’d get nothing for them, so you may as well have them.’
    ‘Are they letters?’
    ‘I don’t know, not letters, just scribblings, I think.’
    If not letters then Ami feels sure she knows what they are. It was she who suggested to Lady Arbella that she take Book VI of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
and turn it into a drama. They had discussed it many times and Ami had sent her early drafts of her own poetry, but she had never seen a word of Lady Arbella’s
Tragedy of Philomel
. She’d concluded it was never written.